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My favorite part of Angband gameplay is that it is so addicting,
My least favorite part of Angband gameplay is that... it is so addicting.“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are DeadComment
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Favourite: Its hard (thats what she said). Youre forced to respect it or you die. You can set your own pace. Good replayability and set of options for your character start, and each time you need to rediscover everything. The insane power spikes that you get from items, and the insane powerspikes that the enemies seem to get too. money isnt the object of the game, and in fact doesnt matter at all.
Worst: Hounds. Playing 4 evenings in a row detecting meticulously and never missing a single beat except once and just dying losing all that gametime. I like the difficulty but sometimes i wish it wasnt so unforgiving for the time you invest in a character, its a long game. Things that can summon baddies worse than themselves. Disconnected stairs not being standard. Lack of items slots (i understand you can just dump all the low spellbooks and !sathunger !phase every time you recall, but when its a formality i wish i could just script it to a button)Comment
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They were the reason i stopped playing the slightly older 3.x versions in wait for 3.5.
I understand the point of them. To be the proverbial thorn in the side that makes some areas unpassable, and dont drop anything, or give much XP to make them as unappetizing as possible. Make you wade through mud in order to get to something if you really want it in some cases, i have no problem with this. In fact thinking about it its really the AI of hounds that makes my eye twitch. Always awake, never chase out of rooms and just hang around there so there is no way you can deal with them without taking a blast from 10 at once, make themselves about as awkward as possible to kill any of them. Think they could only be more annoying if they could pick up or trample items.Comment
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It is possible to cope with them without getting blasted, but you have to lure them into a room they aren't already in, and then kill them as they try to run in and surround you. You'll still take a few hits, but better than trying to take them on in turf they already own.
And of course there's stuff like hitting them with ball spells, or waiting for them to randomly wander into LOS and then shooting them (they'll generally then walk back out of LOS rather than breathe on you). Or banishing them, if you have access to banishment. Being able to banish nuisance monsters is one of the big payoffs of getting a mage to high level.Comment
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Play MAngband sometimes. Almost 99% of high level character deaths are resumed by the following:
"You enter a maze of up staircases. The (insert your favorite canine race here -- time, plasma, chaos...) hound breathes (x20). You die."
I'm happy that in recent V versions, this is not possible anymore. It was plain stupid...PWMAngband variant maintainer - check https://github.com/draconisPW/PWMAngband (or http://www.mangband.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=9) to learn more about this new variant!Comment
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Ok, Timo. You're in charge of assigning allocation rates for items. What algorithm do you use to determine how much goes where? This isn't an idle question. Most of these things are in the edit files, and it may not be too difficult to test an alternate balance scheme on your ideas. Or even include it as an option.
This is extremely difficult, so if you want, maybe we can focus on two items, !stat gain and !healing. We can then compare your estimates against what's currently in the game. What should be the probability of finding !stat gain on any level (including monster drops) between 30-40, between 60-70 and between 90-100? Same with healing.Comment
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Favourite: Mid-game, more options start opening up, gear starts to get interesting but there are still many pieces missing and each new drop is exciting.
Least Favourite: Very early and late game.
Early: barely any options, generally really boring monsters and loot. Identifying mini-game...
Late: your kit is complete, except maybe for one or two pieces that you're desperately looking for. Or the uniques that you still "need" to kill. Because why wouldn't you? I've never been a big competitor for turn counts or anything, so why not clear 10 more dungeon levels before tackling the bosses? It would be a shame to lose a character with so much time spent on.. (I should really try forced descent. I like the way Sil does this also.)Comment
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Favourite: The nighttime run to Gondolin.
Least favourite: Continually rerolling characters until one survives to nightfall on the first day. My median character lifetime is just over one minute (wall clock time, not game time).
If you find these statements baffling then you need to try FA's thrall mode.Comment
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favourite part: playing every level at least once and full-clearing each one. i am somewhat OCD and clearing out a level fully is especially rewarding to me. this also means that the occasional OOD monster/unique becomes incredibly challenging. the other day i ran into shelob very early, at low level, and it took me two hours to kill her. it was most satisfying. i also dislike using banish, so U's, Z's, A's can be quite a challenge.
another favourite part is finding stat potions for my primary stat, and finding speed equipment.
least favourite: the small capacity of my home in town.
another least favourite: matching ammo types to shooter types (i.e. arrows to bows, shots to slings, bolts to crossbows)Comment
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Early game:
Like having to scrap around to survive and use what you can find.
Dislike the boring loot in general and lack of ooD monsters, artifacts, egos, loot and vaults.
Solution: Add more interesting and dangerous stuff early on.
Mid game:
Like finding the first few artifacts and useful egos.
Dislike bring swamped with artifacts and egos making each discovery less and less exciting.
Also dislike stat gain making every character the same.
Solution: Reduce equipment drops by a lot and get rid of stat potions entirely (would need to rebalance for the latter).
End game:
I find this the most boring as the game is the easiest at this point (which it shouldn't really).
Too much junk to sift through, unique hunting and getting endgame kit and consumables is boring. I abandon most characters when it gets to this stage as I don't have the motivation to play through the last few hours.
Solution: Reduce equipment here too and reduce the total number of levels in the game and then balance drops for ironman mode (which I'd like to see become the standard).
Make the end game monsters a bit easier to compensate (Morgoth requires far too much preparation which makes the whole end game boring).Comment
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