[Announce] Poschengband 3.0.0 Released

[Susramanian]

Woes of identification

You should never wield an un-id'd item or quaff an un-id'd potion ever.

So for an appreciable amount of the game's loot, the identification mechanic serves as... what? A simple chore that must be performed before proceeding with the more interesting task of deciding whether the item is right for you?

Blech.

Look, players only have so much of a limited resource. Call it endurance, or patience, or willpower, or something better. It's like mana, but for video game players. And when it runs out, they quit playing your game. Every time your game presents a player with a decision to make, and the player makes a choice, they use up a bit of their mana. A game developer's job is to decide which decisions they want to force the player to make. All the decisions use up the player's mana, so which ones do you pick?

Hint: Avoid uninformed ones. Avoid ones between the optimal and the fun. Avoid meaningless ones.

So, Angband and Angband-variant maintainers: want to use up everybody's limited mana with a decision to expend ID resources for (nearly) every damned piece of loot that hits the dungeon floor? Please don't.

PS: Chris, this wasn't aimed at you in particular; you just had the quote that prompted me to vent

[chris]

PS: Chris, this wasn't aimed at you in particular; you just had the quote that prompted me to vent

It's a fair criticism, but this was not my design decision. Look, the game has been this way for almost 20 years. My quote has been applicable ever since Zangband came out in what, 1994?

I'm just being consistent!

[Roch]

I'm with Susramanian on this one. The change to the stone of lore was so mind-blowingly awesome that most of us said to ourselves, wait, id doesn't have to be tedious?

The change to cursed items seems like a step backwards. Can't I just ignore them again or do I really have to id all of them in case it's an artifact or something else good or worth money? Sure I can still ignore them but it seems like pseudo-id-ing an item as cursed doesn't help you get on with the game anymore.

[Arjen]

I'm with Susramanian on this one. The change to the stone of lore was so mind-blowingly awesome that most of us said to ourselves, wait, id doesn't have to be tedious?

The change to cursed items seems like a step backwards. Can't I just ignore them again or do I really have to id all of them in case it's an artifact or something else good or worth money? Sure I can still ignore them but it seems like pseudo-id-ing an item as cursed doesn't help you get on with the game anymore.

I create a line in that auto_pick-up which destroys all {cursed} items, as artifacts cant be destroyed, you only keep those. I know I'm not going to use cursed egos. Why have slay orc if you are also aggravating? 95% of the time the curse isn't worth the benefits.

[chris]

I must say that I am rather disappointed that players would simply ignore cursed items. That was the old game design: Cursed = Crap, never to be used intentionally by the player and often a cause for suicide if used accidentally. Items in general were either all good or all bad. The cursed item changes are an effort an changing this mechanic, and based on my personal play, I have found the change to be rather interesting.

Would you really decline to use "cursed" armor of elvenkind that also has, say sound vulnerability? Especially if it is the first source of resistance that you find? Of course a "cursed" weapon of slay orc won't warrant consideration, but then again, when has a non-cursed weapon of slay orc sparked interest?

You certainly can decide to just ignore cursed items, but I think you will be missing out if you do. If the strain of identification is too much then try playing a class with an identify spell (or at least one that can use a staff of idenitfy)!

Just my 2 cents, of course ...

[chris]

While this is true, there were very few permacursed artifacts(short of rand-arts, I suppose - I haven't played many variants with those, though), and none of them were whips. Moreso, none of them were available so incredibly early - if memory serves.

I've gotten super early perma-cursed rand-arts from Smeagol, Wormtongue, Robin Hood, etc a fair number of times. I've even instantly worn the drop without first identifying it, and even at times when I had identify in my pack! It is certainly rare, but not unheard of.

This one came out of the thieves' den quest. While one can certainly expect cursed items and associated consequences at this point, a permacurse is not something that would have ever occurred to me so early in the game. Luckily, being that early, it didn't really ruin anything in progress - it was just a complete shock.

My suggestion would be to keep it on bad items. This was a good ego type ...

There are no longer "bad items". In fact, this is one of the things I am attempting to address with the 3.0 release. Instead, items (even normal egos) often are mixed blessings, with some good features and some bad features (e.g. Troll armor that increases your strength but makes you slow and stupid).

Cursed egos/artifacts start with a normal ego/artifact and then apply various bad stuff. Admittedly, often times the end result is not worth it, but I have found that often it is, especially in the early game. Later on, you can find cursed boots of speed, weapons of Noldor, etc, and then, you may be able to stomach the bad effects, especially if they touch on attributes that your class doesn't need (e.g. Spell Power for a Warrior).

The goal is to change the cursed meta-game from "cursed items are always bad, and therefor something to ignore/squelch" to "cursed items might be something useful after all".

(Of course, there were some cursed standard arts that were useful, but the means of cursing them were rather shallow: aggravation, drain experience, negative pvals, etc. Cursed rand-arts and egos were *always* bad items. Boots of Annoyance, boots of slowness, etc).

[Therem Harth]

@chris, that is an awesome idea. Mind if I shamelessly steal it for Neoband?

[chris]

@chris, that is an awesome idea. Mind if I shamelessly steal it for Neoband?

Not at all!

[Avenger]

I must say that I am rather disappointed that players would simply ignore cursed items. That was the old game design: Cursed = Crap, never to be used intentionally by the player and often a cause for suicide if used accidentally. Items in general were either all good or all bad. The cursed item changes are an effort an changing this mechanic, and based on my personal play, I have found the change to be rather interesting.

Would you really decline to use "cursed" armor of elvenkind that also has, say sound vulnerability? Especially if it is the first source of resistance that you find? Of course a "cursed" weapon of slay orc won't warrant consideration, but then again, when has a non-cursed weapon of slay orc sparked interest?

You certainly can decide to just ignore cursed items, but I think you will be missing out if you do. If the strain of identification is too much then try playing a class with an identify spell (or at least one that can use a staff of idenitfy)!

Just my 2 cents, of course ...

Yes, I would really ignore them. Even playing a Berserker, with pseudo-id that works almost instantly.

God forbid I'm playing another class that doesn't - when an item finally pops cursed, I'm getting rid of it immediately - no sense cluttering my inventory with what is almost certainly crap.

Indeed, with the additional requirement to *id* everything in Poscheng to see what it actually does, there is less then no point to bringing up cursed items on the very, very rare chance they turn out to be a useful ego with a tolerable curse.

I can see why, in theory, having mixed enchantments on items would seem like a fun and interesting idea. But in practice, especially with the way the pseudo/id/*id* hierarchy works in poscheng, it simply does not create a fun experience.

I create a line in that auto_pick-up which destroys all {cursed} items, as artifacts cant be destroyed, you only keep those. I know I'm not going to use cursed egos. Why have slay orc if you are also aggravating? 95% of the time the curse isn't worth the benefits.

Would you mind sharing that line? !worthless doesn't seem to affect all cursed items, and I wasn't able to find a line that did.

I've gotten super early perma-cursed rand-arts from Smeagol, Wormtongue, Robin Hood, etc a fair number of times. I've even instantly worn the drop without first identifying it, and even at times when I had identify in my pack! It is certainly rare, but not unheard of.

Ah. I suppose with randarts it is possible. As a long time MAngband player, who rarely survived long enough in other variants to find artifacts, I'm used to exactly two permacursed items - The One and the Massive Iron Crown. Neither of these can possibly be mistaken for anything else at any stage of identification.

I do have randarts turned on in PosCheng(or rather, I have normal arts turned off, since many of them are underwhelming and I'd rather try to generate useful abilities by luck), so it is a feature I'm starting to become familiar with.

There are no longer "bad items". In fact, this is one of the things I am attempting to address with the 3.0 release. Instead, items (even normal egos) often are mixed blessings, with some good features and some bad features (e.g. Troll armor that increases your strength but makes you slow and stupid).

Cursed egos/artifacts start with a normal ego/artifact and then apply various bad stuff. Admittedly, often times the end result is not worth it, but I have found that often it is, especially in the early game. Later on, you can find cursed boots of speed, weapons of Noldor, etc, and then, you may be able to stomach the bad effects, especially if they touch on attributes that your class doesn't need (e.g. Spell Power for a Warrior).

The goal is to change the cursed meta-game from "cursed items are always bad, and therefor something to ignore/squelch" to "cursed items might be something useful after all".

(Of course, there were some cursed standard arts that were useful, but the means of cursing them were rather shallow: aggravation, drain experience, negative pvals, etc. Cursed rand-arts and egos were *always* bad items. Boots of Annoyance, boots of slowness, etc).

Again, with the current identification system, particularly the Poscheng requirement to *id* things to find most of their abilities, this is really not translating as well to actual gameplay as you seem to have intended.

Additionally, I don't really understand the lore perspective on cursed egos. Why the hell would anyone make, for example, a weapon of Morgul? Even the baddies who would presumably use them, the Nazgul and associated enemies, don't want to aggravate, or have penalties to hit and damage rather then bonuses. Can you imagine how much easier WitchKing would be if he spammed misses in melee and all his summons aggro'd onto him because his dumbass was wielding a Morgul blade? Same goes for boots of annoyance or armors of vulnerability - they exist simply as "trap" items that punish people for using without id'ing.

Granted, your stated goal is to change that, but in the process you seem to have created an even worse kind of trap item =P at least with boots of slowness, if I survive, I can get to town and get them off. With a surprise permacurse, the game is over.

[Arjen]

Would you mind sharing that line? !worthless doesn't seem to affect all cursed items, and I wasn't able to find a line that did.

!{cursed} does the trick.

And I'm sorry Chris, but I like playing monsters who don't have id spells and most of the time crappy MD skill. So I just don't have space to carry 4-5 {cursed} items around who might or might not be an (useful) ego which you can't tell until actually ided.

[chris]

!{cursed} does the trick.

And I'm sorry Chris, but I like playing monsters who don't have id spells and most of the time crappy MD skill. So I just don't have space to carry 4-5 {cursed} items around who might or might not be an (useful) ego which you can't tell until actually ided.

You got 3 extra pack slots this release. Why not compromise?

BTW, cursed items come in 3 varieties formerly known as "cursed", "broken" and "terrible" where the latter 2 are cursed egos and artifacts, respectively. The proportion of "cursed" items decreases with dungeon level, so as you descend, those cursed items are more likely to be egos or artifacts.

[emulord]

Permacurse shouldnt ever be a random flag imo. It should be only on *terrible* items. Permacurse is so harsh, its a flag that means "This will be good enough for the rest of the game, and swaps arent allowed"

[Susramanian]

*ID* should go.

One of the things that holds me back from taking another stab at Poschengband is *ID*. After the blessed relief of playing Vanilla without it, the idea of slogging through a variant with it is painful. Doubly painful given that you seem to have greatly increased the importance of *ID* with these new mixed-blessing items. What precisely is the fun experience you're trying to create by having such an emphasis on *ID*? In what circumstances do you think that the whole *ID* mechanic is going to make a situation more fun, rather than less?

The optimal thing for a player to do is clearly to *ID* everything that needs it. If you want players to do that, then just eliminate *ID*. If you don't, then you're essentially saying, "You know, when a player's in the dungeon and they've got a bunch of mysterious randarts/egos that they want to keep, but they don't have room to keep them all, they'll have to choose which ones to keep. I think that making them guess sounds like more fun then letting them just make an informed decision and move on." And if that particular uninformed decision doesn't come up in the dungeon, then it eventually will when their house fills up with items waiting to be *ID*ed.

Once again, player decision-making mana is limited. Forcing them to use it up on uninformed decisions like this isn't a great idea. Just snip *ID*, and, if you're feeling bold, regular ID. The game has more than enough depth and interesting decisions for the player to make without it.

Out of curiosity, is there anybody who misses *ID* in Vanilla? Anybody that wants to put it back in, now that we've had a good dose of Angband without it?

[Avenger]

Permacurse shouldnt ever be a random flag imo. It should be only on *terrible* items. Permacurse is so harsh, its a flag that means "This will be good enough for the rest of the game, and swaps arent allowed"

I strongly agree with this. Even from a lore perspective, a permanent curse is only on such extremely powerful items that the owner can't give them up, such as The One and the silmarils on the Massive Iron Crown.

Having it appear on a low ego whip is both frustrating and inexplicable.

Out of curiosity, is there anybody who misses *ID* in Vanilla? Anybody that wants to put it back in, now that we've had a good dose of Angband without it?

I do like the current state of identification in Vanilla. I think *ID* does have a place, but I don't think that place is in a variant like PosCheng, where every item that generates has the potential for hidden attributes. *ID* should be, in my opinion, reserved for rare items with random properties - in the current MAngband, there's a selection of ego types that provide random high resists or abilities, and *ID* plays an important part in that. For most ego types, that simply isn't necessary, and standard ID works just fine.

In PosCheng, literally anything can have any attribute, and almost all of it is hidden. That makes *ID* critical for pretty much every item you find, which isn't very cost efficient. It is certainly not a situation that lends itself to the in-dungeon decision making which I gather from Chris's posts is something he wants to be a part of the playstyle.

[chris]

In PosCheng, literally anything can have any attribute, and almost all of it is hidden. That makes *ID* critical for pretty much every item you find.

To state that anything can have any attribute is complete bullshit. Could you please try to learn a little bit about the game before bashing it?

*ID* is important, but by no means essential. Also, it is available in infinite abundance thru a town service.