Making Curses Interesting

[acvar]

Lets face a simple fact. The current curse game is not good. If you play inteligently it is non-existant. If you play poorly then it ranges from non-existant to frustrating. This proposal is an attempt to make the curse game more interesting. So here goes:

1. Remove sticky curse (at least as the default)

2. Create a lists of curses similar to our list of mutations. For a quick test list I would suggest the following
a. sticky
b. -slay
c. -AC
d. -EV
e. *tele
f. *rage
g. noisy

3. Magical items can have any number of curses. They are displayed as red inscriptions.

4. Drastically reduce the number of remove curse scrolls. About 6 in an average 3-rune game.
a. remove curse scrolls target objects.

5. Ash folowers may pray over an object to have Ash give 1d3 curses to the object. At least one of these curses will be {sticky}

So how does all this work in the game. Well imagine this. You start a character and on level 1 you find a ring. You put the ring on, and it is a ring of slaying +4 with a curse of {AC -3}. Now is this a good find? Not so obvious. on level one with just a robe -3 AC is pretty bad. A few levels later with plate armour and a pair of gloves it may not be so bad. With a scroll of remove curse it is a good find. This system leads to making choices. This is a good thing.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

I don't think anyone would ever play Ash after this.
Also i don't see how this would make curses interesting in any way. It would only make you not equip 95% of the stuff you find, cause they might be cursed, and you don't have enough ?identify and/or ?rc.

[kuniqs]

How about making mummy curses temporary - instead of cursing items, you get status effects from above which go away after you gain enough experience.

[acvar]

I don't think anyone would ever play Ash after this.
Also i don't see how this would make curses interesting in any way. It would only make you not equip 95% of the stuff you find, cause they might be cursed, and you don't have enough ?identify and/or ?rc.

1. Not trying on things because you don't have enough ?id and/or ?rc is exactly where the game is now.

2. You clearly did not understand what was posted. Curse does not mean sticky! Sticky is only one curse. Not all cursed items are sticky. You can freely remove most cursed items.

[acvar]

How about making mummy curses temporary - instead of cursing items, you get status effects from above which go away after you gain enough experience.

I realy don't like XP based clocks. Crawl has a progressive experience system which makes it a horrible clock. If you want temporary curses exploration is a better clock.

[Zeke]

How about making mummy curses temporary - instead of cursing items, you get status effects from above which go away after you gain enough experience.

I like this idea. But, the effects should be thematically different than mutations and miscast effects. There should be a ton of design space available. For example:

1. lust - the intense desire for the orb prevents you from backtracking (going up stairs)
2. gluttony - the starvation status can come at anytime even if you were full a second ago
3. greed - cannot spend gold, all jewelery possible must be worn and all jewelery seen on the ground must be pick up
4. sloth - cannot attack unless hit first by a weapon or spell as it's hard to get motivated to fight
5. wrath - cannot teleport with enemies in line of sight, chance of berserk during combat

6. envy
7. pride

These ideas are probably pretty terrible. But, there does seem to be a lot of potential in curses.

[and into]

The proposal is about cursed items, not mummy death curses. The latter can cause the former, so it is not entirely unrelated, but death curses are a whole other can of worms. It is worth discussing, but really should be in its own thread. So in this thread, let's stick to acvar's proposal about cursed items.

[mps]

I think the point about Ash sucking with this system is right. It would make sense for Ash curses just always to be sticky, which is handicap enough. I like the idea of cursing things being provided as a power by Ash instead of using remove curse scrolls, since I find I often don't have any to spare when I find an early Ash altar or, more annoyingly, with my limited supplies later on I get unlucky corruption rolls that leave me with the wrong kinds of curse scrolls (this could be fixed by unifying the curse scrolls into a single curse item scroll, though).

If you just want curses to have more bite, I'd say just add some of these extra effects to cursed items in addition to the sticky curse (although in practice -AC and -slay are already that way right now) and keep the number of remove curse scrolls roughly the same.

[Zeke]

The proposal is about cursed items, not mummy death curses. The latter can cause the former, so it is not entirely unrelated, but death curses are a whole other can of worms. It is worth discussing, but really should be in its own thread. So in this thread, let's stick to acvar's proposal about cursed items.

True. They are separate matters.

I don't think the latter should cause the former. They should be kept separate. Adding significant negatives to cursed items would make players much more apprehensive about wielding magic weapons. A good player would always wait until they had a remove curse scroll handy first. All the hard work of the devs would only be experienced by newer players because it simply wouldn't be worth the risk for those that know better. For newer players it would add a layer of frustration. For better players it would add a layer of tedium.

[duvessa]

Seems like this would just blur the line between randarts and things that aren't randarts.
Adding negative properties to items only introduces decisions if you don't already have an item that is clearly better than using no item at all. If you have a +2 helmet already, then finding a +0 helmet with rPois is the same as finding a -2 helmet with rPois when you don't already have a helmet. For negative properties to introduce decisions that positive properties don't, you have to find the item with negative properties before you find any non-detrimental item. So either it makes a difference extremely rarely, or you make all items shitty so that you never actually get something clearly better than no item at all. The first option is what Crawl has right now and it's highly inelegant imo. Good luck getting any traction for the second option.

[ion_frigate]

Here's a simpler suggestion, combining things already said: remove or massively reduce the occurrence of remove curse scrolls (yes this requires adjustments to Ash), and make non-Ash sticky curses expire on an XP or exploration timer - personally I think a proportional XP timer is fine, i.e. it costs 2d5% to the next level to undo the curse, perhaps with some indication of how close you are (you could do this by changing the shade of red the item shows up as in the HUD).

This creates relatively interesting situations, particularly early on - you'd only need to kill a few monsters to get rid of the item, but there's a decent chance you'd need to use consumables to do so safely, particularly for weapons. But you'd have the choice of doing that, or taking the risk of using the (presumably crappy) item in combat. Hopefully, the guaranteed removal of the item in a not-too-long timeframe would mean that people wouldn't feel compelled to identify every item before trying it.

[Sandman25]

We can analyze cursing theoretically.
Cursed items:
1) Cursed item is always bad
2) Cursed item is sometimes bad and sometimes good (depending on time of being used, monsters in LoS, character species etc.)
3) Cursed item is always good (this is not a cursed item actually, we can ignore it)

Curse identification:
A) Curse identification is possible
B) Curse identification is impossible

Curse removal:
I) Curse removal is possible
II) Curse removal is impossible

Currently we have 1AI.
There are 7 other options:
1AII Good players never equip a bad item without identification because it is impossible to remove it
Bad players are stuck with the bad item forever

1BI Good players never equip a bad item without curse removal available.
Bad players are stuck with bad item until they find curse removal

1BII Good players never equip unknown item because they can be stuck with bad item for the whole game (I actually played a game like this, it depended on luck too much). Bad players are stuck with bad item forever

2AI Good players can equip cursed items if their character is powerful enough. Bad players have higher chance to survive later.

2AII Good players never equip item without identification. Bad players are stuck with cursed item forever but can enjoy bonuses in some situations

2BI Good players usually equip items with curse removal. Bad players are stuck with cursed item until curse removal but can enjoy bonuses in some situations

2BII Good players can decide to ignore all items. Bad players are stuck with cursed item but can enjoy bonuses in some situations

Also there is a possibility to auto-equip cursed item if corresponding slot is empty, that can be frustrating though.

As you can see 1 (cursed items are always bad) make them technically unused by good players. So we should use 2 (Cursed item is sometimes bad and sometimes good) if we want to have them in the game unless we introduce the possibility to auto-equip cursed item mentioned above.
Also you can see that cursed item should be impossible to remove (or require killing some monsters/exploring), otherwise good players don't use cursed items (unless their character is powerful enough and they want to have some fun).

So I suggest the following:
Cursed item cannot be identified, cannot be removed before reaching next XL and is automatically apported, picked up and equipped if corresponding slot is empty (even in the middle of a fight, it is instant action). Cursed item is bad in most situations but can be good sometimes. Situations where it can be good are picked randomly for each item and written in the item description
1) There are N adjacent monsters
2) There are N monsters in LoS
3) There is an extremely dangerous monster in LoS
4) Character is below 50% HP
5) Character is below 50% MP
Possible bonuses in those situations, they are picked randomly for each item and are written in the item description
1) +slaying
2) rF+
3) rC+
4) rPois
5) +AC
6) +EV
7) Spell power bonus (similar to wild magic but without wizardry penalty)

Edit. Ninja-ed by ion_frigate

[Lyrick]

So I suggest the following:
Cursed item cannot be identified, cannot be removed before reaching next XL and is automatically apported, picked up and equipped if corresponding slot is empty (even in the middle of a fight, it is instant action).

  Code:

Suddenly, the pair of boots rise up and weld themselves to your feet!


[Sandman25]

  Code:

Suddenly, the pair of boots rise up and weld themselves to your feet!


Does it surprise you? It's a magical curse after all.

[ion_frigate]

This idea sounds ridiculously nasty to unarmed fighters.

[Sandman25]

This idea sounds ridiculously nasty to unarmed fighters.

I didn't mean it would happen with weapons. I hate Xom's weapon swap.

Edit. If character is wearing relatively good items, cursed items become irrelevant if they can be identified OR removed because no sane player would use them without those means. That's why we should not allow identify/remove curse ever.

Edit2. Autoequip does not add anything new, you would equip the item anyway, right? There is no way to id/remove curse so it makes no sense to wait. It's just a convenience method.

[acvar]

Adding significant negatives to cursed items would make players much more apprehensive about wielding magic weapons.

Again read the original post. Cursed does not mean sticky! Most cursed items are not sticky! There is less reason not to wield magic weapons because even if they are cursed they will most likely be able to remove them. If they are sticky and you can't remove them then they will be benificinal for example a +2 mace with {sticky}.

So I suggest the following:
Cursed item cannot be identified, cannot be removed before reaching next XL and is automatically apported, picked up and equipped if corresponding slot is empty (even in the middle of a fight, it is instant action).

How the hell does not giving players any information on an object, and indeed making the decisions of what to do with the object create a more interesting dynamic? The whole point is to give players meaningfull decisions to make. Forcing bad things on players is not interesting. It is frustrating. We want to give control and the information to exert that control to the palyer.

[ion_frigate]

Well what Sandman25 is saying is that, if you have an empty non-weapon slot and no way to ID the item or remove the curse yourself, you *would* just try on every item you find - you'd risk having a cursed item for some time, but the guaranteed risk of leaving the slot permanently empty would be worse.

This also doesn't really work for shields or body armor, though. Virtually any character would be insane to wear a large shield at low skill, while a DEFE is never going to want to wear a randomly-generated GDA - granted every race that can wear body armor will always start with it, but still, people do strange things. When permacorrosion was a thing you actually might ditch your starting armor if got too badly corroded.

However, I'm also inclined to agree that this is a case where player feelings trump 'streamlining' - players are going to be annoyed at cursed items equipping themselves from the edge of LOS, even if they would have otherwise tried the item and still been stuck with it.

[Sandman25]

Well what Sandman25 is saying is that, if you have an empty non-weapon slot and no way to ID the item or remove the curse yourself, you *would* just try on every item you find - you'd risk having a cursed item for some time, but the guaranteed risk of leaving the slot permanently empty would be worse.

This also doesn't really work for shields or body armor, though. Virtually any character would be insane to wear a large shield at low skill, while a DEFE is never going to want to wear a randomly-generated GDA - granted every race that can wear body armor will always start with it, but still, people do strange things. When permacorrosion was a thing you actually might ditch your starting armor if got too badly corroded.

However, I'm also inclined to agree that this is a case where player feelings trump 'streamlining' - players are going to be annoyed at cursed items equipping themselves from the edge of LOS, even if they would have otherwise tried the item and still been stuck with it.

You are right. Let's forget about the autoequipment, it was not essential to my (our) idea. The most important thing is that cursed items can be removed after some XP/exploration and we should not have any other way to id/remove curse.

[Sandman25]

So I suggest the following:
Cursed item cannot be identified, cannot be removed before reaching next XL and is automatically apported, picked up and equipped if corresponding slot is empty (even in the middle of a fight, it is instant action).

How the hell does not giving players any information on an object, and indeed making the decisions of what to do with the object create a more interesting dynamic? The whole point is to give players meaningfull decisions to make. Forcing bad things on players is not interesting. It is frustrating. We want to give control and the information to exert that control to the palyer.

It means players will not equip any items unless they already have that rare scroll of remove curse unless you guarantee that really bad items (like ring of teleportation, stasis or loudness) never have the {sticky} curse.

[acvar]

Well ring of teleportation, and ring of loudness would both be history. And sticky curses would be either rare or special case (ash/mummy). Sticky curses are bad as I stated in the original post. The whole point behind this endevor is to mostly remove them so the curse game actually comes into play.

[Sandman25]

So player decides to use some item and later even has a chance to improve it, I think it is closer to scroll of enchant item.

I had some games where I had ring of teleportation, amulet of inaccuracy and even sling during some long time (3 games, not 1). It was bad play of course but those were very unusual games and I had some fun (except I couldn't find scroll of remove curse for the sling during 5+ dungeon levels and eventually quit).

[acvar]

So player decides to use some item and later even has a chance to improve it, I think it is closer to scroll of enchant item.

But look at the meaningful decisions that this brings to the game. Is the upside of the object better then the curse right now? Is it better when I have some better equipment ot make up for the curse? Is the upside worth one of my few remove curse scrolls or should I save those for mummy curses? There are actual decisions to be made and as such there is an actual curse game other then I have no ?remove-curse, and no ?identify so don't try new things.

[XuaXua]

Xom as a challenge condition would be basically pointless without CK existing (and like Beogh, Gozag etc., Xom is basically not a useful god, so the point of it continuing to exist at all is questionable). It's not really much of a difficulty level at the moment though, monk is basically as bad as CK. I'd support removing Be and AK but I know it's never going to happen so I don't bother talking about it. There would still be an auto-win background, IE.

This makes me think that being cursed should potentially gain the interest of Xom for the duration of the curse.

[duvessa]

Xom acts are not a significant disadvantage after early D.

[and into]

Pruned a few low-content posts that seemed to be developing into a rather off-topic line of discussion.