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Hi folks,
First off - a warm hello to everyone I forum'ed with and developed with in the old days.
Recently I got a hankering for Angband and decided to give it another go.
I just played through a game in 3.2.0. On my 8th try (3rd try that got past 20th level) as a Dwarf Rogue, I made it down to Morgoth. Morgoth killed me - I misremembered the max damage on Mana Storm and let myself get ~50 hp too low.
This game was different than I was used to for three main reasons: It was standard Angband (I usually played Oangband and other variants); I played with default birth settings (I usually played with smart_learn=on and preserve=off); There has been an additional 5 years of development.
Observations about recent changes:
- The changes to identify are a clear improvement. The savings in tedium more than make up for any simplification.
- I am glad to see Leon Marrick's quiver made it into standard Angband.
- I love the new gain one/lose one stat potions. They provide a strong ramp in power before stat gain and temper the importance of stat gain. They do make the early game (a lot) easier, but I can live with that, since I always found the early game disproportionately more dangerous than the mid and late games.
- The summoning changes are good. You still want to use anti-summoning corridors, but for new players who have not learned about them yet, it is easier to survive the first encounter with a heavy summoner.
- Artifacts have gotten stronger (some new, some revised). I am not sure that was needed.
- Core gameplay is largely unchanged. My memory of when to hold out for free action or various resists, for which uniques to treat cautiously, and for how to optimize my gear was pretty directly applicable.
- I am not crazy about the addition of unique titans. We already had enough mythologies in Angband.
- Autosquelch... Even though I added a form of it to Oangband, I am still not crazy about it. As I argued in detail on the newsgroup back in the day, I was concerned that squelch is a weak "bandaid" fix to the fundamental problem that too much junk loot drops. This can be fixed properly (reduced drops, increased drop quality, more utility items in stores), but the addition of squelching makes it all too easy to ignore these issues. I was going this way (incrementally) in Oangband, and had already reduced drop quantities in the late game more than 2x.
- Ego DSM. This is pretty over the top. In my game I bought a DSM of speed +8 in the black market before 2000 feet. Eventually I replaced it with another DSM of speed ... +9. In the mid game, this is insanely powerful. In the end game, your really just want enough stats, 20 speed, critical resists, and all the slaying bonuses you can get; DSM of Speed freed me up to have get slaying bonuses on both rings for the Morgoth fight. I understand the desire to make DSM more viable - in Oangband I took another approach based on shapeshifting.
Observations of Angband vs Oangband:
- It seems that Angband still has the idea that "everyone reverts to melee at high levels". I can live with this as a premise of Angband, but really it is not a good feature for the game. Truly varied gameplay between the classes is my #1 wish for Angband.
- I was putting a lot of work into monster AI in Oangband. Angband does not seem to have done much on this. I would really like to see monster AI improve significantly. It just feels stupid to have endgame uniques casting pointless spells. Some version of improved AI is my #2 wish for Angband
- I missed the Oangband combat system. In Angband, combat performance of weapons just felt so generic. "Slay Foo" and brands were worth considering, but not generally worth carrying swap weapons. Every classes converges on the same preferred weapons, instead of promoting heavier weapons for brawny combat classes.
- Something similar applies to armor - in Angband the whole kit looks pretty much the same for every classes. In Oangband, armour weight is a huge issue for full casters, and a moderate one for hybrids.
Observations on Birth Settings:
- This was my first game that I can remember with preserve mode on. I officially give up on non-preserve. Preserve mode just take so much tedium out of the game. Doing complete clears of dozens of 'special' levels, most of which have only monster pits, is an intolerable pain.
- Smart-learn - I left this off in keeping with the defaults, but I don't understand why it is defaulted that way. The monsters are pretty freakin' stupid already, and the late game is easy enough. Can we just default this to true at some point?
General points:
- Various tweaks seem to have made the game easier - most of the time the tweaks themselves are great for usability reasons. It might make sense for a future upgrade to retune difficultly overall, though.
- The newsgroup seems pretty quiet. Great thanks to Pav and any others involved in running this site.
My next move will be to play through FAangband.
I would love to get back to developing, but realistically, I don't have time. I stopped working on Oangband when I got a full time coding job, and I lost my appetite to also code as a hobby. Even though I am no longer coding at work, my work load is pretty crazy
First off - a warm hello to everyone I forum'ed with and developed with in the old days.
Recently I got a hankering for Angband and decided to give it another go.
I just played through a game in 3.2.0. On my 8th try (3rd try that got past 20th level) as a Dwarf Rogue, I made it down to Morgoth. Morgoth killed me - I misremembered the max damage on Mana Storm and let myself get ~50 hp too low.
This game was different than I was used to for three main reasons: It was standard Angband (I usually played Oangband and other variants); I played with default birth settings (I usually played with smart_learn=on and preserve=off); There has been an additional 5 years of development.
Observations about recent changes:
- The changes to identify are a clear improvement. The savings in tedium more than make up for any simplification.
- I am glad to see Leon Marrick's quiver made it into standard Angband.
- I love the new gain one/lose one stat potions. They provide a strong ramp in power before stat gain and temper the importance of stat gain. They do make the early game (a lot) easier, but I can live with that, since I always found the early game disproportionately more dangerous than the mid and late games.
- The summoning changes are good. You still want to use anti-summoning corridors, but for new players who have not learned about them yet, it is easier to survive the first encounter with a heavy summoner.
- Artifacts have gotten stronger (some new, some revised). I am not sure that was needed.
- Core gameplay is largely unchanged. My memory of when to hold out for free action or various resists, for which uniques to treat cautiously, and for how to optimize my gear was pretty directly applicable.
- I am not crazy about the addition of unique titans. We already had enough mythologies in Angband.
- Autosquelch... Even though I added a form of it to Oangband, I am still not crazy about it. As I argued in detail on the newsgroup back in the day, I was concerned that squelch is a weak "bandaid" fix to the fundamental problem that too much junk loot drops. This can be fixed properly (reduced drops, increased drop quality, more utility items in stores), but the addition of squelching makes it all too easy to ignore these issues. I was going this way (incrementally) in Oangband, and had already reduced drop quantities in the late game more than 2x.
- Ego DSM. This is pretty over the top. In my game I bought a DSM of speed +8 in the black market before 2000 feet. Eventually I replaced it with another DSM of speed ... +9. In the mid game, this is insanely powerful. In the end game, your really just want enough stats, 20 speed, critical resists, and all the slaying bonuses you can get; DSM of Speed freed me up to have get slaying bonuses on both rings for the Morgoth fight. I understand the desire to make DSM more viable - in Oangband I took another approach based on shapeshifting.
Observations of Angband vs Oangband:
- It seems that Angband still has the idea that "everyone reverts to melee at high levels". I can live with this as a premise of Angband, but really it is not a good feature for the game. Truly varied gameplay between the classes is my #1 wish for Angband.
- I was putting a lot of work into monster AI in Oangband. Angband does not seem to have done much on this. I would really like to see monster AI improve significantly. It just feels stupid to have endgame uniques casting pointless spells. Some version of improved AI is my #2 wish for Angband
- I missed the Oangband combat system. In Angband, combat performance of weapons just felt so generic. "Slay Foo" and brands were worth considering, but not generally worth carrying swap weapons. Every classes converges on the same preferred weapons, instead of promoting heavier weapons for brawny combat classes.
- Something similar applies to armor - in Angband the whole kit looks pretty much the same for every classes. In Oangband, armour weight is a huge issue for full casters, and a moderate one for hybrids.
Observations on Birth Settings:
- This was my first game that I can remember with preserve mode on. I officially give up on non-preserve. Preserve mode just take so much tedium out of the game. Doing complete clears of dozens of 'special' levels, most of which have only monster pits, is an intolerable pain.
- Smart-learn - I left this off in keeping with the defaults, but I don't understand why it is defaulted that way. The monsters are pretty freakin' stupid already, and the late game is easy enough. Can we just default this to true at some point?
General points:
- Various tweaks seem to have made the game easier - most of the time the tweaks themselves are great for usability reasons. It might make sense for a future upgrade to retune difficultly overall, though.
- The newsgroup seems pretty quiet. Great thanks to Pav and any others involved in running this site.
My next move will be to play through FAangband.
I would love to get back to developing, but realistically, I don't have time. I stopped working on Oangband when I got a full time coding job, and I lost my appetite to also code as a hobby. Even though I am no longer coding at work, my work load is pretty crazy
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