Why can't all weapons roll all egos?


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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 04:55

Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

I'd put this in GDD but whatever

Would it be so bad if maces could generate with vamp or double swords could show up with protection? Why don't quick blades get anything at all? (special cases/vaults/uniques/randarts aside)

is this just a legacy thing
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Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 07:05

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

Aside from supposed logic and archetypical brand to weapon associations, probably not.

There's...some logic to brand generation. Daggers and whips being able to electrocute dudes sounds almost logical cause one's metal and the other's like a wire, but maces wouldn't have that kinda logical grounding.

Besides which, with regards to fantasy archetypes, some brands are more commonly seen on certain weapons, and whoever set the branding odds used that as a reference.

Some brands are restricted on certain weapons for other reasons. Giant clubs of speed wont show up without being an artifact, for example.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 07:15

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?


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eeviac

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 13:49

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

I would like some differentiation between weapons using brands, If they made sense.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 14:34

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

Some are thematic/rationale choices. I think the vampirism brand is primarily edged/stabbing weapons because those are the ones more likely to draw and be coated in blood (even though bashing weapons get that way after a hit or two). Sure you can bash a face in with a mace, but it's not as likely to get that "blood" benefit that vampirism bequeaths.

Granted, it's all in the implementation of the concept and the developer interpretation of said concept. Vamprisim could just as easily represent an unholy aura that drains life force (rather than writhe in blood) and uses it to regenerate the host.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 17:12

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

I was also under the impression that there were some balance considerations in the as well.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 17:41

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

I'm cool with uniques favoring certain brands and ice caves giving ice gear, but I don't believe balance and/or flavor are enough to justify the labyrinth of special cases outlined in minmay's post.

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 21:25

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

Received a report that this topic belongs in GDD, and I agree. So now it is in GDD. I would be curious to hear what the devs think about the current differences in ego chances for different weapon types.
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Spider Stomper

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Post Wednesday, 24th December 2014, 22:55

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

don't take vampirism away from swords
muh flavour.

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Post Thursday, 25th December 2014, 01:05

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

I don't see anything wrong with having different brands on different weapon types "just because" except for it being not clear to new players. It's true there's not really any reasoning behind the current division of brands among weapon types, but making all weapons the same (wrt brands) doesn't seem to have any real improvements to me (other than the clarity thing).

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Sar, Sprucery

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Post Thursday, 25th December 2014, 16:26

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

I think weapon differentiation is a valuable goal, and one that's been moved towards gradually (axes cleaving, polearm reach). I also don't really see any lack of clarity: you ID weapons before wielding them because chaos and distortion, and you don't really pick a certain weapon class just because it has a certain brand, so I don't see the newbie issue. It's the same type of learning through experience as with many facets of crawl.

If this really bothers people, maybe examining weapons via 'i' could say what potential brands that weapon type could have.
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Sar, Sprucery

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Post Thursday, 25th December 2014, 23:49

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

The lack of clarity is that it's not clear that different weapons get different brands; if your goal is differentiation then the lack of clarity does matter, since it's, you know, an actual difference that is supposed to differentiate things. Unless you want to code-dive you're not going to figure out how this works, unless you want to do something like look through all the .lst files for hundreds of games and record the statistics that way.

The fact that you ID brands when you find them doesn't change anything about this.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 26th December 2014, 01:12

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

Like TeshiAlair said, if it matters that players should know what brands different weapon types can get, this could be explicitly shown somewhere. In the weapon description, the manual, wherever.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 26th December 2014, 01:48

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

TeshiAlair wrote:you don't really pick a certain weapon class just because it has a certain brand
I do this

Slime Squisher

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Post Friday, 26th December 2014, 03:09

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

I very rarely use maces because I don't like the great mace brand set (iirc draining,holy,protection?)
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 26th December 2014, 04:38

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

duvessa wrote:
TeshiAlair wrote:you don't really pick a certain weapon class just because it has a certain brand
I do this


Special case.
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Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 26th December 2014, 04:58

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

eeviac wrote:I very rarely use maces because I don't like the great mace brand set (iirc draining,holy,protection?)

  Code:
static const vector<brand_weight_tuple> M_AND_F_BRANDS = {
    { SPWPN_PROTECTION,     30 },
    { SPWPN_NORMAL,         28 },
    { SPWPN_HOLY_WRATH,     15 },
    { SPWPN_VORPAL,         14 },
    { SPWPN_DRAINING,       10 },
    { SPWPN_VENOM,           5 },
    { SPWPN_DISTORTION,      1 },
    { SPWPN_ANTIMAGIC,       1 },
    { SPWPN_PAIN,            1 },
};

the numbers are percents

that covers most m&f weapons. whips have a unique list, demon whips use the same list as other demon weapons, morningstars and eveningstars have slightly different lists (both have access to freezing/flaming/vampirism, & eveningstars have a higher chance of rolling draining), and sacred scourges... well, you can probably guess that one

basically agreeing with crate on this one: there's room to make brand differentiation meaningful, but you'd need to find a good way of communicating it to players. the current brand generation system is a set of tiny incremental patches to a set of very arbitrary ad-hoc decisions one man made 15 years ago. any serious approach to brand generation would probably be best suited to discard the current numbers entirely & start from scratch

Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 26th December 2014, 10:49

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

PleasingFungus wrote:there's room to make brand differentiation meaningful, but you'd need to find a good way of communicating it to players. the current brand generation system is a set of tiny incremental patches to a set of very arbitrary ad-hoc decisions one man made 15 years ago. any serious approach to brand generation would probably be best suited to discard the current numbers entirely & start from scratch
That's alright, but I don't think this has to be communicated to the player very explicitly. (I mean, it probably should, but if it's just some appendix in the manual, say, that'd suffice.)

As to brand distribution as a vehicle for weapon type diffentiation: we tried to take this into account when redoing ranged weapons, as you can still see. Perhaps a first step towards redoing melee brands would be assessment of ranged brands. Altogether I completely agree that allowing all brands on all weapon types is not a good idea -- even worse that status quo, I'd say. Also, in my opinion, this is one of those aspects of the game which could clearly be improved upon, but it's not crucial. In other words: good concepts are welcome :)

Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 27th December 2014, 04:47

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

dpeg wrote:That's alright, but I don't think this has to be communicated to the player very explicitly. (I mean, it probably should, but if it's just some appendix in the manual, say, that'd suffice.)

The main point of differentiating weapon types is to let the player make strategic playstyle choices. How can they do that if they aren't provided the information necessary to make those choices?

("An appendix to the manual" is just barely above "just look in the code" in terms of getting information to players, but I think you know that. :P)

Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 27th December 2014, 10:35

Re: Why can't all weapons roll all egos?

PleasingFungus wrote:The main point of differentiating weapon types is to let the player make strategic playstyle choices. How can they do that if they aren't provided the information necessary to make those choices?
That is true. My main point was really more about discussing whether/how it works for ranged.

("An appendix to the manual" is just barely above "just look in the code" in terms of getting information to players, but I think you know that. :P)
Sure! The gist of an entry in the manual is that we can throw this into the face of anyone complaining: "We told ya! Not spoiler information!! Haha!!!"

Then again, there are people (like me) who read manuals from end to end when starting out to play. So the audience is there, if small.

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