Reasoning behind pips

[necrosonic]

I'm posting this question here and not in game design because I don't feel I have been playing long enough to suggest real changes (less than a year and only one win). In fact this isn't a suggestion for a change, more just curiosity about the reasoning behind something.

Why do different resistances have varying levels you can go to? As in why poison and corrosion only have one pip you can get but others have 3 or even 5. Why not have every resistance have just one, or three or whatever? Just been curious about the ideas behind that.

[amaril]

The 'hex' mechanic requires a non-binary resistance system, so having MR stack is crucial. With MR though, pips are downright misleading because there are far more than 5 levels of MR.

As for other resistances--I have no idea. Pips differentiate characters in the post endgame based on gear drops, I guess?

[pubby]

have you never read great expectations

[necrosonic]

have you never read great expectations

Too many Pips spoil the broth?

I get the part about magic res a bit, but I do wonder about one pip res. like poison and corr.

[genericpseudonym]

have you never read great expectations

Too many Pips spoil the broth?

I get the part about magic res a bit, but I do wonder about one pip res. like poison and corr.

Well those are the resists that prevent status effects. Either you get poisoned/corroded or you don't. Compare that to a fireball, where it's much simpler to make the player take half the damage, 3/4ths of the damage, etc.

There's more acid-type damage now (e.g. corrosive bolt), so it's not quite as straightforward of a distinction as it originally was when rCorr just stopped your loot from being -1'd.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

I think a lot of it just has to do with how it's been set up.

There are a lot of sources of rF/rC/rN. They are common body armor egos. They are found on rings, so non-artefact rings alone can give 2 (and sometimes more) pips. Some sources give multiple pips, including some unrands and some non-artefacts. Some things give rC- and/or rF-, meaning you're encouraged to counteract it with multiple pips from other sources. There are some places where you want to stack rF (zot 5), rC (cocytus), and rN (all of extended), and I suppose stacking stuff can be fun, but this "resistance-check" system also seems to work well with just 1 pip - just look at the Slime Pits.

Single pip resists are more rare. Resist corrosion wasn't found on rings until recently. rPois can be found on many items, but at least items can't give you poison vulnerability, and a lot of rPois's function has to do with negating status effects.

Standardizing the value of resists with each other sounds nice. More manageable for players in places like Zot and Elf. There's a lot of "at least 1 pip" nonsense here and there, which would naturally be removed if there was only 1 pip, and an additional "immunity" level. Some of the more subtle rules related to resistances are more tolerable when there's only one level of resistance, less so when you can have rN+ and rN++ and rN+++.

If you want to curb the max number of pips, you probably want to remove rF/rC/rN from the list of standard armor and ring egos (although rPois demonstrates to us that it's not necessary) and limit the number of rF/rC/rN pips to 1 on any single piece of equipment. I'm not sure about rN. There are effectively two pips of rTorment. Maybe they could be merged into rN somehow. Maybe rN could be more continuous, like MR or AC, scale with XL, etc.

[crate]

the reasoning, as far as i understand it, is "linley decided to do this", so you'd have to ask him

[duvessa]

It's worth noting that rPois had 3 pips for players in the original crawl.

[Sprucery]

Can someone refresh my memory, did the original Crawl even show the resistance pips to the player? (I know they weren't shown in character dumps but what about in-game.)

[necrosonic]

Well this almost makes me want to make a topic about why everything resistance should just have one pip. Or 3. Or whatever. I would need to play a lot more and get a lot further in the game before I would even seriously suggest it though. I do have a bit of faith here! It just seems simpler to have them all set to the same level somehow, but I respect that I don't get any of the advanced math and programming and all the rest going on behind the scenes.

Thanks for the responses.

[Rast]

I don't get any of the advanced math and programming and all the rest going on behind the scenes.

Talk about softballs.