[Announce] PosChengband 7.0.0 Released

[Fnord]

And another one (would it make more sense to add/edit them into one post?):

I very vaguely seem to remember an overview of home item properties to make it easier to review resistances etc that one has available. Can't seem to find it now. Am I misremembering this existing ever, did it get removed or am I just too dumb to find it?

[wobbly]

I haven't tried poscheng 7 yet but a similar mechanic exists in Sil and works well there. However, entrancement in Sil wears off after you take a single (highly disadvantaged) hit. I'm sure there are some balance changes that can be made to make this more fun.

As far as I can tell paralyze length is reduced if you have FA in 7.0. I've never been paralyzed for more than 1 or 2 turns through it.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Found a bug with Weaponmasters:
Polearmmasters, Clubmasters, and any other non-Sword/Dagger Weaponmasters are able to improve skill with Sabres.

Another bug:
You can go into the World Map while certain erratic awake monsters are visible in LOS nearby. e.g. Metallic blue centipede.

[debo]

And another one (would it make more sense to add/edit them into one post?):

I very vaguely seem to remember an overview of home item properties to make it easier to review resistances etc that one has available. Can't seem to find it now. Am I misremembering this existing ever, did it get removed or am I just too dumb to find it?

That was unfortunately lost when the recent chardump inventory changes were made.

[Conker]

Instant kills and randomized energy were emblematic of poscheng from the beginning and I would hate to see them go.

Out of interest, what is it about these that you like, if you can explain it?

I ask because I am also a fan of punishing difficulty, but for me, the line between fun and tedium is crossed quickly when deaths become unavoidable. There are plenty of race/class combinations that would simply never have the HP to be able to survive a double mana storm from the Serpent. Getting more speed than it is feasible, but getting enough speed that it can't double-move you seems impossible. And this is only compounded by the opaque nature of game mechanics; something that seems to be purposefully cultivated.

Do you think there should be mechanics in place to prevent an 'unavoidable' death, or a death that wasn't somehow warranted through imperfect play? If not, what do you think of the relationship between time spent playing and the chance of an instant death? Dying to an unfortunate trap on D:1 is never a big deal, but the situation is very different after someone has invested dozens of hours in that character.

To the topic at large: the poison changes sound interesting, but the Free Action ones sound distinctly unappealing. Giving someone a practically unavoidable % chance to die - no matter how small it is - never feels fair to me, particularly in a longer roguelike like this.

Debo, you mentioned Sil earlier by way of comparison. For my part, I actually think Sil has the same problem in this regard, rather than being at the opposite end of the scale. It's uncommon, but it rarely happens that your rolls will fall in such a way that you'll suffer a very unexpected death. I've died to Orcobal, for example, in a single hit from full health, with a character that no one would say shouldn't be fighting him.

When that happens, a player doesn't feel like 'Damn, I made a mistake there', or 'Should have retreated earlier'. They just feel screwed by the system. It's the same whether you're paralysed and killed by a pack of ghouls because you rolled 1 on that d100 twice in a row, or whether Morgoth rolls max damage and creams you in one 6d10 blow in Sil, or whether the Serpent double mana storms and kills you from full health. That said, it's less aggravating in Sil because of the shorter game length.

That's not to say the % chance of failure shouldn't exist; without it, we'd just be playing chess. But I personally prefer safeguards or gates to limit the effect of bad - or good - luck. I don't want to be paralysed and killed through a 1% chance, and I don't want Ringil to drop for me on D:1 either. If luck goes against me, I want to have to burn up precious resources - like a soldier's life in X-COM, or a scroll of blinking in Crawl, or a 'life' in other games. Where I'm punished, but it's recoverable, and I know that my luck will average out over the course of the game. If I'm a poor player I prefer to be punished for it by watching with alarm at my rapidly dwindling resources, silently adding up the missteps I made where I wasted what I had, or where flawed tactics cost me greater rewards.

The alternative - instant death - is more tense, of course. Players are never safe. Even if they've played perfectly, never wasted any 'resources', not maneuvered themselves into a poor position, even a single misstep (or no misstep at all) can kill them. That kind of tension is certainly attractive, but I find the cost too high. Because when the moment comes when the roll goes against them, and they're left regretting their 'awful daring of a moment's surrender', I think they're going to be less inclined to pick up the game again if they can't say 'Well, I know where I fucked up'.

[CyclopsSlayer]

<mutter><mutter>
So, I was trashing mobs in the overworld with a new 7.0 char. A tough battle with two named at once gave me the Phial of Galadriel, and the Gloves, Cammithrin... Problem is, I'm a Ninja and abhor light... grrr, aargh...

[EpicMan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by debo View Post
Instant kills and randomized energy were emblematic of poscheng from the beginning and I would hate to see them go.

Out of interest, what is it about these that you like, if you can explain it?

To be fair, randomized energy predates Chris, it was first added way back in Hengband. Randomizing it does remove the binary can-or-can't-be-double-moved-by-the-SoC in favor of a more graduated "more is better" scale, which is where resistances, free action, etc have all been moving. This is more in line with CRPG-style scaling stats and less in line with Angband's binary attributes.

[Fnord]

Fwiw, I agree with Conker.

[chris]

Version 7.0.1 is up in the usual spot. This release is a minor update, mostly because I am about to go online to access all the expected complaints about the 7.0 stuff As with the last release, I'm not finished playtesting and still making considerable design changes. If this bothers you, wait for the 7.1 release which should happen sometime around Xmas ... I hope.

This release addressed a few 6.1 oook reports including:
[1] Problems with quests if monsters are summoned *after* the quest is completed. Fixed. Reports about the Vapor quest not working could not be reproduced. Is this still an issue? If you are on Linux (I think the OP was), try running in gdb and at least getting a backtrace (bt). Also, make sure you are running the correct executable. The build system builds into the src directory. Any executable at the root level was placed there by you, and therefore must be manually kept up to date by you. Also, on Linux at least, you can just run out of src (directories are set by configure).

[2] Minor complaints about message coloring ... weapons of sharpness.

[3] Request to look at mimic design ... I did, but haven't had a chance for playtesting. FYI, mimics are designed to be much weaker in mimicry than possessors. They can learn 5 forms, after all, and they are quite capable of success in their native form whereas the Possessor is hopeless without a current body. They should not be able to count on learning any specific form.

[4] Confusion about device design: In the old days, almost any player could get enough device skills to use (almost) any device. Skills were meaningless for mage types: You could probably do a Mighty Zombie Mage and not notice any decrease wrt devices. These days, *nobody* is above the device system... Well, perhaps a Devicemaster is, but then only in their speciality. And even in this case, race and personality choices matter, as does INT. Every player *might* find Magic Mastery useful.

Wrt devices themselves, the old system had each effect identical (and damage indexed to player level??!). The new system has variability in effectiveness, and I've gone ahead and taken a good hard look at this for 7.0.1. For example, Fire Balls start at around 65 damage, but can go all the way up to 370 damage! If you are in the habit of ignoring certain device types, you might want to rethink that approach. So while a Warrior can't use a wand of rockets, they might be able to snag some other device type that doesn't scale difficulty with power so aggressively. (Of course, warriors are *much* better off shooting.)

Check out the wizard commands ^A"3 and ^A"2 if you don't understand the current system and its design goals. And remember, devices should be considerably weaker than mage spells ... at least until the end game (where device skills really, really matter).

I've also continued to make minor gameplay adjustments, such as:
[1] FA helping with slowing effects from inertia as well as with recovery from being slowed.

[2] Random quest rewards are now 10 levels deeper than the current quest level, but there are fewer reward objects (You can get good stuff early).

[3] There is now more !Healing. _Healing is not required and never really was ... at least before the 6.0 monster additions. If you have it, of course, then it is very nice.

[4] Black Market now stocks object levels commensurate with player level. This is not realistic, of course, but is a nice balance change. For example, stocking OL50 for CL30 is a bit broken. On the other hand, the BM is no longer useless in the late game ... You can get OL70 and CL50.

[5] reduce_uniques no longer removes boss monsters or demigod parents.

[6] _Holiness removed. If you upgrade, it still works of course. You just can't find these any more.

[7] Nexus stat scramble replaced with something else. No spoilers, just play and see!

And remember, I still haven't seen any comments about 7.0. I'll adress those in the next release ...

[MITZE]

Reports about the Vapor quest not working could not be reproduced. Is this still an issue?

This seemed to happen because the edit files for Vapor Quest and a few others--Sandworms, Mountain Shrine, and I think one other I can't remember--were somehow not making it in with the rest of the edit files when compiling for Linux. The problem was manually fixed for the server, but I don't know if there's something that stopping those files from being included with Linux compilations.

[Gwarl]

MITZE means installation, rather than compilation. The makefiles needed to be updated at some point when quests were changed, but weren't.

[nikheizen]

[6] _Holiness removed. If you upgrade, it still works of course. You just can't find these any more.

For what purpose was this done.

EDIT:
Okay, I read the commit log and while I agree that _Holiness is too strong for its depth, I still really like it as a staff effect.
I propose you keep it in since it has a great thematic set of effects.
You still have much better effects on staves, such as Genocide, Destruction, Banish, and the Storms.

Regarding the damage: I don't think 100 LOS damage is actually very good at all in PosChengband. Sure, it literally disintegrates hordes of orcs and early hounds, but as soon as I get deep enough to find good stuff like _Holiness or _Dispel Foo, I am probably sitting in an ASC, wailing at one monster a time as much as possible or blink-scumming lone uniques- stuff like that. And once the chaff has more than 400 or so HP, I can't clear them without burning all/most of my charges (though it is very nice to have this utility on a healing item for when a summon roll fills a wide open space with harmless low U/u etc..

[krazyhades]

For what purpose was this done

Looking for and conserving healing and *healing* is the most fun part of the game so it was made longer

[Gwarl]

Oh, by the way, it would be fantastic if we could get those savefile headers with text descriptions of the character (Name, race, class, level, dungeon level, killed by) that V and FA have. Please.

[HugoVirtuoso]

For what purpose was this done

That's just another step in turning the game into IVAN as MITZE calls the path PosChengband has followed