Very old returning player needs advice!

[Ende]

There is a simple, I´d even call it dumb, definitely not skill involving in any way, shape or form, algorithm for old Angband:

Id the first flags by selling to a vendor. Once money is plenty, start identifying them.
With armor/weapon, carry everything till pseudo-id kicks in (yes, mage has bad pseudo id but gets the spell early). Once that has happened, id it if it has potential to be an upgrade, discard otherwise. This last step requires meta-game knowledge.

If you find a sophisticated, skillfull way to extract information by other means: congratulations, you just saved the cost of an id scroll.

Its called character building.

The old way appears to be more about developing your character, training him, building a knowledge of the items (and the creatures). So if he came across the same kind of thing again he would know it and be able to identify it himself. But the realism was all about discovering something for the first time... the headscratching decision of what u do with an unexamined item.

To me that just seems more in line with the immersion old Angband was trying to achieve. That adventuring feel that u were in a real fantasy world.

Having fantasy shopkeepers who both buy and sell is also more immersive imo.

If theres an issue of gaining too much gold too early in the game then cap the gold that each vendor has in his pocket, the same as Skyrim has. That would limit the amount of items u can sell.

I guess im just surprised at the change to the game since i last played it. It appears to have gone down a different road than i expected...

[Estie]

I call it replay value.

What you describe is exciting the first few times you play the game, and for nostalgia if you return after 10 years. For people like me who have been playing on and off for all this time, other things have become more important I guess.

That being said, I am not completely happy with "no selling" shops either (but in a minority there, if amount of posts on the topic is any indicator).

At the root of the issue is, I think, the fact that the same procedures are used to get knowledge of flavours and individual items.

Gaining knowledge of a flavour is game changing and limited by the (small) amount of flavours - requiring some puzzlework to attain it can be enjoyable. Requiring the same puzzlework for every single chainmail you find can quickly turn into a nightmare.

[Patashu]

Nostalgia and flavour are important for a game you play once (AAA games).

Solid gameplay mechanics and streamlined/'no annoyances/tedious aspects' design are necessary for a game that you play again and again forever (Roguelikes)

[Derakon]

Its called character building.

The old way appears to be more about developing your character, training him, building a knowledge of the items (and the creatures). So if he came across the same kind of thing again he would know it and be able to identify it himself. But the realism was all about discovering something for the first time... the headscratching decision of what u do with an unexamined item.

So which do you find more immersive: paying to identify an unknown potion (or selling it to a shopkeeper to identify it), or trying the potion out and observing its effects? The latter method is how many potions are identified in modern Angband, and it would have been totally unthinkable when there were still Potions of Weakness, Potions of Clumsiness, Potions of Death, etc. in the game.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I play 3.0.6 if I want to play a Vanilla experience that doesn't require me to learn anything new. Others will have their own favorite versions, but if you are looking for an Angband variation that won't throw curveballs at an old timer, or at most, only a few at you, then 3.0.6 is probably the newest version I'd recommend.

I played Moria too, but I only played V between 2.8 -> 3.0.6, so it's possible even 3.0.6 is too new fangled!

[Mondkalb]

Its called character building.

The old way appears to be more about developing your character, training him, building a knowledge of the items (and the creatures). So if he came across the same kind of thing again he would know it and be able to identify it himself. But the realism was all about discovering something for the first time... the headscratching decision of what u do with an unexamined item.

To me that just seems more in line with the immersion old Angband was trying to achieve. That adventuring feel that u were in a real fantasy world.

Having fantasy shopkeepers who both buy and sell is also more immersive imo.

If theres an issue of gaining too much gold too early in the game then cap the gold that each vendor has in his pocket, the same as Skyrim has. That would limit the amount of items u can sell.


I guess im just surprised at the change to the game since i last played it. It appears to have gone down a different road than i expected...

Try FAangband. It's all there, and more. The game uses fractional resistances. Rings and amulets can have a wide variety of bonus and malus effects, and even curses aren't obvious immediately after equipping.

http://angband.oook.cz/variants.php?variant=faangband

It has multiple dungeons, towns, and a wilderness. You can choose between different modes to play (e. g. play only the dungeons without the wilderness).

I enjoy playing the new Angband, but I am also missing some flavor elements and such.

[quarague]

some comment on the id game. It is my understanding that the long term goal is to essentially remove the id scrolls and spells and make id by use the only or at least dominant way of identifying most items. Note also that in the beginning you can easily distinguish magic versus non magic weapons/ armor and throw away the non magic ones. Later on, you will use only ego items/ artifacts, so knowing immediately that an item is ego doesn't really tell you whether it is useful/ an upgrade to what you have. Figuring that out through usage is much harder than using an id scroll on it and comparing numbers.

[taptap]

'no annoyances/tedious aspects' design are necessary for a game that you play again and again forever (Roguelikes)

People tend to put the line between "mere annoyance" and "interesting challenge" at completely different thresholds.

// Removing "annoyances" in a perma-death game strikes me as a somewhat surprising major design goal. Nobody would seriously contemplate (on the Angband forum) removing the single most annoying thing there is in the game, i.e. death. //

[Estie]

People tend to put the line between "mere annoyance" and "interesting challenge" at completely different thresholds.

// Removing "annoyances" in a perma-death game strikes me as a somewhat surprising major design goal. Nobody would seriously contemplate (on the Angband forum) removing the single most annoying thing there is in the game, i.e. death. //

The distinction here is betwen "dangerous" (which is also annoying) and "merely annoying" (which annoys the player without having relevant gameplay implications).

[Derakon]

People tend to put the line between "mere annoyance" and "interesting challenge" at completely different thresholds.

// Removing "annoyances" in a perma-death game strikes me as a somewhat surprising major design goal. Nobody would seriously contemplate (on the Angband forum) removing the single most annoying thing there is in the game, i.e. death. //

I would say it's more the difference between a threat that requires careful thought and one that doesn't. Deciding to identify every item before equipping it is not a hard decision in a game that has sticky-cursed awful items. Similarly the decision to cast Detect Traps is rarely a difficult one. So a significant amount of the last few years' development efforts has focused on removing the non-interesting decisions from the game so that players can focus more on the interesting ones. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that many "interesting little warts" of the game, that gave it flavor, have been removed. There's been plenty of discussion of ways to introduce more flavor into the game without bringing back the warts though. There just needs to be someone willing to implement them.

[Philip]

Because it keeps getting drowned out, I would like to repeat that a lot of variants are still pretty evil, some without being annoying. FA stands out as a non-annoying but still pretty nasty variant, while O is the same but old-school. S is nice since there's a competition just now, and otherwise is pretty nasty too. Has an interesting ID game. NPP is also worth mentioning. Good game, streamlined, even has option for oldschool Moria.

[Mondkalb]

The older versions of Angband are also still available, just in case ... ^^

[TJS]

In the old versions of Angband you just kept everything until you can get id spell/scrolls/staves and then identify everything from then on. It was tedious rather than difficult im my opinion.

Now you have to test it out to see what it does which is far more interesting (and can be more dangerous too).

I wouldn't say the game has been made easier as a result, just less frustrating and time consuming in the wrong way.

[Swishtail]

I too am a long time, old school player, but I have to say I think v3.5 is nothing short of a revolutionary improvement for the game. I am past the point where arbitrary, random, no-fault death is an enjoyable feature. So far every stupid death I've suffered in v3.5 has been truly deserved, and I feel each one inches me further up the learning curve. If I want die a thousand times for no good reason, I'll go play Nethack.

[debo]

If I want die a thousand times for no good reason, I'll go play Nethack.

Hilarity is _always_ a good reason.