Angband Philosophy I: Player choice

[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]

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]

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.

[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.

[taptap]

When writing inflation, I thought it was obvious, that I was not writing about the power curve in general (there are different ways to implement an increase in power). The thrust is that making it possible to repeat floors infinitely in Angband is tied to making the gear acquired there pretty useless for later stages of the game so as not to unbalance the game. (Thus Angbanders should not hope for other games to allow infinite repetition at the cost of completely breaking their balance.) And where there isn't a mechanism to devalue the results of infinite repetition Angband does inflict limits rigidly on the player (why stop at L50?).

P.S. Removed whole increasingly off-topic Sil section of my post. Just remember Sil has smithing (which depends on turn count)... and players who start with high smithing. No min-depth = unlimited smithing.

[debo]

Angband Philosophy II: Always Compare Angband To Sil

[Lionmaruu]

What could be done, maybe, is to make a "challenges" mechanic on the game, maybe linked to the website ladder, maybe just like an self-challenge.

Where the game can be played with all sorts of "limitations", like no scumming/farming, no selling/buying, no visiting previous levels, forced deep descent, et cetera...

But then again, if I want to play the game like a hoarder, finishing every level then going back to sell my crap and mining every single spot of metal, I should be able to, that's the only thing Angband does that is actually different from most roguelikes or roguelike-like games like "FTL"/"desktop dungeons"/"whatever the flavor of the month is". (and more like games I love like fallout and elder scrolls hehehe)

Most roguelikes these days have a way to limit your exploration for "Difficulty" sake...
I think Angband is already pretty hard on itself, take away Teleport Other and Telepathy and lets see how many people will still go down sooooo fast...

I'm not suggesting to take them away! Just think, that's your choice to use it to advance faster, I may as well not use it and still finish the game. On my own therms.

BTW I actually love the no selling option it makes the game more liberating.
If I could still sell I would be doing several travels back to sell my crap, now I don't need too, it IS a better way to play... but still is good to know I CAN toggle sell and play that way too.

Sorry for any mistake my English is as crappy as it is self-taught(completely).

[krazyhades]

Yeah, No Selling is much better than selling. It makes the dungeon create more money, to make up for not selling loot. It's just much easier to manage, and doesn't make you feel awful for not dragging every piece of junk back to town for gold.

[Nick]

When writing inflation, I thought it was obvious, that I was not writing about the power curve in general (there are different ways to implement an increase in power). The thrust is that making it possible to repeat floors infinitely in Angband is tied to making the gear acquired there pretty useless for later stages of the game so as not to unbalance the game.

The other thing is that essentially gear is progression. Increasing your level and stats is important too, but really that happens almost incidentally as you go looking for better equipment.

[Nick]

Angband Philosophy II: Always Compare Angband To Sil

and III is ignore debo

[krazyhades]

but...but...rockets in V!

[getter77]

What about something like one-way tangential paths on given floors to approach the "clock" a different way? As in, as opposed to just endlessly meandering DL..3...as stuff so very slowly manifested while reckoning about going back to town or down prior to comfort, you could take a one-way "path" that would essentially have you wind up in a totally rerolled and repopulated DL 3 where all is fresh and a desperate hunt for both kinds of stairs and all else anew. You still get to "settle in" at a depth, but in a far more effective and streamlined manner versus the slow re-population and virtually non-existent looting possibilities once you've combed the floor in the level in the first place. Your treadmill evolves into the pedestrian conveyor at an airport!

[debo]

and III is ignore debo

v.good philosophy for any open-source project

[Timo Pietilä]

but...but...rockets in V!

Early zangband. Topi Ylinen curse. Cyberdemons.

"unbalanced" in a way that it was actually very well balanced, just crazy. And serious fun.

[TJS]

I'm not sure about encouraging people to play different versions.

There's something good about the community all playing the same game. I think when v4 appeared and also later on pyrel the dev teams and community fractured a bit and things weren't quite the same for a while after that. It's easier to lose interest when you aren't playing/working on the "official" version of the game.