Proposal: Kill some plain rings

[XuaXua]

There is a request out on Mantis to combine Rings of Sustain Ability with Rings of Positive Energy.

I think that, based on the changes to Draining, combining them makes a lot of sense.

- - -

I also think the following should be done:
Remove rings of fire resistance and cold resistance; leave only rings of Fire and rings of Ice.

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Standardize the Ring of Poison Resistance along this train of thought, making it a Ring of Poison (+rPois, enhance Poison, -rNeg or --rNeg).

- - -

From that, one would take the aforementioned combined Ring of Sustain Ability / Positive Energy and make it (sustAb, +rNeg, -rPois, or --rPois) and have it enhance Necromancy.

- - -

Kill the generic rings of Wizardry and POTENTIALLY instead create a couple more enhancer rings for the other spell schools.
PROBABLY BAD IDEAS:
- Ring of Teleportation or Teleport Control enhances Translocation spells.
- Ring of Invisibility enhances Hexes
- Ring of Sustenance enhances Charms (hmm too powerful; hello haste, maybe Ring of Teleport Control instead?)
- Maybe Ring of Hunger combines with Ring of Wizardry?

[savageorange]

I think that, based on the changes to Draining, combining them makes a lot of sense.

- - -

I also think the following should be done:
Remove rings of fire resistance and cold resistance; leave only rings of Fire and rings of Ice.

From a subjective experience perspective, I strongly agree with both of these: Rings of Positive Energy are both non-obvious in their name, and mediocre enough that you would only wear a plain one early-game; and the 'ring of X resistance' vs 'ring of X' distinction is confusing.

[cerebovssquire]

I don't think adding hunger in its current form to wizardry is a good idea. It encourages swapping wizardry out and in more than already is the case. Hunger would have to be modified to have an unwear cost or something, but then all you have achieved is making wizardry consistently annoying instead of annoying because optimal play is swapping it out during travel.

Hunger/sustenance should both just be removed since their gameplay effect is extremely low but both are frustrating (hunger for obvious reasons, sustenance because you might as well have not found a ring unless you are an early Ash worshipper. If finding less useful rings is desirable, then decreasing ring generation is simpler than adding useless rings).

rPois ring having rN- doesn't seem intuitive at all to me. Resists aren't symmetrical in the first place (rElec, rAcid) so you don't necessarily need to make rings of poison symmetrical if you want to remove rF/rC rings.

[jejorda2]

Making more rings double-edged makes more sense to me than combining rings because they are both currently rings, though I don't think all the current rings are strong enough to need a penalty.

Giving rings of wizardry a weak spell power decrease was suggested in another thread as an alternative to a "reverse wild magic" mutation.

A slow healing effect could be added to rPois- it would need to only matter when enemies were around or it would cause tedious swapping.

Hunger could increase mp regen rate, but then it would be a lot like the ring of regeneration. Removing all MP on wearing (or removing?) the ring would reduce swapping.

[Leafsnail]

I support merging the Ring of Positive Energy with Sustain Abilities - neither are particularly good, and the resulting ring could be called Sustain Abilities. I guess removing fire and cold resistance would sortof make sense too.

I find most of the other proposals a bit confusing, though. What problems are being addressed by merging these rings? Is the Ring of Wizardry overpowered? Are all those other rings which are receiving buffs underpowered?

[Tedronai]

Remove rings of fire resistance and cold resistance; leave only rings of Fire and rings of Ice.

Why would you do that? Juggling jewelry is already one of the most annoying aspects of the game. Only having resistance rings with an additional vulnerability increases the need to swap around rings even more. You would have to constantly check if you are in line of fire of something you're susceptible of.

I personally would remove ring of (fire|ice) instead. I only ever use them if I have no other option available.

[Tiktacy]

Wow, what I cool idea. I always thought rings of resistance were pretty boring, doing this will make rings much more interesting. Ring of MR seems fine as it is though, it's interesting enough to where combining it isn't really needed.

[XuaXua]

Of note, anything after the "remove Fire / Cold resistance" and "combine positive energy / sustain abilities" is just some stuff I pulled out of the aether and is neither here nor there.

To support the positive energy / sustain abilities combo, consider the Amulets of Warding have gained rN+.

[crate]

consider the Amulets of Warding have gained rN+.

this has been the case for as long as I am aware

The real reason behind the suggested sustab/rN merge is twofold: one, sustab is the single most useless ring in the game except maybe for ring of hunger (this is because statdrain mostly doesn't exist, and even when it does it mostly doesn't do anything. This actually suggests to me that removing stat drain altogether would be a good solution, and is what I would suggest, but I feel that would be hard to get dev support for so I have not bothered to do so). Secondly, if !restab restores both draining status and statdrain, then it would make sense for the associated ring to protect against both draining status (rN) and statdrain (sustab).

(Yes, sustenance is significantly more useful than sustain abilities. I actually wear sustenance basically every time I clear Tomb and most of the time in Crypt. You might note that I don't wear sustain abilities in the place with the most statdrain in the game, but I do wear sustenance there.)

[duvessa]

consider the Amulets of Warding have gained rN+.

this has been the case for as long as I am aware

It was added in 0.6 (or maybe a bit later, but it definitely didn't have rN in older versions).

[Amnesiac]

I like rings of hunger on my vampires.

I think ring of positive energy should give rN++ to be at least a bit more attractive. I don't think I've ever wore one if I had any other alternative...
Also, I don't think that sustenance is more useful than sustab in tomb( or anywere else). Currentry there is so much food, that I just eat it from the floor if I don't have space and stay engorged most of the time(I played a DE yesterday, who spammed shatter for every pack of monsters and this was the case)

[XuaXua]

consider the Amulets of Warding have gained rN+.

this has been the case for as long as I am aware

It was added in 0.6 (or maybe a bit later, but it definitely didn't have rN in older versions).

More recently than 0.6; 0.9 or higher.

[Arrhythmia]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=6adb570984828b2c36de2952c18e722641fbf802

Warding having rN+ is almost as old as Stone Soup is itself; I hope this clarifies things.

e: now with the right commit

[duvessa]

shit i'm old

[XuaXua]

Someone must have posted that link then because I remember reading about it as a git post within the last year.

Anyway, merge the rings.

[IronJelly]

I would like to counter that Rings of Sustenance are far from useless.

Not everyone is an expert at the game, and those make my sub-optimal gameplay choices a bit less dangerous. Good not just for Ash Worshippers, but the early Zin worshippers too, who can't eat some of the things they kill. also useful the first time you enter a branch with a lot of non-edible enemies such as demons and undead.

Sure, it's maybe not optimal for a long-time player or a spriggan or something, but it's far far from useless, and I really think it should stay.

[and into]

I would like to counter that Rings of Sustenance are far from useless.

Not everyone is an expert at the game, and those make my sub-optimal gameplay choices a bit less dangerous. Good not just for Ash Worshippers, but the early Zin worshippers too, who can't eat some of the things they kill. also useful the first time you enter a branch with a lot of non-edible enemies such as demons and undead.

Sure, it's maybe not optimal for a long-time player or a spriggan or something, but it's far far from useless, and I really think it should stay.

But a lot of stuff in the game makes hunger *seem* more important than it actually is, and so stuff like ring of sustenance actually makes it more difficult, I think, for new players to figure out what decisions are good and bad. Not to mention that the way it works (unlike gourmand which has a "ramp up" period before it comes into effect) tends to lead to bad behavior in a way contrary to Crawl's design aspirations. Plus you get weird ID stuff going on—technically when you put on a ring and it doesn't ID, you want to wait until you get hungry just to make sure it isn't sustenance.

At the very least, things should change. Hunger and sustenance should probably just be removed, but if they stay, then I'd suggest two changes:

1.) Both auto-ID on wear
2.) Change the mechanics. The best I can come up with off top of my head that doesn't become completely (but just mostly) redundant with gourmand would be if sustenance cut *all* hunger costs—not just spell casting—by 50% (1 ring) or 75% (2 rings). No effect for more rings on octopodes or dudes with that funky amulet. =Hunger, meanwhile, doubles all hunger costs. Give them a similar "ramp up" period like gourmand I guess to discourage swapping.

The problem now is that both rings only have a noticeable effect if you are spending a disproportionately huge amount of time resting, auto-traveling, or just having your character pace back and forth doing nothing for some reason. I don't think it is good design to have items that are by definition only meaningful (and then only a little bit) when you are spending far more turns than you should be doing nothing.

I also agree with combining =positive energy and =sustain abilities, I think that would be a good move.

The other rings aren't really problematic but some of the stuff being suggested to fix what isn't broken, is problematic.

Well okay it has been suggested before, but I do think it would be cool if =fire and =ice extended their effect by giving a boost to all damage from the respective element—so including rods, wands, weapon brands, staff damage, etc. The boosts to these sources of elemental damage would probably have to be lower than the spell power effect, but should still be noticeable. This would specifically be the case for these rings, and maybe for the spell ring of flames; other spell power enhancers like archmage would only affect spell power of course. I think if that were implemented you'd see much more experimentation with combinations of rings and armor and different ways of juggling resistances late game, thus giving a bit more strategic variety to late game equipment decisions.

[Siegurt]

Well okay it has been suggested before, but I do think it would be cool if =fire and =ice extended their effect by giving a boost to all damage from the respective element—so including rods, wands, weapon brands, staff damage, etc. The boosts to these sources of elemental damage would probably have to be lower than the spell power effect, but should still be noticeable. This would specifically be the case for these rings, and maybe for the spell ring of flames; other spell power enhancers like archmage would only affect spell power of course. I think if that were implemented you'd see much more experimentation with combinations of rings and armor and different ways of juggling resistances late game, thus giving a bit more strategic variety to late game equipment decisions.

If this change were made, I think it would be nice if it also reduced damage of the opposing element.

[and into]

Well okay it has been suggested before, but I do think it would be cool if =fire and =ice extended their effect by giving a boost to all damage from the respective element—so including rods, wands, weapon brands, staff damage, etc. The boosts to these sources of elemental damage would probably have to be lower than the spell power effect, but should still be noticeable. This would specifically be the case for these rings, and maybe for the spell ring of flames; other spell power enhancers like archmage would only affect spell power of course. I think if that were implemented you'd see much more experimentation with combinations of rings and armor and different ways of juggling resistances late game, thus giving a bit more strategic variety to late game equipment decisions.

If this change were made, I think it would be nice if it also reduced damage of the opposing element.

You mean reduce the damage you (the player) *does* with the opposing element, right? — If so then yeah, that's what I had in mind too, actually (just forgot to write it) .

=Fire and =ice are already differentiated from other kinds of spell enhancers, and everyone can wear jewelry (and wants to wear jewelry), so I think it makes sense for these two rings to have wider appeal. As it stands they are kind of specialized in a way that I usually associate with amulets and certain unrandarts. It would be like if the slaying bonuses given by rings and artefacts only applied to two weapon classes, chosen at random, or something. I don't think it is necessary to limit the appeal that way, and they'd be more interesting if a larger set of characters could reasonably put them to good use.

[Siegurt]

You mean reduce the damage you (the player) *does* with the opposing element, right? — If so then yeah, that's what I had in mind too, actually (just forgot to write it) .

Yes, that's what I meant.

[Amnesiac]

Both auto-ID on wear

This, please.

[elwin]

I agree that it makes sense to merge rings of sustain abilities and positive energy, and to reduce the number of rings in general.

I don't think it's a good idea to make most rings have both advantages and disadvantages. Players already have to make important decisions about rings because the number of ring slots is limited. They already have to choose between deficiencies in their resistances, because two normal rings won't do much. This is why everyone, as soon as possible, switches to artifact jewelry which has no disadvantages and is much better than any set of non-artifact jewelry. Making non-artifact jewelry less desirable doesn't help. And unless artifact rings also become less useful, it won't make much difference past the midgame.

[twelwe]

Plain rings sound like something Xom should gift, along with plain needles

f - ring (right hand) {God Gift}

[spudwalt]

+1 merge positive energy and sustain abilities.

I dunno about any of the other ideas, though. I almost never use rings of fire and ice because of the added vulnerability they give me. The only times I've ever gone for a ring of fire was when a) that was all the rF I'd found with a mummy, and b) when I already had some rC+ from other equipment and I happened to know a couple fire spells, and in that case, I immediately swapped it out for ring of rC whenever I ran into something with strong ice attacks.

[mattlistener]

I'm not keen on the idea of merging rings. There has to be a "least useful" end on the ring spectrum. If rings are merged, and expectations for the ring slot adjust to match, there'll later be the same pressure to do something about Rings of Evasion, Rings of See Invisible, etc.

Swapping gear tactically in response to different threats is more interesting than fighting everything with the same loadout. I'd say, if one is having antifun swapping/carrying rings, then leave more categories behind and be a little more cautious with the corresponding threats.

[XuaXua]

I'm not keen on the idea of merging rings. There has to be a "least useful" end on the ring spectrum. If rings are merged, and expectations for the ring slot adjust to match, there'll later be the same pressure to do something about Rings of Evasion, Rings of See Invisible, etc.

Do you ever swap to rings of positive energy?

[Siegurt]

It's rare for me, but it does happen:

  Code:

 v - a ring of positive energy (left hand)


Of course that's in the greater context of "I have just about all the other resists I could ask for taken care of, and I'm in an area where bolt of draining is annoyingly common"

[Sprucery]

I quite regularly swap on rN+ gear (usually rings) if I'm going to fight a shadow dragon.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

I'm not keen on the idea of merging rings. There has to be a "least useful" end on the ring spectrum. If rings are merged, and expectations for the ring slot adjust to match, there'll later be the same pressure to do something about Rings of Evasion, Rings of See Invisible, etc.

Rings of evasion are already among the best rings in the game, and the proposals in this thread would only make them even better, by nerfing the resist rings and more heavily encouraging swapping (whereas you never swap to evasion, you just wear it at all times).

Compare sustain abilities, which for all practical purposes does nothing. Even in the parts of the game that have much higher than normal rates of statdrain, players don't bother to use sustain abilities. The most significant effects of statdrain by a wide margin are carrying capacity and spell hunger, both of which are extremely annoying but of no real consequence to survival. For this reason it is my opinion that statdrain should be removed. The ring certainly should be, since merely by existing it misleads inexperienced players into thinking stat drain matters.

Do you ever swap to rings of positive energy?

Yes, all the time. Bolt of Draining is just as deadly as Fire or Cold. The merge of sustain abilities really means nothing, because sustain abilities does nothing.

[Siegurt]

FWIW I occasionally use sustain ability, primarily when I have some level of 'deteriorating" mutation (Not all the time, but if I get more than 2-3 points down, wearing SustAb lets me heal the drain naturally while I'm doing other things), Also if I'm already playing TSO with max piety (Or in some other fashion have rN+++) and am in the tombs, and sometimes when I'm in Pan and don't need the ring slot for something else, once in a great while when I need to bypass something awful and stat-draining (Like if for some reason I need to get through a couple squares of LOS of an OCS and have clarity but no disintegration or digging, or any other way around, which would be an odd and unusual state to be in for sure.)

But those situations are unusual and it is certainly one of the least useful rings (Mostly because you can't predict when you will need it, because nothing that drains stats *consistently and predictably* drains stats, except OCS and brain worms and you shouldn't ever be LOS for more than a single action for the former, and the latter are so easily killable it's not worth the effort to swap rings even should you get drained for a point or two it doesn't matter)

[crate]

rN has actually been fine since it got changed to work like rF/rC instead of rN+ being significantly less effective than rF+/rC+

Draining attacks do a little bit less damage than fire/cold but they still hurt a lot.