V 3.5 now in feature freeze

[TJS]

It's a vault. Vaults are supposed to be hard to get into, but not necessarily hard to get out (not a prison). Of course a change where you deny <u>all</u> teleportation inside a vault could be acceptable to me also. No easy cleaning vaults. I have also suggested that earthquake and destruction are prevented from touching vault area. IE. Vault is "protected" from tampering.

Only being able to teleport into a vault is hard to get into safely.

It's definitely harder than just using stone to mud to get in, which is trivial once you have a wand/the spell.

Unless by hard to get into you really mean "impossible for the first 20 levels or so and then incredibly easy afterwards".

Edit: Now a vault with permanent rock all the way around that you can only get into by teleporting. That would be hard to get in.

[Timo Pietilä]

As far as consistency goes, either permanent walls can be teleported through or they can't. The idea that they only work one way doesn't make sense.

It's a vault. Vaults are supposed to be hard to get into, but not necessarily hard to get out (not a prison). Of course a change where you deny <u>all</u> teleportation inside a vault could be acceptable to me also. No easy cleaning vaults. I have also suggested that earthquake and destruction are prevented from touching vault area. IE. Vault is "protected" from tampering.

[TJS]

This would make any form of teleportation a russian roulette and nobody would use it anymore. You don't really want to teleport inside a vault like Castle Death with dozens of monsters in LOS which get a turn before you can react. Pits already allow this, which is a nightmare... I remember getting a char killed with over -3000 hps because an unlucky teleport landed him inside an undead pit where there was one empty spot.

-3000 ha ha. At least you can't say that you nearly survived.

Teleportation is risky anyway in case you end up in a pack of gravity hounds, I have no problem with the small risk of landing in a vault. It's all part of the danger of death that Angband is all about. Remove all those marginal risks and you've not got a lot of game left.

The way you're talking you sound like you might want to prevent landing in an undead pit as well. Where's Buzzkill when you need him?

[PowerWyrm]

I wouldn't call phasing into a vault "easy access". Would be very dangerous indeed. I don't see any gameplay reason why you wouldn't allow it, it just means that if you don't have a digger/heavy weapon or stone to mud they are impossible to get to even by the very risky method of teleporting in. In other words an interesting risk/reward opportunity is removed and one of the standard gameplay device of teleportation is fudged to make it happen.

As far as consistency goes, either permanent walls can be teleported through or they can't. The idea that they only work one way doesn't make sense.

This would make any form of teleportation a russian roulette and nobody would use it anymore. You don't really want to teleport inside a vault like Castle Death with dozens of monsters in LOS which get a turn before you can react. Pits already allow this, which is a nightmare... I remember getting a char killed with over -3000 hps because an unlucky teleport landed him inside an undead pit where there was one empty spot.

[TJS]

That's not rule change, it is just rule. You can't teleport into vault. Not even when you are already in the vault. That's what actually makes vault a vault: no easy access. Vaults are also the only place in the dungeon where you can encounter permanent walls (besides town and dungeon borders).

For consistence reasons that teleport rule should work for monsters too, tele-to or phase door for them should result you or it outside of vault, and teleport away should also always move monster outside of the vault.

I wouldn't call phasing into a vault "easy access". Would be very dangerous indeed. I don't see any gameplay reason why you wouldn't allow it, it just means that if you don't have a digger/heavy weapon or stone to mud they are impossible to get to even by the very risky method of teleporting in. In other words an interesting risk/reward opportunity is removed and one of the standard gameplay device of teleportation is fudged to make it happen.

As far as consistency goes, either permanent walls can be teleported through or they can't. The idea that they only work one way doesn't make sense.

[Timo Pietilä]

They were an interesting concept -- figuring out a way to give players early access to permanent speed that isn't gamebreaking -- but I think they need to be reworked and not overlap so heavily with the existing fear effect.

Rings of escaping: Makes you faster, immune to physical damages, but also unable to do any damage yourself? Should impair spellcasting, maybe zeroing your mana? Also no missile weapons (zero the range, you can use missile weapon, but range is zero so you can only target your own spot). Like having impenetrable cocoon around you. Elemental damages still get thru.

Not sure what to do with activations, wands, rods and staves.

IMO you could just get rid of those rings and terror effect. In my opinion both are irrelevant for the game. Not needed, so unnecessary add-ons that just make game more messy.

[Timo Pietilä]

Sure. As far as I can see you cannot phase door into a vault and if you are inside it will always put you outside of it. This means that the standard rules of what phase door do are broken when it comes to vaults.

That's not rule change, it is just rule. You can't teleport into vault. Not even when you are already in the vault. That's what actually makes vault a vault: no easy access. Vaults are also the only place in the dungeon where you can encounter permanent walls (besides town and dungeon borders).

For consistence reasons that teleport rule should work for monsters too, tele-to or phase door for them should result you or it outside of vault, and teleport away should also always move monster outside of the vault.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I'm running the 30 Sep 2013 at 21:20 UTC, revision 508d0ad now, and squelching works just fine.

Squelch bugs persist in Oct 05 dev 574. Appears to squelch one quality level above what is indicated (e.g., setting squelch of Elven Cloaks to "Excellent, but not splendid" squelches "Non-artifact" instead). There seems to be some disconnectedness between squelching from the inventory/equipment menus and squelching from the options menu, they don't seem to match up. Digger squelching is limited. Unclear what the new category "Great Weapons" covers.

Another persistent bug is in targeting. When a monster is just around the corner and you can "see" it, you can target it. You can also target that location if a monster is not there. However, if a monster is on that location and you cannot "see" it, then targeting will not lock.

Finally, dropping items from inventory/equipment menus still has persistent, albeit intermittent, bugs. For example, you id an item and go to drop it, but the option isn't available. You have to leave the menus, select "d"rop and then drop the item. Still haven't figured out why this is intermittent. Possibly in connection with having inscriptions on the items, and/or items being ego or artifact items, and/or items in the quiver?

[TJS]

The problem with the terror effect vs. heroism is that heroism is an important and balanced potion in its own right -- you sacrifice an inventory slot in exchange for being able to be temporarily immune to fear effects. But if you could wear Rings of Escaping and avoid their bad effects by using heroism, then you would, every time. Speed is so valuable that players will sacrifice almost anything to get it; having to lose an inventory slot and a few hundred gold is nothing, really. You'd have to make heroism far less available just to make certain that Escaping was still "balanced", but that screws over the normal use for the item.

I sympathize with your view that the game shouldn't contort its rules to maintain balance, but at the same time, every effect in the game is its own "ruleset", and should be freely adapted until its rules achieve the desired in-game effect. Or, if that can't be done elegantly, then the item should be removed or re-designed.

Can you think of a way to have a ring that gives you +4 speed, early on, without being unbalancing or uninteresting? By which I mean, without it being either total junk or a no-brainer equipment item for every class?

Well for mushrooms of terror even if they were used with heroism would just be as good as potions of speed which are available from the first couple of levels anyway (well at least they used to be - I didn't notice any until deeper levels on the latest version, has this changed? You really need them early on).

The real unbalancing factor is speed itself which I've mentioned before. Speed is so ridiculously overpowered and yet also so necessary when facing a faster dangerous opponent because of double moves that having or not having it completely changes the game. In fact I'd say that when you get +10 speed the rest of the game becomes very easy.

You could nerf speed by impairing recovery, increasing spell failure rates etc. but then I'm arguing against myself a little bit here (although I'd say it is slightly different to the other rules I was complaining about).

If I had my way I'd probably get rid of the whole concept of speed altogether

[Derakon]

The problem with the terror effect vs. heroism is that heroism is an important and balanced potion in its own right -- you sacrifice an inventory slot in exchange for being able to be temporarily immune to fear effects. But if you could wear Rings of Escaping and avoid their bad effects by using heroism, then you would, every time. Speed is so valuable that players will sacrifice almost anything to get it; having to lose an inventory slot and a few hundred gold is nothing, really. You'd have to make heroism far less available just to make certain that Escaping was still "balanced", but that screws over the normal use for the item.

I sympathize with your view that the game shouldn't contort its rules to maintain balance, but at the same time, every effect in the game is its own "ruleset", and should be freely adapted until its rules achieve the desired in-game effect. Or, if that can't be done elegantly, then the item should be removed or re-designed.

Can you think of a way to have a ring that gives you +4 speed, early on, without being unbalancing or uninteresting? By which I mean, without it being either total junk or a no-brainer equipment item for every class?

[TJS]

Rings of Escaping create a different status effect than being frightened; I think it's called "terror". The entire idea of them is that they give you early speed but keep you from being able to fight effectively by any means. Frankly I think they don't work very well; mages might use 2 of them for the speed bonus if they think they can handle the failure rate penalty, and everyone else basically ignores them.

They were an interesting concept -- figuring out a way to give players early access to permanent speed that isn't gamebreaking -- but I think they need to be reworked and not overlap so heavily with the existing fear effect. Maybe they could simply break (be unequipped and destroyed) if the player ever causes damage to an enemy by any means while wearing them? The trick then would be differentiating between damage that monsters cause to each other (e.g. breath attack splash damage) and damage caused by the player.

I use them with almost all my characters even warriors occasionally.

Terror is being scared really though isn't it? Having two very similar properties is really clunky and messes the rules up too much.

Please no "this ring breaks if you damage a monster with them" attempt at a fix (ie completely break how rings work to combat a seemingly overpowered item). This is what I was getting at when I said I didn't like rules that arbitrarily change in one-off situations.

A good set of game rules are simple, work consistently and allow interesting decisions and strategies that often the designers didn't think about. For example mushrooms of terror are pretty useless, but if you could combine them with other items such as potions of heroism to make them useful then that is a fun gameplay mechanic and gives the player the choice to use up a slot keeping them until they can use them as an alternative source of speed.

Having useless items that might be useful if the entire game rules weren't fudged to stop them being useful is not fun at all.

(Apologies if this comes over a bit ranty).

Edited to add that I just looked at the V4 form and noticed another example where the rules were fudged to stop people purposely losing exp and re-gaining a level to combat stat gain.

[Derakon]

Heroism and rFear is supposed to stop you from being afraid, but as soon as you put on a ring of escaping then they no longer work.

Rings of Escaping create a different status effect than being frightened; I think it's called "terror". The entire idea of them is that they give you early speed but keep you from being able to fight effectively by any means. Frankly I think they don't work very well; mages might use 2 of them for the speed bonus if they think they can handle the failure rate penalty, and everyone else basically ignores them.

They were an interesting concept -- figuring out a way to give players early access to permanent speed that isn't gamebreaking -- but I think they need to be reworked and not overlap so heavily with the existing fear effect. Maybe they could simply break (be unequipped and destroyed) if the player ever causes damage to an enemy by any means while wearing them? The trick then would be differentiating between damage that monsters cause to each other (e.g. breath attack splash damage) and damage caused by the player.

[TJS]

Thanks for the feedback, but could you elaborate on this point? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Sure. As far as I can see you cannot phase door into a vault and if you are inside it will always put you outside of it. This means that the standard rules of what phase door do are broken when it comes to vaults.

Heroism and rFear is supposed to stop you from being afraid, but as soon as you put on a ring of escaping then they no longer work.

[takkaria]

Don't like it when rules arbitrarily change, like phase door working differently in different places eg vaults or heroism or rFear not overcoming certain types of fear. Fixing overpowered objects or situations is preferable to butchering the ruleset I think.

Thanks for the feedback, but could you elaborate on this point? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

[TJS]

I've not played for a few years so here's some feedback based on version angband-v3.5-dev-559-gcc0595 from the nightlies. Sorry for the list style format as I wrote them down as I thought of them.

Love the map changes, with all the extra rooms - it makes the maps much more fun. Lots of mini-valuts are much better than the very occasional massive vault. Still would like more vaults/rooms earlier on though.

Not massively keen on the pac-man like maze levels and also it seems to break the game rules with everything revealed and lit beforehand too.

The cave levels would be nice mixed in with the normal types rather than a complete level.

Didn't we use to have destructed areas occasionally? Felt like they'd been an epic battle there.

Sounds seem to be broken in the version I tried, many sounds playing at once each time you get hit.

Are more monsters susceptible to certain elements? It seems so and is a good change, although Hydras and undead are complete push overs for mages now (although I think this is a good thing as different monsters are easy for different classes).

The first 40 or so levels feelings I got were of the "not much danger" variety. Would be nice to have some dangerous levels earlier on (and more good items too to go with them). After that all the levels make you at least nervous even if you can cope with them easily.

Did I see monsters slow down after being hasted? If so then it's a very good change, I hate the fact that you need to leave the level when a dangerous monster is hasted.

Can't see black characters on black background with old tiles - almost got killed by ungoliant the unlight early on.
Also the trap detection radius lines cover everything underneath. Squelch seems a bit broken, not hiding some things and hiding others that aren't squelched. (Average armour is not hidden by squelch good)

Did Hithlomir used to have resist poison? Doesn't seem as useful now. Actually I'm probably thinking of Caspanion.

The option "can move with mouse" being on by default killed a newish character when I clicked to bring the Angband screen back into focus and it moved the character into a pack of wolves. Also the run command ran me all the way around the map and into an ancient dragon killing the second character. Not sure what can be done about that though really.

Charisma is gone which is obviously a good change. Glad it wasn't shoe-horned into being used in inappropriate situations.

Don't like it when rules arbitrarily change, like phase door working differently in different places eg vaults or heroism or rFear not overcoming certain types of fear. Fixing overpowered objects or situations is preferable to butchering the ruleset I think.

Have shops been put back to how they used to work? There seems a lot of pointless clicking that earlier versions got rid of - I'm sure 'p' took you straight to the buy confirmation menu and now you have to press return first.

Speed was hard to come by, would have been difficult as a warrior (which is good as I find them the easiest).

Regarding difficulty the game still feels a bit on the easy side and I personally find the first 10-15 character levels or so a bit boring (although this has always been a problem for me). I know it probably won't happen, but I'd like to see the first 20 character levels sped up (say starting at around how character level 4 is now - as you are absurdly weak at the start) and the number of dungeon depths reduced to around 50. Also once you get to character level 20 the game suddenly gets too easy so it needs to be harder after that point.

You are no longer swimming with artifacts like previous versions and there's less egos, but still a few too many and the worst ones never show up in time to be useful. I don't think I've ever used slay orc or even a average dragon scale mail by the time they show up. In fact dragon scale mails are boring all the time as there are no artifacts based on most types (and I've never seen the other rare ones), so when you see one it is often not worth identifying. There's still too much junk in general ( don't understand why average stuff isn't just not created after the levels they are useful, especially now with fuzzy detection).

Gradually getting rid of tedium is a good thing, like boring sticky curses and scumming for restore potions.

Overall the game seems a lot more fun and definitely going in the right direction.