Things I don't like about current V (long-ish)

[Derakon]

Sounds like a brilliant idea, as long as they don't appear too early.

The thinking was that you'd usually see the vent of a given element before you'd see the vortex, and the vortex before the hound. Vents also wouldn't need to be especially common monsters since they're mostly "educational" instead of actively threatening.

[molybdenum]

I like these extra elements, but I take your point. It took a while to learn what plasma actually is. Water doesn't make sense as it is applied to water hounds, water trolls (?!) and a confusion attack from certain uniques. Ice is particularly daft as there is a ring of ice.

Maybe a change in terminology is all that's needed. {Ice} could become {Sandstorm} and {Water} could become {Wind}, or at the very least rename Water Hounds as Acid Hounds (and Water Trolls could become Bog Trolls, or whatever).

For sure. To be clear, I don't mind having a lot of elements either; I guess I just prefer a certain sort of consistency. I do like the vents idea as well.

Thinking about elements had made me want to create a Great Wyrm of Construction that breathes rock killer and doors.

[Raxmei]

For summoning, I was going to write a paragraph on that but I forgot. But yes, summoning is a late game problem but it's one with many solutions. A simple one is to have summoned monsters disappear after some amount of time. This alongside with changes that allow the player to face multiple monsters at once greatly reduces summoning's power. Summoning could also take multiple turns.

Reminds me of D&D. In the edition I'm familiar with summon monster spells have a short duration and a full round casting time (monsters appear the turn after you start casting the spell to summon them). There are a couple other interesting differences between D&D and Angband summoning.

Summoned monsters are incapable of summoning more monsters. This neatly prevents the endless flood of greater demons summoning more of themselves.

Summoned monsters yield no treasure nor experience. They're treated as spell effects, not monsters in their own right, so you don't get a reward for an enemy's summon monster spell any more than you would for their fireball spell. This ensures that summoning is still something that the player would rather not have happen because fighting it out with them is a waste of player resources.

[MattB]

No, they don't take away anything, but I was giving more examples in the line of consolidating or removing elements. With those three, specifically, they're a bit obtuse in what they do and how they work:

• Plasma: afflict the player with stunning (which can be prevented with pStun); player cannot resist damage; attacks inventory with fire and electricity (each can be ignored separately if the object does so); some monsters can resist.
• Water: afflict the player with stunning and confusion (which can be prevented with pStun and pConf); player cannot resist damage; does not affect inventory; some monsters are immune. Also, note that water is used in other contexts that aren't related to this element, such as water hounds.
• Ice: afflict the player with stunning and cuts (which can be prevented with pStun and rShards); player can resist or ignore damage with resist or immunity to cold; attacks inventory with cold (which can be ignored due to object flags or immunity to cold); some monsters can be immune or vulnerable.

Personally, I tend to like parallelism in things so that they're a bit easier to learn and keep track of. For example, if plasma was just a high-powered fire attack that can't be resisted and has a chance to stun, I'd like water and ice to be similar high-powered acid attacks with similar behavior. It might be a bit more boring, but that's how I'd have done it. However, it seems that boring things are to go away.

At least with plasma, the player can encounter plasma critters earlier in the dungeon, allowing the effects of the attack to be learned. With water and ice, you don't have a lot of opportunities to figure it out until too late.

I like these extra elements, but I take your point. It took a while to learn what plasma actually is. Water doesn't make sense as it is applied to water hounds, water trolls (?!) and a confusion attack from certain uniques. Ice is particularly daft as there is a ring of ice.

Maybe a change in terminology is all that's needed. {Ice} could become {Sandstorm} and {Water} could become {Wind}, or at the very least rename Water Hounds as Acid Hounds (and Water Trolls could become Bog Trolls, or whatever).

[MattB]

Awhile back I suggested adding "vent"-type monsters which would use the '.' graphic, were immobile and fragile, and periodically would breathe an element at you. Fire vents, plasma vents, time vents, etc. Basically you'd have one for each element type the same way you do for hounds and vortices. The idea is basically that they'd go down to an average ranged attack, but if they surprised you they'd hit you with their breath attack and you'd suffer the consequences. Their HP would be low enough that the actual damage from their breath attacks wouldn't be threatening, but you'd learn the side-effects of that element and have appropriate appreciation of the corresponding vortices and hounds.

Sounds like a brilliant idea, as long as they don't appear too early.

Personally, I am way, way against cutting down on the number of elements in Angband. They don't add that much complexity to the game and they're a useful way to add one-off interest to special monsters. Time hounds and time vortices are extra-special threats, as are gravity hounds (and Kavlax, who breathes gravity reasonably often). As long as the player has a safe way to learn what the elements do, and as long as we solve the "I didn't know that monster could do that" problem, I say we should have more bizarro elements in the game. Weird elements are great!

Agreed. Even though my last three characters, all paladins, have died from (1) Kavlax, (2) gravity hounds and (3) Kavlax and Gravity hounds together. You'd have thought I'd learn...

And I also agree that the 'I didn't know' issue is a problem. I came very close to a 'rage quit' this visit to Angband last year when I got knocked out and killed by plasma hounds. 'Plasma hounds can stun. Huh, who knew'. Glad I didn't quit though.

[buzzkill]

• Change 7: Player races differ greatly in terms of how they eat.
• Hobbits can eat a lot without going from normal to gorged (so they can eat lots of beneficial food) but quickly fall from normal to hungry (so they need to eat often. Second breakfast!)
• Dwarves can eat a lot without going from normal to gorged (so they can eat lots of beneficial food) but take a very long time to get hungry (they have great endurance to privations)
• Elves very quickly go from normal to gorged (they eat like birds)
• Half-trolls need to eat very often and may not get much benefit from plant-based foods

This is nice. Maybe not differ greatly, but differ. At the very least, a troll should need to eat more that a hobbit , but some of the other stuff might be cool too.

[Derakon]

At least with plasma, the player can encounter plasma critters earlier in the dungeon, allowing the effects of the attack to be learned. With water and ice, you don't have a lot of opportunities to figure it out until too late.

Awhile back I suggested adding "vent"-type monsters which would use the '.' graphic, were immobile and fragile, and periodically would breathe an element at you. Fire vents, plasma vents, time vents, etc. Basically you'd have one for each element type the same way you do for hounds and vortices. The idea is basically that they'd go down to an average ranged attack, but if they surprised you they'd hit you with their breath attack and you'd suffer the consequences. Their HP would be low enough that the actual damage from their breath attacks wouldn't be threatening, but you'd learn the side-effects of that element and have appropriate appreciation of the corresponding vortices and hounds.

Personally, I am way, way against cutting down on the number of elements in Angband. They don't add that much complexity to the game and they're a useful way to add one-off interest to special monsters. Time hounds and time vortices are extra-special threats, as are gravity hounds (and Kavlax, who breathes gravity reasonably often). As long as the player has a safe way to learn what the elements do, and as long as we solve the "I didn't know that monster could do that" problem, I say we should have more bizarro elements in the game. Weird elements are great!

[molybdenum]

But what do they take away? They're a nice surprise when you come across them.

(Well, alright, not that nice...)

No, they don't take away anything, but I was giving more examples in the line of consolidating or removing elements. With those three, specifically, they're a bit obtuse in what they do and how they work:

• Plasma: afflict the player with stunning (which can be prevented with pStun); player cannot resist damage; attacks inventory with fire and electricity (each can be ignored separately if the object does so); some monsters can resist.
• Water: afflict the player with stunning and confusion (which can be prevented with pStun and pConf); player cannot resist damage; does not affect inventory; some monsters are immune. Also, note that water is used in other contexts that aren't related to this element, such as water hounds.
• Ice: afflict the player with stunning and cuts (which can be prevented with pStun and rShards); player can resist or ignore damage with resist or immunity to cold; attacks inventory with cold (which can be ignored due to object flags or immunity to cold); some monsters can be immune or vulnerable.

Personally, I tend to like parallelism in things so that they're a bit easier to learn and keep track of. For example, if plasma was just a high-powered fire attack that can't be resisted and has a chance to stun, I'd like water and ice to be similar high-powered acid attacks with similar behavior. It might be a bit more boring, but that's how I'd have done it. However, it seems that boring things are to go away.

At least with plasma, the player can encounter plasma critters earlier in the dungeon, allowing the effects of the attack to be learned. With water and ice, you don't have a lot of opportunities to figure it out until too late.

[debo]

Is water the one that also does acid (equipment-burny) damage for some reason? Yeah sorry, that one is... hrrrm lol

[MattB]

Water and ice are really only used by uniques and a few high demons and don't really seem to add much.

But what do they take away? They're a nice surprise when you come across them.

(Well, alright, not that nice...)

[molybdenum]

Plasma -> fire + electricity

Don't forget the ever so wonderful water and ice. These three elements alone have such a weird mess of effects and flags. Water and ice are really only used by uniques and a few high demons and don't really seem to add much.

[MattB]

I think if you removed food or light, conservative players would go nutzoid. They are venerable parts of the game.

Quite right.
Getting a bit panicky already, which is only three notches off nutzoid.

[taptap]

I have never played vanilla angband, but when people talk about Sil I feel entitled to chime in

Sil makes light interesting by removing the easy / cheap / reliable substitutes and making light matter instead of keeping the ESP etc. and cutting the "trivial light issue".

Light in Sil even matters in more ways than mentioned already. It moonlights as a morale effect, a mechanism rarely explored by players. In theory pacifism by intimidation instead of stealth should be possible in Sil and light would most likely play a major role in this kind of build. And of course it highly matters for archers.

However, no light isn't death in Sil. No light is an interesting challenge in its own right. But all these interesting things only happen if you have partial substitutes, trade-offs at every step.

[Nick]

Combine nexus and chaos into chaos (remove nexus, chaos does not cause confusion)
Combine plasma, force and sound into sound, sound causes confusion
Combine inertia and gravity into gravity
Remove time, allow nether to randomly drain a stat or Exp
Remove light and shards
Remove cutting and hallucination statuses
Remove acid as a damage source. Acid purely becomes and equipment damaging attack. Monsters that were based on acid breath become poison breathers (black and green dragons combine) Yeah, this is crazy, I'm not sure it'd fly. The end goal would be to increase gameplay variance by having different combinations of monsters that you are forced to interact with at the same time, rather than monsters that have any from a zoo of attacks.

This is interesting - although I do want to emphasise here (and will probably do this a lot...) that I really want the code restructure to happen completely, first before any of this sort of thing.

Nexus + chaos -> chaos I think I like
Plasma -> fire + electricity
Force - I like the pushing back mechanic, so not sure
Inertia + gravity -> gravity is good
Time + nether -> nether I think I like - time is utterly terrifying, so that would give nether a needed buff
Light, shards, no strong feelings
Hallucination needs to be at least rethought; I quite like cutting.
Acid is a really interesting one, and I'm glad you've tackled it. I feel like it has a place, but why one of the basic types? More thought required.

For summoning, I was going to write a paragraph on that but I forgot. But yes, summoning is a late game problem but it's one with many solutions. A simple one is to have summoned monsters disappear after some amount of time. This alongside with changes that allow the player to face multiple monsters at once greatly reduces summoning's power. Summoning could also take multiple turns.

I don't know what I think about summoning yet - I like the tension of whether it's going to get out of control or not. Anything that's a good player-killer clearly has something going for it.

Derakon: To me the simplest way to go is to normalize everything into one attack as Sil does. Monsters do one of 4 things chosen randomly rather than all four things.

The whole idea of examining (player, monster) blows is a really good one to be opening too. Reducing message spam is good, but I don't want to be reducing message character.

Food, light - I'm really struggling to care

[LostTemplar]

I have done some experiments with food in my variant, and it seems to be nearly ok if satiate hunger removed, rations are the only food in shops, they weight 5 lbs and satiate 1500 points. Other food items are much lighter, satiate about 500 - 1500 and are quite common in dungeons. But no single type is too common. Taking stairs cost 1000 food. Normal consumption rate is the same as in Angband. And no recall (with recall it is all pointless).

So as a result food does not become a clock, but it is just another basic consumable to manage.