helmets suck


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 01:00

helmets suck

if you're playing a xom or jiyva char then you carry around two pieces of headgear: a helmet to wear while you don't have horns/antennae, and a hat to wear when you do, and you get to switch between them manually every time your god mutates you

i don't see why we need two different base types for the same item slot when the only difference is that one gives you 1 or 2 more AC and becomes unwearable at level 1 of mutations instead of level 3, and the other one has magic resistance sometimes; it's annoying for any character that mutates (particularly with the 52 item limit) and I don't see what would be lost by just removing helmets and only having hats for the head slot, other than losing a lot of player annoyance.

minotaurs being able to wear lear's hauberk wouldn't be a problem, and if it would, you can just do the reverse and remove hats but leave helmets - mutating chars will still have to manually put their helmet back on all the time but at least they won't have to run across the dungeon to grab the hat they left on the floor 2 hours ago

For this message the author duvessa has received thanks: 3
njvack, VeryAngryFelid, watertreatmentRL

Spider Stomper

Posts: 242

Joined: Friday, 17th April 2015, 16:22

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 01:29

Re: helmets suck

I agree with the first bit but not the rest. What if both hats and helmets had the same compatibility with head mutations?
User avatar

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1762

Joined: Monday, 14th October 2013, 01:05

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 01:45

Re: helmets suck

If one is removed, I want whatever remains to be named helmets. I don't like the idea of going around fully armored except for the head. Seems like it would look kinda doofy.

For this message the author Shard1697 has received thanks:
VeryAngryFelid

Slime Squisher

Posts: 368

Joined: Thursday, 11th April 2013, 21:07

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 02:28

Re: helmets suck

duvessa wrote:if you're playing a xom or jiyva char then you carry around two pieces of headgear: a helmet to wear while you don't have horns/antennae, and a hat to wear when you do, and you get to switch between them manually every time your god mutates you

i don't see why we need two different base types for the same item slot when the only difference is that one gives you 1 or 2 more AC and becomes unwearable at level 1 of mutations instead of level 3, and the other one has magic resistance sometimes; it's annoying for any character that mutates (particularly with the 52 item limit) and I don't see what would be lost by just removing helmets and only having hats for the head slot, other than losing a lot of player annoyance.

minotaurs being able to wear lear's hauberk wouldn't be a problem, and if it would, you can just do the reverse and remove hats but leave helmets - mutating chars will still have to manually put their helmet back on all the time but at least they won't have to run across the dungeon to grab the hat they left on the floor 2 hours ago

So, as I see it, this post is really covering three separate problems:

1) Transient mutations that lockout equipment slots. These probably shouldn't exist. If a slot gets locked out once *per game*, permanently, that would be much less of an annoyance factor: Yes, it would still be annoying, but players by definition would only have to bother with dropping their now-useless slot item once on any character.
2) Stone Soup's middle ground WRT inventory management is awful. An inventory limit of 52 is too large to force interesting hard choices. As has been discussed many times before, for the sake of playability this needs to either be uncapped or drastically decreased. (Personally, I'd prefer the drastic decrease, although this comes with its own set of changes that would be necessary to reduce annoyance.)
3) DCSS has too many items with overlapping function. This is maybe-sort-of-okay for items with limited uses, as players will naturally experience some inventory churn there, but when it comes to items that players want to equip once and leave equipped this becomes more of a problem. Each filled aux slot here is effectively a permanent inventory tax (coming in the form of increased player annoyance through more frequently having to break gameflow and press i).


By merging hats/helmets you're addressing problem 3, and by merging items as an adjunct you're beginning to address problem 2, but neither of those things have fuckall to do with problem 1, which is what this thread is putatively about. What about gloves and claws 3, or hooves and boots? (Assuming that those things haven't been removed in recent years.)

Wouldn't a more elegant solution to the stated problem be to either remove slot lockouts from mutations entirely, or alternatively, to make slot lockout mutations unremovable once gained?

For this message the author Implojin has received thanks:
duvessa
User avatar

Zot Zealot

Posts: 982

Joined: Monday, 29th September 2014, 09:04

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 03:26

Re: helmets suck

Other slots only get locked out with a facet mutation level 3, helmets are the one exception. For other slots, it's not nearly as annoying since you very rarely get to mutation level 3 without it being permanent.

I suggest we change helmets to have the same equip restrictions as hats. The differentiation between the two items is reduced, but IMO the difference is already small, and discussions about removal/merging are separate to discussions about a Quality of Life fix.

For this message the author chequers has received thanks: 7
Doesnt, duvessa, Floodkiller, Gigaslurp, Implojin, nago, VeryAngryFelid
User avatar

Zot Zealot

Posts: 982

Joined: Monday, 29th September 2014, 09:04

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 04:46

Re: helmets suck

There is also another difference: hats can be worn by a larger variety of species sizes.

For this message the author chequers has received thanks: 2
Cimanyd, duvessa
User avatar

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 4478

Joined: Wednesday, 23rd October 2013, 07:56

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 06:46

Re: helmets suck

chequers wrote:Other slots only get locked out with a facet mutation level 3, helmets are the one exception. For other slots, it's not nearly as annoying since you very rarely get to mutation level 3 without it being permanent.

So just change it so that only the level 3 mutations block helmets.
DCSS: 97:...MfCj}SpNeBaEEGrFE{HaAKTrCK}DsFESpHu{FoArNaBe}
FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
Bloat: 17: RaRoPrPh{GuStGnCa}{ArEtZoNb}KiPaAnDrBXDBQOApDaMeAGBiOCNKAsFnFlUs{RoBoNeWi
User avatar

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1698

Joined: Saturday, 18th June 2016, 13:57

Post Wednesday, 31st May 2017, 22:43

Re: helmets suck

I think that it's random transient mutations that suck.

Mutations rarely do something that inventory items don't. Elemental and magic resists, AC, SH, Gourmet, regeneration, EV, flight all do something that non-artifact items do. If your mutations are stable, you can count on them and select which items to carry. So you leave your ring of rF if you have the rF mutation. However, if they aren't stable, well, you better still carry the items around, just in case the mutations disappear when you need them! And, tbh, it's not very funny to keep pressing A in case something disappeared and you didn't notice it, especially with Jivvy's constant flush of rather irrelevant messages. And, if they actually changed, it isn't very funny to keep swapping the items you are using.

I get that random transient mutations are supposed to create a rainbow-changing character. However, the way in which they interact with the inventory is bad.
I Feel the Need--the Need for Beer
Spoiler: show
3DSBeTr 15DSFiRu 3DSMoNe 3FoHuGo 3TrArOk 3HOFEVe 3MfGlOk 4GrEEVe 3BaIEChei 3HuMoOka 3MiWnQaz 3VSFiAsh 3DrTmMakh 3DSCKXom 3OgMoOka 3NaFiOka 3FoFiOka 3MuFEVeh 3CeHuOka 3TrMoTSO 3DEFESif 3DSMoOka 3DSFiOka

For this message the author Shtopit has received thanks: 3
duvessa, nago, yesno

Crypt Cleanser

Posts: 746

Joined: Thursday, 5th December 2013, 04:01

Post Sunday, 4th June 2017, 08:39

Re: helmets suck

Shtopit wrote:I think that it's random transient mutations that suck.

Mutations rarely do something that inventory items don't. Elemental and magic resists, AC, SH, Gourmet, regeneration, EV, flight all do something that non-artifact items do. If your mutations are stable, you can count on them and select which items to carry. So you leave your ring of rF if you have the rF mutation. However, if they aren't stable, well, you better still carry the items around, just in case the mutations disappear when you need them! And, tbh, it's not very funny to keep pressing A in case something disappeared and you didn't notice it, especially with Jivvy's constant flush of rather irrelevant messages. And, if they actually changed, it isn't very funny to keep swapping the items you are using.

I get that random transient mutations are supposed to create a rainbow-changing character. However, the way in which they interact with the inventory is bad.


I think the whole notion of "constantly changing character where you have to keep adapting your playstyle to what the game throws at your (moreso than normal)" is something that many, many people have tried to accomplish over the years in DCSS and no one's really pulled it off. The game already encourages you to do some adapting (particularly to items you find), but a lot of people want a god or species or whatever that requires more frequent and radical changes.

Mutations in general, and especially the two mutation gods, are just some of the many failed attempts to accomplish that, I think. Discussing why this design goal in general is so hard is big enough to need its own thread, but I think you've nailed the exact reason that transient mutations in particular have failed: most beneficial mutations just provide similar bonuses to equipment. They rarely change your tactics, they just change your equipment priorities. And when your equipment priorities suddenly change because you gained or lost a mutation, the effect usually isn't intense strategic thinking to figure out how to adjust to the changes, it's just doing some ctrl+f-ing and running around swapping inventory items around, more tedium than strategic decision-making.

For transient beneficial mutations to work well, I think they'd need to provide functions that are more tactical than strategic. Right now, there are bad mutations that do this - teleportitis and berserkitis, in particular, both encourage you to adjust your tactics to avoid their downsides - but very few beneficial mutations encourage you to adjust your tactics to take advantage of their upsides. They only encourage you to shuffle your inventory around, dropping aux equipment you can no longer wear or rings that provide resistances that you no longer need, unless you're expecting to lose those mutations shortly in which case they don't really do much at all.

For this message the author Quazifuji has received thanks: 2
duvessa, Gigaslurp

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests

Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.