Angband Philosophy II: Magic

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  • Nick
    Vanilla maintainer
    • Apr 2007
    • 9633

    #91
    Originally posted by fizzix
    I don't think any of this is necessary. The ideal solution would be to have an earlier heavy poison breather with lower damage that is *easy* to avoid. Evil and moves slowly. Drolems should be moved later. They should be the counterpart to bronze golems and bone golems.
    I'm thinking about dungeon level 60 - they're still a nasty surprise, but it's a bit deeper than things like Dracolisks and Dracoliches.
    One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
    In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

    Comment

    • MattB
      Veteran
      • Mar 2013
      • 1214

      #92
      Originally posted by Nick
      I'm thinking about dungeon level 60 - they're still a nasty surprise, but it's a bit deeper than things like Dracolisks and Dracoliches.
      Maybe we should keep them where they are, but e-mail out a cut-out-and-keep badge that people can wear, once they've earned it, that says:

      "I've been instakilled
      by the first Drolem
      I came across!"
      Last edited by MattB; June 13, 2015, 00:15. Reason: ...And maybe a lollipop

      Comment

      • AnonymousHero
        Veteran
        • Jun 2007
        • 1393

        #93
        Originally posted by MattB
        Maybe we should keep them where they are, but e-mail out a cut-out-and-keep badge that people can wear, once they've earned it, that says:

        "I've been instakilled
        by the first Drolem
        I came across!"
        "My name is AnonymousHero, and I approve[1] this message."

        [1] Never understood why they didn't say "approve of" or "approved", but this is what they actually said.

        Comment

        • Nick
          Vanilla maintainer
          • Apr 2007
          • 9633

          #94
          Originally posted by HallucinationMushroom
          I'm still confused why Angband keeps changing. At what point is the game... 'finished'? Or, is it that it will never be finished? If I want to play what I consider to be Angband, I play 3.0.6. This is not meant to be an offense to anybody, but just what version I'm comfortable with. I always assumed 'maintainership' was some kind of awful thankless job of just making sure the game could be played on new versions of OS's as they came out.
          That's a really good question, which doesn't really have a neat answer. Here are a few reasons I want to change stuff:
          1. Angband is an old game. Many of its design decisions are excellent and have been made for excellent reasons, but there are some which were enforced by constraints which no longer apply. Having a rethink of these can be a good idea.
          2. Angband gets a fair bit of critical comment from the rest of the roguelike community, usually for being "too grindy", because you can just keep regenerating level 1 until you get all the gear you need. While such criticisms neglect changes to the game, and the fact that the heat-death of the universe would come first, they are not completely invalid. I would like to do more to discourage boring play, without forbidding it.
          3. Another criticism Angband gets is that it's thematically confused - mostly it's a Tolkien-themed game, but there are still bits of other mythologies in there too, and it's definitely full of anachronism. The second of those I'm basically deeming fixed by the new splashscreen, and I'd like to do some work on the first too.
          4. Change is an Angband tradition. It's been around about 22 years, and the longest time between versions is less than two years. So in that way it's never going to be finished, until it's dead.
          5. The world has changed in those 22 years. There are many more games around which appeal to the sort of people who like Angband, so people are less likely to spend massive swathes of time playing a single character, and we need to work a bit harder to keep people's attention. The move (both from the game and from the community's perception of it) to a faster play style has helped with this, but there's more to do.
          6. As Derakon says, maintainers need some fun in their lives
          One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
          In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

          Comment

          • MattB
            Veteran
            • Mar 2013
            • 1214

            #95
            Originally posted by Nick
            There are many more games around which appeal to the sort of people who like Angband, so people are less likely to spend massive swathes of time playing a single character, and we need to work a bit harder to keep people's attention.
            Personally, I'm really not convinced that this is true.

            Comment

            • topazg
              Scout
              • Nov 2010
              • 32

              #96
              I first played Frog Knows .. so to some extent, that's still analogous to "Angband" to me. Having said that, and having repeatedly sort of revisited it on and off for the last 20 years, I would never want to go back. I like the addition of colour to a number of places in the game, I like the fact speed is handled much better, I like the way macros have been built in nicely, I like the additional info on "things seen" and whatnot, I love the new vaults, rooms, and level feeling descriptions.

              I somewhat miss haggling (I know, a bit weird, and even on ones I can turn it on, I quickly get bored of it, but it was the flavour of it somehow), I somewhat miss needing to kill lots of mobs of the same type before unlocking a decent amount of info on them ... but overall, each iteration feels improved, and I enjoy jumping into the new one. That's part of the Angband experience for me to be honest.

              Comment

              • AnonymousHero
                Veteran
                • Jun 2007
                • 1393

                #97
                Originally posted by MattB
                Personally, I'm really not convinced that this is true.
                Truth. I've played a single character in (no-reload) Baldur's Gate Trology for about 1-2 years at this point. (I acknowledge that I'm an edge case simply because I actually do this kind of thing... but we do exist!)

                Comment

                • MattB
                  Veteran
                  • Mar 2013
                  • 1214

                  #98
                  Originally posted by AnonymousHero
                  Truth. I've played a single character in (no-reload) Baldur's Gate Trology for about 1-2 years at this point. (I acknowledge that I'm an edge case simply because I actually do this kind of thing... but we do exist!)
                  Oh, I'm sure you do!

                  It was just the phrase 'so people are less likely to...' that struck me as a massive generalisation.

                  I have many games on PC (including Baldur's Gate), PS3, Wii-U and iPad, but I spend literally ten times more time playing Angband than all the others put together. Yes, literally.

                  EDIT: (Of course, maybe I'm just an edge case...)

                  Comment

                  • Nick
                    Vanilla maintainer
                    • Apr 2007
                    • 9633

                    #99
                    Originally posted by MattB
                    It was just the phrase 'so people are less likely to...' that struck me as a massive generalisation.
                    Yes, quite right. I guess I was thinking about people who are looking for a game to play, and how long they'd be prepared to try Angband for before moving on to one of the many other choices - but it's probably pretty marginal. Good! Scratch number 5 then
                    One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
                    In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

                    Comment

                    • AnonymousHero
                      Veteran
                      • Jun 2007
                      • 1393

                      Originally posted by Nick
                      Yes, quite right. I guess I was thinking about people who are looking for a game to play, and how long they'd be prepared to try Angband for before moving on to one of the many other choices - but it's probably pretty marginal. Good! Scratch number 5 then
                      I'm already sold on the whole Angband/Roguelike idea, but I *would* be wary of entirely mehcanical-doesn't-take-into-account-me mechanic.

                      BTW: There's *NOTHING* like winning BG without ever having your PC die. It's just spectacular. Yeah, it's better than beating Angband and/or whatever...
                      Last edited by AnonymousHero; June 14, 2015, 00:26.

                      Comment

                      • AnonymousHero
                        Veteran
                        • Jun 2007
                        • 1393

                        Originally posted by MattB
                        It was just the phrase 'so people are less likely to...' that struck me as a massive generalisation.
                        TBF I don't think that was actually something I said, so...

                        Comment

                        • MattB
                          Veteran
                          • Mar 2013
                          • 1214

                          Originally posted by Nick
                          Yes, quite right. I guess I was thinking about people who are looking for a game to play, and how long they'd be prepared to try Angband for before moving on to one of the many other choices
                          Fair enough - a good point.

                          Good! Scratch number 5 then
                          See! We're making progress. Soon you'll have nothing to do at all!

                          On a serious note, maybe there is a debate here about how much we should change Angband to attract new players, compared with how much we should concentrate on making Angband even greater for the people who already play it.

                          (Of course, by 'we', I mean 'you'.)

                          Maybe the answer is that once someone has made a decent iTunes version (Anyone?...Bueller?...Anyone?...Anyone?...), there could be an Angband Lite which is touchscreen and all Shockbolt-y (insert favourite tile artist here) so that it is not to much of a shock to the system. Where you have to survive to level 20 and kill, I don't know, Shagrat, and be told on winning that there is a whole new world of lost eveinings out there on PC/Mac/Linux that is also free!

                          Comment

                          • MattB
                            Veteran
                            • Mar 2013
                            • 1214

                            Originally posted by AnonymousHero
                            TBF I don't think that was actually something I said, so...
                            No you didn't. Nick did. See post #94.
                            That was the post I was replying to.
                            Apologies for any confusion caused.

                            Comment

                            • AnonymousHero
                              Veteran
                              • Jun 2007
                              • 1393

                              Originally posted by MattB
                              I have many games on PC (including Baldur's Gate), PS3, Wii-U and iPad, but I spend literally ten times more time playing Angband than all the others put together. Yes, literally.
                              You should play BG no-reload more. It's just incredible. Not sure about PS3/Wii/Whatever, but BG2 no-reload is crazy hard and interesting. It was never intentended to played that way, but it works. OMG, it works!

                              Comment

                              • AnonymousHero
                                Veteran
                                • Jun 2007
                                • 1393

                                Originally posted by MattB
                                No you didn't. Nick did. See post #94.
                                That was the post I was replying to.
                                Apologies for any confusion caused.
                                My bad. Apologies.

                                Comment

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