"Best" versions of Vanilla Angband?

[Pete Mack]

My bad. It was 3.2 that lost all repeatability. 4.0 still has too many powerful items, but not the ridiculous flood of 3.2. Speed boots used to be a huge find. Now they are everywhere. Ego dragonscale is better than artifacts. All deep ego weapons are big three. Etc.

Originally Posted by Nick

3.5.1 and 4.0.0 are gameplay identical (apart from the town), and pretty much the only gameplay change from 4.0.0 to 4.0.5 was more room templates.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Does anyone have a list of the necessary fixes to make it old-school again?
* remove multiple pvals
* Nerf certain artifacts
* Remove max object depths
* Fix door bashing

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

My bad. It was 3.2 that lost all repeatability. 4.0 still has too many powerful items, but not the ridiculous flood of 3.2. Speed boots used to be a huge find. Now they are everywhere. Ego dragonscale is better than artifacts. All deep ego weapons are big three. Etc.

I'd be interested to see a complete list of the changes which you think have unbalanced the game, as there's always the opportunity to change things.

My suspicion is that it's not quite as simple as that, because there was considerable rebalancing over 3.3-3.5. In particular, the whole business of collecting object stats for multiple games and making allocation decisions based on that was introduced. The game has certainly changed, but I don't think it's certain that it's now easier.

And then once we can even agree on what the current balance is, there's the question of what the desirable balance is. It may be that the people who have been playing for 10+ years find the game easier just because they're so used to it. There are still new people taking up the game; I would not want to set the entry barrier too high.

All that said, my current plan is to alter the monster list a bit before 4.1 in ways that will probably make the game harder. I'm fairly confident that the community already does a reasonable job of keeping the game balanced - that's certainly what happened after 3.2.

It's worth keeping in mind, too, that one of the chief sources of criticism of 3.2 was the ease of finding speed boots, which was the result of a type in an allocation line

[Pete Mack]

The most unbalancing changes all involve object--which is to say player--power. Monsters you can usually avoid, so changes to them (with the exception of attenuated breath damage) don't make so much difference. The biggest are:

* Max depth of objects and ego types
* increased pvals for certain artifacts (e.g. speed +5 Rings of Power.)
* ego dragon armor
* stacks of utility potions/scrolls. **


Biggest changes to make it harder:
* Wands of TO are rarer and more expensive
* Additive ammo damage


** Eddie mentioned stat potions, but I think he's mistaken. Yeah, you find the occasional stack, and it takes fewer potions to get from 18/80 to to 18/100. But this is balanced by the overall decrease in object frequency.

[kandrc]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Biggest changes to make it harder:
* Wands of TO are rarer and more expensive

And, I think more importantly, don't beam anymore.

[Sky]

speaking of nightlies, what happened to the (s)earch command?


is there a changelog for the nightlies, or are you supposed to figure it out?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Max depth of objects and ego types

What do you mean by this - the fact that they have a max depth at all, or the specific values?

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

increased pvals for certain artifacts (e.g. speed +5 Rings of Power.)

I'd be fine with nerfing the RoP speeds a bit - 2,3,4, maybe?

What other artifacts have been overpowered?

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

ego dragon armor

My understanding is that these were introduced to try and make DSMs a bit more usable. Looking at them, I would say that Resistance, Elvenkind and Speed are the only ones that look as if they might be overpowered, and they are pretty rare. How much of a problem is this?

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

stacks of utility potions/scrolls

Which ones here - !CCW, maybe? I do think that the greater access to healing for all classes has kind of made the game easier (or put another way, is a relative nerf to Priests).

I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts on this - apologies to the OP for kind of hijacking the thread

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Sky

speaking of nightlies, what happened to the (s)earch command?


is there a changelog for the nightlies, or are you supposed to figure it out?

Search is no longer needed, because all traps and secret doors are noticed on walking next to them. No changelog, I'm afraid, aside from the commit list on Github.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Nick

I'd be fine with nerfing the RoP speeds a bit - 2,3,4, maybe?

Why do they need speed at all? In fact I'd say that the relatively recent addition of speed to several items (and additional items that have speed, e.g. Trickery) is a lot of the source of easiness in the game. Adding speed to lots of items reduces a lot of equipment pressure. It does smooth out the difficulty curve considerably...but perhaps there's something to be said for a jagged difficulty curve.

Which ones here - !CCW, maybe? I do think that the greater access to healing for all classes has kind of made the game easier (or put another way, is a relative nerf to Priests).

Being able to spam CCW in most situations does make the game a lot easier, though this change mostly affects ironman characters. *shrug*

[Pete Mack]

Originally, Rings of Power had +1,+2,+3 speed corresponding to the pval for stats. This meant it wasn't feasible to wear two unless you had a big speed artifact (Ringil, Cubragol, Feanor.)

I don't recall if there are others that got a boost, except Carlammas--again, unnecessary.

Originally Posted by Nick

What do you mean by this - the fact that they have a max depth at all, or the specific values?

I'd be fine with nerfing the RoP speeds a bit - 2,3,4, maybe?

What other artifacts have been overpowered?

The really overpowered ones are Dwarves and Speed. +2 CON/STR and a few high resists make it a no-brainer. Add that to PDSM or BaDSM, and you have something better than most any artifact armor in the game. Together with the big ego weapons being easy to find, they make artifactless play just about as easy as with artifacts.
I'd say keep stealth and craftsmanship, Nerf speed to +3 max, and maybe keep resistance.

My understanding is that these were introduced to try and make DSMs a bit more usable. Looking at them, I would say that Resistance, Elvenkind and Speed are the only ones that look as if they might be overpowered, and they are pretty rare. How much of a problem is this?

!CCW yes, in particular. But early in the game, same with !CSW and even !CLW at the start. Also ?Phase in ironman play. On further thought, this really only affects ironman, because in 3.0 I regularly bought out the alchemist to get !CCW when I was short on healing. It's now impossible to do.

Which ones here - !CCW, maybe? I do think that the greater access to healing for all classes has kind of made the game easier (or put another way, is a relative nerf to Priests).

I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts on this - apologies to the OP for kind of hijacking the thread

I thought of one more: Charisma. It only really mattered early in the game, but stingy shopkeepers made _Teleport and even really basic consumables a much more problematic purchase. Now you can afford a whole lot more. Make the prices dependent on max dungeon level as a proxy, perhaps.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

I thought of one more: Charisma. It only really mattered early in the game, but stingy shopkeepers made _Teleport and even really basic consumables a much more problematic purchase. Now you can afford a whole lot more. Make the prices dependent on max dungeon level as a proxy, perhaps.

I submitted this pull request for 4.1 which tweaks average gold supply downwards by 20% compared to 3.4, to more or less counter the effect of CHR disappearing. (In 3.5 it was only a 10% decrease vs previous versions, which didn't make up for the reduction in prices.) Obviously this doesn't affect starting gold, but should make things a bit harder after that even compared to pre-3.5 versions, since the effect doesn't go away with increasing player power.