Shouldn't Ironman be the default (and is it even playable atm) ?

[Selkie]

Originally Posted by Sphara

@selkie
The game I just saved has had typical 'this-can-only-happen-to-me' whining scenario. Game has produced Light Crossbow of Accuracy but not a single bolt from start to this moment. It also produced 10 pebbles of slay evil early but not a single Sling yet. And finally some unique dropped 37 arrows of wounding +17dam, but the game hasn't generated a single bow after that

Those missing pieces will drop eventually, but as far as launchers go, I've been going smh all the way so far. Character just cannot carry a +0 longbow in ironman game just for the fact that some great arrows MIGHT drop.

Weirdly when you play as a rogue especially, you can do more damage throwing shots and pebbles than you can do with a vanilla sling

[Sphara]

Originally Posted by Selkie

Weirdly when you play as a rogue especially, you can do more damage throwing shots and pebbles than you can do with a vanilla sling

This I have noticed. I do not carry unenchanted slings anymore.

[Julian]

Originally Posted by Selkie

Weirdly when you play as a rogue especially, you can do more damage throwing shots and pebbles than you can do with a vanilla sling

This feels like a bug to me.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Julian

This feels like a bug to me.

Yes, it does to me too, but I haven't got around to working out how to fix it.

[backwardsEric]

Originally Posted by Nick

Yes, it does to me too, but I haven't got around to working out how to fix it.

Something like,

dmg *= 20 + (5 * missile->weight - 35) / 6;
dmg /= 10;

for the non-O thrown damage formula would make damage from shots a bit less than they would be with an unenchanted sling (for unenchanted iron shots the possible results would be 1, 3, 5, and 7 for an average of 4 versus 2, 4, 6, and 8 for an average of 5). Thrown daggers and spears would also suffer (2.4x and 5.5x multipliers versus the current 3x and 6x) while thrown hammers would remain the same.

[Julian]

Originally Posted by Nick

Yes, it does to me too, but I haven't got around to working out how to fix it.

A lower multiplier for thrown items that aren’t throwing weapons?

[will_asher]

Originally Posted by Julian

A lower multiplier for thrown items that aren’t throwing weapons?

Iron shots are considered throwing weapons in the code. Seems like an easy solution to me (if you think it needs fixing). Just remove the THROWING flag from iron shots.

[Thraalbee]

Ironman is certainly viable in 4.2.3.

You can't expect to have all the luck this character had, but the drops were balanced enough through the game - I neither had a shortage nor an abundance of escapes, healing and decent ammo. The balance feels ok. (note: I may look overstocked after the final fight but that's because I didn't use a single !*heal* or !Life in the entire game, a first, and only a few !healing. Emergency activation and mushrooms were very helpful to conserve consumables until I found my first _healing (of two in total).

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=24674&ok

[Evilpotatoe]

Thanks for your answers
And special mention for Thraalbee's nice demonstration :)

I guess I'll give a new try to the latest version, with disabled recall and stairs, of course...
I still doubt it will be as noob-friendly as "modern games", where I expect to quickly win some runs on low difficulty just to get familiar with the mechanics, before I use more serious settings... but it deserves some tries.
personal "Skill" note : my hall of fame reminds me I won 4.1.3 not only with a lvl48 High elf ranger, but also as a lvl46 Dunadan paladin and a lvl50 dwarf warrior). I also did win some Z/Heng runs.


Anyway,
I'm not much surprised to see the players (still here) like things the way they are (else, they would be gone, -- like I (more or less) am --, right ? :)
But if I came back here to post, it's because I realized the reason I stopped to play was the ability to reroll levels.

While I've been pretty happy with the "it's possible !" part & given advices of answers (up to a nice char dump !), I was a bit disappointed by the lack of arguments when it comes to saying it "should not be" the defaut option... "because it shouldn't".
I'm not suggesting something harder (it's the opposite), but something with a better balance, less repetitive tasks, and more challenging choices !
Difficulty options should remain, of course, but I think the default should be "average" (read : easy to win for an experienced player), with noobie & veteran options to ease or spice things up...

I'm not expecting everyone to agree with my opinion, but I really do think some great (and well-playtested) concepts, like the finite dungeon, should be imported in this game, making it more interesting and appealing.
And since I love most of the choices made in Vanilla (cleaning of the codebase !, rebalancing stuff/monsters...), I'm overall quite confident, whatever happens-or-not of this suggestion/discussion

"I prefer on-the-spot inventory management vs. filling houses of kit and constant reshuffling for optimal setup"

Fully agree.
This is one of the reason for my suggestion.
As a retired Hengband player, I often ended-up with my 20 pages of home not beeing enough... so much stuff for "shuffling" looks like a very wrong direction to take for me, now.
I know no one is forced to use it, of course, but I tend to try "optimizing" as much as I can, and since it is allowed, doesn't really has any in-game cost, and improves your chances of winning, I somehow "have to" overuse it.

"We don't typically talk about ironman play because it is not the norm and those setting are considered challenge settings. So taking the non-normal settings and making them default does not make sense, regardless of how other roguelike games are structured."

Strongly disagree.
Okay, "Ironman" is a keyword for "extra challenge"... but I precised I actually meant "no recall/upstairs". Maybe I should just have talked of "finite ressources" and getting rid of level-scumming then ?
Taking a good or bad setting in or out of the default ones perfectly makes sense to me.
Didn't this happen several times already ? (With preserve mode, no_sell, runes, or whatever else... ? Well, I'm not *band-history aware enough...)

Anyway, it's all a matter of balance, and what I'd like is the game beeing well balanced (even for non-expert players), and not requiring to abuse of exploits (or similarly, floor-scumming) to get serious chances of winning.
In case my initial post wasn't clear enough about this, I think the game could disallow recall/upstairs, but have better drops, more shops in dungeons, etc. instead



I think "easy" difficulty options should make the game pretty easy (and more importantly, forgiving) for noobs. Not turn it into a grinding contest.
On the other hand, hardcore options should grant experienced players real challenges (birth_no_artifacts anyone ^^ ?), and Angband could probably use even more of them.

I don't quite get the point of still allowing -- by default-- to skip dangerous situations and challenging decisions with the ability to regenerate levels until they satisfy one's safety or reward requirements.
Having to cope with what you get and weight things like risks of getting killed in some level vs the risk of getting short of good loot seems much more important to me than requiring sheer patience.
I'm not a freaking borg !

Even keeping this as an "easy" birth option wouldn't look much relevant to me : couldn't better ones be added, like an increase in drop rates of healing or escaping stuff, a faster XP gain, a bigger HP pool multiplier... ?


@Nick : would you mind sharing your point of view please ?

[Nick]

My understanding is that one of Angband's principal principles is it doesn't tell the player what to do.

Options like forced descent and no recall (which together make ironman) are in a sense unnecessary - as a player, you could choose never to take upstairs or use recall, and the effect would be identical.

I think your statement

I know no one is forced to use it, of course, but I tend to try "optimizing" as much as I can, and since it is allowed, doesn't really has any in-game cost, and improves your chances of winning, I somehow "have to" overuse it.

is the key one here, and is for some people the down-side to not being told what to do.

So my philosophy is there is more to gain by allowing the player free rein than not, and so the default will be to give the player maximum freedom (note that I'm not sure if defaulting to no selling contradicts this ).

That said, note that there's also the persistent levels option, which you may find interesting in some combination with forced descent and no recall, as well as various numbers you can tweak in constants.txt (stair skip, for example).