Elements, resistances and side effects

[Derakon]

Just as a reminder, one man's junk is another man's flavor. I was sad when the shopkeepers stopped being horrible racist assholes, for example. It was nice flavor, and far more meaningful than the CHA stat ever was.

[mrrstark]

Angband is not every other game, it is what it is. Just because a whole bunch of other n00bs are involved in the same lazy groupthink doesn't mean we have to follow them on the road to hell

Sure. But it seems in general, there are four types of attack designs: direct damage, status effects, stat damage, and damage over time. Maybe I'm new and wrong, but it seems like angband barely uses DoTs at all except for cuts, and early level poisons.

[LostTemplar]

barely uses DoTs at all

I used DOTs as main concept in my experimental variant (It had no teleports and no instant healing, it was all around HOTs / DOTs and haste for escape). However in vanilla DOTs are poinless, the game is about single turn, If you can survive any turn, you can survive all the time. Danger do not "stack" in Angband due to destructions, t-levels, t-others, banishments, potions of life, etc. Any damage to HP that does not kill this turn is no damage in Angband. Stats/inventory damage is a different story it stacks at least in short terms.

[bio_hazard]

While I wouldn't want to go down to basic elemental resistances, I think we could probably stand to lose one or two higher ones that don't have much flavor.

Light, Dark, Sound, Shards, Nether, Disenchant- yes keep these. Those seem to have Tolkein flavor and some (Nether, Disenchant) important gameplay implications. Maybe Nether and Disenchant could be combined, such that a nether attack had the potential to disenchant items or drain XP.

Chaos? Nexus? Do we really need these?

re: Poison- I kind of like the idea of the poison counter mentioned above, although if it's something that varies systematically in how the counter works across monsters/traps/etc, this will be really hard for a new player to uncover. In principle, I like the idea of "interesting" poisons that have other effects as well (slow, stat drain, blurry vision/halucination, etc) but not sure how I would implement those- if they are redundant with other attacks/resists then it's not actually adding much to the game, and if they are orthogonal to those, it would super confusing.

[Nick]

Sure. But it seems in general, there are four types of attack designs: direct damage, status effects, stat damage, and damage over time. Maybe I'm new and wrong, but it seems like angband barely uses DoTs at all except for cuts, and early level poisons.

I take your point, but I think LT actually has it exactly right - anything that doesn't kill you outright tends to be survivable (apart from in the early game when HP and resources are low). And the point I was making (somewhat, um, bluntly) was that I want to be careful to maintain Angband's character.

I don't want to get too precious about this, but IMHO players of roguelikes are unusual among players of games, and *band players are unusual among players of roguelikes. You get people who have been playing Angband for all its 20+ years, because it scratches an itch that no other game quite does. I want to keep that.

I'm not saying don't give opinions and ideas - please do. But "this is how it usually works" is not an argument which has much force for me.

[Antoine]

I like the way you're trying to improve the quality of discourse.

I think you can (and should) increase the DOT aspect of poison without throwing away the 1-turn instakill nature of drolem breath.

A.

[Nick]

I like the way you're trying to improve the quality of discourse.

Shut up!

I think you can (and should) increase the DOT aspect of poison without throwing away the 1-turn instakill nature of drolem breath.

You may well be right. I think that one is for down the track a bit though after (of course) the code restructure and then some other gameplay changes.

[Antoine]

after (of course) the code restructure

You gotta put that thing in your sig.

A.

[buzzkill]

I think you can (and should) increase the DOT aspect of poison without throwing away the 1-turn instakill nature of drolem breath.

Yep. I'm not saying all the damage should be DOT, maybe 50/50, 75/25 of 1600 is still pretty deadly. Plus the survivability on the second turn depends on how you play the game. Not everyone has the tools for every situation. In my book, not having all the answers makes the game more fun.

[Carnivean]

In my book, not having all the answers makes the game more fun.

I love the fact that you start off in a town with non-magical equipment, and then fight normal type monsters, then as you progress you find more and more unusual stuff.

It was/is a great pretense that the people in the town were people (shopkeepers being racist against trolls just made them normal people). Taking that away makes them dispensers or vending machines.

You go from a normal town in a fantasy setting, into a dungeon that gets more and more dangerous with new ways to kill you as you go. If it was easy, I wouldn't be coming back.

If you take that out, it's a spreadsheet game. It's so long that it can devolve into that, but that's not what brings players to the game.

[Zireael]

Is there some sort of resistance display in 3.5?

[Derakon]

Nothing fancier than was in previous versions. Hit C, then h, to see it.

[Zireael]

Nothing fancier than was in previous versions. Hit C, then h, to see it.

What a pity. I liked the sketch provided in this thread.