As I was sort of alluding to in the rather lazy post I made the other day, the game seems to be hitting a bit of a lull at the moment. What I mean by that is that despite a load of good stuff being done/fixed/made more accessible (great work by the way!), the actual game design itself seems to lack a bit of overall direction regarding the big picture of where it wants to go. There also seems a bit of a lack of enthusiasm generally.
I was thinking to myself the other day that it might be possible that a game can have a natural life cycle in terms of development since the longer things have stayed as they are in the game, the more entrenched they become and the more difficult they are to ever change. Developers have to become ever more conservative and careful and dissenting voices to any changes begin to outweigh those in favour regardless of whether it is a positive change or not. Developers then understandably get frustrated and give up trying to change anything apart from cosmetic tweaks, UI improvements or less controversial gameplay changes. Any radical ideas slowly becomes impossible.
But then I thought nah. In the days of the internet it is possible to host the old versions so that those who like stuff preserved in aspic can stay happy, which then allows the game to continue to develop, improve and change.
So on that note I thought I'd put out my vision for what I'd like to see happen from here regarding the game. Particularly I think it would benefit from some analysis that looks at the parts that don't very well and think about reworking them, simplifying, reducing or even removing them entirely.
The goal is to create a design that increases simplicity, clarity, challenge and gives the player more interesting decisions, whilst attempting to limit tedium, non-choices and dull stretches of gameplay.
What I'm not interested in (and I think is the last thing that Angband needs) is adding loads of unnecessary ill-thought out content, new game mechanics, monsters, items or other such bloat which I dare say Angband has collected a fair amount of over the years. Any additions (if any) need to be simple, transparent, avoid special cases to make them work and have a good reason for being necessary at all.
What is the point of this? Ideally to try and help create a coherent vision for where the game is going to go, get some more enthusiasm about the idea of development back and try and shake people out of the fact that they're scared of changing anything.
Anyway rather than make a list of loads of stuff in one go, I thought I'd add just a few design ideas at a time which will hopefully get some discussion going.
I was thinking to myself the other day that it might be possible that a game can have a natural life cycle in terms of development since the longer things have stayed as they are in the game, the more entrenched they become and the more difficult they are to ever change. Developers have to become ever more conservative and careful and dissenting voices to any changes begin to outweigh those in favour regardless of whether it is a positive change or not. Developers then understandably get frustrated and give up trying to change anything apart from cosmetic tweaks, UI improvements or less controversial gameplay changes. Any radical ideas slowly becomes impossible.
But then I thought nah. In the days of the internet it is possible to host the old versions so that those who like stuff preserved in aspic can stay happy, which then allows the game to continue to develop, improve and change.
So on that note I thought I'd put out my vision for what I'd like to see happen from here regarding the game. Particularly I think it would benefit from some analysis that looks at the parts that don't very well and think about reworking them, simplifying, reducing or even removing them entirely.
The goal is to create a design that increases simplicity, clarity, challenge and gives the player more interesting decisions, whilst attempting to limit tedium, non-choices and dull stretches of gameplay.
What I'm not interested in (and I think is the last thing that Angband needs) is adding loads of unnecessary ill-thought out content, new game mechanics, monsters, items or other such bloat which I dare say Angband has collected a fair amount of over the years. Any additions (if any) need to be simple, transparent, avoid special cases to make them work and have a good reason for being necessary at all.
What is the point of this? Ideally to try and help create a coherent vision for where the game is going to go, get some more enthusiasm about the idea of development back and try and shake people out of the fact that they're scared of changing anything.
Anyway rather than make a list of loads of stuff in one go, I thought I'd add just a few design ideas at a time which will hopefully get some discussion going.
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