Grinding - should it be prevented?

[Therem Harth]

Much belated congratulations to Timo for insulting pretty much everyone here with that comment about "raping the core angband." Stay classy, dude.

Re the OP...

Seems to me Sil and V are at opposite ends of a spectrum here. V is really grindy. Sil is not grindy at all. Personally I don't play either very much, but my reasons are different.
- Sil lacks sufficient gee-wiz content to keep me entertained. It's fun but there's not much to it.
- V on the other hand does not just lack content, it gets real boring real fast. (For me at least.)

I've tried to tackle some of this stuff in Neoband, though I'm not sure how successfully. Ultimately though I think it'll require better coding and design than I'm capable of ATM.

e.g. with Neoband I just boosted monster and item density globally. Really what I'd like to see - probably in addition to more monsters in general - is something a little more like Sil, where hanging around too long results in being chased by angry monsters. Also other Sil-like behaviors, such as chasing characters up and down stairs... Or (for Liches, etc.) following the character via teleport-level.

Edit: OTOH, between work and play, I don't do much Angbanding any more. So I may not have the best idea what would improve the game anyway.

[taptap]

Forced descent (in Sil) doesn't change the fact that you spend most of your playing time in lower depths - especially when you play close to your limits as in the current competition - it is just always a new character.

Furthermore, while discouraging grinding, Sil somewhat encourages repeating the "throne room -1" floor. Somehow you can't prevent grinding altogether without persistent floors and strictly limited resources/spawns, and maybe that is why you shouldn't try too hard to force it (because who wants persistent floors).