Angband Philosophy I: Player choice

[Derakon]

Obviously this wouldn't be a solution to Timo's problem, and we're getting pretty far off-topic, but it sounds like the clock could perhaps be made to accelerate over time. That is, early on there's relatively little pressure to dive (though if you hung around long enough, you would eventually be forced downwards), while in the late game you'd get to play at best one level at each depth.

Put another way, if the clock gives you N turns to reach 1000', then the first .75*N, say, would be allocated to getting to 500', and the rest to getting to 1000', with some kind of appropriate curve.

Functionally I doubt this would make much difference to the more experienced players, given what you've said about the lack of incentives to hang around. They'd still dive at some appropriate rate and then maximize their time scumming at the bottom of the dungeon. But it might be nicer to the newbies, who are more likely to be wasteful of turns and need more time to figure things out.

[debo]

Except that I could play those levels again and again as long as I would like to play them. I don't care if that would not make my char any better as long as there were no clock. IOW I could relax and just play when I would like to relax without any pressure to get better. Currently in Sil, if I want to relax resolution is to stop playing and play something else.

I actually think it would be fine to have an option that basically removes the mindepth clock and lets you do this all you want.

In practice, I think very few people would hang around where the clock matters most, because it's one of the swarmiest and most annoying parts of the game once you've played it a bunch of times (archers_reasons) with relatively poor drops. It might actually be fun to hang around 600'-700' for longer if you didn't have the incentive to dive to 950' and spend as much time as possible there.

[Timo Pietilä]

I'm not sure how much more you would like Sil even if the clock was removed. You really don't get much out of waiting around on early floors

Except that I could play those levels again and again as long as I would like to play them. I don't care if that would not make my char any better as long as there were no clock. IOW I could relax and just play when I would like to relax without any pressure to get better. Currently in Sil, if I want to relax resolution is to stop playing and play something else.

[debo]

I'm not sure how much more you would like Sil even if the clock was removed. You really don't get much out of waiting around on early floors, and it's only the first few where you would really ever feel any time pressure imo. I never noticed the clock beyond 400' or so even in the very beginning unless I was playing a smith.

Beyond number inflation, Sil does introduce very new behaviours and behavior combinations at each new depth, which you have to develop strategies against depending on your build. I found very little difference in the kinds of challenges I was facing in Angband beyond DL60ish (Morgoth being the exception), but it was still fun to find fancy new toys.

Sil does have a teensy issue with inflation in that there's a very noticeable feeling of going from being near-death to quasi-invincible once you've found the right stuff and hit the groove of your build. This doesn't always happen, though, and the challenge races make it harder to get to this point so that the whole things works pretty well.

[Timo Pietilä]

Personally, I LOVE the inflation - it makes me happy.

Inflation is consequence of character getting better. It happens in every game where your character improves over time. It happens in Sil too, but because of forced descend it is just a lot shorter game so you don't see it as incentive to get deeper. You are forced to dive before you actually might want to dive.

Or at least it was like that when I tried it: a lot shorter version of angband with truly bad way to force people to play it in one way and not another. Kind of boring game to play. Without forced descend I believe I would have liked it.

[MattB]

Personally, I LOVE the inflation - it makes me happy.

[debo]

I admire Sil greatly, but I find Angband more immersive - I can get lost in it, whereas Sil is (by design) more gamey.

I find Sil to be more immersive because it hews so closely to its own highly coherent interpretation of the source material.

I found Angband to be more addictive in the micro-cycle because the dive-and-find-cool-stuff loop was so fun; however, after beating it a couple times, I really never felt a desire to go back and play it again. Sil's atmosphere was part of what made me play it roughly a hundred billion times.

I have recently found the micro-cycle-addictiveness again in poschengband; I think the number inflation is actually a core part of this, rather than detracting from it. I liked JRPGs a lot as a kid, but even the stupidly hard ones were 'too easy' in the sense that there was little feeling of actual risk, since you could always go back to the last savepoint. Angband and angband-themed variants sort of distill down what I liked about those games.

[Zireael]

1) Making Angband easier to modify = go for it!
2) Renaming cheat options to difficulty options = go for it!
3) Number inflation is a feature of AD&D/d20. Not much we can do about it.

[Tibarius]

re: rules

I am no native english Speaker, so maybe i miss the Point in this discussion. If so, i am sorry in advance - just ignore my posting then.

I do not understand rule #1. You cannot Play Angband against anyone. It is a (single player) game. Purpose of a game is to benefit Players of the game in form of fun. Most People differ in what is 'fun' for them. I enjoy the Angband 3.5.0 Version.

Nevertheless i think making Angabnd easy to modify is a good Thing. But i do believe that having a vanilla (Standard) Version, which has an positive voting from as many Players as possible is a good Thing. This keeps the community of the game intact. If everyone has her/his individual Version of the game you are no longer able to share your thoughts and Feelings about it. High score lists are no longer valid if one Version is with Lichs and the other without. You cannot compare your style and strategy with other people's ideas, because they are playing a different game. Discussions in a Forum make only sense if you speak about the same things.

[Nick]

* It feels wrong. Being hit (not stopped or blunted by armour) by a battle axe should never be sth. to laugh at, if it is I feel like in some weird manga / superhero comic not in a norse saga. The difference betweeen plain and high modifier items is far too large - it drowns out the difference between types - do you even notice whether you wear a leather armour or mail? There would be no lead-filled maces when more attention were paid to the base types, am I really the only person who thinks "ah, polyurethane foam / padded larp-weapon" upon reading lead-filled mace or seeing the Witchking of Angmar in the LotR film. A mechanism like automatic success can not scale well by definition. The plethora of damage types indicate a will to spice up fights, when the core combat mechanic can not deliver sth. more interesting.

I take your point, and I see why you prefer Sil to Angband. Like chris, though, I kind of like the progression of the character from "can be killed by a cat" to "can kill the Lord of Darkness".

I admire Sil greatly, but I find Angband more immersive - I can get lost in it, whereas Sil is (by design) more gamey. I like the idea of wandering through the dungeon finding better and better gear to become powerful - aiming at a particular character build has always seemed a bit artificial to me.

Timo often describes Angband as an adventure, and I like that. Sure, you are aiming to kill Morgoth at the end, but it's really about getting there.

[Timo Pietilä]

* It feels wrong. Being hit (not stopped or blunted by armour) by a battle axe should never be sth. to laugh at, if it is I feel like in some weird manga / superhero comic not in a norse saga.

Tolkien world is not norse saga and Morgoth is what we would call a god. Being able to do anything against that requires that you are equally nasty piece of work. In the end of the game you are no longer human/elf/orc/troll, but something very different.

Anyway, if you tickle a dragon with an unenchanted battle axe it would laugh at you.

[chris]

Being hit (not stopped or blunted by armour) by a battle axe should never be sth. to laugh at, if it is I feel like in some weird manga / superhero comic not in a norse saga.

Use your imagination a bit. Perhaps you are dodging the blow, or perhaps it glances off your armor.

My opinion is that "inflation" is a feature of *bands, and a good one. I love the fact that the power curve for the player is so immense, from a snot-nosed youngling tripping over their sword to legendary powers in the end. If Novice Warriors that were so threatening in the early game can have any effect on a player capable of destroying the gods themselves, then *that* is something that makes no sense

[taptap]

OK. So what's wrong with that?

I find it horribly wrong for various reasons* ... but it takes too much time to explain in length and it seems impossible to change in Angband anyway. By just acknowledging that it is the trade-off for being able to allow infinite repetition, it would be very clear, why games without similar inflation can not allow infinite repetition, but need some kind of hard or soft limitation. (Timo's post reg. Sil brought me here.)

* It feels wrong. Being hit (not stopped or blunted by armour) by a battle axe should never be sth. to laugh at, if it is I feel like in some weird manga / superhero comic not in a norse saga. The difference betweeen plain and high modifier items is far too large - it drowns out the difference between types - do you even notice whether you wear a leather armour or mail? There would be no lead-filled maces when more attention were paid to the base types, am I really the only person who thinks "ah, polyurethane foam / padded larp-weapon" upon reading lead-filled mace or seeing the Witchking of Angmar in the LotR film. A mechanism like automatic success can not scale well by definition. The plethora of damage types indicate a will to spice up fights, when the core combat mechanic can not deliver sth. more interesting.

[Nick]

He means numbers getting bigger without changing the underlying gameplay. Fighting a Stone Golem is basically like fighting a Soldier only with bigger numbers.

OK. So what's wrong with that?

[Derakon]

He means numbers getting bigger without changing the underlying gameplay. Fighting a Stone Golem is basically like fighting a Soldier only with bigger numbers.