Angband 3.5-dev

[Djabanete]

Originally Posted by Cold_Heart

So crafting and smithing are considered purely april fool's ideas? Makes me wonder why ...

Vanilla actually does have some elements of crafting, such as enchant weapon/armor spells and branding spells. But Vanilla design is deliberately conservative so that there will always be a core game from which variants can spring. It's not so much that crafting is a terrible idea, as that most people don't want to see drastic changes made to the core game. There's v4 for testing that stuff out.

[ghengiz]

Originally Posted by Cold_Heart

So crafting and smithing are considered purely april fool's ideas? Makes me wonder why ...

If you like them, you could try Sil. IIRC it has at least smithing.

They are april fool's ideas in the context of this previous post.

[Shockbolt]

To me, the reasons for playing angband are:

1. Angband is fun
2. It's got characters & items related to Middle-earth
3. Discovery (both new npc's and not least new items of all kinds)
4. To beat the game

The game should be fast paced, just as it is now. Adding crafting would slow down the gameplay perhaps, so would puzzles, if they are required to be solved in order to go either up or down. Puzzles for chests or other containers would be fun though.

[Therem Harth]

Sil has crafting and it's nothing if not fast-paced.

Me playing V: "Oh, a centipede.... humm-de-dumm... Oh, another centipede."

Me playing Sil: "Oh crap Orcs, run! Oh crap they're coming down the stairs! Crap crap crap!"

Sil is a whole different game of course, but I think V could learn a few things from it.

[Philip]

Agreed. While playing Sil, when I get surrounded, I think for a minute and then fight for the corridor. In V, when I get surrounded, I read a scroll of phase door and start shooting, go to the corridor etc. Sil's lack of escapes and easy death by surrounding make it a more fun game.

[fizzix]

I like how the april fool's joke got turned into a reasonable discussion.

I wouldn't want crafting in V for the same reason that I don't want skills trees or anything of the like. Both are inherently not new-player friendly, and one of the nice things about V is that it's really hard to choose something that will make the game unwinnable in the future. I think Sil's mechanisms like crafting, and the many many variants that allow you to choose skills certainly do help with increasing replayability, but I'd still like V to be simplified in these regards. If a skills tree was ever introduced to V, I would require that it also come with default "best" recommendations, that at least lead to a winnable character.

I also know that many of the other members of the dev-team do not share my views on skills trees.

[Therem Harth]

Actually I'm not sure I like the whole skills thing and lack of character diversity... I just prefer the Sil style of gameplay, where you're immediately thrown into the thick of things and stairs are not necessarily safe. I think V would do well to ramp up the pace of gameplay in a similar fashion.

[ekolis]

Originally Posted by ghengiz

The superhero (only human, but, at creation, can choose two traits of the other races, for example hold life and resist poison; STR, DEX and CON boosted).

This one actually sounds kind of interesting... Angband doesn't have all that many playable races, and this would add a bit more customization. Of course the superhero would probably need a large XP penalty...

[half]

Originally Posted by fizzix

I wouldn't want crafting in V for the same reason that I don't want skills trees or anything of the like. Both are inherently not new-player friendly...

This might be true for a game as long as Angband, but I think that skills and the ability trees in Sil are very new player friendly. For one thing, it is entirely possible to win without any investment in the special abilities, or even any investment in skills other than melee and evasion. Moreover, if you do invest in skills or abilities that don't help you very much, you notice this and don't do it next time, just like if you wear a ring of protection in Angband and then notice it wasn't very useful you learn and stop doing it.

This could be more of a problem in a game that takes many times longer to complete, but even then I'm sceptical, since the hypothetical new player is not going to win Angband on his or her first 20 attempts and this is enough time to get the hang of a reasonable skill system sufficiently well to be able to produce winning characters. Where a skill system could be particularly bad is in games without permadeath, since in those cases you really are stuck with your starting choices (e.g. Diablo II).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I'm against skill trees in Angband for another reason.

Angband already has a perfectly good system for making characters distinguished: stats, skills, races, and classes! Except that it doesn't really work, since most stats and skills don't matter that much.

I'm been using much of my energy in Fay to make every stat and skill on the character sheet really matter. Other variants are trying to do the same thing, like Ironband and Un. The "skill tree" in these variants is rolling/choosing a different set of stats.

I like the Sangband skill system, but I find it a bit inelegant that the old, non-functioning stat & skill system still exists, too. The two systems don't really connect IMO.

I love how Sil reboots everything and starts with a brand new system without any legacy problems.