Replace *rage with *slow


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Barkeep

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 17:45

Replace *rage with *slow

Currently, *rage ("berserkeritis," "You lose your temper in combat") can be controlled in problematic ways.

You can suppress it by maintaining sufficiently low satiation. Duration of berserk can be influenced based on the actions that you took while berserked. One can also avoid berserkeritis by killing stuff with non-melee combat and, while it may create situations that require some innovative gameplay, it creates many more situations where you tediously kill weak enemies using methods that are less effective than melee combat, in order to avoid an untimely berserk.

There are, in short, very annoying and some spoiler-y ways to exert a great deal of control over the "random" berserks given by *rage. Some of this stems from how *rage triggers, but some of it comes from the choice of berserk as a status that can be applied to the player against his or her wishes. That is, one would have to change how berserk works in order to fix berserkeritis completely, which, it seems to me, puts the cart entirely before the horse.

I therefore suggest changing *rage into *slow, on the model of *confuse.

Under the effects of *slow, you have a chance to become slowed every time you take damage, with duration and chance scaling up with the "slowitis" mutation and number of *slow item properties currently equipped.

This would make the property matter to all characters, it would avoid problematic ways to work around the property, and how exactly chance/damage/duration/*slow mut and item stacking actually matter would give quite a few knobs to tweak in order to get balance right.

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 17:51

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Very good reasoning and interesting suggestion!

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 18:18

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

What if *Rage from equipment just didn't take any satiation instead? It's kind of a fun drawback because it's both really bad and really powerful. Random slowness sounds like the most boringest thing ever.

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Blades Runner

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 18:24

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Then it would be exploited somehow, and also wouldn't make any sense.

Also, if being slow is boring, you must hate Chei.
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Sar

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 18:27

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

jwoodward48ss wrote:Then it would be exploited somehow

How?
jwoodward48ss wrote:wouldn't make any sense

"This armour sometimes makes you really angry when you hit things."
Makes perfect sense!
"This armour sometimes makes you really angry when you hit things, but you don't need to eat a bunch afterwards."
wtf is this bullshit
jwoodward48ss wrote:you must hate Chei

I do, however Chei isn't boring.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 18:30

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Sar wrote:What if *Rage from equipment just didn't take any satiation instead? It's kind of a fun drawback because it's both really bad and really powerful. Random slowness sounds like the most boringest thing ever.

*rage is also a way to rage without having Chei get all pouty.
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Barkeep

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 19:27

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Sar wrote: Random slowness sounds like the most boringest thing ever.


If it happened during autoexplore, yes it would mostly be boring. But I don't think *slow on the model of *confuse would be that.

Do you agree that the "workarounds" to *rage are a problem? If so, how would you fix *rage without fundamentally changing normal berserk? Having *rage ignore satiation would be an improvement, and I thought about that as a more minor fix, but it would not address the other problems I outlined in the OP, unfortunately.

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 19:34

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Well, you could make *Rage trigger on taking damage, but that would be a really big nerf. I also don't think "killing weak enemies by not melee" is really that much of a problem. I mean, you can kite them to a safe place and melee and not care about rage anyway?

I also don't think that a conjurator taking advantage of a *Rage item is a problem that needs fixing.

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Post Tuesday, 30th August 2016, 21:56

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

The chance to pass out (essentially paralysis) after berserk seems way scarier than the slowing.

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Barkeep

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Post Wednesday, 31st August 2016, 15:35

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Sar wrote:Well, you could make *Rage trigger on taking damage, but that would be a really big nerf. I also don't think "killing weak enemies by not melee" is really that much of a problem. I mean, you can kite them to a safe place and melee and not care about rage anyway?

I also don't think that a conjurator taking advantage of a *Rage item is a problem that needs fixing.


Agree that it is fine if negative properties are worse for some characters than others.

Encouraging more kiting/luring of enemies, particularly melee-only and weak enemies, is in fact one of the major problems with *rage as currently implemented, though.

Initially I tried to think of less extreme changes to address the problems with *rage. Satiation issue can be fixed separately (I am surprised it hasn't already been tbh). But triggering on melee attack is also a problem. Triggering berserk on damage, in addition to being a nerf, seems like it wouldn't be very fun (I think *slow would be better than that).

Berserkeritis sometimes caused situations where you chose to "fight it out" after a berserk triggered, rather than run away. Those instances could be lots of fun. But if you change how berserks from *rage triggered to something other than "hit enemy in melee," you would be drastically reducing the incidence of these fun situations anyway.

This is what I meant in OP about it being difficult to imagine smaller tweaks to *rage that would both fix its problems and also make it worthwhile to retain berserk (as opposed to slow, or something else) as the inflicted status.

Blades Runner

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Post Wednesday, 31st August 2016, 20:06

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

FR: When you are forced to berserk, have the armour give you satiation to Hungry if you are Very Hungry or below.

There. The angry armour makes you full, too!
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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 31st August 2016, 23:39

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

jwoodward48ss wrote:FR: When you are forced to berserk, have the armour give you satiation to Hungry if you are Very Hungry or below.

There. The angry armour makes you full, too!


so now you can live forever with no food by stupefying something with zin, equipping a few -6 rings of slaying and a *berserk armor, and hitting it with bread

Blades Runner

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Post Thursday, 1st September 2016, 00:07

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Noooo... The berserk removes the food.

Also, you said "no food." "Hitting things with bread" implies food. :P
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 01:16

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Getting rid of *Rage is wrong; there are lots of cool items that rely on it for atmospherics. But random items could be split with some new effects. *Slow is an obvious new option to add. I think it might also be cool to have a *Dance on weapons that makes the weapon have a chance to evade your grasp and start fighting on its own when you hit a monster with it. Depending on your skill (hence its respect for you), there should be a chance it's friendly... and a chance it's not. You can also have a *Invisibility and *Haste that has a chance to make you actually go invisible or be hasted when your armor is hit - catch being, enough hits and you're badly contaminated because it keeps adding up just like you cast the spells. A few ethereal-ish items might have a *Shaft if you get hit hard enough to knock you through the floor. A slimy plate mail might have a *Slime feature that makes you spawn jellies sometimes when hit like the Royal Jelly, but they're (probably) not your friends unlike if you were the Royal Jelly. Just keep adding this stuff. Random artifacts aren't interesting if they don't have many dimensions of possibility to work with.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 08:37

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Chicken wrote:I think it might also be cool to have a *Dance on weapons that makes the weapon have a chance to evade your grasp and start fighting on its own when you hit a monster with it. Depending on your skill (hence its respect for you), there should be a chance it's friendly... and a chance it's not.

And nobody will use such weapons.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 17:14

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Well who's going to use a weapon with *Slow? Or *Contam, except by accident? Or *Corrode, which is truly an awful and unredeemable feature? If weapon skill could make the *Dance less likely to be hostile and more likely to be helpful, you might get tempted, just as you might get tempted with the other stuff. I don't want to see *whatever on every weapon; but if you have a fixed percentage of *whatever it might as well be divided among a lot of options.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 17:54

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Chicken wrote:Well who's going to use a weapon with *Slow? Or *Contam, except by accident? Or *Corrode, which is truly an awful and unredeemable feature? If weapon skill could make the *Dance less likely to be hostile and more likely to be helpful, you might get tempted, just as you might get tempted with the other stuff. I don't want to see *whatever on every weapon; but if you have a fixed percentage of *whatever it might as well be divided among a lot of options.

Once upon a time (not long ago), I suggested making negative weapon egos found in artefacts the new curses for normal weapons and armour (not artefacts), instead of stickiness. If you really wanted to use the *slow dagger of electrocution, you then had the chance to read a scroll of remove curse and remove the *slow. I wonder how it would have worked out. (The idea also was that remove curse wouldn't have worked on artefacts anyway, so it wasn't the scroll of better artifact).
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 23:40

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

*Contam, *Corrode, *Confuse etc. are all often worth it if the gear is good enough. The ones that proc on damage really don't trigger often at all, *Confuse is especially easy because it's like a "use 6 more healing potions over the course of this game" tax which is typically meaningless. *Slow would matter more, but I doubt it would make all gear with the property worthless, because none of the current * effects do that.

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Post Wednesday, 7th September 2016, 09:07

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

Personally, I think *rage is really cool. I think the way it can be extremely dangerous or extremely strong depending on when it triggers is neat. I think the fact that it interacts very differently for ranged characters than melee characters is cool. It's an interesting effect and there's some real depth to deciding if you want it or not. As opposed to *slow, which, like *corrode or *confuse, is just a very boring, straightforward "this property is a big downside, is it worth it?"

So I'd strongly oppose the removal of rage, at least without major effort to solve its issues first. I think *rage adds something of value to the game. I'm not convinced *slow would add any value, and even if it did, it would serve an entirely different purpose from *rage.

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Sar

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Post Wednesday, 7th September 2016, 11:14

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

*Rage would be cool, if it weren't broken, but it is broken.

Moreover, it is actually hard to fix it without making it a lot less cool. For instance, if you fix how it triggers (to something not based on melee combat, eg, damage being received) so you cannot cheese it, then that removes several of the things you have just cited as positive values.

I did actually think about OP quite a bit before posting (which is not true of all my posts to be fair).

Chance to trigger every turn while adjacent to an enemy seems a little better but then you could easily go berserk with, like, a rod in your hand or something and you lose the ability to inscribe stuff to prevent accidental triggers via UI. Plus this merely goes from "many characters can obnoxiously avoid trigger all the time" to "some characters can obnoxiously avoid triggers the vast majority of the time."

These were two of maybe a dozen different reforms I considered before posting OP.

At the end of the day one has no choice but to conclude that berserkeritis really is fundamentally flawed, and fixing it would require changes to berserk itself. Which would be like remodeling your home in order to accommodate a piece of furniture.

Finally... slow is actually pretty interesting as a negative status, more so than corrode and confusion, and thus *slow seems more promising in terms of actual gameplay impact than *confuse (which for non-mummies becomes a !curing tax by midgame usually).

So while *slow might be less interesting to you than *rage I am skeptical of the comparison to *confuse.

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Post Thursday, 8th September 2016, 03:23

Re: Replace *rage with *slow

I agree that slow is more interesting than *confuse, actually. You're right, trying to deal with slow is actually interesting gameplay, as opposed to confuse which is often just "Is anything dangerous happening? If yes, chug curing, if no, wait." And if you'd suggested replacing *confuse with *slow, I think I'd be in complete agreement.

But *rage and *slow are completely different, so I don't think they belong in the same discussion. "Can *rage's problems be fixed, and if not, are they big enough to warrant it's removal?" and "would *slow be an interesting drawback on gear?" are entirely different questions. Going with your furniture analogy, I feel like replacing *rage with *slow is like replacing your sofa with a new table. Maybe the sofa needed to be replaced, and maybe you needed a table, but the table's not filling the same role the sofa was filling. This is probably a terrible analogy, but I have fun making bad analogies.

Anyway, on the topic of *rage itself: I think Sar's initial proposal easily solves the hunger issue, so what's left is "*rage encourages killing popcorn with spells or ranged weapons." I agree that this is bad, but I'm not convinced it can't be fixed, or that it's so cripplingly bad that it needs to be removed.

At the end of the day one has no choice but to conclude that berserkeritis really is fundamentally flawed, and fixing it would require changes to berserk itself. Which would be like remodeling your home in order to accommodate a piece of furniture.


I'm not convinced by this analogy, actually. I think one of the questions to consider, for example, is whether you'd have to change berserk in ways that fundamentally altered it when it was triggered manually. For example, how much of a buff would it be to manual berserk if it allowed switching weapons? That solves the rod concern of Berserkitis.

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