Angband Philosophy I: Player choice

[Raajaton]

The freedom that people have been mentioning is the reason that Angband remains to be my drug of choice when it comes to roguelikes. Having that ability to play at my own pace makes me feel much more immersed in the game. I don't have a specific play style when it comes to aggressive diving vs slow level clearing. Sometimes I have a run where I find a couple of nice items early on and push it to the limits, and sometimes I either don't feel confident in my character yet or am simply exhausted and don't to push my luck. Having to do this sort of risk assessment and decision making without the game suddenly imposing rules on me makes me feel more connected to my adventurer.

There are plenty of birth options available to spike up the difficulty if people choose to do so, which once again goes back to player choice and freedom. When it comes to changing the "rules" of the game, I always would like to see them added as birth options as opposed changing the base game. There was a little bit if an uproar from a small handful of players when the no_selling option was enabled by default, but from where I'm sitting as long as you have the ability to enable/disable it changes nothing.

[Timo Pietilä]

Not sure loose/tight is really the question here. You have a choice of balancing mechanism. If you choose inflation (instead of some kind of limitation), you can allow infinite repetition. This "player choice" is paid for with inflation, which is in my opinion the worst imaginable mechanism you can have in a game

Oddly that works really well in angband. What would you like to have instead that allows infinite repetition?

[taptap]

Oddly that works really well in angband. What would you like to have instead that allows infinite repetition?

I have no strong feelings about infinite repetition, but I abhor inflation. Inflation dulls everything. I would happily give up the option to repeat, if you take the evil of inflation off me.

[Nick]

I have no strong feelings about infinite repetition, but I abhor inflation. Inflation dulls everything. I would happily give up the option to repeat, if you take the evil of inflation off me.

Can you explain exactly what you mean by inflation? If it means what I thought it meant, I'm having trouble seeing the problem.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[MattB]

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

[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.