FA vs Vanilla

[Zireael]

Adding my two cents:
1) Two rubble types (blocking-nonblocking) seem to be the best idea.
2) More terrain in V would be welcome. Main reason why I play variants.
3) Varying spellcaster behavior by smarts/depths - great idea, as long as we don't have any nearly immortal ones :P
4) More movement patterns - great idea, too, but I've never played Necrodancer
5) randarts + some standarts
6) summoning : what bio_hazard said

[the Invisible Stalker]

I realise I'm coming to this thread quite late, but I've been playing FA again recently so I thought I would make some comments. I haven't played V in ages, so the comparison may be a bit dated in areas where V has changed recently.

FA learnable specialty abilities
I like these, but some of the abilities are so weak that I doubt I would ever choose them. Maybe some tweaking could be done.

Monster traps and stealing
Traps are great. Stealing is worthless.

XP penalty for stronger races/classes (V has, FA doesn't)
I think this is an example of counterproductive balancing. Some races/classes should be easier than others. That allows beginners to learn without constantly dying while allowing experienced players to avoid boredom.

Rubble you can walk through
Or better still, no rubble at all? V rubble is definitely broken. FA rubble doesn't seem to add much to the game.

Other varied terrain (trees, lava, water)
This makes sense in the FA wilderness. Trees in the dungeon are a bit weird. It's a long time since I took Biology, but I can't really see how that works.

Combat system
I've always preferred O combat to V combat.

Difficulty
I don't think there's a right level of difficulty for a roguelike. What's more important is allowing reasonable possibilities for challenge games. Birth options are a good way of doing that. I really like thrall mode, for example.

Monster mana, and AI more generally
Monster mana is a good idea in general, but hard to get right. For example, it seems obvious that powerful spells should cost more mana, but how do you prevent monsters from casting weak spells as soon as they've regenerated enough mana, rather than waiting a bit and casting a more powerful one?

On the whole, V monsters seem stupider than FA monsters, but neither are particularly bright. Why does Morgoth need 10000hp? Because he's an idiot. If I got to play Morgoth, with that collection of spells and attacks, no one would ever win. But writing clever AI is hard. A cheap substitute would be more randomness. Monsters would still act stupid most of the time, but every now and then they would luck out and do the one thing you were counting on them not doing.

Different ego types
I've nothing much to say on this one.

Rings and amulets
I find both V and FA tedious on this point, but with somewhat different flavours of tedium. In V there are a lot of rings and amulets floating around, very few of which are even worth identifying. In FA almost everything is worth identifying, but very few are worth wielding or storing. In both I would like to see less junk generated.

Randarts (change the whole set in V vs always have the standarts and a few randarts in FA)
Artifacts are for wimps.

Summoning around the player vs around the caster
Either is fine, but it should really be renamed when it's around the player.

Stat and *stat* potions
I'm not sure it makes much difference, to be honest.

[Nick]

I realise I'm coming to this thread quite late

It's actually a really good reminder to me, and you've added good stuff.

[EpicMan]

Adding my two cents:
3) Varying spellcaster behavior by smarts/depths - great idea, as long as we don't have any nearly immortal ones :P

Add healers, but change the heal spell so it can only heal others. Make priest monsters more priest-y than now.

[Nick]

Add healers, but change the heal spell so it can only heal others. Make priest monsters more priest-y than now.

That's a really interesting thought.

[the Invisible Stalker]

No one so far has mentioned FA's multiple recall points. That's something I find really convenient.

[TJS]

So - with a view of possible changes to particularly V, but FA as well - I would like to get some opinions from people who have played both, on a number of issues. Any input is valuable:

Bit late to the party here, but what the hell.

FA learnable specialty abilities

I like this sort of thing, but not sure it's what Angband is all about. At least I think there are other things that need doing before even considering adding these.

Monster traps and stealing

Traps that can catch monsters? Or monsters that lay traps? I like monsters stealing your stuff.

XP penalty for stronger races/classes (V has, FA doesn't)

I really like this aspect and can't understand why everyone seems desperate to get rid of it. Please don't.

Rubble you can walk through

Not really sure of the point of this? Did you throw this in to see if we're paying attention?

Other varied terrain (trees, lava, water)

Same view as for the learnable skills in that I'd say it would be totally cool, but it is a low priority compared with other stuff that has never been properly resolved in Angband. I think the game has suffered from features/content being chucked in without too much thought at various points and that needs sorting before out first.

Combat system

Are we talking the general combat system in V? I have to mention the S word here unfortunately, Sil does it brilliantly.

Difficulty

Far too easy, I often die of boredom related carelessness even when diving sometimes these days. I honestly think making ironman as standard is the way to go with the old style being an option. Also the difficulty curve is all wrong in that you start off incredibly vulnerable with no detection, speed or escapes and eventually you have an abundance of all three meaning that it eventually becomes a grind whilst avoiding making stupid mistakes. The first part of the game is loads more fun than after the mid game onwards.

Monster mana, and AI more generally

Yes please. The fact that monsters can heal themselves randomly just makes some fights seem more a question of luck than anything else.

Different ego types

Dunno really. Do we need more? Would make the game even easier I imagine. The new ego lanterns do currently for example.

Rings and amulets

Too boring early on. Resist rings and amulets you collect early on are completely unnecessary as nothing breaths for big damage when you get them. By the time you encounter the big breathers you have rBase covered by an ego or artifact anyway. I would suggest adding early breathers from the first couple of levels that you can hunt with the right equipment gaining levels faster. More risk reward from the start.

Also stats are weirdly balanced so that a couple of points early on makes very little difference, but a massive different later on. I remember putting on an early amulet of +5 wisdom and getting a grand total of 1% added to my saving throw. Bah.

Randarts (change the whole set in V vs always have the standarts and a few randarts in FA)

I like them (almost) all being random in V. By the way how come regen the same set of randarts is set to true by default? I got stung by that a couple of times when not paying attention (would be ace to have the game options displayed like each of the character screens before starting the game)

Summoning around the player vs around the caster

Dunno it seems to make detecting and avoiding even more obligatory with summoners than it already is. Not sure what I think about this really, might be good. My first thought is that it encourages more of the same detect->escape routine that dominates the game.

Stat and *stat* potions

Don't like them and never have. For example before stat gain you need to really be strict with what you carry with low strength characters, or lose int or wis in exchange for a valuable +1 or 2 str ring. After stat gain all those interesting decisions just disappear and the game becomes much more tedious. Plus the fact that the range of stats has to be high due to accommodating later stat gain which means that gaining 1 or 2 points of a stat early on through equipment hardly make any difference (see my complaint about rings above).

Pac man levels

Don't like them please take them away

Level generation

Early levels are too boring with not enough out of depth monster and items and almost never any vaults. The last few games I played I got no artifacts or vaults until dlvl 45 odd then every level had loads of each. Finding them occasionally is a real wow moment, whereas finding them each level spoils the discoveries.

Too much junk.

Simple solution, just stop generating weaker equipment as you go deeper. Never understood the point of generating standard weapons after dlvl 15 or weak egos after dlvl 25. The idea that the game must generate all this stuff and then the player must manually hide it all in the options I've always found slightly strange.

Edit: Just realised that this was meant to be a comparison between FA and V and I hadn't read the opening post properly. Bah.

[AnonymousHero]

Add healers, but change the heal spell so it can only heal others. Make priest monsters more priest-y than now.

... and then we end up with the Diablo II "Shaman *" stereotype. Which was never challenging, just annoying. (Disclaimer: This might be different in a non-RT game, but I'm not sure anyone's tried it.)