Ascii Dreams poll

[PowerDiver]

In case you haven't realised yet, I disagree. The magic of Angband and variants is in the seriousness and the scale and the glorious enormity of it all. It's not a game that you pick up and play for a bit before moving on to the next shiny object; it's a game for devotees. It doesn't suit everyone - it's not even close to suiting everyone - but the people it does suit tend to fall deeply and lastingly in love with it.

What used to make angband great, to me, was replayability. Even after you won, the game kept getting better. 3.0 was a great game. I still play it. I can't play 3.3. It no longer has depth of gameplay. Every char gets too powerful too fast. Balance matters over everything else when the goal is replayability, but the recent development attitude is just to add the next shiny idea irrespective of balance.

[PowerDiver]

A better scoring system (as discussed earlier in this thread) would help a bit.

There is a fine scoring system, if you choose to embrace it. Minimize game turns.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

There is a fine scoring system, if you choose to embrace it. Minimize game turns.

That's an excellent point. Unfortunately I've never managed to actually win any *band, even my own. Minimizing game turns to the moment you die is kind of pointless.

But hey, I've won Larn! Multiple times, with increasing difficulty levels! And I always paid my taxes, too!

[Nick]

What used to make angband great, to me, was replayability. Even after you won, the game kept getting better. 3.0 was a great game. I still play it. I can't play 3.3. It no longer has depth of gameplay. Every char gets too powerful too fast. Balance matters over everything else when the goal is replayability, but the recent development attitude is just to add the next shiny idea irrespective of balance.

Eddie, if you haven't already, I think you should read this - I think any such process would really benefit from your input. I also think that you could make some interesting suggestions for v4. Contrarian voices are always valuable

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Tell me if I'm wrong, but looking at people's posts, many think Angband is great because it is (or used to be) competitive, a genuine challenge. And what's more, it get's better after you have won it at least once.

Surely a game for devotees!

Could there be a way to bring some of this same enjoyment to us players who are not good enough or patient enough to win?

For example, let's introduce a lower level boss on DL 30. You would have to prepare for the combat, collect consumables and missing resistances, etc. Exactly like with Morgoth, but on a smaller scale. The game would count game turns until you slay this first boss and reward you for a low turn count (with points at least). And then you could brag about your low turn count on the forums.

D&D 4e introduced "Tiers of Play": Heroic, Paragon, and Epic. What if Angband had similar "Tiers", with a boss fight at the end of every Tier?

First time players wouldn't even need to be told about the final mission (slay Morgoth) at fist. They would be given a mission to slay some evil king that serves an evil god, or some such. That would give them something to strive for. Morgoth is so far away at level 100 that for most players, he might as well not even exist.

What's more, every Tier of Play should be balanced just as well as the Morgoth quest is now. The Heroic Tier would be a good game in itself.

(Edit: If I'll ever introduce this system in my own variant, I might have different racial bonuses for each Tier. An Elf Hero, Elf Paragon, and Elf Demigod could have entirely different stats and special abilities.)

[andrewdoull]

I think the Angband critique in all episodes of Roguelike Radio can be mostly summed by three points: monsters, UI, and that having infinite dungeons is not good game design.

That third one is tough. Of course it can be solved easily enough in variants like Fay and Ironband, but I believe Vanilla will always have infinite dungeons. And many, many people really prefer choosing their own difficulty level.

One of the things that can be done is to design a scoring system that rewards risk-taking and actually reflects your playing ability. Sangband tried that. Would the Sangband scoring system be robust enough to be ported into Vanilla?

I don't believe infinite dungeons is an issue. As Ido points out, you can balance the game around either battles, between which you can effectively completely recover, or the complete dungeon, which requires a finite dungeon. Provided Angband is balanced around making sure each battle is challenging, I believe infinite dungeons is fine.

Of course, by that I mean Hengband infinite dungeons, not any other type...

[andrewdoull]

I love the elegancy of Ey-combat but it is too bare-bones and abstracted for Angband. It feels a like a system from a tactical console RPG. The fact that weapons get higher and higher damage dice and more and more exotic sounding names as you go deeper in the dungeons is PURE FUN but it isn't realistic.

I tweaked the Unangband weapons to go a little more in this direction without being over the top, and it seemed to work. See http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.c...apons-for.html for details.

[fizzix]

I did something better. Also see variants which don't add that many monsters.

Might be much to ask so many years down the road. But do you happen to have either a diff between your tweaked monsters and the list from 3.0.7, or even the 3.0.7 monster list itself would be useful. (I can't seem to download it from rephial).

[myshkin]

Might be much to ask so many years down the road. But do you happen to have either a diff between your tweaked monsters and the list from 3.0.7, or even the 3.0.7 monster list itself would be useful. (I can't seem to download it from rephial).

If I were more on the ball, I would point you to a github tag. Until that work is complete, though, you can see http://rephial.org/downloads/3.0/ang....0.7s3.tar.bz2

[Mikko Lehtinen]

D&D 4e introduced "Tiers of Play": Heroic, Paragon, and Epic. What if Angband had similar "Tiers", with a boss fight at the end of every Tier?

When Angband doubled the dungeons levels from 50 to 100, it might have lost some very important structure, too. Now there's an effort to rebalance the monsters for 100 levels; perhaps it should be accompanied by adding end bosses, too.

Levels 33, 66, 99, and 100 seem intuitive to me.

Oangband is the closest to my ideal Angband: serious, tough, epic. Perhaps I should try this idea there, and tie learning specialties to killing end bosses... Who should the end bosses be?

[myshkin]

When Angband doubled the dungeons levels from 50 to 100, it might have lost some very important structure, too. Now there's an effort to rebalance the monsters for 100 levels; perhaps it should be accompanied by adding end bosses, too.

Levels 33, 66, 99, and 100 seem intuitive to me.

Oangband is the closest to my ideal Angband: serious, tough, epic. Perhaps I should try this idea there, and tie learning specialties to killing end bosses... Who should the end bosses be?

If we sort the V list of uniques by level and divide in thirds, the likely candidates are

• 33: Mim; Lokkak; perhaps Bert, Bill, and Tom together; Lorgan; Kavlax if we want to be mean
• 66: The Balrog of Moria; Shelob; Saruman; The Mouth of Sauron; Thuringwethil; Glaurung

Saruman seems like the clear winner to me for the second third. None of the first third candidates is particularly thematic. Uvatha lurks a little deeper, and I could certainly see the first ringwraith as a decent first boss.

[Derakon]

My main concern with minibosses is that they force the player to stop and power up enough to deal with them. My preferred style of play involves diving much deeper than I "should" be and then very carefully choosing my fights, which doesn't mesh well with being forced to stop and kill a specific powerful-for-his-depth enemy.

We had discussions of good ways to implement minibosses in other threads, though. Specifically this one, with my personal opinion.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I like both myshkin's and Derakon's ideas.

[Magnate]

If I were more on the ball, I would point you to a github tag. Until that work is complete, though, you can see http://rephial.org/downloads/3.0/ang....0.7s3.tar.bz2

And I kept the diff for precisely this purpose, if you want it.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I don't believe infinite dungeons is an issue. As Ido points out, you can balance the game around either battles, between which you can effectively completely recover, or the complete dungeon, which requires a finite dungeon. Provided Angband is balanced around making sure each battle is challenging, I believe infinite dungeons is fine.

Of course, by that I mean Hengband infinite dungeons, not any other type...

I had to google that:

The biggest change is addition of the 'Saved Floors' which is added only on the Hengband 1.5.0. You can climb back stairs to get back former floors, but different stairs will always take you to (infinite) different floors. More over when you get back to the surface using stairs, Word of Recall, or some other way, all saved floors will be cleared and you can explore entirely new infinite number of floors. Artifacts and unique monsters will appear freely on any new floors, and if old ones are already in saved floors, they will disapper from saved floors(they had moved to new floor). Random quest level is 'only-once' and stairs will be blocked from the inside once the player exited the quest level. Level-teleport, trap door, and stair creation take you to the floor right above or right under the former floor which is connected with one of the stairs in the former floor; so you can get back to pick up the long sword (4d5) even *after* you have fallen from trap door.

Interesting!