Quickband 2.0.4 released

[Antoine]

> However even things like low level 'w's and 'a's can bust down doors.

I'm now removing 'bash' from many weak non-humanoid monsters. I don't see why an ant or a centipede should be able to bash down a door; and cats and wolves are both well renowned for not being able to get through closed doors.

A.

[Antoine]

Quickband bugfix release

Balance and bugfix release now available at http://angband.oook.cz/variants.php?variant=quick.

This will be the version for the next comp

Changes:
- Corrected documentation - gnomes only auto-ID wands, not staffs
- Base delay factor now defaults to 3
- Many weak monsters can no longer bash doors
- You can browse spells that you can't cast yet
- Sleep attacks are now much more effective (except against very wakeful monsters)
- High-Con characters have more hp, but low-Con have less

A.

[thapper]

When playing a Dunadan rouge I hit clvl 15 while my str was drained (from 18/30 to 18/25). I felt stronger and my str increased to 18/45 and is no longer drained, so I guess I only got 1.5 of my 2 point increase... Bug or feature?

[Antoine]

When playing a Dunadan rouge I hit clvl 15 while my str was drained (from 18/30 to 18/25). I felt stronger and my str increased to 18/45 and is no longer drained, so I guess I only got 1.5 of my 2 point increase... Bug or feature?

I'll look into it

A.

[tametick]

Hey,
I haven't played angband & variants in a long while(use to play tome2 and vanilla years ago) so I figured Quickband would be the right game for me to get back into the world of angband.

I think the concept is great but my main issue is that I think QB didn't go far enough - 12 levels is a good depth but the levels are still pointlessly *huge*, the challenging (and interesting) part of the game did not manifest itself in the first 10-15 minutes of play, the interface is arcane...

All of these are basically angband's fault of course and not quickband's.

I think this quote from the game's page illustrates my main gripe with the game:

Quickband is intended to be much quicker to complete than regular Angband...In fact you should be able to play a full game in just a few hours.

"A few hours" is far from quick by my book (albeit still much better than angband).

That said, I do think that if you cut down 80% of the less interesting content and make the game much harder it could be a very good game.

or maybe I need QuickerBand personally.

[Antoine]

I think the concept is great but my main issue is that I think QB didn't go far enough - 12 levels is a good depth but the levels are still pointlessly *huge*, the challenging (and interesting) part of the game did not manifest itself in the first 10-15 minutes of play, the interface is arcane...

All of these are basically angband's fault of course and not quickband's.
...

or maybe I need QuickerBand personally.

Do you know, I think if you want a game that plays in minutes rather than hours, then Quickband is probably not your bag. You want a coffee break roguelike. Personally I like Desktop Dungeons for this purpose, but I know there are other good very short games around...

A.

[bio_hazard]

Quick is definitely quicker than V, but it can still be a little grindy.

Not to derail, but if you want a "quick" experience, it's hard to beat Brogue right now. It's got auto-explore (and even auto-play). No tiles, but it has just about the most sophisticated and interesting terrain of any roguelike. It just added randomly generated puzzle rooms (locked treasure rooms, with guaranteed keys in sometimes perilous rooms elsewhere on the level).

Also, if you have an iOS device, "The Dungeon", which is a Dungeon of Doom remake, is a nice hack-n-slash (cheap but not free).

[tametick]

Do you know, I think if you want a game that plays in minutes rather than hours, then Quickband is probably not your bag. You want a coffee break roguelike. Personally I like Desktop Dungeons for this purpose, but I know there are other good very short games around...

Yeah, I love DD (I actually like the alpha better than the beta) and play a few other "coffee-break" roguelikes (DoomRL, 100 rogues, even The Binding of Isaac if you are willing to stretch the definition of what is a roguelike).

But I think the more important thing is the pace of playing rather than how long the game lasts (i'm fine with games lasting a couple of hours if i can play a few minutes at a time and have fun).

I've been wanting to check out brogue again for a while now, last i played it it didn't really get into it too much (main issue i had with it that it was too easy and therefor not that interesting).

[caruso]

But I think the more important thing is the pace of playing rather than how long the game lasts (i'm fine with games lasting a couple of hours if i can play a few minutes at a time and have fun).

TinyAngband goes into a similar vein like Quickband. However, I only know as much about it as the description says.

Random Quickband suggestion: IIRC, the paladin experience penalty is quite severe (couldn't try it out myself because my current 2.0.2 game is taking forever). Letting them gain extra experience from destroying cursed equipment might be nice...

[Antoine]

Quick is definitely quicker than V, but it can still be a little grindy.

Always happy to hear suggestions for reducing grind, though I think you still want a bit of it.

A.

[bio_hazard]

I'll have to admit i haven't played much recently (kind of on a Brogue kick now).

My sense was that the difficulty ramped up so quickly that to be prepared for mid-game levels, unless you got lucky with some fantastic equipment early, you had to stick around 100-200' for a long time to either level up enough or finally get a kit good enough to proceed. That and some of the races/classes that had early game penalties (I'm mainly thinking of the Dunedain- is that the class where stores don't open until CL10?) that favored re-clearing the first few levels over and over.

Of course, I'm not what you'd call a "good" player, so maybe my experience isn't typical.

I'll have to play it again and see if I can think of something to suggest. I really like the variant, so please don't take it as criticism- I don't know of any roguelikes that don't have a ton of grinding at some point. Even the "Dive til your nose bleeds" strategy in V just pushes the grinding until the end game instead of spreading it out...