Quiver at home?

[Derakon]

Why not?

[buzzkill]

I definitely don't agree. I don't mind a restricted inventory, but forcing those choices in the home, by such a totally artificial mechanism, is not and never will be a good thing.

It would be better if we could force those choices in the dungeon instead. People recall entirely too often. It leads to home clutter. Recall should cost more, much more.

[Philip]

From Similar Threads: Idea for extended home / no selling option at
http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=3575 is what I think is a good suggestion(I have a chlvl 41 or so HE mage, although the dump is lvl 39. Do you *really* care about the home so much? Apparently the latest version has the General store left as it is, so you can have a few phase doors and recall.

[ewert]

Having coded and played a no-stores extended-home version, AND
having coded and played a near-infinite home (255 slots) with no-selling (but buying) AND
being of the notion that you can't please everybody, but restriction of options is much much worse, make that INFINITELY WORSE, than inclusion of options:

An unlimited / extended home is, IMHO, a no-brainer for an option. It being stuck with only no-stores is not a good idea. Make it a cheat option, whatever, most people play for fun, and for many people wasting time pondering equipment storage options at TOWN level is the opposite of fun. Wasting time pondering equipment _choices_ at town level can be fun for me, wasting time pondering what to drop in dungeon levels is an important game mechanic, but wasting time pondering which item to scrap at town level ... that's just annoying to me.

Feel free to disagree on wanting an extended home, but, can anyone really, honestly, give a good reason why it should not exist as a (adult or cheat) option? HONESTLY?!

[zaimoni]

Feel free to disagree on wanting an extended home, but, can anyone really, honestly, give a good reason why it should not exist as a (adult or cheat) option? HONESTLY?!

"Options are bad" (for maintainability and balancing).

In this case, technically maintainability is a one-off time cost, but I would be very surprised if the game could be balanced for both instances. [It's a fairly impressive one-off time cost. I did a feasibility analysis for "all stores unlimited stock" for Zaiband (which catches the home for free), but the gameplay benefits aren't really there until some other vaporware features are in place.]

Aesthetically, usually options default to the old behavior, which makes categorizing this one problematic (an ironman option would default to "easy" which should be the nearly unlimited home). So if the default is to be the old behavior, it's a cheat option anyway (which doesn't require balancing for).

[Spacebux]

Home-boy

For experienced players who know generally what / when to carry this or that, I think its much easier to say "the harder the better".

Code portability is a concern, but going easy on newbies would be a noble cause, in my opinion. People learn as they go.

I was a newbie not too long ago, now I know better what I should store or not in the homestead. And, as I have gained experience, I find myself recalling less & less. While I am not to the gung-ho Iron-man level yet, I'm not far from that.

Still - I think the idea of having flexibility in the home - offering a quiver there, or offering more slots in the home is a good thing. For experts who want a tougher game, by all means, go for it! You can increase the cost of items in the shops, reduce frequency of item drops, play a no-artifact game,... and so on.



Extra options only increase the enjoyability of the game, increasing interest in the game will only benefit those involved. Experts know how to make the game challenging for them.


--Spacebux--

[Rizwan]

Simple answer is yes. That's one of those "hard choices" I mentioned.

You just don't know which of the possible combinations will be the one you will be using at the end of the game, so you need to make educated guess. Sometimes it works, sometimes you end up with less than optimal gear. But you still have good gear, just not the best. Game can be won without artifacts at all, in fact in recent games I have been using Fury weapons almost exclusively in endgame.

Point for hard choices is not the newbies that are not going to win the game and will not be using the best gear anyway, it is the veterans. To keep game interesting.

You have to throw something away knowing that you might want to use it later. It hurts, but that is a good thing. Tuning and optimizing your gear not having all possibilities in use is a interesting challenge. Choose a route and stick to it.

Like having both Amrod and Amras, and needing to choose which one to toss. That is selection between +2 STR and CON vs +1 speed, INT,WIS and DEX and higher damage.

I disagree with Timo here. You are just optimizing the game for veterans and forcing noobs to memorize the spoilers. As Spacebux mentioned veterans can limit themselves using all sorts of inventive hardships. If the game does not have a store or a home or whatever then new players certainly cannot put that feature in, but if suppose there is an unlimited home with stores and selling then vets can simply choose not to indulge in these luxuries. or is it that the siren call of unlimited home and shopping will corrupt the said vets?

[buzzkill]

Veterans have experience to guide them in equipment choices. Noobs don't, nor should they. Should we change the game to make up for this lack of experience? No. I think that perhaps the push to make Angband more noob-friendly has been confused with make Angband more noob-winnable. If accomplishing no. 1 results in no. 2, then I think it's a failure. The fact that Angband is near impossible to beat (once upon a time) is what makes it worth playing.

No one forces anyone to view spoilers, nor is it necessary to do so. A minimally educated/experienced player can make logical decision about which equipment to keep and which to toss and be right 90% of the time. It may take more the half a dozen games (or many more than that) to learn the nuances of deep artifacts and rare resists, but that's all part of the fun.

I'm not opposed to unlimited home being a 'cheat option' or a 'no stores option', but I don't think the dev team is much interested in adding more options. I don't see the need for a quiver in the status-quo home, not that I haven't wished for one on occasion (pre-quiver). IMO, if you're stockpiling so much ammo that it won't fit in one or two inventory quiver slots, then you're probably way to focused on archery.

[Derakon]

Keep in mind that you are never equipment-screwed in Angband. It is entirely possible to win even if you've jettisoned every good artifact in the game. A limited home, therefore, may make the game harder for newbies than for veterans...but any number of things do that. It's called a learning curve, and negotiating it is part of the fun of learning to play the game.

As for the quiver, I'll reiterate my stance that the quiver should not expand your inventory space, but merely make small stacks of ammo usable. Allowing each quiver slot to hold 99 units of ammo is too much; it should be more around 40.

[fizzix]

As for the quiver, I'll reiterate my stance that the quiver should not expand your inventory space, but merely make small stacks of ammo usable. Allowing each quiver slot to hold 99 units of ammo is too much; it should be more around 40.

I agree with this too. Somewhere around 35 seems right. Then the whole quiver in home idea is kind of irrelevant.

[Rizwan]

Veterans have experience to guide them in equipment choices. Noobs don't, nor should they. Should we change the game to make up for this lack of experience? No. I think that perhaps the push to make Angband more noob-friendly has been confused with make Angband more noob-winnable. If accomplishing no. 1 results in no. 2, then I think it's a failure. The fact that Angband is near impossible to beat (once upon a time) is what makes it worth playing.

No one forces anyone to view spoilers, nor is it necessary to do so. A minimally educated/experienced player can make logical decision about which equipment to keep and which to toss and be right 90% of the time. It may take more the half a dozen games (or many more than that) to learn the nuances of deep artifacts and rare resists, but that's all part of the fun.

I'm not opposed to unlimited home being a 'cheat option' or a 'no stores option', but I don't think the dev team is much interested in adding more options. I don't see the need for a quiver in the status-quo home, not that I haven't wished for one on occasion (pre-quiver). IMO, if you're stockpiling so much ammo that it won't fit in one or two inventory quiver slots, then you're probably way to focused on archery.

Should we change the game to make up for experience then? Is the future angband then going to be Artifactless-Shopless-Homeless-Bookless-Ironman-band? That would certainly make it worth playing, right?

I think the debate should not be whether Angband should be easier or more difficult to win, but rather IF being noob friendly means that Angband is noob winnable THEN would that diminish the enjoyment one gets out of it? Consider that people who have played it for decades and have won it numerous times, timo et al, have devised various self imposed limitations (no options required) to the game to challenge themselves. Are they bored with the game? I dont know. Only they can tell us if now, after all of the various limitations that they have gone through do they find that the game no longer holds any appeal to them. The main thing is that they have that choice of how challenging they want the game to be.

If they feel that this would lessen the enjoyment of the game for ALL players then Artifactless-Shopless-Homeless-Bookless-Ironman-band here we come.

[fph]

Sometimes I think that the best way to go would be having three different difficulty levels, easy-normal-hard, to make the game more noob-friendly but at the same time remind them that "ok, you won, but what you won is not the real game". A tentative list of features for the three levels would be:

• easy level: unlimited home, infinite supply of basic items in stores, full monster memory, can cheat death once every game (ŕ la ToME's "blood of life"), HP and SP increased by 20 or 30% or some free resistance
• medium level: more or less what we have now. Maybe disconnected stairs?
• hard level: like the current ironman.

[PowerDiver]

As for the quiver, I'll reiterate my stance that the quiver should not expand your inventory space, but merely make small stacks of ammo usable. Allowing each quiver slot to hold 99 units of ammo is too much; it should be more around 40.

If we are reiterating, I'd go along with that if the number of everything that fits in a slot, not just the quiver, was reduced the same way. Saying 99 arrows fits in one slot but put into the quiver takes multiple slots is a mess. Then the question includes e.g. how many ?phase do you want a warrior to be able to carry in a single slot. http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=3524

[Derakon]

Sure, why not? Then the only thing the quiver does that's special is let multiple different types of objects occupy a single slot.

[pampl]

Sometimes I think that the best way to go would be having three different difficulty levels, easy-normal-hard, to make the game more noob-friendly but at the same time remind them that "ok, you won, but what you won is not the real game". A tentative list of features for the three levels would be:

• easy level: unlimited home, infinite supply of basic items in stores, full monster memory, can cheat death once every game (ŕ la ToME's "blood of life"), HP and SP increased by 20 or 30% or some free resistance
• medium level: more or less what we have now. Maybe disconnected stairs?
• hard level: like the current ironman.

I like this on paper, but when I first tried ToME 4 something about choosing a difficulty setting at the beginning bugged me. I can't put my finger on what though.