Something between 2000' and 5000'

[Timo Pietilä]

Then if I understand your position correctly, more of your objections than I thought result from changes even older than JLE.

It's more a basic complain about adding things without removing something else. If you (general you) only adds things to "make something more interesting" you end up with every item being Ringil with some boost.

As someone said, you should have difficulties getting everything covered (or even nearly everything). That would make game more interesting.

I'm going offline for about week now, so don't expect me to answer to anything anytime soon.

[Magnate]

It's more a basic complain about adding things without removing something else. If you (general you) only adds things to "make something more interesting" you end up with every item being Ringil with some boost.

As someone said, you should have difficulties getting everything covered (or even nearly everything). That would make game more interesting.

I'm going offline for about week now, so don't expect me to answer to anything anytime soon.

No worries.

I think if you add something you have to make sure that it is an overall benefit to the game. That might mean removing something else, but IMO doesn't have to mean that.

[bron]

Although this has wandered pretty severely off-topic, I will comment that Amulets of Trickery are *extremely* important when playing birth-no-artifacts. So much so that I'm convinced JLE designed them specifically for that purpose. The other amulets I think could be deleted without particular harm (I occasionally use Weaponmastery when I haven't found some other source of rDisenchant, but I don't believe I've ever used Devotion or Resistance). But it would change things a lot to lose Trickery.

[Jungle_Boy]

I have not found many trickery amulets but I know I like them and my only winner used a devotion amulet for quite some time.

[TJS]

Noone is probably going to agree with this idea, but I think that the last two battles should be made a lot easier and be possible without perfect kit/maxed stats/spending hours looking for consumables.
Then you could make good stuff much more rare so that effectively the end battles are just as hard, but getting there is harder.

I've got to level 99 loads of times, but then just left the game because I can't be bothered to spend ages looking for 'end-game gear' and loads of other stuff that you only ever really need for the final fights. Also I know you probably should find and kill certain uniques beforehand and I've never found out who they all are.

On another note, I'm using devotion myself at the moment for a half-troll priest and it is pretty useful.

[ewert]

The consumables problem is being worked on, aside that the last two fights are not THAT hard ... just as long as you have some of the tactics and being careful. Careful. Careful. Echo ... =P

[Matthias]

Noone is probably going to agree with this idea, but I think that the last two battles should be made a lot easier and be possible without perfect kit/maxed stats/spending hours looking for consumables.

But that's already the case. People win with sub-optimal, or even bad conditions all the time. Maybe for your next character that reaches 99, set yourself a limit like one hour to collect resources and then just go for it. Maybe that won't be enough, or you might be surprised how little is actually necessary to win the last fights. Even if you die it should still be better than abandoning the character. Of course this won't work if your character is level32 and has 230 hp when he arrives at 99, but then the problem isn't the endgame but the diving.

[Hariolor]

Sacreligious thought:

Part of the core of Angband is the RNG and the idea that, given enough time, any desired item could turn up at *almost* any level. Diving merely tweaks the time it takes for these items to turn up...

What if there were a limit to the number of ego items generated throughout the course of a game, much like there is to artifacts. Maybe there could be a grand total of, say, 400 ego items (stacks of ammo=1 item) generated in a game, pre-generated with varying pvals (a good distribution curve would be critical here). And 400 is just a random guess at what a good # might be. This might make things a *lot* harder, but it would also:

a) encourage exploring for players of average to newbie ability (read: most)

b) not penalize diving for those who are able to do so successfully (because there will still be a better risk/reward ratio at lower levels).

c) alleviate TMJ and the "shopping" problems we currently see

d) encourage more creative play strategies, as special items will be more limited, and valuable items will be exponentially more valuable - ie: you will have to make do with what you find.

edit: naturally, the rate of ego drops would have to be reduced. This might have the happy side-effect of increasing the likelihood of useful consumables being dropped.

[ewert]

About any idea limiting creation of non-artifact stuff:

Some of us like to play to farm for the uberstuff. You know, MoD of (insertwantedego) etc. Heck, I would prefer a randart system that created a new randart for each one that gets (LOST). I would even be cool with a preserve off game, with any (LOST) artifacts getting a randart replacement into their slot. This change of course with a concomitant slight decrease in artifact probability maybe.

To offer better risk/reward so that diving is not the end-all quickest path to kick-assiness is very very hard. The only way I could see it is to increase the risk, not limit or decrease the reward (illogical, stuff that drops there should drop there whether you got there fast or slow). Thus anything done should focus on not the rewards, but the risks.

Someone wrote of an idea of giving stealth checks a level based check. Rewrite that idea a bit so that stealth is also a class dependant +skill/lvl kind of skill like the rest of them, and also give monsters a basic +perception/dlvl, so that any lvl 25 rogue is spotted near instantly by most monsters at dlvl99, unless he is wearing +20 or more stealth items or so...

[EpicMan]

As long as we're being sacrilegious, persistent levels would make level-clearing better vs. diving while not arbitrarily penalizing players for diving to insane depths at low character levels. I don't like the scaling stealth idea, because there seems no reason to do it that way other than to penalize divers.

As Ewert and others may prefer grinding/farming for that uber-item, and since it would be a significant change, persistent levels would need to be an option.

Another advantage of persistent levels is that it would exacerbate the lack of consumables so bad it would rise to the top of the issue list....

A less radical change would be to stop generation of new monsters on the level during play, or at least always spawn sleeping monsters.

[TJS]

But that's already the case. People win with sub-optimal, or even bad conditions all the time. Maybe for your next character that reaches 99, set yourself a limit like one hour to collect resources and then just go for it. Maybe that won't be enough, or you might be surprised how little is actually necessary to win the last fights. Even if you die it should still be better than abandoning the character. Of course this won't work if your character is level32 and has 230 hp when he arrives at 99, but then the problem isn't the endgame but the diving.

I wouldn't consider myself a particularly fast player or someone who has a strategy to dive, but I often get down to 99 at around clvl 35. That leaves a lot of wandering up and down the stairs to find stuff and level up.

I also have a hard time coming to terms with certain strategies to win the game. It took me a long time to be comfortable with using destruction, because it seems so unorthodox (What you destroy the level around you removing everything except artifacts? Are you sure?).

I have the same problem with with learning to deal with summoners so I tend to avoid bothering with them (constantly destructing/banishing monsters that appear in unlimited quantities every turn whilst learning all the strange rules on who has line-of-sight on each other doesn't seem like fun to me). Which of course works fine until you get to the end of the game and have no choice but to face them, which then becomes time to roll up another character for me.

[TJS]

As long as we're being sacrilegious, persistent levels would make level-clearing better vs. diving while not arbitrarily penalizing players for diving to insane depths at low character levels. I don't like the scaling stealth idea, because there seems no reason to do it that way other than to penalize divers.

Were non-persistent levels originally a design decision or was it just that it would have taken more coding/memory to store the full 100 levels at once?

[d_m]

Were non-persistent levels originally a design decision or was it just that it would have taken more coding/memory to store the full 100 levels at once?

I think the latter. However at this point it's one of the biggest differences between Nethack and Angband, so I wouldn't hold your breath for this to get changed. I haven't even played many variants which do this.

That said, I think it would probably end up being pretty interesting.

[TJS]

I think the latter. However at this point it's one of the biggest differences between Nethack and Angband, so I wouldn't hold your breath for this to get changed. I haven't even played many variants which do this.

That said, I think it would probably end up being pretty interesting.

I don't really expect it to ever change, but I really like the idea of persistent levels.

I used to play iron man quite a lot (I stopped after starving to death for the third time in a row) which I liked because you had to make do with what you find rather than have the perfect kit all the time with top ups from town.

[nppangband]

I think the latter. However at this point it's one of the biggest differences between Nethack and Angband, so I wouldn't hold your breath for this to get changed. I haven't even played many variants which do this.

That said, I think it would probably end up being pretty interesting.

I can see remembering the last dungeon level you just came from. And it should be accessed only by the set of stairs you just used to arrive at your current level.

Along with the memory restrictions, the randomly generated dungeon levels also were used to keep the game more interesting. I would feel bad for a player that started a game only to have an entire persistent dungeon generated that had 100 boring levels, or 100 levels with no greater vaults, and only jelly pits and graveyards for pits/nests.