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Automatic Identification of Known Brands

PostPosted: Thursday, 5th October 2017, 12:22
by svendre
I propose that once you have identified a specific combination of item+brand, that all future items of that same combination found in the dungeon more be automatically known on sight. The purpose of this change is primarily to remove some tedium associated with inventory management when searching for a new item brand or a better enchant on a known brand. The game already operates in this manner for some items such as spell books, but not others. I believe it would be an improvement to make this behavior consistent.

For example:

I find a "runed cloak".
I wear the cloak and learn it is a "cloak of invisibility".
The next time I find a cloak
{
if it is a cloak of invisibility then I will know it on sight
else
if it is a different brand or no brand at all, then it will be a "runed cloak"
}

Re: Automatic Identification of Known Brands

PostPosted: Thursday, 5th October 2017, 12:34
by Shtopit
This would be very good in Zot, where cloaks are all the rage.

Re: Automatic Identification of Known Brands

PostPosted: Thursday, 5th October 2017, 12:40
by watertreatmentRL
I sometimes play a version of crawl where if you find two items with the same ego property, the second one you find is automatically identified. It's a pretty good feature.

+1 OP, good idea.

Re: Automatic Identification of Known Brands

PostPosted: Thursday, 5th October 2017, 12:43
by VeryAngryFelid
Currently there is very little decision-making once you have a scroll of remove curse and there are almost zero decisions once you have 2 of them.
Let's have all items identified once player has a stack of 10 scrolls of remove curse in inventory.
That might make early game more interesting: do I want to use-id items as early as possible for immediate help or do I want to hoard 10 scrolls for easier middle-late game.
Optionally we can make cursed items more interesting: each cursed item increases that magic number (initially 10) by 2. So if you use your 1st scroll of remove curse, now you need to have 12 scrolls of remove curse for "auto-id".

Re: Automatic Identification of Known Brands

PostPosted: Thursday, 5th October 2017, 13:35
by crawlnoob
10 is an arbitrary number, just as any other number would be. Futhermore, it's a discontinuous mechanic and how would you communicate it to the player, especially new players?

OPs suggestion is pretty good for a mid-point mechanic between having an identification system or not. I would argue however that the mechanic should not be compromised, either have total ID game (and make curses far more significant), or remove both entirely. The reason being that if you have a middlepoint, the entire mechanic is reduced to non-importance as soon as you reach it (in OPs case this at least occurs piece-wise), and everything that mechanic influences, like inventory and gods and whatever, are also affected.

Re: Automatic Identification of Known Brands

PostPosted: Thursday, 5th October 2017, 13:40
by VeryAngryFelid
crawlnoob wrote:10 is an arbitrary number, just as any other number would be. Futhermore, it's a discontinuous mechanic and how would you communicate it to the player, especially new players?


I am sure there can be an easy solution. For instance, you have (10 * N)% chance to id an item when it comes into your view where N is number of scrolls of remove curse in your inventory. Of course it should not be a linear formula, chance with 5 scrolls should be much less than 50%.

Re: Automatic Identification of Known Brands

PostPosted: Thursday, 5th October 2017, 13:45
by watertreatmentRL
I play a version of crawl where even if you have no scrolls of remove curse in inventory, your chance to automatically id an item is 100%. It's a good feature.

If you're going to start making concessions to the reality that identification does not actually do anything worthwhile in crawl, the only concession that makes sense is total removal. There is no reason to produce a lot of intermediate steps of soft removal with complex rules (never mind that this seems to have been the general approach of the last several versions).