tealizard wrote:Magipi wrote:I just don't get it. If you find quaff/read/wear ID interesting, then why don't you just do it? Nothing forces you to read ID scrolls.
This is a pretty good criticism of the OP. The problem with ID isn't just that there are too many ID scrolls, a problem that the player can solve by using fewer ID scrolls as you say.
This is actually a pretty terrible criticism. Nothing "forces" you to use a heal wounds potion if you're in danger of dying, nothing "forces" you to upgrade your weapon when an upgrade is available. The point is that an interesting choice is available when you're *forced* to deal with unidentifed things, like when there's not another choice, like using an ID scroll.
Is it optimal to burn potentially valuable consumables to use-ID them? Currently it nearly never is, unless you're in a real emergency very early (Which isn't really use-ID, it's more like desperate situations call for desperate measures). If that balance was changed so that you were going to have to wait a very very very long time to eke out an extra consumable by not use-IDing them, it brings the choice to use-ID much closer to one that you might make. (Knowing what effect a potion or scroll will have makes it about a billion times more useful)
In the game as it is right now, there's almost no reason to use-ID at all.
tealizard wrote:To circle back and drill down a bit:
tealizard wrote:Brogue has a much better identification game because there are fewer items to identify, fewer items that do identification, and there's a mass pseudo-id item.
There are three dimensions of improvement here where the OP's approach addresses only one. Fewer ID items in crawl, by itself, just displaces an ID scroll use with a use/wear ID action. This is not an improvement. It's actually worse in terms of key presses for equipment. You need either fewer items to ID or fewer ID actions to accommodate your identification needs before you see cleaner gameplay.
It's not that useful to think of identification as having "power" in the sense of changing your odds of winning, but looking at "identification power" as purely the effectiveness of ID scrolls at achieving the player's aims in finding out which items do what, giving the player a targeted identification effect is very "powerful." An effect that will often fail to identify what the player wants to identify at the moment due to randomization will produce situations where the player wants to use/wear ID something that wouldn't occur with targeted ID effects. This means you can make ID more consequential in more parts of the game, while also reducing the total number of ID actions the player needs to take. It's a win-win scenario.
Identification has a direct impact on winning power, every thing that you scroll-ID is something that you can use without wasting it, and without worrying that it's going to be a cursed downgrade, allowing you to upgrade items freely and maximize your consumable use.
The recent change to have monster's equipment pre-identified reduces the total number of ID actions needed, I didn't happen to think it needed any more.
Your suggestion (if I understand it properly, I think you're suggesting ID scrolls be basically "will identify some random item") is pretty bad, 1. It's possibly gamable, if it's "will identify some random item you have" you only need to divest yourself of all items except the one you want to ID to replicate the effects of targeted ID with lots more keypresses. 2. If it's not gamable because it will identify "some random item that exists" whether you have it or not (assuming that you're talking about either generated items or all items that ever will exist of a certain type) you are actually *increasing* the number of ID actions you need to take, since you need to ID a bunch of things that you don't care about before you get to the ones you do. 3. If it's not gamable because it's targeted, but might just fail to work, then it's the same as just reducing the number of ID scrolls, but with more keypresses.
So it's not a 'win-win' it's a 'lose-lose' or possibly a 'lose-lose-lose' depending on exactly what you're alluding to.
Also to be pedantic, use-ID'ing a scroll or potion takes less keypresses than scroll-ID'ing one. (2 vs 3)
FWIW I'd also like to reduce the number of remove curse scrolls available for similar reasons, but that's a separate issue (And I consider it less impactful).