Those first few rings are crap

[CliffStamp]

... but we want to avoid game design that results in boring behavior, and IDing everything by scrolls/spells/etc. in the early game is boring behavior.

Yes but it is also trivial/novice game behavior, no one who has played angband beyond the beginning level would do that. As with all aspects of Angband this is part of resource management and in the early game doing this well can have a significant effect on how much money you have which is directly related to rate of power gain.

For example most early items can be used with very low risk of permanent harm, yes there are a few items that if you caught early would basically force a reset but they are extremely rare and you can also take care of these by inscribing and avoiding use. Positioning in the dungeon can also vastly reduce risk and your only real chance of death is the not common but insanely funny wand of polymorph + worm mass = AMHD.

In the early game money is very important, and being able to get a 8/8 bow + 8/8 arrows (as just one example) makes a massive difference on what can and can not be killed. Avoiding having to id items both reduces scroll cost on remove curse, id and also minimizes trips to town by maxing decisions on what is most likely to get maximum reward in resale when you are left with rods, wands, and rings which are not id'ed and not cursed and have no visible effect when used.

In general I would argue that there should be a benefit to doing this not the opposite. For example I argued long ago that using cursed items and then removing them would "harden the will" and have a random chance to increase con and/or saving throw (small, balance is key here). Again this would add another layer to the game not trivialize an existing one.

[Derakon]

Yes but it is also trivial/novice game behavior, no one who has played angband beyond the beginning level would do that. As with all aspects of Angband this is part of resource management and in the early game doing this well can have a significant effect on how much money you have which is directly related to rate of power gain.

So how do you propose an experienced player handle the fact that the greater part of the early game rings are cursed? Weakness, Stupidity, Teleportation, Aggravation, Feather Fall, Slow Digestion, and maybe Protection (which could also be cursed for a negative modifier!). You either equip the item and then have to deal with a penalty until you can get back to town (and spend way more on ?RemoveCurse than you would have on ?Identify), or you spend the money on ?Identify, or you assume that any early-game ring you find cannot be worth using, which risks you missing out on an out-of-depth item.

For example most early items can be used with very low risk of permanent harm, yes there are a few items that if you caught early would basically force a reset but they are extremely rare and you can also take care of these by inscribing and avoiding use. Positioning in the dungeon can also vastly reduce risk and your only real chance of death is the not common but insanely funny wand of polymorph + worm mass = AMHD.

First off, note that I'm talking specifically about rings here. Bad consumables have a much more limited scope to harm you since they don't glue themselves to your body when you use them. I have no problem with trying to ID e.g. ?SummonMonsters by use; the player learns to read new scrolls while standing in a safe area (cul de sac or staircase) and that's totally fine.

Alas, polymorph no longer is able to generate monsters from any depth, thereby completely eliminating any interest the spell had.

In the early game money is very important, and being able to get a 8/8 bow + 8/8 arrows (as just one example) makes a massive difference on what can and can not be killed. Avoiding having to id items both reduces scroll cost on remove curse, id and also minimizes trips to town by maxing decisions on what is most likely to get maximum reward in resale when you are left with rods, wands, and rings which are not id'ed and not cursed and have no visible effect when used.

A few notes here:

1) You cannot buy enchantment scrolls any more, so getting that enchanted bow and arrows (or other useful enchanted weapon) early on is a matter of luck -- and you're more likely to find such items in the dungeon than in the town even in the early game (I believe town items have been nerfed, excepting the Black Market), so money doesn't enter into it so much.

2) I think there's something of a subconscious shift in game design thought among the devs to deprecate selling as much as possible. Certainly there's a desire to make the player find their good gear as much as possible, rather than buy it. And the no-selling option is getting a lot of traction, though there are of course detractors as well (I don't think the selling game will actually go away anytime soon).

3) Even if you are playing a selling game, the cost of buying an ID to find out if that ring you found is junk is generally less than the opportunity cost of hauling up an un-ID'd ring for ID-by-selling instead of bringing up something you know will sell well. IIRC un-ID'd rings go for 20-40 gold while even an un-ID'd longsword with {average} pseudo is worth enough more to make buying the ?ID worthwhile.

In general I would argue that there should be a benefit to doing this not the opposite. For example I argued long ago that using cursed items and then removing them would "harden the will" and have a random chance to increase con and/or saving throw (small, balance is key here). Again this would add another layer to the game not trivialize an existing one.

So I bring up my cursed rings, buy a stack of ?RemoveCurse, then wield the rings and read the scrolls for a statistically cheap stat boost. That's the kind of obscure abusive strategy I'd expect from NetHack; Angband aims to be much more transparent.

[CliffStamp]

... or you assume that any early-game ring you find cannot be worth using, which risks you missing out on an out-of-depth item.

You use in game knowledge from experience. If you have for example a strong feeling and nothing turns up aside from two rings then it is very likely one of them is the feeling cause. Aside from that you just inscribe on them and sell them for ID, similar with other rods/staves/wands, etc. which activate for nothing. Again it is a risk/reward decision which also depends on game pace.

1) You cannot buy enchantment scrolls any more ...

What exactly was the logic behind that?

How do you handle something like Calris?

3) Even if you are playing a selling game, the cost of buying an ID to find out if that ring you found is junk is generally less than the opportunity cost of hauling up an un-ID'd ring for ID-by-selling instead of bringing up something you know will sell well.

It is not a one time cost and it is simply part of the balance on when to return / what to buy. Once you ID a ring you have no need for, all future rings are essentially junked so you inventory slot expands by one slot (based on sell cost), this doesn't happen with average weapons for example so even if the ring sells for less, the future gain is higher inventory wise.

IIRC un-ID'd rings go for 20-40 gold while even an un-ID'd longsword with {average} pseudo is worth enough more to make buying the ?ID worthwhile.

Assuming they are there and assuming you have the cash to set out to make the investment which could happen early or could not.

That's the kind of obscure abusive strategy I'd expect from NetHack; Angband aims to be much more transparent.

It was part of a larger list of changes of similar theme so for example if you drank a potion of poison and didn't die you had a chance to increase con or gain resist to poison as an intrinsic. Again these were all low chances, the goal would be that someone who aggressively tried out all items would likely gain say 1-3 scattered stat points, a slight increase in saving throw, and possibly an intrinsic or two. Again it is just a balance issue to get the percentages right and balance the item frequency obviously.

At the time, this was long before squelch, the idea was to make all items non-trivial and to reward aggressive use rather than passive play which makes it trivial (just id everything). Now it could be argued that is the reality of actual adventuring and rpg in general and it is a bit munchkin to make everything useful but at the time the discussion was upon making items be good and bad not simply useless. It never really went anywhere (not active development at the time) so it never got out of the prelim stage.

I implemented some small changes like a potion of poison made you poison resistant but also increased the rate of HP loss and duration and ccw only reduced the counter not eliminated it. This meant it was useful as poor mans potion of res. poison but not something you wanted to rely on. I also added that while you were poisoned your blade would have poisoned strike but a much weaker version. It was a case where you could increase damage while taking it. Again you have to balance the effect of the brand. Come to think of it I believe I had it add a percentage which decreased as you your counter decreased.

[Derakon]

What exactly was the logic behind that?

How do you handle something like Calris?

The logic was that pluses are in fact one of the most powerful things you can get on a weapon, so their availability needs to be carefully controlled. That means either removing them from the stores outright or making them far, far more expensive (probably on the order of potions of CHA price-wise). Given that money eventually becomes irrelevant while enchantment remains useful for much of the game, I suspect the devs made the right choice here.

v4 has been playing with different ways to make items magical, and allowing for weapons that have special abilities without having magical bonuses to-hit/dam. The first few iterations of this often had magical pluses be much more rare, and it made a huge difference in how hard the early game (through to about 1000') was. You don't really think about how much more damage that +5 on your 1d5 main gauche is giving you until you don't have it any more; in fact it was almost tripling your average damage.

(Of course, now v4's combat system is completely different so it's harder to compare)

As for Calris, you can either use it with its to-hit penalty or ignore it; your choice. Do note that any attempt to enchant an item has a chance to break its curse, even if they enchantment fails; it used to be that you had to get the item to positive enchantments first. So it'll take much fewer enchantment scrolls to de-sticky Calris, now; the scrolls are just individually harder to find.

It is not a one time cost and it is simply part of the balance on when to return / what to buy. Once you ID a ring you have no need for, all future rings are essentially junked so you inventory slot expands by one slot (based on sell cost), this doesn't happen with average weapons for example so even if the ring sells for less, the future gain is higher inventory wise.

Sure, but if you can ID that ring in the dungeon instead of hauling it back to the town, then you can haul something else back to the town instead and make more money.

In any event, to the extent that going back to the town is boring gameplay, things that encourage you to go back to town more often are discouraged.

At the time, this was long before squelch, the idea was to make all items non-trivial and to reward aggressive use rather than passive play which makes it trivial (just id everything). Now it could be argued that is the reality of actual adventuring and rpg in general and it is a bit munchkin to make everything useful but at the time the discussion was upon making items be good and bad not simply useless. It never really went anywhere (not active development at the time) so it never got out of the prelim stage.

This sounds to me like what was done with the mushrooms; a lot of them are mixed-blessing items now. For example, Mushrooms of Emergency heal you for 200HP and IIRC give you temporary cold/fire resistance, but they also make you hallucinate for a long time. In principle I don't object to every item having a (possibly niche) use, though thematically I find it a bit weird that you being poisoned would cause your weapon to inflict poison damage. Are you puking all over your gear or something?

[CliffStamp]

The logic was that pluses are in fact one of the most powerful things you can get on a weapon, so their availability needs to be carefully controlled.

It was. Once you realized the importance was stock pile the enchant scrolls (weapons mainly but armor to a lesser extend as it has far less of an influence). As getting anything past 8/8 required a lot of money anyway and keeping up 8/8 arrows required a lot of cash. I can never remember them being that common that it was trivial to enchant everything early on

This added a layer to the early game where if you found for example a high level stave it was basically saw as adding 4/4 on your main 0/0 weapon, or bring up a decent weapon to 10/10 or giving you a set of 8/8 arrows or allowing a stave of destruction to turn instead of a rod of acid bolts. Similar with a ring or similar which was marginal now.

The decision then was to keep such items for late game or sell them to speed up the early game as even $1-$2 early on can make a lot in terms of detection/avoidance ability.

In any event, to the extent that going back to the town is boring gameplay, things that encourage you to go back to town more often are discouraged.

So it was decided to turn Angband into Ironman by default?

[Derakon]

So it was decided to turn Angband into Ironman by default?

No; in Ironman you can't buy "basic consumables" like CCW, Phase Door, ID, spellbooks, or ammo; nor can you get a few stat gain potions or a Ring of Free Action, etc. from the Black Market.

I would describe the basic philosophy as "Buying new gear is boring, but finding new gear is exciting." Thus the game should not be predicated on buying as much stuff as possible. Certainly there are exceptions to this, like when you see a high-priced item that you can't quite afford so you sell other stuff you're actually currently using (or make a quick jaunt to the dungeon and hope the store doesn't restock while you're out). However, those are largely dealing with the Black Market, which hasn't changed in behavior. Buying stuff from the "basic" stores is what's been changed; they should provide the gear you need to get started, as well as a selection of utility items*, but that's it.

* Arguably, any item that is usually available in stores, and that you automatically buy any time you're in town because you know you'll use it when you're in the dungeon, is a sign of a breakdown somewhere. Ideally the item shouldn't be needed, or should be needed in quantities greater than the town allows for. Otherwise we just have gameplay that amounts to a "Did you restock recently?" check, which doesn't provide depth.

[Stan Belik]

It's an interesting discussion going on here. And I think I have something to add as well

I'm new to the forum, but I've been playing Angband since 2010, and at that time the version I first played was 2.9.3.

Then it was a long pause in my playing, after which I took up Angband 3.3.0. (It is now I realize that the version of Angband has a great impact on how the gameplay generally feels like, but back then I never read the forums or anything, so I just guessed that all the newer versions were just improvements of the older ones, maybe adding but not changing any established gameplay features). Having played 2.9.3 really heavily, I grew accustomed to all the features it could offer. At this moment I'm playing 3.3.2 really heavily (as I've been playing 3.3.0 sometime ago), and I still can't get used to the absence of cursed items.

I remember it felt really annoying (especially at early levels) to me back then when trying on some sword of a piece of armor turned up having it attached to your body giving you stat drains or some disadvantages of other types. Probably that was what keeped me from reaching deeper dungeon levels and thus winning the game (and I never won - I couldn't even get deep as I venture in the current release), but it was there and it added up to the challenge the game could provide. And even never getting close to such powerful items, deep DLevels and high CLevels and not having any of the artifacts my current 3.3.2 character posesses, it was, let me face it, more fun for me.

Right now, without cursed items, the matter of winning is just about the player knowing (and having mastered) all the tactics necessary to survive deep down in the dungeon. This does not feel much like roleplaying to me. Back then it was, seems to me, more realistic - you (and your character, which is more important) had to think heavily before even trying to put something on - it was a matter of life and death sometimes. Right now it's like the dungeon is filled just with (+0,+0) - normal or (+something, +something) - enchanted items.
But is it realistic? There's a lot of stuff supposed to be scattered around the dungeon. There should be, for example, some rusted swords lying around the floor of some rooms. Of course something like that can easily be recognised by the player and the PC as not-so-good of an weapon, being (-4,-6) or something like that. But IMHO those things *should* be there - even to simply add to the flavour of the game. Nowadays I personally play like this:
1 - find a weapon
2 - ID it
3 - see if it's better than my current one
4a - if it is - wield it
4b - if it is not - squelch it (i.e. throw it away)
5 - continue on
And it used to be:
...
4b - holy smokes, I'm so happy and joyful I never tried it on before ID'ng it!!! gosh, I'm such a lucky and prudent guy!!! Now I can push forward with no worries and finally destroy that evil Morgoth guy!!! Yeah!!!
5 - happily venture on

What I mean is that for me personally having cursed items added lots of emotion while playing the game. What I also want to say is that I see no logic in getting rid of bad (and sometimes even useless - where are the canine skeletons?) items.

Anyone played Ragnarok (AKA Valhalla)? If anyone did, you know what made that roguelike ultimately challenging - lots, and I mean *LOTS* of items there are either bad for your PC or just useless (happens much rarely) - this along with ID being not so readilly available. Can be irritating? Yes. But anyway, it felt that those items *belonged* to that world.

I see it like with 3D action games. Remember the very first one - Wolfenstien? It's still a good game, but I doubt I'll ever play it again. Why? Because it is just walls and right-angled rooms and enemies and ammo and good loot. No furniture, nothing just lying around as it is in real life.

Well, thanks for listening to my rant. It'll be really interesting to know what you guys think about it.

Dixi

[Derakon]

Thanks for the post, Stan (Dixi?). It's not often we get a perspective on the overall changes between the 2.x series and more recent versions of the game.

How would you feel about items that are bad, but more subtly bad? For example, you wield a new sword, and it behaves like any other sword -- a bit better than your old one, maybe, so you keep it around. But eventually you notice that all the monsters are always awake now, or that for some reason every single level has a particular unique on it that you've had to keep running away from, or that your potions seem to be getting shattered by cold attacks with suspicious regularity. So you take a closer look at that sword, and discover that it had a hidden curse on it.

As a further hypothetical extension to "my" hypothetical game in which you don't get ID to discover the attributes on equipment or what a particular ring/wand/etc. does, you could have hidden attributes which aren't recognizable by the character; it's up to the player to recognize how things have changed and put two and two together. Perhaps we could have ID scrolls and the old potions of Self Knowledge as rare/deep items that would actually tell you all the attributes of an item, including the hidden ones -- but certainly for the early/mid-game you'd be on your own.

I'm sure someone's already implemented this. They tend to.

[Nick]

How do you deal with squelch. Do you squelch based on power, such as all steel rings? Or something else?

You can technically squelch all cursed, but in practice you don't want to because any ring might be usable.

FA also has a fairly early bailout from the ID subgame (rods of ID are shallower and more common), so by the time you are getting lots of rings you just ID them all. Although of course that doesn't tell you about curses...

[fizzix]

You can technically squelch all cursed, but in practice you don't want to because any ring might be usable.

FA also has a fairly early bailout from the ID subgame (rods of ID are shallower and more common), so by the time you are getting lots of rings you just ID them all. Although of course that doesn't tell you about curses...

That probably leads to my biggest pet-peeve with late game gameplay in Angband. Namely you clear a giant pit or vault and you're left with 100 armor/weapons that you need to ID (or at least test ID). Usually at this point I squelch all but artifacts, and the big dice weapons, just because I don't want to deal with it. This becomes a bigger problem in v4, where any ego can be comparable in power to an artifact. Even if you IDd everything on sight, you still have to manually sort through the 100 useless items for the one good one.

This is where squelch truly shines. Only the question is, is it that important that you want to design your items/egos around squelch or not...

[Malak Darkhunter]

That probably leads to my biggest pet-peeve with late game gameplay in Angband. Namely you clear a giant pit or vault and you're left with 100 armor/weapons that you need to ID (or at least test ID). Usually at this point I squelch all but artifacts, and the big dice weapons, just because I don't want to deal with it. This becomes a bigger problem in v4, where any ego can be comparable in power to an artifact. Even if you IDd everything on sight, you still have to manually sort through the 100 useless items for the one good one.

This is where squelch truly shines. Only the question is, is it that important that you want to design your items/egos around squelch or not...

mass identify

[Derakon]

mass identify

Doesn't help. v4's problem isn't that you don't know what the item does -- its properties are readily discernable because v4 uses rune-based ID. The problem is that you can't readily say which combinations of properties are useful without looking at them first, so the game can't squelch them for you. You have to say "Okay, that's a 3d4 sword with good pluses, slay demon, a weak electrical brand, and bonuses to STR and CON...but I'd rather keep my current weapon which has a strong acid brand and bigger dice."

In short, by making the potential variation of items so much bigger, our previous categorization-based squelch system breaks down.

[Nick]

Doesn't help. v4's problem isn't that you don't know what the item does -- its properties are readily discernable because v4 uses rune-based ID. The problem is that you can't readily say which combinations of properties are useful without looking at them first, so the game can't squelch them for you. You have to say "Okay, that's a 3d4 sword with good pluses, slay demon, a weak electrical brand, and bonuses to STR and CON...but I'd rather keep my current weapon which has a strong acid brand and bigger dice."

In short, by making the potential variation of items so much bigger, our previous categorization-based squelch system breaks down.

Yeah, this is a 'problem' that FA already has to some extent too. One of the nice things about Vanilla is the relatively simple equipment tradeoffs.

[Stan Belik]

How would you feel about items that are bad, but more subtly bad? For example, you wield a new sword, and it behaves like any other sword -- a bit better than your old one, maybe, so you keep it around. But eventually you notice that all the monsters are always awake now, or that for some reason every single level has a particular unique on it that you've had to keep running away from, or that your potions seem to be getting shattered by cold attacks with suspicious regularity. So you take a closer look at that sword, and discover that it had a hidden curse on it.

I'd feel really nice about this particular idea in general. This obviously makes the game more interesting - making you concentrate and think even more, thus involving you much more into the feeling of the depths of Angband.

But the question is - what do you mean by saying "...you take a closer look at..."? You mean it's the player himself who takes a closer look? Otherwise, how can this be implemented game-wise?

As a further hypothetical extension to "my" hypothetical game in which you don't get ID to discover the attributes on equipment or what a particular ring/wand/etc. does, you could have hidden attributes which aren't recognizable by the character; it's up to the player to recognize how things have changed and put two and two together.

So even the shopkeepers aren't actually aware of all or most of the attributes the items can possess? Why not implement a feature then which would allow the shopkeepers to charge money for ID'ng things for you? It should be a rather big sum of gold, but again it would be more realistic than, say, current playing with 'no_sell = on'. Because now it looks to me like this - you come to a shopkeeper, you ask him to identify something for you, he agrees, but a price for doing so would actually be handing him the item no matter the result of ID. I see no logic here.

Perhaps we could have ID scrolls and the old potions of Self Knowledge as rare/deep items that would actually tell you all the attributes of an item, including the hidden ones -- but certainly for the early/mid-game you'd be on your own.

This fits my idea above really well - you can't suppose the shopkeepers to know all the item properties which exist out there - maybe the PC is the first one to get that deep and fetch some mysterious item out of the dungeon. That's where rare and expensive ID scrolls and the abovementioned potions come to play.

So the basic idea is - the enchantments should be 'level-based' of some sorts. Low-level ones can be identified by the merchants for quite a fee. Mid-level ones can also be ID'd by the shopkeepers but it should probably take them some more time, i.e. ID is not instant in this case (you leave the item with them for a while for them to compare the enchantments of the item with the ones they have in stock via some magical experiments, or to consult some old magic tomes, for example). And high-leveled enchantments are unknown to the townsfolk (except, maybe, for the guy who runs the black market, but he charges *way* to much for his ID service), so that's where you use those rare ID scrolls etc.

This approach makes ID challenging all the way down from the first dungeon levels to the very depths of Angband - exactly what is felt needed by lots of people here, as far as I noticed (I may be wrong here).

That's how I see it I'll be glad to hear what you, guys, think about my ideas

Edit - aslo-also

[CliffStamp]

Namely you clear a giant pit or vault and you're left with 100 armor/weapons that you need to ID (or at least test ID).

A rod/want of acid balls does a fairly decent job at that point unless you are still farming for money.