Bring itemdest back (and corrosion, maybe)

[khalil]

characters already had access to any item that has generated in the game, because they could go back to previous levels

I think what he's saying is you don't have access to them all right at that particular moment. In a fight, you only have access to however much stuff you brought with you. However, you'd have to be really terribad at this game to use all of your healing potions in a single fight.

[dirtywick]

That's correct. Getting into a possibly deadly situation is much more difficult if you have every (notable) item generated in the dungeon in your inventory.

[Leafsnail]

This viewpoint just makes absolutely no sense to me though. How many HW potions do you think you could reasonably use in one fight? Ok, under the old system you could carry that number with you because you had way more of them and could afford to have a couple shatter. This is only a valid complaint if you played very poorly under the old system.

Not to mention the fact that almost all consumables can only sensibly be used once or twice within a given fight.

[khalil]

That's correct. Getting into a possibly deadly situation is much more difficult if you have every (notable) item generated in the dungeon in your inventory.

It's not harder, but there is a point where you do not need that many healing potions. There only difference between having 5 potions of cure wounds on you with 10 others back at your stash and carrying 15 potions is that the guy who has a stash will waste time running to his stash. You are not going to need five potions of cure wounds in one fight.

[dirtywick]

I don't think a bad situation is necessarily limited to one fight. For example, getting shafted, uncontrolled tele, abyssed, etc.

[khalil]

getting shafted

Solved by running away from fights until you get to the up stairs,

uncontrolled tele

Solved by running away from fights until you get to the up stairs.

abyssed

Solved by having a high MR and not fighting monsters with unidentified glowing weapons, thus avoiding getting abyssed in the first place. Oh, and if you end up there, your problems can be easily solved by running away from fights until you get to the portal out.

etc.

Solved by replacing the letters "et" with an ampersand(a pretentious name for the letters "et" written in cursive), thus replacing two keystrokes with one.

[dirtywick]

I guess my confusion is what problem you think is being solved by having stairs? I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

[Sprucery]

The places were item destruction mattered (and matters still to me in 0.14) are places like Vaults:5 or Zot:5 where it's not always so simple to go back up. If a fire giant burns your ?blinking or a frost giant freezes your !haste on Vaults:5, you're in a clearly more dangerous situation than before.

That said, old item destruction was (is) really annoying and most of the time nothing else, so I'm pretty sure I won't miss it once I get to 0.15. But the truth is that the game is a (tiny) bit easier without it.

Personally I'm beginning to feel that attacks that give -potion or -scroll could be the right way to go about it, if the devs feel that something must be done.

[Sar]

You are not going to need five potions of cure wounds in one fight.

I can remember a lot of fights where I burned through bigger HW stacks to survive. Of course, I'm not a particularly great player, but most people who play Crawl aren't particularly great either.

[Tiktacy]

From a design standpoint, I think Sar has a good point in that Itemdest added a unique and emotional element to the game. Smoke demons were genuinly scary, ice clouds were cruel, etc. But I think bickering about what would be the best course of action in THEORY is a waste of everybody's time. So I suggest that instead of telling each other why our ideas don't work, lets try coming up with a list of ideas that have potential and try to improve them, then have someone make a patch so these can be tested.

So far, here is a short list of viable options I've collected from this thread:

1) Make Fire/Ice attacks give -scroll/-potion
2) Bring back old Itemdest, but only have attacks have a chance to remove 1 scroll at a time(having these not effect your useless scrolls is one way to discourage hoarding useless scrolls/potions).
3) Make Itemdest only effect strategical consumables(Heal wounds, blinking, etc.), give additional effects to help iron out other issues(like only allowing 1 scroll to burn at a time).

[Leafsnail]

If you got abyssed and also unlucky with item destruction then I guess the old system might have occasionally caused you to run out of some consumables where you otherwise wouldn't. But that's a pretty rare situation, I don't buy that losing it makes the game significantly easier at all (particularly when there's now the "you actually have less items" factor, particularly early on).

1) Make Fire/Ice attacks give -scroll/-potion
2) Bring back old Itemdest, but only have attacks have a chance to remove 1 scroll at a time(having these not effect your useless scrolls is one way to discourage hoarding useless scrolls/potions).
3) Make Itemdest only effect strategical consumables(Heal wounds, blinking, etc.), give additional effects to help iron out other issues(like only allowing 1 scroll to burn at a time).

2) would still encourage you to carry every non-useless scroll you can, to avoid having it target the good ones.

[Hurkyl]

We need to itemize the problems we're trying to solve too. It doesn't really make sense to talk about viable options without seeing how they address the problems.

• stashing to avoid destruction -- i.e. spending time deciding how to ration out consumables and running back and forth from the front-lines to your stash
• dropping items to avoid destruction -- i.e. ducking around a corner (or upstairs) and dropping everything valuable (or even doing so in place with a couple very valuable items) so you can fight without having your consumables destroyed
• filling your inventory with junk items to reduce the chance something you care about is destroyed
• the tedium of swapping your equipment (e.g. jewelry) between your normal configuration and a destruction-resistant one (e.g. Cons, extra resistances)
• the game is less interesting without enemies that attack your inventory
• too many consumable items are available to players, particularly to strong builds

[Hurkyl]

• the game is less interesting without enemies that attack your inventory
• too many consumable items are available to players, particularly to strong builds

And I don't believe these are unanimous opinions.

For the second point in particular, you want most consumables to be relatively plentiful, just not too plentiful: you want people to use them when things get rough rather than feel pressure to save them for only the absolutely most dangerous fights.

[Leafsnail]

There's also the problem about strategic consumable destruction having no effect other than forcing the player to walk back and forth more, which I think is unanimous.

[KoboldLord]

In ideal design, it seems to me that consumables should be regularly used, because if they aren't used there's no point in them even being there. At the same time, they shouldn't always be available, because if the supply of them cannot be consumed they are not meaningfully different than any other resource. Because of the hoarding instinct, these are mutually contradictory goals. It may be that random floor spawns is not a sensible place to place consumable-style effects in a roguelike that as biased as Crawl towards tactics over strategic resource management.

[Wahaha]

Regularly using consumables and running out of consumables aren't contradictory goals. The game has moved closer to these goals by reducing the amount of potions spawned. In some games I almost run out of curing and heal wounds, and !haste is often very rare.

[KoboldLord]

Regularly using consumables and running out of consumables aren't contradictory goals. The game has moved closer to these goals by reducing the amount of potions spawned. In some games I almost run out of curing and heal wounds, and !haste is often very rare.

When you say you 'almost run out' of potions, that's the same as saying that you don't run out. You never do actually have to play without access to those potions, even with reduced potion spawns.

If potion spawns were to be reduced to such a hypothetical extent that you have to desperately hoard them instead of using them, they might as well not be spawned by the game at all because the point of a game feature is for that game feature to be applied.

It is possible to base an entire game on resource management, for instance you can have Angband-style roguelikes where you need to delicately meter out your consumable use so you always retain enough resources to farm up replacement consumables to use, and your success in major battles depends mostly on whether you have sufficient quantities of the right consumables (e.g. potions of speed, scrolls of phase door, teleport other, banishment, etc.) to see you through. Crawl has been moving away from that model, however, preferring instead to implement mechanics that are significant on a tactical scale and will be replaced through normal gameplay instead of some elaborate mini-game. If you blow through most of your hp, mp, ammunition, nutrition, or piety on a difficult battle, it will restock itself without requiring any lengthy farming or mini-games, so you can feel free to spend these resources rather than hoarding them.

[Tiktacy]

Ok, I have an idea. Create an effect called "Scroll seal/Potion Seal" or something along those lines. This effect would work similar to draining in that it requires Exp to be removed. As long as this is in effect, the appropriate consumables cannot be used.

There are multiple ways we could go about this, one option is to give certain enemies an attacked called "Scroll Seal" or "Potion Seal", a good place to start would be Flavored Elves just to test it out in trunk.

Essentially, this gives devs full control over what enemies can effect your consumables and what enemies can't(as opposed to all fire/ice based enemies having this effect). For example, Orcish Wizards won't have an effect on you late game at all even with a lucky hit, but Fire and Ice dragons will be terrifying as they can cut you off of an essential survival tool.

This would also make dropping/stashing consumables useless since they are effected no matter where they are. It would also make late game fire/ice enemies terrifying again as they can cut you off of valuable escape options and strategical advantages that can only be removed by killing more enemies. In addition, putting this in spell form makes balancing a lot more simple.

Thoughts?

[Wahaha]

When you say you 'almost run out' of potions, that's the same as saying that you don't run out. You never do actually have to play without access to those potions, even with reduced potion spawns.

That's why I said "moved closer to these goals", not "reached these goals". If consumable generation was reduced even more players would literally run out of potions, but read the next paragraph and see that making players literally run out is not exactly necessary.

The fact that there are less potions means players use less potions, even if they never run out. If I have 2 heal wounds left I have to increase the level of risk I'm willing to take to avoid using one. Maybe I won't use one at 25 hp vs a spiny frog or something similar. In contrast if I have 10 heal wounds I can use them freely. There's a huge difference between finding 10 hw in a game and 100 hw in a game, even if the player with 10 hw never drops to 0 potions carried and never "runs out". When I say "I almost run out" it means I have to take significant risks because there are few hw and I expect more dangerous situations to occur later where I am more likely to need the potions to live. Note that this is different from the new player mistake of "not using potions to save them for later and dying with tons of potions" because the hypothetical new player has enough potions for both this situation and the next one. With 1 or 2 potions there aren't enough potions for all situations where you'd want to use a potion and so you have to be able to evaluate whether it is worth using a potion for this situation or not. So when you say "you never do actually have to play without access to those potions", well in the previously mentioned situations where it is not worth using a potion, the player does play "without access" to the potion. If this isn't clear, then imagine the player has 100 potions and DOES use a potion in that situation. That's the difference and that's why not using a potion even if you have 1 or 2 left is playing "without access" to them (assuming you can fairly accurately predict that you will need them more later and your supply will stay just as limited).

If potion spawns were to be reduced to such a hypothetical extent that you have to desperately hoard them instead of using them

I don't see how potions becoming rarer leads to the player hoarding potions instead of using them. As mentioned above, if there are 10 potions in a game, the player would use them more conservatively, and hold on to them longer, because they're used less often, but that's not what hoarding means. If the player actually attempts to hoard potions (attempting to save a potion where it would be optimal to use one) then 1. he dies as a result 2. he is somewhat lucky and doesn't die 3. the game is easy and does not require the use of potions. 1 is an obviously intended result, no problem there. 2 is fine as well, players can get lucky. Players shouldn't run out of potions in every game either. 3 Crawl DOES require using potions throughout the game, so 3 doesn't happen.

So what does making potions rarer do? It simply removes the excess of potions if there are too many potions (I think that if there even is an excess, it is very small.). It makes the game harder because the player sometimes can't use a potion in a situation where he would use one. That's it, nothing to do with hoarding.

If you think that consumables should be used often, and that making them rarer makes them used not often enough (I think they're used 'regularly' but maybe you would like to see them used more often than that), the solutions would be to increase the frequency of dangerous situations, or reduce the power of consumables (this solution is bad for hw but might be good for might and agi). Increasing dangerous situations would achieve those two initial goals of "using consumables regularly" and "running out" just as well, it's just harder than reducing consumable generation.

[crate]

re: running out of consumables:

I have never personally run out of any specific consumable in a fight without ALSO running out of said consumable in the entire game--except for situations where I knew full well I'd e.g. used my last heal wounds potion in my inventory, but I was too lazy to immediately go fix this by retrieving !hw from the ground. (That did happen a few times, because going back to grab items is a noticeable effort.)

Removing item destruction is a legitimate change to pan and hell (and abyss I guess) but for the entirety of a 3 rune game (other than abyss) the change is just convenience.

[Tiktacy]

Removing item destruction is a legitimate change to pan and hell (and abyss I guess) but for the entirety of a 3 rune game (other than abyss) the change is just convenience.

I think this part sort of ignores the fact that Item desctruction gave a meaningful threat in a way that does not involve damage. ItemDest was a cool idea, but it failed because of the inconvenience that was involved in its existence. I think if we want players to not die of boredom while playing through the mid-late game, adding in something with a meaningful impact on gameplay is a good place to start.

[dirtywick]

re: running out of consumables:

I have never personally run out of any specific consumable in a fight without ALSO running out of said consumable in the entire game--except for situations where I knew full well I'd e.g. used my last heal wounds potion in my inventory, but I was too lazy to immediately go fix this by retrieving !hw from the ground. (That did happen a few times, because going back to grab items is a noticeable effort.)

Removing item destruction is a legitimate change to pan and hell (and abyss I guess) but for the entirety of a 3 rune game (other than abyss) the change is just convenience.

I guess I don't understand how that could never happen. So you've never had only one scroll of fog and used it on a centaur? Quaffed your only might potion on an early unique? Had your only scroll of blinking burned by a orc wizard?

[duvessa]

You might understand crate's post better if you read more than the first 15 words.

[katai]

If the problem about itemdest is the mechanic of the solution (dropping into stack before fighting, and similar), and item weight isn't important anymore: Why not make scrolls & potions undroppable, and add the item destruction again? That way, it's like an attack on the player: Loosing a potion / scroll is a cost. You cannot avoid it, unless you change your tactic somehow.

This would keep some of the itemdest creatures interesting and dangerous, while also removing the "boring" mechanic of always running around the corner, dropping everything, and getting back into the fight. It basically turns those two types of items into "sats", that can always be attacked by certain abilities/spells. Maybe, even the same for food - just all consumables just get their own Inventory/Bag, where they just can't be dropped once they're in (basically the same like now, since weight is out).

That's just my first thought after reading trough some of the posts here - I personally would also prefer to have itemdest, since that's one of the few reasons for me to change tactics during fights, or even retreat. It at least added a sense of "danger" outside of "Oh fuck I'm surrounded/confused!"

[Sprucery]

Undroppable items don't work well with limited inventory. Would they still take inventory slots?

[katai]

Undroppable items don't work well with limited inventory. Would they still take inventory slots?

No, they wouldn't take inventory slots if they're unremovable (since... well, that would just add other problems). They either need to be placed in a "consumables" Inventory, or maybe just have the option of "controlled destruction" (you can destroy the consumable instead of dropping it - but that wouldn't make much sense character-wise - still, I've seen it in some games). It always depends on how important the 52 Item limitation really is (I get that it's because of the limited character count, but I'm not sure if it's also thought of as a "choose what you're carrying" kind of limitation). I personally think that the 52 Item limitation is even more important now that the weight issue is gone, since otherwise it's like having a Final Fantasy Inventory... but on the other side, destroying your own items as means of making room also sounds like something no sane person (in-character) would do!

Maybe, if consumables do not take up space anymore, the item limit could be reduced to 26, to balance it out and still force the player to only carry a limited set of items.

[Sandman25]

Previous item destruction (which punished player for having many potions/scrolls) was really bad: even if I can't drop potions, it means I will not pick up excessive potions to avoid the destruction. So the "stash" will be on every floor and you will have to use Ctrl+F and come back for a couple of potions every time you are running low on specific potion.

[katai]

Previous item destruction (which punished player for having many potions/scrolls) was really bad: even if I can't drop potions, it means I will not pick up excessive potions to avoid the destruction. So the "stash" will be on every floor and you will have to use Ctrl+F and come back for a couple of potions every time you are running low on specific potion.

That could be solved in a similar way like the potions of blood for vampires: Potions (that are not in your possession) can go bad / disappear. Basically, as if another creature has taken them after a while (or a slime ate it). If the player ignores the potion for too long, just to "stash" it, it'll just be gone. Yeah, I know, it's a quite artificial way of forcing the matter again, but I guess there is no "simple" change of mechanics to achieve a system where item destruction still has it's place / value, while also trying to avoid forcing a player to run back to his stash every 10 enemies. Just changing one thing (like having them not-droppable) wouldn't fix the issue, there would be the need for this kind of tweak. On the other side, I always wonedered why the blood potions can go bad, but a 2000 year old "Health Potion" is still healthy... Another possibility would be: You only know the type of potion after picking it up (if you already identified it), and not by just looking at it while passing by.

Well, but I wouldn't just change potions so that they all have a time limit like the blood potion - I'ld just give them a time limit while on the cold, rough, humid dungeon ground - As explained, either because of them going bad, or other creatures using / collecting them.

[dirtywick]

You might understand crate's post better if you read more than the first 15 words.

It doesn't match my experience with the game.

[Tiktacy]

You might understand crate's post better if you read more than the first 15 words.

It doesn't match my experience with the game.

Crate and duvessa assume their experiences are the same as everyone elses. Based off of what I've seen in the past, I think they are quite good at relating with people, but keep in mind that their experience may not match everyone(but it will usually represent the majority of people).

[dirtywick]

That's great. What do you think?

[Tiktacy]

That's great. What do you think?

I don't think it matters. Items should not be destroyed, its infuriating and make the game less fun. But basing a negative effect off of consumables is something that still has a lot of potential.

[dranichekk]

I think that there are no acceptable for everyone solutions of these problems.
So what if Crawl would have a "difficulty" option at the beginning of every new game?


Normal is for:

• removed item weight (52-slots invertory)
• temporary corrosion
• no item destruction
• no anti-training

Conclusion:no stashes, no item-dropping, no irritative corrosions, the game is smoother, a little bit easier, and much less grindy. The whole game process seems to be smoother and more friendly for unexperienced players. And here is a possibility of creating fire-ice mage, BTW.

Hard is for:

• removed item weight (52-slots invertory)
• temporary corrosion
• item destruction
• anti-training

Conclusion:Good choise as well - removing the stashing process out of the game and permacor, but still frightening you with potion&scroll losses and anti-training for opposite magic schools.

Hardcore is for:

• old item weight system
• permanent corrosion
• item destruction
• anti-training

Conclusion:the game is a bit more realistic, grindy and hard, but there are never spirrigans, carrying ~10 plate mails with them, a lot of hardcore due to permacor and inventory damage. However it makes the player to play carefully and be more responsible for his decisions.


I see here such good sides as:

it is acceptable, because it gives the player to choose the playstyle himself

it is acceptable, because it can ballance a game both for old and new players

it is the only way of agreement between all the suggestions, described here, presented in old versions and in actual 0.15

it is acceptable, because it can provide extra chellenge to the game, if player wants so

What's for me

Spoiler: show

- I love the old system of weight and all these extra challenges, I like stashing, I like when I have penalties for my Ice Magic as DEFE, I like it, when I couldn't take unlimited amount of consumables with me, 'cause it makes the game much more atmospheric and realistic, IMHO.
SO my choise is to play on Hardcore or, maybe, Hard sometimes

Thanks.

[Leafsnail]

If a difficulty mode is added it should change things that actually make the game harder, rather than just add tedious elements back into the game.

Also I'd like you to explain how anti-training is realistic, or indeed why being attacked with fire would damage your scrolls but not your books, food, clothes etc

[dranichekk]

...it should change things that actually make the game harder, rather than just add tedious elements back into the game.

So here is a point of clash because of totally different points of view. You call these elements "tedious", but I have some reasons to like them as they are. And the "difficulty" (that should nothing to nobody, BTW) can help me and you to play Crawl with comfort and pleasure, even if we have totally different opinions about some game aspects.
It is obvious, that all these things as permacor and item weight makes the game harder and are enlarging it's strategic richness, even if adding some "tedious" for someone moments as well. Here is nothing to argue about

Also I'd like you to explain how anti-training is realistic, or indeed why being attacked with fire would damage your scrolls but not your books, food, clothes etc

I don't want to see crawl totally realistic, and if you were attentive while reading my previous post, you can notice, that I mentioned the game to become "a little bit more realistic", and I see realism in such things, as when kobold could not carry as much as ogre and when a fire mage could not use ice shield spell, and when the freeze cloud makes your potions shatter.

It is an interesting idea to damage more that only scrolls and potions, but, I guess, such changes will lead to serious balance issues, and here and now we are discussing what we have and what we could do with it, instead of suggesting much more other ideas

I want to remind, that here is my point of view described, and we can have a bit different opinions about what is "realistic", "tedious" and "hard". Please comment my difficulty idea, instead of commenting my views on realism and so on, my views can be wrong as well

Thanks.

[Hurkyl]

Calling them difficulty levels is a bad idea, because you're telling players "if you want to claim to be good at this game, you have to play with all of these tedious things".

(also, even having them as options would still encourage people to think of it as a difficulty level)

[duvessa]

I see realism in such things, as when kobold could not carry as much as ogre and when a fire mage could not use ice shield spell, and when the freeze cloud makes your potions shatter.

I think we have very different definitions of the word "realism"

[Arrhythmia]

I see realism in such things, as when kobold could not carry as much as ogre and when a fire mage could not use ice shield spell, and when the freeze cloud makes your potions shatter.

I think we have very different definitions of the word "realism"

Pretty sure magic potions are actually real we just call them "Antibiotics" for some weird reason.

[dranichekk]

Calling them difficulty levels is a bad idea, because you're telling players "if you want to claim to be good at this game, you have to play with all of these tedious things".

Thanks, I'm thinking about it too, and I see that it is not the best solution. But if it would be like "Original Crawl" and "New Crawl" or something like that, maybe it can help a bit, what do you think about it?
Or, maybe, make "original mechanic" turnable in init.txt, for players that really want to play in that way

Thanks.

I see realism in such things, as when kobold could not carry as much as ogre and when a fire mage could not use ice shield spell, and when the freeze cloud makes your potions shatter.

I think we have very different definitions of the word "realism"

Maybe I am using the wrong word, but I can't find a better one to describe the way I see it. I just hope my point of view is understandable, anyway, even if I use not the proper word to describe the whole thing.

Thank.

[Sar]

The thing is that you're stating things like permacorr being harder when in reality new corrosion actually makes the game harder, as it will hurt you despite having rCorr or artifacts.

As I stated in the OP, my issue is not that these changes make Crawl easier, and if they do it could be addressed in different ways (reducing the amount of scrolls and potions has already been done, for example).

[Patashu]

Maybe I am using the wrong word, but I can't find a better one to describe the way I see it.

Look up 'versimilitude'

[crate]

re: running out of consumables:

I have never personally run out of any specific consumable in a fight without ALSO running out of said consumable in the entire game--except for situations where I knew full well I'd e.g. used my last heal wounds potion in my inventory, but I was too lazy to immediately go fix this by retrieving !hw from the ground. (That did happen a few times, because going back to grab items is a noticeable effort.)

Removing item destruction is a legitimate change to pan and hell (and abyss I guess) but for the entirety of a 3 rune game (other than abyss) the change is just convenience.

I guess I don't understand how that could never happen. So you've never had only one scroll of fog and used it on a centaur? Quaffed your only might potion on an early unique? Had your only scroll of blinking burned by a orc wizard?

Since your post below indicates you did not understand properly: the examples you give are things that have happened to me. In those cases, I have run out of said consumable in the entire game. I said this is a thing that happens.

What does not happen is: I am carrying 2 haste potions, and I have 2 haste potions elsewhere in the dungeon, and I need to use 3 haste potions in a single encounter (this is the situation that would be legitimately changed by item destruction compared to just having fewer consumables). Now, if you choose to carry an insufficient number of potions for your particular skill then it's entirely possible to run out (and carrying just 1 potion of a type that you really want to have available is of course a bad idea). But the problem there is you chose to carry too few potions. If I carry only 2 hw potions (despite having more available) and run out, then the problem there was that despite knowing that I might run out of potions I didn't correct this.

In the end, item destruction works very nearly identically to just generating fewer potions--in either case the end result is that you get fewer potions. The main differences are:

1) Item destruction punished worse players (players who (should) carry more potions because they might need them) more severely
2) Item destruction rewarded finding conservation of some sort (by giving you a significant increase in how many consumables you get). (Personally I think this is a bad thing, but you can argue otherwise).
3) Item destruction makes players spend a significantly larger amount of time picking up and dropping items.
4) The legitimate changes to pan/abyss/hell that I mentioned above.

There are also smaller changes like item destruction (especially in older versions) giving "EV characters" more consumables than "AC characters". But the end result of item destruction is players get fewer consumables; the end result of reducing consumable generation is players get fewer consumables. It's not hard to see that the two things are largely equivalent, and given point 3) above I think that removing item destruction makes crawl more fun without much/any loss in gameplay depth/strategy/tactics/whatever.

[Jeremiah]

What about having some monsters with either a "fiery aura" or a "freezing aura" that prevents use of scrolls or potions while in LOS of the monster. I guess there are already silent spectres that prevent scroll use, there could be something similar that doesn't also prevent spell casting/invocations, and something that prohibits potion use.

[Sandman25]

What about having some monsters with either a "fiery aura" or a "freezing aura" that prevents use of scrolls or potions while in LOS of the monster. I guess there are already silent spectres that prevent scroll use, there could be something similar that doesn't also prevent spell casting/invocations, and something that prohibits potion use.

Also probably there is some space for special monsters who prevent use of specific consumable/spell: Snails prevent wand/potion/spell of haste, Blinking Frogs prevent scroll/spell of Blinking, all Spriggans prevent use of might, Ancient Champions prevent use of berserk (potion/evocation only, Trog still works) etc.

[johlstei]

I don't like all this talk about -potion and -scroll, removing access to certain consumables or classes of consumables is a completely different thing from item destruction, which didn't do anything remotely like that except when it happened to destroy your last consumable. Whether or not -scroll and -potion effects are worthwhile things to have in the game, I think they are completely tangential to the discussion of item destruction, as they would not really be a replacement, they'd be something new.

[TeshiAlair]

Ok, I have an idea. Create an effect called "Scroll seal/Potion Seal" or something along those lines. This effect would work similar to draining in that it requires Exp to be removed. As long as this is in effect, the appropriate consumables cannot be used.

There are multiple ways we could go about this, one option is to give certain enemies an attacked called "Scroll Seal" or "Potion Seal", a good place to start would be Flavored Elves just to test it out in trunk.

Essentially, this gives devs full control over what enemies can effect your consumables and what enemies can't(as opposed to all fire/ice based enemies having this effect). For example, Orcish Wizards won't have an effect on you late game at all even with a lucky hit, but Fire and Ice dragons will be terrifying as they can cut you off of an essential survival tool.

This would also make dropping/stashing consumables useless since they are effected no matter where they are. It would also make late game fire/ice enemies terrifying again as they can cut you off of valuable escape options and strategical advantages that can only be removed by killing more enemies. In addition, putting this in spell form makes balancing a lot more simple.

Thoughts?

Since this seemed to get ignored, just wanted to bump it and say that I think this is the best solution. It allows for situations where lack of access to consumables requires different strategic considerations, without making it overly trivial or long term crippling. It seems design-wise to be in line with the recent draining and corrosion changes as well. (I'm aware that people aren't a fan of temp corrosion as well, but I feel that bad mutations serve the niche of "permanently inconveniencing/possibly fucking you" very nicely.)

I don't like all this talk about -potion and -scroll, removing access to certain consumables or classes of consumables is a completely different thing from item destruction, which didn't do anything remotely like that except when it happened to destroy your last consumable. Whether or not -scroll and -potion effects are worthwhile things to have in the game, I think they are completely tangential to the discussion of item destruction, as they would not really be a replacement, they'd be something new.

I think they are a replacement in the sense that the reasoning behind itemdest is limitation of access to consumables, whether that is time-based or resource based.


Here's my solution to the issue:
Take the "common" consumables, the ones that you are likely to have a great deal of, and make them into fairly common wands with very low charges (1-2).


Pros:
Each wand takes up inventory space, so selecting which tools you have with you at any given time is a meaningful choice.
Recharging allows you to get more of a resource, but adds a choice of which resource feels most valuable to a given player, allowing better players to make better choices, and less experienced players to try and learn which resources are more valuable.
It would also allow for a more fluid way to balance wands of hasting/heal wounds/teleportation by lowering the max number of charges and making there be less unnecessary overlap.
Prevents fire/ice spells from being overloaded. Ice can already slow you and tends to do massive damage in melee. Fire I don't believe does anything special except for sticky flame, but there is potential for design space there (burn status effect perhaps. A topic for another thread).
Similarly, allows for new kinds of threats- eyeballs or purple ugly things have a wand draining effect for instance.

Cons:
Stashing.
Probably lots of others I'm not thinking of at the moment.

[daggaz]

I agree with the 'forest for the trees' statement. Stashing was tedious and annoying. Item destruction was often annoying and caused tedious behaviors to avoid it. So to get rid of (entirely voluntary on the player's part) annoying tedium, the solution was to completely bork game balance, and remove choices? By removing item destruction AND weight limits, the game has taken a nose dive towards boringly easy. Crawl is supposed to be HARD, its supposed to kill you if you dont think about your choices. There are no choices any more regarding the most powerful escape options available to (nearly) all characters. You simply hoard everything and know you will always have it on hand should the need arise. And now, you dont even need to fret about either removing your amulet of faith, or just sucking it up with the goddamn centaurs (or finding other options).

Personally (and I know Im in the vanishing minority here), I liked item weight limits. It wasnt just realistic and a throwback to old school DnD, which was also hard compared to today's RPG crap of infinite inventories and little to no real choices, but it even resulted in some hard situations from time to time. Like getting your strength drained and not being able to just tuck up back the stairs in time.

Item destruction? If it was so annoying, just include more options to avoid it. Dropping stacks of scrolls when a mottled dragon showed up was admittedly a pain in the ass, but at least it made mottled dragons interesting, most notably when they popped around a corner and flamed your scrolls before you could react. It also made killing one and skinning it an interesting option for avoiding this type of item destruction. Why didnt something similar exist for specifically for flaming arrows? Make new options or choices, instead of removing an essential game balancing mechanic. I opt for the nuclear option, however: Make item destruction such a consistent threat, players MUST learn to cope, and avoidance options become worth their weight in gold.

And in order to plug tedius behavior, impliment new methods to punish it. Scrolls that are dropped, can get muddied. Potions that are dropped can break or spill. And here is the kicker: Any item of value dropped by the player is flagged as 'exceedingly interesting' to any monster that can pick it up and isnt in active pursuit of the player. Any item of value that is seen by the player gets a timer before the same effect kicks in. Change the respawn rate in the Vestuble and hey presto, stashing of any kind is pretty much nipped in the bud.

Will just add, with specific regard to potions, a DnD mechanic to limit their use was simply to cause random effects if too many were quaffed in short time. Magic n shit, yo. Maybe a good idea? Other games just said, 'You are too full to drink another potion right now' so perhaps upping their food value could be another option.

Anyhow, that's my two cents. Crawl needs to get back to its roots and avoid the modern traps of PS3 bore-you-to-death-its-so-easy RPGs. Removing hard limits in this game was a step in teh wrong direction, dont pander to the whiners.

PS: the new corrosion mechanic is good imho, but the idea about a very small chance for permanent damage is also worth a serious look

[duvessa]

dont pander to the whiners.

Sounds good

[Leafsnail]

That post seems like a good demonstration of a major tension in the pro-item destruction camp: supposedly the fact that you can now access all your items makes the game too easy, but if you implement anti-stashing measures then it would be the same under item destruction - you'd carry all the consumables you've found. The only difference is that there would be a consumable tax for people who haven't found some particular item (which isn't too different from just reducing item spawn rates like they did)

[daggaz]

You miss the point, which is that the game should implement both measures. No stashing (or at least make it significantly more risky to do so, thus introducing a burden of choice) on one end, and on the other: item destruction and weight limits.

This means you will carry what you can with you, but there will be less of it to carry. The ever present threat of destruction/theft means as well that the game rewards the player for using consumable instead of hoarding them. Using your consumables is more fun. The game is supposed to push the player towards making decisions and having fun.

The only difference is that there would be a consumable tax for people who haven't found some particular item.

This by the way is way off the mark, in that every character ever is taxed by the RNG if they are missing some essential item. Its arguably THE core mechanic driving character development. I think also that you are cherry picking, assuming that there only exists a few no_item_destruct items like the cloak of preservation as per the old status quo, and ignoring my idea about making more solutions available, which should be both permanent and temporary btw.