Cocytus Succeeder
Posts: 2184
Joined: Tuesday, 3rd February 2015, 22:05
Danger level
Suppose we want to calculate: "how much danger is our character in right now"? It is difficult to calculate this exactly. DCSS damage formulae are insane, and there are all kinds of interactions between monsters.
To get around this problem, we can try to devise a proxy which is "good enough". The in-game measure "tension" tries to do this.
However, as far as I know, there is no real study of whether "tension" is really a good measure of danger. What exactly is the relationship between tension and danger? If you have double the tension, are you twice as likely to die?
I propose that an alternate measure of "tension" should be calculated (call it "danger level"). It should be anchored to real-world danger. For instance, just like the game makes an automatic note when your HP is very low, the game could make an automatic note when the "danger level" is above a certain value. We can then use morgues to determine whether you are really in "danger" when the game thinks you are.
How this measure would be useful:
- New players have problems with threat assessment: displaying this measure could help them.
- We could graph the danger level across the whole game to see how "risky" the play was.
- It would help with game balance: for instance, if we find that some areas tend to have lower (or higher) "danger level" -- for comparable characters -- we can buff (or nerf, respectively) the areas.