"Nick is going to butcher the game"

[fph]

The danger of that approach is feature bloat, which is detrimental for both maintainer and player ("gee, which of these gazillion things to choose from. Meh, never mind.").

The other danger is having too many things to keep tested, bug-free and balanced. Same reason why many uncommon game options got removed from the = menu.

[Hounded]

My approach to implementing (most of) my plans for 4.2 has been to get the two big items - classes and monsters - roughly done first, and then let that settle for a bit while making other, smaller changes.

So that's where we are now. It's worth emphasising, I think, that particularly in the case of monsters we're not finished yet. This development is being done publicly with as much chance as possible for players to comment on what they do and don't like. I am entirely happy to revert any bits that are clearly not working; sometimes it's difficult to judge, though, when that is the case.

So, to be specific, if people think we were better with dark elves as they were instead of the replacement dwarves, we can do that. If people don't like the new classes, we can get rid of them. But I would ask for specific criticism as much as possible, and as time goes on I will be asking specifically about specific changes to get a sense of whether people think they're good or bad.

There's personal bias at play here but I'm excited for the concept of switching to Dwarves.

They're vastly underrepresented in the fantasy realm and I've always preferred them in concept to the pointy-eared munchkins regardless of the setting (three cheers for Markus Heitz for putting them back where they belong as "a force to be reckoned with").

[Mars]

Of all the changes, I think changing the standard classes is the one that seems the most drastic to me.

I wish you could keep both. Have a standard option when creating your character. And then have advanced classes for those who want to play something a little different.

And I don't mean so that I can swap the file myself. Make it so they can both exists side by side.

This gives those who like the old classes and those who like the new ones the option to play they way they prefer. I would like to see the spell books fixed so that it's clear which ones go to which of the new jobs.

Change is about balance. No change at all is just as bad as too much change too quickly.

The danger of that approach is feature bloat, which is detrimental for both maintainer and player ("gee, which of these gazillion things to choose from. Meh, never mind.").

[kandrc]

There really is no such thing as an "official" vanilla Angband. What is considered to be "official" comes by de facto acceptance of the community. Nick is only the maintainer because a critical mass of the Angband community agrees on it. Anybody can pick up any old version of Angband, hack on it, fork a release, call it vanilla Angband foo.bar, claim to be the official maintainer, etc., and if that person amasses sufficient support from the community, then all of the claims are de facto true.

Claiming that the maintainer is ruining the game without forking and doing it yourself is just lame you don't really have the right to complain*, but you do have the right to do it "right" yourself.

Anybody who claims the game is moving in the wrong direction can just fork off.

* To be clear, you absolutely have the right to make suggestions, critique, etc., and the maintainer has the right to entertain or ignore them, but you don't have the right to engage in verbal diatribe against the efforts of the maintainer. That's just a dick move. Seriously, I don't understand why people have to be told these kinds of things.

[Youssarian]

Of all the changes, I think changing the standard classes is the one that seems the most drastic to me.

I wish you could keep both. Have a standard option when creating your character. And then have advanced classes for those who want to play something a little different.

And I don't mean so that I can swap the file myself. Make it so they can both exists side by side.

This gives those who like the old classes and those who like the new ones the option to play they way they prefer. I would like to see the spell books fixed so that it's clear which ones go to which of the new jobs.

Change is about balance. No change at all is just as bad as too much change too quickly.

[Hounded]

Thank you Voovus. I apologize if I came across as "if you don't like it, leave". That wasn't my intention. More that if someone feels that strongly then, as I've seen suggested elsewhere, their efforts would be best spent in doing a parallel effort to maintain Vanilla (call it VanillaX or something for the moment and lobby to become the maintainer after Nick, I dunno). If support for retention rather than for the changes Nick has incorporated is that strong then it will quickly become apparent.

[Bostock]

Wouldn't it have been great if the Civ series, instead of taking the wrong turn after Civ 2 and ending up with four meh sequels,

Fight me. :-P

(Except when it comes to Civ 3. Civ 3 can go suck an egg.)

[Nick]

My approach to implementing (most of) my plans for 4.2 has been to get the two big items - classes and monsters - roughly done first, and then let that settle for a bit while making other, smaller changes.

So that's where we are now. It's worth emphasising, I think, that particularly in the case of monsters we're not finished yet. This development is being done publicly with as much chance as possible for players to comment on what they do and don't like. I am entirely happy to revert any bits that are clearly not working; sometimes it's difficult to judge, though, when that is the case.

So, to be specific, if people think we were better with dark elves as they were instead of the replacement dwarves, we can do that. If people don't like the new classes, we can get rid of them. But I would ask for specific criticism as much as possible, and as time goes on I will be asking specifically about specific changes to get a sense of whether people think they're good or bad.

[Derakon]

@ Derakon: Moria already had rangers, and "slime mold juice" is a Rogue thing (the taste of a potion of see invisible).

Thanks for the corrections. I've never played Rogue, and I couldn't remember if Rangers were stock. I remember playing a Moria that had druids, which could cast both mage and priest spells, but I'm pretty sure that was a Moria variant and not "true" Moria. To the extent there is such a thing of course!

I forget -- did Moria have Blubbering Icky Things and Green Glutton Ghosts? It certainly didn't have Death Molds!

[Voovus]

I confess I'm puzzled. Dune 2 was better than Dune 2000. So I stayed with that. Civ 2 beats hell out of Empire but I found Alpha Centauri lacking by comparison so I play Civ 2 (I may be unusual but I'm comfortable with that).

I agree with all three comparisons.

But... Wouldn't it have been great if the Civ series, instead of taking the wrong turn after Civ 2 and ending up with four meh sequels, would have developed into something even more amazing?

On to the oliphaunt in the room (or an oliphaunt, at any rate). If, in five years time, the vanilla maintainer removes the bit of Angband that's sacred to me personally, I'll be cross. Banning half-troll warriors might do it for some, or maybe stopping natural spell point regeneration, or perhaps introducing care bears that you had to kill - most of us have a breaking point. The worst bit is that it would not only spoil the current version of Vanilla Angband, but it would likely spoil all future versions of Angband for me too. And if I had been with the Angband community for many years, and have been hoping to stay with it for many more years, then I might get very cross. So, please, Angband community, don't just say "no-one else has a problem with X, go away", even when no-one else does have a problem with X.

I'm not offering a solution.

In an attempt to be a bit more constructive: my impression is that changes that concern balancing, removal of tedium (selling, identify, remove curse, traps) or new additions to the game (vaults, artifacts, uniques, druid, necromancer) go down relatively well. Alterations to well-functioning parts of the game (changing an existing play style, changing "lore" from Total Mess to Tolkien) are asking for trouble.

... and since this is an annoying post anyway:

@ Pete Mack: please, Rogue had 26 monsters. Yes, I know that's <52.
@ Derakon: Moria already had rangers, and "slime mold juice" is a Rogue thing (the taste of a potion of see invisible).

[misanthropope]

i have a concern about over-tolkienization of angband. angband is fundamentally a d&d experience ("murder hobo"), not a tolkien one. i like JRR as much as the next guy, but the old boy took himself seriously to a degree that angband just can't.

70% tolkien? loving it. 100%? im thinking it just makes "buy lantern, kill morgoth" that much less suspension-of-disbelief-able.

in my view, it would be altogether meet and decorous for angband to feature one monster in its list from each and every suitably well-loved fantasy franchise. there's a hundred bloody levels, you got room.

[Nick]

But most of all i disagre to the statement that a game must evolve or constantly be changed to stay alive. That is total nonsense ... software development goes by the requirements made. Only if the requirements change it is to needed to change the code. In my world view there is a "perfect" solution once the requirements are defined. And since my personal requirements to Angband never changed i am totall against what Nick does to the game.

This argument would have some force if Angband had been essentially the same for a long time and then I was suddenly changing it. The fact is, though, that there have been 30 or so progressively changing, distinctly different versions of Angband over the last 28 or so years - and that's only if you count "official" Angband releases and ignore the 100+ variants.

So, which of those is the one that you think is perfect? 2.6.1? 2.8.3? 3.0.3? 3.4.1? Should staves stack? What do you think of the JLE monsters? Are randarts an acceptable new addition to the game? What about the Palantir - should that have been removed? Are amulets of Weaponmastery OK? What is your position on Tiamat, or the sword of Eowyn, or the bonuses on Narya?

I await your answers to these questions with interest.

[Thraalbee]

Change is toxic. To some people

[Hounded]

I confess I'm puzzled. Dune 2 was better than Dune 2000. So I stayed with that. Civ 2 beats hell out of Empire but I found Alpha Centauri lacking by comparison so I play Civ 2 (I may be unusual but I'm comfortable with that).

I just don't understand why someone would be opposed to development of a game which they are not being forced to play? Especially with V. Angband where there isn't a multi-player component and all of the older versions with a plethora of variants remain available.

If I don't like a movie, I get up and leave. If I don't like a new game I stick with the old. I can't see why someone would be so invested in pushing others efforts, especially volunteer effors, to suit their own vision.

[Pete Mack]

The game is far more easily modified no than it ever was in the past. What mods do you want to make, and why are they difficult?
And who would want to be maintainer for a static game?