Proposal: Rework Item Destruction


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Blades Runner

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Post Tuesday, 24th September 2013, 07:46

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

When you write posts like that, the troll is you.

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Post Tuesday, 24th September 2013, 15:15

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Just as a counterpoint, I don't hate it, I don't love it, but I'd rather have some scroll or potion I need, and have some control over whether it's destroyed or not, than have it not generate in the first place.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 24th September 2013, 15:29

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Item destruction makes the game less fun:
1) if you don't use consumables in a hard battle trying to save them for even harder battles, you feel stupid when the consumables are destroyed. If you try to minimize item destruction, you feel stupid because of spending your real time on stashing (even in a corner) instead of actually playing the game
2) if you do use consumables in a hard battle because they can be destroyed any way, you feel stupid when you are out of consumables in a harder battle.

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Post Tuesday, 24th September 2013, 16:32

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Sandman25 wrote:Item destruction makes the game less fun:
1) if you don't use consumables in a hard battle trying to save them for even harder battles, you feel stupid when the consumables are destroyed. If you try to minimize item destruction, you feel stupid because of spending your real time on stashing (even in a corner) instead of actually playing the game
2) if you do use consumables in a hard battle because they can be destroyed any way, you feel stupid when you are out of consumables in a harder battle.


I dunno, those situations, when they come up don't make *me* feel stupid, no more so than "Oh that centaur warrior shot me" makes me feel stupid.

Minimizing item destruction is as much or more to do with target selection and tactical/position play (And training some stealth, and not using the noisiest attack available, actually) as it is to do with stashing. Generally speaking you should be stepping back out of LOS of that smoke demon/mottled dragon and putting the melee critter or something in the way or blasting that ranged attacker to death instead of the close-to-you-melee-er to minimize the number of rounds you can get pelted from afar is good play whether or not it destroys your scrolls. Playing optimally and having the *chance* of having one of those scrolls when it's needed is, in IMHO, better than never having the scroll in the first place.
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Post Tuesday, 24th September 2013, 16:40

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Siegurt wrote:
Sandman25 wrote:Item destruction makes the game less fun:
1) if you don't use consumables in a hard battle trying to save them for even harder battles, you feel stupid when the consumables are destroyed. If you try to minimize item destruction, you feel stupid because of spending your real time on stashing (even in a corner) instead of actually playing the game
2) if you do use consumables in a hard battle because they can be destroyed any way, you feel stupid when you are out of consumables in a harder battle.


I dunno, those situations, when they come up don't make *me* feel stupid, no more so than "Oh that centaur warrior shot me" makes me feel stupid.

Minimizing item destruction is as much or more to do with target selection and tactical/position play (And training some stealth, and not using the noisiest attack available, actually) as it is to do with stashing. Generally speaking you should be stepping back out of LOS of that smoke demon/mottled dragon and putting the melee critter or something in the way or blasting that ranged attacker to death instead of the close-to-you-melee-er to minimize the number of rounds you can get pelted from afar is good play whether or not it destroys your scrolls. Playing optimally and having the *chance* of having one of those scrolls when it's needed is, in IMHO, better than never having the scroll in the first place.


Ok, maybe "stupid" was not right word. Is "frustrated" ok? Like you killed a dangerous monster without any consumables but it was a bad idea because you lost that potion of speed any way and you spent more time waiting for HP to regen. Do we really want players feel bad when they win without consumables?

Stealth is not available to all characters. I still remember my first DDFi in plate armour without conservation, he didn't have any potions/scrolls/spells in late dungeon and zot. It made me train Dodging for next characters who barely got any EV from it.

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Post Tuesday, 24th September 2013, 17:02

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

The trunk change allowing AC to reduce the chance for item destruction should help keep heavy armor tanks from losing all their consumables.

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Post Tuesday, 24th September 2013, 23:11

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

savageorange wrote:When you write posts like that, the troll is you.

well, yeah, sorry, it's turned out a bit troll, but that wasn't my intention, maybe it's my psychological trauma from mottled dragons.

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 00:22

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

This thread is moving too fast, I cannot keep pace. Some random comments:

1. The fact that something is mostly disliked doesn't say too much about is design value. I don't think you'll find many players who sing the praises of jellies and draining, and still both mechanics have something going for them.
For a non-Crawl example: Brogue has a much more limited inventory, and the question of what to carry can be excruciating (Brogue can only pull this off because there is simply not enough food to backtrack too much). Players often complain about this mechanic but it definitely creates interesting choices and makes for a more intricate gameplay.

2. Often (not just here), the extended game is mentioned, e.g. "this change will make the Hells much harder". I think it's okay to be aware of this, but these should be seen as minor points. First, very, very few players ever see these regions. Second, these are optional, so if they become harder (or easier), it simply matters less -- compare with "Vaults is much harder now", which may be alright but always warrants discussion. Third, these areas can be tweaked on their own (each of these have their own rules, and could have more of them, or different ones).

3. Why not simply remove item destruction?
As a player, I am as unhappy about losing my potion as the next guy. As a designer, do I see any value in the mechanic? It causes everyone to at least drop (and at most compulsively stash) items, and the mere presence of certain monsters can lead to the "drop items, fight monster, pick up items" cycle which gets old quite fast. On the other hand, the mechanic creates opportunities for mistakes (and I not talking of the "I forgot to drop my potion of cure mutation" type of error), which means it increases depth (better players will cope more easily with item destruction). Some examples: if time is scarce, what to drop first? How much to carry of something into battle? For these questions to make sense, the answers better be "it depends" -- and I am not a good enough player to ascertain this.
I have no idea if these are worth the interface worries. Maybe not, but I don't think the case is entirely trivial.

What could we change right now?
For some items, it's almost always a bad idea to carry them whatsoever (enchant foo, acquirement, cure mutation) although there are exceptions. (I've been to bazaars where I wished I'd have brought my acquirement. Not being able to fetch dropped items right away also changes things: Abyss, Pan, portal vaults.) Making these indestructible may be an immediate improvement. Of course, even this is not trivial to do: new item type? What about the id-minigame?

I agree that handicapped uses of potions and scrolls in the relevant hells and portal vaults would help flavour and increase diversity. For hells, this is actually easy to substantiate: "As you try to read the scroll, it perfidiously burns up.", which fits with all the "You feel watched." flavour. (I.e. the scroll does not burn because it's so hot, which you'd think is a constant, but because some malicious entity does not like you reading scrolls.) Chances don't have to be really high for this to make a little impact.
If doing this, the theme could be strengthened further by making sure that Cocytus contains no potions whatsoever etc.

There are certainly ways to find flavour rationales for what sanka suggests (not saying at this point his idea is good or bad): the "scroll flies away as you try to drop it on the floor", the "potion shatters as you try to drop it on the floor", i.e. every inventory-floor interaction could potentially lose the item. The same could go for such items on the ground: if left on the floor for too long, they could develop cracks (potions) or move a little (scrolls) before they disappear. Of course, this only makes sense if strategic items are of a different kind, and I am not convinced it's a great idea. But this is the place to let off strange ideas. :)

dck

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 01:34

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Well old draining was crap and completely irrelevant in virtually all situations so it mainly annoyed players, new one can be relevant sometimes though it still isn't worth going out of your way to get rN for. Similarly, jellies hardly do anything at all. Even with jiyva they don't eat that much stuff that isn't junk. Now killing them was a damn nightmare when they were slow because it meant a lot of ridiculously boring actions and doing things the fast way out of exasperation meant risking a lot of bad things, including death. Nowadays you just crabwalk back to your stairs and leave them to their business if you can't kill them without getting close.
What I mean by this is that these mechanics didn't do that much to make crawl a better game, were changed and are now a bit better. Similarly others like itemdest could use a change.

But while currently playing this item dropping minigame incredibly annoying I think consumables are interesting and good as they are and they don't need to be nerfed, and if itemdest removal gets through they will be nerfed into not being 100% reliable in all contexts as long as you have them for not much more reason than keeping this idea that "we're doing something to prevent the guy who found 12 HW pots from using them all if he fucks up!" which is a problem that never existed because if the guy fucks up bad enough that he'll need all the HW pots he's carrying instead of 2-3 he's still a terrible player and will soon need them again and die because he doesn't have them. In fact if he lost his potions because he used them he may reconsider being so reckless in the future, while with itemdest he still has the scapegoat of blaming it on having gotten them destroyed because of bad luck and can keep this mindset for longer, which leads him not improving as a player.

I know I'm not the first to say this and I'm sure it won't do much to say it again, but killing itemdest would affect nothing but the tedium of managing your items "properly". With current itemdest there is no relevancy to consumable destruction if you carry the right amounts of stuff and react properly to certain enemies and you don't even have to do it all the time, working around itemdest for say a bit more than half of a 3-rune game often leaves you with enough consumables that with decent defenses and proper play you won't have to give a damn about it anymore because if one of your 3 HW gets shattered you just ctrl+f another one, go grab it and die inside a bit more.
Mind you this doesn't mean consumables are too common, spawn rates are good I think, it just means item destruction is terrible as a mechanic and doesn't really achieve any of its goals.

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Amnesiac, and into, Sandman25

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 13:22

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Realistically the only time that item dest really matters and causes trouble for me is in Zot. It's either find cons/preservation and carry HW & blink and fog and whatever else or don't find it, drop pretty much everything by the stairs go find the way to the other stairs, possibly get the HW or whatever I was carrying destroyed and weigh if I need to go back to the stairs stash or not, go back and get my stuff and then repeat.

The rest of it just falls into occasional annoyances, more so in the very early game when you have an orc wizard destroy your only HW or speed pot.

I haven't played trunk where AC is checked against destruction so I have to imagine that Zot is slightly less painful but until and unless Zot is "fixed" this is probably going to continue being an issue that many people complain up.

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 14:21

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

dpeg wrote:I don't think you'll find many players who sing the praises of...draining

Me me! I love the new draining, it's actually dangerous rather than annoying. Shadow dragons are especially terrifying for armored brutes without rN. Had one character die in Tomb due to lack of rN and severe draining, try to have at least rN++ now when attempting Tomb.

For some items, it's almost always a bad idea to carry them whatsoever (enchant foo, acquirement, cure mutation) although there are exceptions. (I've been to bazaars where I wished I'd have brought my acquirement. Not being able to fetch dropped items right away also changes things: Abyss, Pan, portal vaults.) Making these indestructible may be an immediate improvement. Of course, even this is not trivial to do: new item type? What about the id-minigame?

Agree that cure mutation is nice to have on your person in pan and to a much lesser extent abyss. Don't know what you're saying about bringing acquirement in a bazaar though?

As for the id minigame couldn't you just leave them as unidentified scrolls/potions that are never destroyed? To the player there would be no discernable difference until the item is id'd, assuming you want to explicitly create a new category like say "indestructibles". They stay lumped under the "scrolls" or "potions" category until identified, then moved into the new category.

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 14:23

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

zugundertherug wrote:Don't know what you're saying about bringing acquirement in a bazaar though?

You can acquire gold, but should only do so if you have something on which to spend it.

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 14:54

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

I remember getting drained to 0 level skills, that was fun and it took quite some time to get back all my skills. I managed to do this somehow. I'm glad I wasn't a mage, but I wasn't a tank either, so it wasn't exactly easy for an inept HaAs.

At least it would be relaxing if cure mut and enchant foo scrolls(and brand weapon, of course) would be indestructible and I don't see any reason to not do it this way.

Also, it's super frustrating to get your only couple of scrolls before even identifying them, I can't sleep after that, because I think that I will never know what kind of scrolls those were(It's a lie).
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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 15:29

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

BlackSheep wrote:
zugundertherug wrote:Don't know what you're saying about bringing acquirement in a bazaar though?

You can acquire gold, but should only do so if you have something on which to spend it.

Huh. I can't think of any time I've ever been kitted out well enough that I don't want to use ?Acq immediately. I'm not a good player, though, either.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 15:37

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Some people choose to save acquirement scrolls if they're comfortable with how their character is going. Others have something specific in mind that they'd like to acquire, and wait until they've discovered more items of the same base type to make receiving that item more likely. (My understanding is that acquirement is tilted toward things you haven't seen yet.)

I'm with you, though. As soon as I get one, I stop everything while I mull over my choices.

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 15:46

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Unless you want an animal skin, I think it's a good idea to wait until you've seen one, if you are trying to aquire armour, as well as all other vanilla stuff, preferably.

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 15:49

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

I think making !cMut a food would be a good change, even if it does take away some from the potion ID game. (Even non-eating races should be able to use them.) Acquirement/enchant scrolls don't make much sense as a food, but perhaps !experience could also be one? Item destruction of strategic items seems definitively less interesting than destruction of tactical items. (Food destruction is not a big deal and we could make these foods immune to it if we really cared.)

dck

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 15:51

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Well generally important things to acquire for example are wands which no matter what you've seen or not are always weighted towards the great ones (though the ones you've not ID'd do affect the results a bit). I can't say using it right away is the most efficient way every time but it seems to me like it's pretty good.
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Barkeep

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 16:04

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Amnesiac wrote:Unless you want an animal skin, I think it's a good idea to wait until you've seen one, if you are trying to aquire armour, as well as all other vanilla stuff, preferably.

I guess what I'm saying is: I think being able to safely keep acquirement in your inventory on the off-chance you'd want one in a bazaar would be an extremely minor buff.

On the topic as a whole.... I used to be closer to the "rework it" camp (draining being an excellent example), but I'm being won over to the "remove it" camp. Ontoclasm is right; there are already a boatload of ways to balance consumables (adjusting the potency of consumables is another). And while I agree with dpeg that game features need not be popular to be good, when something irritates people as much as item destruction seems to, that means something, too.
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Barkeep

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Post Wednesday, 25th September 2013, 17:51

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Yeah, ontoclasm and (in particular) dck's arguments have caused me to change my mind as well, njvack.

I think the temporary % failure chance would be an interesting mechanic, but I now think it would only work on a new (nasty) type of creature, as a much more specific and targeted threat—a very high failure chance to use consumables, being caused by a certain type of monster (similar to moth of suppression, silent specter, or what have you).

Failure chance for consumables is already implemented in a few ways, it doesn't break the game, but having it be generalized so much through elemental damage would be a nightmare to balance, as even a small failure chance could mean that a very well prepared player gets screwed by RNG through no real fault of his own, because in mid-game fire and cold damage is flying at you all the time. It would also be extremely annoying to keep up with fluctuating % failure chances, if it were displayed, and it would be even more annoying if it weren't displayed. So having this be an extremely common feature of the game would, upon reflection, be too annoying. The difficult *and* interesting situations it creates would be far outweighed by uninteresting frustration. I think it would be great as a feature on a new enemy type or something, but not linked to fire/cold damage, both of which become ubiquitous very quickly after Lair.

I *do* like that fire and cold damage do something aside from just lower your HP, though. But, maintaining that distinctiveness is probably not worth maintaining a feature (item destruction) that so often tends to be frustrating rather than challenging. I do hope we can devise a different way for fire/ice to be different, but I guess I'm on the "remove it" bandwagon now.

As for acquirement—I like the fact that it is not clear when it is best to save, or spend. Which is optimal depends largely on the specific situation (which means it is well designed), although I probably tend to use rather than save, mostly. I have acquired money before, a few times, one time recently on a mage who got very few mid-game book shops but spawned a couple of mall levels, including some great book stores, so there are certain situations in which nearly any option from acquirement could be strong. I also really like that read-IDing scrolls and getting lucky can sometimes force the decision on you, all of a sudden.

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Post Thursday, 26th September 2013, 01:10

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

minmay wrote:I have played 2629 games online and have never, ever saved a scroll of acquirement, nor can I imagine any circumstances under which I would do so. I also fail to see any relevance this has to the topic whatsoever.

It has a bit of relevance, as we are talking about destruction of items and scrolls of acquirement are probably the most frustrating to lose.

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Post Thursday, 26th September 2013, 01:48

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

minmay wrote:I have played 2629 games online and have never, ever saved a scroll of acquirement, nor can I imagine any circumstances under which I would do so. I also fail to see any relevance this has to the topic whatsoever.


There are definitely circumstances under which saving acquirement is a reasonable course of action, even if it is probably ideal in most cases to use it now, or very soon. It isn't just an either/or, though, of course. It is a question of when.

If I id a scroll of acquirement at the end of Lair, for instance, saving it until after I see what shops Orc 4 offers, is a completely reasonable course of action, and I'd even wager it is optimal play over using immediately in certain situations. Of course hoarding items like a miser is not good play in general, but using acquirement immediately is not necessarily the best option. Which is good, it should be a judgment call that changes based on the situation.

Admittedly though this is off topic, so I won't continue the derail.

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Post Thursday, 26th September 2013, 13:41

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

It is possible to find a scroll of acquirement near bazaar or a shop. I am sure it would be optimal not to use the scroll before going into bazaar/shop. Case closed.
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