Rework highscores for non-ascended characters

[HomebrewHomunculus]

Just a placeholder issue for now - for some possible ideas, see my comment here: https://github.com/tmewett/BrogueCE/issues/342#issuecomment-846871933

Why:

Highscores for characters who don't reach the Amulet or Lumenstones are entirely based on gold. Gold scoring is bad and probably rewards bad play more than it does good play.

What:

Redesign incentives so that even non-winning players get useful feedback when they improve their skill at the game.

---

To quote myself:

Ideas to consider implementing

So, some suggestions for making the game - not easier to win, but easier to find partial success in and see your growth as a low-level player. These are mostly alternatives to each other, not all to be implemented together:

1. Remove score values for non-winning runs and simply order them in the highscore list by the depth that was reached.
2. Remove gold and replace it with a fixed score for depth level reached, perhaps to be doubled if the dungeon is escaped alive.
3. Remove gold and replace them with a "mini-Lumenstone" equivalent. These are treasure with a fixed score value and are spawned at a fixed rate of one per level, for levels 2-25. The score value is perhaps doubled if the dungeon is escaped alive. This is equivalent to the above suggestion except it adds the exploration aspect to collecting the treasure.
4. Allow players to escape the dungeon at any point, even before ascension, AND give additional points for doing so. Thus, a player who reaches level 13 and knows they will likely die soon can "bank" their winnings and get a nice score, one much higher than if they died on level 14. Retreating like this is not the optimal way to play in the long run - but, inevitably, after getting several similar scores, the player will want to push themselves and venture deeper. It gives a more meaningful highscore for non-winning players to compare their best achievements with each other.
5. Add a "mini-Amulet of Yendor" equivalent to the middle depths, along with a nice mini-boss. This gives a milestone for middling players to strive for and measure themselves by, but with potentially fewer changes to scoring than the "mini-Lumenstone" alternative.
6. Allow players to trade some score for an easier game. If gold is to stay, then the obvious way to implement this would be by adding opportunities to buy equipment. Shops,vending machines, vault doors that require gold payment instead of keys, whatever.
7. Allow players to trade score for an easier game, but combined with the mini-Lumenstone idea above: the mini-Lumenstone can spawn in the cages in vaults. This allows daredevil players to skip upgrades in exchange for a higher score. Beginner players will, instead, take the upgrades since they definitely need them to survive. Hardcore players will instead have a new challenge mode: who can win with the fewest upgrades picked up. This idea can also be used with gold - simply spawn gold in the cages. It's technically the same thing, but I think that new players might assume that the gold can be used for buying things later, due to the association of gold coins as fungible resources in most games. Having a single, clearly non-fungible item, would make it more obvious that it isn't something they need to worry about. There are others but those have to with quite significant changes to levelgen and balance so I won't mention them here.

Since I have no shortage of space here, I'll also post the other thing I was thinking about but omitted:

8. A much more significant change to the game, probably too big to consider: make depth level ranges more distinct from each other. Monsters to be more strongly tied to their native depth range, and the ranges of levels to have names and strong themes. (Swamp zone, fairy forest zone, lava zone, graveyard zone, whatever.) Unique miniboss-esque monsters that can only spawn in the native zone. This would make the game more predictable, in a sense, but also easier to build a mental model of. (c.f. Spelunky's "I got to the temple!" "I keep dying in the jungle...")

[buster-blue]

I read your comment. In particular I'm very interested in the idea you had about being able to leave the dungeon at any time for bonus points. An idea like this would help players who aren't good enough to ascend with the amulet still feel like they have a victory when they leave early after reaching new, deeper depths, or getting a new high score.

Also the last 2 ideas about trading score for an easier time and vice-versa sound like a fun way for less skilled players who aren't as concerned with getting a high score to still have a use for score, and also as a way for players who are quite good at the game to have an additional challenge they can use to get an even higher score than normal.

Those 3 ideas together sound like a great way to create a sort of dynamic difficulty, where the player decides how difficult they want their run to be based on how much they want to risk losing the score boost for leaving the dungeon alive in order to reach deeper depths, and also based on how much they value having a higher score and lumenstones versus having access to better equipment and upgrades. It sounds it could end up creating a very engaging risk/reward metagame aspect to each dungeon-run, where players can adjust difficulty without the game they're playing actually changing in any way. The only thing that changes is their goal.

[HomebrewHomunculus]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad you see it the same way I do. Agreed that risk & reward is a really good way to have self-selected difficulty - I'm very much influenced by 868-HACK in that regard.

One thing I'm no sure about with the "escape anytime" thing is I wonder if the backtracking part of escaping wouldn't feel very boring at the early depths. I haven't actually backtracked much in Brogue so I'm not sure if it spawns any monsters at the previous depths during the game, or when you grab the amulet. If escaping doesn't feel like an exciting part of the challenge, then it probably shouldn't be forced - just give the player the points upon death. Or have a "rope of escape" item to skip the walk, I dunno.

Yeah, trading score for upgrades (either one way, or the other, or both) seems fun.

The most straightforward way to slot that in to Brogue's existing structures would be to have treasure appear in vaults, replacing one of the caged items.

The most obvious way in general would be shops where you can trade your gold in for stuff (enchants, food, strength, whatever). But that turns gold into a resource, which weakens the idea that it's just for keeping score.

The opposite of shops would be some sort of recycling/disenchanting machine that eats your food and good items and spits out gold. Not being able to do anything with the gold would, again, reinforce the idea that it's not meant to be something for you to hoard in order to grow stronger later.

In any case, whether it's "mini-Lumenstones" or just gold, I think I would want it to be fixed value per gold pile. If not fixed by level, so that each level would be guaranteed to contain 100 (or 100 x depth) points worth of treasure, or something. The randomly rolled gold pile sizes don't really add anything, IMO, they just fuzz the numbers slightly.

[HomebrewHomunculus]

Or maybe using a scroll of enchanting on treasure increases its score value... hmm.

Or cursed golden idols that take up an inventory slot and cannot be dropped but are worth a bunch of points.

[HomebrewHomunculus]

Old values: Amulet = 70,000 score Lumenstone = 5,000 score per Gold = 1 score per (typical gold piles around 100-400, with both size and number increasing with depth, so likely around 300 on average per pile)

(Amulet is listed as 35,000 but always doubled when winning. Only gold is scored on a game over, others require a win.)

Potential new values 1 (divide by 100): Amulet = 700 (list value 350) Lumenstone = 50 per Gold = 2 per pile

Potential new values 2 (divide by 200): Amulet = 350 (list value 175) Lumenstone = 25 per Gold = 1 per pile

Potential new values 3 (divide by ~average gold pile size, some rounding): Amulet = 200 (list value 100) Lumenstone = 20 per Gold = 1 per pile

Potential new values 4 (similar to above but even more "rationalized"): Amulet = 100 (list value 50) Lumenstone = 10 per Gold = 1 per pile

(these lower numbers give the possibility of doing other simple things such as 1 point per depth descended, etc.)

[HomebrewHomunculus]

Alternatively, to keep gold the pile size/score value scaling by depth, but more clearly and impactfully:

gold pile size = 100 + 100*(round_down(D/7))

or

gold pile score value = 1 + (round_down(D/7))

This means that gold pile size jumps up at depths 7, 14, and 21 - which is probably a pretty good division of "intermediate player/level, experienced player/level, and endgame/advanced player" stages. For example, goblin warrens appear on DL 5-15, so roughly the early-mid game. These clear jumps in value also communicate to the player that they're entering a new stage in the game, much better than the fuzzed values that go randomly up and down but generally tend up.

For a more granular progression:

gold pile size = 100 + 50*(round_down(D/4))

So up at 4, 8, 12, etc. This would let even the new players who can't make it past depth 6 to see some hint of the progression :)

[tmewett]

My concern with the possibility of leaving is that I think it could get the more risk-averse beginner stuck in progress plateaus, since to play optimally they would have to be evaluating the risk vs reward of progressing deeper - whereas now they must press on and might be surprised by getting further than they thought they would. I am quite a risk-averse person though :grin:

I haven't actually backtracked much in Brogue so I'm not sure if it spawns any monsters at the previous depths during the game

It does, but only as part of the usual periodic spawning clock while you're at the depth. Every depth is harder than the one previous so afaik the ascending part of a win is not challenging at all - except maybe any skipped depths towards the end