3.3.0 Hobbit Rogue / Death

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

That is the purpose of a maintainer/developer. If you are going to ignore the requests from the user base then you should be on a variant not on Angband proper by definition.

But the consensus of the user base is a tricky thing to ping down, and we can only do what we think is best after listening to all the views expressed.

And even when we know what we'd like to do, that's still different from someone finding the time to code it up.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

That is the purpose of a maintainer/developer. If you are going to ignore the requests from the user base then you should be on a variant not on Angband proper by definition.

I don't think that's a fair statement. Everyone who's on the devteam is a volunteer. We have lives and the time we can spend working on Angband is a limited commodity. You can't tell someone, "Hey, do this!" regardless of whether you yourself are on the devteam or not. The best you can do is say, "I think this is a priority and I can't do this myself, can someone pick it up or help me?" It's amazing how much actually gets done with this structure.

To say that we don't consider user input is also not fair. Every gameplay change I've made has either been something that someone else has suggested and that received good support here (~80%) or something that I've come up with that I talked about here and other people have supported. All major changes get ample discussion on the forums, and I've abandoned ideas that were disliked or only received tepid approval.

The other point is everything I've implemented is something that I've felt strongly about, or something that I felt was a requirement, i.e. bugfixes. (Actually bugfixes really are the major bulk of my commits, and most other devs as well.) The whole point being, if I don't feel it's necessary I have no incentive to work on it, especially when there are so many other higher priority tasks that need attention. There is no shortage of open tickets for Angband, but there is limited devtime.

So my statement is essentially, I don't think adaptive shop prices is a priority. While I understand that you feel strongly about it, it's way down on the list of things that bug me. So I'm not going to spend my Angband-coding time implementing it. If someone else wants to work on it, that's great! I'm not going to stop them. I'm not even going to say, "Hey, you should work on this other project instead." If you want to pick it up yourself and work on it, awesome!

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Malak Darkhunter

I kind of feel like things are moving more in the direction of variant talk, for one i find stat drain annoying- taking out restore stat potions was one thing i didnt like but found it an acceptable change since your stats are restored at level up. To make it more annoying by punishing the player the more by only allowing one stat to restore at level up is aggravating, and i for one won't play it. Reading this thread i will put my 2 cents worth in-

I agree that stat-draining/restore is not perfect now and could stand some significant improvement. I have not yet seen the "yes, this is the way to go!" suggestion yet. I don't like time drain-all attacks or nexus stat swap at all. I would rather both of those be removed, but that hits a lot of resistance, so it's never been implemented except in personal versions.

1. I have always considered angband/moria a type of rpg game and i like to roll play the character, its my story.

Honestly, I do this too.

2. I like options and i miss seeing ego weapons and armours in the stores.

I agree with Derakon that it's more fun finding things in the dungeon than finding things in the stores. I also still wind up buying a non-trivial amount of weapons/armor/jewelery from the stores. I'd be ok with ego items showing up in armory and weaponsmith more often but at prices closer to BM value (large discrepancy between selling price and asking price is needed).

3. I think things have moved more towards ironman gameplay, i do like the birth- no selling option however.

Angband will never go full ironman. One of the appeals for me playing Angband instead of, say, Nethack is how "nice" it was to allow you to replay early levels to try things out and learn the game. That's why I got hooked on Angband and never really progressed in Nethack.

4. I prefer the old shop ui

old shop ui works in 3.4

5. Im okay with id by use and artifacts automaticaly ided

6. Like the newer font-windows interface and big screen support

Yay. ID by use has turned out to be pretty popular.

7. I like 3.0.6 gameplay though feels more like the original game, think the game is changing to be not like angband anymore.

How much of this is nostalgia for a non-existent past? 3.0.6 had some features which annoyed the hell out of me. Overabundance of hounds, way too much time spent hockey-pucking hounds around a corridor bend. Way too many junk items and no squelch, especially when you started hitting Wyrms that dropped 12 items that were all weapons and armor that needed to be ID'd. Amnesia that caused you to forget all your items and require you to either take notes on everything or re-ID everything. Neither of which is "fun". Useless mage attacking spells except for MM. Destruction abuse to loot vaults.

Specifically, what did you like about 3.0.6 that is missing now?

I'm hoping you like 3.4, I think we've fixed a good chunk of the problems in 3.3, at least with item generation.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

That is the purpose of a maintainer/developer. If you are going to ignore the requests from the user base then you should be on a variant not on Angband proper by definition.

Spoken like a job applicant

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by fizzix

You can't tell someone, "Hey, do this!" regardless of whether you yourself are on the devteam or not.

As I have stated this fairly frankly that is obvious, but the point remains if you are coding for what you want to be done you are not a maintaining Angband proper, you are making a variant by definition.

There is nothing wrong with that, some of the greatest roguelikes are variants. Zang for the most obvious is still played, it inspired Heng which is still played, and that inspired Entroband then Chengband etc. . These are all great, but you can clearly see how they are "this is what I want" coding.

Again, nothing wrong with that, the entire thing started off as "this is what I want" to get Moria from Rogue. But again if this is what you are doing then don't claim to be maintaining Angband proper.

While I understand that you feel strongly about it, it's way down on the list of things that bug me.

It isn't a large thing to me, it just stands out as an obvious weak point in both game mechanics, gameplay and just consistent behaviour. It is in other variants in various forums and it adds meaning to both item gaining and general rp atmosphere. There are other things you could do, for example donate vs sell. It is just another way to make use of ood items which you can not use directly and gain more use from the stores which at this point are almost useless as a game mechanic (weapons/armor).

The largest thing to me which stands out is gaining replayability through randomization. Think back to when you first started playing Angband, provided there was no spoiler searching, the main thing that made it a challenge was not knowing. If there was a random element to monsters this would add challenge for experienced players (especially if it was monster level based) but be almost transparent to new players.

The only thing you could do when you see a monster that you had not saw before is :

-try to judge from its description, level/vault placements
-hit it with your best distance attack
-get fully buffed and try a round of melee etc. .

This would make probing much more powerful as well. However it could be argued this is such a major change from gameplay and it would not be Angband proper any more.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Originally Posted by fizzix

I agree that stat-draining/restore is not perfect now and could stand some significant improvement. I have not yet seen the "yes, this is the way to go!" suggestion yet. I don't like time drain-all attacks or nexus stat swap at all. I would rather both of those be removed, but that hits a lot of resistance, so it's never been implemented except in personal versions.



Honestly, I do this too.


I agree with Derakon that it's more fun finding things in the dungeon than finding things in the stores. I also still wind up buying a non-trivial amount of weapons/armor/jewelery from the stores. I'd be ok with ego items showing up in armory and weaponsmith more often but at prices closer to BM value (large discrepancy between selling price and asking price is needed).


Angband will never go full ironman. One of the appeals for me playing Angband instead of, say, Nethack is how "nice" it was to allow you to replay early levels to try things out and learn the game. That's why I got hooked on Angband and never really progressed in Nethack.


old shop ui works in 3.4


Yay. ID by use has turned out to be pretty popular.



How much of this is nostalgia for a non-existent past? 3.0.6 had some features which annoyed the hell out of me. Overabundance of hounds, way too much time spent hockey-pucking hounds around a corridor bend. Way too many junk items and no squelch, especially when you started hitting Wyrms that dropped 12 items that were all weapons and armor that needed to be ID'd. Amnesia that caused you to forget all your items and require you to either take notes on everything or re-ID everything. Neither of which is "fun". Useless mage attacking spells except for MM. Destruction abuse to loot vaults.

Specifically, what did you like about 3.0.6 that is missing now?

I'm hoping you like 3.4, I think we've fixed a good chunk of the problems in 3.3, at least with item generation.

I hope I like v 3.4 to, there sounds like a lot of good changes, to be honest I'm a little indesisive on what version I want to play, I like 3.3 screen changes, and the way the game feels, It feels clean and dosen't seem to be buggy at all, very good work there.

Now on the other hand and I acknowledge that I might be in a minority here, I like older version "WoW" moments, where you didn't know everything about the game, I feel there is almost too much information given, blows/round damge/round etc, making it easier in some ways, but also it's nice for new players to have that wonderment feel about that item and not immediately knowing all about it as soon as they pick it up.

I think from 3.0.6 backwards had that wonderment feel about item generation, less in game knowledge.

specificaly I like 2.7.8, after that I stopped liking the changes aside from bug-fixes, which are always nice, this version still had the Moria/original Angband feel, so I guess you could call that nostalgia, and I might be in a minority
here.

As far annoying gameplay, yup 3.0.6 and as far back as 2.7.8 had annoying hounds, I still think they are a problem though, I think they should be nerfed to solitary creatures, and the "Friend" flag removed from the code, you still have packs of wolves, white wolves, spiders to deal with, and more than that I hate hell hound pack generation, again fine as solitary creatures.

Amnesia, was actualy a minor annoyance, usually had a permanent means of Id anyway, I'm a verteran of Sang, where Ameneisa, mind-blast, was common so used to it I guess.

To sum it up change wise, the town is less intersting from 3.0.6 on, don't like that change, I for one liked finding things I needed in town, it was a way to spend my money, and there was still a thrill of excitement when you found soemthing interesting in the stores, and more when you tried to come up with a way to buy it without having the gold.
Stat drain worked better with restore potions, again in 2.7.8/3.0.6 you didn't always find the restore potion you needed so I felt worked just fine.

Love the new randart code, and the old shop ui code going into 3.4, if stat drain was reverted back to the way it was, the shops generating things interesting again, and less player knowledge about item generation, to where you know what it does but blows/round/ damgage calculation was hidden, then I would chalk up 3.4 as probalby my favorite, but for now I'm playing 2.7.8, will try 3.4 when it comes out.

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by Malak Darkhunter

As far annoying gameplay, yup 3.0.6 and as far back as 2.7.8 had annoying hounds, I still think they are a problem though, I think they should be nerfed to solitary creatures, and the "Friend" flag removed from the code, you still have packs of wolves, white wolves, spiders to deal with, and more than that I hate hell hound pack generation, again fine as solitary creatures.

I always saw them as something to avoid for that reason and it made sense that not everything in the game has a high reward for its risk as that means no choices. I avoid them almost exclusively because they usually do a lot of damage both directly and indirectly, they move out of LOS, they have no drops, and the exp isn't worth the consumables. However if you happen to find a decent wand of balls/breath you can blow up a pile of them for cheap EXP as they are stupid about avoiding such damage.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

I always saw them as something to avoid for that reason and it made sense that not everything in the game has a high reward for its risk as that means no choices. I avoid them almost exclusively because they usually do a lot of damage both directly and indirectly, they move out of LOS, they have no drops, and the exp isn't worth the consumables. However if you happen to find a decent wand of balls/breath you can blow up a pile of them for cheap EXP as they are stupid about avoiding such damage.

Agreed-they are great means of experience, some class combo's might be better suited to deal with them, others not. Half-trolls with no stealth and no Rblindness just get hunted, I dig jagged corridors Some levels it's best to just plum leave on.

[CliffStamp]

Originally Posted by Malak Darkhunter

Some levels it's best to just plum leave on.

With poor detection they can be a bit of a problem as they don't come up on detect evil which is one of the easiest to fine and gravity / impact hounds have caused the death of more than one adventurer who stayed on the level, later forgot and teleported into LOS of a bunch of them.

It might be nice to actually reward people who hunt them by reducing the frequency, i.e., you are genociding them if you kill each pack when you see them. Similar if you kept ignoring them they would get more and more frequent.

This would prevent the min/maxing approach to Angband which is common as monster information gets learned.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by CliffStamp

As I have stated this fairly frankly that is obvious, but the point remains if you are coding for what you want to be done you are not a maintaining Angband proper, you are making a variant by definition.

There is nothing wrong with that, some of the greatest roguelikes are variants. Zang for the most obvious is still played, it inspired Heng which is still played, and that inspired Entroband then Chengband etc. . These are all great, but you can clearly see how they are "this is what I want" coding.

Again, nothing wrong with that, the entire thing started off as "this is what I want" to get Moria from Rogue. But again if this is what you are doing then don't claim to be maintaining Angband proper.

Could you expand a bit more on what you see as "maintaining Angband proper"? I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn't anything that anyone would willingly volunteer their time to do (there have been effectively no takers to do this since Robert Ruehlmann packed it in) - but I don't feel I can say this with certainty until I understand more about what you mean. It's certainly true that all the members of the current devteam, recruited by takkaria, joined because we were offered the chance to help turn Angband into what we thought it should be - better dungeon generation, better item generation, better code (nobody's done "better shops" yet, but it would fit perfectly with the operating model). I have linked before to takkaria's essay on maintenance and development: may I conclude that you disagree with it? Or is it in fact not a distinction between maintenance and development that you want, but a distinction between developing the UI and developing the gameplay?

The largest thing to me which stands out is gaining replayability through randomization. Think back to when you first started playing Angband, provided there was no spoiler searching, the main thing that made it a challenge was not knowing. If there was a random element to monsters this would add challenge for experienced players (especially if it was monster level based) but be almost transparent to new players.

The only thing you could do when you see a monster that you had not saw before is :

-try to judge from its description, level/vault placements
-hit it with your best distance attack
-get fully buffed and try a round of melee etc. .

This would make probing much more powerful as well. However it could be argued this is such a major change from gameplay and it would not be Angband proper any more.

Well you'll be pleased to know that randomised monsters are on the list for v4 (which is indeed not Angband proper). I agree that this would dramatically improve replayability for experienced players.