Amulet of Berserk Rework


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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 07:17

Amulet of Berserk Rework

As it stands, amulets of berserk are the only good amulet in the game you can freely swap to/from. Since the general move has been towards not letting that happen, I have two suggestions:

(1) Remove the amulet

We already have enough sources of berserk in the game. Trog is there if you want to use it all the time, potions of berserk are there if you want to use it sparingly. +Rage and Trog's necklace or w/e are fine though, and can stay.

(2) Give the player Slow and Exh when they put it on

It keeps people from swapping to it in combat, is thematic with the amulet, and easily clears away with two presses of 5 if you're outside combat.

e: don't any of you fuckers dare make this a discussion about amulets of harm or some other bullshit
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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 07:24

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Suggestion 2 sounds very good.

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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 12:57

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Arrhythmia wrote:good amulet in the game you can freely swap to/from. Since the general move has been towards not letting that happen

When are you going to make your post about removing reflection so i can hunt you down?

Back on topic, i agree that rage "could" be removed, i dont agree with your op though, as freely as you are to swap to rage, if you are using rage then you are more likely to just have it on at all times, because when you are not raging you are just fighting trivial things, where other amulets dont provide anything to be swap worthy, except reflection, and now im off topic again.
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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 13:20

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Suggestion 2 sounds good, you make a good point in the OP. I see you got 8 thanks, so the devs are contractually obligated to implement your proposal :P

Since reflect got mentioned... what about that? Although that leads into rings...

What if all equipment egos didn't work for the first X turns of wearing an item? That'd make swapping pretty useless, or at least swapping would also require you to pay a tactical cost.

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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 13:56

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Also make all amulets recurse on equip, their point is to be non-swappable as far as I understand design direction.

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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 15:13

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

dowan wrote:Since reflect got mentioned... what about that?

Read the "shields should take 0.5 auts to wear" thread or something. Also, reflection is good to use to aproach ranged mobs, or flee from them, or just stand still and watch the fireworks.
dowan wrote:What if all equipment egos didn't work for the first X turns of wearing an item? That'd make swapping pretty useless, or at least swapping would also require you to pay a tactical cost.

The tactical cost of kiting.
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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 15:21

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Anyways, amulet swapping was already nuked into oblivion, heck, even identifying amulets is a waste of time, just get regen/reflect and roll with it. The only time you will actually swap amulets is if you have 2 randarts and none happen to be faith/harm/dismiss while also being good, which is never.
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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 15:25

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

dynast wrote:
Arrhythmia wrote:good amulet in the game you can freely swap to/from. Since the general move has been towards not letting that happen

When are you going to make your post about removing reflection so i can hunt you down?

Back on topic, i agree that rage "could" be removed, i dont agree with your op though, as freely as you are to swap to rage, if you are using rage then you are more likely to just have it on at all times, because when you are not raging you are just fighting trivial things, where other amulets dont provide anything to be swap worthy, except reflection, and now im off topic again.


Forgot about reflection. I think it's a fine amulet and I'm not about to ask for its removal. What prompted the suggestion was exactly what you describe though; I've got a character who's wearing regeneration most of the time, but I'm not strong enough to kill hydrae in a fair fight, so I wield my 0 skill war axe of flaming, switch to rage, and go to town. I don't use rage for pretty much anything else though, because I'm with Gozag, and I'm Wary Of The Hunger Cost.
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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2016, 23:49

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

could make it a ring i guess, like invis

idk that it's a big deal either way.

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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 17:41

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

I think option 2 is interesting, and may code it up this weekend. I'm also thinking slow on removal.

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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:02

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Why is amulet swapping bad again?
I still don't understand why the devs want to punish people for reacting to situations thrown at them by a randomly generated dungeon....
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:09

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

infinitevox wrote:Why is amulet swapping bad again?
I still don't understand why the devs want to punish people for reacting to situations thrown at them by a randomly generated dungeon....

because you swap rings and not amulets
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:15

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

That's a non-answer.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:18

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

well i think you're not going to understand why the devs want to punish people for reacting to situations thrown at them by a randomly generated dungeon for a very long time then

e: maybe i misunderstood your question. maybe it wasn't meant to be "why do the devs want amulet swapping to be bad", but rather, "why is it a bad thing to do". well, because you get drained, or lose EV, or lose mana, or just waste a turn.
Last edited by Arrhythmia on Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:21

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Arrhythmia wrote:well i think you're not going to understand why the devs want to punish people for reacting to situations thrown at them by a randomly generated dungeon for a very long time then


Well if they're going to give the same sort of condescending smart-ass non-answers as you did, then yes, you're right.
But maybe I'll get lucky and someone who isn't a smarmy ass-bandit will deign to give me an actual answer.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:22

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

amulet swapping is bad because they want non-swappability to distinguish rings from amulets how is this a non-answer

e: like, i'm sorry i told you an answer in a curt way without punctuation, but that's the answer.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:26

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Why wouldn't they just make amulet swapping take 10-15 turns instead?

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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:28

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Sandman25 wrote:Why wouldn't they just make amulet swapping take 10-15 turns instead?


probably because 1) that wouldn't work with faith as it was and 2) they thought how faith worked was cool and wanted them all to be like that
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:30

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

So you make one pointedly worse in order to differentiate between the two?
Sorry if I don't accept that as a valid answer. That's ham-fisted and piss-poor design philosophy, and I believe the devs working on the game are a lot smarter than that.
If its "Optimal play with amulet swapping is tedious", I can kind-of see that, but I personally never viewed it as tedious at all. And if that is the case, the same argument could be made of ring swapping, so I don't think that's it either.

So I'll ask a third time, why is amulet swapping "bad" from a design stand-point?
I ask this as someone who has also done/does game design, I want to better understand the reasoning behind it.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:34

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Arrhythmia wrote:probably because 1) that wouldn't work with faith as it was and


what do you mean? Faith always reduced current piety as far as I remember, it does not matter how many turns it takes to be removed.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:43

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

infinitevox wrote:I believe the devs working on the game are a lot smarter than that.


lmao

Sandman25 wrote:
Arrhythmia wrote:probably because 1) that wouldn't work with faith as it was and


what do you mean? Faith always reduced current piety as far as I remember, it does not matter how many turns it takes to be removed.


oh no i mean like, i totally agree with you that "lots of turns to swap" would have been a fine thing to just add on to faith/all amulets, but what i meant was that i assume they wanted all amulets to have just "one" of the same penalty
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 20:59

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Swapping equipment isn't all that interesting, and so it's good to avoid incentivizing the player to do it a lot. Fast-swapping equipment is particularly bad because in many situations it means you're effectively wearing all of the swappable stuff at the same time, but at the cost of burning realtime every time a threat with a new form of attack comes into view. This is most true of resist equipment -- an ice dragon is in view? Okay, I swap to rC+. A fire giant is in view? Okay, I swap to rF+. Only if both are in range to hit me at the same time does it matter that I'm not technically wearing both items at once.

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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 22:09

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Many late game monsters with elemental attacks seem to be balanced around player having corresponding resistance as swap. If the intention is to reduce equipment swap, their damage might be decreased, damage reduction from resistance might be decreased and maybe equipment swap cause light draining. So players would play like most characters of Ash do i.e. prepare for branches but no much swap otherwise.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 22:36

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Lasty wrote:Swapping equipment isn't all that interesting, and so it's good to avoid incentivizing the player to do it a lot. Fast-swapping equipment is particularly bad because in many situations it means you're effectively wearing all of the swappable stuff at the same time, but at the cost of burning realtime every time a threat with a new form of attack comes into view. This is most true of resist equipment -- an ice dragon is in view? Okay, I swap to rC+. A fire giant is in view? Okay, I swap to rF+. Only if both are in range to hit me at the same time does it matter that I'm not technically wearing both items at once.


Wouldn't a more elegant solution for this issue be something like: You can't swap out EQ if there is a monster in LoS? --> "Enemies are too close to change equipment right now!"
Instead of actually punishing/penalizing a character for removing something?
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 22:42

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

You can't do just "in los" since that's really easy to mess with. A simple example is breaking los by going around a corner.

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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 22:52

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

So combine that with jewelery taking a couple turns to swap out
(Hold your sword between your knees while you pull your ring off, fish the other one out of your pocket, put it on, and grab your sword again.)

Lasty was talking about fast-swapping being particularly bad, so that's really what I was aiming at tackling.
I mean honestly, how is this any different from carrying around a scimitar of flaming to swap to when you see a hydra? Or carrying around an artifact weapon you found that has a resist you want for certain situations?

I guess part of why I don't really understand the "swap amulets and get punished" mentality is that it only applies to amulets. It seems silly when you can get just as much benefit from swapping weapons, which only takes .5 turn for each.

If this is the route the devs wish to take, shouldn't it apply across the board? Because otherwise its extremely arbitrary.
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Post Thursday, 7th July 2016, 23:20

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

infinitevox wrote:If this is the route the devs wish to take, shouldn't it apply across the board? Because otherwise its extremely arbitrary.


yeah, it is.

e: the other big problem with any "in los" suggestion is "how does it function with invisibility without causing an info-leak?"
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Post Friday, 8th July 2016, 00:48

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

This is an area where change is happening gradually. It's not always an option or a good idea to change everything all at once.

Weapon swapping isn't generally as bad as jewellery swapping; it's rarely needed aside from launchers, and i already have a solution in mind for that. There are big chunks of the game where you might want to swap jewellery before and after almost every encounter.

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Post Friday, 8th July 2016, 01:02

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Lasty wrote:Swapping equipment isn't all that interesting, and so it's good to avoid incentivizing the player to do it a lot. Fast-swapping equipment is particularly bad because in many situations it means you're effectively wearing all of the swappable stuff at the same time, but at the cost of burning realtime every time a threat with a new form of attack comes into view. This is most true of resist equipment -- an ice dragon is in view? Okay, I swap to rC+. A fire giant is in view? Okay, I swap to rF+. Only if both are in range to hit me at the same time does it matter that I'm not technically wearing both items at once.

This is the type of thing that just makes me cringe when it comes from a dev and the "fire and ice" argument that follows. What interval of turns between fighting an fire to an ice enemy do you need to not classify as "swapping", because this argument only makes sense if you are fighting them on a line, otherwise you have to destroy everything the player is not wearing, inventory included. Or, am i supposed to not be able to resist against a fire giant and a ice dragon? Should i play my games around picking one element only? What about weapons, cant i wield my poison dagger against killer bees? am i supposed to whack them with my protection mace? i cant snipe enemies from afar with my crossbow until they get close?How does not being able to interact with the elements of the game make it more fun?
Lasty wrote:Weapon swapping isn't generally as bad as jewellery swapping;

Ironically, weapon swapping is far stronger than jewellery.
Lasty wrote:it's rarely needed aside from launchers, and i already have a solution in mind for that.

*curls up in a little ball*
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Post Friday, 8th July 2016, 02:10

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

weapon swapping is stronger than jewellery swapping, but there are 2 ring slots which is horrible, and there aren't 2 weapon slots. this is why ring swapping is worse (amulet swapping was not though so w/e)

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Post Friday, 8th July 2016, 06:15

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

Mod Note: I've split the posts trying to discuss the strength of the reflection effect in general to a CYC thread. This thread is about reworking the amulet of rage, so please try to keep discussion directly related to that topic.
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Post Friday, 8th July 2016, 06:19

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

gammafunk wrote:Mod Note: I've split the posts trying to discuss the strength of the reflection effect in general to a CYC thread. This thread is about reworking the amulet of rage, so please try to keep discussion directly related to that topic.


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Post Friday, 8th July 2016, 06:40

Re: Amulet of Berserk Rework

infinitevox wrote:So combine that [not allowed to swap in los] with jewelery taking a couple turns to swap out

You might as well just not have the "monsters in los" restriction then, though, since if the swap takes sufficiently long that's all you need. No need to complicate it further by adding an extra restriction.

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