Combining elemental evokers

[Baldu3]

Somehow in my current game I found 6 stones of tremor. This is rather unusual, but it has multiple issues:
1- When I'm faced with a challenging situation, I usually have all 6 ready, and evoking all 6 consecutively tends to deal with the situation extremely effectively.
2- It's annoying as balls to have 6 inventory slots occupied by those 6 items.

Proposal: make it so all elemental evokers of same type share the same global cooldown (same xp based as as now), and when picking up a second evoker of same type, automatically combine it with the first, call it +1, and have the global cooldown for this type reduced by some amount (maybe reduce by 5% the cooldown).

If this works out and is interesting it could eventually be expanded to other evokers, so combining 2 crystal balls of energy would reduce by 1% for example the chance to fail.

[and into]

Somehow in my current game I found 6 stones of tremor. This is rather unusual, but it has multiple issues:
1- When I'm faced with a challenging situation, I usually have all 6 ready, and evoking all 6 consecutively tends to deal with the situation extremely effectively.
2- It's annoying as balls to have 6 inventory slots occupied by those 6 items.

Proposal: make it so all elemental evokers of same type share the same global cooldown (same xp based as as now), and when picking up a second evoker of same type, automatically combine it with the first, call it +1, and have the global cooldown for this type reduced by some amount (maybe reduce by 5% the cooldown).

If this works out and is interesting it could eventually be expanded to other evokers, so combining 2 crystal balls of energy would reduce by 1% for example the chance to fail.

This would be a very big nerf to evokers that isn't really needed IMO. Having multiple shots at once is more important than recharging more quickly.

I'm also not sure that combining CBoE would really add much. I think it is fine that CBoE is one of many items that, once you find one of them, further copies are no longer useful.

[Arrhythmia]

I think it would just be better to have

A - Stone of tremors
D - Stone of tremors {inert}
R - Stone of tremors {inert}
S - Stone of tremors {inert}
T - Stone of tremors {inert}
Z - Stone of tremors {inert}

be changed to

A - 6 Stones of tremors {5 inert}.

with the inerts popping off as it is in the status quo, rather than that weird cooldown stuff you've got going on in that post. If collapsing inventory stuff makes it too strong, I think the simplest way to counteract that would be to just make individual evokers heavier.

[dpeg]

Arrhythmia: There are plans to remove item weights, so that will probably not fly.

I don't like those merging proposals in general. The inventory limit is meaningful. If you want to carry one stone of tremor, but not six, then what's a reasonable number for you? I don't think this decision should be sacrificed to convenience. (This is a case where the interface limitation has actual gameplay value, in my opinion.)

[duvessa]

I don't agree that the limitation has gameplay value. You can already carry around every elemental invoker you find, especially if you don't carry stones of tremors since they're useless.

Arrhythmia might also be interested in this thread where I suggested the exact same thing.

[Arrhythmia]

I don't agree that the limitation has gameplay value. You can already carry around every elemental invoker you find, especially if you don't carry stones of tremors since they're useless.

Arrhythmia might also be interested in this thread where I suggested the exact same thing.

I fucking knew this wasn't the first topic on the subject.

E: Generally, inventory space is the choice "should I carry potion X or scroll Y" while inventory weight is the choice "how many of potion X should I carry?" I think crossing these two, as elemental evokers do, doesn't work very well at all.

e2: Apparently I am coming across as heated. I assure you I am as cool as what isn't my avatar, my sincerest apologies.

[crate]

Inventory space limitations don't really work in crawl, because the first things players would (or should, at least) stop carrying are strategic consumables that you carry for convenience (?id, ?rc, ?mapping, etc.). This ends up just being really obnoxious instead of actually being meaningful. I agree with keeping the limit to 52 items for interface reasons, but making this limitation matter doesn't really work.

[Baldu3]

I don't like those merging proposals in general. The inventory limit is meaningful. If you want to carry one stone of tremor, but not six, then what's a reasonable number for you? I don't think this decision should be sacrificed to convenience. (This is a case where the interface limitation has actual gameplay value, in my opinion.)

I don't agree that the limitation has gameplay value. You can already carry around every elemental invoker you find, especially if you don't carry stones of tremors since they're useless.

I mostly wanted to point out the balance issues with getting lucky with elemental evokers. In my game I had what might be the weakest of them, and they still trivialised branch ends and other challenges up to zot in this amount (I'm guessing they will trivialise most of zot too but I don't think I'll have time to continue this game until monday). In this other linked morgue, the player has *10* fire evokers and a few other evokers. There cant be too many situations that couldnt be solved with the "V" button in that game. Perhaps my proposal isn't the right way to go about it, but some reflection on the subject might be in order.

[bcadren]

Arrhythmia: There are plans to remove item weights, so that will probably not fly.

Side Note: Removing item weights will be a HUGE buff to Huge Rocks and a smaller one to ammo in general. [Last time I played an archer I left stashes of 100 arrows a bunch of places because of the sheer weight.]

That said; I'm not sure how I feel about this. Inventory management in general feels like it just exists to be annoying.

[duvessa]

Arrhythmia: There are plans to remove item weights, so that will probably not fly.

Side Note: Removing item weights will be a HUGE buff to Huge Rocks and a smaller one to ammo in general. [Last time I played an archer I left stashes of 100 arrows a bunch of places because of the sheer weight.]

If you are using more than 100 arrows in a single fight then something is very wrong. If you are not, then there is not a balance impact here.
I suppose you have a more reasonable case for large rocks - those are certainly the only case I can think of where weight sort of matters.

[bcadren]

If you are using more than 100 arrows in a single fight then something is very wrong. If you are not, then there is not a balance impact here.
I suppose you have a more reasonable case for large rocks - those are certainly the only case I can think of where weight sort of matters.

More like losing 300 arrows in my battle with TRJ, etc.

[Leafsnail]

There could just be cap on the number of large rocks you can carry, maybe make it strength dependent.

[Baldu3]

Maybe a simpler solution would be to lower the drop rate of elemental evokers to similar level as rods. Looking back at my last 4 wins, on dungeon exit in their carried inventories, one had 1 rod and 3 evokers, one had 3 rods and 13 evokers, one had no rods and 6 evokers, and another had 1 rod and 7 evokers.

[and into]

Maybe a simpler solution would be to lower the drop rate of elemental evokers to similar level as rods. Looking back at my last 4 wins, on dungeon exit in their carried inventories, one had 1 rod and 3 evokers, one had 3 rods and 13 evokers, one had no rods and 6 evokers, and another had 1 rod and 7 evokers.

The solution should follow from trying to fix the problem, though. So what is the problem? Is it bad interaction with current inventory interface? If so there would be more than one way to address that issue without affecting current game play balance. If you think elemental evokers are currently OP, on the other hand, then that's really a different kind of discussion.

[Zammy]

There could just be cap on the number of large rocks you can carry, maybe make it strength dependent.

So before you could carry only x stones because they weight so much and now you could carry only x stones because you have high enough str.
In other words get rid of item weight and them mimic the same effect with different method.

[duvessa]

There could just be cap on the number of large rocks you can carry, maybe make it strength dependent.

So before you could carry only x stones because they weight so much and now you could carry only x stones because you have high enough str.
In other words get rid of item weight and them mimic the same effect with different method.

Except that this different method would eliminate the many, many undesirable things the current system does.

[Zammy]

Except that this different method would eliminate the many, many undesirable things the current system does.

That might be, but I see it causing new problems aswell.
How many large rocks you can carry, how many javelins, how many potions... You would need to set a limit based on str for each item type.
Or maybe just for certain items and allow infinite amount of other types. But then it would be very unituitive.
But having no clue whatsoever on how they are going to implement restrictions if they do get rid of item weight this is probably just useless speculation.

I haven't made any in-detph analysis on game features, so would you elaborate on what are the main problems with the current item weight system?

[and into]

I think the idea is that *only* large rocks would have a str-based requirement. The idea being that in practice that tends to be (outside of weird situations) the only meaningful thing in terms of game play for which strength can be a limiting factor anyway.

[Baldu3]

Maybe a simpler solution would be to lower the drop rate of elemental evokers to similar level as rods...

The solution should follow from trying to fix the problem, though. So what is the problem? Is it bad interaction with current inventory interface? If so there would be more than one way to address that issue without affecting current game play balance. If you think elemental evokers are currently OP, on the other hand, then that's really a different kind of discussion.

Errmmm....

... this has multiple issues:
1- When I'm faced with a challenging situation, I usually have all 6 ready, and evoking all 6 consecutively tends to deal with the situation extremely effectively.
2- It's annoying as balls to have 6 inventory slots occupied by those 6 items.

Proposal: make it so all elemental evokers of same type share the same global cooldown (same xp based as as now)...

I find that individually evokers are fine but carrying 10+ around is not so fine, both from balance perspective and interface perpective. Both solutions I proposed are attempts at resolving both issues, #1 being having a global cooldown per evoker type instead of per evoker item, and #2 being lowering the number of available evokers.

[Leafsnail]

I think the idea is that *only* large rocks would have a str-based requirement. The idea being that in practice that tends to be (outside of weird situations) the only meaningful thing in terms of game play for which strength can be a limiting factor anyway.

Yeah that's what I meant. Barring that one time I fucked up and hit zero strength in the abyss I can't think of any other cases where the weight limit forced me to drop tactically useful items.

[and into]

@Baldu3: I had taken that simply to mean, "It is good to have as may as possible, or nearly so, but the interface is really bad," and not a separate point that they are overpowered.

[Sandman25]

I had 8 rods on one character with spear and it was OP but at least it was not typical because rods are very rare. New evocables are not that rare and arguably their effect can be better than effect of most rods since most rods don't distract monsters so I agree that either evocables should be as rare as rods or there should be some limit of max number by weight or hard-coded value (1 each for example).

[TeshiAlair]

How about this: When you find a second of the same kind and pick it up, if your current is "ready" nothing changes, but as soon as you use one, you get a message "Your {evoker} glows brightly for a moment. You feel dead weight in your inventory," the idea being finding an extra gives you a free recharge, but makes the new one permadead.

Might allow for too much burst usage, but burst usage as a one-time thing might not be a bad thing.

[dck]

This is a bit tangential to the matter at hand, but I'd like to mention I don't really like how evokers are basically free powerful abilities with no drawbacks for anyone who finds one (and they're common enough you'll likely find plenty with any given character). Particularly because there is no reason why you would not want to carry them if you play to win, in the current system with item weights it just makes them take priority before items that improve quality of life but are not necessary to lug around at all times (?id, ?mmap etc) and leads to pretty ridiculous inventory interactions to carry as many of them as you can; that said I still dislike more the fact they're basically strong consumables that are not actually consumed upon usage.

[TeshiAlair]

Maybe make them scale far more with envocations both in terms of recharge time and effectiveness to make them require some investment?

[archaeo]

dck can't you say virtually the same thing about weapons? You need to train a pretty big amount of evocations to make them worth a damn and recharge quickly enough to use routinely, a pretty reasonable drawback IMO.

I am constantly surprised by how common they are, though. I love it, and don't get me wrong, I am more or less In Favor of the Status Quo and wouldn't change a thing if I was in charge. But that said, if they were made more rare, it would probably be a reasonable decision.

[duvessa]

your weapon takes up 1 inventory slot

[archaeo]

Yes, well spotted, duvessa. Note that I was responding to dck, who called evokers "free powerful abilities with no drawbacks." I think the investment:effectiveness ratio between evokers and weapons are pretty comparable; you get quite effective damage in the range of 14-16 and extremely effective damage >20 evo skill. And in order to spam evokers, you have to give up a big part of your inventory, which strikes me as an effective drawback that rewards inventory management skills even if it's a little wonky.

But feel free to correct me, as I'm not going to pretend I've played with evokers half as much as you or dck. I just don't find them to be overpowered and instead think they're pretty fun despite the inventory bloat.

[dck]

The thing about evokers is you can use the good ones (tremors is only really good at extremely high evo, so I'm taking out of here) in different ways:
At say 7 evo they create 1 elemental, the lamp creates flame clouds on demand, the phial creates water wherever you want water and the fan pushes basically everything you could care about back.
At say 14 evo they create a couple of elementals, the lamp deals (a bit) more damage and creates more clouds, the phial deals pretty good damage and the fan pushes even the heaviest monsters (out of ridiculous concrete enemies that are not very relevant due to the threat they pose).
At say 21+, they always create 3 elementals, the lamp deals decent damage and again creates more clouds, the phial deals very heavy damage and the fan does nothing it didn't do before.

You may have noticed a problem here. Evokers basically offer damage dealing and a tactical advantages all at once for different skill prices, but while not all characters are interested in both effects, indeed all should be interested in the tactical advantage since it offers ways to deal with bad situations that may not be available at all otherwise.
What makes them better still is that the tactical advantages are gained pretty much as soon as the evoker is found at all; so while obtaining an evoker does alter the way you deal with things and perhaps can even change your training slightly, the price you pay relative to the power it grants is basically zero. This in my eyes makes them just consumables (which also grant benefits for no cost) that are not actually consumed upon usages and just locked for a while, this is further reinforced by the fact (much like actual consumables) the tactical advantages they provide are not something anyone should need constantly.

I do not think the comparison to weapons holds much water, except maybe for very concrete examples like very fast weapons of distortion. Much like evokers these weapons provide you with an instant power the moment you find them that you did not have the moment before and practically demands no training whatsoever; unlike evokers these weapons and the powers they grant do in fact demand a sacrifice (trivial, but it's still a slight opportunity cost), and a degree of adaptation to be used appropriately.
This all is leaving aside the interface issues evokers cause, which I believe are very important.

[archaeo]

Sometimes instead of a "thanks" button, I'd like a "I disagree with your position but totally respect it and also you're a pal for explaining it so thoroughly" button, but I guess the former will suffice.