320 stair failure

[dos350]

i will be surprised TOMEOMFETOEJTGWEIJHW, cos infact i think that is ridiculous..

cheating is it? gloating am i? sorry , no... as i said, asked actually.. please no rage..

i may only be new to this game (3.09~) but i believe that forcing ironman, as well as alot of these randy changes ive heard talk of~ will ruin the game. now please, im not trying to overstate this.

how about u make a new variant that all people that think like sheep can play ~ i even come up with a name for it , for u~ hows about PLAYLIKEMEORDIEBAND, ??

and phillip, im not trying to prove stair scumming is good, theres no point, u all seem to know that it is. im protesting against the failed mentality and disgusting rage and judgement i see here when people disagree.

[Nick]

Wow, dos350, when you're angry you get quite coherent

[pampl]

how about u make a new variant that all people that think like sheep can play ~ i even come up with a name for it , for u~ hows about PLAYLIKEMEORDIEBAND, ??

and phillip, im not trying to prove stair scumming is good, theres no point, u all seem to know that it is. im protesting against the failed mentality and disgusting rage and judgement i see here when people disagree.

You're the biggest rager on here. You're calling people sheep and saying they have a "failed mentality". You're even going into other unrelated threads to rage about how people have different opinions than you. Let. It. Go.

[dos350]

please no,

im only speaking truths here, if people want to play some way, play that way! dont hurt others playing by making it hard to play in ways that people play! do u understand?

please i think its pretty simple, i think its not really a specific thing im talking about, maybe thats why its hard for some people to follow??

i think its an attitude of this place ,reminding me of some kind of fascist domination, maybe there are some 'things' i should know about people or something, but i dont think that should matter anyway..

please, it is true !

[pampl]

You're calling people fascists because they want a video game to have a different set of rules than you like. This is not grown up behavior.

[Magnate]

Seriously, stair-scumming is viewed as cheating because it is a method of playing which abuses a feature of the game in a way it is not mean to be used. Similar way as using hockey sticks a lot. Angband community is determined to remove such abuses, so don't be surprised if that really is removed from upcoming releases.

This is a tricky one, because for new players disconnected stairs doesn't make much sense. It takes a while for new players to realise that connected stairs can be abused and move on to playing disconnected. This is why the connected stairs option defaults to on. Turning off or removing it altogether would unfortunately hamper new players picking up the game, I think.

Here's a possible future though: the game has three modes, each with its own options -

Beginner mode: connected stairs is on, selling is on, even cheat_death is on - and you can toggle them off one by one as you learn the game. All the monster AI options are off.

Normal mode: connected stairs and selling are off (along with any others considered part of beginner mode), and everything is at its "default" state. Maximise and preserve are both on. Monster AI is normal.

Ironman mode: More and more things to turn off: no_stores, no_preserve (or even no_artifacts), etc. etc. Monster AI learns (and even cheats). Note that actual ironman is one of these options - so you can still play challenge games with access to recall.

[dos350]

please pampl , i think u are not reading my words, im not calling anyone names here, im explaining the feeling i get from people saying things like wat has been said here and other places on this forum. its a feeling of people of a certain mindset trying to make it "their way" for everyone,

as i keep saying, no rage please

[LostTemplar]

While anyone can play challenge games from simple disconnected stairs up to egoless ironman bookless hobbit mage who never digs, It is completely wrong to call any type of challenge the only right way to play.

Angband have many variants, options, playstyles. If you only enjoy few of them, please dont call others bad.

[dos350]

ty very much for speaking sense to my doggy, losttemplar, i couldnt agree more,

play how u want to, especially if there are already options facilitating ur prefered playstyle, plz no rage on others

[Pete Mack]

I don't have any problem with stairscumming. I just don't do it anymore, as I find it makes the game too easy. (Most) people don't think statscumming at dl 35 is cheating, though it also changes the balance of the game.

Cheating means: breaking the rules. That means savescumming or turning on wizard features. Everything else is a matter of taste.

Edit: And even save-scumming can have its place, in practice play. Just don't call it a real game.

[Philip]

While anyone can play challenge games from simple disconnected stairs up to egoless ironman bookless hobbit mage who never digs, It is completely wrong to call any type of challenge the only right way to play.

Angband have many variants, options, playstyles. If you only enjoy few of them, please dont call others bad.

Yeah, I agree with you. Stairscumming is not THE right way to play, just as anything else isn't. I don't feel that we should punish dos for how he plays, but I will never agree with the style of his posts. When he got angry, he left out a lot of ~ and eeks, but started to be insulting. If he managed to keep his posts nice and clean, he would be accepted even if he turned on all the cheat options and used the debug commands all the time as long as he didn't post them. Now as long as he admits to stairscumming we may not respect his wins or anything, but we will treat him as a oook member.

[Timo Pietilä]

This is a tricky one, because for new players disconnected stairs doesn't make much sense. It takes a while for new players to realise that connected stairs can be abused and move on to playing disconnected.

I was thinking about using stairs like portals that dissipate once you step out of it. That was you have a "stairs" to back up to previous level, but can't abuse it. Might be difficult to code though (you don't want all of those to dissipate if you step on them but not use them).

Portals make more sense in here in many ways.

1) you never enter the same level twice, which is odd with stairs.
2) you have a town in top of angband which is just weird if you think about it

[Magnate]

I was thinking about using stairs like portals that dissipate once you step out of it. That was you have a "stairs" to back up to previous level, but can't abuse it. Might be difficult to code though (you don't want all of those to dissipate if you step on them but not use them).

Portals make more sense in here in many ways.

1) you never enter the same level twice, which is odd with stairs.
2) you have a town in top of angband which is just weird if you think about it

I like the portals concept a lot - it would enable us to get rid of the "recall" concept completely. We just have different types of portal in the dungeon: up one level, down one level, back to town. In fact we could have up or down N levels as well. Lots of portals. Rather fewer in ironman.

The town would need two portals, of course: one for dl1 and one for wherever you came from.

[Derakon]

DOS350: in general, yes, play any way you like. And talk about your games playing any way you like!

BUT: don't assume that your playstyle is superior or desired (and this goes for everyone else here too). Be aware of the benefits and drawbacks of that style. For example, stairscumming has the benefit of making the game significantly easier. It also has the drawback of removing much of the difficulty of the game. If you are looking for a harder game, then you shouldn't stairscum.

Many of us are gradually making our own games harder as we improve at play; we started out cheating death and savescumming shamelessly, moved on to accepting permadeath but abusing all the mechanics of the game, and have gradually added more and more restrictions to how we play. Most of us have moved past the stage when we find stairscumming to be interesting, which is why we've reacted negatively when you've suggested that we adopt it for a specific setting. Why should we savescum? For us, that makes the game less fun. In short, nobody should really be telling anybody how to play the game -- with the exception of competitions.

The competitions are intended to be a challenge for many players. They push us outside our comfort zones by choosing unusual characters, in variants that many people have little experience with, and with settings that most people consider to be more difficult. A Vanilla half-troll warrior would not make a very interesting competition game since we all have lots of experience at playing Vanilla and half-troll warriors are generally pretty easy to play. Part of setting up the competition is choosing which options are on, which includes deciding if the game should have selling, be ironman, or have connected stairs. Not every competition is ironman; in fact, I daresay most aren't. However, competitions typically have connected stairs off, because the people playing in the competition have no interest in stairscumming, but if connected stairs were on, they'd feel obligated to scum to improve their rating in the competition.

Okay, this has gotten more than long enough as it is, but perhaps it'll instill some perspective in a person or two around here...

[Philip]

Thanks. A very helpful comment which I hope will resolve this thread. Derakon is the one who is talking sense here.