[Announce] Poschengband 3.0.0 Released

[Derakon]

Right, so, given the existence of *ID* in piles, what is the purpose of having both ID and *ID*?

[Arjen]

The question, then, is whether you do need *id* in the dungeon. For certain purposes, such as upgrading with new gear mid dive, or choosing what to bring up after a big vault, I would venture to say that you do.

The alchemy (5) shop does sell *id* scrolls in piles. They are not always available, but not uncommon either. So that is doable.

[Avenger]

3 towns have a *id* service, so if you don't need *id* in the dungeon, you will be fine.

The question, then, is whether you do need *id* in the dungeon. For certain purposes, such as upgrading with new gear mid dive, or choosing what to bring up after a big vault, I would venture to say that you do.

[Arjen]

chris: is there something you find distasteful about the way Vanilla handles things right now? Which is to say, Identify is *Identify*. Functionally it sounds like you're moving towards this anyway by making scrolls of *Identify* more common.

3 towns have a *id* service, so if you don't need *id* in the dungeon, you will be fine.

[Derakon]

chris: is there something you find distasteful about the way Vanilla handles things right now? Which is to say, Identify is *Identify*. Functionally it sounds like you're moving towards this anyway by making scrolls of *Identify* more common.

In what situations do you want a player to know the "stat line" of an item (e.g. "Warhammer of Slay Rodent (3d3) (+4, +9) (+2)") without knowing all of the specific flags on that item? What does forcing the player to make uninformed decisions about gear add to the game?

[Avenger]

I guess part of my frustration is that people are complaining, but not offering ideas for change. Certainly, players don't want everything instantly *identified* upon generation to "remove the tedium"?

My suggestion would simply be to significantly cut back on the number of properties which remain hidden from standard identification. I don't know whether this is easier said then done - I thought there were some item flags that affected hidden properties, but I could be mistaken on that.

You are probably correct that it will become easier to determine what needs to be *ID*'d the more I play, but I think it would be fair to say that the proportion of items needing that level of identification is noticeably higher then in other variants.

One more brief note - now that all jewelry comes in a single color(as far as I've seen, at least) shouldn't mimics match that color? A brown = isn't very sneaky if every other ring in the game is green

[chris]

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"

It is indeed horribly unfair. But the game is rather unfair in many ways (Random speed system, Amberite blood curse, Chaos patron rewards, etc.). Also, there is an out: permanently cursed items can be removed.

My thoughts were that if cursed rand-arts are allowed to have this attribute (and they always have) then so should cursed ego items. But I don't have a strong objection to removing it though my preference would be to limit it to powerful egos.

[chris]

I apologize if I caused offence - that was certainly not my intention. Heng, Cheng, and Entro have long been favorite variants of mine, as was Posband, and I'm grateful to you for combining those concepts - the result is a game that appeals to my personal preferences on many levels.

No, I apologize. I am perhaps a little oversensitive and read too much into your comments?

It's simply been my experience while playing that abilities are very random - various rings or amulets of the same type have vastly different sets of properties and activations, for example.

This is true. Rings and amulets have become much more like rand-arts ... except that the set of abilities is not really random after all. Rather, abilities are chosen from a suite of thematically consistent possible attributes.

So yes, it is fair to say that jewelry requires heavier use if *id* than it previously used to. Not knowing what is possible for each type of jewelry might be frustrating, especially if you don't want to miss something. For example, a Ring of Elemental Resistance might specialize itself on a single element and perhaps grant immunity, or weapon branding (but these are only possible late in the game).

The jewelry changes are the main reason why I added 3 extra inventory slots for this release. Also, scrolls of *id* are much more common (and come in stacks).

Perhaps it would be fairer to say that many items and ego types can have a wide range of properties, of which the majority are hidden.

Again, this is true.

Many egos are hard coded with fixed attributes (especially wrt weapons) but some also have the potential to have extra resists or the like (Pattern weapons, Trump weapons, ...) Eventually the player learns which ego types could benefit from *identification*. Also, there is usually no point *identifying* a pattern dagger, say, since the 1d4 damage dice render the slays rather worthless.

The various armors of single resists (together with resistance) have been folded up into a single ego type that does indeed require *idenitification*. Also there are quite a few new ego types that might have extra stuff that weren't around prior to 3.0. So I do agree that *id* is important.

However, after a bit of play you get a sense of which ego types are worth further investigation. And I rarely find my pack so full that I have to leave stuff behind when recalling back to town.

I guess part of my frustration is that people are complaining, but not offering ideas for change. Certainly, players don't want everything instantly *identified* upon generation to "remove the tedium"?

And I personally love the extra attribute egos that are present in Hengband, TinyAngband and XAngband, especially the last two that turn egos into mini-artifacts from time to time. And dragon armor in Hengband is always fun. Having fixed power items that are always the same is rather boring, after all.

[Avenger]

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.

I'm not bashing it - indeed, it's by far my most played variant at the moment. It's simply been my experience while playing that abilities are very random - various rings or amulets of the same type have vastly different sets of properties and activations, for example.

Perhaps it would be fairer to say that many items and ego types can have a wide range of properties, of which the majority are hidden.

In any case, I do find myself *ID*ing everything just to be sure I'm not missing anything, even on items I end up selling, which is the point I was trying to make.

I apologize if I caused offence - that was certainly not my intention. Heng, Cheng, and Entro have long been favorite variants of mine, as was Posband, and I'm grateful to you for combining those concepts - the result is a game that appeals to my personal preferences on many levels.

Edit: I am aware of the town services, and move to Morivant for both the full inventory ID and the single item *ID* as soon as possible. As a berserker, I have quite a lot of gold to spare on those services, so it isn't really a huge issue as far as taking care of things in town(although doing so in the dungeon is still dodgy, once my inventory fills with pseudo-ids at my minimum autodestroyer setting). I don't know how well that translates to other classes, and in the dungeon, I would think the abundance of hidden properties would be a challenge even for classes with an Identify ability(are there any with a *ID* ability? If so, I have yet to ever get that far =P).

[Susramanian]

Also, it is available in infinite abundance thru a town service.

I had forgotten that. Never mind that bit in my post above where I talk about houses filling up with *ID*-needing items

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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"

[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.