Post your top feature/option wish for Vanilla

[Timo Pietilä]

Restoring the old DOS Version (I like to play full screen, windows does not allow it, must continue with 3.0.6)
Better documentation, expecially for items/strategies at depth > 2500

Thanks

There are no special strategies below 2500. Just the basic:

1) don't let yourself killed
2) know what you are fighting
3) if unknown assume it can kill you if it gets a chance to attack.

Probing helps to figure out what monsters can do.

[Roch]

My "would most like to see" feature is to generalize the DROP_CHOSEN attribute to be able to apply it to any monster, not just Morgoth. See http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=1180 for a discussion.

I like this idea of assigning a specific drop to a given unique. TOME did this -- I remember beating Paths of the Dead for the first time and expressing gladness in a forum that the guardian, Feagwath, dropped Doomcaller. Someone promply notified me that he always drops Doomcaller, which didn't take anything away from having it given the difficulty in getting it.
Doing this could greatly affect gameplay. For example, if cubragol were only dropped by a deep unique, then one couldn't just traverse levels 95-99 and back looking for it on the floor or in a vault. So you would be forced to buff up if you wanted to get it to use in your final kit.

[Derakon]

I wouldn't mind much if some uniques had a chance of dropping a thematically-appropriate artifact. The main thing IMO is that a) it shouldn't be guaranteed (maybe you could specify a percentage drop rate so e.g. Morgoth is still guaranteed to drop his stuff), and b) it shouldn't be endgame gear. Giving Feagwath Doomcaller is too much IMO. But we could probably fudge it a bit and give Smaug a chance of dropping Belegennon and claim that that's the mithril shirt that Frodo wore. Giving Smaug the Arkenstone would probably be too much. Giving Smeagol the One Ring? Yyyyeahno.

Of course, this all goes out the window with randarts. And it'd be yet another way the game would be made easier.

[Hariolor]

I wouldn't necessarily advocate that all artifacts be unique-specific. Nor that all uniques drop an artifact that is strictly theme-appropriate (such as smeagol with the One, as cited above).

However, I don't know that being required to win fights to earn artifacts would make a game easier, randart or otherwise...with enough patience it's easier to skulk around the deep dungeon with rods of TO and some !speed until unguarded artifacts turn up near the stairs.

That approach seems more "broken" to me than any exploitation from a likely/guaranteed artifact drop by many/all uniques. Except perhaps for the rogue class...but that's a different thread altogether...

[Timo Pietilä]

I wouldn't necessarily advocate that all artifacts be unique-specific. Nor that all uniques drop an artifact that is strictly theme-appropriate (such as smeagol with the One, as cited above).

However, I don't know that being required to win fights to earn artifacts would make a game easier, randart or otherwise...with enough patience it's easier to skulk around the deep dungeon with rods of TO and some !speed until unguarded artifacts turn up near the stairs.

That approach seems more "broken" to me than any exploitation from a likely/guaranteed artifact drop by many/all uniques. Except perhaps for the rogue class...but that's a different thread altogether...

How about preventing artifacts from appearing at floor but increase the chance for vaults and "special rooms" somewhat? That would make "preserve off" -gaming a little bit easier too.

IMO game should be balanced so that it is possible to win and play without any artifacts with high-level ego items and DSM:s. Artifacts should all be "wow!" -items.

[ekolis]

That's kinda troubling, Timo... if it's possible to win WITHOUT artifacts, and artifacts are still considered "wow" items, more powerful than any ego item, that kind of implies that an artifact would make the game too easy if you're lucky enough to find one!

Then again, if artifacts were only dropped by tough monsters and never found on the floor, then I suppose that's an acceptable reward for taking the risk of fighting them!

[Timo Pietilä]

That's kinda troubling, Timo... if it's possible to win WITHOUT artifacts, and artifacts are still considered "wow" items, more powerful than any ego item, that kind of implies that an artifact would make the game too easy if you're lucky enough to find one!

I'm not against making winning easy with proper equipment, just that that "easy to win" equipment should be hard to get.

[EDIT] and BTW it is now too easy to win with current set of ego-items. Way easier than it used to be. Pretty much _everything_ would need a downgrade except those old set legendary hugely powerful artifacts (RoP, Ringil, Doomcaller, Deathwreaker, Thorin, Cambeleg, Fingolfin, etc.). Then artifacts, if made more rare, would be "wow!"-items.

[fizzix]

I agree with Timo on this. I wouldn't mind strengthening artifacts and increasing their rarities by a factor of 10. In fact, I really liked the way that randarts worked before the change. I would find about 40 artifacts and that was enough to assemble an endgame kit. Some games I would find no artifacts for a given equipment slot. This is good! If I scummed longer I would find more artifacts, but that is the point! Rarity one artifacts never showed up, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

There were many ego items I'd use in the endgame. Here are some I've used: shield of preservation or elvenkind, crowns of might, helms of ESP (or magi w/ ESP), boots of speed, bows of lothlorien or extra shots, xbows of haradrim or extra shots, high end ego weapons, cloaks of magi with esp, amulets of trickery, rings of speed, gloves of thievery or power. All of these items have been used in an endgame kit for me. In my last game I just picked up law dragon scale mail of permanence so now the armor slot has competitive ego items also.

Now I am not opposed to having artifacts that obsolete all these items. I am opposed to finding these artifacts every game.

[Derakon]

One thing to consider is that we may just have too many artifacts, full-stop. There's 136 of 'em! If you find even a quarter of those that's still a huge number of found items that just aren't going to be used. IMO that devalues the concept of artifact a bit. These items are legendary, after all.

We could change Angband so that all artifacts are endgame-viable, with the expectation that the player not necessarily find an artifact for each slot. That'd be pretty drastic. We could also go for, broadly speaking, two tiers of artifacts: midgame (1000'-3000') and endgame, where the midgame artifacts wouldn't be able to compete with high-level ego items.

Regardless of what we do, though, artifacts need to be less common. My last winner found over 50, in one of the fastest games I've ever played. I'd be happier if it were more like 20.

[nullfame]

Regardless of what we do, though, artifacts need to be less common. My last winner found over 50, in one of the fastest games I've ever played. I'd be happier if it were more like 20.

I can get behind this. I don't object to having made things earlier and more powerful, but if they were a lot more rare that would be balanced in my view. Eliminating things is okay too but I gather more controversial.

[Therem Harth]

I've got mixed feelings about increasing artifact rarity, but I do like the idea of making artifacts monster drop only.

[fph]

Also, I think *destruction* should destruct artifacts lying on the ground --- but maintaining the rule that artifacts are lost forever only after you get to know their name (in the latest nightlies, by either picking them up, or IDing them on the floor).

Otherwise clearing vaults for artifacts with *destruction* is too easy. Want that un-id'ed ring at 4000' in a vault? Sorry, you'll have to kill everything in between. (or use teleport-other on them. Duh. That's another issue.)

[Derakon]

Destruct not removing artifacts always struck me as a bit weird. I suppose it's a holdover from the days before preserve mode, when removing an artifact from a level was a Seriously Big Deal. I wouldn't mind removing that behavior, especially since it's fairly exclusive to late-game scumming.

I also wouldn't mind trying a patch where TO doesn't work on icky floors. Then at least you'd have to lure monsters outside of the vault before TO would work. It'd completely change the dynamics of GCVs, especially for the classes without Stone to Mud.

[Magnate]

Currently I am hard pressed to come up with anything other than:

Unlimited home space.

Yep, that's it. Randart games are so troublesome with limited home, for myself it detracts from the fun of kill-and-gather to have to junk so many maybe useful artifacts.

I'd love an option for it. Hell, put it in "cheat" options I don't care. I play with know full monster info anyways, as I start new savefiles so often the "noncheating" method of gathering a full monster knowledge doesn't work for me...

Nice thread. It was great to skim the whole thing and take away a bunch of thoughts:

1. Very nice to see no selling mentioned so often. I'll make a renewed effort to persuade Takk to do this.

1a. Ditto 4GAI: I really love this, but not sure if Takk thinks it might not be V any more. Time to raise this one again, I think.

2. Disappointing to see so many requests for an expanded home and/or inventory. Don't get me wrong - I am the world's greatest packrat (let me send you my spreadsheet of all the Diablo II and Titan Quest items I ever found ...) but definitely not in Angband. YMMV of course, but it just isn't my thing. Not that I'll throw my toys out of the pram if somebody commits it, of course. I'm sure I'll love it - my games will just take longer, that's all.

3. Nice to see a lot of suggestions that have been discussed on IRC and/or trac and might actually happen: fractional blows, multiple pvals, themed drops, indexless edit file syntax, etc. (Derakon: the latter has already been done btw, just not committed yet.)

4. Someone mentioned "player artifacts" in the same breath as player ghosts. Tell me more ...

[PowerDiver]

1. Very nice to see no selling mentioned so often. I'll make a renewed effort to persuade Takk to do this.

Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to think about balancing gold drops. Every time value pricing is tweaked, the game moves more towards selling for money.

At the moment, prices are crazy. At an absolute minimum, they should be rescaled so that reading an enchant scroll on a weapon has an expected price increase of at most 100. That's my suggested scaling factor. So the price difference between a +2 and +3 heavy crossbow should be at most 100 * probability of success, same for a chaos blade. Just maybe that would get things in line.