Vampiric message rewording

[Sar]

  Code:

As you grasp it, you feel a great hunger. Being not satiated, you stop.

I've seen new players misinterpreting it at least three times. And by "misinterpreting" I mean "I can't ever wield vampiric weapons, help". I think the confusion stems from the fact that you aren't really "hungry" when your status bar lacks "Hungry"? Either way, it could be reworded in a more blunt way (I'm not good at it, though), or perhaps it should be allowed to wield vamp weapons at "normal" satiation, dropping you all the way to "Near Starving".

[DracheReborn]

Yeah, that has to be one of the more opaque messages in crawl.

I'd go for something direct like "You need to be Full or above to wield this weapon" (compare to "You can't wield that with a shield."). Another alternative is a prompt, e.g. "Wielding this weapon will greatly reduce your satiation level, are you sure?" which would work with Sar's second option, but this seems more annoying.

[Lasty]

Regarding the proposal to allow wielding vampiric weapons at less than Full, I always assumed that the intention behind the current behavior is to force most races to use up permafood as part of the equip cost.

[Bart]

If current message is a problem, then it should be fixed (although for me it is clear enough).
The point to disallow characters from wielding vampiric weapons when not full+ is to force them to eat their permafood and thus prevent too much switching as a price. (this at least applies to most character cases, unless they can get full+ because of mutations).

[One-Eyed Jack]

You could also remove that mechanic because who gives a shit about food?

Make it hurt you on equip or something instead

[Curio]

You could also remove that mechanic because who gives a shit about food?

Make it hurt you on equip or something instead

I concur. Not because of food issue but because of lack of flavor to it. Directly harming player on equip is more appropriate to avoid switching abuse.

[zrn]

You could also remove that mechanic because who gives a shit about food?

Make it hurt you on equip or something instead

This is equivalent to triggering a mechanical trap when there are no monsters around. DracheReborn's wording is pretty good, clear wording is always way better than a slightly more flavorful message.

[Curio]

You could also remove that mechanic because who gives a shit about food?

Make it hurt you on equip or something instead

This is equivalent to triggering a mechanical trap when there are no monsters around.

Thats the point! You can safely switch to vampiric and heal off in the corner but will think twice doing so in heat of the battle

[WalkerBoh]

"I want to change the wording of 'X'."
"You know, instead of changing the wording, let's just change the whole mechanic instead."
"Speaking of weapon mechanics, what about 'Y'? That has problem xyz."
"No, mechanic 'Y' is fine, we don't need to change that, you're dumb."
(2 pages of bickering about 'Y' later...)
"Thread locked, all relevant things have been said, no changes made."

AND THIS iS WHY NOTHING USEFUL EVER GETS DONE IN GDD.

Anyways, changing the message is good and easy. Let's just stick to that.

[and into]

@WalkerBoh:

That can be really frustrating yes, but on the other hand, beyond the OP and the first few responses, I don't think there is much more to say about the matter of rewording the message—and it doesn't seem that anyone disagrees. So in this particular case, if things evolve into a general discussion of vampiric brand, that's probably okay. You can't derail a train that's pretty much already at rest at its destination. (I think Sar's right and hopefully a dev will tweak the wording, fwiw.) If discussion goes really far afield I'll move it to CYC and just keep the narrowly relevant posts in GDD, but in the meantime people can discuss wield cost for vampiric brand.

[WalkerBoh]

That's fair. This isn't the best example of what I observed, just an extremely obvious one. I only commented because I'm a jerk.

[damiac]

I demand WalkerBoh be banned for calling WalkerBoh a jerk.

I think the reason for the requirement to be full or better is to stop people from swapping from the vampiric weapon to a bow or whatever, so I think if you were able to easily re-wield the weapon after combat, it would take away a big disadvantage of vampiric weapons.

Of course, some people think there's practically infinite permafood anyway, so perhaps the disadvantage is more perceived than actual.

[Sar]

I regret offering the second option, I didn't think it through.

[damiac]

You should edit it out of your first post, to make everyone discussing it look crazy.

But since we've opened the box of Pandora's worms, how about this for a more meaningful restriction:
Wielding a vamp weapon is allowed at any satiation level.
Vampiric weapons drain satiation extra fast (similar to the very old behavior they had before I started playing)
Vampiric effect slowly becomes effective, like amulet of the gourmand(but based on attacks rather than based on turn count)
Once they have become effective, the satiation drain is slowed somewhat, or eliminated.

So you can swap all you want, but you have to stick with the weapon for a while for it to be better than an unbranded weapon. This ensures you pay the satiation price, without making vamp weapons feel so restrictive. At the same time, while they feel less restrictive, their swapping restriction would be more meaningful than it is currently. And I don't think any of this would make vampiric weapons underpowered.

[Kate]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 9420692e0e