"Nick is going to butcher the game"

[debo]

I think an important variable in this problem is the size of the "Angband community." It's pretty darn small. Even if we irritate half the community with a change that's, what? Maybe 30 people? That falls pretty firmly under "who cares" territory for me.

Nick, hurry up and get these changes into master. I haven't wanted to play V in forever, and now I'm curious.

[debo]

imagine logging into diablo 2 and half the classes had name change and many skills removed and or completely changed, monsters had name and ability changes and generally started being in the star wars universe instead of diablo, despite many dedicated players learning, enjoying and talking about it for the last 20 years, its all invalidated!

now thats not diablo2 its a mod

Yes, I agree that could be a problem! However, it's a pretty terrible analogy for what is happening here. And this is coming from someone who would be super stoked to see Angband go sci-fantasy (greater chance of rockets.)

[dos350]

imagine logging into diablo 2 and half the classes had name change and many skills removed and or completely changed, monsters had name and ability changes and generally started being in the star wars universe instead of diablo, despite many dedicated players learning, enjoying and talking about it for the last 20 years, its all invalidated!

now thats not diablo2 its a mod

[Youssarian]

I would like to say that the level of communication and discussion about changes is pretty great and there is clearly only good intentions for Angband being done in its continued development.

It's also clear the community that enjoys this game (and those like it) truly love and appreciate it - even when we might be a little less tactful about it then necessary. A shout out goes to all the effort people make to keep a game that is still relevant today that otherwise would have just been a footnote in computer history.

I also believe that should any change occur that the community does truly dislike would be changed back almost instantly by Nick. Maybe something could be different here and there, but that is always the way of change.

I've thrown in my thoughts previously on the current changes and won't rehash them, but I think as a whole, Nick and this community all have the best interests of Angband at heart.

[wobbly]

And I meant no offence despite my snarkiness. Thing is there are people who don't want to see the game they love "butchered" by changes but there are also people who don't want to see the game locked in some sort of permanent stasis because the game has become this sacred cow where changing anything is killing the game or ruining it.

At the end of the day changing something is going to annoy someone & from experience it can be the slightest thing such as removing haggling or gorged status or all sorts of things. But I can tell you seeing a whole bunch of things that could be improved stay static because "how dare someone change {foo}…" is also annoying to a lot of us.

[dos350]

please dont get the wrong idea

i respect nick and all the devs, and i am very thankful for their work in maintaining this amazing game,

i just want to express these concerns, please try to understand my perspective,

im not against all changes whatsoever, i just want to demonstrate that there is a point of no return

[wobbly]

or consider chess,,, theres 4 way chess on some site but thats really not chess

Exactly chess still has the same old elephants & chariots...
You know it's actually not that long ago that pawns couldn't move 2 squares on their 1st move. Not in terms of how old the game is anyway.

More relevantly I can think of another game that didn't change (up until recently) & that is Nethack. This is understandable as Nethack is perfect in every way & contains no design flaws, but I still feel like this may of not been the best move for the game. Plenty of people ended up losing interest.

[olivertheorem]

I have been following this conversation with great interest. I have been playing Moria and then Angband off and on for something like 20 years. I have at times gone several years without playing (due to other time constraints or interests), and when I come back, yes sometimes many things have changed about the game. But, even then, I can instantly recognize it as Angband. Were I currently not playing and reading this forum, and I picked up the official release with Nick's current changes, I'd see it as Angband. A new, different Angband certainly, but still recognizably Angband. Would I like it or not? I don't know, as I haven't played the dev versions much, but whether I like it or not really isn't the issue. That it would still be recognizable as Angband is.

Yes, Nick is changing quite a bit, and yes some of them have been in place for quite a while in Angband. I empathize with those who don't want certain aspects of the game that they personally quite enjoy as is to be changed. Yet, most every reference I have seen in this thread and other various threads boils down to some variation of "I think X is perfect and/or too entrenched to change, therefore it should be left alone." The problem with this argument is that, when it comes to things like games, personal opinion on such things will vary wildly (see the previous 12+ pages of this thread for exhibit A) and no single opinion overrides any other....aside from the maintainer. Yet, Nick has done his best to make sure the community has a say, which is to his credit. To cite the theoretical opinions of those not on this forum, though, is disingenuous. It is not as if Nick could poll all those players, so in this regard their collective opinion is irrelevant to the discussion as it is unknowable. Nick is doing the best he can with the resources available to him, and I am thankful for his efforts to try to make this old-school game we all love to be better than its ever been.

I will say, though, that when someone posts about not liking Nick's direction, the reflex response tends towards "well then don't upgrade when it reaches full release," which is a valid point but doesn't help the situation necessarily. I personally find Nick's responses to such posts (well, the reasonable ones, anyway) to be among the most interesting ones he makes, just because it gives him reason to explain his thoughts and direction more clearly. I would encourage those who have reservations about Nick's direction to say so, but to do so with well reasoned arguments and explanations (not, "I like this as it is so don't change it", that doesn't count). And, to those same people, even if your arguments have no ultimate effect on the direction Angband takes, I encourage you to try it once it hits full release. Who knows, you may just be surprised at how much you like it.

Just my....um.....25 cents?

[Derakon]

You can cherry-pick examples of popular games that have never changed. I can cherry-pick examples of popular games that have changed (for example, Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, or the rise of Texas Holdem in poker). Does that make either of us right? Of course not. And yes, people do still play the old versions of Street Fighter / SMB, and Texas Holdem hasn't completely displaced, say, five-card draw or seven-card stud. Whether to change or remain basically static is a decision that has to get made on a case-by-case basis. There's no global rule on these things.

Incidentally, Nick has made it massively easier to find and play old versions of Angband, by building up the archive of pretty much every version ever. That's not the kind of action taken by someone with no respect for the past.

[Philip]

Well obviously, if there were 5 block pieces it would be called pentis, and that looks a bit too much like penis, especially considering one of the possible arrangements of 5 blocks does resemble a crudely drawn phallus.

More seriously, it is preposterous to identify one particular rule that tetris has not changed and pretend that it signifies some sort of internal consistency. It is trivial to identify similar rules about Vanilla that have not changed (though some have in variants): one town, one dungeon, dungeon has 127 levels of which 100 are relevant to the primary objective, the primary objective is to kill sauron on dlvl 99 to unlock dlvl 100 where you kill morgoth, players have one weapon slot, one bow slot, two ring slots, an amulet slot, an armor slot, a cloak slot, a shield slot, a glove slot, a hat slot, and a shoe slot. It is also trivial to identify similar hard and fast rules of precisely this sort that have been violated in Vanilla itself before Nick even became the maintainer, without actually harming it: 6 basic stats reduced to 5 through removal of charisma, for example. Randarts violated, as far as I can tell, at least one rule. The only rule change of this magnitude Nick has actually made is the change to classes, as far as I can tell.

[dos350]

ur missing the point,

i am a serious tetris player, and i dont mean that original nes or gameboy tetris is the only tetris, eg i play mainly on nullpomino or tetrisfriends, but i never really played any other puzzle game that i like besides tetris

and i was speaking only of ff7 not others, but lets even change that to ff8 seeing as that wont be remade any time soon.

the core game has not changed , still no 5 block piece in tetris cos then its not tetris

ff8 is as it was when it released unless u mod it, and its remained interesting,

so has tetris the original, even if later versions are prefer'd , classic tetris is infact at the highest point of interest see classic tetris world championship for info


or consider chess,,, theres 4 way chess on some site but thats really not chess

[fph]

On the contrary, Tetris changed a lot along the years. The method of randomizing pieces changed, the scoring, 7-8 different rotation systems, different level setups. It did so through various games released at different times rather than successive versions, though, because that's how commercial games work: you can't resell version 2.1, so you have to make a different game and sell it with another name. Take a look at https://tetris.wiki/, for instance, to see how many rule variants there are, and how many official games. Representative page: https://tetris.wiki/Scoring .

As for Final Fantasy, well, it did the same: a lot of successive games, each significantly different from the previous one.

[dos350]

did tetris or final fantasy 7 need to change to remain relevant or interesting?

wat about world of warcraft, that keeps changing and many users are upset and demand the original

if someone new plays angband 4,1,3 its very much the same experience as i had starting in 3.1.2v2 , (finer points are an exception)

i hope that remains true for the lifetime of angband

[mrfy]

alot of users do not follow the development or use the forum, but they download the latest versions in hopes of enjoying the game they love, the game they know, i dare to say most of this category hope for general improvements, and that does not necessarily mean changes to the lore or class/item/combat systems, or additions to the game OR things being removed entirely (besides options)

I believe that most users when they download a new version expect that changes have been made. And that there will be major changes from a 3.1.x to a 3.2.x to a 3.3.x or even a 4.x version. They will either dive right in, or do as I do, look at the list of changes in the release notes.

i think very small incremental changes to these things are better than an all at once overhaul,

not only will the final product be more refined but it will not run a risk of shocking and terrifying returning players who do not follow the development

I disagree completely. The game needs to evolve in order to remain interesting, imo. The classes did need changes, and to balance the game he also looked at monsters and now randarts. Much better to make the major changes and then tweak the balance.

u even considering removing hunger however, i believe is a huge mistake

FWIW, I agree with removing search, but am ambivalent about hunger.

people in favor of massive changes please understand that once classes and monsters that have been there for 20years+ get changed in a big way, or removed or replaced, angband is not far from becoming a variant in the eyes of traditionalist players, and although that may not matter to the developers, it does really mean alot to these users

Sorry, I again disagree. There have been many major changes over the 20+ years. Those who have been around for so long understand this.

play an older version is not an answer, wats important is the live version because thats the default for all but the most hardcore users

Of course it is. If you don't like the changes, why upgrade? There's plenty of games I've played where I didn't like the next versions, either I moved on to other games or stuck with the version I had.

i know its not possible to please everyone, but to me angbands history and living legacy is more important than a direction for development

Again, disagree completely.

[dos350]

hi phillip,

honestly im struggling to express myself about this in text,

i believe , despite all the changes , that 4,1,3 is the pure version ,, and i compare it to 3,1,2v2 in my mind ~ but not once in my career have i gone back to play an older version once a new one is out, however~ thats not to say i wont, for example, if a new version comes one day that i believe has gone TOO FAR, i will stick with watever the last one was, and to me thats a tragedy, not just to me but in general, to play an old version of a game is like an abomination, a crime against nature,


despite being against major change ever since i first played angband, ive accepted them, not cos i agree completely or think its better, but because i love angband and want to enjoy it in its latest form, which to me as of now is wat ive always known, even though alot has changed. (eg i play now finally with no selling on, for a long time i refused utterly and turned it off every game)

its not about a pure version though, its about treating the game with respect and care moving forward, not as some kind of experiment where maybe u find something new and exciting but it divides the community because its too different