I want more hitpoints

[Derakon]

jesus derakon, talking with you is like hitting my head against a brick wall.

I could say the same thing about you. I appreciate your perspective, but you're expecting the game to do a lot more for you than it does or should (in my opinion) do. Angband expects you to experiment, fail, observe, learn, and demonstrate mastery. Every death should be a learning opportunity; if nothing could be learned, then that is a flaw in the design.

However, learning requires effort on the part of the player, too, which is why I asked you what you learned. Here are the lessons you should have learned from that encounter:

1) Watch your health. You had three turns between when you started the fight and when you died. The game has a low hitpoint warning that should have alerted you that something was going on.

2) Watch the message log. You should have seen messages like "It hits you." in addition to the messages from fighting the orc.

3) Learn to run away. If you're taking damage that quickly, you should not be where you are.

4) Relatedly, learn to have escape items in your inventory, and learn to use them. You must be prepared for things to go badly before they go badly.

You're a new player, and as such bring a valuable perspective to this community. However, that does not make your perspective inherently right -- at least, not all the time.

I will say that you've reminded me of a cool feature I've seen a couple of modern roguelikes implement -- a post-mortem that gives canned advice to the player. I'll go ahead and make a new thread in Development for that.

[Sky]

jesus derakon, talking with you is like hitting my head against a brick wall.

So what did you learn from this encounter?

nothing.

which is the point of my entire post, and thread, which you conveniently decided to edit so that it suits your purpose, while ignore how i proceeded to explain the reasoning behind it.

Angband requires counterintuitive playing. As such, it doesn't take off, while everyone and their dog knows Dwarf Fortress, Pixel Dungeon, FTL, Darkest Dungeon, or even Dark Souls.

New players, even those who try hard, will simply not come to the realization that a ring of see invisible is a better choice than a OBVIOUSLY MASSIVE INCREASE IN DAMAGE. They will not think "i have learned that status variants such as rPois and pConf are more important than damage output" but rather they will think "the game killed me this is a stupid game".

We no longer live in the 90s. people no longer like to nerd out to games demanding a complex understanding of hidden rules, but rather they want to play the game and make it up as they go along, which is the reason why games like Unreal Tournament have failed and games like Halo and CoD are multimillion dollar franchises.
And you genuinely advise that "the only way to play V is through a series of obscure rules which no sane player will discover on their own unless they band their head against the wall until it bleeds .. or join the forums and get the spoilers from us, and even then it's not guaranteed".

In game design, you will always have to choose between depth and playability. Agband sure has a ton of depth, but very, very little playability. There is no moment where you can say oh, im way over my DL minimum, i'll just kill these orcs, because you will lose invariably to one of the thousand variables which are impossible to learn in a short .. reasonable amount of gametime.

Pixel Dungeon is even harder than Angband. You get 1 food, and earn 1 food per level, SOMETIMES 2. Food is your hp, AND YOUR FOOD. You will simply starve unless you dive.

But, when you have a sword that does 12 damage, and you find a sword that does 16 damage, you can say "oh good, now i do 4 more damage".
In Angband, the same would result in the player coming to the forums and everyone telling them "idiot, everyone knows the 12 damage sword is SO MUCH BETTER than the 16 damage one, and you would know too if you have observed a small line of text that appeared when you killed the 74th mob of a specific type under some particular light conditions".




there's plenty of people here on these forums. have them all take 1 friend and make them play V without help. Set a number of new players they can have. Then count at what DL they died.

You like statistics, right? Let's see what portion of the game content remains unexplored to an average angband player.

I already did mine. the guy died in town.

[Bostock]

Lightning bolt... or crossbow bolts.

[Pete Mack]

@Sky: Diving, at least at a modest rate, is not a "1337 skill." It is much, much easier than you seem to think. You mentioned at one point killing cutpurses for EXP. The trouble with this is cutpurses give terrible EXP. If you were killing a pack of wolves instead, you'd already be DL 9. The trick about killing wolves is you can't afford to kill all the orcs between you and the wolves, unless you get lucky with a wand of light. So don't try to kill them until you get reliable lighting bolt. It's not elite. It's a technique that can be learned fairly easily.

[Gwarl]

I think Angband's early game is far too easy. I made it to DL27 on literally my first attempt (completely unspoiled). So much power creep has made the first 10-20 levels pretty much just a matter of finding the stairs down.

Potions of cure light wounds cost 20 gold. Scrolls of phase door cost 15. There are infinite amounts of both readily available from the start. There's nothing on the first few floors that can't be beaten with these two consumables alone.

[Derakon]

let me make you a V example.

i'm DL33 and i melee an orc .. or something. Uruk, halforc, something that dies in 2 rounds at most. the key here, is that i have meleed a million of these things.

i hit it, my hp goes down. i hit it again, my hp goes has fallen from 250 to 100. my reaction is "wth ?". i take 1 more step in an empty room, dead.

some invisible dragon killed me.

So what did you learn from this encounter?

[Bostock]

If you'll pardon my laziness (not downloading 4.1 to check it out), have the hints been updated in 4.1? The hints in 4.0.5 contain some stuff that is irrelevant or not very relevant or misleading in that version.

[the Invisible Stalker]

That's already basically in V - the shopkeepers give hints (from the hints.txt file).

That's good. It's been quite a while since I played V.

[Nick]

I hope this point doesn't get lost in the rest of this thread. Angband is unlike most games that I've played in that it seems to teach new players terrible habits. I had the exact same experience, playing in what I now realise was a ridiculous manner for years until I read Eddie's posts. Players who find their way here get plenty of good advice, which they may or may not choose to take, but what happens to those who don't? Fixing this problem, if people agree that it is a problem, is probably hard, but here's a relatively easy change that could be made: Introduce a town unique like FA's Complainer, but instead of random bug reports have him (or her, or it) dispense snippets of useful, but not obvious, advice.

That's already basically in V - the shopkeepers give hints (from the hints.txt file).

[the Invisible Stalker]

Sky--I really do understand your point: If you spend a lot of time at low CL, a few extra points can make a big difference. But it's a discussion we've had dozens of times here: focusing on this issue tends to teach the wrong lessons. I was an absolutely hopeless player until Eddie Grove posted Tales of the Bold on rgra. You don't need to play optimally. But clearing levels, or just staying shallow for too long, makes it much, much harder to learn how to deal with levels below 3000'.

I hope this point doesn't get lost in the rest of this thread. Angband is unlike most games that I've played in that it seems to teach new players terrible habits. I had the exact same experience, playing in what I now realise was a ridiculous manner for years until I read Eddie's posts. Players who find their way here get plenty of good advice, which they may or may not choose to take, but what happens to those who don't? Fixing this problem, if people agree that it is a problem, is probably hard, but here's a relatively easy change that could be made: Introduce a town unique like FA's Complainer, but instead of random bug reports have him (or her, or it) dispense snippets of useful, but not obvious, advice.

[wobbly]

I'm fairly neutral on levelling out the starting hps. If you take a look at poscheng it in fact does (base hps).

In the scenario given paladins have detect evil. Any character other than the human warrior (no infravision) wandered straight in to that situation. If you can't phase out or retreat back to a corridor, what are you sposed to do? Honestly you're sposed to die, learn & adjust your tactics.

As an addenum: removing lanterns from the general store inadvertitly screwed human warriors a little. I'd consider at least giving them a lantern in their starting gear to balance out the lack of infravision.

[Mondkalb]

OTOH these unfortunate hit die rolls only happen half the time, you also could be lucky. You could also be unlucky on early dungeon levels to step into a room with some foes and a shrieker mushroom which could get you killed regardless of how lucky you were with hit die rolls.

Nick is right, Angband is for masochists.

[Huqhox]

I think we're all sympathetic to what you are saying Sky, and certainly I don't think the first few levels are too easy - neither are they too hard.

Yes occasionally your CL3 Paladin gets ambushed by creatures it won't be able to handle and in that case you will die, regardless of how well you have prepared. After all the RNG does hate you. But that's offset by the time when you do manage to defeat a tricky mob, squeaking through with 1hp left.

Angband does have significant difficulty spikes but this is something that is up for discussion in 4.2. 4.1 removed a lot of tedium of detection with the new trap and secret door code, and rune id makes idenification more streamlined so now it is onto the races, classes and monsters. It is improving all the time.

I remember when floating eyes (a DL1 monster) would paralyse your character automatically if you stepped next to one. So your brand new character (unless it was a gnome with built in FA) would walk around a corner and end up next to a floating eye they couldn't have detected. End of game. That doesn't happen any more.

Hounds also used to be a real pain; as soon as they appeared around DL18 they were always in large groups and even if you were being a good @ if you couldn't deal with them you'd have to abandon the level.

So yes Angband is still hard (and yes a game that relies on the player learning an awful lot about how the game works in order to progress) but that learning curve is getting smoother. And that is why your input is valuable. Those of us who have been playing for years and years do lose perspective on just how hard this game is to learn. So keep it up.

To answer the specific point of this thread: if you roll low for you first HP increases then personally that just means I spend more time at the lower levels. I'm not a power diver and don't mind wandering around within stair distance of the town for a bit. There's plenty of XP, kit and $ available to maybe give @ a fighting chance even with the poor rolls

[Sky]

let me make you a V example.

i'm DL33 and i melee an orc .. or something. Uruk, halforc, something that dies in 2 rounds at most. the key here, is that i have meleed a million of these things.

i hit it, my hp goes down. i hit it again, my hp goes has fallen from 250 to 100. my reaction is "wth ?". i take 1 more step in an empty room, dead.

some invisible dragon killed me.

sure, no seeInvisible is stupid. but it's not weird that most people tackling angband will just think "uhu, ring of damage +14 at such a low DL, i better wear that".

the reaction to immediate visual clues (empty room, 1 mob) is something which players will always have for long before they decide to not stick with angband and instead try darkest dungeon or something else.

diving is another example of an aspect of angband which is counter-intuitive; i'm too weak to clear DL20, let me read two scrolls of deep descent.
Sure, you can do this once you master the game, once you learn to evaluate all aspects which are not immediately obvious to the average player, but, what if you don't? What is you *are* an average player?

Are you really telling me that someone who thinks "i'm still levelling up pretty fast here at this DL, and i'm finding useful gear, maybe i better not risk going down any further for a while" is approaching the game in the wrong way?


ANY game will become too easy when you master it. once you do master it, is it even fun playing? i really don't play FTL anymore because i'm either playing Medium and it's too easy, as i know exactly what to do in all circumstances, or Hard, which is just gambling with the RNG. i dont find either to be fun.

i want to make it clear that i am not saying (although it may seem like it) that "Angband is too hard, make it easier", but rather "Angband has unusual difficulty spikes, make it more even".

Diving, and various "1337" playing techniques, should be something you do once you master the game, not something *required* to play. I'm ok with OOD mobs, escapes, detection, im just not ok when the game says "ok i decided that you die".
Here specifically, it's "you just started, the only option i'm giving you is to melee mobs (it's ok, you have more hp) but IM NOT GIVING YOU ANY HP".

It hardly matters that you will have 1000hp at CL50. When you are a CL3 paladin, and 2 soldier, 2 priests and 2 bandits decide to wake up at the same time, what do you do?

[Pete Mack]

Sil is a genuinely brutal game. Angband only assures the possibility of bad luck. Sil guarantees it.

Sky--I really do understand your point: If you spend a lot of time at low CL, a few extra points can make a big difference. But it's a discussion we've had dozens of times here: focusing on this issue tends to teach the wrong lessons. I was an absolutely hopeless player until Eddie Grove posted Tales of the Bold on rgra. You don't need to play optimally. But clearing levels, or just staying shallow for too long, makes it much, much harder to learn how to deal with levels below 3000'.