Attribute Potions

[mrfy]

In my opinion, the complexity of Angband with all its nuances, intricacies, and deep, deep, learning curve are one of the principle reasons for the longevity of the game and my continued interest in playing all these years. I still learn things I never knew, and this is a good thing. The current push to simplify and make things less opaque not only runs the risk of destroying much of the nostalgia and fond memories of this game, but the very fabric that makes the game worth coming back to again and again. Please, be very careful about these changes.

I agree completely. I have liked the proposed changes to the character classes, as it has made gameplay more interesting and more complex. But this change to attributes sounds like it has far-reaching complicated effects and may not be worth the effort.

[Ighalli]

I agree that it might not be worth the effort but I also question the value of leaving in such esoteric mechanics for the attributes. Why should stat potions have roughly triple their usual effects at one point on the curve?

If we care about preserving the total number of potions for characters with low stats, we could make the first stat potion of each stat count for, say, +3 (formerly whenever you drank at 18), then +2 (formerly 18/30->18/50 territory), +1 some number of times (I'll throw out 6, to keep the same number of potions for a character to get from 17 to 18/100 as we need now), then have progressively larger chances to have the potion fail to increase your stat. To get to 18/100 or 28 from 10 could be made to match the current number of potions.

Alternatively, we could keep all the percentile wackiness in the background and just make it a display option to show increasing numbers (rounded down, to 10% increments because the fractions only matter for stat potions).

In my opinion, the complexity of Angband with all its nuances, intricacies, and deep, deep, learning curve are one of the principle reasons for the longevity of the game and my continued interest in playing all these years. I still learn things I never knew, and this is a good thing. The current push to simplify and make things less opaque not only runs the risk of destroying much of the nostalgia and fond memories of this game, but the very fabric that makes the game worth coming back to again and again. Please, be very careful about these changes.

My opinion is that opaque mechanics are an annoyance to playing. When I see a monster can hit for 4d8, that tells a casual player almost nothing. If the player reads the source code and knows how AC works and how monster to-hit chances depend only on native depth and attack type, then in principal they can calculate how much damage the monster is likely to do. At that point, I think the game should do the math on behalf of the player; life is too short. People being surprised by how bless and heroism work after years of playing the game doesn't feel like a feature to me. It feels like the game isn't doing a good job of telegraphing it's mechanics to the player.

I'm not arguing that reworking how stats work is in the same camp of changes as making things less opaque; there are real gameplay changes that would result from this. I dislike the silly stat numbers, but I don't particularly want to change how the pacing of the game works.

[Pete Mack]

A periodic reminder: linear behavior is next to predictable. Predictable is next to boring. Boring is next to grinding.
NONLINEAR BEHAVIOR IS THE STANDARD WAY TO AVOID GRINDING.
Take a look at the recent AAR for ironman paladin. The character dives moderately fast (as is required for ironman) and goes from "mostly comfortable, but with severe resource limitation" to "seriously underpowered with significant risk of life" to "mostly comfortable, with occasional risk". This is desirable, when the alternative is "each level is more of the same."

The specific cause here is a sudden change in monster power (from DL 40) followed by a sudden change in player power. I don't see a straightforward way to avoid this...unless you are willing to grind.

[Nick]

People being surprised by how bless and heroism work after years of playing the game doesn't feel like a feature to me. It feels like the game isn't doing a good job of telegraphing it's mechanics to the player.

I think this is just another result of the fundamental complexity of the game. There is a massive wealth of information that could be learned about the game, but it can be played effectively without doing that. The more I think about it, the more I am actually impressed with what a good job the game does of communicating the important information to the player, and of having the less important information available if the player wants to find it.

So, for example, anyone looking at the 'C' screen can easily see the effect of bless etc from the to-hit value. If that were important enough, it would be on the main screen, but as it is just having a "Bless" marker is enough, and if the player wants to see exactly what that means they can dig deeper (which may just mean hitting '?' when casting a spell).

[mrfy]

I think this is just another result of the fundamental complexity of the game. There is a massive wealth of information that could be learned about the game, but it can be played effectively without doing that. The more I think about it, the more I am actually impressed with what a good job the game does of communicating the important information to the player, and of having the less important information available if the player wants to find it.

So, for example, anyone looking at the 'C' screen can easily see the effect of bless etc from the to-hit value. If that were important enough, it would be on the main screen, but as it is just having a "Bless" marker is enough, and if the player wants to see exactly what that means they can dig deeper (which may just mean hitting '?' when casting a spell).

Yes! The information is there if the player wants to look for it. They don't have to be hit over the head with it. I would argue that this is what this forum is for too, to disseminate information about how the game works, but having it available in the help files would be good too.

I don't see a good argument for changing the attributes display just because we don't like the 18/100 scale or to make it simpler. Keep the complexity, please.

[Pete Mack]

You don't have to look very far: just do a triple buff and look at your improvement in to_hit vs some target monster. The game will TELL you what it is. And given how many times various players have recommended carrying a buff at the beginning of the game in case of emergency, the basic value of buffs should be pretty well established here. That said, for the endgame, buffing is usually just a nice thing to have. It's a long way from critical, unless your planning to melee as a bookless mage or something.

Knowing little factoids like this doesn't help repeatability. Nonlinear effects (Like stat gain): those encourage replays.

[EpicMan]

You don't have to look very far: just do a triple buff and look at your improvement in to_hit vs some target monster. The game will TELL you what it is. And given how many times various players have recommended carrying a buff at the beginning of the game in case of emergency, the basic value of buffs should be pretty well established here. That said, for the endgame, buffing is usually just a nice thing to have. It's a long way from critical, unless your planning to melee as a bookless mage or something.

Knowing little factoids like this doesn't help repeatability. Nonlinear effects (Like stat gain): those encourage replays.

I think this is the problem - Angband provides many numbers like to-hit and AC (which is even printed on the main display all the time) that don't tell you much of anything except maybe more is better. The numbers are more noise than signal.

The raw numbers should be displayed less prominently. Instead of showing AC near the top, put the actual number farther down somewhere and show the miss chance for monsters of the current depth, and maybe the physical damage reduction.

To-hit is harder to find a good value to show on the character screen, showing it on looking at the monster is nice. Bless/Heroism/Berserk consumables should tell you the % boost to your to-hit and to-dam stat so players can more easily realize their usefulness.

[Pete Mack]

But to_hit and the like are not the only numbers it shows. Just look at the monster lore for the particular enemy, and you will see exactly your hit probability. There is nothing at all mysterious about that! Just as for every weapon, it will show total damage per turn, including criticals. to_hit is a useful counter: higher is better, and much higher is much better. But for precision, look at the specific enemy.

[Nick]

But to_hit and the like are not the only numbers it shows. Just look at the monster lore for the particular enemy, and you will see exactly your hit probability. There is nothing at all mysterious about that! Just as for every weapon, it will show total damage per turn, including criticals. to_hit is a useful counter: higher is better, and much higher is much better. But for precision, look at the specific enemy.

Precisely.

My current thinking is that many of the numbers (like to-hit) are not useful in themselves because of the complex things done to them to produce game effects. So as a player you will not be able to do all the calculations involved, but you can see the input (the to-hit number) and the output (chance of hitting specific monsters, damage done by weapon). This gives a basis for decision making.