Abyss Ambulator
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Remove curses
If it is considered too much of a buff then decrease early item generation.
(Curses can stay for ash and artifacts with recurse ability.)
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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goodcoolguy wrote:It's an interesting thing. No one seems to have difficulty with the idea that as adders become a nonissue, they should appear less frequently or not at all, making way for other things. When it comes to curses though, you have exactly the same dynamic and yet there is no recognition that they should fade away too.
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and into wrote:Personally I am all for removing curses except for Ash.
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Sandman25 wrote: Another option is to make curses matter, for instance, remove scroll of remove curse, make scroll of identify identify scrolls/potions/wands/arefacts only and suddenly you have no way to id items except via using them. Now add "uncurse with XP" mechanic and you have interesting decisions like "Am I strong enough to try that ring on D:2? What if it is slay -4 or teleportation?"
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and into wrote:In games where ?rc is scarce, I don't wear-ID jewelry already. Very bad scenario (teleportation/loudness) is plausible and increases likelihood of dying by a lot. Functionally this ends up being the same as not generating the jewelry until later, except there is the additional pretense of a meaningful choice that doesn't really exist.
The one thing that curses do uniquely add to the game is that, if you know all bad possibilities of (e.g.) jewelry ahead of time, you can through this knowledge gain an advantage as there are specific circumstances in which wear-IDing stuff is not a bad gamble for a particular character. Whether this is enough to constitute a significant violation of Crawl's general efforts to avoid spoilers is a matter of judgment; I'm content to argue simply that this is an effect I don't think is worth preserving in the game. ("Bound items" works fine as a conduct, and conducts are best handled in Crawl through gods/species, so Ash can keep curses.)
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Sandman25 wrote:Removing curses would make trying any non-artifact item completely safe so all such items would need to be fully identified while they are on the floor.
You don't wear-ID because you are waiting for ?rc. I am suggesting to remove ?rc completely, I don't think you will continue to ignore rings with that change (or will you use randart rings only?).
Sprucery wrote:Curses matter in the early game.
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and into wrote:Anyway, the correct way to look at this, in my opinion, is, "Are curses intereting/good enough of a feature to justify not automatically IDing non-artefact equipment?" .
Sorry, I didn't elaborate enough to make my point clear. Basically, XP-gating curses and removing ?rc will generalize a low-?rc situation in every game. In that case I'll just wait until after early game to wear-ID jewelry, in every game that I want to win. So if I find 4 rings by D3, this just means that I might as well not have found any jewelry until later, when I feel comfortable dealing with loudness/teleportation/negative slay/stats.
(It also adds an additional caveat that I might have to play with e.g. teleportitis for a while rather than just immediately reading a scroll and removing the ring; that's slightly tangential so I won't discuss whether this additional effect is good or bad and stick instead to remarks about the ID minigame.)
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Sandman25 wrote:Removing curses would make trying any non-artifact item completely safe so all such items would need to be fully identified while they are on the floor.
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Sandman25 wrote:Why do we have the ring of teleportation in the game if no good player ever uses it?
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Arrhythmia wrote:Sandman25 wrote:Removing curses would make trying any non-artifact item completely safe so all such items would need to be fully identified while they are on the floor.
This isn't true as long as distortion is still a brand.
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Sandman25 wrote:Arrhythmia wrote:Sandman25 wrote:Removing curses would make trying any non-artifact item completely safe so all such items would need to be fully identified while they are on the floor.
This isn't true as long as distortion is still a brand.
As far as I remember weapon brand is already always identified for non-artefacts. Or was it changed in trunk?
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and into wrote:It is redundant except for the "gotcha" of generating cursed and sticking player.
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dowan wrote:Wait, why would anyone voluntarily wear a ring of teleportation? To get off islands that require flight, or to get onto said islands? Or is there something else I'm missing?
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Sandman25 wrote:I take it as curses should be removed completely then. I don't see how we can combine "Curses should not punish new players for experimentation" with "Curses should be relevant early game only" because new players die early.
Slime Squisher
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dowan wrote:Wait, why would anyone voluntarily wear a ring of teleportation? To get off islands that require flight, or to get onto said islands? Or is there something else I'm missing?
Tartarus Sorceror
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infinitevox wrote:Also, curses being inconvenient and annoying is kind of the entire point of curses... They wouldn't be called curses if they weren't detrimental to your character. They force you to think about what you're wearing or wielding, and weigh the potential benefit against the possibility of negative consequences.
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Siegurt wrote:dowan wrote:Wait, why would anyone voluntarily wear a ring of teleportation? To get off islands that require flight, or to get onto said islands? Or is there something else I'm missing?
I guess maybe "I am running away from a really nasty critter and don't mind if i am teleported to a random pack of monsters elsewhere on the level" ?
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goodcoolguy wrote:It's been suggested before and I'll suggest it again because it's such a damn good idea:
In the temple, there could be an item like a rune that automatically identifies all items and removes all curses from that point forward. You maintain all the silliness of not knowing if items will help you or kill you between d:1 and d:4 and cut all the garbage user experience issues past the point where identification and curses become strictly a nuisance.
and into wrote:Anyway, the correct way to look at this, in my opinion, is, "Are curses interesting/good enough of a feature to justify not automatically IDing non-artefact equipment?"
infinitevox wrote:I frequently put [ring of tele] on if I'm doing Abyss. It used to matter more before slaying monsters would generate exits.
infinitevox wrote:Because another thing here is, if we remove curses, what then would be the point of generating any item with a negative slay malus?
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goodcoolguy wrote:It's been suggested before and I'll suggest it again because it's such a damn good idea:
In the temple, there could be an item like a rune that automatically identifies all items and removes all curses from that point forward. You maintain all the silliness of not knowing if items will help you or kill you between d:1 and d:4 and cut all the garbage user experience issues past the point where identification and curses become strictly a nuisance.
Sprucery wrote:I always put on the first two rings and the first amulet I find, ?RC in inventory or not. Likewise I occasionally try the tempting glowing weapon. Either I get something good, which is interesting, or I'm stuck with something bad and have to survive with it, which is also interesting. The optimal player won't do these things, of course. But to me, curses make the early game more interesting.
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twelwe wrote:It's like Blink, but you end up drowning.
Barkeep
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jwoodward48ss wrote:I was thinking that removing curses would be best, but you've got me convinced. Curses are a good idea, but don't work well right now. (What was I thinking? I'm not a dev, I should never consider removing things!)
Also, that would kill two caustic shrikes with one stone! Traps fixed, curses fixed! Nothing removed! Everybody happy, except for [INSERT_NAME_OF_REMOVE-HAPPY_DEV_HERE]
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archaeo wrote:goodcoolguy wrote:It's been suggested before and I'll suggest it again because it's such a damn good idea:
In the temple, there could be an item like a rune that automatically identifies all items and removes all curses from that point forward. You maintain all the silliness of not knowing if items will help you or kill you between d:1 and d:4 and cut all the garbage user experience issues past the point where identification and curses become strictly a nuisance.
I'm not really sure why this is regarded as a good idea.
You brought up adders earlier in the thread, but that's too specific; HP damage is the operative mechanic (along with, maybe, fast monsters and poison), and it never goes away. It's a mechanic that scales with the dlvl/XL and remains the foremost danger throughout the game, factors that are completely untrue when it comes to curses and ID. The answer to a mechanic that doesn't scale across the entire game is to remove it or make it scalable, not to just restrict it to the part of the game where it currently has an impact. That "works," insofar as you retain whatever interest exists while discarding what is uninteresting, but it's such an inelegant kludge when you could just discard the mechanic altogether or make it work across the entire game.
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twelwe wrote:It's like Blink, but you end up drowning.
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Sandman25 wrote:and into wrote:Anyway, the correct way to look at this, in my opinion, is, "Are curses intereting/good enough of a feature to justify not automatically IDing non-artefact equipment?" .
I think a better way is "Can we change curses to make them good enough to justify not automatically IDing non-artefact equipment?"Sorry, I didn't elaborate enough to make my point clear. Basically, XP-gating curses and removing ?rc will generalize a low-?rc situation in every game. In that case I'll just wait until after early game to wear-ID jewelry, in every game that I want to win. So if I find 4 rings by D3, this just means that I might as well not have found any jewelry until later, when I feel comfortable dealing with loudness/teleportation/negative slay/stats.
There are more items with good effect than with bad one so probably it is a good idea to use unknown items.
I switched to always putting on unknown jewelry as soon as I find them and I found that loudness/teleportation are not that bad. Negative slay for non-casters is bad though.(It also adds an additional caveat that I might have to play with e.g. teleportitis for a while rather than just immediately reading a scroll and removing the ring; that's slightly tangential so I won't discuss whether this additional effect is good or bad and stick instead to remarks about the ID minigame.)
Why do we have the ring of teleportation in the game if no good player ever uses it?
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jwoodward48ss wrote:Alternately, remove curses. For Ash: all slots are sticky, piety-using invocation that unstickies all slots for an Invo-dependent length.
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