"Won't be done" -- Why?

[wesleyshaver]

I was checking out the list of "Won't be done" on the wiki: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:planning:wont_do and while I agree with all the explanations given for the items on the list (excepting 50% summons penalty) I have to ask about two of the items that lack explanations, because they sound cool and fun:

1. Ice bridges: Why not? Sounds fun and not problematic to zap a wand of cold or cast a spell to freeze water.

2. Throwing potions or dipping weapons into them: again what's the reason for this being bad? A single-use dip or throw per harmful potion vs. a monster would be fun and preserved for tough fights. What's wrong with this?

If someone could update this wiki page by including explanations about these things they might get fewer requests to implement them (yeah right).

Wes

[dpeg]

"Won't do" does not mean "idea is so bad it'd kill the game". It means that the topic came up (perhaps more than once), was rejected and there's no need to do it again. Truth to be told, I can't recall ever discussing ice bridges but thrown potions come up from time to time. Minmay has it right. It would add perceived depth without really making matters interesting. (Note how you could do it in a good way: in 100Rogues, there are only three potions, all of which restore Health and/or Magic, and they give nice effects when thrown. The idea is always proposed for bad potions, though.)

[nicolae]

Ice bridges, I think, would turn out to be fraught with issues, like dealing with melting, and still end up being a worse spell than Flight (Flight doesn't end from certain attacks, Flight doesn't let monsters walk over the water to get to you, Flight can be used on lava, etc)

[sardonica]

The potions thing would just be really annoying to work with, cause then you'd either autopickup bad potions or have to pick them up manually.

The ice bridge thing is far inferior to flight as another poster noted. No one would pick it up.

Turn it into an ability to block corridors too and you might have something, like conjure flame, but then it'd just be a duplicate of flight + conjure flame which doesnt work on lava or help you carry things or make you faster or... Get the idea?

[wesleyshaver]

The ice bridge wouldn't be it's own spell. It would occur when bolts of cold (from wands or the spell) pass over water. This would occur in lieu of a freezing cloud (which doesn't make sense since water doesn't evaporate when you freeze it).

[sardonica]

The ice bridge wouldn't be it's own spell. It would occur when bolts of cold (from wands or the spell) pass over water. This would occur in lieu of a freezing cloud (which doesn't make sense since water doesn't evaporate when you freeze it).

Oh well that'd be pretty cool actually...

[ebarrett]

Ice bridges were already proved silly and annoying in ADOM. And potion throwing already exists - it's called Evaporate, L2 fire/tmut.

[ElectricAlbatross]

Ice bridges were already proved silly and annoying in ADOM. And potion throwing already exists - it's called Evaporate, L2 fire/tmut.

Yeah, but why can't you, you know, just throw the potion? (Not actually in favour of the idea)

[nicolae]

Ice bridges were already proved silly and annoying in ADOM. And potion throwing already exists - it's called Evaporate, L2 fire/tmut.

Yeah, but why can't you, you know, just throw the potion? (Not actually in favour of the idea)

Probably for the same reason a lot of people think Evaporate is overpowered.

[ElectricAlbatross]

Ice bridges were already proved silly and annoying in ADOM. And potion throwing already exists - it's called Evaporate, L2 fire/tmut.

Yeah, but why can't you, you know, just throw the potion? (Not actually in favour of the idea)

Probably for the same reason a lot of people think Evaporate is overpowered.

It's less about overpoweredness than about the annoyance of having to fiddle around with your inventory carrying around bad potions. The fact that it would be overpowered is just a crappy crappy cherry on top of the crappy crappy pie.

[mageykun]

2. Throwing potions or dipping weapons into them: again what's the reason for this being bad? A single-use dip or throw per harmful potion vs. a monster would be fun and preserved for tough fights. What's wrong with this?

I can come up with several reasons why crawl doesn't do things this way.

Uniqueness/Independence: Crawl does not have to do things just because Nethack (or any other game) did. Our flavor and/or game design is not dictated by outside forces. (Heck, sometimes there's a contrarian impulse to do things differently just because it's been done that way before!)

Flavor: It just wouldn't work in universe. Potion bottles in Crawl are pretty tough, and only really break when exposed to extreme heat or cold (as opposed to bottles in Nethack, in which they are so flimsy mitosis can occur across a glass barrier). A thrown potion wouldn't break, and even if it did, the chemicals inside wouldn't do anything wetting the outside of a monster. It's been established that the various drugs / chemicals crawlers see need to be metabolized in some way to have an effect, either via ingestion (quaffing), the lungs (clouds) or the bloodstream (needles). Crawl doesn't have contact poison / contact drugs (assuming poisoned sling bullets draw blood). Presumably these chemicals have too fluid a consistency to coat weapons- they just run off.

Balance/Gameplay/Philosophy: letting you use negative items in a positive way misses the point- it just turns bad items into good items. The current system, in which there are a limited number of ways to use normally negative items positively at a cost is much better- it fosters interesting choices. Want to throw potions? Fine, but you need to waste spell slots on fulsome and evaporate, and some skill lvls in throwing, transmutations, and fire. Or alternatively, invest in cloud spells, or start collecting needles and training throwing to get a similar effect. Want to poison your weapon? Well you can't get one for just a potion of poison- why should you get something good in return for something useless? Instead you need to memorize poison weapon, and burn a scroll of vorpalization. Forcing you to make choices with real and immediate consequences is more interesting and better for the game than just making the ID game traps useful for spoiled players.

Eh, I'm probably not doing the philosophical justification the justice it deserves, but I think you get the point I'm trying to make.

[cjo]

Yeah, but why can't you, you know, just throw the potion? (Not actually in favour of the idea)

Probably for the same reason a lot of people think Evaporate is overpowered.

It's less about overpoweredness than about the annoyance of having to fiddle around with your inventory carrying around bad potions. The fact that it would be overpowered is just a crappy crappy cherry on top of the crappy crappy pie.

Seems like Fulsome Distillation / Evaporate have come up a lot, and I just want to say that I LOVE these spells. I love them both thematically and for game play. I don't think they are inherently overpowered, but I think maybe they are a little cheap for what you get. If you compare them to mephitic cloud, mephitic has the advantage that you can spam it all you like, but FD/E has the advantage of being more powerful when you do use it (by offering a wider variety of effects, some of which stay useful longer than mephitic cloud). In my experience, FD/E wins out, yet is cheaper to master.

Mephitic cloud can also be a trap - it is so good so early that I tend to cling to it longer than I should. I see my spouse do the same thing, even when I warn him off of it. The limitation of FD/E actually helps me avoid becoming overly dependent on it.

I don't find these spells at all inconvenient. I don't distill every corpse in the dungeon - it helps not to over-optimize. If I get burdened, I drop some potions of poison or confusion. If I have excess potions of decay or degeneration, I drop them, or once in a while I will use some even if I don't strictly need to. If I need to regularly drop potions, I cut back on how many I distill in the first place. It does involve a little additional inventory fussing, but not nearly as much as sublimation of blood, and no one seems to complain about that spell...

[ElectricAlbatross]

The thing I hated most about FD/Evap is that they were in the Transmuter starting book. Now that that's been fixed, I don't have quite as much of a problem with them. They'd fit in nicely to an Alchemy school if that ever gets done.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

I myself like Evaporate, too.
GRENADES. Small gas grenades (and for debut, potions of water ARE grenades!).