[Announce] PosChengband 7.0.0 Released

[Antoine]

> My point was: How can you say that without having played it?

I read the forum, ladder dumps, changelogs etc. There's not much point in me trying to play it as I am lousy at Angband. Anyway I don't have time

A.

[Bostock]

Since we're all opening up, I'll mentioned my own pet peeve here. It's turn loss for actions that are clearly disallowed. This seems to be the intended behavior, which bothers me. This is most visible (and probably most controversial, i.e. I'll probably find the most disagreement) for actions incompatible with the Nervous/Scared statuses, but it shows up in other situations as well.

There's a term I heard once in discussions in the roguelike community (probably back in the newsgroup days... if any remaining newsgroup users will forgive my use of the past tense): "false difficulty." You're not fighting the challenge set up by the game rules, but rather fighting the interface instead - e.g. fighting not to ever overlook status text on the right/top (scared/nervous) while your eyes are mainly focused on the viewport.

I would rather stick to strictly fighting the challenges set up by the game rules.

[AnonymousHero]

> My point was: How can you say that without having played it?

I read the forum, ladder dumps, changelogs etc. There's not much point in me trying to play it as I am lousy at Angband. Anyway I don't have time

Theorycrafting. Got it. Please stop posting as if you have any idea how it plays, please. I mean, honestly, WTF?

[Antoine]

Theorycrafting. Got it. Please stop posting as if you have any idea how it plays, please. I mean, honestly, WTF?

I think you're confusing me with someone else. I haven't been posting on poscheng design issues.

Also, chill, dude.

A.

[AnonymousHero]

I think you're confusing me with someone else. I haven't been posting on poscheng design issues.

Also, chill, dude.

A.

I'd say calling variant X "the best variant" would be "posting on [poscheng] design issues", but what do I know....

Anyway, waaaaaay chill, dude. Hope you are too .

(I can see that my post was a bit over the top, tone-wise. I apologize for the tone, but not the content )

[Antoine]

I'd say calling variant X "the best variant" would be "posting on [poscheng] design issues", but what do I know....

Anyway, waaaaaay chill, dude. Hope you are too .

(I can see that my post was a bit over the top, tone-wise. I apologize for the tone, but not the content )

I always like reading your chardumps by the way. Props

[EpicMan]

I am a fan of Poschengband, because it has so many play options that are so different. I have never played a possessor (or a tonberry for that matter) yet, but I have played Balrogs, Rings, a pitiful attempt to play with a Runesword, and had many hours of fun, and look to have many more.

That said, I also greatly dislike much of the Angband ID system and always play with easy_id. Nowadays I also usually code average weapons & armor to fully ID when pseudoed, as I the player know the pluses. I do this in every Angband variant I play, not just PosChengband.

I also play with easy_lore, because again I the player can easily look up the monster's abilities, even those implemented in the code, but the formatting of monster memory in Poschengband (colors and all) is really nice and I prefer to look them up that way.

I don't mind these being options as you and probably many others like lots of unknowns in their roguelikes. But I do ask that they not be removed as I find PosChengband much more fun with them.

[GenericPseudonym]

Since we're all opening up, I'll mentioned my own pet peeve here. It's turn loss for actions that are clearly disallowed. This seems to be the intended behavior, which bothers me. This is most visible (and probably most controversial, i.e. I'll probably find the most disagreement) for actions incompatible with the Nervous/Scared statuses, but it shows up in other situations as well.

The game doesn't really do this too much, except I think for zapping empty devices.

When you are nervous or scared you simply have a CHANCE to fail certain actions, including melee and device-zapping. Every time you attempt to do so, you make a saving throw based on your charisma and fear resistance vs your current fear counter -- if you succeed, you perform the action, otherwise "you are too scared!".

It might help to have an option to prompt the player in situations like this, though: "Really attempt to push through your fear and zap the staff of healing?" might make a player aware of the danger and lead him to drink a potion instead of gambling with fear.

[Bostock]

The game doesn't really do this too much, except I think for zapping empty devices.

You'd be surprised. It also does it with attempting to 'g'et from an empty floor. Probably not the only example.

And yes, a prompt (which could be disabled, though I never would) for taking uncertain actions when scared would be ideal in my book.

[Fnord]

Just my two cents why I play PCB:

I started with Angband... I think probably well over 20 years ago. I discovered Zangband and liked the increased variety. But what I also liked was things being hard - unless you got lucky finds, and suddenly, you could feel undefeatable. Then you dived, until things got hard, and then you found stuff, and suddenly you had the upper hand again.

Posch seemed to increase this principle with a lot more variety - in classes/races, in items, correspondingly harder monsters and more.

That's the principle I love, if I think about it.

What I never really liked was the ID game. I never liked "you've got the best realistic kit, yet given the right circumstances, you still die". I never liked obscure mechanics - the more numbers and details are displayed to me, the better. I can make more educated choices that way. The game(s) is hard enough. Seriously. One example of why this is annoying is that it's totally intransparent what resists/properties help against what damage type and their special effects.

You, Chris, seem to think that one can just explore and slowly learn about this, but when the price is death after having played a character for 20 (or 50 or more) hours, that feels like a lesson far too hardly learned.

Right now, v7 is turning me off mostly due to summoning. I'm playing at depth 98 right now - my char feels almost ready for the endgame. But even mere Byakhees can and do summon there. Suddently it's a Great unclean one, and then suddenly there's 3 unique Us.

Also, additions like the Star Blades (which I think are relatively new - they weren't there when I last played a couple years ago) - why? They just mean "leave the level", really. They summon, they follow across the level and eat walls. What's the point other than being annoying and to be avoided? That's not fun.

You might be trying to "balance" things - but for me, *band in its perfect form has never been about balance. It has been about "Foo is impossible" -and if you're new you marvel at that - until you gain Foobar, then it's easy, and then you encounter impossible Barfoo, and then you gain some other thing (an item, a spell, a property, a resistance - whatever!), and suddenly you can take revenge.

Since you commented on those:
Monster lore is no fun for me. Again - once I invested dozens of hours into a char, I don't want him to die simply to get new info for monster lore. That's just too much for me. Especially when I - in theory - know 90% of the monsters inside out, given how long I've played, but don't want to memorize in detail whether Foo or Bar was resistant to telportation.

Alignment - heck, I can't even comment on it since I turned it off as soon as I learned about it. I think the concept is too ambitious for a game of this type to ever work reasonably. As others have commented, it just leads to annoying obscurity, exploits, spam and other annoyances.

For now, while I really thank you for your work, I mostly consider playing my next char in one of the forks before 7.

One last bit: As much as I'd hate to have it nerfed, Stun still is powerful. So much that a staff of Confusing lights feels obligatory.

I completely understand that it's your choice where to go with your variant. But if you are happy about its popularity and want to keep that alive - please reconsider some of your choices and intents.

[Fnord]

And for the case that you or some potential forker cares: The perfect direction for *me* for the game to take would be to improve on transparency. Probably drop alignment entirely. Make it absolutely clear what a point of wis does against spells or how weapons compare damage-wise, what resistances have what detailed effect on the various damage type special effects, what all the classes and class powers do in detail, how the various scaling systems (such as the new devices) work and so on.

I should be able, in my humble opinion, to see all this ingame at a fingerpress or two.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Suggestion for PCB's nightmare mode's midnight effect (SPOILER):

We all know how nightmare mode is supposed to work right? In PCB 7.0.0's Nightmare mode - World Map travel has some kind of protection against the midnight effect. During a recent nightmare-mode, midnight struck while I was in World Map mode and then all I got was the dungeon trembles. The game should be summoning Cyberdemons at this point, but in my experience the game doesn't and never did. So, I think the midnight-effect needs to be *WAY* more punishing for PCB Nightmare-mode players.

In PCB 7.0.0's Nightmare mode, corpses are supposed to revived into live monsters...but, I don't see this at all! This surely would have happened in the original Z's nightmare mode, but in PCB 7.0.0...not happening to my surprise!

[HugoVirtuoso]

Another 7.0.0 bug:
Cyclops characters now have Probe Monster and not Throw Boulders anymore! (I might be wrong) ....Uh, apparently, I noticed the same thing with Zombies too. I've been playing Snipers lately...So, is the Probe Monsters ability part of being a Sniper? Sorry if I didn't know this earlier, I'm merely getting used to how Snipers work.

[jupiter999]

I found one bug (I guess): it seems I can't wear / wield items that stay in Inventory's second page
Any advice on this?

[GenericPseudonym]

Another 7.0.0 bug:
Cyclops characters now have Probe Monster and not Throw Boulders anymore! (I might be wrong) ....Uh, apparently, I noticed the same thing with Zombies too. I've been playing Snipers lately...So, is the Probe Monsters ability part of being a Sniper? Sorry if I didn't know this earlier, I'm merely getting used to how Snipers work.

Snipers get Probe as a class power, yeah. If you don't use spoilers or easy-lore it's probably pretty handy for figuring out monsters' elemental weaknesses and getting the most out of your element-branded sniper powers.