suggestion: remove fuel, darkness/turn draining revisions

[mushroom patch]

It's weird how when supporters of fuel and food come at you with anecdotes about how integral the two are to angband gameplay, you get stories of games where someone chose to run out of fuel or chose to starve by not using or picking up items that were available to them. I guess this is what people mean when they say angband lets the player do what they want. (???)

I would be totally cool with reducing the number of inventory slots available by 1 after removing food.

edit: re: posts upthread about food being irrelevant in certain situations, in fact, food is irrelevant in all situations. A competently played game, played to win takes between 50k and 100k turns (this is being generous on the high end). That's between 10 and 20 rations of food, if the information I'm looking at is accurate. You can buy that in town in the first 100 turns of any game. But even if you don't, the amount of food you find on the ground exceeds that total many times over.

[Carnivean]

A competently played game, played to win takes between 50k and 100k turns (this is being generous on the high end).

You are occupying a different realm to the average player. Clearly you've superseded this game. You should try a game that doesn't have summoning, escapes, food, fuel or any of the other basics of Angband.

I suggest chess or go.

[mushroom patch]

I don't get it. Am I to infer from your sarcasm that you believe no one can transcend the depths of angband?

I can assure you, no matter how hard it is for you to believe, angband is quite easy by the standards of roguelikes and it's because the game does not have enough tactical depth. It's too easy to control what happens. That's just a fact.

[Carnivean]

I don't get it. Am I to infer from your sarcasm that you believe no one can transcend the depths of angband?

No, you may not. What I am saying is that the game you want isn't Angband. If it is a roguelike, then you should probably start your own variant, because what you want is so far from Angband that it would be a completely different game.

My recommendations are because you are so minimalist that I can't imagine you playing a game other than the purest tactical/strategic games.

[Philip]

I agree with mushroom patch that summoning is out of control - summoning a monster that is somewhat weaker than the summoner, but still is a larger threat than just the one turn from the summoner is great, because it forces the player to react in some way (assess threat, ignore, reposition to avoid, kill, remove), summoning lots is bad because it forces the player to react in variations of the same way (assess threat, then ignore or remove).

On the food/light debate. I don't see why "no one who is experienced and/or competent dies of this" is a valid argument. Things don't need to kill you to justify continuing to exist. Food and light are interesting parts of the game, and do have an effect. Do you risk running out of food or light in the dungeon to get those two slots? Admittedly, recall being easy to acquire screws with that. I would be in favor of making food and light more interesting, perhaps by nerfing recall somehow. If you had no clue how long the dive would be taking you it could be pretty interesting - perhaps make portals to the surface appear randomly in the dungeon?

Is there an actual reason to assume competent play? I play idiotically all the time, and learning what not to do is a great part of the game.

[nppangband]

Some other things that add nothing to gameplay:

1) Doors - you open them and walk through them. Boring. I can do that in my own home.
2) Corridors - put the rooms close together so we don't have to walk so far. If I wanted to walk, I would go outside. Boring.
3) Gold - We should be able to kill the shopkeepers and take their inventory as we see fit. Get rid of it.
4) Stats - just have one, called "power". The helpfiles are way too long as is.
5) Races - eventually they all play the same. Who cares? Plus, it promotes prejudice.
6) Hit points - You can always heal as needed with a couple button presses. Call of Duty doesn't have hit points, and look how popular that is. Angband needs to adapt or die.
7) Leveling up - There should be only 2 character levels. Anything more is just needless repetition. Yawn.

[Nick]

I can assure you, no matter how hard it is for you to believe, angband is quite easy by the standards of roguelikes and it's because the game does not have enough tactical depth. It's too easy to control what happens. That's just a fact.

So why doesn't everybody just win all the time? Do you win every game you play? If not, what kills you?

[AnonymousHero]

Some other things that add nothing to gameplay:

1) Doors - you open them and walk through them. Boring. I can do that in my own home.
2) Corridors - put the rooms close together so we don't have to walk so far. If I wanted to walk, I would go outside. Boring.
3) Gold - We should be able to kill the shopkeepers and take their inventory as we see fit. Get rid of it.
4) Stats - just have one, called "power". The helpfiles are way too long as is.
5) Races - eventually they all play the same. Who cares? Plus, it promotes prejudice.
6) Hit points - You can always heal as needed with a couple button presses. Call of Duty doesn't have hit points, and look how popular that is. Angband needs to adapt or die.
7) Leveling up - There should be only 2 character levels. Anything more is just needless repetition. Yawn.

I realize this is tongue-in-cheek, but I think it's a gross mischaracterization, i.e. a straw man.

Generally speaking, I don't think anyone said flavourful things shouldn't remain in game. Things that basically add nothing of value (including flavour) could just as easily go.

Moreover, most of the things you mention actually do have a purpose. Let's just take race and stats: These determine pretty strongly how good your survivability will be at the start of the game, and thus how likely you are to survive to the mid and end game. They also determine how easy a time you'll have getting all the needed resistances and protections from gear. (E.g. High-Elf gets SeeInvis and thus doesn't need it from gear.)

Can we please avoid this kind of caricature? It doesn't help discussion one bit and promotes an us-vs-them mentality. (Although I did get a chuckle out it!)

I can assure you that all I want is a better Angband, I'm not out to destroy Angband. (Whatever "better" means!)

EDIT: Stats: Except CHA which was in fact removed because it had no noticable effect on the game.

[AnonymousHero]

@mushroom patch: I think the whole summoning/teleport discussion is probably off-topic?

(Not that we don't have a proud tradition of almost certainly always veering off-topic in these forums, but I think that particular discussion is probably important enough to not bury in this thread?)

[Carnivean]

I can assure you that all I want is a better Angband, I'm not out to destroy Angband. (Whatever "better" means!)

I can assure you that I am not lumping your opinions in with anyone else's.

Generally speaking, I don't think anyone said flavourful things shouldn't remain in game.

Not in this thread, directly. In a broader context, that's the general gist of mushroom patch's posts, whether he realises it or not.

[debo]

If you people were really serious about a better angband, we would have had rocket launchers in vanilla like a billion years ago.

[AnonymousHero]

If you people were really serious about a better angband, we would have had rocket launchers in vanilla like a billion years ago.

+1000. I'll be submitting a pull request shortly. (Or not.)

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I don't get it. Am I to infer from your sarcasm that you believe no one can transcend the depths of angband?

That's not what I got out of what he was saying. What I inferred is that you have implied that anyone who plays the game and runs out of food or light is incompetent.

[Whelk]

Sorry if I stirred up the pot by mentioning my fears. I'm glad to see, though, that people seem to be aware of the dangers and slippery slopes of calling for parts of the game to be removed or made less important due to being "boring" or "uninteresting".

A previous poster touched on what I perceive the issue is that has ruined DCSS for me: The constant refrain of "this part of the game isn't interesting and doesn't affect gameplay significantly" when what they should be saying is "this part of the game isn't interesting to me anymore and doesn't affect my current method of gameplay significantly because I've learned the most effective/efficient way to handle it due to previous experience.

I don't think game features, mechanics, or flavors should be adjusted/removed just because they get "boring" to people who figure out how to best handle them with minimal effort. It's a minor hassle and inconvenience to you because you've played the game and learned how to tackle that particular thing. For people just starting or still learning, it can well be an "interesting" challenge that they still need to learn how to overcome or best manage.

[Tarrasque]

Food and fuel management is definitely not an interesting challenge by themselves outside of ironman.

They have a little influence on inventory management in general though. If you find an endless source of light you get either a bit less weight to carry and an extra inventory slot, or more time in the dungeon. I'd like it if fuel and food were more relevant deeper down and had more of an effect on strategy/tactics/the game. *waves hands around in a vague manner