Level completion (for level clearers)

[fizzix]

If the delayed feeling tiles get implemented, it allows for a new feature, level completion. The game has a metric now of whether the player has seen (i.e completed) the entire level. Would anyone be interested in a "reward" given to the player for level completion?

This reward could be something tangible, like money or items, but it could also be something like a congratulations message that goes in player history. Or is this a bad idea because it encourages OCD behavior?

[Magnate]

It's probably the worst idea I've heard since Timo suggested that development should stop altogether. Please don't do it!!!

(EDIT: If I didn't suffer from terrible OCD, I'd probably think it was quite cool.)

[CunningGabe]

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to get a reward for clearing a level -- unless there's a mapmaker's guild in town that would reward you for such. At any rate, I'm not wild about such a system. Some people might find a note in their player history nice, though.

What I would like to see, however, is more hidden dungeon features that can't be discovered just by using a spell or sitting in place pressing 's' over and over. It would be really cool if there were various switches that triggered hidden objects or rooms appearing. It could be as simple as "walking over this tile causes a secret door to appear", but I'd also be interested in things like "hitting this crystal with a spell causes a chest to rise up out of the ground."

In my experience, finding hidden things is one of the most fun parts of an RPG. You feel smart for having found it, and it makes you want to explore more.

Granted, though -- what I describe would take a substantial amount of work.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by CunningGabe

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to get a reward for clearing a level -- unless there's a mapmaker's guild in town that would reward you for such. At any rate, I'm not wild about such a system. Some people might find a note in their player history nice, though.

What I would like to see, however, is more hidden dungeon features that can't be discovered just by using a spell or sitting in place pressing 's' over and over. It would be really cool if there were various switches that triggered hidden objects or rooms appearing. It could be as simple as "walking over this tile causes a secret door to appear", but I'd also be interested in things like "hitting this crystal with a spell causes a chest to rise up out of the ground."

In my experience, finding hidden things is one of the most fun parts of an RPG. You feel smart for having found it, and it makes you want to explore more.

Granted, though -- what I describe would take a substantial amount of work.

I rather like this idea. I hate it in games with nonrandom levels, because it always makes people use spoilers to ensure that they've seen/done everything. But in a game with random, non-persistent levels, it could be awesome, because you'd never know if you missed anything, and if you found something (say, you happened to catch a wall square in the blast radius of a ball spell, which caused a hidden door and room to appear), it would be really cool.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by CunningGabe

Granted, though -- what I describe would take a substantial amount of work.

Not really. You can label squares with a bitflag FEAT_HIDDEN which means that nothing shows up with clairvoyance, mapping, detect doors, stairs, traps or objects. (you could do detect monsters too, but I think that's a bad idea.) It's also trivial to ensure that no stairs wind up on a HIDDEN tile.

Then on dungeon creation, on each room you roll for hidden. Something like 1/50 would be appropriate. If the room is hidden, then all walls and floor tiles are hidden, as well as all corridors originating in that room. (corridors ending in that room are trickier, I don't know how to do that.)

[Nomad]

I don't think level completion is an idea that meshes well with non-persistent levels. It doesn't seem great to either reward for level clearance or attempt to track total clearance in a game where you can revisit levels infinite times.

The main thing of interest I think you could do is track the average percentage that the player explores when they visit a level: it could influence scoring, or perhaps the knowledge menu and character dumps could have a statistics section so you can compare people's different playstyles.

I like the hidden feature idea, though. Random thought - how about making traps flavoured? Replace the existing, fixed colour traps with a randomised selection of magical runes. Some have nasty trap effects, others do interesting, good things like open a hidden section or make a treasure appear elsewhere on the level. Up to the player whether they creep round cautiously avoiding them all, or take the risk of experimenting to discover which are the good ones.

[jens]

Originally Posted by fizzix

If the delayed feeling tiles get implemented, it allows for a new feature, level completion. The game has a metric now of whether the player has seen (i.e completed) the entire level. Would anyone be interested in a "reward" given to the player for level completion?

This reward could be something tangible, like money or items, but it could also be something like a congratulations message that goes in player history. Or is this a bad idea because it encourages OCD behavior?

I've wanted something like this, but thought better of it ;-) What I did come around to is that I'd like to have something to complete. Vaults, and pits fill this want well, but I want more :-)

Originally Posted by CunningGabe

What I would like to see, however, is more hidden dungeon features that can't be discovered just by using a spell or sitting in place pressing 's' over and over. It would be really cool if there were various switches that triggered hidden objects or rooms appearing. It could be as simple as "walking over this tile causes a secret door to appear", but I'd also be interested in things like "hitting this crystal with a spell causes a chest to rise up out of the ground."

In my experience, finding hidden things is one of the most fun parts of an RPG. You feel smart for having found it, and it makes you want to explore more.

Another thing I've thought about is that there ought to be nice, interesting things behind secret doors, I mean, why were they secret in the first place? A feature that is important for games in general is to have mechanics to reward veteran players for knowing the game well. As CunningGabe said, get the opportunity to feel smart. One such thing in Angband is knowing something about the map generation, so you know were to search for secret doors.

So, yes something like this would be neat, and make it just random enough so the vets will be able to guess with some relevant probability were to look to find it. And, after going through all this trouble a reward is in place. Maybe a small randomized vault or something similar?

[CunningGabe]

Originally Posted by Nomad

I like the hidden feature idea, though. Random thought - how about making traps flavoured? Replace the existing, fixed colour traps with a randomised selection of magical runes. Some have nasty trap effects, others do interesting, good things like open a hidden section or make a treasure appear elsewhere on the level. Up to the player whether they creep round cautiously avoiding them all, or take the risk of experimenting to discover which are the good ones.

That's a cool idea! I was just brainstorming some trap effects today, and was thinking of maybe making some of them have beneficial effects -- but it hadn't occurred to me to make "reveal hidden stuff" one of the beneficial effects.

[Zikke]

What about having Vault contents (layout and monster/items) be hidden from detection? You could see the vault outline, and the entrance square but nothing else.

[Remuz]

Originally Posted by Zikke

What about having Vault contents (layout and monster/items) be hidden from detection? You could see the vault outline, and the entrance square but nothing else.

Monsters should be detectable, I think... but items should not, so that the player can decide if he wants to take risks, for an unguaranteed (but likely) reward.