three bad suggestions for V

[passer_by]

Some random ideas I had during my recent playthrough. I like to think they're pretty tangential and don't interact with anything, but I'm aware that programming roguelikes is harder than it seems.

1. An ironman option: your equipment slowly degrades through regular use. The idea here is to force you to find new equipment more often. A simple implementation of this would be something like: when a monster hits you, 1 in 200 times it becomes a hit to disenchant.

2. If you lose an artifact by selling/giving it to a shopkeeper, rather than by abandoning it in the dungeon, then it's not lost and can be found again. The idea, of course, is that another brave adventurer bought it, took it back to the dungeon and met with one of those occasional misfortunes that keep Angband exciting.

3. A visual effect for confusion (like hallucination and blindness have visual effects). The effect would be: whenever @ moves in the wrong direction due to confusion, the map is completely redrawn in the wrong orientation. So that @ moved in the right direction with respect to the screen, yet the wrong direction with respect to the dungeon.

[Huqhox]

I implemented 1. when I was tinkering with the code years and years ago. The mechanic was something like a critical miss with a weapon had a chance of degrading the weapon, and a critical hit against you had a chance of degrading a piece of armour. This included egos and artifacts. I also added a skill for warriors to 'repair' armour that had been damaged.

It made things a little more interesting as new gear was always needed and it made you keep endgame equipment at home rather than exposing it to damage. And that was it's biggest flaw; it turned @ into a hoarder.

2 just sounds like a backdoor way of effectively increasing the size of your home, albeit with a 'storage cost' of having to buy the item back (irrelevant in the late game when @ has $ aplenty) and presumably with having to stair scum until the item you wanted was back in stock. Not personally convinced by this one

I don't like the sound of 3 either. The key here is that Angband is a role playing game. I think I can role play @ being confused without having to actually be confused myself. Plus the current display wouldn't be able to cope with moving in diagonal directions - the map could only be rotated at 90 degrees, not 45

Interesting ideas though

[Patashu]

I implemented 1. when I was tinkering with the code years and years ago. The mechanic was something like a critical miss with a weapon had a chance of degrading the weapon, and a critical hit against you had a chance of degrading a piece of armour. This included egos and artifacts. I also added a skill for warriors to 'repair' armour that had been damaged.

It made things a little more interesting as new gear was always needed and it made you keep endgame equipment at home rather than exposing it to damage. And that was it's biggest flaw; it turned @ into a hoarder.

You would only want this kind of mechanic if the game is also in Ironman mode (or otherwise limits the amount of resources available, like Sil's depth clock).

[Huqhox]

Agreed, ironman would make it a lot more interesting to play

[passer_by]

having to buy the item back (irrelevant in the late game when @ has $ aplenty) and presumably with having to stair scum until the item you wanted was back in stock.

Wait, no, it reappears in the dungeon eventually. Not in the store. It's an extension of your home only in the same sense that the whole dungeon is an extension of your home … full of wonderful artifacts you haven't met yet.

[dreembeard]

@passer_by: I like ideas 1 and 3, even though I'd probably hate playing 1 in Patashu's variant, and end up hoarding stuff otherwise, just like Huqhox did.

I'm with Huqhox on 2. Even though your scenario is conceivable, it would amount to a (slight) softening of the hard constraint that you can keep only so many items at your disposal (home+inventory). Though I must admit that I had a dream once about hitting 's' at home and finding a hidden stairway to the cellar.
At most, I would allow an artifact that was stolen from you to re-appear when you vanquish Harowen, the King of Thieves. (I know: thieves have zero chance to steal an artifact from your pack, but I find that they deserve a brake. So I say, give the poor bastards some chance to steal a lil' trinket now and then. )

As for your point 3, I disagree with Huqhox. If a player lets @ walk to a heap of coins to pick it up and @ gets bitten by a creeping coins, it's not @ that got fooled...
But the idea of rotating the screen makes me nauseous. Besides, confusion is bad enough already. It's blindness that is too damned easy to cope with. So I would be in favor of losing not just the location of monsters, but the whole map when @ gets blinded. Temporarily of course. Until @ regains sight again. Maybe Hughox has a better memory than I, but losing the map would really help me with my roleplay of a blind caver.

[EpicMan]

A variant named Kamband has weapons and armor breaking eventually. It's one of the more frustrating changes in that variant.

Kamband would make an interesting competition as it has a lot of unique features (some dungeon levels have water or mist replacing walls, friendly guards in the first few levels, friendly monsters based on religion, a zoo with real monsters in one of the towns). Last player to ragequit wins.

[Patashu]

A variant named Kamband has weapons and armor breaking eventually. It's one of the more frustrating changes in that variant.

Kamband would make an interesting competition as it has a lot of unique features (some dungeon levels have water or mist replacing walls, friendly guards in the first few levels, friendly monsters based on religion, a zoo with real monsters in one of the towns). Last player to ragequit wins.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder.php Kamband is not even on the ladder??

[passer_by]

Besides, confusion is bad enough already. It's blindness that is too damned easy to cope with. So I would be in favor of losing not just the location of monsters, but the whole map when @ gets blinded.

Oh, interesting. The counterargument, of course, to justify the status quo is that @ is smart and experienced enough to remember the layout of the dungeon and judge their movements when blinded, even if the player is not.

But what when @ is blinded *and* confused? In that case it seems to me that @ would lose track of their own location if they move. So even if we take the position that @ still knows the layout of the dungeon when blinded and confused (so we continue to show the map), the obvious thing to do is to not show @ on the map.

(I can see three options here: don't show @ when blinded, don't show @ when confused, or don't show @ when both blinded and confused. I'm not quite sure which is right.)

[Gwarl]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder.php Kamband is not even on the ladder??

It's in the category of 'more difficult to compile' variants too

[Derakon]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder.php Kamband is not even on the ladder??

It's a pretty old variant; IIRC it was contemporary with early ZAngband versions, predating PernAngband. It had a randomly-generated-spell system that ToME stole/refined for the thaumaturgist class; I remember it having spells that did things like "remove all walls in LOS, then teleport away all monsters in LOS, then create Runes of Protection on all open tiles in LOS".

[dreembeard]

Oh, interesting. The counterargument, of course, to justify the status quo is that @ is smart and experienced enough to remember the layout of the dungeon and judge their movements when blinded, even if the player is not.

But what when @ is blinded *and* confused? In that case it seems to me that @ would lose track of their own location if they move. So even if we take the position that @ still knows the layout of the dungeon when blinded and confused (so we continue to show the map), the obvious thing to do is to not show @ on the map.

(I can see three options here: don't show @ when blinded, don't show @ when confused, or don't show @ when both blinded and confused. I'm not quite sure which is right.)

If your @s are that smart and experienced, I think they may well simulate being blind and confused so that they can disappear from the map, and have a few pints of beer in the nearest tavern. Pfui, I'm glad my @s are not that smart...