DRL > Discussion

YES! I finally won one!

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thelaptop:
Ugh, at least you've won your first game.

I shouldn't have made that silly promise of playing only HMP+ games.  I'm so rusty I can't even win any of the challenges properly at HMP.  =(

Maybe we should rebalance things at HMP instead of HNTR...  >.>

Will it be bad form if I break that promise to complete more challenges instead of that one or two wins I had with HMP?

scotherns:
Congratulations! Wins are always worth sharing :-)

Evilpotatoe:
@Op
Hey, a win is a win !
Maybe you should read Dtsund's DoomRL for dummies guide, it's excellent.


@thelaptop

--- Quote ---Maybe we should rebalance things at HMP instead of HNTR...  >.>
--- End quote ---

Of course !
here's what I see :

"E" is tourist mode. Maybe the most successful skill level, after all, since it's supposed to be very easy, and it is ! I got my my first win in a few games thanks to that difficulty.
"M" isn't medium at all, it's very easy early, but can be really tough in the end. I tried a HNTR game a few days ago and was surprised by the ridiculously low ammount of monsters. While it gives a very easy start, this makes XP hard to get, and can result in a more difficult game when you reach hell, since you don't have 15 levels to spend in all those traits you don't even need.
"H" looks like some sort of awkward compromise between HNTR and UV : there isn't enough XP yet to get OP fast, and monsters are still very easy to deal with when you know how the game works. At least, this level looks harder than the previous one, and the extra XP doesn't make a big difference, so it looks like a good "step" in difficulty increase.
"U" is kinda difficult.... at start. The hordes of monsters force you to know what you're doing, but once you got a shotty, you'll level up easily and make it to the end, where you'll nuke MM and pwn JC easily with your insane OP char. You might have a few bad surprises, but there is so much XP around than once set up, about nothing can stop you.
"N" is more serious. Respawning monsters force you to choose between rushing through the game, or fully clearing everything, carefully. Both are quite dangerous strategies, since the former is very random, and the latter needs a lot of patience, and few mistakes.

So, first, difficulty isn't consistent.
Easy levels shouldn't have a harder ending. They should be easier all game long.
Harder levels shouldn't give more XP than the easy ones. I don't care much whether the XP is raised in easy games or if it is nerfed in harder ones, or maybe... both ? but the endgame bosses shouldn't be easier to beat on "greater" difficulties.
Also, some levels, like the vaults or lava pits, contains knights or barons in easy difficulties, which always don the nice armors you could have grabbed here...
Mancubis, revenants, or even Viles, are very easier to deal with from my point of view...  maybe equipp knights from those levels with some dummy armor, or remove from them the pickup-item flag ?


Overall game difficulty :
While the increased number (and accuracy) of monsters makes them tougher at start, you quickly can handle any quantity of baddies, and the only (remotly) dangerous moment is when you enter a level.
This is why I love the new HaC more than any other level : it's the only one where you get a real constraint ! It forces me to play differently, and sacrifice some security or loot to spare precious time. (now, I most of the time just permawait, which is not advised in flood or nuke levels).
I dunno what should be added to higher difficulties, but more random factors to handle would probably be a start. This could include more random behavior of monsters, more dangerous level events, like  mortars, maybe new monsters, like the ones from the inferno module (well, I know they are "not original monsters", but I'd add tem anyway, for the sake of difficulty, like elite formers or double shamblers have been added)

And finally, N! isn't difficult enough.
First, I think it's pretty easy with a melee build. I got little experience with melee, since I hate constraining my display to one color channel, but from what I tried, it looks ridiculously easy. For example, I won my first AoOc+AoB game... while I didn't even expect to play it. Just played 5 minutes and... duh, already done ? I even read several times that AoB was easier than a normal game... I don't think it would be, for me, but melee looks like a real balance issue.
For what I would call a "normal" build, well... once you're used to dispose of corpses with fluids and doors, N! is more boring and constraining than really difficult. If you play cautiously, it's not so much harder than an UV game. It will need way more attention, and mistakes will have a higher cost, but you also get a great buff to powerup effects, and free unlimited ammo in most levels.
I think the difficulty increase from UV to N! is fine, but the main problem remains : UV is too easy.


Currently, the game's difficulty is so low that many challenges like AAoPc, AoP(u) or AoRA are possible (and sometimes easy), despite the fact that they give you no benefit in counterpart of the big limitations they feature.
Standard games should be challenging, and challenges should never take something without a counterpart : they should be designed in such a way that without the counterpart, they'd be extremely difficult and/or luck based.
AoLt and AoMs are good examples : they feature great limitations, but some non-negligible compensation.

Currently, you "just" have to learn to play damageless to handle most challenges, be it AoP, AoMs, AoHu... and the real problem is : you CAN play damageless (and it's quite easy, with INT2)
That's why I think the tread asking to nerf cornershooting and redesign the way projectiles work is the best idea I've seen atm. (making them work like lost souls, with a non-instant movespeed, so that you can move to dodge between them effectively, instead of just picking HR)

thelaptop:
Hold on.  Dual Angels are not balanced at all, and so all arguments based on them right now are practically invalid -- cheesing achievements with Dual Angels falls in the category of things that I don't think is worth mentioning at this point considering the amount of effort put into balancing them properly (i.e. no effort whatsoever).

There are some "sacred cows" that cannot be dealt with in the current DoomRL, since any such alteration would end up with a drastically different game (and thus making that version 1.0.0 an impossibility).  Corner shooting is one of them, melee is another, weapon/assembly is a third one.

But don't let what I said be a damper.  Once the sources are opened, we can start forking different versions and test each component separately from each other component.

Evilpotatoe:
Damn... I understand your point of view :/
I think a few assemblies could be tweaked, like tac boots have been, and zerk resistance could slowly reduce from version to version (50% for next, maybe ? then 40% ?), but I understand that the more we change, the longer it will take to complete the dev cycle.
(Well, I could also say that the sooner things are improved, the better... but I really don't want to, right now :)

Note that I wasn't speaking of dual angels, except for AoOc+AoB, which I mistakenly tried (just wanted to check whether you start with a chainsaw, which looked ridiculous to me). I just ignore them, since they are, indeed, not balanced at all.
I was mainly complaining that difficulty is to low (which could also be expressed in other ways, like "We should nerf the doomguy !")

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