Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 3037
Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06
Monday, 10th January 2011, 01:07
early game balance
I didn't locate a page for this on the Wiki, but it seems like the sort of thing that somebody would have brought up in the past so I figured I'd bring it up here first, where it can be buried if I'm excavating zombie horses.
I am of the opinion that the early game is unreasonably hard, and more importantly the early game is hard in a bad way. Once you're past the mid-Lair, you're probably only going to die if you actually screw up or run into a situation you've never seen before. In the early game, though, your starting character has few viable options to work with, and no matter how good you are at the game there's a random chance the RNG will just declare you dead. The longest streak of games on a public server ended with a Kenku Venom Mage in the very first room, a combination that really should have had no trouble on D1, simply because the player's entire mana bar got randomly miscast away and there were no other possible actions to take.
Judging by observations of the best tournament players, optimal starting play for many backgrounds appear to be picking up and throwing random dungeon trash, a practice which is non-intuitive to a beginning player and is actively punishing later on when the experience wasted on throwing sabotages loot generation later in the game. According to forum posts I've read on rpg.net or the SA forums, mediocre players often seem to simply accept mashing the buttons idly until they reach the Temple, at which point they start taking the character seriously and playing with actual care. I believe that this attitude is detrimental to the game; start-scumming in this manner is detrimental to playing skill overall but the playing skill demanded by the first few levels is completely unrelated to the playing skill required after that point.
The first issue to discuss, I suppose, is whether anybody agrees with me on whether the early game should be consistent in difficulty with the rest of the game. The second issue would be to brainstorm ideas for correcting the issue if it exists. Here are a few of mine:
1) It might be worthwhile to start with a few consumables as an early-game emergency button. These could be motivated by mechanics (a potion of speed for berserkers, to abbreviate the aftereffects of one rage) or flavor (a scroll of fear for necromancers, to drive off a dangerous living early-game enemy and allow a reprieve), but in either case the consumables should provide a benefit early on but not later. Just potions and scrolls, basically, which can be used to alleviate RNG screwjobs early on but will eventually be popped by fire or cold effects (or just become obsolete) if the RNG screwjob doesn't happen. Transmuters already get this -- their starting potion of poison can be used to flat-out solve any one otherwise-dangerous encounter before the Temple, and the starting potions don't seem to cause any detrimental power creep for them later on.
2) Objects that can one-shot a level appropriate character before that character can reasonably react should not generate too early. For instance, wands of frost are fine in in Ijyb's filthy hands, wands of cold not so much. You can't see the wand before you're dead. You can't go around him and Sigmund and Jessica and Terrence all on the same level without waking up at least one, and it's a matter of pure dumb luck whether the one you pick happens to generate with a line-of-sight instakill. Similarly, D1 kobolds should probably not be walking around with distortion brands. This is at least partially in place already, since scrolls of immolation don't spawn in the first few levels, and I can't remember anybody complaining about that! And on the other hand, there are plenty of items that are simply too good to generate early on, like spellbooks or demon weapons, which could likewise be deferred so as to not encourage start-scumming.
3) Starting characters should have basic competence in their job. A fighter, for instance, will typically replace every piece of starting equipment they have before they even reach the Temple. They are completely at the mercy of the RNG, and a mediocre player is well-rewarded to replay the first two levels until a good weapon or armor randomly spawns. Spellcasters are all almost without exception generated with a good item (their spellbook) that will define their character at least until the early midgame, so why not extend that same courtesy to the non-casters? Merfolk are popular at least in part because they don't start with the single worst weapon of their weapon type. Is there even a drawback to starting non-casting melee characters with a vanilla sabre/war axe/trident/morningstar?
Thoughts? Links to development wiki pages I somehow stupidly missed?
I am of the opinion that the early game is unreasonably hard, and more importantly the early game is hard in a bad way. Once you're past the mid-Lair, you're probably only going to die if you actually screw up or run into a situation you've never seen before. In the early game, though, your starting character has few viable options to work with, and no matter how good you are at the game there's a random chance the RNG will just declare you dead. The longest streak of games on a public server ended with a Kenku Venom Mage in the very first room, a combination that really should have had no trouble on D1, simply because the player's entire mana bar got randomly miscast away and there were no other possible actions to take.
Judging by observations of the best tournament players, optimal starting play for many backgrounds appear to be picking up and throwing random dungeon trash, a practice which is non-intuitive to a beginning player and is actively punishing later on when the experience wasted on throwing sabotages loot generation later in the game. According to forum posts I've read on rpg.net or the SA forums, mediocre players often seem to simply accept mashing the buttons idly until they reach the Temple, at which point they start taking the character seriously and playing with actual care. I believe that this attitude is detrimental to the game; start-scumming in this manner is detrimental to playing skill overall but the playing skill demanded by the first few levels is completely unrelated to the playing skill required after that point.
The first issue to discuss, I suppose, is whether anybody agrees with me on whether the early game should be consistent in difficulty with the rest of the game. The second issue would be to brainstorm ideas for correcting the issue if it exists. Here are a few of mine:
1) It might be worthwhile to start with a few consumables as an early-game emergency button. These could be motivated by mechanics (a potion of speed for berserkers, to abbreviate the aftereffects of one rage) or flavor (a scroll of fear for necromancers, to drive off a dangerous living early-game enemy and allow a reprieve), but in either case the consumables should provide a benefit early on but not later. Just potions and scrolls, basically, which can be used to alleviate RNG screwjobs early on but will eventually be popped by fire or cold effects (or just become obsolete) if the RNG screwjob doesn't happen. Transmuters already get this -- their starting potion of poison can be used to flat-out solve any one otherwise-dangerous encounter before the Temple, and the starting potions don't seem to cause any detrimental power creep for them later on.
2) Objects that can one-shot a level appropriate character before that character can reasonably react should not generate too early. For instance, wands of frost are fine in in Ijyb's filthy hands, wands of cold not so much. You can't see the wand before you're dead. You can't go around him and Sigmund and Jessica and Terrence all on the same level without waking up at least one, and it's a matter of pure dumb luck whether the one you pick happens to generate with a line-of-sight instakill. Similarly, D1 kobolds should probably not be walking around with distortion brands. This is at least partially in place already, since scrolls of immolation don't spawn in the first few levels, and I can't remember anybody complaining about that! And on the other hand, there are plenty of items that are simply too good to generate early on, like spellbooks or demon weapons, which could likewise be deferred so as to not encourage start-scumming.
3) Starting characters should have basic competence in their job. A fighter, for instance, will typically replace every piece of starting equipment they have before they even reach the Temple. They are completely at the mercy of the RNG, and a mediocre player is well-rewarded to replay the first two levels until a good weapon or armor randomly spawns. Spellcasters are all almost without exception generated with a good item (their spellbook) that will define their character at least until the early midgame, so why not extend that same courtesy to the non-casters? Merfolk are popular at least in part because they don't start with the single worst weapon of their weapon type. Is there even a drawback to starting non-casting melee characters with a vanilla sabre/war axe/trident/morningstar?
Thoughts? Links to development wiki pages I somehow stupidly missed?
- For this message the author KoboldLord has received thanks: 2
- cyborgemu, szanth
I did start my halfling hunter, but this is getting off-topic here, so I'll post elsewhere when I have a question and/or die.