Ascii Dreams poll

[ekolis]

I don't know about everyone else, but "enemy strength depends on player level" just rubs me the wrong way - first off, what's the point of leveling up your character if enemies power up as well? (Heck, I've heard of characters in Elder Scrolls games becoming practically unplayable because the player put all his skill points in crafting, smithing, diplomacy, etc. and now he can't wander outside of town without getting slaughtered by lv. 35 goblins!) And secondly, it just seems arbitrary - why should enemies level up just because the player did? Now I know that in some games (especially Zelda and Metroid games) where there's a lot of backtracking, midway through the game you'll revisit an old area and HOLY CRAP there are lots tougher monsters there that last time! But you might notice they're actually DIFFERENT monsters, not just "elite mooks" with arbitrarily inflated stats.

[Derakon]

I have never encountered a game with monster level scaling where I thought the game was improved for it. The problem with scaling monsters to the player is that the player never feels that they're making progress. They need to have things to compare themselves to, which means monsters that were stronger than them but are now weaker then them.

In the context of Angband, your first Ancient Dragon kill is a notable accomplishment. But later on you're taking them down in one or two rounds like it's no big deal. That's a good indication that the player has gotten stronger, and it's a big part of the motivation to play the game. Angband is, after all, basically about accumulating enough power to kill a god. Not much point in that if by the time you have all that power, so do the small kobolds you were fighting in the first dungeon level.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Originally Posted by Derakon

I have never encountered a game with monster level scaling where I thought the game was improved for it. The problem with scaling monsters to the player is that the player never feels that they're making progress. They need to have things to compare themselves to, which means monsters that were stronger than them but are now weaker then them.

In the context of Angband, your first Ancient Dragon kill is a notable accomplishment. But later on you're taking them down in one or two rounds like it's no big deal. That's a good indication that the player has gotten stronger, and it's a big part of the motivation to play the game. Angband is, after all, basically about accumulating enough power to kill a god. Not much point in that if by the time you have all that power, so do the small kobolds you were fighting in the first dungeon level.

I don't mean it that way really, what I mean is if you think about it, the farther you go down the tougher the monsters are, more powerful incarnations of previous versions you have fought, you can take that principal and apply it to character level, sort of like how you usually fight large brown snakes on level 1, but lo and behold once your character has replayed dungeon level 1 continously you all of a sudden find a mettaclic green centipeed or something out of depth, it is taking normaly out of depth monsters and placing them on DL's that the player is on based on CL. Not specifically about making level 50 kobolds appear. I mean same monsters, same power but the player finding no relief in gaining levels and scumming on "Safe Levels".

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by Malak Darkhunter

I don't mean it that way really, what I mean is if you think about it, the farther you go down the tougher the monsters are, more powerful incarnations of previous versions you have fought, you can take that principal and apply it to character level, sort of like how you usually fight large brown snakes on level 1, but lo and behold once your character has replayed dungeon level 1 continously you all of a sudden find a mettaclic green centipeed or something out of depth, it is taking normaly out of depth monsters and placing them on DL's that the player is on based on CL. Not specifically about making level 50 kobolds appear. I mean same monsters, same power but the player finding no relief in gaining levels and scumming on "Safe Levels".

To modify this just a bit. Make the OoD check dependent upon character level. At CL1 almost nothing out of depth will appear. At CL50, anything can happen, and usually will. Ancient Dragons on DL1, no problem (we can presume that Morgoth becomes more aware of the PC as he gains power and actively sends minions after him). Most of the game will function largely as it does now, with moderate leveled characters
facing moderately OoD enemies a moderate amount of the time. I particularly like idea this because for a large part of the game it's a rather small change to the status-quo.

To go further, if there was a way to track how often a player flees from in depth monsters (or doesn't), that could be used to modify generation or, going off on a tangent here, we could approach this problem from the side by altering the frequency of spawns and/or the number of enemies that would normally appear in a group or alone, maybe even overpopulate the dungeon to begin with. However first we need to accurately determine if the player is adequately overpowered. Maybe track average % of max HP turn-by-turn and/or near death expierences (within 10% of death).

[Malak Darkhunter]

Yup nailed it!

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

To modify this just a bit. Make the OoD check dependent upon character level. At CL1 almost nothing out of depth will appear. At CL50, anything can happen, and usually will.

This will however lead to characters leveling faster on shallower depths. It's easier to kill tough monsters if they are surrounded by mooks. Killing OOD monsters gives a lot of experience.

What if experience rewards depended partly on your dungeon level?

[LostTemplar]

Crawl does that, and IMO it is the single mechanic which makes Crawl harder than Angband.

Unless you stairscum by luring monsters one by one from extremely dangerous level to already cleared one, that is even more cheesy, then angband style stairscumming. Personally I find Crawl boring just due to this.

[Antoine]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

At CL50, anything can happen, and usually will. Ancient Dragons on DL1, no problem

Why would a CL50 character be on DL1??

A.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by Antoine

Why would a CL50 character be on DL1??

A.

Heading toward dungeon level 100 because town didn't have Scrolls of Recall?

EDIT: Words of Recall, duh. I can't even remember what they're called since Fay doesn't have them.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Would a message "You feel you can't learn anything new on this dungeon level." annoy you much?

DLs could have maximum CLs.