Weightless experimental branch playable on CSZO

[Klown]

I hated this at first, but I'm coming around. Especially after my 0.14 character just got overencumbered on D:7, leading to slowy choosing what to use/drop every ten seconds.
I just think STR needs compensation in addition to it. There was a thread last year where a lot of players thought STR was already weak, and one person said something like 'you can carry a lot more stuff, that's enough power already'. Not to mention I watched some tournament games, and people had more DEX than Nemelex has Decks.

[Bim]

You don't need to carry more than a few weapons ever, and carrying a few weapons was quite possible when we had inventory weight. It's easier to do that now, but the 'difficulty' that was removed was really just hassle balancing out excess consumable and didn't involve much strategic thinking you weren't already doing elsewhere. You had to know which consumables you'd want and make a reasonable guess as to how many of each you'd want to have for a while. Then there was a mini-game where you balance out all of your inventory piles until you hit the magic burden number you wanted (you got a high score in this game if you could do the math without using show_inventory_weights). You need to know how to effectively use consumables in order to know how which and how many you'll need, so the inventory juggling didn't bring any new strategic thinking. You could also always carry as many as you'd actually need, so the only effective limit was the game not giving you enough of a consumable type, or you made a mistake and used too many. Carrying extra body armour is generally not very useful, and alternate armour pieces for the other slots were easy to carry with item weight just like they're easy to carry now.

I don't think any interesting gameplay was lost due to item weight removal; there may be some cases like large rocks where we actually need to balance the ability to carry so many, but there are not many cases like that.

Gammafunk, whilst I understand your viewpoint, that's just how you play the game as an experienced player - many other people don't know what they'll need so they have to make guesses on what will make them survive - to me that's strategy and exciting. Similarly, whilst you may know that you don't really need more than one or two weapons, some people don't know that - carrying 3 halberds was incredibly tricky for merfolk for instance (as well as consumables and whatever) which meant that you didn't always have everything you needed for every enemy (with other stuff included).

While dropping stuff and coming back to it may seem like a drag, going through difficult floors that you might not have fully cleared (or past mennas/whatever) was a challenge.

I do agree that weight needs to be looked at very seriously gu5 just getting rid of it seems a bit of a rushed step, and mainly seems appealing to long time players who find it easier as they know the strategic challenges already. I'd suggest that we at least look at alternatives instead of just cutting it out completely because some people find it tedious.

[Sar]

It's dead, Bim.

[duvessa]

Gammafunk, whilst I understand your viewpoint, that's just how you play the game as an experienced player - many other people don't know what they'll need so they have to make guesses on what will make them survive - to me that's strategy and exciting. Similarly, whilst you may know that you don't really need more than one or two weapons, some people don't know that - carrying 3 halberds was incredibly tricky for merfolk for instance (as well as consumables and whatever) which meant that you didn't always have everything you needed for every enemy (with other stuff included).

If you balance a game based on the perceptions of the worst players you can find, then you end up with some pretty weird things. In Crawl, for example, you'd likely end up buffing elyvilon and demigods while nerfing chei and deep elves. Certainly the game should be welcoming to new players, but it shouldn't be balanced under the assumption that they will never improve.

[gammafunk]

Gammafunk, whilst I understand your viewpoint, that's just how you play the game as an experienced player - many other people don't know what they'll need so they have to make guesses on what will make them survive - to me that's strategy and exciting.

Monsters already take care of players that don't know what they need to use by killing said players. We don't need a redundant and bad system to remind players to think about what consumables are important. If players use the wrong things, they'll die when their HP are reduced to 0 or below, and having the correct item sitting unused in their inventory isn't going to change that outcome.

Similarly, whilst you may know that you don't really need more than one or two weapons, some people don't know that - carrying 3 halberds was incredibly tricky for merfolk for instance (as well as consumables and whatever) which meant that you didn't always have everything you needed for every enemy (with other stuff included).

I don't think a good justification for inventory weight is "because people are bad at using weapons at first". The game provides more than enough rope for players to hang themselves with. Preserving the case where players got themselves killed lugging around too many weapons really isn't worth the tedium from item weight.

While dropping stuff and coming back to it may seem like a drag, going through difficult floors that you might not have fully cleared (or past mennas/whatever) was a challenge.

Players will still have to drop items; they can only carry 52 item stacks. We certainly don't want to keep item weights because players might mess up walking back through explored territory.

[Leafsnail]

If you wanted to make players eg choose between extra weapons and potions then it would be better to do so through slot restrictions. That would mean they'd have to go without one type of potion altogether, rather than making them drop 2 of their stack of 10 heal wounds potions and making basically zero impact on their tactical decisions.

Although with that said I think you'd have to make it so that strategic items don't take up slots before doing that (so that the system doesn't make you have to backtrack for ID scrolls constantly).

I hated this at first, but I'm coming around. Especially after my 0.14 character just got overencumbered on D:7, leading to slowy choosing what to use/drop every ten seconds.
I just think STR needs compensation in addition to it. There was a thread last year where a lot of players thought STR was already weak, and one person said something like 'you can carry a lot more stuff, that's enough power already'. Not to mention I watched some tournament games, and people had more DEX than Nemelex has Decks.

My understanding is that STR is good if you're doing something that needs it (wearing heavy armour, some ranged weapons I think) and not so good if you are not. Which seems alright to me. Carrying capacity never really came into it.

[Bim]

It isn't about the worst player or punishing players, it's basic RPG common sense - think about it the way a standard RPG fan would come to it: 'fire kills hydra heads/plants, I need to carry around a flame weapon', 'holy for demons/undead', 'freeze for cold blooded' - that's already 3 weapons, and it makes perfect sense.

Sure, we know that it's not necessary once we're experienced, but for a new player/average/unspoiled player it's not - they think they need to carry everything, and item weight provides a challenge to that - do they increase their strength to carry more stuff (and survival), or put it into int/dex for their other needs? That is a strategic challenge, it's just that it wasn't handled well in the past so everyone was scroll shuffling and potion dropping to edge under the weight.

This really isn't worth arguing as it's clear that your mind has been made up but I know I'm not in a vast minority in disliking the ripping out of a lot of functionality just because some people find it boring - improve it instead!

[duvessa]

Sure, we know that it's not necessary once we're experienced, but for a new player/average/unspoiled player it's not - they think they need to carry everything, and item weight provides a challenge to that - do they increase their strength to carry more stuff (and survival), or put it into int/dex for their other needs? That is a strategic challenge, it's just that it wasn't handled well in the past so everyone was scroll shuffling and potion dropping to edge under the weight.

So...you want to keep item weight because it confuses new players?

This really isn't worth arguing as it's clear that your mind has been made up but I know I'm not in a vast minority in disliking the ripping out of a lot of functionality just because some people find it boring - improve it instead!

bad features are improved by removing them

[Zammy]

bad features are improved by removing them

No, bad features are removed by removing them. Improving them might result in a good deature. But that requires a lot of work and know-how. Easier just to remove them.

[khalil]

bad features are improved by removing them

It depends on how bad the feature is, and what it is that makes the feature bad. Sometimes you get things with a good concept that just happen to have serious issues, and in those cases it's best to fix the issues. For example, OCS were supposed to be "dangerous thing that you only have to fight if you really want whatever it's guarding." Instead, they were "Absurdly deadly thing that you only fight if you have a wand of disintegration." This was fixed by making disintegration not kill them in one hit, and making it possible to kill them in other ways.

Other times you have Slugs (And all the other monsters that're slower than a Naga of Chei and lack any ranged attacks), which have a terrible concept (monster that poses no threat but makes the game slightly more boring) and can't be fixed because the foundation of their design is flawed.

In this case, I think item weight is in the second category, as it's concept (as far as I can tell) is "make stashing optimal while still allowing players to carry around more consumables than they will ever need," or possibly "be a thing that exists because every other roguelike has inventory weight, so we should have it too."

[gammafunk]

It isn't about the worst player or punishing players, it's basic RPG common sense - think about it the way a standard RPG fan would come to it: 'fire kills hydra heads/plants, I need to carry around a flame weapon', 'holy for demons/undead', 'freeze for cold blooded' - that's already 3 weapons, and it makes perfect sense.

You keep citing this example as if it was very difficult to carry around 3 or 4 weapons with item weight. It wasn't difficult to do that, nor were players much penalized for doing so. If they put a few points into str in order to carry weapons more easily, there was also no great penalty. How many weapons is a terrible example of strategic decision-making in the game. A good strategic decision is when the player decides if a weapon effective against a particular enemy or in general or not at all. Those are the kinds of decisions the game will force them to think about, and they were able to make those decisions both with and without item weight. Item weight prevented them from carrying more ludicrous numbers of weapons compared to inventory slots alone, but we figure players can come to the realization "hey, I don't need infinite redundant things" pretty quickly without tediously reminding them.

[crate]

"it's basic RPG common sense"
adhering to common rpg/roguelike tropes for no reason makes crawl worse, not better!

one of the reasons I enjoy DoomRL a lot is precisely because it avoids implementing a lot of roguelike tropes (identification, traps, heal-over-time, poison, etc.) entirely

anyway like was said earlier in this topic there's no real point to item weight as long as crawl contains both up- and downstairs, and since crawl wouldn't be crawl without stairs I suspect that they're not going away

[nicolae]

No, bad features are removed by removing them. Improving them might result in a good deature. But that requires a lot of work and know-how. Easier just to remove them.

I wonder: when features are cut, why are there always players who assume the devs considered no other options besides removal?

[WalkerBoh]

This thead is proof that you literally cannot remove anything in Crawl without someone complaining about it.

For what it's worth, whenever I hit "burdened", it always meant I had to drop food or rocks. I have never raised Str for increased carrying capacity. The 52-item limit is a much more meaningful limit, both for gameplay and interface reasons. From my point of view removing item weights is purely beneficial to Crawl. Good work, gammafunk (and whoever else contributed)!

[Galefury]

OK, great, now get rid of item destruction.
So happy.

[gammafunk]

OK, great, now get rid of item destruction.
So happy.

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/noitemdest

[njvack]

This thead is proof that you literally cannot remove anything in Crawl without someone complaining about it.

BRING BACK JESTERS

Seriously, though: this thread has made me so happy (also I don't think it's come up in tavern but corrosion is already temporary holy hooray for that). I haven't played a game of Crawl in quite a long time, but trunk is calling out to me...

It's like the annoying parts of Crawl are slowly being taken out...

[Moanerette]

Brilliant change. Thank you.

[HilariousDeathArtist]

Removing item weights encourages carrying around larger stacks of items in my opinion, which doesn't seem to create any new problems.
However, this only helps solve the item management issue for characters who like to carry large stacks or have low STR.

I would be much more excited to see the item cap increased...

After playing with these changes I have to apologize if I came across as at all opposed to this idea. It is actually very pleasant to play.

I had to juggle items noticeably less than normal, and didn't ever have to worry about how much food or ammo I was carrying.

I got annoyed a few times at my pack being full when I had multiple types of food, personally I wouldn't mind the flavor loss of moving to only MRE's and fruits.

Edit: Item destruction destroyed!