A New Take On "Item Destruction"

[Tiktacy]

Introduction:

Given that the recent discussion in the Item destruction thread has been productive in explaining item destruction's pros and cons, I figured now might be a good time to post a thread about an innovative way to "fix" it.

In a sense, there is no REAL way to fix Item Destruction without completely changing the way consumables are handled, and quite honestly the mechanic just isn't worth doing that. Even still, a negative effect involving consumables being cut off has already proven to lead to interesting gameplay scenarios. For example, the unique Angel Mennas cuts players off of scroll usage temporarily using silence, which can sometimes lead to very intense moments in gameplay.

Unfortunately, being cut off of consumables has not been very successful in the past. Mennas only shows the potential of -Consumables, it doesn't quite represent genuine proof of concept. For example, I believe Retch cut players off of potions for a temporary amount of time, but was eventually removed since it didn't add anything interesting to the game, and silence is more about cutting you off of your spells, not so much scrolls. The main issues with retch was the fact that it was so easily removed, all you needed to do was go to a safe place and rest until it went away, and silence only lasts until the aura disappears or you kill the enemy, and in most scenarios you could simply escape and come back when it doesn't effect you as much.

After spending a little while contemplating the flaws of these past attempts and how to fix them, I think I finally found a way to implement -Scrolls/Potions without it being infuriating or completely harmless.

Concept:

Essentially, the idea is to create 2 new effects, we'll call them "Seal Scrolls" and "Seal Potions" for now. These effects would do exactly what you would expect, they make it so you are unable to use the appropriate consumables. These effects would work similar to draining in that you can't remove it by waiting, only gaining experience can get rid of the effect.

Seal Scroll and Seal Potions would not be spells on there own, but instead would be tacked on to other abilities. For example, giving Fire Dragons the ability "Scroll Seal: Bolt of Fire" which would essentially be bolt of fire that gives you the Scroll seal effect with the length of the effect being based on the damage of the bolt. As stated above, the effect would not disappear until enough experience has been gained(again, similar to draining).

Explaination:

One of Item Destructions biggest flaws was the consumable management that went along with it, having to create stashes and drop valuable consumables before entering battle was incredibly tedious. So, instead of having the attack damage the consumables, the attack "damages" the player. This effect will inevitably lead to more interesting tactics than dropping scrolls when your out of LOS, it will encourage the player to find alternative ways to deal with powerful creatures since their attacks have a chance to hurt you in ways besides damage.

On top of being more interesting(and less emotionally damaging...), this effect also gives the devs free reigns for balancing and the ability to implement this new form of "Consumable Hatred" wherever they see fit.

Conclusion:

The idea for this is certainly a different take on the issue. A lot of people seem to be in support of a consumable based bad-effect, and I believe this to be a good place to start. It looks good on paper to me, and I would love to hear what other people think. The concept is flexible and there is a number of different ways one can go about implementing Scroll/Potion Seals, so I am happy to listen to feedback from the community. In particular, I would like to hear feedback on the difficulty of this coding this effect into the game. It doesn't appear to be difficult, but I figured devs would know more about that than I would.

[tabstorm]

If too many consumables is a problem can't we just nerf spawns again or something instead of screwing with people's inventories? Please? I'm sort of sad that people keep clamoring for more item denial after we just made so much progress with removing item destruction.

I feel like this would be annoying because you'd always be trying to game your resists to reduce as much as possible the amount of time you would be under -potion/-scroll even if it was otherwise unnecessary.

[Tiktacy]

If too many consumables is a problem can't we just nerf spawns again or something instead of screwing with people's inventories? Please? I'm sort of sad that people keep clamoring for more item denial after we just made so much progress with removing item destruction.

I feel like this would be annoying because you'd always be trying to game your resists to reduce as much as possible the amount of time you would be under -potion/-scroll even if it was otherwise unnecessary.

That seems like it would be a decent option, but the issues with item destruction had much more to do with the implementation rather than the concept itself. Also, optimal play already involves ring swapping most of the time, so I don't see how this would change the way you play normally.

I do see what you are getting at though, item restriction would be frustrating if it wasn't implemented correctly. At the very least, adding this into the game gives the devs options to test the waters of a less broken form of Item Destruction. The devs have already removed most of the frustrating and unfun parts of the game over the last year, weight and nausea are no more, and Item Destruction is finally purged. Now would be a good time to turn some of the old illusions of difficulty(i.e. redundancy and tediousness) into actual difficulty that can be avoided with better strategy, and finding ways of damaging the player that can't be cured by pressing 5 a bunch of times is a good place to start.

The new form of draining is very well designed in my experience. It is terrifying and potentially damaging, but it isn't extensively punishing people for things they couldn't avoid(being forced to kill shadow dragons in the old vaults:5 is a good example). I think making another effect using a similar mechanic might prove to be successful.

[tabstorm]

The difference is that if my defenses are top-tier, I don't really care about swapping to a ring to get that second/3rd rank of fire resist - what is 10-20 more damage in a fight I know I'm going to win anyway? I can just rest or cast regen or worship makhleb/TSO. Well it certainly might matter with this system, because I'll suffer longer-term consequences if I don't. It's one thing to argue about optimal things that almost never happen in reality but if it's something that looks like it can have a nontrivial affect on your win chance by denying you consumables I think it's not great to have.

I just don't understand why people want item destruction/denial so badly. Like I said if there are too many potions just nerf the spawns or something, we already have a no-potion difficulty setting for people who want it. At least consumables present some form of tactics by actually allowing you to use them, vs "Nope lol screw you! Better run away earlier rather than later!" as opposed to being able to plan fights or certain floors around your consumables.

Edit: Another thing about this system is that I'd have no idea how long my potions or scrolls are going to be denied for. I mean it works OK for evocables since having/not having them isn't a life or death thing, but if my escapes are locked out for ????? turns.. Not really a huge fan. It's not like players can reasonably expect to know how much XP monsters give (I have no idea how much XP anything gives) Plus I feel it would probably privilege fire resist even more (because we have fireball)

The difference between draining and this is that while both are XP based, draining just weakens your characters fighting ability, so you have to adjust your tactics or (heh) use consumables. With consumable denial I think you're just reducing tactical options.

Overall I just hate item denial and think it's annoying, I'd rather increase difficulty in a more honest way than screwing with player inventory.

[duvessa]

If free access to consumables is making the game uninteresting then that seems like a problem that needs to be addressed by changing consumables themselves, not introducing completely new bandage mechanics. (You were virtually guaranteed access to consumables with old item destruction, too.) Wouldn't it be better for every fight to be interesting, instead of only fights where you have -potion/-scroll?

A -scroll effect also already exists with silence, which I don't often see hailed as good design.

[and into]

And –Potion exists with Oz's Refrigeration. What makes that a lot better is you can only get that status by using the spell yourself. Since the spell self-damages (and always has) you had to resign yourself to 5ing once anyway, so the short-term -potion status doesn't even add any grief there, it was a very good change to refrigeration.

Another thing is that with this proposal, you still have the old problem of strategic and tactical effects being mixed together both in potions and in scrolls. So -scroll doesn't just mean no ?blinking, but also no remove curse. And it doesn't just wear off by 5ing, so it seems like the mechanic would be prone to reintroducing some of the annoying hassle that non-destructible items has removed.

[Sprucery]

Silence is good design imho and makes Mennas an interesting unique. Also silent spectres would be great if they just spawned somewhere else than Crypt where all dangerous monster are spellcasters and thus the spectre actually helps the player. Put some silent spectres for example in Vaults:5 and you have interesting times.

If, and only if, -potion needs to be a thing other that Ozo's, I'd prefer a monster with -potion aura.

[Sandman25]

I hope new "item destruction" will NOT depend on rF+/rC+. It is not fair to punish players who were unlucky with gear twice. Fighting OoF with potion of resistance as the only source of rF+ is hard enough, I don't want severe item destruction to be on top of that. IMHO it should be closer to silent specter mechanic where player cannot do much to counter. Draining and rN+ is a different matter since it is not that common in 3 rune game.

[Sandman25]

Edit: Another thing about this system is that I'd have no idea how long my potions or scrolls are going to be denied for. I mean it works OK for evocables since having/not having them isn't a life or death thing, but if my escapes are locked out for ????? turns.. Not really a huge fan. It's not like players can reasonably expect to know how much XP monsters give (I have no idea how much XP anything gives) Plus I feel it would probably privilege fire resist even more (because we have fireball)

The difference between draining and this is that while both are XP based, draining just weakens your characters fighting ability, so you have to adjust your tactics or (heh) use consumables. With consumable denial I think you're just reducing tactical options.

Well, it's possible to give +d1 damage instead of +d10 damage for might, +5%speed instead of +50%speed for haste, blinking could work in 2 tiles radius instead of full LoS etc.

[partial]

crawl got about 1000x better when item destruction was completely cut

why are we revisiting this?

[partial]

the issues with item destruction had much more to do with the implementation rather than the concept itself.

I strongly disagree.

Item denial is frustrating at best and should be used sparingly (if at all).

[Tiktacy]

If free access to consumables is making the game uninteresting then that seems like a problem that needs to be addressed by changing consumables themselves, not introducing completely new bandage mechanics. (You were virtually guaranteed access to consumables with old item destruction, too.) Wouldn't it be better for every fight to be interesting, instead of only fights where you have -potion/-scroll?

A -scroll effect also already exists with silence, which I don't often see hailed as good design.

Sorry duvessa, you sort of lost me here. I don't understand where you are getting the idea that this is meant to be a "Bandaid" when I clearly state in the OP that its an idea meant to increase potentially interesting situations. The entire idea of the post is to create a way to be damaging to the player in a semi-permanent way. Game design isn't as simple as "lets just make everything better now", it involves experimenting with new ideas and over time implementing new ways to make each battle unique and interesting.

And –Potion exists with Oz's Refrigeration. What makes that a lot better is you can only get that status by using the spell yourself. Since the spell self-damages (and always has) you had to resign yourself to 5ing once anyway, so the short-term -potion status doesn't even add any grief there, it was a very good change to refrigeration.

Another thing is that with this proposal, you still have the old problem of strategic and tactical effects being mixed together both in potions and in scrolls. So -scroll doesn't just mean no ?blinking, but also no remove curse. And it doesn't just wear off by 5ing, so it seems like the mechanic would be prone to reintroducing some of the annoying hassle that non-destructible items has removed.

I was not aware of the changes to OR, I think its been a while since I've even seen that in a game actually. But thank you for bringing it up.

As for the second part, I think that thats probably an important thing to bring up. However, although not clearly outlined in the OP, this particular effect would be mid-late game only, the part of the game in which curses are much less relevant(an end game weapon is usually found by mid-late game).

I would like you to also keep in mind that this effect is not meant to last as long as draining. I would expect that this would be implemented in a way that would cause minimal irritation, maybe making it last only after a small amount of experience has been gained(maybe 1/2 a floors worth?). So in that case, an issue with strategical consumables probably won't arise very often unless you happen to get hit with 2 or 3 particularly large blasts of Scroll/Potion sealing.

I think this particular issue involves balancing, it isn't an inherent problem with the proposal itself. Any more thoughts And Into?

[KoboldLord]

As a monster power, I don't see why it needs to outlast the monster that is causing the problem. If it works like drain, it'll go away as quick as drain so you just need to walk away. We actually already have Silence and Retch already in the game, and silence already slots into place on a couple decent support monsters. Retch has never been good, but that's only because it only ever appeared on one experimental monster that didn't work and was removed. A fire- or cold-flavored variant on these abilities doesn't seem out of the question, but there also doesn't seem much point in having two statuses that are so similar mechanically.

Certain consumables could probably stand to be reined in, but it would be more effective if the control on consumables was an intrinsic part of choosing to use the consumable than as a monster randomly wandering in and disabling them. Currently, there are two attempted checks on the power of the best consumables, and neither one works perfectly. The first is availability; if you use a consumable, you no longer have it. It is consumed. But right now you get loads of everything, so you probably can't actually consume it all. There are also potential issues with going from 100% consumable power to 0% in one fight when you consume your last copy, with no gradiation between those two wildly different states. Then there's the whole hoarding trap.

Moving onto the other attempted check, we have glow. Currently glow doesn't do much that is useful as a player control mechanic because you can rest most player-initiated sources off, but if you got a bit of glow from each use of a consumable and required xp to bleed it off afterward you could be flush with consumables but still not want to spam them constantly if you can avoid it.

[Tiktacy]

As a monster power, I don't see why it needs to outlast the monster that is causing the problem. If it works like drain, it'll go away as quick as drain so you just need to walk away. We actually already have Silence and Retch already in the game, and silence already slots into place on a couple decent support monsters. Retch has never been good, but that's only because it only ever appeared on one experimental monster that didn't work and was removed. A fire- or cold-flavored variant on these abilities doesn't seem out of the question, but there also doesn't seem much point in having two statuses that are so similar mechanically.

Certain consumables could probably stand to be reined in, but it would be more effective if the control on consumables was an intrinsic part of choosing to use the consumable than as a monster randomly wandering in and disabling them. Currently, there are two attempted checks on the power of the best consumables, and neither one works perfectly. The first is availability; if you use a consumable, you no longer have it. It is consumed. But right now you get loads of everything, so you probably can't actually consume it all. There are also potential issues with going from 100% consumable power to 0% in one fight when you consume your last copy, with no gradiation between those two wildly different states. Then there's the whole hoarding trap.

Moving onto the other attempted check, we have glow. Currently glow doesn't do much that is useful as a player control mechanic because you can rest most player-initiated sources off, but if you got a bit of glow from each use of a consumable and required xp to bleed it off afterward you could be flush with consumables but still not want to spam them constantly if you can avoid it.

So, by not having 2 effects that are so similar, are you suggesting an effect that does both would work better?

Another interesting idea that was brought up is the idea of a silent spectre equivalent to consumables. What is your opinion of these things?

Also, the point of outlasting the monster is to make the effect more damaging to the player. Sort of like draining, but a little bit more gruesome and probably not quite as long lasting.

[KoboldLord]

Another interesting idea that was brought up is the idea of a silent spectre equivalent to consumables. What is your opinion of these things?

We already have a silent specter for consumables. It's called a silent specter. It's a good monster and we should see more of it, preferably in areas that are more interesting than the Crypt.

An anti-potion specter is a bit more dicey, because potions of curing are so integral to managing status effects.

Also, the point of outlasting the monster is to make the effect more damaging to the player. Sort of like draining, but a little bit more gruesome and probably not quite as long lasting.

Anti-consumable effects would work best as support abilities for specific monster packs. Throwing a monster with anti-consumable breath into an empty dungeon level just means you go farm yaks for a bit to make the status effect go away. Better would be an effect like the monster spriggan spell that inflicts -Tele; fighting spriggan packs is exactly the sort of situation where you would want access to teleportation. A deep troll hexer that debuffs the player could be made to work, but a random dragon in Lair that inflicts the same debuff in hopes that a pack of yaks wanders by at just the right time wouldn't be as promising. Debuffing monsters should be reliably paired up with monsters that they can usefully support.

[adozu]

give ice attacks a chanche to inflict a chill status that makes using potions longer because opening the cap with your hands shaking and stuff is not easy. -pot takes off decision from you, slowerpot introduces a choiche and a risk associated with it.

similarly i don't think it's easy to read a scroll when you're almost set on fire, but i'll agree i like my own idea better for ice attacks.

[johlstei]

Why do people talk about consumable denial but imply that it is anything remotely resembling old item destruction? The two things have nothing in common. Old item destruction reduced the number of each consumable you had by some percentage unless you wore conservation, but never denied you access to anything tactically. Item denial tactically denies you access to something you have and might want in a tense situation, something item destruction never did. They are two completely opposite in this sense, and while I'm fine with ongoing debate about each of them independently, why are they being hailed as substitutes for each other?

[dpeg]

johlstei: Absolutely! We should try to stop the confusion between item destruction and item denial. I guess it tends to happen because of the common "you cannot use an item you had" effect.

However, I don't understand those either who claim that reduced item generation is equivalent to item denial. It isn't: there is a huge difference between
(a) only getting 10 items instead of 20, and
(b) getting all 20 items but sometimes being unable to use them.

That said, I think that item denial can work. In Crawl, there are often many solutions to a problem, and consumables are strong. By shutting out one option, others becomes hopefully more prevalent. In other words, the idea is that item denial leads to more choices, not less.

There is no question that item denial could fall flat if done badly (perhaps also if done well!). For a start, I'd suggest to make it rare (and strong) and restrict to specific areas (such as Cocytus or Ice Caves). Item denial incurred from monsters should certainly disappear when the monster is killed.

[snow]

Stasis is basically scroll denial. Imo we need more aura of stasis/silence/no healing