Issues on current master

[Derakon]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to think on this a little bit more, and if I can't come up with anything else, I'll turn on saving throws for all monster status effects again. If that still doesn't play well, I'll back out the changes. And if the changes around status effects are broken by the time Nick wants to release 4.1, they won't go in that release - so please don't worry about 4.1 being broken because of this tinkering.

What do you think about the idea, previously brought up, of replacing the status effect wands with throwable potions? Then they're inherently one-shot abilities that you aren't able to spam on every fight.

[takkaria]

What do you think about the idea, previously brought up, of replacing the status effect wands with throwable potions? Then they're inherently one-shot abilities that you aren't able to spam on every fight.

I am not super keen on adding the infrastructure to make potions have effects on hit, so I'd be more tempted to make them scrolls.

[Pete Mack]

It doesn't have to be a throwing effect:
Potion of Hound's Breath (Vibration) for stunning
Potion of Hound's Breath (Inertia) for slowing
Potion of Dragon's breath (Bronze) for confusion

I am not super keen on adding the infrastructure to make potions have effects on hit, so I'd be more tempted to make them scrolls.

[Derakon]

It doesn't have to be a throwing effect:
Potion of Hound's Breath (Vibration) for stunning
Potion of Hound's Breath (Inertia) for slowing
Potion of Dragon's breath (Bronze) for confusion

Though these would implicitly be conic area-of-effect, which would probably be too strong.

I am not super keen on adding the infrastructure to make potions have effects on hit, so I'd be more tempted to make them scrolls.

As far as I'm aware we don't currently have any bolt-effect scrolls, since that was traditionally reserved for wands and rods. That feels kind of odd to me, though it could be worth trying for playtesting purposes if nothing else -- it'd replicate the gameplay impact of throwable potions without the infrastructural changes.

I guess another workaround would be to add a NO_RECHARGE flag to wands that causes them to be destroyed when their last charge is used up. That might interact oddly with charge pooling (when wands are combined in stacks and their charges "merge") though.

[Nomad]

As far as I'm aware we don't currently have any bolt-effect scrolls, since that was traditionally reserved for wands and rods. That feels kind of odd to me, though it could be worth trying for playtesting purposes if nothing else -- it'd replicate the gameplay impact of throwable potions without the infrastructural changes.

Maybe the equivalent of a scroll of Monster Confusion, where it affects the next monster you melee? Or an area effect scroll that only affects directly adjacent monsters?

[gameplay appreciator]

I think the right take on the previous situation of having a large number of wands and such that effectively do nothing was not to try to make them do something, but instead to get rid of them so that you're not seeing so much junk in the dungeon. Giving the player even more types of powerful consumables doesn't improve the game. The player needs nerfs, not buffs.

[Sky]

i think we are looking into giving both player and also everything else buffs, in varying amounts.

[Derakon]

I think the right take on the previous situation of having a large number of wands and such that effectively do nothing was not to try to make them do something, but instead to get rid of them so that you're not seeing so much junk in the dungeon. Giving the player even more types of powerful consumables doesn't improve the game. The player needs nerfs, not buffs.

What we want to do is to give the player more meaningful options. This can be accomplished both by giving them more tools, and by taking tools that are too dominant away. For example, I believe all this is leading up to the removal of Teleport Other and other cheap unlimited teleportation.

(That will, incidentally, probably require removing some tools from monsters as well; mass- and chain-summoning being the most obvious problems)

Replacing the wands with more equivalents to the Scroll of Monster Confusion gets my vote as a simple solution that we can probably do right now. The only problem with it is that now applying a status effect requires two turns -- one to read the scroll, one to hit the monster. But that can easily be handled by balancing the power of the status effects, which is something we're working on anyway. Maybe down the road we can add chuckable potions that apply a weaker (or shorter-duration) status effect but only require one turn to use.

[gameplay appreciator]

Improving monster behavior, e.g. reducing their extreme susceptibility to stealth, better pathing/AI (which seems to be happening), is good. You got to stretch out the timescale encounters evolve on. Axe the high impact, instant effects (summoning, banishment, all kinds of teleportation, destruction). Reduce the player's control over situations. No-save monster statuses go the wrong way on that.

edit: didn't see the derakon post before hitting post. Teleport other removal sounds good.

[Gwarl]

Actually I think teleport other is a great candidate for allowing a monster save.

I just want to say that in 4.0.5 status effect wands/spells aren't completely useless, they just pale in comparison to hitting things with your sword in most instances.

[Gwarl]

Two clarifications on the minor build issues I reported in the last thread -

The build process creates 'score' and 'save' directories in /lib/user/ but the game looks for them in /lib/

running version.sh in /scripts/ doesn't seem to create a version file in the root directory.

[Nick]

From the old thread:

IMO the monster list revamp should be left out for 4.1, which already has a ton of new features, especially if it's gonna impact the list drastically.

You are probably right, but I'm probably going to ignore that

Although I have just looked at my original plan post, and monster list is firmly under 4.2. I will consider further. What do others think?

[Sky]

back to the bugs.

if i try to squelch a cursed weapon, such as Sword (+0,+0) [cursed] i will get the message "squelch all non artifact swords?" because the game sees the cursed sword as an Ego weapon.

[Nick]

What we want to do is to give the player more meaningful options. This can be accomplished both by giving them more tools, and by taking tools that are too dominant away. For example, I believe all this is leading up to the removal of Teleport Other and other cheap unlimited teleportation.

(That will, incidentally, probably require removing some tools from monsters as well; mass- and chain-summoning being the most obvious problems)

I have no plans at this point to remove teleport other or summoning. My feeling is that they support one of Angband's distinguishing features: things happen suddenly, and the player needs to react quickly.

[Gwarl]

From the old thread:


You are probably right, but I'm probably going to ignore that

Although I have just looked at my original plan post, and monster list is firmly under 4.2. I will consider further. What do others think?

I don't mind waiting for the monster list, but I think once pathfinding has been worked out the changes that have gone in since 4.0.5 (sans status effects ) justify a new minor version. In particular I think the new ID system and the curses are strokes of brilliance.

Although that does remind me, remove curse has some strange behaviour where you can remove unidentified curses sometimes and not others, which acts as a free pseudo-ID. I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact circumstances where this happens, but it's a wrinkle to be ironed out.