Tuesday, 20th June 2017, 00:43
the magical staves complaint
There are 11 types of magical staff in the game.
8 of these are enhancer staves for a specific spell school. I do not see what advantage is provided by having so many different enhancer staves. You're not going to switch from earth magic to fire magic because you found a staff of fire. I suppose it's imaginable that someone with both staves of air and conjuration would have trouble deciding between Airstrike spell power and IOOD spell power, but since they can just swap the staves in 5 aut anyway, that doesn't lead to any interesting or difficult decisions - it just leads to swapping. Furthermore, as a result of weapons being so fast to swap, lots of characters carry around enhancer staves for a while because they provide resistances. Having 8 different enhancer staves as opposed to just 1 enhancer staff:
- results in more swapping
- results in more inventory clutter
- results in more identification clutter
+ is the status quo, so leaving it as it is is easy
Furthermore, staves of air, cold, death, earth, fire, and poison have extra melee effects. In a game where melee damage is already difficult to understand and weapons are already difficult to compare, enhancer staff melee effects add even more confusion. This is especially present with staff of earth, where I routinely see people claiming it's "the best staff for melee", when it does inferior damage to air, cold, death, or fire due to checking AC. Moderately-spoiled players did seem to be pretty good at understanding that staves of earth were OP back in 0.4 when they were OP, but other than that it is almost impossible to compare enhancer staves to other weapons unless you source dive.
Speaking of melee, if you want to use a missile weapon, or have a melee weapon that's better than your staff for melee (which you almost always do), you're going to be doing even more swapping, because the staff lives in your weapon slot.
Causing even further swapping are the remaining three staves. If you have a staff of power, the proper way to use it is to use the extra MP, then swap to something else, then swap back to regenerate MP faster after the fight. Once you find an appropriate enhancer, you'll want to wield that at full MP since +20 spell power is better than any max MP bonus...but you should still swap to staff of power to regenerate MP faster out of combat, saving aut and therefore piety. Other MP-boosting items have the same problem, of course.
Staff of wizardry needs no explanation.
Staff of energy is only useful as an intensely tedious way to save turns and improve CBoE. It really should not exist. Wucad Mu is basically a better CBoE so whatever.
A common suggestion for magical staves is to move them to the shield slot. This mostly addresses the swapping, since it would take 5 turns (but many characters would still carry staves of cold around in case an ice cave generates; I'll make another post complaining that portal vaults are bad). It is also a substantial nerf to magic staves, which is good. Of course, you would want to call them something other than staves at this point, to avoid confusion with the weapon class. I don't think the game loses anything by removing magic staff melee; a decent lajatang is already better anyway. I like using staff melee as a player, sure, but I can't possibly defend it from a design perspective.
It should be noted that excessive weapon swapping for magic users will happen as long as "stat sticks" of any kind exist. Magic staves are not the only offender in this category; weapons with the protection ego and artefact properties (particularly +Int, +Dex, and resistances) have the same problem. You'll have one weapon you use for melee and one or more weapons you wield while casting spells or waiting for teleports.
I believe any of the following options would be improvements, ordered from least to most impactful:
And regardless of what happens to staves: If +MP continues to exist on items, it should only apply once you reach full MP, like the amulet of magic regeneration does, and unwielding/unwearing it should deduct the bonus from your current MP as well as your maximum MP. Maybe don't allow removing it if your current MP is below that level, either.
8 of these are enhancer staves for a specific spell school. I do not see what advantage is provided by having so many different enhancer staves. You're not going to switch from earth magic to fire magic because you found a staff of fire. I suppose it's imaginable that someone with both staves of air and conjuration would have trouble deciding between Airstrike spell power and IOOD spell power, but since they can just swap the staves in 5 aut anyway, that doesn't lead to any interesting or difficult decisions - it just leads to swapping. Furthermore, as a result of weapons being so fast to swap, lots of characters carry around enhancer staves for a while because they provide resistances. Having 8 different enhancer staves as opposed to just 1 enhancer staff:
- results in more swapping
- results in more inventory clutter
- results in more identification clutter
+ is the status quo, so leaving it as it is is easy
Furthermore, staves of air, cold, death, earth, fire, and poison have extra melee effects. In a game where melee damage is already difficult to understand and weapons are already difficult to compare, enhancer staff melee effects add even more confusion. This is especially present with staff of earth, where I routinely see people claiming it's "the best staff for melee", when it does inferior damage to air, cold, death, or fire due to checking AC. Moderately-spoiled players did seem to be pretty good at understanding that staves of earth were OP back in 0.4 when they were OP, but other than that it is almost impossible to compare enhancer staves to other weapons unless you source dive.
Speaking of melee, if you want to use a missile weapon, or have a melee weapon that's better than your staff for melee (which you almost always do), you're going to be doing even more swapping, because the staff lives in your weapon slot.
Causing even further swapping are the remaining three staves. If you have a staff of power, the proper way to use it is to use the extra MP, then swap to something else, then swap back to regenerate MP faster after the fight. Once you find an appropriate enhancer, you'll want to wield that at full MP since +20 spell power is better than any max MP bonus...but you should still swap to staff of power to regenerate MP faster out of combat, saving aut and therefore piety. Other MP-boosting items have the same problem, of course.
Staff of wizardry needs no explanation.
Staff of energy is only useful as an intensely tedious way to save turns and improve CBoE. It really should not exist. Wucad Mu is basically a better CBoE so whatever.
A common suggestion for magical staves is to move them to the shield slot. This mostly addresses the swapping, since it would take 5 turns (but many characters would still carry staves of cold around in case an ice cave generates; I'll make another post complaining that portal vaults are bad). It is also a substantial nerf to magic staves, which is good. Of course, you would want to call them something other than staves at this point, to avoid confusion with the weapon class. I don't think the game loses anything by removing magic staff melee; a decent lajatang is already better anyway. I like using staff melee as a player, sure, but I can't possibly defend it from a design perspective.
It should be noted that excessive weapon swapping for magic users will happen as long as "stat sticks" of any kind exist. Magic staves are not the only offender in this category; weapons with the protection ego and artefact properties (particularly +Int, +Dex, and resistances) have the same problem. You'll have one weapon you use for melee and one or more weapons you wield while casting spells or waiting for teleports.
I believe any of the following options would be improvements, ordered from least to most impactful:
- Merge the enhancer staves into a single staff, and make it correspondingly rare (between 1/4th and 1/8th as common as current magical staves, depending on how interchangeable you consider conjuration with the elemental ones and poison). For simplicity, it should just enhance all spell schools. It should not have any melee effects or resistances. Additionally, remove staves of wizardry (there are already rings) and energy. This solves staff melee, reduces swapping, and reduces identification and inventory clutter a bit.
- Remove magical staves as weapons, but offer the ones you like as scarf or robe egos. A scarf or robe of wizardry/Archmagi/+MP does not suffer from any particular design problems, aside from wizardry and Archmagi possibly being overpowered, but they are far more overpowered if you can get them in the weapon slot, so yeah. (I am aware that robes of wizardry used to be in the game and were removed.) This solves staff melee, reduces swapping, and slightly improves balance.
- Move magical staves to the shield slot. This solves staff melee, helps with swapping, and improves balance more (by giving magic staff users less SH). However, it means that in order to use a magic staff you have to cripple your melee/missile ability since it would stop you from wielding two-handers. Since melee on conjurers is something they do for convenience rather than actual power, this part of it is annoying and not good imo.
- Remove magical staves with no compensation. This solves staff melee, helps with swapping, mostly improves balance, reduces inventory and identification clutter by more than the previous options, and is a pretty simple change. I say it "mostly" improves balance because it screws up late-game elemental school balance due to the existence of rings of fire and ice, but you can remove those as well.
- Remove magical staves with no compensation; eliminate all artifact properties from weapons except for *Noise, *Contam, *Drain, Curse, and Fragile; and remove riposte, Wucad Mu, and Majin-Bo. I am sure this option will be met with nothing but hostility, but I mention it because it is the minimum you need to do in order to solve the problem of stat sticks, and I do think it would be a good change.
And regardless of what happens to staves: If +MP continues to exist on items, it should only apply once you reach full MP, like the amulet of magic regeneration does, and unwielding/unwearing it should deduct the bonus from your current MP as well as your maximum MP. Maybe don't allow removing it if your current MP is below that level, either.
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- Airwolf, luckless, Shard1697, VeryAngryFelid, ZipZipskins
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