Death!

[Maegdae]

Some thoughts about the bottom:

There are many things that have a very high risk of instantly or close to such killing you at that depth.  Any time you fight a GWOB you run a risk of the GWOB popping several breaths on you, summoning nasty dragons which all do the same, etc.  

Fighting anything that can manastorm, (or darkness storm if you aren't lucky enough to have an art that resists it) is quite largely luck, connection speed, and reflexes to fight.  If you don't have extremely low ping, extremely fast reflexes, or most likely stuff just happens in a few milliseconds.. you're smacked.

This really isn't fun, considering the time that it takes to build up a level 50 character, so... most people who live take the route of avoiding things capable of unresistable or extremely high damage attacks likely to cause insta-death.  If you fight enough of the wrong things, you'll get unlucky one time.  And one time is often all it takes to get a dead ghost, too.  

Conversely, the bottom is easy in some ways.  As long as a monster doesn't summon or have a high damage breath/spell attack, it's probably not risky to fight.  Players have the full assortment of money, items, and spells available to their class, making most inconvienences.. disapear.  

If the bottom is speeded up, the main result would be that the monsters that were previously too dangerous to be worth fighting will get more so.  More level 50 characters will be instantly killed because the thing they were fighting summoned or simply breathed/casted twice in a row.  Scumming, going only for vaults/items would become worse, as most players simply refuse to fight more and more types of monsters.  

[Berendol]

Here's where I bring up a few points.

Preamble: GWoBs, Dracolisks, and things that can otherwise screw you over really quick appear quite shallow. I can testify from recent experience that GWoBs normally appear with decent frequency around 3500.

Analysis: All three GWo*s are set to appear normally on 3350 with a 1 in 4 chance of being generated. The Dracos appear on 2300 with a 1 in 2 chance of being generated. In fact, the deepest non-unique monster is the group-spawned Hell Hound at 4150. The second deepest non-unique monster is the Aether hound at 3750, followed by the Black Reavers and various high level Qs at 3550, and the GWo*s at 3350. All the rest of the non-unique monsters in the game start appearing at or above 3250. I'd say with reasonable confidence that about 50%-75% of the monsters you see at the bottom started appearing between 50' and 2000'. Time hounds start at 2550, all Druj at 2750, Drolems at 2200. Graveyards (pits of undead) start at 2500.

Point A: The issue of certain monsters' being able to utterly demolish you instantly is not new to the lower depths - indeed, it starts halfway there or less, in the case of time hounds at 2550.

Point B: The danger of insta-death is reduced at lower depths due to slower level speed. The danger is also increased due to more likelihood of those monsters' generation in greater vaults and such, and perhaps their being summoned by the uniques (presuming they are alive) but this is again offset by the speed.

Point C: There are no new dangers due to anything (discounting uniques) after 3750. Therefore one can dive anywhere between 3750 and 5000 without fear of new monsters, if all the non-Morgoth uniques are dead.

Point D: There should be a certain element of reflex and luck in a realtime game. I'm not saying instadeath is good - quite the opposite, if you are equipped to be at your depth. See my previous posts on this thread.

Point E: Why is there no recharge time on monsters abilities, and why do they not need mana points to cast anything? This makes the game extremely unfair in the case of high speed combat.

Idea A: Let us implement monster mana and regeneration, and recharge time for their non-spell abilities. Make the DSMs equal to that, or perhaps twice or three times that to be reasonable.

Idea B: Let us also make the base speed actually faster, but make the actual-temporal speed increment differences smaller. Such that: Normal speed will be what Normal + 10 is now, and +10 speed will be what Normal +15 is now, and +20 speed will be what Normal +20 is now, and +30 speed will be what Normal +25 is now, and so on and so forth. Then, speed would still factor into the equations but monsters and players operating at such high speeds as +30 or more would not be entirely twitch-based. This is all in reference to perceived speed of the entire game, as opposed to perceived speed of the player vs. monsters.

Whew, that was a mouthful.

[Maegdae]

I agree with all of your points, love your formatting, and.. got feedback right here.  

The newer versions of Angband took several steps toward improving monster distribution by moving "nasty" monsters deeper.  This evidentally was implemented on your server when you added the new monsters, and I found it very welcome.

Dracos are moved a few hundred feet, as are many Greater Undead, Greater Titans, and some fearful uniques including the A's.   Significantly, the Great Wyrm of Balance seems to have been moved down by almost 500 feet to 3950, deservedly besting the now-shallower HellHound group as the deepest non-unique monster.  Very nice!

This improves the situation for relatively shallow divers by  extends the monster lineup by 500 feet.  Unfortunately, it doesn't remedy the dearth of monsters below 4k..


Idea B is very interesting to me.  Implementing Idea A and reducing insta-deaths from double-manastorm and related spells would have an effect on game difficulty, since players would die less frequently to insta-death.  

I think Idea B would counterbalance this is a positive way.  I might be confused and going off on a tangent especially considering the statement " This is all in reference to perceived speed of the entire game, as opposed to perceived speed of the player vs. monsters."  

Currently, most level 50 players have a large (10-20 with temp speed engaged) speed advantage over monsters.  Most level 50s come close to 25 or 30 base speed, rising to 35-40 with spell engaged.  My memory tells me that the only monster with 30 speed is Morgoth, and many monsters have only 10 speed.  Therefore,  reducing the effect of larger speed increases would reduce the advantage of speed differences between monsters and players.  

Voila, being 30 speed compared to a 20 speed monster means gives less actual advantage then before.  This would increase the difficulty of the game for top players, while Idea A keeps insta-death from being unvoidable.  This seems good to me!  

Thanks, Berendol, for your well-written and researched post.  

[Rali]

Giving monsters mana or cooldown times for attacks would be nice. However, a much easier change would be to give a non-insignificant chance of failure to monsters' special attacks like spells, summons, and breaths.

[Berendol]

Someone (off the forum) recently brought up the point that when monsters' spells say (for example) 1_IN_3 that maybe they should cast one, wait two turns, then repeat. I am not sure this is the best idea but it's still interesting. It would nerf all monsters - which is not my goal.

Ahh. The speed difference idea. If you have less extra perceived speed but your character still had the extra speed in terms of energy and game turns, then he'll still do the damage. Sure, it's a little more twitch based! But, in the end, you do the dirty deed all the same. I don't know if my limited words can accurately express what I'm trying to convey here.

Obscure and useless trivia bit: If you aggravate Morgoth, you will be faced with the game's only +40 speed monster! I wouldn't want that to happen, but consider your gear before fighting him. You *really* don't want anything with Aggravate Monster!

[Fink]

Actually, I've been using an aggrivate monster item for a couple weeks now at the bottom. Interesting comment on mogy tho

-fink

[Avenger]

Just wanted to point out that Pazuzu and Cantoras are also base speed +30.

[Maegdae]

This brings me to another point.  Cantoras has an extremely high average damage per turn, but he doesn't insta-death players like say the Tarresque does.   I'd like to see monsters do more damage on average, while reducing the insta-death capability / massive one-shot blows.  

[Anyar]

Hell hounds are really 4150ft? i thought they were easier than that

[Berendol]

Well, you see, there are two kinds of Hell Hounds. Confusing, right?

The first form is found alone at 1750' with a rarity of 1/3, and has 400 HP.

The second form is found with friends (ie in packs) at 4150' with a rarity of 1/4, and has 480 HP.

That is the difference between the two kinds of hell hounds.

For your edification, I now present the complete list of monsters also appearing at multiple depths, courtesy of some good old utilities.

Carrion Crawler:
1250: Alone.
1700: Appears in groups. Grants 66% more EXP per kill.

Dread:
1750: Alone. Drops up to four items. Rarity of 1/2.
2100: Appears in groups. Drops one item. Rarity of 1/1.

Gnome Mage:
550: Alone. Drops up to 2 items.
750: Appears in groups. Drops one item. Has 10' more vision. Has 10 less alertness. Grants 1/17th more EXP per kill. (Hardly worth it for the risk if I do say so myself.)

Hell Hound:
1750: Alone. Rarity of 1/3. 400 HP.
4150: Appears in groups. Rarity of 1/4. 480 HP.

Mumak:
1750: Alone. Rarity of 1/3.
2150: Appears in groups. Rarity of 1/2.

Novice mage:
100: Alone. Rarity of 1/1.
250: Appears in groups. Rarity of 1/2. Slightly less alert.

Novice paladin:
200: Alone. Rarity of 1/1.
400: Appears in groups. Rarity of 1/2.

Novice priest:
100: Alone. Rarity of 1/1.
300: Appears in groups. Rarity of 1/2. Slightly more alert.

Novice ranger:
200: Alone.
400: Appears in groups.

Novice rogue:
100: Alone. Rarity of 1/1.
300: Appears in groups. Rarity of 1/2.

Novice warrior:
100: Alone. Rarity of 1/1.
300: Appears in groups. Rarity of 1/2.

That's all. We don't reuse a lot of monsters. Perhaps a little bit of reuse could be a good thing later on, unless people want to invent complete new monster definitions. (That's not a call for "Make a pink dragon that breathes plasma plz kthxbye" entries.)

Ummm... I forgot what I originally set out to post besides the hell hounds thing, so I'll stop here.

[Ashi]

A lot of ideas were suggested here that would change MAngband drastically, but if we actually implemented them, the game would just not be Angband. Right now the plan to add the latest monsters is good because it adds a new challenge to the game, but what can we do to prevent people from being frustrated over dying and leaving the game? Keeping the game alive has been another serious issue recently.

[Korat_Rahmoon]

I don't know how feasible it would be from a coding standpoint, nor do I have a really complete grasp of the end-game, as I've never gone below 2700' ... it would probably require a lot of tweaking, but if there was a global increase in hit points, without a correlating increase in damage.  The challenge in mobby areas would likely increase, but you'll probably see less instant-death scenarios (which, IMO, are the most annoying, particularly as you enter a floor).

An exponential effect of sorts, increasing more as you dive deeper and level higher, perhaps even to the extreme of the bottom floors having monsters with 8-10x current HP levels, and a level 50 player with 6x current HP/SP levels.

[Maegdae]

One of the main dangers of dying is, of course, the maximum damage output of the monster compared to your hp.  

When you've got 900 hp, something that can manastorm for 600 is quite suicidal to fight against.

If you've got even say 1800, the danger changes to almost nil - no matter how tough the monster is, you can just carry bigger healing potion stacks to match.

Unless you're a priest, in which case 0% fail mega heals along with restore mana pots become the order of the day.  Heck, with that kind of hp even a Paladin could risk 5% fail rates.  

A mage with that sort of mana and a chain-manaball spell is simply evil, too...