New Angband: rant

[Estie]

Recently I have played Angband again and initially wanted to test the new classes, but as I started to play I realized that I was forcing myself to play. I didnt enjoy it. So instead, I loaded up old 3.0.9 and had a blast, at least till the endgame started with its nightmare of sorting through loads of loot.

There have been hundreds of small changes, most of which I dont like and I have been posting my opinion throughout the process, but alas, the changes were made and thats that. None of them individually are of dealbreaking proportion, but all combined have managed to ruin it for me.

A few points:

I want boots of free action on level 20, stealth on 40 and speed +10 on 60 - not speed +3 on 20, +6 on 40, +10 on 60. Clearcut, powerfull, noticable bonuses with different qualities that force decisions instead of pointless and linear power trickle.

At some point money and drops on lvl 1 were nerfed, presumably to discourage farming. I am supposed to buy 2 recall srolls first thing when back in town, but I am human and sometimes forget, or maybe there is an expensive item I can barely afford, then I am going to farm for a ?WoR. So, ever since that change I have spent hours of time farming level 1: for ?WoR money when I previously could just clear it once and be good to go.

What was wrong with using a (precious) ?Banishment to get rid of Qs before opening a vault ? Or ?massbanishment to get rid of a sizable sector of non-uniques ?

There are 100 things like that; instead of listing them all, I refer to older posts I made. When there is a gameplay difference between old and new, chances are I prefer old.

More generally speaking, I blame the design philosophy of "trying to discourage bad playstyles". I think it would be better to focus on making sure that there is a "good" way of playing Angband, and not worry about "abusive" techniques. If someone wants to place a golfball on a walk-around-in-circles macro key to farm lice, or kill blue wormmasses to level up, or destruct vaults to get at artifacts, let them have their fun. Point at the right path, dont try to force people to walk it.

I could have made better points some time ago when I was considering playing the new classes. Time has passed and my memory and focus got muddled. I delayed this post, because it was unpleasant to make. But it had to be done.

With all this, maybe I am alone and everyone else is happy with the new version. If so, I wish you the best. As for me, I am back to playing old versions, if at all, and yearn for someone to introduce rune id.

[Antoine]

Maybe we need a variant 'NewOldAngband'

[Moving Pictures]

What was wrong with using a (precious) ?Banishment to get rid of Qs before opening a vault ? Or ?massbanishment to get rid of a sizable sector of non-uniques ?.

Not sure what you're talking about? I just started 4.1.2, and accidentally discovered that a mass banish cast outside a vault disperses the non-uniques within. T'was not my intention to do so, but @ was caught up in a pitched battle with a big name unique outside (release from) said vault, and a straight-up banish wasn't going to clear the decks to undead-o-orc.

[Estie]

Not sure what you're talking about? I just started 4.1.2, and accidentally discovered that a mass banish cast outside a vault disperses the non-uniques within. T'was not my intention to do so, but @ was caught up in a pitched battle with a big name unique outside (release from) said vault, and a straight-up banish wasn't going to clear the decks to undead-o-orc.

Not sure - I must have wasted a dozen banishment scrolls trying to figure out what is considered a vault and what isnt - and I thought I had tried the mass version too, establishing that it didnt affect vault inhabitants - but maybe not and I just made assumptions. I cant remember.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Not sure what you're talking about? I just started 4.1.2, and accidentally discovered that a mass banish cast outside a vault disperses the non-uniques within.

Let's be clear - Estie is talking about the "experimental-feature" branch of Vanilla, not the plain (current) 4.1.2 Vanilla.

I tentatively agree with many, though not all, of Estie's comments, but I've only played one feature branch character so far.

The banish, mass banish, having to figure out what is a special room or vault and what isn't, (wasting many scroll/charges in the process), and that somehow it is "wrong" to banish Q's, v's, and Z's before entering a vault - so someone else's idea of "correct" gameplay gets imposed on me, yeah, I find that distasteful.

[Pete Mack]

Banishment is the least important of his points. The main one is the smooth power curve in 4.x. 3.0is tougher for a number of reasons, but the main one was equipment availability. There is some stuff with monster movement where it now takes longer for them to chase you through locked doors. Also, rogue stealth is nuts, mage mana goes further, certain potions and scrolls are easier to come by...

The one change for the harder is object detection...but then I end up playing rogue anyway.

[Estie]

the Short Sword 'Sting' (1d7) (+7,+8) <+1, +3, +2>
--------------------------------------------------
+1 strength.
+1 dexterity.
+1 constitution.
+3 speed.
+2 attack speed.
+1 light.
Slays undead, orcs, animals, evil creatures.
Provides resistance to light.
Provides protection from fear.
Cannot be harmed by acid.
Grants the ability to see invisible things. Prevents paralysis.

What is this ? +1 str, dex, con - really ?
The original had +2 - either way, the main feature here is the +2 attacks, and if the creator of the original version had translated "makes the wielder a hero" with "+2 all combat stats", fine.
Now it got nerfed - a move I disagree with, for reasons posted elsewhere - but if you absolutely have to make it weaker, for Christ´s sake give it some character. Make it +3 to str only, or dex, or whatever you think is more tolkienish, but not this tastless sludge of +1 to everything.

Is this sword important ? Absolutely not,even moreso for me who never plays with standarts. But whoever made this thing has no regard for the item puzzle aspect of Angband.

/rant

[Sky]

i know, right? give back Elessar the (+7,+7) it deserves.

[Grotug]

"Elessar used to have (+7, +7)? What version? That does sound very appropriate. Maybe I should try out some old versions of Angband.

It was very disappointing playing in my early days of Angband finding really cool, deep artifact amulets with their great, thematic texts and cool names only to discover that *all* of them were useless once I found "Trickery. And then how lame it felt that an item called "trickery", a word associated with cheapness and gimmickry, such as brawn, nimbleness, intellect, contemplation, toughness, ie. a word connected to the lesser of the true form, was the most powerful amulet, and furthermore, not even an artifact!

If any change be made to Angband, make Trickery not the best amulet when it's not even an artifact, or better, leave it as is, make it an artifact and change its name to something more evocative of its bossness, even something as simple as "Amulet of the Elves" would be a huge improvement (stealth, dexterity and speed all being thematically fitting to elvish qualities).

Basically, when I found "Elessar, I thought I had found a really powerful object, only to be disappointed by learning it really wasn't that useful. Then when I found "Trickery, I thought I had found some object I was meant to find earlier in the game because of its name, and was weirdly disappointed that this object that "shouldn't" have been powerful was powerful. One of the big appeals of Angband for me was that powerful objects had fitting names and descriptions to them. I don't know about other people, but I think of "Trickery as an amulet that Grima would wear (it even has similar stats to Grima's boots), not a hero of Middle-Earth, yet its the most heroic amulet there is.

That all said, the trickery/amulet business is a quirk in game design I've gotten used to. Every game I've ever played has had oddities about them that seemed poorly thought out.

[Werbaer]

the Short Sword 'Sting' (1d7) (+7,+8) <+1, +3, +2>

What is this ? +1 str, dex, con - really ?
The original had +2 - either way, the main feature here is the +2 attacks, and if the creator of the original version had translated "makes the wielder a hero" with "+2 all combat stats", fine.
Now it got nerfed - a move I disagree with, for reasons posted elsewhere - but if you absolutely have to make it weaker, for Christ´s sake give it some character. Make it +3 to str only, or dex, or whatever you think is more tolkienish, but not this tastless sludge of +1 to everything.

The original had +2 attacks as it's main feature, too.
Since back then there was only one pval, each other bonus had to be +2 too (or 0), so it got +2 Str, Dex, Con.
The Original didn't have any speed bonus. I think the +3 speed makes the current version much stronger than the original, even if the stat bonus is a bit lower.

[Werbaer]

"Elessar used to have (+7, +7)? What version? That does sound very appropriate. Maybe I should try out some old versions of Angband.

But not too old. Elessar didn't exist pre-3.0. Along with most other high-level amulets.

Elessar, Evenstar, Trickery, Weaponmastery, Devotion, Resistance, ESP, Sustanance. All these were added in 3.0 or later.

Back in old days, it was Amulet of Wisdom for priests, and Necklace of the Dwarves for everybody else. If they were able to find it; i had a mage use Wisdom (+5) at the end, since he didn't find anything better.

[Sideways]

But not too old. Elessar didn't exist pre-3.0. Along with most other high-level amulets.

Elessar, Evenstar, Trickery, Weaponmastery, Devotion, Resistance, ESP, Sustanance. All these were added in 3.0 or later.

Yeah, 3.0 already came a lot closer to today's "linear power trickle" than 2.9 did, and additions of things like those (as well as new egos) were a big reason why. JLE's patch (officially added in 3.0.0) was a huge change, and to me it still marks the border between "new Angband" and "old Angband".

[Derakon]

What is this ? +1 str, dex, con - really ?
The original had +2 - either way, the main feature here is the +2 attacks, and if the creator of the original version had translated "makes the wielder a hero" with "+2 all combat stats", fine.
Now it got nerfed - a move I disagree with, for reasons posted elsewhere - but if you absolutely have to make it weaker, for Christ´s sake give it some character. Make it +3 to str only, or dex, or whatever you think is more tolkienish, but not this tastless sludge of +1 to everything.

I agree with this. It's more interesting to have gear that gives a big bonus to one stat than it is to find gear that gives small bonuses to many stats. In Sting's case I'd say that a +3 STR bonus and no DEX/CON bonus sounds pretty reasonable.

As for speed bonuses: I understand why the game is now littered with small speed bonuses, and it does usually eliminate the "I can't go deeper because everything moves twice as fast as I do" issue that frequently came up in earlier versions. But it also makes speed finds a lot less special. I have to wonder if there's some other solution to the problem that keeps speed bonuses "chunky" for the most part, while also ensuring that they have the right amount of rarity. I would not be opposed to the game biasing drop rates based on what level of speed you already have...

[Ighalli]

I would not be opposed to the game biasing drop rates based on what level of speed you already have...

Then there would incentive to leave all your speed in your home to keep farming for more, then equip endgame level speed items at DL40 or whatever, once you have enough of them. If it counted the items in your home, then you'd have to be sure to destroy equipment with speed bonuses that you don't intend on using, lest it bias the game against you. The dungeon generation should not be influenced by your character.

Maybe we need a variant 'NewOldAngband'

That would be amazing!

[fizzix]

I probably bear some blame for some of these changes, if not directly contributing to the code, at least with the philosophy.

I think for everyone there's a sweet spot of the game that feels right to them. This is going to vary a lot between players. Back in the old version (3.0.6-9 or thereabouts) I would bring characters down to level 60 or 80 and then just stop. Sorting through all the gear to find the one piece of equipment you needed was just way too frustrating. Back then "too much junk" was considered one of the bigger problems in the game. Some of it could be solved with squelch, but weapons and armor issues couldn't (it's better now with the rune system for sure)

It's actually possible to revert back to 3.0.x items (or even 2.x) without much or any coding. You can do a good chunk of it in the edit files. All it takes is a little time and patience. If you want to revert some other changes, you might need to add some pieces of code. Increasing monster group sizes to 25 is a straightforward change in the code. Whereas something like stripping out all the mixed monster groups is easy in the edit files. Don't forget to increase hound frequency too! Or, you can just choose the game style you like and make the appropriate changes. (It used to be that you only had three options, monsters were solo, monsters spawned in groups of 2-25, monsters had escorts)

Another point. For better or for worse, games get judged a lot on how optimal strategies work. Any game where the best strategy is mind-numbingly boring will suffer for it. Angband *still* suffers from the perception that the game is just one big grind, where you mow down weak monsters on early levels over and over again looking for that one item that will help you. You *still* can play that way, and 15 years or so after "tales of the bold rogue" we still have that reputation.

Some of us have been playing for decades. I'm pretty sure I would not have had the desire to load up a new character if the game was still the same as 3.0.6. Are there changes I don't like, yup. Are there changes I do like, yes, certainly. The only thing that has always been true as long as I've been on this forum. Anytime there's some substantive change, there's always someone who likes it better the way it was.