Proposal: Rework Item Destruction


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

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Post Tuesday, 2nd July 2013, 20:12

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Insult hidden from tender eyes. Kids: don't do this. - Grimm
Spoiler: show
Galehar just stop. You're not winning this one: no one agrees with you. Just go add more AI quirks that everyone hates or whatever you do.


Anyway on topic:

Item destruction effects some characters more than others and I think this is at least interesting in that my Lava Orc died on ascension because, due to losing potions bit by bit all game, he didn't have any to heal with on the orb run (and had slow healing from an orb of fire). Also preservation and conservation will take a bit of a hit in usefulness if item destruction is changed which would further remove any interesting equipment choices.

Every change has positives and negatives and it's clear the the positives outweigh the negatives on changing item destruction. If the interesting bits that are lost in the change could be added in a different manner that would be cool.
Last edited by Grimm on Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 00:29, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: put insult in spoiler tags and added info
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Post Tuesday, 2nd July 2013, 20:27

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

I would read a scroll of silence to shut you guys up but I can't due to all this flaming.

Also preservation and conservation will take a bit of a hit in usefulness if item destruction is changed which would further remove any interesting equipment choices.

99% of the time you're not going to have better equipment than conservation or preservation for their corresponding slots. A nerf makes them more interesting.
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Post Tuesday, 2nd July 2013, 20:32

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

pubby wrote:I would read a scroll of silence to shut you guys up but I can't due to all this flaming.

Also preservation and conservation will take a bit of a hit in usefulness if item destruction is changed which would further remove any interesting equipment choices.

99% of the time you're not going to have better equipment than conservation or preservation for their corresponding slots. A nerf makes them more interesting.

You're probably right.

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Post Tuesday, 2nd July 2013, 21:19

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

galehar wrote:However, I'd say there is a difference between 2 and 6 potions of healing. Or why do people value the wand so much?

The main reason the wand is so valuable is that finding a single wand more than doubles the total number of times you can use !hw in a given game.
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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 02:56

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Moose wrote:Would it be possible to have a config option that would warn you before you try to consume an item under these conditions?


Done! :)

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Post Wednesday, 3rd July 2013, 05:10

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

brendan wrote:
Moose wrote:Would it be possible to have a config option that would warn you before you try to consume an item under these conditions?


Done! :)

f7602ab2061


Is it flagged on by default? Because it should be.
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Post Saturday, 6th July 2013, 06:57

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

This is now available on cszo console on the `destruction` branch. It will make it into cszo webtiles the next time the server restarts. I'd appreciate it if I could get some player feedback, though admittedly this might be hard since destruction is such a small part of the game.

(Games on this branch are probably unscored.)

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Post Saturday, 6th July 2013, 08:34

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

What about over servers, like cao?

Can't wait to try this, item destruction has always aggravated me. I suppose the choice "to use or not to use" is way more interesting than "to carry with you or to stash somewhere and tediously return every time you fought a mottled dragon or smth".

Although the jinni are gonna be even more broken now that they don't care about fire damage at all.

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Post Saturday, 6th July 2013, 15:12

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Man, I missed the announcement that cszo was back up. I've been playing a more distant server for two weeks.

New announcements show up in my RSS feed, but not changes to old announcements.

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Post Sunday, 7th July 2013, 17:29

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

brendan wrote:
pubby wrote:Conservation should prevent the status in the first place - you shouldn't be able to swap amulets for conservation after getting hit by an attack.


Done.


(Forgive me if the implementation has already taken my concerns into account).

What if wearing a conservation amulet gave a different effect (i.e. "warm hands" instead of "hot hands"). That way, you keep the 5% destruction rate (instead of a fore-knowledged 50% destruction rate 10% of the time) and amulet swapping is still ineffectual.

Unequipping the amulet of conservation should obviously switch "warm hands" to "hot hands".
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Post Tuesday, 16th July 2013, 14:28

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Looks like crawl is taking another direction after all.
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Post Tuesday, 16th July 2013, 14:45

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

galehar wrote:Looks like crawl is taking another direction after all.


I don't see how that interferes with this proposal? I mean wand draining is good an all, but if you get 5-10 traps you're set for avoiding most zot traps.
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Post Tuesday, 16th July 2013, 17:27

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

And if you worship Ash, you don't need any points in traps at all.

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Post Tuesday, 16th July 2013, 17:43

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

What's the point of the change? Is it just trying to make Zot traps scarier?
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Post Tuesday, 16th July 2013, 22:52

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Is there any idea yet if and when the new item destruction will make it into trunk? Because I must say that having to drop all of your useful scrolls 7 times on D:15 because of fire-wielding enemies (fire drake, mottled drake, 5 bow of flame-wielding centaur warriors) like I just had to gets rather tedious. It also helps prevents the "Hey, it's Nikola. Let me drink my potion of resis... oh. Apparently I encountered a frost enemy at some point"-syndrome I had a few floors earlier.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 00:22

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Igxfl wrote:What's the point of the change? Is it just trying to make Zot traps scarier?
Adding this effect to Zot Traps is like adding a new type trap. It's just that instead of rolling what the trap will do when it generates the game instead rolls what it will do when you walk on it.

FalconNL wrote:Is there any idea yet if and when the new item destruction will make it into trunk? Because I must say that having to drop all of your useful scrolls 7 times on D:15 because of fire-wielding enemies (fire drake, mottled drake, 5 bow of flame-wielding centaur warriors) like I just had to gets rather tedious. It also helps prevents the "Hey, it's Nikola. Let me drink my potion of resis... oh. Apparently I encountered a frost enemy at some point"-syndrome I had a few floors earlier.
This item destruction reform isn't popular with the dev team at all. brendan said on IRC he wouldn't personally push it due to the controversy, and obviously nobody else has decided to push it. One criticism is that it breaks Pan's cut off from supplies because you can just carry everything.

Bim wrote:
galehar wrote:Looks like crawl is taking another direction after all.


I don't see how that interferes with this proposal? I mean wand draining is good an all, but if you get 5-10 traps you're set for avoiding most zot traps.
I agree that this shouldn't really affect whether this goes in or not. I think galehar meant that it showed that most people think item destruction is a good thing. However, wands are different because they all have tactical effects outside some corner cases - the only reason to stash a wand is to save it for later, and you'd already do that now to free up the inventory slot.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 07:34

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

reaver wrote:This item destruction reform isn't popular with the dev team at all.


Are they against changing at item destruction at all or just this specific implementation? Because the way I see it, item destruction goes against crawl's design philosophy in several ways:

- "activities that have low risk, take a lot of time, and bring some reward": The optimal way of dealing with item destruction is stashing all non-essential scrolls (enchant weapon, acquirement, etc.) on L:2 and dropping all tactical scrolls (blinking, teleport, etc.) and potions whenever you encounter any of crawl's many fire/cold enemies. Crawl generally tries to reduce the need for the former as much as possible and the latter is just wasting time. In my current game as a midgame HOBe, the damage a red ugly thing or centaur with a bow of flame does to me is largely inconsequential, so there's barely any risk in doing the same drop-everything actions again and again.
- "All tedious, but necessary, chores should be automated". See above re: manually dropping scrolls/potions at each relevant encounter, turning what would have been a two-second, 10-tab fight into a 10-second analysis of what order I should drop my scrolls in, dropping them, killing the monster, picking them back up and dropping the couple arrows that invariably are on the same tile since they were shooting me while I was dropping things.

Given the lack of support for the current alternative, here's a suggestion for a less drastic change: tie potion/scroll destruction to the amount of rC/rF you have, similar to the way damage works, i.e.:

  Code:
rX---  80% increased chance
rX--   66% increased chance
rX-    50% increased chance
rX+    50% reduced chance
rX++   66% reduced chance
rX+++  80% reduced chance.


Even at rX+++ there's still a reasonable chance of destruction so an amulet of conservation doesn't become obsolete (as well as offering protection from both fire and cold), but it does help reduce the frequency of destruction. Also, it promotes tactical decisions a little. Currently I wouldn't bother putting on my ring of fire resistance to go from rF+ to rF++ for a fire drake because, as mentioned, the damage is fairly trivial. When it helps keep my consumables safe, I just might. It's not a perfect solution (dropping scrolls would still be the optimal play), but it does reduce the need for it and thus might serve as a stopgap measure until a better proposal is drafted.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 08:24

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

that favours swaps to read/quaff safely which is awful
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 09:27

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

absolutego wrote:that favours swaps to read/quaff safely which is awful


I think I'm missing something. What does rC/rF affecting item destruction rates have to do with reading/quaffing? There are no scrolls/potions that destroy items and the only thing this does to reading/quaffing in combat is making it more likely that you still actually have the scroll/potion you were hoping to use.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 12:20

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

oh, i admit i didn't go through the whole post. i don't read big posts on design because they're nearly always bad. (preemptive answer: i just worry about this thread because it has the potential to ruin crawl for me.)

i thought you wanted resistances to factor into the chance the item is destroyed when you get the whatever status in the branch proposal, for some reason. so you actually just want resistances to work like conservation, *in addition to conservation*? this doesn't solve any of the problems that brought this about (say tactical vs strategic items). all i can say is

that favours swaps [REDACTED] which is awful


i like how you call that "tactical decisions" but you're not getting away with it
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 12:51

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

reaver wrote:One criticism is that it breaks Pan's cut off from supplies because you can just carry everything.

I'd almost rather Pan just not let you bring potions/scrolls at all :/

Almost.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 12:57

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

absolutego wrote:this doesn't solve any of the problems that brought this about (say tactical vs strategic items).


Never claimed it did. Since it doesn't look like the whole temporary status solution is going to make it I thought I'd propose something that at least reduces the annoyance of the current item destruction mechanic a little, since as far as I'm concerned it's just that: an annoyance that doesn't lead to any interesting gameplay changes and is just a case of "Let's see how much the RNG hates you today". I am prepared to accept that this might be a minority opinion, but the only way to find whether that is indeed the case or if most people hate it but just don't bring it up is to provoke discussion.

absolutego wrote:i like how you call that "tactical decisions" but you're not getting away with it


Hence why I said "a little". Dropping scrolls when the damage of the fire source is negligable is a no-brainer; with alternate jewellery/weapons there's at least a hint of a trade-off. At the very least it replaces the current 4-5 clicks for dropping each type of scroll with one click for switching jewellery/weapons. Obviously a solution that actually promotes more interesting gameplay is preferrable, but I don't have one yet.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 13:02

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

well there are two in this thread (bh branch, or remove altogether)

At the very least it replaces the current 4-5 clicks for dropping each type of scroll with one click for switching jewellery/weapons.


this is funny in so many ways

anyway try d?, d!
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 13:22

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

If anything, the argument that the new mechanic is bad because it allows people to bring more stuff into pan really just shows how much room for improvement the current system has. Let's look at it this way: the idea of more enemies like Maurice that steal items has been vetoed because having your items stolen is really annoying. And yet, if I find 8 scrolls of blinking, I'm going to put 6 of them somewhere safe because having them eaten by jellies or having them burned by some enemy that probably isn't dangerous is every bit as annoying. Nobody really likes having their items destroyed; the existing item mechanic is at best a necessary evil, and at worst a hack-ish balancing tool. And yet people are worried about Pan, an area 99% of characters never even see? If it can be done better, it absolutely should. Here are some proposals:
-Revise scroll/potion weight
-Introduce a hard cap on the number of potions or scrolls, or limit stack sizes so it can take more than one item slot
-Introduce abyss-like penalties on using items, perhaps tied to the life of the pan lord (you could even make it part of Pan's chaotic nature; one level cancels out teleports, another cancels out haste, etc.)

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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 13:23

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

absolutego wrote:anyway try d?, d!
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I know the option exists, but I thought that dropping multiple items still drops each stack one by one rather than all at once, taking time for each action, and that using multi-drop doesn't give you control over the order in which you drop them, which means there's still a chance that your most valuable scroll gets destroyed during the drop process just because it happened to come last in whatever sorting order is used. If either of these assumptions is incorrect, I'd love to hear it.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 13:39

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

well i rarely drop things on the spot. i do that with blinking sometimes but that's it.
usually i kite things to a door i can close (works for dragons, ice beasts, simulacra) or a < and drop the stuff.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 14:05

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Bim wrote:
galehar wrote:Looks like crawl is taking another direction after all.


I don't see how that interferes with this proposal? I mean wand draining is good an all, but if you get 5-10 traps you're set for avoiding most zot traps.

Mechanically it doesn't, but it's a different design direction. The proposal is to remove item destruction, this commit is adding a new source of item destruction. Wouldn't make much sense to do both.

absolutego wrote:oh, i admit i didn't go through the whole post. i don't read big posts on design because they're nearly always bad.

You shouldn't bother answering posts you haven't read.

FalconNL wrote:
  Code:
rX---  80% increased chance
rX--   66% increased chance
rX-    50% increased chance

Note that rX-- and rX--- don't actually exist. They just make it harder to overcome the vulnerability but you don't actually take more damage than with rX-.
Instead of giving a conservation effect to resistance, another suggestion is to scale the destruction effect to the damage. This would help make harmless monsters less annoying and make AC based characters suffer a bit less compared to EV based ones.

Tiber wrote:If anything, the argument that the new mechanic is bad because it allows people to bring more stuff into pan really just shows how much room for improvement the current system has.

reaver wrote:One criticism is that it breaks Pan's cut off from supplies because you can just carry everything.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 14:18

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

galehar wrote:Instead of giving a conservation effect to resistance, another suggestion is to scale the destruction effect to the damage. This would help make harmless monsters less annoying and make AC based characters suffer a bit less compared to EV based ones.


Good idea. It achieves the same same thing as my proposal (since more resistance => less damage => less item destruction), as well as providing an additional reduction for popcorn like orc wizards and such. I'm all for it.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 14:43

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

1. this doesn't address consumables with no tactical use.
2. less item destruction means non-zero item destruction so stashing is still optimal. and if this happens you may have to generate less consumables, which may make them more valuable, which means back to square 1?
3. EV characters would still dodge most sources of item destruction (the big exception being fireball)? also we're talking about elemental damage, which is reduced by AC but moreso by resistances, so you're tying it to swaps, again, which is bad. and before it comes up, we're talking about popcorn so they are not "desirable anyway".
4. the zot trap thing is sort of orthogonal to this? it has nothing to do with fire/ice. it even bypasses conservation. edit: also didn't cloud traps just get removed

still yeah, i've said many times that high AC/low EV chars without conservation are very annoying to play by V/late D. i actually remember talking with galehar about giving AC some sort of conservation, but it never happened.

You shouldn't bother answering posts you haven't read.


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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 16:47

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

The goal of the current item destruction mechanic (as I understand it) is to make sure players don't carry all their tactical consumables all the time. In other words, even if you have amassed six scrolls of blinking, you're probably better off running around with just one or two.

So the goal is to ENCOURAGE tediously running back and forth to stashes?!?!?!?!

I see a mottled dragon, and immediately turn around, go upstairs, drop my scrolls, then go back down and fight it. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TELLING ME THAT IS INTENDED BEHAVIOUR??

Depending on how it's implemented, per item suppression encourage...drop the stuff before suffering the effect.

This is already what happens. In fact, according the bit I quoted above^^^, the entire purpose of item destruction is to encourage this behaviour.

Sure, there's no difference between 2 or 6 scrolls of blinking. Except in Pan/Abyss but whatever.

Blinking scrolls are functionally worthless in Abyss, and WHY ON EARTH would you leave any behind when you enter Pan? The fact that some of your blink scrolls will be destroyed in Pan is just an incentive to carry more of them, not less (since you can't go back to your stash if you lose one).

One criticism is that it breaks Pan's cut off from supplies because you can just carry everything.

I already carry everything I can into Pan. The ONLY limitation is that I have to leave some free inventory space for the stuff I find in Pan.

Also Pan doesn't cut you off from supplies. It contains infinite supplies.

galehar wrote:Looks like crawl is taking another direction after all.

Except that's entirely unrelated to consumable destruction for a variety of reasons (most obviously, it does absolutely nothing whatsoever to discourage players from carrying all their wands, which is the supposed purpose of item destruction).

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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 17:53

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Regarding Zot traps draining wand charges, item destruction as it is would not be as annoying as it is now if it was limited to Zot traps as well, since it bypasses the whole "dropping items because you spotted a relatively harmless item destruction source" part.
Now if enemies with, say, elec attacks had a chance to drain a wand charge each time they hit you...

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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 19:07

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

It seems I missed some discussion but I'll say it anyway: I support enabling brendan's branch in trunk. For what it's worth, I also support the new Zot trap effect -- wand charges being sacrosanct was not good (ages ago Lemuel proposed a "magic trap" which would reduce wand charges).

The replies which use the design statement to prove how evil item destruction is are ... not necessary. Item loss has a very definite gameplay meaning, and gameplay beats interface. Finding a solution that keeps the gameplay aspect and improves the interface is welcome, of course.

galehar: I actually agree with the others that being able to carry all scrolls of blinking is not so bad. While it does remove a decision ("how many of my scrolls of blinking should I carry with me?"), I think that this choice is interesting only early on in a player's career (until they realise or are told to carry one or two). On the other hand, with the new mechanic new decisions come up: Should I read blink in spite of the chance of loss? Perhaps I should use an item in sight of a smoldering-giving monster before it bestows the effect on me? I'd definitely want to try it out.

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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 20:23

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

How about this:
Fire attacks burn a hole in the bag causing items not currently equipped to fall on ground.
Ice attacks freeze the bag, adding 0.2 delay to all consumables.

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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 20:43

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

And then you can repair that bag with your Sewing skill.
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Post Wednesday, 17th July 2013, 21:03

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

I've won entire games with my sewing skill alone.

Once you craft the Orb Cozy it's basically over.

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Post Thursday, 18th July 2013, 01:09

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

brendan wrote:Potion and scroll destruction lead to fiddly behavior, like caching strategic items and dropping scrolls when you meet a fire drake. No one, apart from a Jiyva follower, will carry around cure mutation or acquirement. Food destruction is a less bothersome important problem, due to its rarity and very low probability of actually killing the player.

On IRC we discussed replacing item destruction with use prohibition. Fire effects prevent scroll use ("You're still smoldering!"), ice effects would block potion use ("You're too chilly to drink that!"). Food destruction could be replaced with the hated nausea status. This would shift the threat of item destruction from a strategic to tactical.


While it's true that the current system leads to quirky behavior, imo there should still be item destruction of some form or another. Otherwise there's no pressing reason to wear conservation plus the strategic threat is part of the challenge. Without conservation I usually have almost no scrolls by the time I get to pan/hell, though recently I'm fond of speedrunning so I never stash anything (I'm the moron carrying cure mut on me).

Perhaps being covering in liquid flames/standing in clouds could still result in a chance for destruction? Also food destruction should remain because it's so rare, no need to nerf harpies.

Shoals Surfer

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Post Thursday, 18th July 2013, 01:30

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Item destruction makes me rage, but I don't think it should go entirely because it does affect tactics and strategy. I like zugundertherug's suggestion re liquid flames and clouds. And maybe hellfire and dragon breath. But item destruction via the likes of white imps and branded range weapons is just annoying. Edit: Though upon further thought, simplicity in the form of all or none is probably preferred over more complicated alternatives.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 18th July 2013, 14:24

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

To: zugundertherug, MrPlanck
The new proposal doesn't remove destruction of consumables, it makes it a direct consequence of player actions. I really like that player has to make risky decisions during certain intense fights, instead of deciding whether he wants to do some tedious things before and after certain inconsequential fights. Also all those scrolls of blinking that you saved with the new mechanic may fail help you against tough fiery things like brimstone fiends and waste you a turn in addition. Quaffing a pot of speed will be much less of a no-brainer in fights with ice monsters too.

Also stashes are unfun and break the flow of the game and any change that will move the game towards the point where stashing is suboptimal is welcome imo.

Shoals Surfer

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Post Thursday, 18th July 2013, 18:39

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Sounds like its worth a try to me.

Dis Charger

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Post Thursday, 18th July 2013, 19:12

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Will something be done with sticky flame? I have nightmares because of it. My mother says that sometimes I scream "nooo, nooo, my scrolls" in my sleep.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Thursday, 18th July 2013, 22:17

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

My opinion on item destruction.

tldr: it's terrible and should be removed.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 01:24

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

The weird and uncomfortable tactics that item destruction encourages (run and close doors when you see an ice beast, mottle dragon, fire crab, etc.) are really unfun and I would be happy to see them go, even if item destruction itself is to stay. I wouldn't mind seeing item destruction go either, though.
take it easy

Dis Charger

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 01:31

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Or at least just remove f..damn sticky flame scroll burn, because it's just bad for your heart. I think more of my nerve cells have died from it, then from dying, or dying on a trap(I don't even remember, when it last happened and you can count them with fingers on one hand, anyway).
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Barkeep

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 01:42

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

The point that really summarized my feeling was:
Galefury wrote:consumables are by definition a limited resource (if you are able to safely scum for them you don't need them anymore). If the player, through luck or good play, managed to save up a stock of this resource, why should he not be allowed to use it?

A corollary: if consumables are too powerful, they can be balanced by making them less powerful or less common.

Perhaps more importantly -- removing item destruction is an effective nerf to the "drop consumables" tactic. As good players tend to do it and inexperienced players don't so much, this means that (whether consumables become rarer or not), the game gets harder for good players relative to new players. I feel like that's a good direction in this case.

Think of how often someone posts a character dump and three people say "jesus god drop those potions and scrolls" and then think: is that really an interesting skill for players to learn? It's mechanically trivial; you just need to always remember to do it or play with a significant handicap.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 06:10

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

whale wrote:Also stashes are unfun and break the flow of the game and any change that will move the game towards the point where stashing is suboptimal is welcome imo.

No argument here, but I'm worried about players being able to mass lots of combat consumables. Versus fire/ice based foes the game may become slightly more difficult (which I'm all for) though this depends on whether wasting an action trying to use a consumable is more dangerous than not having the consumable in the first place. Versus everything else the game will be easier if item destruction is removed.

Note that I do like the idea of certain consumables being indestructible such as enchant scrolls since these are stashed by most players and they serve no purpose in combat. Imo the main issues are discouraging stashing and limiting the amount of combat consumables a player has available. Also would like to see something break (not just drain) my haste wand but I'm masochistic.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 06:19

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

imo talking about "easier" and "harder" is completely not a thing that should even be considered here. that can be addressed later, in several ways.
item destruction is tremendously un-fun
crawl is a game, let's make it more fun

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Cheibrodos, Wark

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 08:58

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

Mmm... okay, interesting discussion so far, but what about this:

Instead of fire or ice attacks destroying the scrolls and potions outright, they damage them, making them unusable for a period of time.

If you have one Potion of Heal Wounds in your inventory and it gets blasted, it will be greyed out on the inventory screens with the caption {damaged} next to it.

If you have three Potions of Heal Wounds in your inventory and only one of them is hit, the icon won't be greyed out, but it will tell you you have "2 potions of Heal Wounds {1 damaged}".

Wearing Conservation would be as before, and drastically reduce the chances of items getting damaged. Conservation would be to scrolls, potions and food, as SustAb would be to stats; the stats very slowly come back over time, and wearing SustAb would highly reduce chances of stats being hurt. Same for Conservation and items. And when a scroll or potion comes back, a green text message should alert the player: "One of your Potions of Heal Wounds has become stable" or "Your Scroll of Blinking is no longer singed".

Damaged items could be placed on the ground like normal items and that wouldn't change how fast they get repaired at all, but you would get no alert that it's repaired and you would just have to guesstimate. Theoretically you could drop a potion that got damaged on the floor and come back for it later when you think it's stable again, so that it doesn't take up weight in your inventory, or you could carry the dead potion with you and be alerted right away when it's back online, and have it available right then.

Food destruction could be kept as-is because it is so rare, but for consistency's sake, there's no reason why it couldn't be changed to be like scrolls and potions. Perhaps there could also be more food-damage threats to make up for it, perhaps from acid or miasma or whatever.

And if we reeeeeeally want to appeal to purists, there COULD also be an extremely slight chance of items still being destroyed outright when they would normally be just damaged. It keeps things fresh, and embodies the concept that in Crawl you can never truly plan for everything. Either way, you wouldn't want a Scroll of Acquirement or a Potion of Cure Mutation damaged OR destroyed if you can avoid it, so players are still encouraged to be careful this way, but are not downright strong-armed into it.

Additionally, these ideas open the possibility of a Repair Kit sort of item, that would be used on damaged scrolls/potions/food to get them online again instantly. Perhaps we could call it the "Artifice Ribbon" and it would be a Misc item with a low number of charges?

Anyway these are all just my random ideas. If they help any of the devs out, no need to credit me, but feel free to pay me in coffee. Because coffee is God.
--Schwa, your local muse forever and long-time High Elf fangirl ^_~
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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 13:00

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

SchwaWarrior wrote:...

Anyway these are all just my random ideas. If they help any of the devs out, no need to credit me, but feel free to pay me in coffee. Because coffee is God.

Umm, Schwa, from the first page:
dpeg wrote:Just for the sake of discussion, here are some variants of the proposal:
Full prohibition (Brendan's original suggestion): getting hit with a certain type of attack (that would currently destroy potions or scrolls) denies use of all potions (or scrolls) for some time.
Prohibition per item: as above, but the attacks selects one or more potions (or scrolls), which would then be marked as "currently unavailable". This is more forgiving, but less clear-cut.

Not to be rude, but in order to get credit, you have to be the first one to have the idea. It kind of helps to read the thread.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Friday, 19th July 2013, 13:09

Re: Proposal: Rework Item Destruction

How about still having the status effect of the 'prohibition' idea, but instead of either not being able to use scrolls/potions - or the potion/scroll you're using getting destroyed (skipturn+destruction<33) -
Why not have using an appropriate consumable trigger the current destruction model while under this effect?

You wouldn't waste a turn (or two, or three!) and lose the consumable(s) - but you'd lose something else if you dared to use some. And you'd still be able to use them while under the effect. (But with consequences, of course.)

This would solve the huge annoyance of popcorn monsters popping your consumables
  Code:
 The deep elf knight casts a spell at you.
_The puff of flame hits you! You resist. Your scroll of blinking catches fire!
classic example eh

While making actually dangerous situations take their toll. And that's not nearly as annoying as yaktaur/centaur packs slaughtering your consumables with glee.
fyi currently vaults is the place consumables go to die
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

Did you know that I like ruining crawl every now and then? Go check it out.
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