[Announce] Poschengband 7.0.2 released

[Antoine]

Do we have some means of communicating with Chris, is he on email or ...?

[HugoVirtuoso]

Do we have some means of communicating with Chris, is he on email or ...?

Chris doesn't use email. To reach him, you'll just have to send PM.

[poschengbandplayer]

Hello.


Despite my last post in the former thread, I have to say that I do like the design Philosophy and the general direction Chris is taking the game.
If I understand correctly, his goal is to utilize and equalize all game mechanics so that everything is useful and crucial in its own way.

Of course I still hold to the opinion that the game as it is now is way too unforgiving. A very un-elegant solution would be to implement a crude one-hit-kill protection so that no matter how often you get hurt in one turn, you will be always left with 1 hp or somesuch, which needs XXX turns to recharge.

while i respect the personal vision of the variant maintainer, i think it would be a huge boon for "casual" players like me who enjoy the loot&hacknslash aspect of the game, if somebody could create a fork that manages to both make all stats and abilities useful and not one trick wonders, and also remove the "turn randomness" and make the game thus more strategic. In my humble opinion, monsters should always use the most destructive spell/ability, have no random energy and summon should be extremely nerfed and static. what i mean is, a certain monster always summons the same creature. and summons should dissipate once the original summoner has passed away. These changes will make the game predictable and thus strategic. Players will be rewarded for their foresight and planning, instead of stumbling blind into every situation. The amount of randomness that we have now would be fun if this was a game without permament death but yada yada. Make it happen you guys ;o




Anyway, thanks for the work chris <3 It truly is appreciated.

[wobbly]

Just a note there is some kind of display bug for weaponsmiths adding slaying to items. The (+,+) it shows you adding & the (+,+) you actually get are different. Never worked out what is happening.

Anyways won 7.0.0 & will have a try at 7.0.2 when I feel less drained. Hope you continue the good work on the variant despite the dramas.

Edit: & I also miss blue mages. Would be nice to get them back sometime

[HugoVirtuoso]

Edit: & I also miss blue mages. Would be nice to get them back sometime

What wobbly said about Blue-Mages

[Avenger]

Just stopping in to add my two cents.

I am one of the more casual PosChengband players that isn't really a fan of many of the changes in the later versions of the game. I enjoy the vastly wider array of race/class combinations that poschengband and predecessors had, and often played for roleplaying purposes - that is, I thought a specific race class combination sounded interesting, and wanted to play as that, rather then approaching from a strategic perspective and choosing race and class based on that.

Needless to say, I never got anywhere with even the easier versions of poschengband(and predecessors) - maxed out at maybe level 35, and that was a *really* good game, before dying to something.

I don't have the time or mental focus to spend long enough on a game like this to learn to play it well enough to have a legitimate chance of winning - I just wanted to play for the enjoyment of it, and unfortunately, the direction Chris has taken it has sort of reduced my interest in it.

All that said, he's the maintainer. You want a game that plays the way you want, write it yourself, don't complain about the existing game. And perhaps that's why there are so many forks out there(I assume this is some kind of micro-variant? new concept to me, but I've been away from Angbandish games for awhile), but I think Chris's desire for those making and playing these forks to unmistakeably identify the fact that they aren't his game is entirely reasonable.

I also don't really understand the need for vitriol of any kind... it's a game. Play it, or don't. But don't lose your s**t over it. I would like to think that this community ought to be better then much of the rest of the internet in that regard.

Chris, keep doing what you're doing. Your design philosophy is solid, and while it doesn't really cater to someone like me, I can still appreciate and respect it. I've been a long time player and fan of Poschengband, and while it no longer really does for me what it used to, it's still an excellent game, and I'll continue to follow its development, if it a distance.

All the best,
-Avenger

[Bostock]

Regarding the removal of the clouded quests, having played around with the new situation (new for me, as I started with 6.1), I'd say it was deleterious. The new-for-me Vapor Quest isn't harder than the clouded variant, but it's more tedious, and that's not good. Haunted house... OK here I'll admit I'm judging from other player's reports. It seems to be harder, which isn't bad in itself, except that it means it's best to delay the quest until the reward is worthless, which is kind of unfun.

As much as I hate jumping on the criticism bandwagon, I feel like these changes were not actually guided by game design considerations, as would be best for game design decisions.

[Exo]

Can't say I see the point in alienating part of the people that play your game.

Something general about the recent changes:
The changes to Free Action and See Invisible hit Death Swords a lot harder than any other class. This might need some balancing instead of having to avoid enemies that are invisible or have paralyze/disenchant attacks for a majority of the game.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Here's something I've asked for ages (seen in 7.0.2 and older versions):

Apparently, players can use the '<' (instead of the intended '>') command to swap from the wilderness World Map to the Normal Map (applies to PCB on webserver and offline). This means '<' can serve as dual-purpose to swap between map modes.

Anyone know if this was intended / feature or a bug?

FYI, we know the in-game manual says to use '>' (i.e. the intended key). Players might use '<' accidentally anyway during gameplay (i.e. fat-finger, etc). Of note, there is no difference in turncount either way, unless a wilderness encounter occurs. When a wilderness encounter happens, very small additional turncounts are taken. But otherwise, they're the same! I brought this up earlier because I thought using '<' resulted in lower turncount than '>'. But, I proved to myself that this isn't the case. I can prove they're the same again on angband.live, if anyone requests!

[krazyhades]

Anyone know if this was intended / feature or a bug?

It is a doesn't matter because it doesn't mess with anything so who cares.

[Brouhaha]

Can't say I see the point in alienating part of the people that play your game.

Something general about the recent changes:
The changes to Free Action and See Invisible hit Death Swords a lot harder than any other class. This might need some balancing instead of having to avoid enemies that are invisible or have paralyze/disenchant attacks for a majority of the game.

I've already sent Chris a PM about this. I honestly thing he might have just overlooked the Deathswords when he made that change. One question about them though; are they supposed to be able to gain Mana Brand or the Blessed abilities? Those essences haven't dropped from the appropriate sources.

[krazyhades]

One question about (Deathswords) though; are they supposed to be able to gain Mana Brand or the Blessed abilities? Those essences haven't dropped from the appropriate sources.

Mana brand requires a mana pool to work and deathswords have no mana. Blessed only matters for certain types of priests. So in both cases no they're not intended-but-missing for deathswords.

[HugoVirtuoso]

It is a doesn't matter because it doesn't mess with anything so who cares.

Chris cares for sure. I figured mentioning no-difference is proven will prevent problems with Chris later.

[wobbly]

Did potions of clarity get removed from the alchemist shop? (I'm yet to see 1 for sale) This seems harsh on the priest which was already slow to get rolling even with them. It's not like warriors don't get access to 4 towns worth of !ccw & had the faster game to begin with.

Edit:Found some in store, they are just rarer

[CyclopsSlayer]

Now that you mention it... I see plenty in deep, but not in town. Hmm...

edit: WTF! I was carrying three wanted corpses. Grendel, Rich and Poor the thief, then a bunch of tough fights later in the Icky Caves I noticed all three corpses were gone! Are they vulnerable to Fire/Acid or theft?