Making V play more like Sil

[zaimoni]

Originally Posted by Scatha

I can see why you might say this, though I think it is misguided. It is almost certainly the case that luck plays a larger role than in Angband, if measured by something like looking at the proportion of games where perfect play gets you killed.

Empirically, this is two in three games just considering DL1 through DL3 for Sil 1.0.1. That's what turned me off to Sil.

Originally Posted by Scatha

Indeed managing luck is a major part of the game in Sil (and I think one of the things which makes it exciting).

Having said that luck plays a larger role in Sil than in Angband, I think skill also does! I think it would be very much harder to write anything like the borg to do as well at Sil as it does at Angband.

And also harder to measure said borg's deficiencies.

There are so many Lady and the Tiger choices when starting an early DL in Sil. Normally you have a zero-information choice of which hallway to take at the start of the level; the way the dungeon generator works the plausibility that at least one is instant death is over 50%. (I went into save-scumming to measure this as it was happening a lot. My small sample size didn't find any 2/2 or 3/3 instant death to explore choices, but did find all of 1/2, 1/3, and 2/3 for DL2-DL4. These instant-death zero-information choices were happening about 60%-75% of the time. At DL5 and higher, this Russian Roulette went away because I actually had enough stealth, melee, and CON.)

Also, Debo reported the problem is still extant, so there has been no serious attempt to fix this.

[debo]

Originally Posted by zaimoni

Empirically, this is two in three games just considering DL1 through DL3 for Sil 1.0.1. That's what turned me off to Sil.And also harder to measure said borg's deficiencies.

There are so many Lady and the Tiger choices when starting an early DL in Sil. Normally you have a zero-information choice of which hallway to take at the start of the level; the way the dungeon generator works the plausibility that at least one is instant death is over 50%. (I went into save-scumming to measure this as it was happening a lot. My small sample size didn't find any 2/2 or 3/3 instant death to explore choices, but did find all of 1/2, 1/3, and 2/3 for DL2-DL4. These instant-death zero-information choices were happening about 60%-75% of the time. At DL5 and higher, this Russian Roulette went away because I actually had enough stealth, melee, and CON.)

Also, Debo reported the problem is still extant, so there has been no serious attempt to fix this.

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly here, but if you're dying that often at DL 1-3, something is funky. I haven't died before 200' in... ages. At least not with a build that I'm familiar with.

I'd say 80%+ of the characters I make survive past 500'. When I first started playing, I'd die at 200' constantly. I'd say that's an indication that practice + skill can help you get better at the game.

As for my "report" -- Which video are you referring to? I've made so many that I lost track of what I've said

[zaimoni]

Originally Posted by debo

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly here, but if you're dying that often at DL 1-3, something is funky. I haven't died before 200' in... ages. At least not with a build that I'm familiar with.

My impression is that Sil 1.1 has been rebalanced to reduce this, but I'm not going to schedule the time to verify.

Death rate on DL1 was zero for a Naugrim with CON 4; the initial skill layout was "balanced", but weighted towards smithing, stealth, and combat skills (give these 4 rather than 3). I have a systematic error of allocating experience points to skills too quickly.

Originally Posted by debo

I'd say 80%+ of the characters I make survive past 500'. When I first started playing, I'd die at 200' constantly. I'd say that's an indication that practice + skill can help you get better at the game.

Starting 250' was a virtual guarantee of starting 400' in Sil 1.0.1.

Originally Posted by debo

As for my "report" -- Which video are you referring to? I've made so many that I lost track of what I've said

I may have misattributed it. There was a post about having to save-scum to preview what to actually use when making let's-play videos.

[debo]

Originally Posted by zaimoni

There was a post about having to save-scum to preview what to actually use when making let's-play videos.

Oh, that -- No, that's not what I meant when I made that statement.

I basically "warmed up" by regenerating a completely different level than the one I'd play on video, and play that for a bit just to remember the kinds of monsters that appear at that depth. I wouldn't try out the on-video floor first to discover which way I should leave a room to make it easier on me Everything you see on video is 100% reactive in that sense.

[Psi]

Originally Posted by zaimoni

There are so many Lady and the Tiger choices when starting an early DL in Sil. Normally you have a zero-information choice of which hallway to take at the start of the level; the way the dungeon generator works the plausibility that at least one is instant death is over 50%. (I went into save-scumming to measure this as it was happening a lot. My small sample size didn't find any 2/2 or 3/3 instant death to explore choices, but did find all of 1/2, 1/3, and 2/3 for DL2-DL4. These instant-death zero-information choices were happening about 60%-75% of the time. At DL5 and higher, this Russian Roulette went away because I actually had enough stealth, melee, and CON.)

If this is what is happening to you, then it can only be because you have skill points invested in the wrong places (or are letting yourself get surrounded). If you put the majority in melee and evasion and forget about abilities etc, then that will see you through until you find some armour and a shield.

The majority of chars I lose at the start is when I have invested 2800 of my 5000 initial allocation in smithing and had to go in with minimal combat stats.

[half]

Originally Posted by zaimoni

Empirically, this is two in three games just considering DL1 through DL3 for Sil 1.0.1. That's what turned me off to Sil.

I'm a bit confused here. As debo said, this is clearly not with perfect play -- many of us can do much better than this (which actually reinforces Scatha's point about Sil rewarding skill). You must be making a choice or choices which are dramatically lowering your survival rate. Quite possibly this is in character generation, rather than in play, but it could be either. Perhaps this is our fault as game designers for not pointing new players in the right direction. Posting such a character to the ladder could help us diagnose what was going wrong.

the way the dungeon generator works the plausibility that at least one is instant death is over 50%.

This is also clearly not true for others, so I'm puzzled by why you were having such a hard time of it.

It can't be differences between 1.0.1 and 1.1 (or any other pair of versions) as there has not been much relevant change to early survivability.

[zaimoni]

Originally Posted by Psi

If this is what is happening to you, then it can only be because you have skill points invested in the wrong places (or are letting yourself get surrounded). If you put the majority in melee and evasion and forget about abilities etc, then that will see you through until you find some armour and a shield.

The majority of chars I lose at the start is when I have invested 2800 of my 5000 initial allocation in smithing and had to go in with minimal combat stats.

No, 1000 pts in smithing is all that's tolerable to make the DL 1 death rate practically zero at CON 4. Remainder is split relatively evenly between melee, ranged, evasion, and stealth; melee and evasion are overweight relative to ranged and stealth.

[Scatha]

Originally Posted by zaimoni

No, 1000 pts in smithing is all that's tolerable to make the DL 1 death rate practically zero at CON 4. Remainder is split relatively evenly between melee, ranged, evasion, and stealth; melee and evasion are overweight relative to ranged and stealth.

I think I see what might be going on here. While Con does help a little bit, it's far less important than Dex for surviving the early levels. Try starting a Feanorian with 5 Dex and put at least 1500 into each of Melee and Evasion at the start. With a little caution I think you'll see 250' over 95% of the time.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Magnate

I can't remember if Timo has tried v4's new squelch system - it's very close to flag-based and does almost exactly what he described. Unfortunately it can't be ported to V separately from the affixes. Ho hum.

If I have understood v4 system correctly it would remove two of the three issues I mentioned: ID-by use would actually be useful and squelch would become more specific.

It's too bad that V4 is a bit too far away from vanilla to be used as playtest platform. Maybe a test version of vanilla with this is in order (even if wildly unbalanced at first). Something like 3.5.test1.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by fizzix

Ok, so let's say you don't have the time to learn and hack at the code. After all, there is a significant time investment to be made here, especially at the start.

Not having time is one point, another is that I simply lack the passion to learn coding. Or to be more precise to learn any more than I really need (I have some scripting experience). Which is kind of sad, because I would really like to do my own version. Unfortunately pretty soon after I start to look at the code, I get bored. It's like reading some dull legal contract paper to me. Maybe, if I had the skill, I could get interested, but getting past that initial boredom has proven to be too much this far for me.