The Monster Memory

[debo]

Just to give a data point: while I think there's something cool about the exploration aspect of not knowing what a monster does when you first meet it, I only have a certain amount of time to play games in and I'm much more likely to want to engage with a turn-based game (such as a roguelike) if it's telling me all of the relevant rules (such as what that red 'D' can do).

So something's which changed since Angband was first written is that people have many more games competing for their time. If I knew ahead of time that I'd be sinking 100 hours into the game, I might prefer the exploration aspect of no monster memory. But presenting the information freely allows me to engage with the game more quickly. I think this would actually be a great precedent to set, as it would encourage variants to go the same way by default, which would in turn make them easier to try out.

+100000

I don't really care how this ends up going in V one way or another, but I personally played V with spoilers the first time around because it is incredibly long. I'm not going to play to 4000' just to die to something that has a 1600HP damage breath because I didn't know it could do that -- or if I do, I'm probably never going to play again. With things like Nexus in the game, it's even worse -- although most nexus things advertise their powers in their names, IIRC.

I was also lucky that people here were so responsive to questions, which avoided a lot of the dying-at-3000'-because-I-didn't-know-it-was-coming problems. Even if you know what a monster does, you still have to learn how to deal with it reliably, or in combination with other things -- that's a whole other level of learning that, for me, is really the fun part.

I tried to sort of play Sil without any spoilers or reverse engineering the first few times because it's relatively much shorter. I still ended up gunning for loremaster pretty early on, though, because I don't have fun discovering stuff about what things can do, I have fun figuring out what to do with it once I know what it does.

Places where I do find discovery interesting are e.g. new area types ("cool I've never seen this terrain / situation before") which many variants are good at. in V, I think I probably would have appreciated the ability to play with spoilers on right in-game as a new player. I'd still appreciate it if I were to play again.

[Oramin]

Debo:

So your argument is that you want the information because the game is so long?

Angband was, to an extent, designed to be a marathon. In Rogue, you had to go down to the 26th level to pick up the Amulet of Yendor. In Larn, there were 10 levels of the dungeon (which you don't actually need to complete) and 3 levels of the volcano. In Moria, there were 50 levels. I don't know the specifics for NetHack or Omega.

Length is sort of the point of Angband.

As I indicated, I can understand wanting to avoid insta-death situtations and making the information easier to obtain by playing the game. I don't think that a free complete monster-memory should be a non-cheating option. That's sort of like saying that you want to play the game by not playing it.

[Derakon]

Just because Angband is a long game and there's a sizable time investment doesn't mean that the player should be okay with dying over and over again. Sure, that's how many people play the game, myself included, but I can definitely understand the opposed attitude of "Look, I only have so much time to dedicate here, and I'm not gonna spend it replaying the game just so I can learn each new way to die."

For most games, I figure anywhere from 10-40 hours is a reasonable time investment; if the game expects me to invest more than that then it's doing something wrong. Angband may be an exception to that rule for me, but that doesn't mean that it's exceptional for everyone.

In any event, the bottom line is that it's a singleplayer game, so however you choose to enjoy it is up to you. Your use of spoilers does not harm my game. If we want to move the "always have full monster memory" option from the cheats section to the birth options section, then I am totally fine with that (barring the technical problem of us being full up on birth options already, anyway...).

[Oramin]

Ok, let me see if I can explain it differently.

Consider the two spells Clairvoyance and Probing.

Suppose we had an option to allow auto-mapping of the entire level the instant you enter it. I suspect many of us would regard that as cheating (if not, feel free to pipe up). IIRC, that's part of what Wizard mode in an earlier version of Angband used to do (might have been Moria, this is from 20 years ago).

That's the equivalent of being given an infinite supply of the Clairvoyance spell.

A free complete version of the monster memory is like being given an infinite supply of an improved version of the Probing spell (don't even need to be in LOS).

Either both are cheating, neither or cheating, or you can draw a distinction between the two. Personally, I think both should be considered cheating.


Derakon:

You are correct that since this is a single player game what one player does ostensibly does not affect any other player.

So, are you fine with eliminating *all* cheating options?

Infinite lives, you still get to be a *WINNER*. Creating items, you still get to be a *WINNER*.

I also understand that people want to invest limited amounts of time, but they are quite capable of just looking at the spoilers as opposed to the game providing them the information.

(If you like, we can get into a discussion of whether players in the steroid era belong in the Hall of Fame. )


Edit:

Also, the simple fact that we're having the discussion not of adding an option for a free complete monster memory but of removing the cheating flag for using that option pretty much demonstrates that it does matter. If it didn't then the people using the option wouldn't have a problem being flagged as cheaters in their single player high score list, would they?

[bio_hazard]

I'd prefer NOT to have auto-monster memory labeled as a cheat. I'm a pretty casual (and pretty bad) player who doesn't play that often. Sometimes I play with the monster memory cheat on, because I really don't care about my ladder scores. At the same time, there are clearly degrees of cheating, and that one is pretty minor. It shows up in the birth options, so if someone really cares about it their mark of shame will be there for all to see even if it doesn't say CHEAT all over in big bold letters.

Thematically, it doesn't make any sense to me why player memory would transfer @-to-@, but @ never brags about anything to the shopkeepers who are actually persistent game-to-game. Also, the uniques are, you know, famous things in the world of Angband.

Since the monster attributes are static game-to-game, the "get knowledge" part of the game is not interesting (i.e. fun) to me. To me it seems like an artificial hurdle because it's something that mostly affects beginners.

If monster attributes were variable, then everyone would have to play the "get knowledge" minigame every time the head into the dungeon. I would actually prefer something like this if it were well implemented.

but hey, this is all just my opinion. I'm not that passionate about it one way or the other, and I think it's kind of neat that not only is there a team of coders working to keep the polish on a 30 year old game, but there are players who are ready to write thousands of words in an internet forum defending her honor. Go on, buddy, tell us what's what!

[Oramin]

Bio_Hazard:

(Text inserted to make the post long enough.)

[AnonymousHero]

Look, it's very simple.

As a player who wants information about monsters at the time I face them I (currently) have two options: a) be labeled a cheater, or b) suffer the huge and insurmountable (/sarcasm) inconvenience of opening monster.txt in a text editor and doing a Ctrl+F once in a while. Which am I most likely to choose if I, for example, am going to post my character to the ladder?

The point being the negative connotation of "cheat" and the relatively small inconvenience of monster.txt versus having in-game perfect recall: Labeling the option as a cheat option can only encourage people to meta-game rather than enabling the friggin' option. As long as the effort to open monster.txt in an editor is trivial (it is) nobody's actually going to use an option labeled "cheat". (Well, OK, some will but people playing roguelikes are a weird bunch )

[Nick]

I'll note that the only times, so far, that I've seen an argument with DaviddesJ end are when the other party gives up and walks away. As far as I can tell, he is physically incapable of letting anyone else have the last word in any discussion.

I dunno, Derakon, he might just have met his match

[Oramin]

Look, it's very simple.

As a player who wants information about monsters at the time I face them I (currently) have two options: a) be labeled a cheater, or b) suffer the huge and insurmountable (/sarcasm) inconvenience of opening monster.txt in a text editor and doing a Ctrl+F once in a while. Which am I most likely to choose if I, for example, am going to post my character to the ladder?

The point being the negative connotation of "cheat" and the relatively small inconvenience of monster.txt versus having in-game perfect recall: Labeling the option as a cheat option can only encourage people to meta-game rather than enabling the friggin' option. As long as the effort to open monster.txt in an editor is trivial (it is) nobody's actually going to use an option labeled "cheat". (Well, OK, some will but people playing roguelikes are a weird bunch )

You do realize that your argument boils down to "It is incredibly easy to cheat and I'm going to do it anyway so therefore it shouldn't be considered cheating."?


“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”
― John Wooden

From:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23041.John_Wooden

[Oramin]

I dunno, Derakon, he might just have met his match

That has yet to be determined. He hasn't had much time to post in this thread yet.

[Djabanete]

(1) There is something to be said for exploration (acquired monster knowledge), and something to be said for transparency (automatic monster knowledge). But in of Angband, the difference in difficulty between the two is a mere hairsbreadth. Even when I was a new player, I only died once or twice to the unknown, and much more often to my own rashness. Rather than being a question of difficulty, I think acquired vs automatic monster knowledge is a question of enjoyment for personalities who cannot abide "gotcha" moments (such as having Mim put -1/-1 on your artifact weapon), and for people who often change between computers/game versions. I support adding a non-cheat option.

(2) Tangent: monster memory should say what things a monster doesn't resist. It's frustrating when information that my ancestors have learned through trial and error isn't there. (The lack of mention of, say, fire resistance could be owing to a monster's lack of fire resistance, or I might never have used fire on this monster before --- my human memory doesn't know if I have or not, but my character's monster memory ought to.)

(3) @OP: Please, let's not have name-calling in our discussions on this site.

“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”
― John Wooden

In this case we can deduce that AHero, like many others, prefers his strategy games to come with transparency when no one is watching. But it sounded kind of like you were trying to say something less nice.

[AnonymousHero]

You do realize that your argument boils down to "It is incredibly easy to cheat and I'm going to do it anyway so therefore it shouldn't be considered cheating."?

No. I'm saying that it literally does not matter if it's called cheating or not -- unless you're competing against others on a supposedly equal footing. If it's an option, everyone can see exactly what I've done when I upload my character. If it's a "cheat" option I'm not even sure I can upload my character.

(In fact, I'd be for removing the "cheat" flag from every single option and just uploading the option information when you upload a character and be done with it. That may be a bit extreme for others, but whatever.)

The only context in which this matters is if you're competing against others, and I'm saying it's absurd to call it "cheating" if you're just playing against yourself.

“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”
― John Wooden

"A witty saying proves nothing". - Voltaire. So please stop it with the smugness, mkay?

[Oramin]

AnonymousHero:

(In fact, I'd be for removing the "cheat" flag from every single option and just uploading the option information when you upload a character and be done with it. That may be a bit extreme for others, but whatever.)

Well, at least you're consistent.

As for this:

The only context in which this matters is if you're competing against others, and I'm saying it's absurd to call it "cheating" if you're just playing against yourself.

You are playing solo but you aren't just playing against yourself.

[Oramin]

(3) @OP: Please, let's not have name-calling in our discussions on this site.


In this case we can deduce that AHero, like many others, prefers his strategy games to come with transparency when no one is watching. But it sounded kind of like you were trying to say something less nice.

Assuming that you are referring to what I said to AnonymousHero, let me be clear what I was trying to say.

1. The free complete monster memory is currently considered a cheating option just like the infinite lives option.

2. It is possible to get around the cheater label that the game marks your file with by actions outside the game itself.

3. In the case of the monster memory, as far as I'm concerned, if you do this to get information that you have not already discovered within the game then you are still cheating. You've just avoided getting caught by the game.


Should the game be changed to reflect his apparent opinion that it is not cheating, then it won't be cheating. At the moment, however, it is.

Now, if you have a problem with my conclusion or you consider that to be name-calling, that is unfortunate.

Clarified?


Edit:

Perhaps this will help. IIRC, Chessmaster 2100 had a Championship option which eliminated all possible "cheating" options. If you won, it printed out a special certificate to commemorate your victory under those circumstances.

Consider this: There's nothing stopping you from getting help from other people, analyzing it on a board by moving pieces, consulting with books, or even getting a better program to suggest moves.

I would consider any and all of those to be cheating because they violate what I consider to be the premise, that you will have earned the victory within the intended parameters of the game.

Sure, you can change the parameters so that the free complete monster memory isn't a "cheat" option; I just think it violates the spirit of Angband (and Rogue-likes generally) to do it.

[Djabanete]

"Name-calling" refers to you calling the other guy a douche, in the OP.

As for the other bit, I'm sure you're capable of having a discussion about what is or isn't cheating without casting aspersions on your interlocutor's character.

Sorry for going off topic. I already said what I thought about the option, so I'm done now.