Proposal: Inventory challenges

[Roderic]

Since the removal of the weight and item destruction, the slot inventory has become one of the most abstract and unaltered features of Crawl. It's even more magical than Doraemon's magic pocket.

I think it is a good niche to add new playing challenges. This is a list of ideas and their possible implementations:

- Removal of slots. You lose a certain number of slots. If you are full, items fall at ground randomly. This can be seen as corrosion but affecting the slots of your inventory -let's assume that are your garments and pockets what are affected. This could be a possible reintroduction of fire attacks without item destruction.

- Locked slots. You lose the capacity of consume or access items because the slot(s) is(are) locked. Besides you cannot drop the items in these slots. I see this as a possible reintroduction of ice attacks because they freeze the garments and pockets

- Incapacity to grab items. You cannot add new items to your inventory despite having space. This can be implemented as a monster hex similar to drain. I propose two degrees:
1) cannot grab but use on ground
2) neither grab nor use

If by some reason temporal passing out of these effects above is plain boring or leads to tedium by simply pressing '5', more complex alternatives could be made such as assessing a certain amount of XP or exploring.

- Losing items: I know that harpies' steal food was very painful and wsa removed. What I'm thinking is a monster tloc spell which randomly places some items of your inventory again in the level so you have to look for them again.

- Single item curse: Another hex-like, this is more abstract because simply states that you cannot accumulate more of the same consumable but one per slot.

Discuss.

[crate]

i think you missed cyc

[Leafsnail]

Since the removal of the weight and item destruction, the slot inventory has become one of the most abstract and unaltered features of Crawl. It's even more magical than Doraemon's magic pocket.

So the problem you've identified is that the slot feature is "abstract". Well um, ok. How does a feature being "abstract" or "magical" (in a game which explicitly includes magic) go against the stated philosophy of the game?

- Removal of slots. You lose a certain number of slots. If you are full, items fall at ground randomly. This can be seen as corrosion but affecting the slots of your inventory -let's assume that are your garments and pockets what are affected. This could be a possible reintroduction of fire attacks without item destruction.

How does this address the problem you've identified?

- Locked slots. You lose the capacity of consume or access items because the slot(s) is(are) locked. Besides you cannot drop the items in these slots. I see this as a possible reintroduction of ice attacks because they freeze the garments and pockets

How does this address the problem you've identified?

- Incapacity to grab items. You cannot add new items to your inventory despite having space. This can be implemented as a monster hex similar to drain. I propose two degrees:
1) cannot grab but use on ground
2) neither grab nor use

How does this address the problem you've identified?

- Losing items: I know that harpies' steal food was very painful and wsa removed. What I'm thinking is a monster tloc spell which randomly places some items of your inventory again in the level so you have to look for them again.

How does this address the problem you've identified?

- Single item curse: Another hex-like, this is more abstract because simply states that you cannot accumulate more of the same consumable but one per slot.

How does this address the problem you've identified?

Even if we ignore the fact that none of your suggestions have anything to do with your preamble you need to try and explain why any of them would lead to interesting gameplay, because they all sound like item destruction only less meaningful and more annoying.

[Roderic]

To put it plain and simple, to me a variable* number of slots is more interesting (someone else can call it annoying, it's fine) than having a constant number of them for all the game. Let's say that every other trait of your play: skills, stats, resistances, weapons... experiement variability along the game, sometimes you lose them sometimes you gain. But the slot inventory is fixed as if it were a dogma and currently is very dettached from the interaction with the dungeon. I agree that item destruction or stealing was tedium because it leads to drop fight and grab again. With these solutions there are some challenges and a feeling that dungeon's threats may affect not only you but your items.

* or at least, the possibility of experiencing this as a threat

[Lasty]

Roderic, for each of the proposals you've made, please visualize a scenario where you, the player, run into an example of it. Picture how it would impact your character, and what actions you, the player, would be forced to do to adjust to the existence of that feature. Try to imagine what the typical case is and also the most extreme case of 1) the ability being applied the character multiple times and 2) a player playing optimally around this feature.

I think you'll find that for most of these suggestions you are creating scenarios that frustrate rather than challenge the player.

[jejorda2]

I know I clean out my inventory before entering portal vaults to make room for loot, and sometimes there is some tension. Will I need that wand? Will I be willing to leave it behind for something else?

Usually the answer is, "If I leave it in the portal, it will be because I found something better." Just like the answer to, "Should I wait to enchant this helmet in case I find a helmet of Intelligence" is "+0 helm of Int is better than +1 helm."

But I still like that decision, and making it more often would be fun. I don't know if any of these proposals would lead to that kind of decision, unless it were branch wide or something like that.

[njvack]

I could imagine loss of inventory slots as an Iashol sacrifice. Maybe it would just mean more stash runs, but I suspect that, say, a 26 slot inventory would actually be a pretty significant limitation.

"Sacrifice Pockets"?

[and into]

Let's say that every other trait of your play: skills, stats, resistances, weapons... experiement variability along the game, sometimes you lose them sometimes you gain. But the slot inventory is fixed as if it were a dogma and currently is very dettached from the interaction with the dungeon.

A lot of other things are immune to being messed with by enemies and game effects. No enemy effect changes the fact that the yuhjklnm keys move my character. No enemy effects change the spells I have memorized (orange crystal statues used to do this but don't any longer, and for good reason). No enemy effects reassign the spell or ability slots to try to prompt miskeying.

In terms of game play, the "inventory" is just a menu, it is an interface that separates "stuff that is 100% accessible to me" from "stuff that is accessible to me when no enemies are present." (For speedruns that separation matters more but let's ignore that.)

The reason item destruction was bad was not because it was painful—it is also painful when I lose a character I've invested an hour or two in—but because it mucked with that separation in ways that were more frustrating than actually challenging in 99 out of 100 cases. You could squirrel away whatever you wanted and make it 100% safe, and still have access to it at any moment when an enemy was not in your face. So long as you carried one or two of each consumable—whatever you felt comfortable with—every encounter was exactly the same as carrying all your consumables in your inventory, you just had to trek back to your stash continually in order to resupply.

All the stuff you are suggesting is not just like the more recent (now removed) item destruction, which is bad enough. It looks more like old item destruction, when you could do stuff like carry around extra unneeded scrolls to limit the chances that good ones would be burned up. All the stuff you suggest encourage workarounds that intrude on game play.

Locked slots means you have to carry various different food types around and items that produce similar effects, so that if one thing gets locked you have a fallback. Removal of slots means that you just roll with less slots filled, obviously, because having stuff in your inventory fall out of it randomly is really bad because it means you cannot ever fly over lava or deep water (unless merfolk in latter case)—the corollary of this is that you have to wrangle with auto-pickup even more than usual, which doesn't sound very fun either. Incapacity to grab items doesn't matter unless combined with removal of slots, but as pointed out above there's a workaround to that; besides, the game already has a great way to discourage picking up items—namely, by having enemies around. When enemies are around you don't want to waste turns picking up something, and when enemies are not around, why on earth wouldn't the game allow you to pick something up, except to annoy (not challenge) you? The "take item(s) from your inventory and scatter them over the level" idea is far and away the worst and I really hope I don't have to explain why.

I don't mean to be harsh and I don't intend any of this personally, but I fundamentally fail to see how any of these proposals would add to the game. So long as the floor is an "infinite bag of holding" in Crawl, and you can freely travel back or forward, I think the inventory must be treated as simply an interface convenience. The only times when inventory concerns might even approach significance are those few instances in Crawl when your ability to backtrack freely is curtailed, e.g., Pan, Abyss, and some portals. Things that randomly screw with inventory are attacks on the player's time and patience, pure and simple, rather than challenges to his or her actual ability to play Crawl.

[Matanui3]

My main gripe with inventory slots is that the max slots you have (52) does not mesh with the inventory graphic.
When my inventory is full, I can still clearly see empty slots.

[Hirsch I]

"sacrifice riches" or "vow of poverty" you can only carry 2 potions, 2 scrolls, a wand and what you can wear.

[PleasingFungus]

My main gripe with inventory slots is that the max slots you have (52) does not mesh with the inventory graphic.
When my inventory is full, I can still clearly see empty slots.

Should be slightly better now:



Might try to remove those last few squares entirely, if I can figure out what generates them.

[twelwe]

those squares should stay, they are for future DLC

[Patashu]

those squares should stay, they are for future DLC

2015: English Alphabet officially extended by three letters to allow for Crawl 0.17's release

[tompliss]

Except it would only need 1.5 new letters, and I think we have a problem with the half letter.