Roadmap for angband

[fizzix]

My concern is that without an official maintainer who is responsible for keeping the game alive? developers can come and go at will, but the question is who is now responsible for angband, and responsible for passing the torch if needs be?

Are you volunteering?

[Antoine]

+1 Timo/Derakon/Antoine.

How can you +1 us all when we are disagreeing with each other?!!



A.

[buzzkill]

+1 Timo/Derakon/Antoine.

[Storm-Sky]

My concern is that without an official maintainer who is responsible for keeping the game alive? developers can come and go at will, but the question is who is now responsible for angband, and responsible for passing the torch if needs be?

[Antoine]

Timo has a point. If v4 becomes too distant from Vanilla, then you stop being able to decide if a feature can transfer from v4 to Vanilla.

I don't believe for one second that v4 is going to stay close enough to Vanilla that it can be used for balance-testing proposed V changes. I'm not even sure it's still close enough for that now.

A.

[sethos]

Despite having introduced the controversy, I actually agree (on premise, anyway) with Derakon here. Let me try to word it right:
If it's Absolutely Not going to go into V in the foreseeable future, It shouldn't go into V4.
I do, of course, realize that still leaves a very wide margin of things that can (and should) go into V4 - But I am concerned about TMJ... Even if V4 does get balanced and polished, what if it's decided that only half the features should go into V? Will V4 then devolve to meet the criteria, get a second round of rebalancing, and then become V?

that actually sounds like a reasonable way to go about it, though admittedly inefficient. (Sorry devs!)

[Derakon]

Timo has a point. If v4 becomes too distant from Vanilla, then you stop being able to decide if a feature can transfer from v4 to Vanilla. For example, you could conceivably achieve a new balance in v4 which, as a side effect of completely redoing the item and monster lists, allows x3 elemental branding rings to be balanced. That doesn't mean you can transfer just the rings over to Vanilla proper, and you couldn't (in this hypothetical case) transfer the item and monster list overhaul while retaining a Vanilla feel.

v4 isn't just another variant, or at least that's not how I was lead to understand it. It's a staging area for ideas that the dev team thinks could someday be part of Vanilla. Thus to the extent that an idea is clearly too extreme to ever be a part of Vanilla, it shouldn't be included in v4 either -- it'll just muddy the waters and make it harder to judge other features. But that include/exclude line is pretty fuzzy, depending on where a given person thinks Vanilla is headed.

[Magnate]

And it keeps the Devteam happy and helps them to resist the temptation to try out weird ideas in V (which is probably the single biggest benefit of it).

Second biggest. The biggest is that we don't have to have this kind of argument about what is Angband and what isn't!

[Antoine]

If you do that in v4 it no longer serves as test platform for Angband even if you succeed to rebalance it, because then v4 would be truly new variant, and no longer Angband.

If you insist pushing that change to v4 I beg for other devs to interfere and stop it.

Sorry, Timo, I think you're going to have to accept that V4 will very rapidly move into variant territory. It is not Vanilla and not subject to the same disciplines.

If you don't like it, don't play it.

V4 will be distant enough from V, that just because a change is balanced in V4, doesn't mean it is balanced in V. But V4 can still yield some insights about what changes might work in V - no more and no less than any other variant can.

And it keeps the Devteam happy and helps them to resist the temptation to try out weird ideas in V (which is probably the single biggest benefit of it).

A.

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, the whole point of v4 is to have the freedom to put these things to the test without anyone worrying about Angband being broken. The devteam have some ideas for very significant rebalancing of combat, which would mean that yes, we could introduce something like this and do all the other necessary changes to rebalance it. There has been talk of introducing O-combat to V for many many years

Just to emphasize, O-combat would be less drastic change. Even introducing 4GAI would be less drastic change. Neither of those change the gear you want/find/need that much, nor the tactics you use to deal with monsters.

That resistance change you suggested would change fundamental element of what makes angband angband. You would change the game of get minimum required defense, optimize offense and speed and avoid unmanageable fights to resistance gathering game.

In order to balance it you would need to introduce new artifacts, new egos, tweak old artifacts, tweak with drop ratios and monster breath deadliness and/or monster depths. This would mean completely new game, not just "rebalancing angband".

If you do that in v4 it no longer serves as test platform for Angband even if you succeed to rebalance it, because then v4 would be truly new variant, and no longer Angband.

If you insist pushing that change to v4 I beg for other devs to interfere and stop it.

THIS is why maintainer is needed. And also why maintainer is called maintainer, not developer.

[Magnate]

That's just it, I don't think this would be improvement, quite opposite, even with extensive testing. It moves focus on different direction than what it is in Angband. By doing that Angband ceases to be Angband: you would need to rebalance everything.

As I said with that change you would be moving to variant-land.

Well, the whole point of v4 is to have the freedom to put these things to the test without anyone worrying about Angband being broken. The devteam have some ideas for very significant rebalancing of combat, which would mean that yes, we could introduce something like this and do all the other necessary changes to rebalance it. There has been talk of introducing O-combat to V for many many years - we're not thinking of exactly O-combat, but something which moves in that direction, i.e. properly deals with heavy weapons, gets rid of the problems with blows/+dam/etc. and is generally a better model than the existing one.

Now, it will take us a long time to get that right - as you say, by changing stuff that's this fundamental, everything else needs rebalancing. This is precisely why v4 exists - so we can take plenty of time to do that without breaking V or having to put it on hold for years.

It might work, it might not - if it doesn't we can roll v4 back and no harm has been done to V.

If anyone is interested, the initial list of issues we want to look at is here. This list looks purely at combat mechanics, and doesn't include the concomitant changes to resists, monsters, spells, etc. etc.

[Timo Pietilä]

And just in case anybody's wondering, I am of course thinking aloud about v4, rather than V. This kind of thing would need extensive testing in the context of all the other combat improvements planned for v4 ...

That's just it, I don't think this would be improvement, quite opposite, even with extensive testing. It moves focus on different direction than what it is in Angband. By doing that Angband ceases to be Angband: you would need to rebalance everything.

As I said with that change you would be moving to variant-land.

[Magnate]

I'm a bit worried about the need for multiple sources of permanent resistance too. The player starts needing to cover resistances at around the 1500' depth or so, at which point they're lucky if they can find a single Armor of Resistance, but that alone wouldn't mitigate damage at all much. Note that currently permanent resistances reduce damage by 67%, not 33%, so cutting them down to 15% is much worse than halving their effectiveness.

Sorry, a simple arithmetical error. I meant 30%, not 15%. So two would be roughly equivalent to current permanent resist, and three would be near-immunity. One would be roughly half as good as now.

Lots of variants have percentile stacking resists, but they're usually non-linear. This is a similar concept but kept simple.

And just in case anybody's wondering, I am of course thinking aloud about v4, rather than V. This kind of thing would need extensive testing in the context of all the other combat improvements planned for v4 ...

[Derakon]

I'm a bit worried about the need for multiple sources of permanent resistance too. The player starts needing to cover resistances at around the 1500' depth or so, at which point they're lucky if they can find a single Armor of Resistance, but that alone wouldn't mitigate damage at all much. Note that currently permanent resistances reduce damage by 67%, not 33%, so cutting them down to 15% is much worse than halving their effectiveness.

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, since we've wandered into this topic, here's my current view:

- variable resistance should go
- all permanent resists should be equal for all elements
- all permanent resists should stack with temp. resist and with each other (for each element)
- permanent resists should reduce damage by, say, 15%
- temp. resist should continue to reduce damage by 1/3

So temp. resist from spells/potions/activations stays exactly the same as it is now. Permanent resistance would be about half as useful for base elements, so you'd need each covered twice - but you could also get better coverage by having more items with resists. (If this is too easy to achieve, we can always lower the resistance from 15% to 12% or 10%.)

IMO this would be much more intuitive and easier for new players to understand - each item with rFoo reduces damage from Foo by the same percentage, regardless of what Foo is. Temporary rFoo is about twice as good at reducing damage from Foo, but doesn't last long.

That also changes gameplay way too much and wanders into variant-land. You would absolutely need multiple sources of basic four resists, which in current Angband is rarity at the endgame. I would rather move away from resistance importance than toward it.

Build up an usual endgame gear and count how many basic four resists you get. I bet there is at least one element that is covered only once. If it is electricity (like it probably is) then only arcane spellcasters get double resists.