Some questions about vanilla Angband

[whartung]

Originally Posted by dayafterday123

Now other few questions about RNG and player skills:

1. How is the replay value?
2. Does Angband reward player knowledge and skills?
3. Can I consistently win if I'm good enough?

If you like the general theme of the game (getting items, beating up monsters), it has high replay value.

It certainly rewards player experience. I consider "skill" more of a motor/dexterity/coordination trait, and being a turn by turn game, in THAT sense there's "no skill". To me, it's all experience. Folks are free to quibble on this. There are tactics in this game, but they can be learned. Also perception is important. Patience is a good trait for this game as well.

Good players can and do win this game more so than not. Luck can lose you the game, but you can not win by luck (RNG can always grace you in the end, but luck isn't what gets you there in the first place). The underlying premise of the game is to build up a broad enough toolset in your character (skill, items, etc.) to overcome whatever the RNG decides to throw at you. There is definitely more "bad luck" than "good luck".

That said, there is a lot of avoidance in this game. Running away, avoiding monsters, abandoning levels, etc. is a primary tactic in this game, learned through experience. Learning what monsters to avoid. Arguably the prime tactic in this game is avoidance vs confrontation.

As for the time constraint and issues with perma-death, simply turn death off, and play the game. It's all a matter of what you're looking for. You can't "die" and "win" the game, in the end you'll have to play it "the right way". But early on, especially with limited time, no reason to "waste time" by dying when you can turn it off and continue to learn the game.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by whartung

Luck can lose you the game, but you can not win by luck (RNG can always grace you in the end, but luck isn't what gets you there in the first place).

Since you mentione luck, one note from me.
I think it is important to learn when someone should treat death as "bad luck".
Some people says "The Tarrasque breathed disenchantement which was my only resistance hole - bad luck".
Others say "5th consecutive mana storm from Morgoth is not bud luck, playing long enough guarantees at one point I get not favourable results n times in a row". So if someone is learning the game, I would prioritize understanding why characters die and not only review the last 1 (2-3) moves but think about when @ should have done something else (usually heal or escape earlier).
Winning also depends on minimizing the chance when the RNG can kill you. If you take that 1% chance too many times, you will probably die.

[fph]

Re "can I consistently win this game": you can win a reasonable percentage of your games, but 100% is unlikely. To get a hang of how frequently an experienced player dies, you can check the recent threads named "Sky's Checklist", where one of our fellow forum users describes his attempts to win with each race/class combination, and mentions explicitly every death (I think).

[DavidMedley]

The first 100 deaths/winners of a new version on Angband.Live are also interesting data points.

BTW, is the 100 limit to the HoF hard-coded, or could Gwarl up that if he so chose?

[dayafterday123]

Thank you all for devoting some time for replying to my questions, you're so friendly.

I think I got a fair idea about what to expect in Angband.

[sffp]

I'm planning to play Angband but I want to make sure that I'm diving into something that has a lot of play time/replay value, and that rewards player's knowledge, and that doesn't have any bad elements in it.

Many thanks!

It's all about player knowledge.

I would say I'm a bad player because I play it again and again and have a winning percentage of about 3.5% But the game isn't just about winning, it's about exploring, finding things. I play the game to have fun.

Yes, the game has a lot of replayability because the dynamics of the various character classes (melee vs spell/ritual/prayer vs archery) all have different flavors.

There's nothing remotely offensive unless you stretch....

[Sky]

Angband *is* gambling. It literally is the same reward mechanism, do the same thing over and over until you casually get an artifact drop, then return to the mechanism.

[whartung]

Originally Posted by Sky

Angband *is* gambling. It literally is the same reward mechanism, do the same thing over and over until you casually get an artifact drop, then return to the mechanism.

There's truth in that but I do feel it is different.

At a high level, since the goal of the game is to acquire randomly generated gear, then, certainly, the RNG has a large impact.

There's also the farming aspect -- repeatedly running levels in a certain range to acquire specific, for example stat gain. Here you're working specific content for a particular end.

In video games, this is common, and there is certainly, perhaps, an endorphin hit when you get the prize you seek from the RNG after repeated tries. A friend of mine has what I call the "gambling gene", in that he has a high tolerance for that kind of content. The kind of person that would do 100's of boss runs in something like Diablo 2. Just over and over and over and over, striving for better gear.

My patience wears thin doing that kind of content.

But in Angband, most players do not do that explicitly. First, there really is no mechanic to "farm" high value monster, per se, over and over. Rather, they may level scum -- repeated redo high dungeon levels hoping, not necessarily for a good monster to kill, but, rather, a chance that the RNG just plonks a nice piece of gear on the floor for the character to sneak in and pick up.

But, it seems to me, most players, at least most successful players, don't linger. They don't repeated do content. Rather they dive, and they dive fast, relying on their wiles to get deeper in to the dungeon, in to the "loot rich" levels to quickly gear up enough to take on the bad guy waiting for them at the end.

There are certainly different play styles.

However, there's also one more factor.

Gambling incurs risk. While playing the game, you risk the life of your character. In that sense it can be risky to gamble with the characters life (especially diving too quickly for example).

But, outside of time, there are few "real world" risks. You don't risk money, you can't spend your way to, well, anything in this game. The things you risk for has very little value.

Sure, you might get the "One Ring" or some amazing piece of gear, but to what end? To convert an ASCII character from one letter in to an explosion of other letters? Even if you get the "One Ring", you can't keep it. You can finish the game, you can win with it, and then...what? Not so much.

Brag on a forum?

Contrast to these casual games that let you buy power ups, or buy loot boxes in order to beat other people. To get permanent cosmetic bits that hold some social status over others in the community. I've seen the income charts on some of those games, and there's always someone that just pours an extraordinary amount of $$$ in to trying to match some more colored crystals.

I don't think Angband has that kind of drive in the game. Heck, if you want the "One Ring", wizard mode is a key click away.

In the end, to win this game, you need patience and knowledge. Everyone likes a lucky drop, but it's clear that good players do well at this game. As I said, you can't luck your way to a win. It rewards perseverance, but not necessarily gambling.

So I don't think it really quite has the gambling hook, despite the pervasive nature of RNG in the game.

[dayafterday123]

Modding this game was easier than I expected. Kudos to the devs.