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Howdy! I haven't played angband in moons pretty much, but did play vanilla and a variant quite a good bit in pre 3.0 days (2.8.1 or 2.8.2).
Man, it's been a while, but I've found that my old habits and familiarity are still with me, sufficient to A) not get immediately squished, and B) to let me live long enough to both see the game fresh for the first time so to speak, and to occasionally get a sense of comparison and progression in terms of how the game has grown. I figured I'd drop some notes here on my experience of seeing Angband with fresh eyes.
Some background:
So! Here's some notes on my thoughts thus far.
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Welp, that's my impressions thus far just above 4k. I'd love to hear if any of the above triggers some thoughts or impressions - lay it on me!
Man, it's been a while, but I've found that my old habits and familiarity are still with me, sufficient to A) not get immediately squished, and B) to let me live long enough to both see the game fresh for the first time so to speak, and to occasionally get a sense of comparison and progression in terms of how the game has grown. I figured I'd drop some notes here on my experience of seeing Angband with fresh eyes.
Some background:
- I played some 2.8.1/2 vanilla back in the day, moderate amounts but not too heavily.
- I played absolute crap-tons of MAngband (I can hear the groans already heh) thereafter. MAngband stayed 2.8.1/2 for quite some time after Angband vanilla went 3.0/JLE, so all of my knowledge of the game, content, and mechanics is pre 3.0. I should note that while MAngband is a very kooky take on vanilla, the core of the game outside of the eye-watering realtime aspect of it is pretty much entirely vanilla. So while how one plays MAngband is certainly very very different (realtime), the underlying game and gameplay/design concepts are very much absolutely in force. Long way of saying, "don't worry, I may come from a wierd neck of the woods, but I still get it." Also, MAngband is a very art-light game: we learned to value and appreciate good egos, as they generally made up the majority of your gear.
- My current dive has me playing vveeerrrryyyyy conservatively, as I am scared and am getting my sea-legs back. I'm just about to 4k going super super slow, am about level 45 or 46 (stop laughing! I'm still scared to go faster!) and have spent many millions of moves. Again, stop laughing!
So! Here's some notes on my thoughts thus far.
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- Wow, awesome documentation on more than a decade's worth of changes! When I decided to get back into vanilla, I stopped by the IRC channel to ask if there were any resources to help me get a picture of just what is changed. Holy crap, I was sorted out in spades! The work that has been done to carefully summarize each change over the many years - including historical "added X here, but we actually removed in later in version Y" - is impressive and really well done. Again, it's not just a big wall of changelists: this is a nice, breezy and informative summary of changes that reads like a nice blog post, per each release. Hats off!
- No conventionally cursed items: Cool! In the end, a sensible idea. I'm a firm believer that when something exists only for you to learn the crappy way to not do it, you're just looking at something that should be nixed or developed. For the new player, cursed items are a "Screw you." For the non-new player, it's just more crap on the ground. A sound change!
- Drops of stacks of useful items: very very cool! Really like the "don't sweat it, stay in the dungeon and play!" feeling this leads to.
- Early game feels optimized to make me want to get in the dungeon and keep playing!
- I freakin love initial level feelings (I don't mean the treasure quality feeling here, just the initial one). I'd forgotten how exciting and freaky it is to a get a very serious level feeling: it sets the tone very dramatically, and I tiptoe through the level all freaked out. Awesome!
Downside tho: when it turns out to just be a pit, I feel disappointed. Pits are contained and easily skippable for a player who knows an undead pit is something to avoid unless you know exactly what you are doing etc.
- The depth threshold gameplay shifts are awesome The approx 1k and early 2k etc shift in the overall tone and beefiness of the game are hugely satisfying and cool. Always loved the principle from the past, and it's great to see it again: major rapid shifts in the the tone and seriousness of the game is kick ass, and gives a definite sense of progression and accomplishment. Would love to see great tuning effect accentuated/grown to include more stata.
- Tappety-tap message spam at the top of the main window: I wish there was an extra line (for 2) at the top for messages, as it would sort out a lot of the tap-tap-tap if you want to get to the end of a turn. Probably is a way, but I catch myself often getting frustrated with this when I just want to perform some action but keypresses are getting eaten to scroll through messages. I do like and carefully watch the messages tho, so they aren't valueless to me.
- Earlier U's are uninteresting and easy, particularly given their experience.
The earlier U's you encounter always felt like a placeholder "note to self: make these guys cool and interesting some time" kind of monsters. They always struck me as a cool concept, but are always a bit of a letdown. They feel like a letdown as an upgrade from u to U. Only once they start breathing fire etc or summoning do they get interesting.
Perhaps summoners could summon more often as a start (tho this doesn't address the problem with the earliest U's you encounter).
"But stuff that summons frequently, and that isn'tlate-game, can lead to farming."
Implement a feature of summoner vs summoned (summoned things have the option of not being able to do summoning themselves), and/or max summon count or somesuch (ok, that's my limit for "coming up with feature work for someone else to do"). Just tossing out ideas here.
- Later game U's are samey, blend in with each-other, blend in with D dragons, and don't seem to have a perceivable role or characteristic.
Being most familiar with pre 3.0, late game U's were fewer in type. I suspect they got fleshed a little further to get more interesting things and variety going on at low depths. However, the result is an almost confusing array of U's that just don't stand out, and quickly just feel like "D dragon in another guise" to me: they feel like filler.
When there are only a few of them in type, they stood out a bit. A profusion of types makes them kind of mooj together as I play.
I would advocate both reducing their counts, but also really thinking about how make them have a distinguishing characteristic across the types that sets them apart and addresses the "U is a D later-game" problem. What kind of thing could make them distinctive? A manner of damage? A behavior? Exclusion from some mechanic (perhaps they don't show up with esp, or don't show up reliably. Perhaps they can only be detected visually?) Not sure, but I think the line of reasoning is sound.
- Hounds and Canines are kind of annoying when they do the intelligent "won't chase you into a zigzag dug corridor" behavior. Due to their numbers, it can be kind of onerous/tedious to sort them out using the method of digging a little open patch to trick them in. I don't mind that tactic (it's classic Angband crowd management in action), just the sheer numbers of them. This is not a "too hard" comment, but a "too tedious" one instead: Z's feel like they are more trouble than they are worth to deal with sometimes, given the above tactic. I like fighting them, but what player is going to walk into a room full of hellhounds or plasma hounds? I feel like its a choice between "oh screw it, I just won't go over there" or "welp, grab a coffee and put on some slippers: this is gonna take a looong time." That's grindey instead of fun.
I advocate: A) make most C's and Z's use the old style zerg method of chasing the player (with tuning adjustments if necessary)(btw this is the behavior I'm used to from ye olde dayes), or B) toning down the overall counts in packs (again with tuning adjustments if needed).
- Vaults are really cool and a defining of characteristic of Angband, but sadly uncommon. Wish they were perhaps 4-7 times more common. (I understand this has a significant tuning impact of course).
I understand of course that vaults are generally deadly early on, but the vault experience is a powerful one and a wonderfully distinctive part of Angband. Perhaps sets of more carefully depth-tuning vaults so early game you can get that exciting vault experience that is maaaaaybe doable (even if partially) vs getting a GCV at 1450 (happened with my current character). Vaults are too awesome and exciting of a thing to make so rare. Core feature! Highlight it!
- I feel guilty ground-scoring art that isn't in a vault.
- I wish uniques would be almost or fully guaranteed to drop a level appropriate art. Related to art ground-score-guilt, I kind of wish we had this behavior instead of non-vault ground art. That would make them super satisfying, and help frame the game around them as a sort of challenging miniboss with great payoff. Uniques are scary and cool - make them shine!
- Interesting egos show up too late to be of use for a conservative player such as myself. I would love to use them, because they are very cool, but by the time they reliably show up I'm already in pretty much "thanks, but art only" mode. Seems sad to see such great items go to waste on me. Tough issue, of course, because it All Comes Back To Tuning, that big hairy rats nest - but what could be some solutions here?
As a long time player of MAngband, egos was where it was all at: an average player would be lucky to own one, maybe at best two, ok-ish artifacts. We really got to appreciate awesome egos.
- Too Much Stuff: I know this is an issue that has been discussed at length over the years, in Angband as well as in pretty much any RPG ever made. But it still is a problem, and it stands out pretty glaringly to me, seeing it again with fresh eyes. When I'm at 4k and finding piles of armor of resist fire or weapons of venom, its just chaotic tedium and crap laying everywhere. Squelch is cool, and makes sense: once you've upgraded a slot with a good item, lower-end stuff doesn't make sense anymore (and I appreciate that when that event occurs can be highly variable in terms of dlevel).
But there generally Comes A Point where you just don't want to see all that junk anymore: I wish that, at certain depth thresholds, crap would just fail a quality roll and not spawn or drop.
"But then you'd know that item over there is good, vs being uncertain if it's worth the risk!"
I'm at 4k. I already "know" that the odds of stuff being good is moderately high: that's why I'm here! The certainty that the sword in the next room over has a great chance of being a Westy isn't a bad thing: it makes me want to clear the room and check it out even more!
"But then you just quaff an enlight or cast level reveal, see how much stuff around, and you can be certain that what is on the ground is in the level is juicy! That ain't good!"
That's a really good point. But it's a separate issue: the issue is that the churn of useless crap is tedious and messy. If tedium is how we make things interesting or challenging, we have a problem.
Instead, the above response highlights a separate potential problem to look at: is full-level reveal a good idea, or is it a bit too over the top? I played loads of pre-3.0, when ESP was level-wide. This very sensibly got reduced. ESP is a great idea, and a great addition to the game - it just needed to be dialed in to make it work well and fit well in the game. So to, perhaps, full-level-reveals and other issues related to items in a level.
"But without full level reveals, you end up wasting time / grinding a level only to discover it's not a very interesting level! Or, just wandering around waiting for the second level feeling message to kick in!"
That again is a new/separate issue (and certainly a chewy one). The topic of level quality / grinding / player progression speed is quite a serious one, but one that we need to keep an eye on as well, and not let a deficiency here force us to make decisions up the chain that are poor just to accommodate this potential shortcoming.
Broadly, if the player is looking for stuff (namely resistances, stats, books, speed, and an ok damage amount), there's nothing wrong with giving it to them at a reasonable pace - and a pace that is more predictable than random: in short, doing more to ensure more good levels is a positive.
If the second level feeling is a problem, this ties into the above comment: get rid of them, along with compressing the time between Getting Good Stuff. The game is huge, and has lots of room for compression without sacrificing the epic, "not a coffee-break roguelike" characteristic that is a wonderful defining element of Angband.
Whew! Went off on a bender there on that one, but it felt good to think through the implications.
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Welp, that's my impressions thus far just above 4k. I'd love to hear if any of the above triggers some thoughts or impressions - lay it on me!
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