Loving 3.5.0

[Derakon]

The problem as I see it is that it is almost like a cheat, a potion of beserk strength happens to boost HP, if you are getting killed and can blindly recognize items on the floor then that provides a means of escape, what if he happens to recognize that he picked up a staff of teleport? This "cheat" just saved his life. Now the fact that it is a minor thing is true, however to automaticaly think that no body cares is a great disservice to the game. If it's not worth the time to code then exactly what is? Other variants already have this.Everything should go black, and you should not be able to see didly squat, not even walls.

I can't tell if this post is serious or not, and that bothers me.

Certainly I don't think that the game should e.g. wipe the map display when you're blind. Any gameplay change that encourages the player to take regular screenshots is against Angband's philosophy of gameplay.

As for being able to figure out what items are, we're already assuming that the player character has a perfectly organized backpack in which items never get jostled around or confused for each other and in which every item takes an equal amount of time to retrieve no matter what it is. And of course the character can carry a (two-handed!) sword, a shield, a lantern, and whatever item they're using at the moment, all with nominally two hands. Not only that, they can carry hundreds of pounds even with human-average strength with the only penalty being that they walk about half to a third as quickly as normal -- and they never get tired either. Putting armor on/off takes about 9 seconds* (at normal speed), the same amount of time it takes to chug a potion or hit a monster six times or walk 10 feet.

Basically what I'm saying is this seems like a weird place to start arguing about realism.

* 10k normal-speed turns between dawns means that each turn takes about 9s (3600*24/10000 = 8.64). Consequently, the player's base movement speed is about .8MPH.

[Malak Darkhunter]

You want blindness to also prevent knowledge of what's on the player's square, I think that's unnecessary.

okay then, it's not really blindness is it? lets call it clouded or something, maybe murky? I'm blind but I can still tell what's on the ground and I can still see my map, so I know where I'm going. from a game play perspective I think this is silly.

[Malak Darkhunter]

I can't tell if this post is serious or not, and that bothers me.

Certainly I don't think that the game should e.g. wipe the map display when you're blind. Any gameplay change that encourages the player to take regular screenshots is against Angband's philosophy of gameplay.

As for being able to figure out what items are, we're already assuming that the player character has a perfectly organized backpack in which items never get jostled around or confused for each other and in which every item takes an equal amount of time to retrieve no matter what it is. And of course the character can carry a (two-handed!) sword, a shield, a lantern, and whatever item they're using at the moment, all with nominally two hands. Not only that, they can carry hundreds of pounds even with human-average strength with the only penalty being that they walk about half to a third as quickly as normal -- and they never get tired either. Putting armor on/off takes about 9 seconds* (at normal speed), the same amount of time it takes to chug a potion or hit a monster six times or walk 10 feet.

Basically what I'm saying is this seems like a weird place to start arguing about realism.

* 10k normal-speed turns between dawns means that each turn takes about 9s (3600*24/10000 = 8.64). Consequently, the player's base movement speed is about .8MPH.

I'm not arguing "realism" as I am arguing the ability of a player to "cheat" because we have obviously watered down blindness, to be almost irrelevant. I know this was not how this effect originally was, so it's been changed.If I can still see where I'm going and I can still see the items on the map and can still identify what is lying on the ground then it is not blindness, blindness as it is right now is pretty much irrelevant and annoying because guess what? it really dosen't do anything anymore nor does it add any excitement or danger to the game.

[krazyhades]

You clearly don't play mages or priests. Blindness is terrifying, especially hit-to-blind.

edit: Also, I don't see how recognizing floor items while blind is gimping the blind debuff. I think it's an extremely edge case situation where it saves you. All it usually does is save you a few turns of hassle picking up items after a blinded fight that you didn't know to pick up earlier.

edit2: Again, if you care so much, change it yourself. Open source is open. If your change seems good, it could even be pulled into the core.

[fizzix]

okay then, it's not really blindness is it? lets call it clouded or something, maybe murky? I'm blind but I can still tell what's on the ground and I can still see my map, so I know where I'm going. from a game play perspective I think this is silly.

No it's not really blindness. It's an arbitrary gameplay state. However, calling it blindness is *useful* because it gives the players some idea of what to expect from that state. For example, if we called it blindness and prevented the player from quaffing potions, then they would get frustrated when they were blind and couldn't quaff. There's nothing in a standard player's understanding of language that equates blindness with an inability to drink. So there are two separate issues here.

1) Does the fact that you can recognize items on the ground conflict with the idea of "blindness" I say no, because the object have other distinguishing features, you say yes.

2) The second question is whether the departure from reality in 1 is significant enough to cause player frustration (which is the whole point behind calling it blindness and not something else irrelevant, like "fuzzy"). I say no, because no one ever gets frustrated when they discover they can do something that they might have thought they couldn't. It's only the other way around that causes frustration.

[Malak Darkhunter]

You clearly don't play mages or priests. Blindness is terrifying, especially hit-to-blind.

edit: Also, I don't see how recognizing floor items while blind is gimping the blind debuff. I think it's an extremely edge case situation where it saves you. All it usually does is save you a few turns of hassle picking up items after a blinded fight that you didn't know to pick up earlier.

edit2: Again, if you care so much, change it yourself. Open source is open. If your change seems good, it could even be pulled into the core.

I've been playing since 1988, so I've covered pretty much every character class I would say, you clearly don't understand my knowledge of the game, and I know when something has changed. And that was my whole point behind posting and mentioning it, I wasn't looking for a crew of people to get on here and argue about the fact that YOU don't think anybody cares because actually I do, and I'm sure there are other people that do as well.

[krazyhades]

Very defensive reply that as far as I can tell does not address any of my points.

1) Blindness and especially hit-to-blind are dangerous for nonresistant casters
2) Recognizing floor items only saves characters in extreme edge cases
3) You can make a change yourself, for your game, and potentially even to be drawn into the main line.

[Malak Darkhunter]

[QUOTE=fizzix;92616]No it's not really blindness. It's an arbitrary gameplay state. However, calling it blindness is *useful* because it gives the players some idea of what to expect from that state. For example, if we called it blindness and prevented the player from quaffing potions, then they would get frustrated when they were blind and couldn't quaff. There's nothing in a standard player's understanding of language that equates blindness with an inability to drink. So there are two separate issues here.

1) Does the fact that you can recognize items on the ground conflict with the idea of "blindness" I say no, because the object have other distinguishing features, you say yes.

2) The second question is whether the departure from reality in 1 is significant enough to cause player frustration (which is the whole point behind calling it blindness and not something else irrelevant, like "fuzzy"). I say no, because no one ever gets frustrated when they discover they can do something that they might have thought they couldn't. It's only the other way around that causes frustration.[/QUOTe/]

I'm really surprised I'm having to argue about this. You guys can do what whatever you want with the game, I was merely trying to prove a point.

[Derakon]

I've been playing since 1988, so I've covered pretty much every character class I would say, you clearly don't understand my knowledge of the game, and I know when something has changed.

I've been playing since 2.4 frog-knows, which a) was the first version of Angband, and b) didn't even exist in 1988. Maybe you're talking about Moria; it's been rather longer since I played that game, so I can't claim to speak with authority about how its implementation of blindness works. I cannot remember a version of Vanilla that blanked the display when you were blind. It may have been done in variants, but variants are not Vanilla, and with good reason.

And that was my whole point behind posting and mentioning it, I wasn't looking for a crew of people to get on here and argue about the fact that YOU don't think anybody cares because actually I do, and I'm sure there are other people that do as well.

That crew is welcome to speak up. If enough people feel strongly enough about this issue, then the odds are greatly increased that someone will have the combination of motivation and skill required to implement the change.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Very defensive reply that as far as I can tell does not address any of my points.

1) Blindness and especially hit-to-blind are dangerous for nonresistant casters
2) Recognizing floor items only saves characters in extreme edge cases
3) You can make a change yourself, for your game, and potentially even to be drawn into the main line.

Let me address your points.
1.) Blindness for casters being very bad. (Big deal, drink a potion of cure light wounds.)
2.)Why create more ways for a character to survive when the original goal of the game was to make it unbeatable?
3.) I can, but why put myself through that work dealing with the attitudes I am dealing with now, just becausse I mentioned something that I didn't feel was right?

[Malak Darkhunter]

I've been playing since 2.4 frog-knows, which a) was the first version of Angband, and b) didn't even exist in 1988. Maybe you're talking about Moria; it's been rather longer since I played that game, so I can't claim to speak with authority about how its implementation of blindness works. I cannot remember a version of Vanilla that blanked the display when you were blind. It may have been done in variants, but variants are not Vanilla, and with good reason.



That crew is welcome to speak up. If enough people feel strongly enough about this issue, then the odds are greatly increased that someone will have the combination of motivation and skill required to implement the change.

Yes indeed, in 1988 it was actauly a buggy version of Moria back then, one of the 3.0 - releases I believe, but that is where I started and angband originated from that, on up to frog-knows and beyond. So for someone to claim that I clearly don't play this or that is jumping to conclusions that I am some sort of noob, so I take offense to that.

[Malak Darkhunter]

That crew is welcome to speak up. If enough people feel strongly enough about this issue, then the odds are greatly increased that someone will have the combination of motivation and skill required to implement the change.

Why would they want to? Why would anybody jump into this kind of thread when people are ready to jump on your case because you feel like something needs changed?

[Derakon]

Let me address your points.2.)Why create more ways for a character to survive when the original goal of the game was to make it unbeatable?

Yes indeed, in 1988 it was actauly a buggy version of Moria back then, one of the 3.0 - releases I believe, but that is where I started and angband originated from that, on up to frog-knows and beyond. So for someone to claim that I clearly don't play this or that is jumping to conclusions that I am some sort of noob, so I take offense to that.

I never called you a noob. Nobody here called you a noob. Stop being so defensive.

Also I find it curious that you're trying to defend a feature that was apparently considered by the original devs to be a bad enough idea to have not made it into any official release.

Finally, Angband (again, in any official release) was never intended to be unbeatable. Exhibit A: Globe of Invulnerability (Exhibit B: two Rings of Speed (+2) and Deathwreaker). The Moria it descended from wasn't meant to be unbeatable either, though Moria went through a phase of the dev wanting it to be so.

[krazyhades]

I did over-hastily say something about having clearly not played much mage/priest, which was unfounded, but my point was more that blind is dangerous for those characters, not that one hadn't actually played them.

[Malak Darkhunter]

I never called you a noob. Nobody here called you a noob. Stop being so defensive.

Also I find it curious that you're trying to defend a feature that was apparently considered by the original devs to be a bad enough idea to have not made it into any official release.

Finally, Angband (again, in any official release) was never intended to be unbeatable. Exhibit A: Globe of Invulnerability (Exhibit B: two Rings of Speed (+2) and Deathwreaker). The Moria it descended from wasn't meant to be unbeatable either, though Moria went through a phase of the d,ev wanting it to be so.

I could argue with you all day but I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to waste your time and my time, when I could be enjoying the game, this happens every time I try to play Angband nowdays, so back to Sangband for me. I like the look and feel of Angband, it's like a nice shiny car only to find out it's a lemon.