"Nick is going to butcher the game"

[Pete Mack]

I think Nick is mostly right on this--the same list forever is kind of dull.

[Carnivean]

Originally Posted by tangar

2) there are people who participate the discussions on this forums, but silent in this particular one. Why? Because they are too.. gentle. This is very good virtue of human, but not in all conditions.

I participate a reasonable amount in discussions, but have been silent in this one, and it is for the reason that you mention here. I have been refraining from commenting because my reaction is harsh and many people here are genteel and polite to a fault.

I think you should go away and never come back. You are a toxic piece of garbage who chased away T4nk who was a valuable contributor with a nasty, vile piece of trash series of comments.

I don't know if you suffer from some kind of mental illness, but such is the delusion of grandeur in your posts that I don't care. This forum would be better without you.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by takkaria

A lot of people have made the same kinds of claim you've made here - that some particular element of the game is sacred, makes the game "Angband", that removing/changing it/adding to it is the end of Angband. But we also have some players who have played since 2.4.frog-knows and have seen almost everything in the game change in some way, including the monster list, and they still call it "Angband".

Hi.

For what it's worth, I still feel like a lot of the JLE monsters don't fit, and it bugs me how good Amulets of Trickery are. Back in the old days, you wore an Amulet of Wisdom +6 because the marginal improvement it gave to your saving throw was better than anything else you could get until the artifacts came in...and they were pretty underwhelming too! As I recall, the de facto best amulet was usually Carlammas because it gave +2 CON and basically nothing else.

But yeah, they got added to the game and somehow I neglected to get upset about it or quit the community.

(Also, I can't help but feel some responsibility for affecting the game balance, seeing as I added the "Miniature Cell" vault, which had 5 of the "monster 40 levels OOD with guaranteed-excellent item 20 levels OOD" tiles, and nothing else, in particular had nothing preventing those monsters from getting out of the vault. That thing wisely got nerfed shortly after being added to Vanilla)

[tangar]

Angband as the heritage

Originally Posted by takkaria

tangar, I understand you think you're "in the right" here. But there isn't a right or wrong; we're talking about aesthetics. This is the kind of thing where there are preferences and not facts.

Aesthetics - beautiful and right term. But why there shouldn't be a discussion about it? Let's take Vincent van Gogh.. A 'majority' didn't understand his works aesthetics for a long time. And when 'they' finally managed to comprehend - it was to late, he was dead. I'm an artist myself and I see an Angband as a masterpiece in a certain way. When I see it's destruction I can't just stay beside and watch on it. Even if I'm the only one who understand it's aesthetics. Who knows, maybe 'they' would understand it later, but it would be too late?..

I just have another POV on Angband in terms of gamedesign and actually cultural phenomena. I see V-Angband as the étalon (reference, standard, model) which is very close to perfection because it's being actively developed over ~30 years and which is based at gamedesign concepts of Moria and Rogue which gives yet another 10 yeards to this concept - Angband is closer than eg Nethack to 'original' Rogue and we actually could call Angband as Rogue III (Moria is Rogue II).

So we could say that Angband has 40 years gamedesign in total. 40 years of gameplay and lore evolution. A lot of classic vanilla monsters went through it and I feel them as a thing close to perfection which we, of course, should enrich and rebalance, but being very cautions and respectable to the heritage. "One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor".. lol this discussion remind me of Council of Elrond..

Strangers from distant lands, friends of old, you have been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor. Vanilla Angband stands upon the brink of destruction; none can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race is bound to this fate, this one doom. Bring forth the word about Lore...

Considering criticism:

Never before has anyone dared utter words of that tongue here, in Imladris.

But:

The Lore cannot be destroyed by any craft that we here possess. The Lore was made in the fires of Mount Doom. Only there can it be unmade. It must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came! One of you... must do this.

And:

Have you heard nothing Lord Nick has said? The Lore must be destroyed!

But I understand that I'm a minority there and as I said in my past post - I've stopped struggle for Vanilla lore. I won't participate in monster/race discussions further except this thread.

Originally Posted by Carnivean

I think you should go away and never come back. You are a toxic piece of garbage who chased away T4nk who was a valuable contributor with a nasty, vile piece of trash series of comments.

I don't know if you suffer from some kind of mental illness, but such is the delusion of grandeur in your posts that I don't care. This forum would be better without you.

It was pretty obvious to see such reaction at my past message, so I'm not offended. It's just a good proof of the concept about why there are no negative feedback on lore destruction, but vice versa, from:

Originally Posted by tangar

2) ..... This 'gentleness' makes people who do not agree - just to be silent so they won't offend beloved person / won't go agains it's supporters.

And an insults from fanboys make people go to #1:

Originally Posted by tangar

1) people who do not like what's going on - do not participate in Angband forum discussions anymore..

There are always people who do not have anything to say about topic of the discussion and their the only argument is to 'go personal'. Enjoy yourself!

[wobbly]

Originally Posted by tangar

End of vanilla Angband

Rip vanilla. Bring back Vorpal bunnies and Hobgoblins.

Originally Posted by Carnivean

T4nk

I too was upset to see him go. But not as upset as I'd be to see another forum-ite go, over something similar. Never commented because basically I'm glad I'm not actually a moderator.

Originally Posted by tangar

fanboys

I'm probably the worst person to be calling people up on rudeness, being prone to getting rude myself on design choices in Angband but I'm going to make a request anyway. At least consider the possibility that the people calling you out on rudeness (multiple people) has more to do with the way you're saying things then simple disagreement.

[tangar]

Originally Posted by wobbly

At least consider the possibility that the people calling you out on rudeness (multiple people) has more to do with the way you're saying things then simple disagreement.

It's very pretty how you quote this 'rude' word:

Originally Posted by tangar

fanboys

And do not notice any rudeness this message:

Originally Posted by Carnivean

I think you should go away and never come back. You are a toxic piece of garbage who chased away T4nk who was a valuable contributor with a nasty, vile piece of trash series of comments.

I don't know if you suffer from some kind of mental illness, but such is the delusion of grandeur in your posts that I don't care. This forum would be better without you.

wobbly, thank you very much for providing such beautiful evidence to typical double standarts! Good job!

Originally Posted by tangar

There are always people who do not have anything to say about topic of the discussion and their the only argument is to 'go personal'.

[wobbly]

One word, but I had a billion to choose from. Simple fact: you're rude, I'm rude. Neither of us have special privilidge.

Done.

[PowerWyrm]

Originally Posted by wobbly

Edit: Honestly it's a shame Nick the butcher would be out of place as a unique.

Too late! This is gonna be a unique in my variant now!
The Butcher of Baddu-Bak is having a new husband!

Originally Posted by debo

Look, Vanilla was ruined from the moment that Nick decided to not have rockets in it. Who cares about the rest.

Rockets pfft. Final Fantasy has nuclear bombs, so why just play with small rockets, we need some BFGs...

Originally Posted by tangar

I donno why some other folk with whom I discussed this matters in Discord are silent..

Because it was not the time to say something. The current monster overhaul is WIP, not finished work.

Originally Posted by takkaria

PWMAngband and your own variant are very welcome to keep the old monsters, or add to them or mix between the different monster lists to your heart's content.

Exactly, and that's what I've been doing for the past 12 years. PWMAngband started as a fork of MAngband, because I wasn't satisfied with the turn TomeNET was taking and wanted to play a real-time version with stuff I liked while keeping the core Angband feel. That's why I'm following all the changes while porting only some of them for PWMAngband -- that's what variants are for. If you look more closely at the latest PWMAngband source, you'll probably find out that most of the changes from latest V are there... but not all of them. This will also be the case for post 4.1.2 chances about races and monsters. I will not contest the changes in Angband, just adapt them for my variant if I dislike them.

Originally Posted by takkaria

I think it's fair to say that everyone who has seen your posts on the forum, tangar, understands you have a strong attachment to the current monster file as of Angband 4.1, and that you don't want to see things removed. It sucks when games change in ways you don't like. But maybe give the changes a go? You might find that an updated monster list is a new challenge to master, rather than a loss of hard-won knowledge. Personally, I've been playing the game more recently than I have in ages because I'm excited to see the changes.

I understand Tangar, as the change to the monster list is BRUTAL. I felt the same way 10+ years ago around v3 when half of the list was switched around, many monsters removed and replaced. Who here remembers the name given to The Balrog of Moria (Muar) or to the Witch-King (Murazor)? I used to play and fight Cerberus and suddenly he was gone... But then I thought... why we would have to fight Cerberus in the Pits of Angband? This makes no sense... And Carcharoth was adopted. And I felt happy with the changes.

[Sphara]

Only time I've felt strongly about Angband development was few months ago, when traps were just obnoxiously dangerous. I don't know if dragon/demon summoning traps are nerfed nowadays, but those did one-shot me few times. Also it wasn't rare to lose majority of your town-bought healing supplies to early spiked pit traps. And if you did not have any, you could just die to bleeding+poison.

These incoming changes today, I just look forward to and wanna see how they play. Every change is likely displease some players, there's no way around that for a game with this long of a history. I bet there are people who still miss ant lions and evil iggies.

[eMeM]

Originally Posted by Pahasusi

Hei,

long-time lurker here (7 years??), player of Angband since 1995 or so, done my Nethack, ADOM etc...

I made an account just to come here and post my couple of cents. What the OP wrote is in my opinion completely wrong.


I'm not bothered by the mixing of different ages of Middle Earth - what irritates me is the mixing of religious mythology, D&D monsters, David Eddings and who knows how many other sources to Middle Earth context.

Angband to me represents Tolkien's world. Removing all the outliers, D&D monsters and "funny" monsters just enhances the game - makes it more coherent and unique experience.

Going through the monsters, giving epic Tolkieny villains (for example Nazguls) their rightful place at the top of the monster food chain instead of just being pushovers is exactly the right choice.

What Nick has done to the game is great! It feels vibrant, evolving game once again, not stagnant pit that tries to preserve "a mix of bit of everything".

So I say go for it Nick! Realize your vision while taking feedback like you have done so far - those who want to stay with the old Angband can do so, but it's my opinion it's high time this great, classic game got someone with your vision to maintain it

From day 1 when Nick was "appointed" as a Angband maintainer it was obvious from his previous work he will make it more Tolkienised. And from day 1 I knew I will not like that sort of changes because I'm not into Tolkien's books or any other fantasy books. I just liked Angband as a ASCII roguelike game played on a fullscreen DOS/Linux. Side note it's not possible to play it that way in Windows for many years and no maintainer cares enough to fix it.

Overall I admit that I don't like changes in Vanilla in last 15 years. There are some nice user interface improvement but much more things are made in what I perceive as a wrong direction. Some of fun is removed because maintainer feels it's annoying to him. Some annoying things are introduced because maintainer feels it's more fun to him. I just know that if I don't follow current maintainer's philosophy then I will just get disappointed reading what's going on in Angband development. Might be a reason why I quit playing in last few years.

Back to main subject of Angband LORE changes. I understand tangar's concerns. I understand that some monsters should stay in the game with their non-Tolkien roots, non-Tolkien names. On the other hand I agree that some monster needs to be moved to different depth. I'm not attached to a monster's name.

Myself I though that 50' depth should be different from any other level. More safe, single monsters, no packs, no invisible monsters, no paralise monsters, no OOD monsters. But for someone else that would be a LORE change and maybe they would quote Tolkien that dungeon is never a safe place to be.