There are Too Many Rings

[bcadren]

I'm putting this in CYC instead of GDD because it's both half-baked ideas and because...it's a counterpoint to something I already posted there (randomize rings of power); debating/looking at all angles instead of sticking to the original opinion.

Anyways; what if we combined a lot of the weaker ring egos into something more complicated and interesting; but less random (and the previous random rings were removed) All of these are basically brainstorm ideas:

• Ring of Barbarism (STR+6, Slay+3)
• Ring of Thaumaturgy (INT+6, MP+9)
• Ring of Nimbleness (DEX+6, EV+3)
• Ring of Defense (AC+3, EV+3, SH+3)
• Ring of Secrecy (Stealth+, +Inv)
• Ring of Augmentation (STR+6, INT+6, DEX+6)

Additionally the aux armour egos would be boosted:

• Gloves of Robustness (STR+6, AC+3)
• Gloves of Nimbleness (DEX+6, EV+3)
• Hat of Thaumaturgy (Wizardry, INT+6)

And all the following removed:

• Ring of Slaying
• Ring of Wizardry
• Ring of Magical Power
• Ring of Strength
• Ring of Intelligence
• Ring of Dexterity
• Ring of Protection
• Ring of Evasion
• Ring of Stealth
• Ring of Invisibility
• Gloves of Strength
• Gloves of Dexterity
• Hat of Intelligence

[Siegurt]

I think there's a place for lower power rings, that aren't very interesting late, but have some sort of meaningful interaction early. In the same way that i feel like there's a place for weaker and stronger weapons.

The rings you suggest are all too strong for the early game, in the name of being significant later, so either you get nothing for a very very long time, or you get an item that's overpowered too early. That might work if we wanted there to be a only a few, very powerful artifact magic-type items, but I personally would like that a whole lot less, I'm happier playing my game where i get periodic small upgrades than when i have nothing for a very very very long time and then finally get an item that's just amazing.

[mps]

The way rings are sprayed all over the dungeon with little sensitivity to dungeon level or value of the rings leads to soupthink e.g. the above criticism that such and such is too strong for the early game, the premise of which is that you'll often see such and such an item in the early game, ignoring that this bizarre type of item generation is essentially unique to crawl. Amazingly, that criticism is followed up by an implicit defense of the ridiculous ring of str -5 or -4 or -3 or -2 or -1 or +1 or +2 or +3 or +4 or +5 or +6 (pick them all up to find out which you found, collect 'em all!).

At some point you have to recognize that the entire concept of a ring parametrized by a numerical value like this is a product of two garbage mechanics: Identification and curses. It is optimal but fundamentally ridiculous to check whether the dex ring you found on the floor is better than your +5 one you're wearing when a) the difference made by one point of dex is marginal (forget about other less useful stats), b) you actually have to press a lot of buttons to check, and c) the odds that the mystery ring is better are fairly low. In a soup-free crawl, you would not need to pick up a ring to know what it is, you would not have to deal with the possibility that it's cursed, and the game wouldn't pretend the difference between +5 and +6 to whatever stat is worth thinking about.

[bcadren]

At some point you have to recognize that the entire concept of a ring parametrized by a numerical value like this is a product of two garbage mechanics: Identification and curses. It is optimal but fundamentally ridiculous to check whether the dex ring you found on the floor is better than your +5 one you're wearing when a) the difference made by one point of dex is marginal (forget about other less useful stats), b) you actually have to press a lot of buttons to check, and c) the odds that the mystery ring is better are fairly low. In a soup-free crawl, you would not need to pick up a ring to know what it is, you would not have to deal with the possibility that it's cursed, and the game wouldn't pretend the difference between +5 and +6 to whatever stat is worth thinking about.

yea, that pretty much...I'd say INT is the one most likley to make a huge difference (to spellcasters anyways). I can't see myself wearing +DEX (+EV is generally better) and +STR would only be used if I can't otherwise use my armour well.

EDIT:
Additionally I honestly don't know if the difference between a +3 weapon and a +4 weapon is enough to worry about...or a +5 ring of slaying and a +6 one. The only one that's really obvious is +AC rings on an Op or Fe...since a ring of +6 AC is like Defense x 3 for a felid.

[daggaz]

Agree that small rings have their place in the early game, but also think some of these mixups would be interesting/useful assuming they are weighted properly for depth of appearance. Overall, I think just overhauling the loading chances would fix the problem far more than removing a bunch of items. There should still be some randomization there, small but real chances for finding a lucky early item, etc.. But definitely you shouldnt be running across so many +2 Dex rings in Pan. I mean, come on...

One thing that I am getting tired of is cursed items (rings) with a crappy malus. Great. You put on a ring of -4 INT, and now it's stuck. While this can lead to interesting survival situations in the early game (I like when the game is hard), most of the time its just a) time to read an otherwise pointless scroll of plugging your inventory I mean remove curse or b) a reason not to wear that jewelry until you have one of said scrolls. This also means you have that much less chance of finding the specific item with the proper bonus (I assume the game rolls for ring type first, and then for curse/notcursed, and then applies the bonus/malus). I absolutely f-ing HATE finding cursed rings of slaying, for example. They are rare enough as it is.

It would be more interesting to see more contamination items that give you an actual choice. Put this on (its got some pretty good bonuses) and hope you can deal with glow when you want to switch it later, or leave it for a lesser item/nothing? Contamination-like mechanisms (I guess there is *corrode now in trunk? but that seems suicidal) are interesting. Even just making a tier system inside of artefact items would be useful, so purely good artefacts would be more rare (especially at low depth), whereas artefacts of mixed goodness/badness would load a bit more often also at early D. (Nice +Int +MP +regen ring but its got two pips of -rF, hmmm...)

Sorry if thats too tangential, dont mean to hijack the thread.

[Siegurt]

Well, the presumption that if we removed the cursed slaying rings, you would have more positively Enchanted ones is predicated on an unlikely belief; I assume that the intent is for us to get exactly as many good slaying rings as we do, and the bad ones are there to force the player to exercise some caution.

If you eliminated the bad rings I presume that the overall ring generation would drop so you would see the same number of good slaying rings as you do now.

I think that it would be nice to simplify the +/- ring generation value into fewer individual values would be nice, say 4, and 8 for stats, 3 and 6 for ac/ev/slay would be nice, (maybe make 3 levels instead and call them +, ++, +++/-,--,--- to go with resistances or something) that would still allow for some low power rings to exist, alongside some higher power ones, but with less gradients

[KoboldLord]

I think there's a place for lower power rings, that aren't very interesting late, but have some sort of meaningful interaction early. In the same way that i feel like there's a place for weaker and stronger weapons.

The rings you suggest are all too strong for the early game, in the name of being significant later, so either you get nothing for a very very long time, or you get an item that's overpowered too early. That might work if we wanted there to be a only a few, very powerful artifact magic-type items, but I personally would like that a whole lot less, I'm happier playing my game where i get periodic small upgrades than when i have nothing for a very very very long time and then finally get an item that's just amazing.

That's not how item generation works, though. Item generation is happy to drop the Ring of Robustness or Shaolin before Temple while also scattering a couple dozen +1 and +2 rings throughout the game where no character would ever consider using them.

I don't think generated items need to have a stupendous effect to be worth generating, but I do think they should generate at least a noticeable effect. Many of the lower value rings fail this test.

[starhawk]

I
I don't think generated items need to have a stupendous effect to be worth generating, but I do think they should generate at least a noticeable effect. Many of the lower value rings fail this test.

Agreed - rings of evasion/protection/slaying/stat that are only +1 are sooooo boring.

[Sar]

soupthink

I like how you casually dismiss the part of Crawl that most people who play Crawl actually play it for as superficial bloat. Wait, no, I don't. Because I am pretty sure that people who play Crawl because they enjoy the deep tactical positioning game of "get in the corridor, hold ctrl+Tab" and are thrilled by the prospect of playing a FooBe a couple of hundred of times until they beat the species highscore and get temporarily immortalized on the global highscores page are in the minority. Most people I know play Crawl because it has over 20 of races and they are wildly different, because it has a god of cards and a god of orcs, which change the game significantly, because it has a ton of spells, some of which are clearly suboptimal but fun to cast, because it has a couple of hundreds of different monsters, uniques, items. Because it's, you know, soup, not because of the stone foundation of choosing when to move and when to attack. And yeah, getting a stupidly powerful item early makes for memorable games, even though it's clearly unfair to the speedrunning elite.

Tl;dr:

Spoiler: show

[archaeo]

rip soup meme, 2015-2015

[mps]

soupthink

I like how you casually dismiss the part of Crawl that most people who play Crawl actually play it for as superficial bloat. Wait, no, I don't. Because I am pretty sure that people who play Crawl because they enjoy the deep tactical positioning game of "get in the corridor, hold ctrl+Tab" and are thrilled by the prospect of playing a FooBe a couple of hundred of times until they beat the species highscore and get temporarily immortalized on the global highscores page are in the minority. Most people I know play Crawl because it has over 20 of races and they are wildly different, because it has a god of cards and a god of orcs, which change the game significantly, because it has a ton of spells, some of which are clearly suboptimal but fun to cast, because it has a couple of hundreds of different monsters, uniques, items. Because it's, you know, soup, not because of the stone foundation of choosing when to move and when to attack. And yeah, getting a stupidly powerful item early makes for memorable games, even though it's clearly unfair to the speedrunning elite.

Tl;dr:

Spoiler: show

Suboptimal but fun is the flip-side of optimal but tedious. If you have a good, balanced mechanic, it should be as good an option as whatever's taking the high scores. Or at least, it shouldn't be obviously worse.

If most people you know think crawl has 20 wildly different races, that's great. I don't begrudge people their fun. But, if you want to talk about what items or species or gods or whatever should be added to or removed from the game, you can't think that way and make progress. You can't think that anytime a challenge is made to some of the assumptions of item generation, the response is "but crawl is so fun!"

[Sar]

Suboptimal but fun is the flip-side of optimal but tedious

No it's not, a game can have multiple fun ways of playing it with one of them being optimal. Hell, if a game has multiple different ways of playing it, one of them will inevitably be optimal. I'm not one of those people who think balance is completely irrelevant in a single player game, but it's an obviously unattainable goal. As long as both ways of playing the game feel differently enough and good enough, it's all right. It's when nobody enjoys one way of playing the game, we have a problem.

if you want to talk about what items or species or gods or whatever should be added to or removed from the game, you can't think that way and make progress

Clearly "Do speedrunners use that?" is a much better metric!

[mps]

Well, as far as I can tell, you have no metric, outside of a sort of kitschy thing where you claim for your side of the argument all the wild-and-woolly fun stuff when it's fun while pretending the shit doesn't exist.

[Sar]

Yes, I am guilty of actually considering Crawl to be a somewhat good game (not perfect, mind you) and not a steaming pile of shit with online highscore pages being its only saving grace.

[mps]

SOUNDS LIKE WE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER THEN!

[duvessa]

soupthink

I like how you casually dismiss the part of Crawl that most people who play Crawl actually play it for as superficial bloat. Wait, no, I don't. Because I am pretty sure that people who play Crawl because they enjoy the deep tactical positioning game of "get in the corridor, hold ctrl+Tab" and are thrilled by the prospect of playing a FooBe a couple of hundred of times until they beat the species highscore and get temporarily immortalized on the global highscores page are in the minority. Most people I know play Crawl because it has over 20 of races and they are wildly different, because it has a god of cards and a god of orcs, which change the game significantly, because it has a ton of spells, some of which are clearly suboptimal but fun to cast, because it has a couple of hundreds of different monsters, uniques, items. Because it's, you know, soup, not because of the stone foundation of choosing when to move and when to attack. And yeah, getting a stupidly powerful item early makes for memorable games, even though it's clearly unfair to the speedrunning elite.

Tl;dr:

Spoiler: show

that really rumbled my johnnies