Increasing home size

[mushroom patch]

I suspect a lot of the house shuffling phenomenon is based on outdated understanding of the game. We now know/it is now the case that having pConf among many other formerly "essential" resistances is totally unnecessary to win, even if you're going fast and winning with underleveled characters, etc. Agonizing over equipment, what to throw away, etc. is really a nonissue -- you just don't have to do it. Cover your base resistances + darkness, maybe poison and disenchantment, get speed, stealth, AC, and stats on your equipment, play carefully, and you're good.

[AnonymousHero]

I suspect a lot of the house shuffling phenomenon is based on outdated understanding of the game. We now know/it is now the case that having pConf among many other formerly "essential" resistances is totally unnecessary to win, even if you're going fast and winning with underleveled characters, etc. Agonizing over equipment, what to throw away, etc. is really a nonissue -- you just don't have to do it. Cover your base resistances + darkness, maybe poison and disenchantment, get speed, stealth, AC, and stats on your equipment, play carefully, and you're good.

Sorry, but saying "just don't do thing X" isn't good game design. Especially since many of us players can be somewhat OCD and simply cannot help ourselves. It was the exact same problem with selling vs. no_selling. If you reward players with "a number goes up when I do boring/tedious thing X", then the game is actively teaching players the wrong thing. Either the underlying mechanic should be fixed or the "boring/tedious" bit should be addressed. (I was originally opposed to no_selling, until I realized that it freed me from my own OCDish tendencies.)

EDIT: Just to clarify: Removing the home size limit would at least remove the boring/tedious bit of inventory shuffling required for those who cannot help hoarding "too much". At least then you could limit equipment shuffing to when you, the player, want to do it rather than at arbitrary points in time when you've just raided a vault and suddently have way too much equipment to store in the home. At least one could just dump it and deal with it later. And again: This works absolutely fine in Entro/Poscheng, so I don't see why it wouldn't work in Vanilla.

(Yes, I am saying that players should be protected from themselves, in a sense. This is a big part of good game design.)

[mushroom patch]

I agree with you, actually, re: design. On the other hand, the current situation can be defended by saying that optimal play does not require the tedium you're talking about. That's an important point, imo. Tedium is at its worst when it's optimal play. If it's not, well, you can't spend too much time thinking about the silly things a player might do (there's just too much possibility there), you just try not to encourage them.

[Derakon]

I agree with you, actually, re: design. On the other hand, the current situation can be defended by saying that optimal play does not require the tedium you're talking about. That's an important point, imo. Tedium is at its worst when it's optimal play. If it's not, well, you can't spend too much time thinking about the silly things a player might do (there's just too much possibility there), you just try not to encourage them.

While there are indeed an infinitude of ways that players might spend time playing the game in tedious ways, that doesn't free us from the obligation of addressing very specific ways that players actually are playing the game in tedious ways. We know the home is a problem. It should be fixed. There are many potential solutions, but "just voluntarily play differently" is not one of them.

[AnonymousHero]

I agree with you, actually, re: design. On the other hand, the current situation can be defended by saying that optimal play does not require the tedium you're talking about. That's an important point, imo. Tedium is at its worst when it's optimal play. If it's not, well, you can't spend too much time thinking about the silly things a player might do (there's just too much possibility there), you just try not to encourage them.

Well, obsessive behaviors are usually not centered on what's optimal. If they were, it probably wouldn't be a problem . That's why I personally experience this as needless enforced (for my play style, others may and do differ, obviously) tedium.

AFAIUI the Angband development philosophy is usually "let players play how they want". This was the impression I got from the Roguelike Radio epsidoe many of them did. (I'm paraphrasing, but I believe one example that was brought up was something along the lines of "if you want to dig away every single wall tile on Dlvl 1, then go for it.".)

It's for precisely this reason that I see the home size limit as an arbitrary and pointless restriction, in addition to the annoyance factor of not just being able to dump stuff and sort it out later (once you get past a certain point in the game). If I wanted to restrict my usage of the home (even given infinte room), I could do that in a game where the home was infinite. I couldn't do it the other way round.

Anyway, I think everybody's opinion/position has probably already been established, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the dev team decides .

[mushroom patch]

Yeah, I agree. There's no good reason not to make home infinite balance-wise and it would lighten some players' psychic load to lift the limits. I screw around with home too much myself and have to remind myself not to worry too much about middling artifact armor and such.

[Cold_Heart]

Home could have interesting things aside from storage space too btw.

[Derakon]

Home could have interesting things aside from storage space too btw.

Such as? Feel free to suggest things.

[Nick]

AFAIUI the Angband development philosophy is usually "let players play how they want". This was the impression I got from the Roguelike Radio epsidoe many of them did. (I'm paraphrasing, but I believe one example that was brought up was something along the lines of "if you want to dig away every single wall tile on Dlvl 1, then go for it.".)

That was me

In the 4.0beta code, you can easily change store inventory size in the constants.txt edit file. Making it larger (and no other changes) makes no difference to anything except the home size. There is some slight UI weirdness, which I will look at fixing at some point. When we are making gameplay changes again, home size can certainly be up for consideration - but given the preceding, is it really necessary?

BTW, for those who regularly play with a larger map window, I really recommend changing the town to about 40 rows x 50 columns - it looks much better.

[Cold_Heart]

Such as? Feel free to suggest things.

Well a seasoned adenturer would surely find a potion making still useful. Besides, there are probably some interesting recipe books and materials that can be found in the dungeon, if one knows what to look for.

Speaking of materials, a rogue could probably use a crafting table to create/repair trap kits for later use

Another one that comes to mind is a crystal ball that can ID all of your items if you are in town.

Also could have a bed that would provide some temporary benefit from sleeping in it.

[the Invisible Stalker]

You can also make you home smaller if you want. I briefly considered playing a homeless thrall in FA as a challenge game. It would be just ever so slightly less masochistic than an ironman thrall. But the way the game is structured that would deny me any recall points, so I quickly decided it would be much too tedious. Setting your home size to zero in V would, if I understand things correctly, give you a somewhat more reasonable challenge game if you didn't want to go full ironman.

[Derakon]

You can also make you home smaller if you want. I briefly considered playing a homeless thrall in FA as a challenge game. It would be just ever so slightly less masochistic than an ironman thrall. But the way the game is structured that would deny me any recall points, so I quickly decided it would be much too tedious. Setting your home size to zero in V would, if I understand things correctly, give you a somewhat more reasonable challenge game if you didn't want to go full ironman.

So if your home has a size of zero, is it just a "Home Sweet Home" floormat in front of a brick wall?

[MattB]

So if your home has a size of zero, is it just a "Home Sweet Home" floormat in front of a brick wall?

The Half-Troll Warrior, Grunt Buggr III, walks up to her home...

"Nietzsche breathes philosophy...<more>
You are struck by metaphysical nihilsm...<more>
You come to the realisation that there might be no objects."

[the Invisible Stalker]

So if your home has a size of zero, is it just a "Home Sweet Home" floormat in front of a brick wall?

Larn, Omega, etc. have a bank. Think of it as having your home repossessed by the bank. It's still there. You just can't use it.

[strato]

Although I'm sure it's obvious, no one has mentioned yet that changing home size could (and probably should, if it's implemented) be made a birth option.