What is the reason why this change to food was made?
It's one of the things I find most irritating about the game now. I'd be happier to just remove food entirely honestly because it always feels incredibly pointless to me, but at least in older versions you just carried a pile of sat hunger (or used the spell) and didn't really care about it.
I'm guessing it was to actually make food items have 'value' but frankly, the better solution would have been to just remove a mechanic that's only there to be annoying. (my opinion of course)
What is the reason why this change to food was made?
It's one of the things I find most irritating about the game now. I'd be happier to just remove food entirely honestly because it always feels incredibly pointless to me, but at least in older versions you just carried a pile of sat hunger (or used the spell) and didn't really care about it.
I'm guessing it was to actually make food items have 'value' but frankly, the better solution would have been to just remove a mechanic that's only there to be annoying. (my opinion of course)
People do want some adventure feel for being hungered. That cannot be taken away. I've tried and it won't go.
To avoid being gorged the thing is simply: "just don't eat over 80% so you can drink healing potions".
In games where Word of Recall scrolls and rations of food are infinite in town shops, food is very close to 100% of being meaningless.
It seems to me that the primary purpose is to nerf the "Phase Door and slam back CLW potions by the dozen" strategy for healing. At least, there have been a few times where I've nearly gotten killed because I wasn't watching my satiation and ended up at 99% full thanks to CLW spam (happened while clearing a vault once. Oof, that was intense).
Which, honestly I'm ok with. It made me much more likely to use those non-renewable CSW, and even CCW because it meant less satiation, and thus I was less likely to be gorged.
Sure, food isn't a big deal, but I don't mind having that kind of downside to most characters' only source of renewable healing.
People do want some adventure feel for being hungered. That cannot be taken away. I've tried and it won't go.
To avoid being gorged the thing is simply: "just don't eat over 80% so you can drink healing potions".
In games where Word of Recall scrolls and rations of food are infinite in town shops, food is very close to 100% of being meaningless.
Some people do... but it can be taken away, indeed many other games in this genre (maybe not direct Angband variants though) don't bother with it at all. As to 'don't eat over 80%' well sure, I mean my point isn't about how to navigate the system, it's that the system itself is not interesting to me because it is so trivial to deal with, but all it yields is the frustration of having to deal with an otherwise trivial mechanic.
What does it actually add other than 'some adventure feel'? And, to be sure, I'm not suggesting it's wrong to enjoy that feel, I'm suggesting that as implemented it's just busy work. In any case, I would like a birth option to 'turn off food'. Even if it just removes any penalty for being at 0% so one wouldn't have to rework how potions affect it.
Speaking of potions...
Other games handle that by cool downs or diminishing returns. Of course there are cool downs on rods, and that's a weird mechanic to cheese onto potions, but if the (or a) goal of this was to remove potion spamming (which I kind of don't get the point of either, but whatever, I'll play along that it's a 'problem' that needed solving) then I would just suggest this is not a good solution because it simply adds an additional micromanage element which is so easily managed that it doesn't add any actual depth to game play.
Other games handle that by cool downs or diminishing returns. Of course there are cool downs on rods, and that's a weird mechanic to cheese onto potions, but if the (or a) goal of this was to remove potion spamming (which I kind of don't get the point of either, but whatever, I'll play along that it's a 'problem' that needed solving) then I would just suggest this is not a good solution because it simply adds an additional micromanage element which is so easily managed that it doesn't add any actual depth to game play.
I don't really view gorging as a means of *removing* potion spamming. More to give potion spamming a trade-off. So you have to give some thought to it. Maybe not a lot of thought, but some.
I still maintain that it is only an issue when you don't understand the mechanic. Once you understand it? No longer an issue.
Also, at what point does potion spamming stop being something characters do? For me that happens pretty quickly, because at some point you don't bother with CLW, and then you don't bother with CSW, and then CCW is basically only for condition control, or you might drink a couple, not dozens.
Depends on the class. I relied on them pretty heavily for quite a while for my recent Blackguard to cut down on how much time I spent resting (both because of her poor stealth, and because she loses spell points when not in combat). Most classes I could get away with being 70% satiated before going into the dungeon. With her, I needed to be like 50 or 60% satiated before going down.
Depends on the class. I relied on them pretty heavily for quite a while for my recent Blackguard to cut down on how much time I spent resting (both because of her poor stealth, and because she loses spell points when not in combat). Most classes I could get away with being 70% satiated before going into the dungeon. With her, I needed to be like 50 or 60% satiated before going down.
So even in this case, was it an interesting mechanic to manage or just something you had to micromanage?
I dunno really though, even without the penalty, food is just a mechanic I never really got. It's only kind of meaningful for young characters, but there's no real cost to it, it doesn't impact your economy, it sometimes kills you if you're super unlucky or really dumb (like drinking salt water without WoR or any food or something...). Is the supposed gain to immersion really worth the hassle of something that has no cost and serves no in game benefit?
I found it somewhat interesting. The lower my satiation when I went down to the dungeon, the likelier it was that I'd have to abandon a level prematurely because I got hungry (or take up a precious inventory slot with some food). The higher my satiation, the likelier it was I was going to be gorged at an inopportune moment. Balancing that was moderately interesting, but on the whole it wasn't a big part of the game by any means. It didn't bother me, but I can see how it would bother other people.
That being said, if the choice was between "making food more interesting" and "removing it entirely" I'd probably lean towards "remove entirely." I just don't see how you make it interesting in a game with infinite resources like Angband. I mean, I guess food could give you buffs, but we already have potions, scrolls and mushrooms for that (and honestly I mostly ignore mushrooms).
Comment