These Should Not Be Inventory Items

[Shtopit]

The title is more peremptory than it should, but, at least, it's synthetic.

My point is that items are divided in two categories: those you can tactically equip and/or use on the fly, and those you can't. For example, putting on a ring of rN+ when you meet Nergalle is a tactical application. An armour with rN+ cannot be swapped this way: you need to be out of the fight.

Items with tactical application:

- Weapons
- Rings
- Most potions
- Half the scrolls
- Misc items
- Wands

There are many items that you can't tactically equip or use on the fly. These you can leave on the floor, and get back to them when you need them. Since there is no limit to floor stashing and you generally have no reason to/cannot equip or use these items in combat, you effectively have an infinite inventory for them (the floor). However, while optimal, it's a very boring way to handle them. So if they didn't take up inventory slots, it wouldn't change anything in their practical use, while improving playability.

These items are:

- Scrolls of: acquirement, amnesia, brand weapon, enchant armour, enchant weapon, identify, remove curse
- Spellbooks
(you have no reason to carry these items around. You can leave them on the floor and go back to them when you need them, use them on location, and leave them again. Spellbooks would have tactical meaning if they allowed you to learn spells on the fly during combat, but they don't. The only time acquirement counts as item is if you find more than one in a portal, so you take them to avoid leaving the acquired items there).

- Armour
(once you have what you want to wear, you can leave the rest on the floor, because you would have to reset the fight to wear anything else anyway)

- Food
(once you have a stack of bread or meat, you have no reason to pick up anything else. Leave them there until your provisions run low)

Amulets move in a similar direction with the after-effects of many of them, effectively discouraging swapping. However, this is more like a decrease in power than a complete absence of tactical equipping on the fly.

IMHO strategic scrolls should be goldified. Spellbooks should disappear and leave you with a "spell library" comprising all spells you found and haven't learnt yet.
Food should also be goldified, simply because it's not a free choice to carry one stack around or not, and having more than one type is suboptimal. If food must take one inventory slot, then it's better to just have a 51-slot inventory, it's the same with less fiddling. Anyway, there already is discussion about a solution: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23263

Armour leaves me in doubt. While being able to carry infinite amounts of armour would be an improvement from a gameplay point of view, it would be a strange solution, and probably overwhelming for new players.

[watertreatmentRL]

Unbounded numbers of items are bad from a gameplay perspective. Avoiding paged menu interactions is key. The search menu is somehow thought of as a triumph because its early crawl alternative of having no way to track the massive number of items available outside of combat was so totally unmanageable. (Autotravel is a similar story.) The problem here is that people mistakenly believe that having a lot of dead space in the game has value in terms of realism and simulation. It's true as far as it goes, the mistake is thinking realism and simulation are valuable.

Instead of creating a new infinite item menu, you could add the ability to directly recall items from the search menu according to rules that maintain the non-tactical aspect of traveling across the game world to get them. That would be the natural incremental approach, but unfortunately it accommodates the bad mechanic of a large but empty game world that grows and grows over the course of the game. The alternative is a downstairs-only world where leaving items behind represents a permanent, potentially consequential decision. You never think about those items again and the number of items available at any time is far more manageable.

[Majang]

Spellbooks are tactical items for Trog worshippers.

[MainiacJoe]

Floor items are not exactly an infinite inventory, since it costs piety and food to get to them.

[bel]

My own experience is that you can already carry pretty much everything you need. There are a few exceptions: decks, books etc.; but that is mostly due to the bad mechanics of those items rather than anything else. I agree that having an inventory is not really important. Therefore, I like the OP.

Currently, the "paged display" issue is avoided by forcing the player to discard the least valuable item in their pack (after you reach 52 items). The "least valuable" item, of course, depends on the player. For the "paged display" issue, an alternative to the current situation is the following:

Have an infinite inventory, on the lines of the OP. Calculate an "importance" index for each item. One can think of various ways to calculate this value, but a simple one is as follows. There are two components to the importance:

(a) Shop value
(b) How well the item matches the skills trained by the player.

The "importance" of an item is some combination of the two components.

Sort the items in inventory in decreasing order of importance. That way, most of the items you'll use would be on the first or second page.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I think scrolls and potions could be inventory-slot-less, and simply have their own menu each, just like spells and abilities.

Equipped items don't need to occupy slots either; if need be there can be a separate menu.

The trouble with floor items is more tricky. Conceivably, they could also be put in a library on pick-up, but it would feel weird.

Perhaps items should not generate in duplicate. If you already have a pair of plain boots, no others need to spawn, unless they have a better enchantment level. Similarly, one plate armour of MR+ in a game is probably enough.

[siprus]

Giving potions and scrolls their own inventory is actually one of the best suggestions I've heard about how to fix the inventory system.

[Majang]

When in the future the player indiscriminately slurps up all that is lying around on the floor, without ever leaving behind stuff to be slurped up by slimes, Jiyva worshippers will need another way of accumulating piety.

[Shtopit]

When in the future the player indiscriminately slurps up all that is lying around on the floor, without ever leaving behind stuff to be slurped up by slimes, Jiyva worshippers will need another way of accumulating piety.

Sounds like a good chance to remove felids and have Jivvy PCs turn into slimes instead.

I think that scrolls and potions taking too much room is a result of the weight reform. With weight, you could leave a few tactical scrolls around, and have enough of their kind on you. Now, with the stack system, a single scroll of enchant armour takes as much room as ten scrolls of blinking or the orange crystal armour.

Giving scrolls and potions their personal inventory is a good step forward (especially because of autopickup), but there still is the problem of overwhelming the player with choices. One option would be to have the RNG decide for not generating certain scrolls and potions during the game.

The cost of running around picking up stuff is very small. Many characters don't need much food, demigods don't have gods, and piety loss by inactivity never stroke me as much of a factor. I think it's more of an anti respawn-scumming system.

[gameguard]

potions and scrolls being in their own menu is a good idea. Good thing this system already exists via q and r. We just have to remove them from i menu.

Another thing ive been thinking aboutis adding 0-9 to the inventory. If the reason for having 52 limit is the alphabet, adding the numbers shouldnt be such a drastic change. Even having those 10 additional slots would really make life easier for everyone.

[MainiacJoe]

I use 0-9 for macros, typically spells I'm casting frequently. hey are available to me since I use numberpad for movement. If they get assigned to inventory, there will be no convenient macros keys left.

[prozacelf]

p is a perfectly fine macro key now.

[Rast]

p is a perfectly fine macro key now.

I set it for fedhas, but when I switched back to gozag on my next character, it caused me to waste 3 potion petitions before I turned it back off. Never again.

[prozacelf]

I did the same thing, but nearly fucked myself with Trog a couple of times. So now I make sure to clear the macro and only put it back when I'm doing a Fed game.

[gameguard]

So after playing a oka dude with a bit of throwing skill, i quickly got reminded of why i never use throwing. There is no room to carry around ammo unless you sacrifice evocation (and i never want to sacrifice evocation). I dont see an easy fix that will have minimal impact on the game as far as throwing brands and all the different types of needles are concerned. It brings me back to the general complaint on inventory limit. Its so aggravating.

Every game is constantly being interrupted by juggling items to bring around. Do i wanna keep this or that wand? do i need this lightning rod? Should i stop picking up enchant scrolls for now? I dont REALLY need vuln scroll right? Silence scroll sux anyways ill just drop it. Ok lets stop picking up fruits and royal jelly. Lets drop ring of flight and just use potion if i need to fly.

At this point i want to ask the devs if this inventory management minigame is intended to be an interesting crawl experience or just a byproduct of the limited UI. Personally I dont think having access to more items at anytime will have a negative impact on the game. In fact, it would add to the interesting tactical decisions players could make in any given scenario. There are many situationally useful items that gets left behind because there is no room in the inventory.

[emikaela]

thrown brands are a pain and should probably go away eventually. as a slightly less radical alternative perhaps they could all be unique to either tomahawks or javelins. for example, remove poisoned and returning javelins and steel and silver tomahawks, while keeping their counterparts. maybe even remove the vanilla versions too, they don't really add anything interesting (though this would be a buff to an already strong skill so maybe not).

[yesno]

Replace returning weps with a boomerang item

[Zhorgal]

How many of you guys really hate inventory juggling? That's probably the thing I hate the most about this game.
I can totally see myself in gameguard's post, I don't hate inventory juggling, I fricking LOATHE it!

[stoneychips]

Okay, I juggle a lot. It doesn't honestly bother me all that much. But I'm a packrat when life allows me to be.

I'm still waiting for a definition of "makes for bad gameplay" apart from "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should." Everyone thinks something that someone else sees a purpose for is "bad gameplay." At which point the whole thing degenerates into 100 Remove threads, finally Remove Crawl and eventually go play chess or checkers cause that's what most of the mass removal/"there should be less variation" people claim to admire so much anyway.

Actually I think much or most of the OP is about right, if it didn't mess up the game too terribly from a technical standpoint by now and with the varioius deities already balanced in around what's there...

Now personally, I wouldn't mind an encumberance system or even an enhanced encumberance system with variety, where big bulky species could have more pages of stuff if they felt like bothering and maybe magically powerful characters could have pages of at least lightweight stuff (some sort of size/Str factoring in). You could even toss in bags of holding and what not with similar modifiers still attached. And to whoever screams "bad gameplay" and "no realism desired" ffs go play chess and you won't need monsters to be called things straight out of Middle Earth, what torture that sort of flavor must be for you. Not expecting people to vote for it en masse. Just saying on principle.

[Wark]

Now personally, I wouldn't mind an encumberance system or even an enhanced encumberance system with variety, where big bulky species could have more pages of stuff if they felt like bothering and maybe magically powerful characters could have pages of at least lightweight stuff (some sort of size/Str factoring in).

Have you played 0.14 or earlier versions? Because it had pretty much what you're describing, except inventory expansion: item weights and carrying capacity based on strength.

[watertreatmentRL]

I'm still waiting for a definition of "makes for bad gameplay" apart from "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should." Everyone thinks something that someone else sees a purpose for is "bad gameplay." At which point the whole thing degenerates into 100 Remove threads, finally Remove Crawl and eventually go play chess or checkers cause that's what most of the mass removal/"there should be less variation" people claim to admire so much anyway.

This is pretty amazing. Have you just never read the GDD section before?

[Shard1697]

I'm still waiting for a definition of "makes for bad gameplay" apart from "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should." Everyone thinks something that someone else sees a purpose for is "bad gameplay." At which point the whole thing degenerates into 100 Remove threads, finally Remove Crawl and eventually go play chess or checkers cause that's what most of the mass removal/"there should be less variation" people claim to admire so much anyway.

You know this logic runs both ways, right? "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should" is not any less valid than "I personally like having to bother with this so everyone else should."

[stoneychips]

I'm still waiting for a definition of "makes for bad gameplay" apart from "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should." Everyone thinks something that someone else sees a purpose for is "bad gameplay." At which point the whole thing degenerates into 100 Remove threads, finally Remove Crawl and eventually go play chess or checkers cause that's what most of the mass removal/"there should be less variation" people claim to admire so much anyway.

You know this logic runs both ways, right? "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should" is not any less valid than "I personally like having to bother with this so everyone else should."

I suppose, but the point is that simply saying "bad gameplay' and little else, as I often see, isn't very informative. It's at least honest to say one personally just does or doesn't like something -- "bad gameplay" to me is such jargon that I feel like it wants to imply more some quasi-scientific, community-backed and documented explanation but I have no idea what that would be or whether many people have actually agreed somewhere on which one. Which makes it more of an arm-wringing term to my receptors.

So it's one thing to feel slightly pushed with "I'd prefer just because" (obvious personal preference, no claims to evidence or system) and another to be regularly tossing out big words like "gameplay" or say, "logistics" with no specifics around them.

Is it "bad" because one thinks it's tedious (doing this too often but might not mind if it was more efficient for flow of operations -- I might say this about reaching weapons), because one just didn't like that whole flavor to begin with (a few people seem to feel against food on principle, though I'm not entirely sure what that principle is, it still says more to me than just "it's bad"), because it's technically difficult for the game system to integrate with everything else that's going on in a way that makes it fair (as say used to be true for different values for diagonal versus horizontal speed)? Etc. These are very different viewpoints but tossing out something like "bad gameplay" without specifics allows one to sound a touch elitist about it without actually saying much.

Not demanding an essay with every preference, but a little detail might go further than resorting to the same bigger, "community expert"-sounding words as a shield so often.

[stoneychips]

I'm still waiting for a definition of "makes for bad gameplay" apart from "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should." Everyone thinks something that someone else sees a purpose for is "bad gameplay." At which point the whole thing degenerates into 100 Remove threads, finally Remove Crawl and eventually go play chess or checkers cause that's what most of the mass removal/"there should be less variation" people claim to admire so much anyway.

This is pretty amazing. Have you just never read the GDD section before?

Perhaps not so much. This doesn't mean that it makes sense to be tossing the term around in the rest of the forums as if it had all the simplicity of, "The wind only always blows in this direction and everyone knows I'm right."

[stoneychips]

Now personally, I wouldn't mind an encumberance system or even an enhanced encumberance system with variety, where big bulky species could have more pages of stuff if they felt like bothering and maybe magically powerful characters could have pages of at least lightweight stuff (some sort of size/Str factoring in).

Have you played 0.14 or earlier versions? Because it had pretty much what you're describing, except inventory expansion: item weights and carrying capacity based on strength.

Actually I have. I've said this elsewhere, but if there were a fork that incorporated some old features like encumberance and item destruciton, monster pickups of items (perhaps a bit toned down on some but still), I'd probably play it. In reality though, it's a choice between those or a bunch of new features I like too -- not both.

I just raised it in response to the rhetorical, "Does anyone enjoy any of this" above. Because yes at least a few of us do enjoy at least a touch of realism. I realize encumberance wasn't popular in the past and some people seem to flee from my online games when they notice I tend to swap and recheck inventory quite often (no offense taken, just noticing)... But if people are going to make such blanket assertions on behalf of everyone else and I happen to notice... What can I say.

[Siegurt]

I'm still waiting for a definition of "makes for bad gameplay" apart from "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should." Everyone thinks something that someone else sees a purpose for is "bad gameplay." At which point the whole thing degenerates into 100 Remove threads, finally Remove Crawl and eventually go play chess or checkers cause that's what most of the mass removal/"there should be less variation" people claim to admire so much anyway.

You know this logic runs both ways, right? "I personally don't like having to bother with this so no one else should" is not any less valid than "I personally like having to bother with this so everyone else should."

The difference between "I personally like/don't like this" and "this is good/bad gameplay" is the acknowledgement that it's an opinion based on personal preference, rather than an objective "fact" that everyone should agree with because it's obvious, or that there's consensus on, or derives from some closely held principal that we all implicitly agree to.

It's mostly likely the expectation of the latter "derives from some principal that we all agree on" case that "bad gameplay" is expected to fall into, where the principals are derived from the expectation that we all want to enjoy the game, and that there's a proscribed list of things that are generally considered not enjoyable (for example, there is an expectation is that 'tedium' isn't enjoyable, and if you claimed that something was 'bad gameplay because it was tedious' we'd probably all understand why you considered it to be 'bad', there might be a discussion as to whether something was in fact tedious, but there probably would not be any arguments that tedium is good. (Maybe there would be, any backers of mindless tedium out there feel free to speak up! ) )

It's unsatisfying, though, to see something declaimed as 'bad gameplay' with no further qualifications, as that implicitly assumes that each of us as members of the game-playing community already have a reason to dislike something, and should be disliking it, even if we don't know what that reason is. Nobody likes being told what they should be thinking, particularly with no supporting evidence for it, trying to *convince* people to agree with you on the other hand, is just par for communication, and totally expected.

[stoneychips]

Thank you Siegurt, I wish I had the zen to write that formally and succinctly about it

at wee hours when I'm feeling a little bummed...

Or most of the time outside of more predictable university work, actually.

[Siegurt]

Thank you Siegurt, I wish I had the zen to write that formally and succinctly about it

at wee hours when I'm feeling a little bummed...

Or most of the time outside of more predictable university work, actually.

I have lots of practice at writing this on the forums

[watertreatmentRL]

See, the problem with what I'm hearing here is that when I call such and such "bad gameplay," I do either proceed from widely shared principles or, as above, give some exposition of why that is the case. What I see with this sort opinion call out argument that doesn't really come at any of what's been said except by saying "well, you know, I like shuffling through menus and autotraveling and it's elitist to make me feel bad about my deeply held preference like that," is just evasion.

Of course, it's hard to make an argument that screwing around with inventory as much as you do in crawl is somehow good or necessary. "Good" is at best a matter of taste and "necessary" is clearly just not true no matter how you slice it. So it seems to me, someone surveys the terrain and says, "Well, if this doesn't go anywhere very conclusive, my position of pure reaction will win by default, since all that has to happen is nothing." Hence the "that's just, like, your opinion, man" posture and other more lengthy variations on it.

[Shtopit]

Was Confucius zen?

One man once asked Confucius what death was. Confucius answered: "How am I supposed to answer that, if I don't even know what life is?"

Let's just say that, until we have a definition of "bad" that is OK for everyone, we won't have a definition of "bad gameplay" that is good for everyone. I'll stick to "this thing bores the hell out of me, makes me want to kill this character, and isn't something that can be avoided by choosing a different race" for "huge bad gameplay problem", and as "localized bad gameplay problem" if it's typical of just one race/god. The problem with the inventory isn't something I was the only one to notice, it comes up periodically. It's also something can counter-prove playing Jivvy, suddenly the game becomes a lot smoother and far less tiresome.

Then you have throwing and evo etc etc which do the opposite of Jivvy, and increase a lot the number of items you carry, and you wonder, is it OK that this one skill should take eight times the inventory room of axes? More importantly, when the limit becomes more cogent, you notice a lot more the problems it carries with it.

It's not a Crawl exclusive. I remember how much time I spent in Morrowind selecting what loot to carry, and NWN distributing stuff in the party. I am sure that one of the reasons why I remember Summoner so fondly is that it gave you an infinite inventory that was common to the whole party; you kept it clean by selling stuff you didn't need to buy hyperpriced better items in the shops. Selling clearly is against Crawl Thought, for reasons which make sense, but it is interesting to think about it. I think that the advantage of having selling stations that convert into money the things you don't want to carry to the next level or simply making abandoned items not reachable once you leave the floor is that you just need to make one choice, once, about that item: lose it or keep it? The current system effectively forces you to keep making the same choice over and over, because each time you remember there is that one artifact with a different AC to Slay proportion to the one you are wearing, you must choose if you want to go back to it or not, because different enemies, or just different enemy variety distribution, make it potentially better in some floors than others.

[Siegurt]

See, the problem with what I'm hearing here is that when I call such and such "bad gameplay," I do either proceed from widely shared principles or, as above, give some exposition of why that is the case. What I see with this sort opinion call out argument that doesn't really come at any of what's been said except by saying "well, you know, I like shuffling through menus and autotraveling and it's elitist to make me feel bad about my deeply held preference like that," is just evasion.

Of course, it's hard to make an argument that screwing around with inventory as much as you do in crawl is somehow good or necessary. "Good" is at best a matter of taste and "necessary" is clearly just not true no matter how you slice it. So it seems to me, someone surveys the terrain and says, "Well, if this doesn't go anywhere very conclusive, my position of pure reaction will win by default, since all that has to happen is nothing." Hence the "that's just, like, your opinion, man" posture and other more lengthy variations on it.

I think mostly you do at least call out what specifically you think that principle is, and sometimes you don't (we don't all reiterate all of our positions every damn time, because we expect that someone somewhere would've gotten the message already) and it's true that not everyone will read everything that gets posted by everyone all the time.

Still it shouldn't be all that surprising in whatever percentage of cases it is where it's left unstated, that someone is going to call it out, and it is reasonable to simply point at why you think the bad thing is bad. If they still disagree on the meat of it, then that's fine you can talk about that or not, but until you mention *what* you think is bad, it can seem as if you mean to stand apart like your position is unavailable for comment or discussion, and no-one has the right to disagree with you. I suspect that's not your intention, but it *can* be misread that way.

In this case I think you stated most of your position, but left out a couple key points, you didn't say why realism and simulationism are bad (Those elements are present in a *lot* of games, maybe you think all of those games are bad, but there are a significant number of games which are very popular which include elements of both, and one could argue that both elements actually increase one's engagement with, and attachment to, the game played for a significant percentage of the population) Nor did you explicitly at the time mention that unbounded items results in an interface nightmare (you did make an reference to avoiding paged menu interactions, from which one should probably infer the actual problem with it, but it's also possible for someone to miss the connection)

Back to the actual the subject at hand, maybe it's just my playstyle but for me personally, in the status quo, I maybe have to mess around "juggling" things in my inventory like 4 -10 times a game, and it takes me under like 20 seconds per, and I have to go back and retrieve something I've left behind about four times every five games, so for me "shuffling through menus and autotravel" is very minimal, I probably could more tightly optimize what I carry, and maybe if I spent more time agonizing over my inventory space, I'd have a slightly higher win percentage, I dunno, if my experience was that it was highly disruptive I'd probably advocate for the removal of more crap, but it rarely is (and pretty much only when I'm trying to actually use all the throwing on a race that doesn't have any armour restrictions does it surface to the point of me noticing it as a thing that I need to care about) I probably have somewhat optimized my playstyle around inventory not causing me too many headaches, and deprive myself of some opportunities thereby, for me the inventory pressure is probably at the right level, I have to decide what's going to be helpful for the character I'm playing right now, but there's some give if the RNG changes the circumstances around.

I personally, wouldn't like a 'no backsies' crawl, because it means every inventory decision is a critical one, once you've left the floor, it's gone forever, and I would feel obliged to cart around a bunch of crap that I *might someday, maybe possibly want, if circumstances dictate* That to me would be significantly more annoying that just dropping it and coming back for it if I need to. That's what the so-called 'dead' space gives *me*, a soft landing zone so I can not care about things that aren't important *right now* because I can always come back for them later. I'd much rather play a game where the decisions are all about what's going on now, and not about what might happen at some possible point in the future.

[stoneychips]

The skill training system, over the long run, arguably incentivizes players to compete on knowledge of the world and system more than on tactics. In that sense, it's arguable I suppose that a key part of the game is already based on always thinking a branch or more ahead. Does one really want so much more of the game to do that, is the question then.

It's curious to me that so many people rejected item destruction and encumberance before, and if I'm not mistaken I think at least some people argued against mobs picking up items for their own use from stashes (yes? no? this would have actually happened before I was on forums, but I seem to recall a few passing references to such opinions later). Most of these features either definitely would or sometimes could encourage players to assume that dropped items might not be recoverable and stored-on-person items might have a certain limited average shelf life. Even the old encumberance system could cut down on immediate-use options for packrats like me, although it wouldn't technically remove them all from the later game (you could only carry so much of each thing, even if you could store them). All of that was actually a step closer to fewer short-term decisions that could have reliable power, and yet people seem to have rejected it all largely because they found it somehow too frustrating to be deprived of the sense of acquisition or lasting control? Yes? That is, IF I'm gauging the vibe right and that is actually a key motivation there; I wasn't in forums exactly when it happened.

There are many aspects of Crawl itself that appeal to a sense of realism. If one says that they just don't like having to pop up more than one page of inventory ever, fine that's your opinion and I can work with that (though I probably won't agree with it at that extreme). But once people start to say they don't want "realism" generally, I have to start wondering why inventory is somehow 'too real' but going through a maze of floors dealing with monsters that sometimes look like bees and sometimes look like shrikes but have much the same movement... Isn't that annoyingly realistic, (so observation/research-intensive, "Why not just remove most icons/branches and reduce everything to a nice manageable, much less random chess game?") and tedious by the same expressed standards. Where are the lines, because much of what makes Crawl interesting to me is a sense of immersion in a somewhat complicated fantasy milieu. And complicated worlds have a certain degree of repetition -- as do most games that are replayable. As Siegurt describes in more detail, the current inventory system is sometimes work but even as someone who uses it (myself, more) heavily in some games, it doesn't bother me all that much.

And I'm not demanding "nothing" change. Again, I actually think several or most of the OP suggestions might have potential to improve the flow somehow... That is if they're actually workable, which I haven't thought through much but there seems to be some decent debate. What I protest about more broadly isn't any change whatsoever, it's being told something is generally "bad" pretty much 'just because.'

[watertreatmentRL]

It's weird that "I wouldn't like hypothetical version of crawl X" is apparently accepted as a legitimate point of view, when people claiming they will quit the game because of a change that has already happened are usually met with derision and ridicule or indifference at best. At least the quitters can claim to have tried the version they say they don't like.

[Siegurt]

It's weird that "I wouldn't like hypothetical version of crawl X" is apparently accepted as a legitimate point of view, when people claiming they will quit the game because of a change that has already happened are usually met with derision and ridicule or indifference at best. At least the quitters can claim to have tried the version they say they don't like.

Not really that weird at all "I wouldn't like change X for reasons Y" enjoys pretty much the same response as "I didn't like change X for reasons Y", it's only when the disproportionate "This one change makes everything else horrible and unplayable" happens that derision and ridicule happens, the problem is not with the rejection of a change, it's with the disproportionate response (It's akin to (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ over a bad roll)

Also FWIW a significant portion of the people who threatened to quit on these forums, did so without actually trying the changes, whether or not they existed, and a significant number of those didn't in fact quit.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I think that the advantage of having selling stations that convert into money the things you don't want to carry to the next level or simply making abandoned items not reachable once you leave the floor is that you just need to make one choice, once, about that item: lose it or keep it? The current system effectively forces you to keep making the same choice over and over, because each time you remember there is that one artifact with a different AC to Slay proportion to the one you are wearing, you must choose if you want to go back to it or not, because different enemies, or just different enemy variety distribution, make it potentially better in some floors than others.

That's quite different from how would view the situation. If I had to regularly give up items for good, I would find myself mentally crippled by the choice. I know this because sometimes I jump into portal vaults before making inventory space.

Every time this turns into protracted staring at the inventory screen, searching the dungeon floor, imagining all sorts of unlikely scenarios, looking up exactly what some of the more obscure items (that I use only rarely) actually do, and so on. In a given game I spend multiples of the real-time speed record looking at my inventory.

Often this has the effect on me that I hit ctrl+s, because I can't face up to the decision. Then I come back next day, faced with the same decision, and sometimes I just hit ctrl+s again.

I may be an extreme case, but this really does majorly disrupt the game flow for me. None of the above is an exaggeration.

Being able to drop items temporarily, having the option of coming back, makes this easier for me, although still not exactly easy.