New Angband: rant

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Smarter enemies is a tricky topic.

I meant smarter deeper than shallower, not than currently. I agree that the player has to be able to kill a lot of monsters, and most encounters need to be relatively straightforward. My idea, though, is that skillful play might enable you to survive a bit deeper than unskillful play, and that the price you pay for that increased depth is having to be more careful and focused.

Note here that I'm not actually a very skillful player...

[Sky]

for randarts, you could try having a pool of powers. out of this pool, a set percentage is represented in every set.

so, let's say, that you have 70% of the pool. this means 70% of games will have ONE item which activates for MBan. 70% will have one glaive of pain dice, one +15 speed item, and so on.

[fizzix]

Just a point on whether better items are more common earlier.

When I rebalanced items in 3.x (I'm not sure which one and I don't feel like checking), I explicitly balanced against 3.0.6. The idea being that specific items should show up, on average, just as common or rare as in 3.0.6. There were a couple differences though. In 3.0.6 actually IDing each item was a boring chore, in 3.x it was easier (because sticky curses were gone) and in 4.1 it's trivial. Another big difference was scaling ego items. It used to be that you had a level dependent roll to determine if the drop was an ego item, and if it was another roll, independent of level, determined what kind of item it was. So the ratios of slay orc/westernesse on level 1 were the same as on level 99. In 3.0.6 you were much more likely to find a defender/holy avenger/westernesse weapon on DL 1 than you are now (you still can find it, but it's rare).

edit: one other change I remembered implementing. Slightly reducing the quality of drops from the floor and vaults and compensating that by increasing the drops from uniques.

There were some other changes, but those were the biggest ones.

I still have stats data from 3.0.6 and various 3.x, so I could compare with current values. Last time I tried to run stats I got a bunch of game crashes, but I haven't tried in a while. Maybe it's worth it to see if I can get stats running on current master and see where we stand as far as item frequency. I'll have a bit of time today to poke around I think.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Nick

I meant smarter deeper than shallower, not than currently. I agree that the player has to be able to kill a lot of monsters, and most encounters need to be relatively straightforward. My idea, though, is that skillful play might enable you to survive a bit deeper than unskillful play, and that the price you pay for that increased depth is having to be more careful and focused.

Note here that I'm not actually a very skillful player...

I don't think anything I said is less true when you're in the endgame than when you're just starting out. In fact I'd say a lot of endgame monsters, especially the uniques, are already in a good place: the player has to be very careful in engaging with them because they're so powerful, and any low-leveled player pretty much has no choice but to avoid them.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Derakon

I don't think anything I said is less true when you're in the endgame than when you're just starting out. In fact I'd say a lot of endgame monsters, especially the uniques, are already in a good place: the player has to be very careful in engaging with them because they're so powerful, and any low-leveled player pretty much has no choice but to avoid them.

I think some late game monster effects can be more judicially applied. Stuff like the earthquake effect from polyphemus, atlas and morgoth is good. AFAIK they're the only monsters that do that effect. So is the stunning attack from the grand master mystic (although I'd much rather that attack be more of a 'ninja' think and GMMs do something else). However, stuff like charge draining is found among a whole bunch of monsters, lichs, eyes and balrogs most notably. It would be more interesting, I think, if it was more judiciously applied. Maybe it becomes only a high level Lich thing.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Estie

It simply takes less time to get 120ish gold for a ?recall. Of course I find sellable items, too, but there was a time when that was accounted for by bigger coin piles. Later those piles were reduced again specifically on the first levels or in town. I remember finding 20 gold in the average pile when no-selling was introduced first, at some point it became single digit more often than not.

This particular issue could be solved by making ?recall cheaper, but the point is that a measure to discourage farming has encouraged farming. That original intention is the point at which this whole snake should be cut off, imho.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Looks like that change was in 2011, where no-selling doesn't multiply gold drops on dlev1. I'm not convinced by it either!

[wobbly]

Originally Posted by Estie

At some point money and drops on lvl 1 were nerfed, presumably to discourage farming. I am supposed to buy 2 recall srolls first thing when back in town, but I am human and sometimes forget, or maybe there is an expensive item I can barely afford, then I am going to farm for a ?WoR. So, ever since that change I have spent hours of time farming level 1: for ?WoR money when I previously could just clear it once and be good to go.

Yeah I do that too & it's annoying or I see something in the BM or buy a _teleport that leaves me just short. Testing with my kobold druid it took 1630 turns (or the time to be 3xp short of level 4) to collect 130 for a recall. Seems fine, just not balanced for a level 20 character which is pretty boring on dlvl 1. It's probably be reasonable to up it? I don't think it's unreasonable to be able to clear dlvl 1 & buy a wand of magic missile (around the price of 2 ?recall). You'd have to clear a lot of times for _teleport. If someone really wants to do that let them.

[bio_hazard]

As long as you can buy one ?WoR for the next return, just start taking stairs back down. That's always seemed more enjoyable to me than farming 50' or 100' just to buy a scroll to recall back to 500' or wherever you made it to on your first dive.

I agree it stinks when you accidentally spend too much to afford even one.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Originally Posted by bio_hazard

As long as you can buy one ?WoR for the next return, just start taking stairs back down. That's always seemed more enjoyable to me than farming 50' or 100' just to buy a scroll to recall back to 500' or wherever you made it to on your first dive.

I agree it stinks when you accidentally spend too much to afford even one.

Just iron-man it until you find a scroll of recall

[Carnivean]

Last time I tested it you could add items to your starting kit in the edit files and it would automatically take the value off your starting kit. If you are someone that automatically buys a WoR but might forget, just add it to the edit file.