"Nick is going to butcher the game"

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Voovus

@ Derakon: Moria already had rangers, and "slime mold juice" is a Rogue thing (the taste of a potion of see invisible).

Thanks for the corrections. I've never played Rogue, and I couldn't remember if Rangers were stock. I remember playing a Moria that had druids, which could cast both mage and priest spells, but I'm pretty sure that was a Moria variant and not "true" Moria. To the extent there is such a thing of course!

I forget -- did Moria have Blubbering Icky Things and Green Glutton Ghosts? It certainly didn't have Death Molds!

[Nick]

My approach to implementing (most of) my plans for 4.2 has been to get the two big items - classes and monsters - roughly done first, and then let that settle for a bit while making other, smaller changes.

So that's where we are now. It's worth emphasising, I think, that particularly in the case of monsters we're not finished yet. This development is being done publicly with as much chance as possible for players to comment on what they do and don't like. I am entirely happy to revert any bits that are clearly not working; sometimes it's difficult to judge, though, when that is the case.

So, to be specific, if people think we were better with dark elves as they were instead of the replacement dwarves, we can do that. If people don't like the new classes, we can get rid of them. But I would ask for specific criticism as much as possible, and as time goes on I will be asking specifically about specific changes to get a sense of whether people think they're good or bad.

[Bostock]

Originally Posted by Voovus

Wouldn't it have been great if the Civ series, instead of taking the wrong turn after Civ 2 and ending up with four meh sequels,

Fight me. :-P

(Except when it comes to Civ 3. Civ 3 can go suck an egg.)

[Hounded]

Thank you Voovus. I apologize if I came across as "if you don't like it, leave". That wasn't my intention. More that if someone feels that strongly then, as I've seen suggested elsewhere, their efforts would be best spent in doing a parallel effort to maintain Vanilla (call it VanillaX or something for the moment and lobby to become the maintainer after Nick, I dunno). If support for retention rather than for the changes Nick has incorporated is that strong then it will quickly become apparent.

[Youssarian]

Of all the changes, I think changing the standard classes is the one that seems the most drastic to me.

I wish you could keep both. Have a standard option when creating your character. And then have advanced classes for those who want to play something a little different.

And I don't mean so that I can swap the file myself. Make it so they can both exists side by side.

This gives those who like the old classes and those who like the new ones the option to play they way they prefer. I would like to see the spell books fixed so that it's clear which ones go to which of the new jobs.

Change is about balance. No change at all is just as bad as too much change too quickly.

[kandrc]

There really is no such thing as an "official" vanilla Angband. What is considered to be "official" comes by de facto acceptance of the community. Nick is only the maintainer because a critical mass of the Angband community agrees on it. Anybody can pick up any old version of Angband, hack on it, fork a release, call it vanilla Angband foo.bar, claim to be the official maintainer, etc., and if that person amasses sufficient support from the community, then all of the claims are de facto true.

Claiming that the maintainer is ruining the game without forking and doing it yourself is just lame you don't really have the right to complain*, but you do have the right to do it "right" yourself.

Anybody who claims the game is moving in the wrong direction can just fork off.

* To be clear, you absolutely have the right to make suggestions, critique, etc., and the maintainer has the right to entertain or ignore them, but you don't have the right to engage in verbal diatribe against the efforts of the maintainer. That's just a dick move. Seriously, I don't understand why people have to be told these kinds of things.

[Mars]

Originally Posted by Youssarian

Of all the changes, I think changing the standard classes is the one that seems the most drastic to me.

I wish you could keep both. Have a standard option when creating your character. And then have advanced classes for those who want to play something a little different.

And I don't mean so that I can swap the file myself. Make it so they can both exists side by side.

This gives those who like the old classes and those who like the new ones the option to play they way they prefer. I would like to see the spell books fixed so that it's clear which ones go to which of the new jobs.

Change is about balance. No change at all is just as bad as too much change too quickly.

The danger of that approach is feature bloat, which is detrimental for both maintainer and player ("gee, which of these gazillion things to choose from. Meh, never mind.").

[Hounded]

Originally Posted by Nick

My approach to implementing (most of) my plans for 4.2 has been to get the two big items - classes and monsters - roughly done first, and then let that settle for a bit while making other, smaller changes.

So that's where we are now. It's worth emphasising, I think, that particularly in the case of monsters we're not finished yet. This development is being done publicly with as much chance as possible for players to comment on what they do and don't like. I am entirely happy to revert any bits that are clearly not working; sometimes it's difficult to judge, though, when that is the case.

So, to be specific, if people think we were better with dark elves as they were instead of the replacement dwarves, we can do that. If people don't like the new classes, we can get rid of them. But I would ask for specific criticism as much as possible, and as time goes on I will be asking specifically about specific changes to get a sense of whether people think they're good or bad.

There's personal bias at play here but I'm excited for the concept of switching to Dwarves.

They're vastly underrepresented in the fantasy realm and I've always preferred them in concept to the pointy-eared munchkins regardless of the setting (three cheers for Markus Heitz for putting them back where they belong as "a force to be reckoned with").

[fph]

Originally Posted by Mars

The danger of that approach is feature bloat, which is detrimental for both maintainer and player ("gee, which of these gazillion things to choose from. Meh, never mind.").

The other danger is having too many things to keep tested, bug-free and balanced. Same reason why many uncommon game options got removed from the = menu.

[Youssarian]

Originally Posted by Mars

The danger of that approach is feature bloat, which is detrimental for both maintainer and player ("gee, which of these gazillion things to choose from. Meh, never mind.").

Yes, but I'm not talking about leaving everything in the game that was ever there and just adding to it. Classes are a base function and why even bother to include the option to switch to them if its too hard to balance and maintain them all? By that reasoning there should never be a way to regress the game.

From my perspective, the new jobs change the game which is fine. But the core classes are well known commodities by players who have enjoyed this game for many years. I am merely stating my preference to keep them and the others. Or give it as a base option just like no gold, or randarts, or no selling. Put the option there for the player to opt for original classes; new classes or both.

If it is too much work, then I understand as I cannot code so can't answer as to that.