[Announce] PosChengband 7.0.0 Released

[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'.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[Fnord]

So the key for auto travel is not present on my keyboard. I want to rebind it through @8. What do I enter for the action/code?

[Fnord]

Why would a staff of simplicity have exactly the same fail rate as a normal staff of the same type (with more max charges)?

[debo]

The game as it is now, is unreasonably hard and encourages some playing styles over the others. I feel that insta kills, randomized energy, summoning and unresistable dispells made the game hard as is. In the last versions, monster damage has had been effectively doubled (the resistance nerf), my favourite artifact penalized with - 60% total health (crown of beruthiel), and now these recent changes..

If by 'resistance nerf' you're talking about how higher resists work now, then I believe that this is false -- breath damage was also reduced across the board so that it was less likely to do huge enough damage to kill.

Beruthiel is just one artefact, and if you really want you can just edit it back. It's not like there's some huge competitive spirit in poscheng.

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

I do think the recent changes have missed the boat a bit, though. Poscheng was always attractive to me because it was basically the spinal tap of angband variants -- all dials turned to 11. It was nice to have Sil, which was lean and mean, balanced on the other extreme with poscheng, which was huge and mean. Now it seems we're starting to get finnickier about how people play the game, which is sad.

I'm still optimistic, though. At worst, someone will fork from v5 or v6 and take it further in the super batshit crazy direction.

[debo]

I think it's more of an attempt to encourage you to fight at range. Unfortunately, ranged combat is boring af in pretty much every angband variant.

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.

I also think maybe people are missing the fact that poscheng 7 has a giant 'beta' tag next to it in the version number.

[CyclopsSlayer]

I'm afraid this is part of the new Free Action mechanic. ^What just happened with two layers of Free Action, is working as designed, per Chris. You're going to have to tolerate deaths in order to play PosChengband nowadays.

This just seems to me to be actively trying to drive people away. Now, no matter how carefully you guard your self, one string of bad RNG rolls and Poof!

This may be what Chris wants, but to me, it has become more like convincing people to go to the gym, then when they exercise, you randomly Tase them so they fall face first into the treadmill, or drop that barbell onto their chest.

[HugoVirtuoso]

My last character died due to paralysis, even though he had 2 lots of free action
I won't be playing Poschengband again unless this is fixed

I'm afraid this is part of the new Free Action mechanic. ^What just happened with two layers of Free Action, is working as designed, per Chris. You're going to have to tolerate deaths in order to play PosChengband nowadays.

[murphy]

For vortex monster, the description of the "elemental explosion" power is broken.

[poschengbandplayer]

I hate to be salty but I have to say this; I really don't like the course this variant has taken. Which is a shame, because, as it is seen from my username, it was my most favourite rogue-like.

The game as it is now, is unreasonably hard and encourages some playing styles over the others. I feel that insta kills, randomized energy, summoning and unresistable dispells made the game hard as is. In the last versions, monster damage has had been effectively doubled (the resistance nerf), my favourite artifact penalized with - 60% total health (crown of beruthiel), and now these recent changes.. Its really not a game for me anymore.

(plus, the removal of the clear -more prompt- option, nerfing of devices, nerfing of ring and amulet detection etc)

Of course chris, the variant maintainer, has the right to do with his variant as he pleases but if he wonders about the opinion of his audience; this is mine, and i am sure i am not the only one who thinks so.


I would stick to older versions but it'd feel like cheating. Im glad I could experience this variant in its alpha/beta stages when it wasn't so unreasonably punishing.


cheers.

[Cold_Heart]

I saw monster spells mentioned in changes list and got excited, but it looks like unresistable (except for one mutation and level 50 psion skill) dispel is still a thing.

Any plans on changing this?

[CyclopsSlayer]

Found the problem. I was assuming I could use the "Your character's name" field when uploading to override the actual character name. That doesn't seem to work, so it failed because I already got a higher level char with that name.

I guess there's no way to rename an existing character ingame?

In Outpost, check the building with the Thieves/Warg quests.