With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse


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Slime Squisher

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2016, 19:28

With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

Having a near-infinite supply of branded ammo from god gifts was a pretty big upside for Oka and Trog (at least if you could bear the inventory management), but now their gifts are going to be no better than the huge piles of ammo you scavenge from centaur or yaktaur packs.

I'm not really sure how you could change ammo gifting to make up for this now that all ammo is the same.
One suggestion would be to change their acquirement code to give slightly higher enchantment to ranged weapons, or to increase the chance of such weapons being branded.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2016, 20:01

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

So what is the actual problem here? Oka and Trog being relatively less attractive to ranged combat chars seems to me to be a good change, not a bad one. (They're both still extremely good for ranged combat characters.)

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2016, 20:50

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

the problem is that ammo exists

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Slime Squisher

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2016, 21:10

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

crate wrote:So what is the actual problem here? Oka and Trog being relatively less attractive to ranged combat chars seems to me to be a good change, not a bad one. (They're both still extremely good for ranged combat characters.)


Well I think in general balance changes and quality-of-life changes should happen separately.

If there's a change specifically to nerf trog/oka with ranged characters or to make other gods more appealing that's one thing, but I'm not a fan of the nerf just being a side effect of a completely different change.
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2016, 21:42

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

Wait a moment. Branded ammo no longer exists? Or Oka just doesn't gift them anymore? Actually, I don't know where I can look to follow minor changes like this. I've found this changelog but either I'm inattentive or I see nothing there to this effect in the recent entries.
If I play online, I do so under the screenname Marenglen.

Dungeon Master

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2016, 21:50

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=co ... b8ddeb1a1a

Ranged combat was overpowered anyway. Note that only ammo for launchers (other than blowguns) was changed, Javelins/Tomahawks/Needles still have brands.

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Tomb Titivator

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Post Sunday, 17th April 2016, 21:55

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

yeah you can use that website for up-to-date commits: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git

throwing hasn't been stripped of its brands yet; the centaurs could have been changed to idk gnolls with tomahawks

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Swamp Slogger

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Post Monday, 18th April 2016, 02:54

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

CanOfWorms wrote:http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=dbab4ee685ab4b05a1684d4e1dcd9cb8ddeb1a1a

Ranged combat was overpowered anyway. Note that only ammo for launchers (other than blowguns) was changed, Javelins/Tomahawks/Needles still have brands.


I don't agree with this change at all. It's not like ranged combat users get the same kind of power mages do with things like Fire storm or hell, even Iron shot.
"Crawl is cruel. But we keep coming back to it like an abusive boyfriend. It keeps telling us how it will be different this time by giving us early robes of the archmagi and staves of fire. Then it backhands you with a Centaur on D4." ~Me

Blades Runner

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Post Monday, 18th April 2016, 03:12

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

Cheer!

I think this is a good step in the right direction. If you want branded ranged attacks, just get a launcher with the brand.. seems fair enough. Velocity+another brand was indeed stacking too many brands. When you had tons of flavors of ranged ammo, it was indeed more difficult to manage inventory. Also, knowing that you are playing sub-optimally if you don't change your ammo to the appropriate type for every other shot was tedious. Granted, a person could still swap launchers to gain a different brand, but it will take time and be on par with melee weapons.

As for the god gifts, I don't think it's a big deal. The time when you are the most concerned about running out of ammo is in the very beginning and you don't have the piety immediately anyhow. Later on you typically have so much ammo you would be hard pressed to ever run out. The only thing I think might make sense if it's not already happening is if you already have say 1,500 arrows in inventory, the god gifting might look at that and lower the chance of getting ammo greatly as a result.. but as pointed out already, Oka and Trog are already very strong gods and I don't see them as needing to be helped.

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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 18th April 2016, 16:44

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

Now the ideal end-game launcher is no longer necessarily velocity. That's a change towards more interesting choices.

Speed artefacts probably still rule, as the do for big melee weapons.

Crypt Cleanser

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Post Monday, 18th April 2016, 17:58

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

genericpseudonym wrote:If there's a change specifically to nerf trog/oka with ranged characters or to make other gods more appealing that's one thing, but I'm not a fan of the nerf just being a side effect of a completely different change.


I think it's valid to point out that this change indirectly nerfed Trog and Okawaru. But I also think it's a completely valid response that they're both still strong enough ranged gods that they don't need a compensation buff.
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Tomb Titivator

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Post Monday, 18th April 2016, 18:00

Re: With ammo brands removed, --Hu^Oka is suddenly worse

if they stopped gifting branded ammo one week, and branded ammo got removed the next week, would that have been better somehow?

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