compensating removals

[ololoev]

Remove various wands
Cold, fire, frost, magic darts, and invisibility.
The primary reasoning here is that, as we've added new evocables and other items, we haven't made any compensating removals;

Now u see this? No more whining about weight removal, item destruction removal, hammers removal etc etc. All those were compensating removals!
Btw I like recent changes trunk!

[Sprucery]

I assume that the frequency of wands being generated in a game didn't change? So we get more other wand types now. A good change imo.

[ydeve]

But, but, Crazy Yuif needs hammers!
FR: rename maces to hammers.

[prozacelf]

As far as I can tell, all the removed wands have been replaced by fireball in terms of frequency on the ground.

But hey, I wanted a louder solution that does less damage for my problems =p

[CanOfWorms]

I imagine wand of fireball is pretty good against killer bees and blink frogs.

[WalrusKing]

As far as I can tell, all the removed wands have been replaced by fireball in terms of frequency on the ground.

But hey, I wanted a louder solution that does less damage for my problems =p

Actually, this isn't accurate, I don't think. Lightning and Draining should be far more common on average

  Code:

static int _random_wand_subtype()
 {
     // total weight 80 [historical]
-    return random_choose_weighted(5, WAND_FLAME,
-                                  5, WAND_FROST,
-                                  5, WAND_SLOWING,
-                                  5, WAND_MAGIC_DARTS,
-                                  5, WAND_PARALYSIS,
-                                  5, WAND_FIRE,
-                                  5, WAND_COLD,
-                                  5, WAND_CONFUSION,
-                                  5, WAND_DIGGING,
-                                  5, WAND_LIGHTNING,
-                                  5, WAND_POLYMORPH,
-                                  5, WAND_DRAINING,
-                                  5, WAND_RANDOM_EFFECTS,
+    return random_choose_weighted(10, WAND_FLAME,
+                                  10, WAND_LIGHTNING,
+                                  10, WAND_DRAINING,
+                                  6, WAND_SLOWING,
+                                  6, WAND_PARALYSIS,
+                                  6, WAND_CONFUSION,
+                                  6, WAND_POLYMORPH,
+                                  6, WAND_RANDOM_EFFECTS,
+                                  6, WAND_FIREBALL,
                                   5, WAND_DISINTEGRATION,
-                                  3, WAND_INVISIBILITY,
+                                  5, WAND_DIGGING,
                                   3, WAND_ENSLAVEMENT,
-                                  3, WAND_FIREBALL,
                                   3, WAND_TELEPORTATION,
                                   1, WAND_HASTING,
                                   1, WAND_HEAL_WOUNDS,


[prozacelf]

This being CYC, I'm allowed to extrapolate from the one game I played after the change where I found 4 /fireball before Lair and infer that those kinds of results will happen every game =p

[Sar]

That's kind of a Pak/evo nerf. My previous Pak char had wands of cold and fire to quickly kill hellions, nexofsfgsks and tormentors at range. Fireball doesn't do enough damage and is loud, lightning is loud, draining doesn't work on daemons... I'm not saying it's an undeserved nerf, but it is a noticeable nerf.

[Croases]

Wands should go the way of rods and start having unique effects, starting with a holy damage wand.

They're limited resources, anyway, and this way you don't start thinking "do I use this on my /hw or my other /hw?" when you get recharging late game.

[ololoev]

nexofsfgsks

Man, I wont even dare to imagine how do u spell 'lorocyproca'!

[Sar]

"invisible blue antimagic thing"

[daggaz]

Lightning and fireball are floor trash once you get a few levels into Lair, and both are dangerously loud. Draining is fine until you get into depths, at which point it goes down hill pretty fast. Fire and Cold were the only offensive wands worth picking up for the late part of the game, and were life savers in the early levels if you found one.

Why remove them again?

[ontoclasm]

Lightning and fireball are floor trash once you get a few levels into Lair, and both are dangerously loud. Draining is fine until you get into depths, at which point it goes down hill pretty fast. Fire and Cold were the only offensive wands worth picking up for the late part of the game, and were life savers in the early levels if you found one.

Why remove them again?

Not every change can make the player more powerful. You got (very slightly) weaker, deal with it.

[daggaz]

When did I say that every change should make the player stronger again? Oh thats right, I didn't, but nice strawman anyhow. For that matter, removing wands of flame and frost also makes the player weaker, as these are substantially useful in early D, notably the most dangerous part of this game.

My point is that wands that are objectively useful were removed, while wands that are arguably crap for the vast majority of the game (other than the beginning) remained. If we are trimming down the items, what again is the logic behind this decision? Hell, if you want to add some negatives to the damn things, make them noisy if you need. As it stands, we get a take-it-if-you-get-it-because-anything-is-better-than-nothing nobrainer for early D which quickly devolves into floor trash, instead of a higher-powered item that might actually inspire a choice. Such as: putting points into evocables early, burning early consumables like ?ID or ?recharge, not wanting to spam the item on mid-range fights because hey its actually useful and doesnt come with 27 charges and you probably wont find 6 more of them, etc... Im sure there are a few more if you take god abilities into account.

[ontoclasm]

All of your arguments were "but X were useful and strong, while Y are not as strong. Why remove X?" They were removed because they were strong, to some extent; many player options and powers have been added over time, so these got removed as balance. So now you have to use the weaker ones. You call lightning/fireball floor trash, but maybe now they're not, because the blatantly better ones don't exist any more, and you have to make do with what you've got instead of discarding things that are slightly suboptimal. The fact that fire/cold were super reliable and useful tools that everyone could use to remove major threats with zero investment is precisely why they're gone.

[TeshiAlair]

FR: Replace wand of cold with "Wand of one shotting hydras" plz

[daggaz]

FR: Replace wand of cold with "Wand of one shotting hydras" plz

Only if you have put points into them, which is precisely why they become a useful decision maker. Untrained, you can easily use 5 or more zaps (often draining the wand if you havent ID'd it) and still leave the hydra alive.

At the same time, nobody ever finds a wand of lightning/fireball and thinks, "Hey I am going to turn off fighting for a little bit and drop some XP into evocations now, and while I am at it I might as well ID this thing even tho I havent finished out the ID minigame and I am expecting to find some jewelry in Lair as well..", or a little bit later, "hmm the wand is almost out of charges, maybe I should go ahead and burn a single ?recharge on this thing".

All of your arguments were "but X were useful and strong, while Y are not as strong. Why remove X?"

My argument was that some items had more enduring usefullness and others were inventory cloggers that were doomed to be floor trash, if you want to simplify that fine, but you lose the point when you do so.

You call lightning/fireball floor trash, but maybe now they're not, because the blatantly better ones don't exist any more, and you have to make do with what you've got instead of discarding things that are slightly suboptimal.

Exactly what I said isnt it, we get a "use it because it is better than nothing and you wont get anything else" nobrainer, and because it is suboptimal (slightly is a poor qualifier here, they are significantly so), it will be left on the floor ASAP and will not generate any real decisions for the player.

Im sure the Devs get tired of players whining for more power/why did you nerf me here, but, and I think I have made this clear, my argument is based on keeping useful, choice-generating items in the game, instead of superfluous, boring items of dubious usefulness. I will mention it again, if you want to add draw backs, you could just make powerful wands that much more noisy, or give them a miscast cloud effect centered on the user if you really want to be hard.

[Sar]

Well wands of lighting and fireball were replaced with supposedly more powerful wands of acid and iceblast, so I guess we'll see how that works out before complaining.

[daggaz]

Were they? That wasnt mentioned in this thread, sorry...

[wheals]

It happened just last night.

[nago]

Well wands of lighting and fireball were replaced with supposedly more powerful wands of acid and iceblast, so I guess we'll see how that works out before complaining.

Actually lightning is still in, acid replaced draining - and probably the former is much stronger than the latter.