Feelings about recent "development"

[Timo Pietilä]

First version for items. Not too different, some changes might feel controversial, especially removals of few artifacts (commented out). I also added one item.

Lots of small tweaks, rarities, PVAL:s, things like that.

One thing I did because of purely personal hate of Palantir as lightsource (it feels like carrying a television as a lightsource) was to remove it and give Arkenstone clairvoyance back. However testing it it feels a bit too powerful activation. I need something between mapping and clairvoyance. Detection is a poor activation because it doesn't follow the same theme as rest of the lightsources (detect dungeon structure). Map entire level, but not detect anything and not light it up either?

Palantir should be more like artifact rod. Carry it in inventory and use it there. Activation of Palantir should have drawback. Can we make artifacts that activate from inventory? Curses that doesn't require wielding the item, it would be enough to just carry them?

[Derakon]

Artifacts that activate from inventory would require a code change, and I'm not certain how involved it'd be. Especially you'd want them to recharge while in inventory, but would you want non-inventory-artifacts to recharge while in inventory too? That could get confusing.

So if the Arkenstone having clairvoyance as an activation is unbalanced, what's changed since the old days? It used to have that all the time. Is it just too easy to find now? Or are we more aware of how powerful clairvoyance is?

[Timo Pietilä]

So if the Arkenstone having clairvoyance as an activation is unbalanced, what's changed since the old days? It used to have that all the time. Is it just too easy to find now? Or are we more aware of how powerful clairvoyance is?

A bit both I guess, and also in old days you didn't have "known objects" list available. In even older version you couldn't even look the items that were not in direct LoS. In really old days you had to recognize items from their symbols, which means that you didn't have any way to separate dagger from longsword until you actually saw it.

OTOH potions of enlightenment are rather common, so maybe that activation isn't that powerful. Maybe Arkenstone just needs to be deeper than it is now.

Arkenstone rarity is already rather high, but for some reason I seem to find it anyway a bit too easily. That makes me suspicious about the rarity code making odd numbers every now and then. "Special" artifacts are for some reason easier to find than in old days. Or it feels that they are, I'm not sure.

[relic]

You can't have it both ways - complaining about what people produce for free and then saying that you don't have the time to contribute is pretty poor.

I hope that you're not saying that only those who contribute to Angband development can criticize Angband development.
That would severely limit discussion in this forum.

[Magnate]

Artifacts that activate from inventory would require a code change, and I'm not certain how involved it'd be. Especially you'd want them to recharge while in inventory, but would you want non-inventory-artifacts to recharge while in inventory too? That could get confusing.

So if the Arkenstone having clairvoyance as an activation is unbalanced, what's changed since the old days? It used to have that all the time. Is it just too easy to find now? Or are we more aware of how powerful clairvoyance is?

The latter, I think. I agree with Timo that we need an activation which is better than the Star's mapping but less abusable than Clairvoyance.

We already have a ticket for non-wearable artifacts - #353, originally conceived for the dungeon spellbooks. d_m has long wanted to produce artifact staves and rods, and the Palantir would basically be one of these. One day ... (and yes, everything in inventory would recharge, making the time bubble consistent, finally).

On your own putative changes - don't worry, there's plenty of scope. Timo has only added one new ego type (Dwarven shields), and has otherwise mainly removed stuff (speed boosts from artifact weapons, aggravate from Hammerhand and Haradrim) and changed rarities and reverted other changes (Cambeleg/Fingolfin, speed on rings of power, etc.). It will be easy to merge your changes with his, when you offer them up. If there are any direct conflicts I'll summarise them in a new thread and get some comments.

@jens: same goes for yours - it should be easy to merge them with Timo's and Derakon's, so don't be put off.

[Magnate]

I hope that you're not saying that only those who contribute to Angband development can criticize Angband development.
That would severely limit discussion in this forum.

Not at all - though I can see why it might come across like that when taken out of context. My problem is with people who bang on over and over again about the *same thing*, well after it's been acknowledged by the devteam, and still don't bother to offer any kind of solution.

It's absolutely fine to criticise - and if you don't feel that anyone has heard you, by all means keep going. But you may have to settle for simply being heard - it's not the same as getting things changed to be the way you want. But the more people we can encourage to contribute, the more likely it is that things will get changed to be the way people want. (And it's *especially* easy to contribute edit file changes, because you don't have to touch the code.)

[Timo Pietilä]

reverted other changes (Cambeleg/Fingolfin, speed on rings of power, etc)

Noticeable in these was that Fingolfin was already really rare, but Cambeleg for some reason was not. It was nearly as common as Cammithrim. For Top Artifact that's just wrong. And as a top artifact they both were worthy for having original big combat bonuses. If you find them, use them. If. I have played now several games without seeing Fingolfin, but Cambeleg I found in every game.

RoP vs RoS RoP needed that speed boost. I kept the combat bonuses small. Same for Elessar vs Trickery. Elessar got speed back, and Trickery lost two points from it. No more +4 speed Trickery. Without that change only priests without decent other WIS boost would have preferred Elessar over Trickery. Trickery was in general too "no-brainer" over any other amulet.

Most other changes are harder to notice than those. Well, there is one that every Ranger will notice.

[jens]

I guess the risk is that players get put off the nightlies by bugs (or misfeatures) and then it becomes hard for you to get the level of feedback you want.

Would it make sense to have an intermediate build - weekly, fortnightly, or monthly perhaps? - which people can play if they want to test interesting new features in advance of the next version, but don't want "a lot of bugs or weird stuff"?

Does something like this exist now?

A.

Magnate already answered this with 'no'. But unoficially there is something like it. When a new version comes out, the critical bugs will often be fixed within a day or so. If you wait a week or so after release date you can be pretty sure that that version is 'quite' stable. Where 'quite' -> severe bugs and game play issues found in the early game are already fixed.

For instance the latest dev build is quite stable:
24 May 2011 at 22:03 UTC, revision d39a356436

http://rephial.org/nightlies/angband-rd39a356436.zip

The most serious thing wrong with it are level feelings. Which have changed in staging, pending a new release for testing. There are of course lots of other issues, but a real game can easily be played, and evaluated.

[Magnate]

Noticeable in these was that Fingolfin was already really rare, but Cambeleg for some reason was not. It was nearly as common as Cammithrim. For Top Artifact that's just wrong. And as a top artifact they both were worthy for having original big combat bonuses. If you find them, use them. If. I have played now several games without seeing Fingolfin, but Cambeleg I found in every game.

RoP vs RoS RoP needed that speed boost. I kept the combat bonuses small. Same for Elessar vs Trickery. Elessar got speed back, and Trickery lost two points from it. No more +4 speed Trickery. Without that change only priests without decent other WIS boost would have preferred Elessar over Trickery. Trickery was in general too "no-brainer" over any other amulet.

Most other changes are harder to notice than those. Well, there is one that every Ranger will notice.

Just going through your changes now ... I know you didn't like Evenstar or the Palantir, but what have you got against Himring?? There are very few artifact soft armours, and it doesn't have anything you could consider broken - just AC and resists ...

[Timo Pietilä]

Just going through your changes now ... I know you didn't like Evenstar or the Palantir, but what have you got against Himring?? There are very few artifact soft armours, and it doesn't have anything you could consider broken - just AC and resists ...

I just never used it. Useless == junk so I just removed junk. I didn't bother trying to make it useful. Same thing with Evenstar, I have nothing against it, but I also never used it. Easiest solution was to remove it.

That makes everything else a bit more probable to pop up in fights. Be it possibly useful ego or another artifact.

If there were some reason to use soft armors over hard armors, then there would have been reason to make Himring useful, maybe even create one or two new soft armors, but currently soft armor is just subset of armors with different symbol (and vulnerability to fire IIRC) and nobody really cares do they use soft or hard armor.

BTW, I do want to make similar approach to artifact weapons as well. IMO there are too many of them with too many abilities / weapon making artifact weapons dull grey mass. Some very similar (Fundin and Eowyn, *thancs). I just couldn't choose which ones to change/remove that fast.

[Max Stats]

Just going through your changes now ... I know you didn't like Evenstar or the Palantir, but what have you got against Himring?? There are very few artifact soft armours, and it doesn't have anything you could consider broken - just AC and resists ...

I just never used it. Useless == junk so I just removed junk. I didn't bother trying to make it useful. Same thing with Evenstar, I have nothing against it, but I also never used it. Easiest solution was to remove it.

That makes everything else a bit more probable to pop up in fights. Be it possibly useful ego or another artifact.

If there were some reason to use soft armors over hard armors, then there would have been reason to make Himring useful, maybe even create one or two new soft armors, but currently soft armor is just subset of armors with different symbol (and vulnerability to fire IIRC) and nobody really cares do they use soft or hard armor.

I have used Himring several times, so I would consider it useful as is, no need to make it useful. Maybe marginally useful, but IMHO worth keeping.

[Timo Pietilä]

I have used Himring several times, so I would consider it useful as is, no need to make it useful.

Really? Why have you used it? It has no useful abilities except poison resistance if you don't have any other source for it but you usually do have more than one source for that before you find Himring and also much better/useful bodyarmors collected.

[Magnate]

I just never used it. Useless == junk so I just removed junk. I didn't bother trying to make it useful. Same thing with Evenstar, I have nothing against it, but I also never used it. Easiest solution was to remove it.

That makes everything else a bit more probable to pop up in fights. Be it possibly useful ego or another artifact.

If there were some reason to use soft armors over hard armors, then there would have been reason to make Himring useful, maybe even create one or two new soft armors, but currently soft armor is just subset of armors with different symbol (and vulnerability to fire IIRC) and nobody really cares do they use soft or hard armor.

BTW, I do want to make similar approach to artifact weapons as well. IMO there are too many of them with too many abilities / weapon making artifact weapons dull grey mass. Some very similar (Fundin and Eowyn, *thancs). I just couldn't choose which ones to change/remove that fast.

I'd be careful of removing things just because you've never used them. I took a look at Himring, and the reason you've never used it is this line:

A:5:50 to 100

- that makes it more than six times as rare as Hithlomir and Thalkettoth, and they both come in depth at level 20 (1000'). I'm inclined to change it to A:25:25 to 100 - and I'm also inclined to make Thalkettoth slightly deeper and rarer (A:20:30), as it's better than Himring.

I'm happy to remove the Palantir and Evenstar though. I do think it's a shame to go down to three lights and four amulets, but both the Palantir and Evenstar need replacing with better designs.

I also agree with you on the weapons, there's been a need for rationalisation there for some time. Not to mention that Gurthang, Mormegil and Anguiriel are all the same sword! (Or is it only two of them? I forget.)

[Max Stats]

I have used Himring several times, so I would consider it useful as is, no need to make it useful. Maybe marginally useful, but IMHO worth keeping.

Really? Why have you used it? It has no useful abilities except poison resistance if you don't have any other source for it but you usually do have more than one source for that before you find Himring and also much better/useful bodyarmors collected.

Mostly I use it if I have the higher priority resistances otherwise covered and I want to complete (or nearly complete) my resistance set. Occasionally, I also might want to swap out something that is currently giving rPois for something better, and I can use this to cover poison, and possibly a couple more while I am at it. This usually assumes that I have good stats from the rest of my equipment and don't need a boost from my armor. Plus it is nice and light, good for spellcasting classes.

[Timo Pietilä]

I'd be careful of removing things just because you've never used them. I took a look at Himring, and the reason you've never used it is this line:

A:5:50 to 100

- that makes it more than six times as rare as Hithlomir and Thalkettoth, and they both come in depth at level 20 (1000'). I'm inclined to change it to A:25:25 to 100 - and I'm also inclined to make Thalkettoth slightly deeper and rarer (A:20:30), as it's better than Himring.

Right comparison should be Caspanion right before it in the file. It needs to be less rare than that to be useful, OTOH it doesn't have anything other than RES_POISON for early use, and deeper you want something better anyway. Maybe if you add DEX-bonus or something like that...

Too tired. Need to sleep ZZZZZZZZZ