"Nick is going to butcher the game"

[Sky]

Just to be clear, i support the idea of making Angband tolkien-only, but i question if there exists lore to replace the uniques that would need to go.
What could replace Arien ? What could replace Radagast? (These are supposed to be friendly instead of hostile)
What could replace Chronos?

Im sure there's a tolkien dragon that could replace the tarrasque, maybe shifting Ancalong up on the scale, but what about the titans? Would we just lose a bunch of uniques?

How about the trapper?? Does tolkien have an unmoving monster in his legendarium?

[MWGE]

I am one of those that are mostly happy with the direction the game is going. Debate is healthy, Nick is open to this. Fair enough I say.

[Sideways]

The monster list hasn't had a good looking at since before version 3 (17 years ago! good lord), when the JLE patch was incorporated into the main game, while most other areas of the game have been altered.

JLE's patch ruined Angband. 2.9.3 was the last real V.

--

Nick is a great maintainer - competent, dedicated, experienced, open to suggestions and feedback, and always ready to communicate with players. Many changes he's made I don't approve of, and many changes have not been made that I think should have been made, but I suppose that's why Nick maintains V and I maintain FrogComposband

Changes have happened during every Angband maintainer's tenure that some players have found offputting. That's okay - from both the player's side and the maintainer's side. It's always the maintainer's dream to keep everybody happy, but it very seldom works out that way!

And the starting point for the changes is a developing game, not one that's already perfect. For everyone who dislikes a change, there are usually two people who like it; and if I belong in the former group I wouldn't dream of holding it against Nick personally. Nick makes (and should make) the decisions, but he doesn't make them without listening to the Angband community.

For those who disagree with the direction V's taking, there are many variants to play and always room for more; and old versions of Angband itself won't disappear anywhere just because Nick's releasing new ones.

[debo]

See, thats funny because lore does nothing for me. Id be ok with angband being based in space or on discworld. But as a long time D&D GM we all assume that all fantasy world components exist in all fsntasy worlds - maybe just in a different geographical location. Tolkien lore, greyhawk lore, norse myths, greek myths, ninjas, hobbits, kendars; obviously if you walk north long enough, you'll bump into Thor. Go east far enough and there's Amaterasu, you can't miss her.

Even better if those "components" shout at you in Engrish.

[wobbly]

I remember being told I had destroyed the flavour of the game when I removed the various 'broken' items in the game - rodent skeletons, kobold skulls, broken daggers, etc. Sometimes I think it would really be nice to re-incorporate those some other way, but the game has been enjoyed by many thousands of people since they were taken out, mostly without them noticing.

Rodent skeletons are the real reason so many of us play FCPB these days.

[takkaria]

As a previous maintainer I mostly want to keep out of the way of Nick and give him latitude to make the changes he wants to make. Tangar, I am familiar with the type of post you make from spending years changing the game in various ways - there is always someone who feels that one particular change or set of changes irrevocably alters the game for the worse, turns it into a variant, etc. Sometimes it's warranted, sometimes it's not, but either way, the way Angband has worked for the last 25 years (!) is that the maintainer gets the final say as long as there is dialogue with the players.

The monster list hasn't had a good looking at since before version 3 (17 years ago! good lord), when the JLE patch was incorporated into the main game, while most other areas of the game have been altered. So it's definitely due this rework. I never really bothered with monsters because I didn't think I had a good enough feel for those things, and anyway, the object list was more urgent then.

I remember being told I had destroyed the flavour of the game when I removed the various 'broken' items in the game - rodent skeletons, kobold skulls, broken daggers, etc. Sometimes I think it would really be nice to re-incorporate those some other way, but the game has been enjoyed by many thousands of people since they were taken out, mostly without them noticing.

The other option, of course, if people want to re-add monsters, or even do their own rebalancing, is to make a patched version of the monster file. There is a precedent in Angband that when people put effort into a patch and people like playing with it, it gets added into the main game. If you really miss Easterling warriors, the Greek myth uniques etc., after the whole of the monster list rebalance is finished and other people do too, they can be added back. But I think it's good that the flavour of the game changes over time - like Derakon says, Angband will die when it's not updated with changes that some people feel are controversial (and I think it came close to dying once before, 13-ish years ago, for exactly this reason).

[Pete Mack]

D&D has evolved a bit since those days, too, I would imagine. And the main goal isn't to get rid of D&D monsters. It is to get rid of monsters that are redundant or really don't fit--the giants from ancient Greece don't fit. Norse would be so much better.

[Sky]

See, thats funny because lore does nothing for me. Id be ok with angband being based in space or on discworld. But as a long time D&D GM we all assume that all fantasy world components exist in all fsntasy worlds - maybe just in a different geographical location. Tolkien lore, greyhawk lore, norse myths, greek myths, ninjas, hobbits, kendars; obviously if you walk north long enough, you'll bump into Thor. Go east far enough and there's Amaterasu, you can't miss her.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Dammit, Nick.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

+1 to everything Derakon said. Tangar, once again your post is quite offensive, perhaps without meaning to be, but offensive nonetheless. And how is that you have the end-all-be-all survey of what "LOT'S" of Angband players feel about the changes? If anyone's posts smack of being power-mad, it's yours!

[Pete Mack]

More notably, besides the nazgul, none of these changes is particularly good. And Uvatha really is too weak, though I am not sure they should go all the way to dl70.

[Derakon]

Other people have addressed other parts of your post, so I'll limit myself to this:

It's good to care deeply about the game. That's great! Angband is a great game and people are passionate about it. And it's good to have strong opinions about what the game should be like, and to like or dislike changes that are made to the game. Just recognize these two facts:

* Just because you don't like a change doesn't mean it is necessarily objectively a bad change.
* The instant Angband stops changing is the instant it dies.

It is quite literally impossible to please everyone with every change, and I daresay it is similarly difficult to not displease someone with every change! But change is vital to keeping the game alive. If it stops changing, then there stops being much to talk about, and eventually the community peters out. It might take years, decades even considering how long Angband has been around, but it will die eventually so long as it is not a "living document".

Considering that change is vital, then, you have to take the bad with the good. Some changes are going to displease you. Ideally you will find the majority of changes pleasing, not least because the maintainer typically only works on the game because they want people to play it.

But please do not scream to the heavens about how Angband has been ruined by the latest change that you personally do not like. If you can't convince people with calmer arguments, histrionics are unlikely to do any better.

[NightLizard]

Angband’s lore destruction

But currently there are coming changes to monsters and races (game's lore actually) which are NOT liked by a lot of players.

From this thread and the thread where Nick proposes the changes I think it looks like it is quite well received.

Angband’s lore destruction

This changes pushed by huge Nick's authority, which he absolutely deserved by his work on the game. But what is more important: Nick's authority or Angband itself?

He doesn't change by "authority". He openly describes his ideas, asks for feedback and really listen to what the community say. And it seems these changes are mostly met by enthusiasm.

It is natural to have reactions to change. I also think "but I was used to that..." when I see a change (lore or not), but all that is being done is to make the lore more consistent and to make Angband feel more like Angband. The changes are also quite humble, and as others mentioned: things have changed before.

[Pete Mack]

Amusingly, Easterling Warrior is a very new name. Until recently it was 'hardened warrior' or 'swordsman.'

[emulord]

I liked the "kitchen sink" mythology of past versions, but the game should evolve over time. Past versions are still available so its just more options imo.