Tomb Titivator
Posts: 808
Joined: Sunday, 23rd June 2013, 15:20
Remove race-adapted trove prices again.
- Code:
Don't ask Octopodes for armour as a trove toll (edsrzf)
The armour tolls specify dragon armours so as to require some enchant armour
usage, since that's likely to be a desirable item even for characters that
don't care about giving up a dragon armour, but since Octopodes only have hats
to enchant it's very unlikely to be a significant toll for them.
Closes #228.
In one way I get this commit - supposedly armour scrolls are of no use to octopodes, so no interesting decision has to be made. On the other hands ...
A) Octopodes still need to hunt down one or multiple(!*) dragons for the hide. On early (dungeon) troves that can mean dipping into depths, very exciting high risk/high reward incentives.
B) Only a fraction of games do have troves, and only a fraction of these troves ask for armour gifts. If such a rare trove is then relatively easy accessible, thats to me is absolutely acceptable as part of the inherent randomness of the game. Do we want to remove the arbitrary chance that Ring of Robustness drops? To equip it is a no-brainer if I ever have seen one.
C) Once we start with racial/situational item/environment generation, we go down a rabbithole. Should armour-sacking Ru-worshippers also not get treasure troves? Should felids have it easy? Trog and Oka worshippers have a rich supply of highly enchanted weapons, so forbid them from weapon troves prices?
D) Most trove prices are currently very much no-brain binary situations. Piety troves: easy yes except on Ru. Fully charged wand of hasting/heal wounds? easy no. 3 scrolls of acquirement? easy no. Removing the single no-brainer in question seems like a bad bandaid to the trove-price problem in general.
E) A big part of fun in the game to me is not just about the hard decisions, but about luck. When I get an early +5 slaying ring or an easy early trove, I have fun, am excited to play. The most boring games I have played in crawl had no lucky drops and no portals at all.
TLDR: Dont open Pandoras box by single-casing trove prices by species. Let poor squishy octopodes feel lucky by having their no-armour trait in rare cases be benefical. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages by far.
(* why is random hide dropping even still a part of the game?)