Playing humans

[Derakon]

People don't like reading the help files, remember? And if he read it once years ago, he can (rightfully) assume that nothing much has changed about it since then; the help files are basically the same as they were back in the 2.8 days from what my spot-checking has revealed. No sense reading the entire document if only a few sentences have been changed.

EDIT: incidentally, it would be awesome if, when you hit '?' with a given race or class selected, you jumped automatically to where that race or class is described in the help text.

[Timo Pietilä]

You haven't read birth.txt recently then? Both those are documented.

Read that and learned about Gnome ability which I wasn't aware of earlier (I rarely play gnomes). However it seems that these special skills are given to races already quite good, hobbits, dwarves and gnomes. We need to boost elf and half-elf, because those two are the weakest of the races, even including humans. Elves in particular are bad at everything that matters in survival in dungeon.

[Nomad]

EDIT: incidentally, it would be awesome if, when you hit '?' with a given race or class selected, you jumped automatically to where that race or class is described in the help text.

The game actually had this functionality back in 3.0.9; if you look at birth.txt it's still marked up with the 'bookmarks' for it, but it doesn't work any more.

I'm not sure many new players would take the time to press ? for each individual choice, though; I'd suggest slipping in a one-liner description under the "Your 'race' determines various intrinsic factors and bonuses" line. Something like:

- Humans have no special abilities or bonuses.
- Gnomes are clever and agile and can ID wands and staves.
- Dwarves are tough and wise, resist blindness, and sense treasure.
- Half-trolls are strong and tough and regenerate quickly.

...etc. Combined with colour-coding to highlight stats and in particular indicate less obvious things like lack of infravision or good/bad HP, I think that would help a lot.

Also, when I was a newbie it took me a while to twig that 'hit die' refered to HP rather than combat damage. Is there a clearer way to label that?

[Timo Pietilä]

Also, when I was a newbie it took me a while to twig that 'hit die' refered to HP rather than combat damage. Is there a clearer way to label that?

Hit die is traditional but maybe health die could work better? Or saying directly Hit Points and leave "die" out of it.

[nppangband]

Elf priest might be the worst possible combo. Actually I think elf anything is worse than its human equal. -1 to STR, -2 to CON and worse hit die than humans makes it the challenge race.

Timo - I am curious about your thinking here. How this could be worse than a human rogue? Human rogue might be stronger at startup, but even an elf priest can eventually get 0% fail on their spells, and they can eventually have just as much spellpower as any other mage.

A human rogue is almost worthless in the later part of the game. They are weak at combat. And while they have some utility spells, with a 5% fail they can't be counted on when it matters. Maybe they aren't as weak as an elf priest in some characteristics, but their biggest weakness is that they aren't good at anything.

And I know you have won with a bookless hobbit mage, so I just want to stress I am not challenging your evaluation, but seeking to understand it.

[Hariolor]

Just a personal observation in terms of game design - but I sort of feel that all this talk of buffing humans and the weaker races is a bit counter-intuitive...

If humans are to be the "base" race, then the game (ideally) should be balanced with a human @ in mind. Whether other races are under-or-over-powered could then be objectively measured relative to a human...this is how it started out ages ago IIRC. [yes, it is still possible to measure relative to human, but HE/Dunedain seem to be the default measuring sticks these days]

If the game is too easy, by all means make the non-@ aspects harder. But at the same time, might it make sense to nerf the races a bit. Dunedain could still be an easy "beginner" race with absurd buffs (Like Maiar in Oangband). Lower modifiers to the "better races" and more severe penalties to offset the buffs, maybe?

I also second the idea of giving more transparent info about racial abilities on the birth screen while choosing your options.

[Timo Pietilä]

Timo - I am curious about your thinking here. How this could be worse than a human rogue? Human rogue might be stronger at startup, but even an elf priest can eventually get 0% fail on their spells, and they can eventually have just as much spellpower as any other mage.

Eventually maybe, but it takes time, a lot of time. Elves have also -1 to WIS, which causes them to need +8 to WIS to reach 18/200. That basically means something like Caspanion + Thranduil + 3 from other sources. This basically means AoWIS or Ingwe which means elf priest cannot use Trickery and Elessar is not enough. Good HA weapon would do it, but then you lack good artifacts. Also lack of CON and small hit die causes trouble in choosing the gear with Priest. You want high CON with priest, because with high HP healing ability allows you to stay on combat longer.

Without Caspanion you are in trouble. You just need that +3 to WIS and CON. Without you have no other choice than use AoWIS +6 to get WIS up to 18/200 (at least until you start to see Rings of Power), unless you also use HA weapon, in which case CON is a problem. Thorin is a no-brainer for elf priest, you can't even consider anything else.

A human rogue is almost worthless in the later part of the game. They are weak at combat.

Not any worse than Ranger or Paladin. In fact they are a bit better than Paladins at the end. Ranger has extremely powerful archery to compensate weaksih melee.

And while they have some utility spells, with a 5% fail they can't be counted on when it matters.

Play rogue like warrior, not like mage. A warrior with utility spells. Makes a big difference.

Maybe they aren't as weak as an elf priest in some characteristics, but their biggest weakness is that they aren't good at anything.

And I know you have won with a bookless hobbit mage, so I just want to stress I am not challenging your evaluation, but seeking to understand it.

Elf priest = -2 STR, -1 INT, +2 WIS, +0 DEX, -2 CON 11 hit die
Human rogue = +2 STR, +1 INT, -2 WIS, +3 DEX, +1 CON 16 hit die


Stats are the problem. You need some very powerful combo of items to compensate that many negative stats. It pretty much doesn't matter which way you play your gear, you lack STR, WIS or CON (and low DEX isn't helping either). Elves just suck.

[camlost]

Stats are the problem. You need some very powerful combo of items to compensate that many negative stats. It pretty much doesn't matter which way you play your gear, you lack STR, WIS or CON (and low DEX isn't helping either). Elves just suck.

There's always (is there still?) non-maximize mode. If you're fishing for wis anyway, why not take the +2 to str/con as a tradeoff?

[Timo Pietilä]

There's always (is there still?) non-maximize mode. If you're fishing for wis anyway, why not take the +2 to str/con as a tradeoff?

Without maximize it doesn't matter which race/class combo you choose, you end up with same stats. I find it cheating to use non-maximize to just compensate bad stats. You either use it with all combos or not at all. Even then Elves would still suck, but not as badly as hobbits, gnomes or kobolds.

[Magnate]

The game actually had this functionality back in 3.0.9; if you look at birth.txt it's still marked up with the 'bookmarks' for it, but it doesn't work any more.

Ticket #13 is for context-sensitive help - not sure if it will be the old bookmarks system or something different. It was broken by accident when the helpfiles were (ahem, Derakon) substantially updated for 3.2. Admittedly they hadn't changed for about a decade before that (I think RR rewrote them in the early noughties).

[Magnate]

People don't like reading the help files, remember? And if he read it once years ago, he can (rightfully) assume that nothing much has changed about it since then

He can ... until he starts asserting that things are undocumented. Always sensible to check readily available sources before making assertions.

[Starhawk]

Y'know, a year or two ago when I started playing Angband, I poked at a couple of text files and found game data, etc that did not bear messing with.

The features I mentioned aren't noted anywhere in the actual birth screens, so to a tyro like myself, they seemed undocumented. There's no need to get your dander up about it. And thanks for pointing me at birth.txt, it was an interesting read. Especially the numeric scales for skill improvement.

[Nick]

He can ... until he starts asserting that things are undocumented. Always sensible to check readily available sources before making assertions.

So you're saying RTFM or GTFO? Nice customer relations there from the dev team.

*Runs*

[Magnate]

So you're saying RTFM or GTFO? Nice customer relations there from the dev team.

*Runs*

Heh, no I'm not really saying that, and I'm sorry if I came across like that. There are plenty of criticisms one could make of 3.2 - I just think the docs are a bit of a poor choice, given that they were thoroughly overhauled (thanks to fizzix) for the first time in almost a decade. We even removed the warning from the splash screen which had been there for two or three years.

I don't think I was rude to Starhawk - all I said was "you haven't read birth.txt recently then?". I then challenged Derakon's implication that it was ok to claim that something was undocumented if you read the docs a long time ago.

I just want people to know that the docs are better, I think - ok so they're not context-sensitive yet, they're not in html yet, they don't have their own subwindow yet etc. etc., but they're all available from the ? menu and they're all pretty up-to-date. Given how few people like to work on docs and how much difference they can make to new players, I think this is pretty big news.

Starhawk - no offence intended at all - you can blame Nick for turning it into a big debate ;-) ... and you're quite right to point out that stumbling upon the text files in lib/edit before the ones in lib/help is going to put people off. Perhaps the edit file headers should all contain a pointer to lib/help ...

[Derakon]

I didn't mean to claim that it was okay to say something was undocumented, and I'm sorry if I came across that way. I was mostly saying that people don't like reading docs, and if they've already done so in the past, they'll need a clear reason to reread them or they'll assume they haven't changed -- especially since up until recently the docs had been largely stagnant for a long time. Nobody's going to want to read through all of birth.txt to find the three sentences that have changed.

Obviously if the docs say that dwarves can sense treasure, then you can't reasonably claim that treasure sense isn't documented. But just because you document something doesn't mean that people are going to find out about it. The information isn't as discoverable as it could be.