v4 - a few characters

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by d_m

But in any case, I think when we provide numbers (e.g. weapon to-hit/damage bonuses) we should provide/assume knowledge of the game engine and try to provide some other useful context (i.e. how the weapon is actually performing).

I can understand the logic there, but it doesn't fit how I see the character interacting with the world. Imagine you are a novice warrior, you read a scroll of ID on a weapon, it gives you a list of numbers - would you then be able to tell from that description of the enchantment how much damage it would do? Or forget about Angband for a second, if I was to give you statistics on a bullet (fps, impact energy, etc.) could you figure out the damage it would do to a target?

I would argue that you should be able to know the weapons main dice but the to-hit, and to-dam (or whatever you want to call it) are things that would only come with use. The class/race modifiers would then influence how rapidly this took to become less fuzzy. I high level / high skill warrior could likely figure out the exact damage ranges with just a little use, but a novice mage certainly would not.

This to me would move the game more away from ID crunching, would again differentiate characters and add to immersion in game play. But I don't see any way to make the coding trivial because you would need to store the "known" values for weapons/armor for each item used until they were destroyed (left on a level and abandoned). Quite frankly I would like to see the same for rods, etc. as well but again that is a lot of coding.

It is also an argument that making this change really could be sufficient grounds to claim variant as this is a pretty big chance in game play vs the Angband which came from UMoria.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

I can understand the logic there, but it doesn't fit how I see the character interacting with the world. Imagine you are a novice warrior, you read a scroll of ID on a weapon, it gives you a list of numbers - would you then be able to tell from that description of the enchantment how much damage it would do? Or forget about Angband for a second, if I was to give you statistics on a bullet (fps, impact energy, etc.) could you figure out the damage it would do to a target?

I would argue that you should be able to know the weapons main dice but the to-hit, and to-dam (or whatever you want to call it) are things that would only come with use. The class/race modifiers would then influence how rapidly this took to become less fuzzy. I high level / high skill warrior could likely figure out the exact damage ranges with just a little use, but a novice mage certainly would not.

This to me would move the game more away from ID crunching, would again differentiate characters and add to immersion in game play. But I don't see any way to make the coding trivial because you would need to store the "known" values for weapons/armor for each item used until they were destroyed (left on a level and abandoned). Quite frankly I would like to see the same for rods, etc. as well but again that is a lot of coding.

It is also an argument that making this change really could be sufficient grounds to claim variant as this is a pretty big chance in game play vs the Angband which came from UMoria.

I think you and d_m are in more agreement than it might appear! It's not too hard to add disp_to_d and disp_to_d to the o_ptr structure to store the "currently known" values, and I agree that it would be a lot more immersive. I don't think it would really be that big a change, for those of us who have got used to ID-by-use. It's really just a halfway house between not knowing the plusses until you cast ID, and knowing them on the first hit (which is what we have now).

I like your idea of extending this kind of gradual learning to devices too. That's a little harder to do, because devices have all sorts of variables (damage, range, duration, etc.) which would need to be learned gradually, instead of just plusses.

In fact, that same logic could be extended to pvals - I'm thinking particularly of slays, but it could also be applied to other pvals, like stealth or speed or stats. But that really would be quite a big change - not knowing exactly how fast or strong you are is likely to discomfit a lot of players.

[LostTemplar]

Or forget about Angband for a second, if I was to give you statistics on a bullet (fps, impact energy, etc.) could you figure out the damage it would do to a target?

All this numbers, e. g. damage dice, hitpoints, etc. are only parameters of the model, in real life they does not exist, so the only real number, that characterise a weapon effectiveness is how many hits it takes to kill an average orc, or something like this.

[Derakon]

At this point we start running into the issue of how "real" all the gameplay abstractions are. In other words, we can pretend that we are inexactly representing a realistic world, in which case the adventurer only knows how heavy, sharp, etc. his weapon is and so on. But then said adventurer must start wondering why the orc he's fighting is just as spry at 1HP as it was at 80HP, or how exactly he survived being crushed by falling rock, etc. Or we can pretend that we are exactly representing an abstracted world, in which case the adventurer knows that his world runs on a system of hitpoints and numerical damage and special-cased rules for earthquakes and so on. Neither case is ideal, and I think no matter how you decide to represent information to the player "based on what the character has figured out", you're going to run into holes because of these disconnects.

[LostTemplar]

But then said adventurer must start wondering why the orc he's fighting is just as spry at 1HP as it was at 80HP

Well, you missed my point, IMHO HP is just a model parameter, not something, adventurer can wonder about, adventurer just hit orc 3 times and orc dies, no hp no damage, no dice, etc. all this is just a part of a computer model. In other words I dont care too much about how things are modelled, if an orc dies in 3 hits, anything else does not matter (e.g. dwarf fortress game has a very complicated model), and I dont need any numbers to figure out, that one weapon kill orc in 3 hits, while another takes 5 hits, and so make a decision, that first one is better.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by LostTemplar

Well, you missed my point, IMHO HP is just a model parameter, not something, adventurer can wonder about, adventurer just hit orc 3 times and orc dies, no hp no damage, no dice, etc. all this is just a part of a computer model. In other words I dont care too much about how things are modelled, if an orc dies in 3 hits, anything else does not matter (e.g. dwarf fortress game has a very complicated model), and I dont need any numbers to figure out, that one weapon kill orc in 3 hits, while another takes 5 hits, and so make a decision, that first one is better.

You still have the issue of entities being equally dangerous when they're clearly mostly dead (at one star of health) as they are when they're at full health. Even if you can't observe the exact HP of the enemy (and hint, you can), you can observe how badly hurt they are. In a realistic world that hurt would have ramifications; it doesn't in Angband.

Bottom line is, we either have an imperfect model or a perfect model of an imperfect world.

[LostTemplar]

Well, I am not talking about imperfection in the model, it can never be completely perfect, but it is very easy to add some function of (hp/mhp) value to all combat stats, also any other similar things can be corrected if needed, but since this is a game, and action takes place in a fantasy world, I dont see this as a problem, orcs can be immune to pain, and just die if they are no longer capable to fight.

However it is completely impossible to write a computer program without numbers, we simply have to represent anything by numbers, but I doubt this means that we have to say, that our characters are living in some numerical world, there are many (computer) games, that does not show any model numbers to player (allmost any 3d shooter have much more complicated physical model then any roguelike have, but all numbers you see are percent of hp and ammo count). However if you insist, that angband characters live and act in the numerical word it is OK, but you need more numbers then, and all model equations be described in the game for consistency.

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by LostTemplar

All this numbers, e. g. damage dice, hitpoints, etc. are only parameters of the model, in real life they does not exist, so the only real number, that characterise a weapon effectiveness is how many hits it takes to kill an average orc, or something like this.

IIRC, Brogue describes damage in a similar way. "You can kill this enemy in as few as 2 hits, and it could kill you in as few as 4", or something like that. Although I'm firmly in the "show me the numbers" camp, I never found Brogue's system lacking. However, Brogue's whole weapon/combat structure is way simpler than Angband's, so it probably wouldn't translate well.