It's been a while now...

[Tyggs]

It's been years since I've kept up with Angband. RL stuff just kept limiting my time. I have to admit, I'm dismayed by what I've seen coming back to it. There are some good new changes, but there's a LOT that just doesn't sit right with me: Removal of weak cursed items, borders marking the edges of DTraps and a message at the bottom while you're in the radius, removal of potions of death and such, rings and amulets partially IDing when you put them on, food and beneficial potions/scrolls appearing in stacks rather than singles, drained stats restoring on level up, and other similar changes. Really? I almost expected to see an option to respawn in town upon death ( other than the avoid death cheat option ). Maybe it's change shock, but it almost feels like Angband for Dummies to me now. Seems Angband has been pretty heavily de-fanged.

Am I wrong here?

[debo]

So I don't play V anymore really, but I might ask if you even bothered playing 3.4.x before complaining -- it's actually pretty hard. Looking at a list of changes doesn't really tell you anything about how a game plays.

I played 3.3.x and it was super easy but still fun. 3.4.x is legit hard, imo.

3.5dev seems to have a lot of cool stuff in it too. Check out the thread where they're talking about the feature freeze, might be instructions in there about how to build and play.

[debo]

Also, I don't know how long you've been gone, but a lot of the "I want to play terrifyingly hard roguelikes" people have also moved onto other variants -- FAangband comes to mind. NPPAngband is also awesome.

I only play Sil now, which you might want to try.

[Tyggs]

I've played around with it, yes. I'm not noticing the difficulty as far as monster fights and such having gone up. Just a lot of the care needed dealing with items, remembering to keep casting detect traps, and other such being removed. Managing the environment, so to speak, seems gone and it's all managing the monsters.

[dos350]

It's been years since I've kept up with Angband. RL stuff just kept limiting my time. I have to admit, I'm dismayed by what I've seen coming back to it. There are some good new changes, but there's a LOT that just doesn't sit right with me: Removal of weak cursed items, borders marking the edges of DTraps and a message at the bottom while you're in the radius, removal of potions of death and such, rings and amulets partially IDing when you put them on, food and beneficial potions/scrolls appearing in stacks rather than singles, drained stats restoring on level up, and other similar changes. Really? I almost expected to see an option to respawn in town upon death ( other than the avoid death cheat option ). Maybe it's change shock, but it almost feels like Angband for Dummies to me now. Seems Angband has been pretty heavily de-fanged.

Am I wrong here?

some changes not so good,

the cavern levels, the maze lvls, dtect item not tellu the item , etc
i think even bring back stat restore pots cos being drained long way from lvl can utterly destroy a char and the enjoyment of it,

ty please no rages

ive played alot of 3.41 and no wins, idk if is cos changes or cos unluck~~

[Derakon]

I've played around with it, yes. I'm not noticing the difficulty as far as monster fights and such having gone up. Just a lot of the care needed dealing with items, remembering to keep casting detect traps, and other such being removed. Managing the environment, so to speak, seems gone and it's all managing the monsters.

So the question really is, did these things create difficulty, or did they create tedium and unforeseeable gotchas for newbies? I grant that there's a certain pleasure in demonstrating that you have mastered an obscure system, but most of the things you're complaining about got tweaked because the devs felt that they weren't actually interesting, gameplay-wise. They amounted to "do this otherwise-meaningless ritual, or risk being randomly screwed over".

Though, uh, why is it a problem that the game tells you when you've reached the edge of the region you've detected traps for?

[Estie]

Also an old time player here, back in the days I divided the map into virtual rectangles, the borders being defind by scrolling edge.
These days I use "center continuously" option and find it much more natural than the old block division. For the life of me, I cant imagine why someone would prefer the former; of all the criticisms (and there are many! ) this one is the weirdest.


As for the other points:

- cursed items prevent id by use (noone ever used to equip non-identified items, right ?), which is now encouraged. You can equip magic items and do tests to find out about their properties without (much) fear of having your character ruined. Cursed items are mostly gone, but pending re-introduction once somehow has a great idea of how exactly they should work.

- stacks of consumables dropping: the issue here must be the amount of consumables (wether they are bundled into stacks or not hardly has any effect on gameplay), and yes farming for healing potions before tackling big uniques has basically gone. There is a lot of variation though between the various recent releases; the latest 3.5 dev has plenty of clw, very few ccw, and again plenty of the high healing ones later.

[Timo Pietilä]

I've played around with it, yes. I'm not noticing the difficulty as far as monster fights and such having gone up. Just a lot of the care needed dealing with items, remembering to keep casting detect traps, and other such being removed. Managing the environment, so to speak, seems gone and it's all managing the monsters.

Angband is still work in progress. I think ultimately we have curses back, ID by magical means completely gone and trap detection (by magical means) gone.

[Tyggs]

So the question really is, did these things create difficulty, or did they create tedium and unforeseeable gotchas for newbies? I grant that there's a certain pleasure in demonstrating that you have mastered an obscure system, but most of the things you're complaining about got tweaked because the devs felt that they weren't actually interesting, gameplay-wise. They amounted to "do this otherwise-meaningless ritual, or risk being randomly screwed over".

Though, uh, why is it a problem that the game tells you when you've reached the edge of the region you've detected traps for?

Learning by mistakes was always a part of the game when I started playing. You equip a cursed item, you learn not to do that again before IDing it first, either pseudo or via spell/scroll/staff/rod. If you had none and your cloak was zeroed out on AC due to acid damage, you had to choose whether to risk the curse by equipping that un-IDed cloak in your pack. That risk is gone. Find a ring with a negative stat now? Just take it back off. Scroll/spell/etc of remove curse was there before if you got hit with a lesser curse, you weren't "screwed over".

Telling you where the edge of DTraps is is a problem because it removes another thing you need to pay attention to yourself. It's another way of holding your hand rather than making the player be aware of what they're doing.

One common key factor to roguelikes in the past was always that mistakes were punished harshly. Angband was better than Nethack about this because it didn't have as many unavoidable straight-up deaths ( "The orc throws a poison dart at you. The poison was lethal. Do you want your possessions identified?" ), but we've seem to lost all punishment for mistakes. Like I said, the danger in the environment ( Traps, cursed items, and so forth ) seems to be mostly gone. The danger from the monsters from what I've seen so far is mostly unchanged.

- cursed items prevent id by use (noone ever used to equip non-identified items, right ?), which is now encouraged. You can equip magic items and do tests to find out about their properties without (much) fear of having your character ruined.

Why is it now encouraged, though? What was wrong with having to ID items before they could be safely used? And it didn't ruin your character before. "Ruining" your character implies that the damage is irreversible. That's what remove curse was for, and it wasn't hugely expensive. Pseudo-ID for classes that had it mitigated this risk, as did the various forms of ID.

I'm curious how long folks have been playing. Maybe it's just that I'm just an old kook... I learned through trial by fire and the game was more enjoyable for me because of it.

[MattB]

The great news is that you can still download and play 3.0.whatever if the modern versions are not to your tastes.

[Timo Pietilä]

Learning by mistakes was always a part of the game when I started playing.

It still is.

Telling you where the edge of DTraps is is a problem because it removes another thing you need to pay attention to yourself. It's another way of holding your hand rather than making the player be aware of what they're doing.

In old days you detected the whole sector at once. How is this detection border any different than reaching sector border? IMO it is much harder to detect than sector change, especially if you are hunting a fleeing monster.

One common key factor to roguelikes in the past was always that mistakes were punished harshly.

It still is. However mistakes by forgetting to do tedious routine "press this button to make it go away" has lessened. You just make less mistakes because we have better UI now than we did in past.

Why is it now encouraged, though? What was wrong with having to ID items before they could be safely used?

Whole ID is just boring. That's just another magic button to press to get something go away.

And it didn't ruin your character before. "Ruining" your character implies that the damage is irreversible.

Like death? Two ways to get dead immediately. Also couple of ways to just ruin your current char so badly that you don't want to continue. "rage quit" because it takes longer to fix the problem than get back where you were from start.

That's what remove curse was for, and it wasn't hugely expensive. Pseudo-ID for classes that had it mitigated this risk, as did the various forms of ID.

So what was the point of cursed items if there were no risk of using cursed items? That was just another tedious routine. And then there were heavily cursed items that did ruin your char. No "harsh punishment" there except when you got a heavy curse, and then you got just extremely boring exercise to get rid of that heavily cursed item. Sticky curses in old angband were just plain boring.

Curses are not gone, just pausing. There could be a lot better ways to implement curses than boring sticky curses. Like effects that activate at random times in otherwise good item (currently only amulet/ring of teleportation does that). Or hidden effects like doubling the spawn rate when wielding an item. Doubling monsters detection range or halving their alertness threshold. Teleport inhibit which is double-edged sword: monster can't teleport you, but you can't teleport either. Feel free to suggest more. Only imagination is a limit.

I'm curious how long folks have been playing. Maybe it's just that I'm just an old kook... I learned through trial by fire and the game was more enjoyable for me because of it.

About 20 years now.

[Nick]

I had actually been reading this thread and thinking "Maybe it is a bit easy now" when my character got killed by an unresisted darkness breath. Others might think that's my own fault, but I blame the thread for lulling me into a false sense of security.

[MattB]

Curses are not gone, just pausing. There could be a lot better ways to implement curses than boring sticky curses. Like effects that activate at random times in otherwise good item (currently only amulet/ring of teleportation does that). Or hidden effects like doubling the spawn rate when wielding an item. Doubling monsters detection range or halving their alertness threshold. Teleport inhibit which is double-edged sword: monster can't teleport you, but you can't teleport either. Feel free to suggest more. Only imagination is a limit.

How about:

Blocks ESP
Renders you unable to shoot missile weapons
Renders you mute (i.e. unable to cast)
Negative stat 'boosts'
Gives you ESP, but makes you blind
Reduces your saving throw by a quarter

All of these could be something you decide to live with until you can remove the curse. Or, if not, mean that you keep hold of it unequipped until you can remove the curse. (Although it might blow up, so maybe you should keep the curse on and live with it...).

[Timo Pietilä]

How about:

Blocks ESP
Renders you unable to shoot missile weapons
Renders you mute (i.e. unable to cast)
Negative stat 'boosts'
Gives you ESP, but makes you blind
Reduces your saving throw by a quarter

All of these could be something you decide to live with until you can remove the curse. Or, if not, mean that you keep hold of it unequipped until you can remove the curse. (Although it might blow up, so maybe you should keep the curse on and live with it...).

Maybe curse could negate item bonuses? Ringil (4d5) (-22,-25) (-10) {cursed} until curse is broken. Remove curse should be event or some special place and not an item so that it forces you to carry it around. Maybe like old pseudo-ID, carrying it around gives you insight how to break the curse. Or just plain using item could remove curse.

Negative effects:

see inv -> negate see inv
free action -> negate FA from other items
hold life -> double drain life effects if not HL, if then negate that
Infra -> reduce infra range
Feather -> double drop damage
Protections -> induce the effect at random interval (or maybe even permanently)

and so on...

Thing is that the worse the item the more you want to keep it because it will be great after you manage to remove curse from it.

[Derakon]

I'm curious how long folks have been playing. Maybe it's just that I'm just an old kook... I learned through trial by fire and the game was more enjoyable for me because of it.

Like Timo, I've been playing for about 20 years now, so no, it's not that you're just an old kook; you're an inflexible old kook.

Seriously, though, like I said earlier most of the changes have been to remove many of the little hoops the game made you jump through. There was no tactical decision being made; you jumped through the hoops because it was always optimal to jump through the hoop than not. Or if you were a newbie, you experimented and then got punished with no way of having been able to see the punishment coming. Removing these hoops isn't handholding; it's streamlining the gameplay so you can focus on the aspects that are actually interesting.