Monster list tweaking

[Antoine]

So you prefer every monster being easy to predict and kill at their corresponding depth? You add boredom with smoothness, unless you also make sure that game creates very OoD monsters every now and then and pretty much every level has some OoD monster.

+1

Some monsters should be "dangerous when encountered at depth"

A.

[Magnate]

+1

Some monsters should be "dangerous when encountered at depth"

Actually all monsters should be dangerous when encountered at depth. What we should avoid are massive discrepancies between the danger levels of monsters of the same native depth, which is what fizzix is trying to address. The discrepancies between the danger levels of monsters present on any given generated level should be roughly what it is now - but the more dangerous monsters should be varying degrees OOD.

[Timo Pietilä]

Actually all monsters should be dangerous when encountered at depth.

That's impossible goal. Even if you make dungeon two level deep with Morgoth waiting at dlvl 2 player would just play level 1 so long that he is ready to face Morgoth. You need variance. Without that no level would ever be dangerous (or to be more precise all levels would be equally boringly similar in danger level).

[PowerWyrm]

I've been thinking about doing some significant monster list tweaking for a while now, and I've started gathering my thoughts together. The main problem I wish to solve is that non-unique monsters top out at level 79. I'd like to move that to about dlevel 95, with the deepest monsters likely being the Pit fiend and the Great Wyrm of Balance.

For my variant, I made an important tweak on dragons to make the deeper levels more interesting (and to allow the full variety for players choosing the Dragon race at birth). Currently, you have wyrms which summon dragons (storm, ice...) and wyrms which summon ancient dragons (chaos, law...). For my variant I split those into Greater Wyrms (+10 speed, summon dragons) and Ancient Wyrms (+20 speed, summon ancient dragons). The Greater Wyrms are maintained at their current depth (63-83), the Ancient Wyrms are put deeper (87-97).

[Magnate]

That's impossible goal. Even if you make dungeon two level deep with Morgoth waiting at dlvl 2 player would just play level 1 so long that he is ready to face Morgoth. You need variance. Without that no level would ever be dangerous (or to be more precise all levels would be equally boringly similar in danger level).

You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote. I said "The discrepancies between the danger levels of monsters present on any given generated level should be roughly what it is now" which means the opposite of "equally boringly similar in danger level". Perhaps you are confusing the gameplay result (unchanged) with the underlying mechanism (proposal to change). Perhaps also we understand different meanings of "dangerous" as used in my sentence which you quoted. I meant "non-trivial" and (clarified in the next sentence) "not wildly varying in danger level" (remember this is the underlying mechanism, not the gameplay result). Perhaps you thought I meant "instakill-deadly" and "equally boringly similar".

[fizzix]

So you prefer every monster being easy to predict and kill at their corresponding depth? You add boredom with smoothness, unless you also make sure that game creates very OoD monsters every now and then and pretty much every level has some OoD monster.

1) I prefer that every monster's depth corresponds in some way to its difficulty. Of course with wide varieties of monsters, this is very difficult to quantify, and depends greatly on the specific game you are playing. A nexus vortex is dangerous to a powerful character without rnexus but is ignorable for a much weaker character with rnexus.

2) To me problems occur when obviously stronger monsters appear earlier than weaker monsters. Dracolichs and great ice wyrms are an example here. Another problem is when monsters are given the illusion of being handleable due to prior experience when they are not. AMHDs are an example of this, judging by Ancient dragons, and the difference between mature elemental dragons and mature MHDs, a player will deduce incorrectly that an AMHD should be *much* weaker than they actually are. The solutions are to make AMHDs much deeper than elemental ancient dragons, or make elemental dragons stronger. Personally, I prefer the latter. But for the first run through, I'm going to avoid tweaking *anything* to monsters besides levels.

3) Some difficulties arise because moving some already powerful monsters deeper will make them significantly more powerful. I've already mentioned black reavers as a problem. Other problem monsters are angels, emperor wights, death knights, dark elven lords, nether wraiths. These monsters need to be handled with care, and perhaps they will satisfy your need for dangerous out of depth monsters, simply because the prospect of weakening them is not appealing to me.

4) I have no problem of increasing the variance in OoD monsters appearing. Assuming we use a normal distribution on the OoD side. Something like a 6 level standard deviation (after say level 40) seems reasonable. Then for every OoD monster, 68.2% are between 1 and 6 levels OoD. 26.8% are between 7 and 12 and 4.2% are between 13 and 18, and 0.2% are between 19 and 24. This will probably be my next task.

[Magnate]

3) Some difficulties arise because moving some already powerful monsters deeper will make them significantly more powerful. I've already mentioned black reavers as a problem. Other problem monsters are angels, emperor wights, death knights, dark elven lords, nether wraiths. These monsters need to be handled with care, and perhaps they will satisfy your need for dangerous out of depth monsters, simply because the prospect of weakening them is not appealing to me.

Just to note that the reason these monsters get more dangerous if moved deeper is because (some significant proportion of) their attacks are level-based.

Also to note that this is configurable, so we can stop any of these attacks being level-based and replace them with level-independent attacks, if we want to make any of these monsters deeper without becoming more dangerous.

Finally, I am working on moving this configurability of spells and effects from source code files into edit files, so it will be possible to test changes like this without needing to recompile. This is a sizeable project and won't be finished any time soon, but I am hoping to make good progress over the xmas holidays.

Just in case anyone has forgotten that this is the v4 forum, none of the above changes will be going into V, at least not for a long time.

[Timo Pietilä]

1) I prefer that every monster's depth corresponds in some way to its difficulty.

Well, you are creating an variant I wont be playing, and hopefully nothing from it is coming to vanilla as it is (because nothing from it will be directly useful for vanilla) so feel free to do whatever you wish. Personally I feel that similar monster danger level at any given dlvl just makes game more boring.

[Malak Darkhunter]

here is my take on the monsters, never liked monster pits of any sort it's tedious gameplay, I like the idea of having smaller groups, pits, but make the monsters tougher in return, trolls, giants, dragons, balrogs should never appear in large groups, but make them tougher and more dangerous and therefore worth more expereince in return, I think there is a thing such as too many monsters generated on a level, that makes for frustrating gameplay.

that's my 2 cents, I'm fine with whatever you guy's decide to do, I'll play it.

[Antoine]

Actually all monsters should be dangerous when encountered at depth. What we should avoid are massive discrepancies between the danger levels of monsters of the same native depth, which is what fizzix is trying to address. The discrepancies between the danger levels of monsters present on any given generated level should be roughly what it is now - but the more dangerous monsters should be varying degrees OOD.

I understand what you're doing but I don't think it's good for the game

A.

[Gorbad]

Well, you are creating an variant I wont be playing, and hopefully nothing from it is coming to vanilla as it is (because nothing from it will be directly useful for vanilla) so feel free to do whatever you wish. Personally I feel that similar monster danger level at any given dlvl just makes game more boring.

You are beginning to sound like dos350... I am sure you have very valid points, but remarks like this are just spiteful. Create your own angband fork and everyone who agrees will flock to your version. Welcome to the wonderful world of Open Source.

[myshkin]

1) I prefer that every monster's depth corresponds in some way to its difficulty. Of course with wide varieties of monsters, this is very difficult to quantify, and depends greatly on the specific game you are playing. A nexus vortex is dangerous to a powerful character without rnexus but is ignorable for a much weaker character with rnexus.

By "depth," do you mean the race's native depth, the depth at which this particular monster appears, or something else? Similarly, by "difficulty," do you mean the race's native depth (i.e. mlvl), or some more nuanced measure of how tough the monster is?

I am curious as to how people would want the following thought experiment to go: Consider the distribution of characters who are first encountering dlvl 50. (I'm picking a specific level just to be concrete; I don't intend anything special about dlvl 50.) These characters might be mostly between 150-600 HP, have a maximum damage per round of 10-100, have speed from 0-20, etc. Pick a character from this distribution, compare it to the monsters it encounters on dlvl 50, and repeat a few hundred times. What proportion of these encounters should fall into each of the following categories? Assume an expert player with knowledge of monster attributes and tactics. For extra credit, think about what rewards a character should get for each kind of encounter.

• Pushover - Poses no danger to the character, except maybe as an obstacle (e.g. a single orc)
• Fight - Characters will win this encounter, but may need to use a handful of rounds and some tactics (e.g. ancient non-MH dragons?)
• Major fight - A well-prepared character can win this encounter, but may be forced to flee (e.g. some vaults, middling dragon uniques depending on the character)
• Very risky encounter - Character might be able to defeat the monster(s) with luck and/or consumable consumption, but death is also quite possible once engaged, even with best play; most players would evade before engaging (e.g. The Phoenix in most cases)
• Evade or die - Character should leave level, banish, or take other evasive action immediately upon detection, on pain of death (e.g. pack of time hounds)

For the moment, I'm disregarding unpleasant side effects that may make the player want to avoid an encounter for reasons other than risk of death, e.g. stat swapping, disenchantment, equipment/inventory damage. I'm also ignoring synergies among nearby encounters. Feel free to amend my list of categories as needed.

[Magnate]

I understand what you're doing but I don't think it's good for the game

Could you say a little more, please? If the actual gameplay is unchanged, why is it bad to change the underlying mechanism?

[Timo Pietilä]

Could you say a little more, please? If the actual gameplay is unchanged

How do you keep the gameplay same if you move monsters around? Did this thread suddenly take 180 degree turn, and you are not supposed to change monster dlevels anymore?

[Magnate]

How do you keep the gameplay same if you move monsters around? Did this thread suddenly take 180 degree turn, and you are not supposed to change monster dlevels anymore?

No. Let me try and explain as simply as I can: the proposal is to make the native depths of monsters more closely indicative of their power/danger/whatever you call it. At the moment there are large variations in the power of monsters of the same native depth.

If we made this change without changing anything else, then gameplay would change because the variations in power encountered on any given dungeon level would be significantly reduced, leading to a duller game. This is what I think you and Antoine object to, and I can understand that.

The proposal is to increase the number of OOD monsters, and the extent to which they are OOD, so that the variability of encountered danger remains roughly the same, so the game stays interesting.

Does that make any better sense?