Abyss refactor suggestion

[Rast]

I didn't care much for the abyss change that made it five floors deep. Yes, abyss needs to have easier and harder areas to make it more interesting, and banishment less immediately fatal, but the current implementation just feels wrong to me. Here's an alternate suggestion:

- Abyss should be just a single infinite plane with no staircases
- However, when in the Abyss, the "place" field would still contain a number ranging from 1 to 666 (or possibly 729), which represents the layer you're on.
- "Layer" is directly translated to difficulty: nastier and more frequent monster spawns, and possibly nastier terrain.
- Roughly speaking, monster difficulty at Abyss:1 would be like d:7 but a bit more frequent generation, while Abyss:666 would have a constant stream of the worst monsters in the game, a nice chaotic mix of hells:7, pan, tomb, and slime.
- However, to prevent scumming the easiest levels infinitely, high tier-items, especially strategic items, wouldn't be eligible to spawn until certain layers. This can be done in a way that avoids flat breakpoints.
- Likewise, the rune wouldn't be eligible to spawn at all until Abyss:X, and have gradually increased chance of spawning as you go deeper. By Abyss:666, you would find it almost immediately... but you really don't want to go that deep.
- Portals out would be most common at Abyss:1 and Abyss:666. Much more common than they are now.

The layer of the abyss you arrived in would depend on the power of the banishing effect or HD of the monster. Depths portal would take you fairly deep. Pan portals even deeper. Miscast effects, Lucy wrath, self-banishment, and distortion unwield would send you to layer 10*XL.

Same rules would apply to the layer monsters arrive in when they get banished. However, they would be considered to be wandering a bit, so you wouldn't need to be at their exact layer to find them again, just relatively close.

Changing layers:
- Getting re-banished while in the abyss would send you deeper.
- Banish effects would be added to several abyss monsters, to make this a more common thing to worry about.
- Random or player-induced teleports would usually/always send you a bit deeper.
- Walking south on the abyss map would gradually increase your layer, up to the max. The increase wouldn't necessarily be linear. It would be faster for Lucy followers, up to 3x normal speed at max piety.
- Walking north would decrease your layer, down to the minimum of 1.
- Monsters would have a greater tendency to spawn at the north edges of your LOS rather than the south, to encourage walking south.

Thoughts?

[tedric]

How would you communicate the link between north-south and shallower-deeper? The rest of the game uses staircases for depth, so this special-casing could feel spoilery if it's not made clear. Same for the added effect you'd be giving to Abyss teleports, etc.

I do like the idea of a gradual increase in difficulty instead of discrete floors, and that your starting difficulty would correlate with the danger of the situation that sent you there.

[bel]

Perhaps you can tell us why you don't like the current stairs implementation and how this is better.

[KoboldLord]

The north-south thing is probably too opaque as proposed. There's basically no reason to intuit the way that works, and an unspoiled player will either blunder deeper and deeper without knowing that there were any actions that could be taken to reduce the danger, or they will blunder north instead and simply wander for an eternity wondering why Abyss is so non-challenging and unrewarding. The current portal-and-floor mechanic is very similar to the staircase mechanic from the normal dungeon levels, so all players should be able to grok the idea that the portals are basically escape hatches without too much trouble.

Leaving that problem aside for the moment, being guaranteed to be able to manipulate your depth in a similar way means that banishment is going to be pretty trivial to handle for any and all characters that can run the initial blockade. If you get banished in Elf, for instance, you just jog towards wherever you know Abyss 1 happens to be, and the journey gets progressively less and less challenging as you go to your guaranteed escape instead of getting more intense as it usually does in the current implementation. While this would make the Abyss more reliably survivable for all characters regardless of preparation, I don't think this would be a step in the right direction. I don't think high-level characters should be encouraged to steamroll a D7-equivalent just to get their banishment over safely.

[Wahaha]

I like some of the ideas here because they lessen some of the problems with the current Abyss, I'll list the pros and cons at the end.
Improving this idea:
Start with the current Abyss and apply the following changes:
-Instead of 5 difficulty levels, there are many levels, like 666 or perhaps 100, doesn't matter as long as it's a big number.
-Player enters the Abyss at an appropriate difficulty number based on XL and cause of banishment.
-Portals deeper into the Abyss go down multiple levels, by a random amount.
-Add portals/abyssal stairs that go up, also by a random amount, but probably smaller than when going down. A player cannot go higher than the minimum difficulty level at which they entered the Abyss. If they entered at 234 it will never be easier than 234. Portals up do not spawn when on this minimum difficulty.
-Teleporting by any means sends player deeper. Banishment sends player deeper too, this should be more common.
-Rune and exit spawn chances depend on current difficulty level and on the difference between the current difficulty level and the level at which the player entered the Abyss.

Pros:
-Fine-grained difficulty levels make it easier to place the player at an appropriate difficulty. It's easier to provide an appropriate difficulty for a level 4 player, a level 9 player, a level 12 player, etc.
-Fine-grained difficulty makes going deeper in the Abyss a smoother difficulty increase, which is better. For example right now I stay at Abyss 3 and never, ever go to 4. If the difficulty was more fine-grained I would sometimes go to the equivalent of 3.5 for example. A more variable difficulty is more interesting than always staying at a single level forever, usually 1 or 3, especially when they player would be willing to increase the difficulty slightly in exchange for higher rune/exit spawns.
-Teleporting slightly punishes the player. If you think the ring of teleportation or just teleportation is too strong in the Abyss, this adds a drawback.
-Similarly, monsters can punish the player by teleporting/banishing them deeper. This would be a new type of danger that the player can choose to avoid during fights. Would be an interesting addition imo.

Cons:
-Need a way to calculate an appropriate difficulty level when a player is sent to the Abyss.
-Need to create monster sets with weights that scale with difficulty, to provide an appropriate difficulty for all levels.
-Intentionally getting teleported or banished by monsters. This is only a con if the monster teleportation/banishment attacks are NOT guaranteed (check MR). If they hit 100% of the time then this would absolutely not be a problem in my opinion. If they can get resisted then it definitely is.

I guess this is more like 2 ideas. 1 - Fine-grained difficulty. 2 - Teleporting/banishment send player deeper. If #2 doesn't work that doesn't stop #1 from still being a good idea.

[BobIsDead]

@Wahaha

That's basically pretty similar to ideas I've been dwelling on for a while. I like the idea of the difficulty of the Abyss increasing more gradually. It allows for a more interesting set-up in terms of depth mattering. For example, it allows for depth-of-banishment to be more callibrated to the strength of whoever did the banishing. You don't get the problem of Abyss 3 being too easy but Abyss 4 being too difficult.

It also allows for the slightly randomised nature of using stairs to go deeper. It adds some unpredictability to deliving deeper (not that the Abyss needs much more of that) without it ever being completely written off as needlessly risky. It also allows for other means of being pushed deeper to become more common. At the moment, if an enemy banished me deeper into the Abyss, it could so easily make death a near certainty. This way, I'd have a chance of making it out.

I'm not sure how I feel about staircases leading up. On the one hand, it could trivialise the delving deeper thing. On the other hand, if you wound up going too deep for your liking, your only other alternative would be to completely leave the Abyss and re-enter. Not sure if that makes things more challenging or simply more frustrating.

Umm... as for the actual depth of the Abyss, I was actually wondering if there was a way to give the Abyss infinite depth. For example, up to a certain point (let's say 27, as everyone here likes that number), the difficulty of the Abyss would be fine-tuned to some extent. After that, though, every additional depth would be labelled as "27+" and an algorithm would be used to figure out the increase in difficulty and chance of rune spawning.

All this said, whilst I prefer these sorts of ideas to the present system, I can't with my hand on my heart say they're necessarily better ideas. You point out a number of fiddly problems with implementing them. There's also the fact that a less gradual, very intimidating Abyss does have its merits. If nothing else, it stops me from pratting around in the Abyss any longer than I need to.

[dpeg]

It's only tangentially related, but at least somewhat related, so I'll dig out the broken record again: in my opinion, current Abyss (with its five levels) is alright, by which I mean it's a reasonable change of pace and generally deadly enough. The main issue is that late banishmers underperform, because Abyss:1 is then not an approprate threat anymore. The simplest solution (that I am aware ofI is to keep everything as is, but use monster HD or banishmer total depth or some measure like this to send players deeper than Abyss:1 later on.

All of this does not mean that the current implementation is perfect, far from it. But Abyss has seen a lot of effort in the recent past, and I don't think there's a need for a sweeping change, especially when it's not really clear why. Discussing specifics about Abyss (layout, monster set, rune vaults etc.) is very helpful, of course.

[Siegurt]

Fwiw I agree with those points, plus trying to make a finer gradation of difficulty gets pretty meaningless very quickly (with how highly random "difficulty" is from moment to moment in the abyss) I made my thoughts known on how banishment depth should happen already.