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I was gonna send my rebalancing Ideas to Antoine, but I figure Matthias at least will have some 10 cents+ to add, and I guess the new variant could do with a bit of exposure, so here goes:
For those who haven't played it yet, Ironband is an "ironman-only" variant based on NPP. Please give it a go if you have a bit of time spare, because at present not enough players have been past DL5 to give the maintainer proper feedback; the variant has enough new ideas to be worthy of continual development. My advice to the newbies who find it too hard is to get a bit of experience in Ironman mode in V (or another variant if you like) - it will be a little easier to get a character going (ie past the first few floors). A little experience at Ironman in general won't hurt, much better to get some practice in a familiar environment - and as the new variant aims to fix some gripes with that mode, its difficult to appreciate why the new game is good otherwise. Although I'm now going to make suggestions as to how to make it harder, don't let that put you off - I think anyone struggling just needs some ironman experience.
The main problem lies in the game not being hard enough once you get a character rolling (actually I thought it was easier from the word go) and some rebalancing needs to be done. Put bluntly, nobody should be able to win a variant on their first try, even if they have as many wins under their belt as Matthias. I don't believe Matthias to be a cheater either, I suspect he just has far too much time to play *band in - I figure parsing his TC from ladder characters and extrapolating a realtime figure based on those would scare a lotta people away from Angband; but of course, I digress.
So here are my suggestions:
The player is simply too good at everything; the idea was that you get some choice over development but are partly forced down a random route. However, instead of being good at one thing, you end up good at everything and great at one thing. Personally, I think the (currently classless) game would benefit from some basic classes (fighter, shooter, caster) but it may be hard to impose classed play, and perhaps this is something to think about for later; maybe try some rebalncing first, and maybe the game can stay classless. If so, I think the amount of statgain may want reducing a little.
The biggest "broken" aspect of play is casting, not surprising as the game has reworked spellbooks, wands/rods and added an idea of talismans. The concept of not recovering spellpoints until you descend, while a great new tactical feature, has an overlooked balance issue: at low levels, you basically get a low-level mages casting power to last you a whole floor(!) which is fine, and cool, and adds something. Once your SP balloon, though, even though they have to last you a floor, you are capable enough at fighting/shooting to save most of your SPs for the vaults/uniques and coupled with talismans and wands allows you a longer chain of more potent magic than in any variant I know of; my test character (mainly ran as a ranger) died at about 1/2 to 2/3 SP(!!) after fireballing away half a pit of diamond and adamantite coins. I still didn't figure out if these would have been worth "collecting" for XP... Anyway, the point is I tried to base my character around stealth and shooting, then fighting, and lastly magic - I basically would have been happy to detect traps!
This is what I would do for the next version, with regards to rebalancing casting:
*Restore mana potions - rather than reduced effect, get rid. Antoine commented that Matthias' winner had too many supplies at the end, but I also know he drank at least one of these. If he didn't have it he would have presumably had to use up other supplies or take an early exit from the floor. When thinking about realism, this seems a bad thing to do, but remember that never recovering SP, but getting them suddenly zapped back full on using stairs is also unrealistic. Treating the SP changes as a pure game device (and a potentially awesome one at that) mana potions are 100% broken, IMHO.
*Wands - these are almost fine as is - rods and wands are big part of mid-game ironman play, and thats what they are here too. As they take up a whole inventory slot for one spell, you simply cant carry all of them to 5000' as you start having to carry spare artifacts in ther late game, to swap in resists and slays. I don't think the talismans should make casting from wands any cheaper, though... the wands should represent the best value magic in the game.
*Spellbooks - although I didn't find anything but the first spellbook for a long time, I found (over three floors) three spellbooks containing more than enough magic to win with. The fact that practically every spell had the same (<7% by the time I died) fail rate was an issue for me. Either make them rarer, or add more and have each one less useful (make the player choose his magic more skillfully). It wouldn't hurt to make spell fails a little higher. Alternately, let them get burned more easily, even the "good" ones... *evil grin* ...that might just be a lot more fun!
*Talismans - (AKA what got broke) stacking talismans makes spells too cheap, end of story. I suspect Matthias and his dry-run winner will agree with me... They are, unfortunately, a nice & cute newish idea, otherwise I would recommend their removal altogether. So instead I recommend:
A- Stop cumulative effects, curbing the chain-casting "wizard of legend" effect that afflicts lvl 10 "fighters" in Ironband.
B- If you increase spell fail rates, talismans could reduce them, that would be ok in my book.
C- make them rarer, thus forcing the player down unexpected routes and making him/her adapt to what the RNG gifts him... I think this was the basic concept of development in Ironband.
D- To reiterate "stop cumulative effects" - don't let them have any effect on wands, wands should be the cheapest way to cast (because you get only one spell per item) but FGS don't let talismans make them cheaper! After that, spellbooks coupled with talismans are what shapes your power; by chance or by choice - a staple of Angband.
A couple of other observations:
Arts seem rarer, so thats all good, because even with my rebalancing suggestions, IDing items and not wearing cursed ones is actually a lot easier, so those features should even out a bit.
The new unique I fought might have been a tricksy little cow, if only I wasn't overpowered, so don't worry about redoing those, at least until they have been more tested. From what I can tell, they are in line with the current V ones, and new flavour is always nice. Basically, after about 200' all uniques were offed far too easily for my liking - when I play ironman in V (still my favourite ironman) I'm used to getting chased off otherwise tasty floors when Mim turns up to bail Azog out, stuff like that. I put a lot of this down to it being to easy to have a natural +3/+4 speed on a low-level @. Obviously anything of "normal" celerity and zero ranged attack will be laughable to the "somewhat quick" player. Something of a sidenote, this one - I would personally focus on the casting side of things and give it a test run first.
BTW, on a side note, the plural of 'talisman' is 'talismans'. I wish wholeheartedly it was 'talismani' (to bring them in line with the magi who would create them) and google tells me a whole lot of peeps wish it was 'talismen'.
Hopefully, some of this was of some use to Antoine, and at least one or two people are intrigued enough to give Ironband a go.
For those who haven't played it yet, Ironband is an "ironman-only" variant based on NPP. Please give it a go if you have a bit of time spare, because at present not enough players have been past DL5 to give the maintainer proper feedback; the variant has enough new ideas to be worthy of continual development. My advice to the newbies who find it too hard is to get a bit of experience in Ironman mode in V (or another variant if you like) - it will be a little easier to get a character going (ie past the first few floors). A little experience at Ironman in general won't hurt, much better to get some practice in a familiar environment - and as the new variant aims to fix some gripes with that mode, its difficult to appreciate why the new game is good otherwise. Although I'm now going to make suggestions as to how to make it harder, don't let that put you off - I think anyone struggling just needs some ironman experience.
The main problem lies in the game not being hard enough once you get a character rolling (actually I thought it was easier from the word go) and some rebalancing needs to be done. Put bluntly, nobody should be able to win a variant on their first try, even if they have as many wins under their belt as Matthias. I don't believe Matthias to be a cheater either, I suspect he just has far too much time to play *band in - I figure parsing his TC from ladder characters and extrapolating a realtime figure based on those would scare a lotta people away from Angband; but of course, I digress.
So here are my suggestions:
The player is simply too good at everything; the idea was that you get some choice over development but are partly forced down a random route. However, instead of being good at one thing, you end up good at everything and great at one thing. Personally, I think the (currently classless) game would benefit from some basic classes (fighter, shooter, caster) but it may be hard to impose classed play, and perhaps this is something to think about for later; maybe try some rebalncing first, and maybe the game can stay classless. If so, I think the amount of statgain may want reducing a little.
The biggest "broken" aspect of play is casting, not surprising as the game has reworked spellbooks, wands/rods and added an idea of talismans. The concept of not recovering spellpoints until you descend, while a great new tactical feature, has an overlooked balance issue: at low levels, you basically get a low-level mages casting power to last you a whole floor(!) which is fine, and cool, and adds something. Once your SP balloon, though, even though they have to last you a floor, you are capable enough at fighting/shooting to save most of your SPs for the vaults/uniques and coupled with talismans and wands allows you a longer chain of more potent magic than in any variant I know of; my test character (mainly ran as a ranger) died at about 1/2 to 2/3 SP(!!) after fireballing away half a pit of diamond and adamantite coins. I still didn't figure out if these would have been worth "collecting" for XP... Anyway, the point is I tried to base my character around stealth and shooting, then fighting, and lastly magic - I basically would have been happy to detect traps!
This is what I would do for the next version, with regards to rebalancing casting:
*Restore mana potions - rather than reduced effect, get rid. Antoine commented that Matthias' winner had too many supplies at the end, but I also know he drank at least one of these. If he didn't have it he would have presumably had to use up other supplies or take an early exit from the floor. When thinking about realism, this seems a bad thing to do, but remember that never recovering SP, but getting them suddenly zapped back full on using stairs is also unrealistic. Treating the SP changes as a pure game device (and a potentially awesome one at that) mana potions are 100% broken, IMHO.
*Wands - these are almost fine as is - rods and wands are big part of mid-game ironman play, and thats what they are here too. As they take up a whole inventory slot for one spell, you simply cant carry all of them to 5000' as you start having to carry spare artifacts in ther late game, to swap in resists and slays. I don't think the talismans should make casting from wands any cheaper, though... the wands should represent the best value magic in the game.
*Spellbooks - although I didn't find anything but the first spellbook for a long time, I found (over three floors) three spellbooks containing more than enough magic to win with. The fact that practically every spell had the same (<7% by the time I died) fail rate was an issue for me. Either make them rarer, or add more and have each one less useful (make the player choose his magic more skillfully). It wouldn't hurt to make spell fails a little higher. Alternately, let them get burned more easily, even the "good" ones... *evil grin* ...that might just be a lot more fun!
*Talismans - (AKA what got broke) stacking talismans makes spells too cheap, end of story. I suspect Matthias and his dry-run winner will agree with me... They are, unfortunately, a nice & cute newish idea, otherwise I would recommend their removal altogether. So instead I recommend:
A- Stop cumulative effects, curbing the chain-casting "wizard of legend" effect that afflicts lvl 10 "fighters" in Ironband.
B- If you increase spell fail rates, talismans could reduce them, that would be ok in my book.
C- make them rarer, thus forcing the player down unexpected routes and making him/her adapt to what the RNG gifts him... I think this was the basic concept of development in Ironband.
D- To reiterate "stop cumulative effects" - don't let them have any effect on wands, wands should be the cheapest way to cast (because you get only one spell per item) but FGS don't let talismans make them cheaper! After that, spellbooks coupled with talismans are what shapes your power; by chance or by choice - a staple of Angband.
A couple of other observations:
Arts seem rarer, so thats all good, because even with my rebalancing suggestions, IDing items and not wearing cursed ones is actually a lot easier, so those features should even out a bit.
The new unique I fought might have been a tricksy little cow, if only I wasn't overpowered, so don't worry about redoing those, at least until they have been more tested. From what I can tell, they are in line with the current V ones, and new flavour is always nice. Basically, after about 200' all uniques were offed far too easily for my liking - when I play ironman in V (still my favourite ironman) I'm used to getting chased off otherwise tasty floors when Mim turns up to bail Azog out, stuff like that. I put a lot of this down to it being to easy to have a natural +3/+4 speed on a low-level @. Obviously anything of "normal" celerity and zero ranged attack will be laughable to the "somewhat quick" player. Something of a sidenote, this one - I would personally focus on the casting side of things and give it a test run first.
BTW, on a side note, the plural of 'talisman' is 'talismans'. I wish wholeheartedly it was 'talismani' (to bring them in line with the magi who would create them) and google tells me a whole lot of peeps wish it was 'talismen'.
Hopefully, some of this was of some use to Antoine, and at least one or two people are intrigued enough to give Ironband a go.
).
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