watertreatmentRL wrote:Agree there, but from that perspective positive effects are an even bigger and more prevalent issue.
They are an issue, but I don't think they're bigger. Compare a ring of {Slay+6 rC-} to a ring of {Slay+4 rC+}. The former ring, you'll wear most of the time but take it off every time a cold-using monster gets near. The latter ring isn't stronger (I'd argue it's weaker), but you'll leave it on constantly instead of swapping it.
Unless you want randarts to be worse than plain +0 base items, you can reach a target power level for randarts without adding negative properties. So adding negative properties means you have more properties, total, to get the same power level. Some people like this, the whole "transforming your character" thing, but I don't because I don't like equipment swapping or lengthy descriptions.
Indeed, the "randart reform" that increased the incidence of negative properties also greatly increased the overall power level of randarts. So clearly the objective of adding more negative properties was not to nerf randarts.
As far as comprehensive reform, I have my doubts as to the ability of randomly-chosen properties to create interesting decisions. Statistically, it's
vanishingly unlikely that any two random items will be similar in power. When is the last time you had trouble deciding which aux armour to wear? We can't even manage to make most of the non-randart items difficult to decide between; there are no characters for which gloves of strength and gloves of dexterity are equally valuable. Similarly, while you might have trouble deciding which weapon skill to train or whether you should invest in getting spells castable in heavy armour, at any particular moment it's clear which of your weapons does the most damage and it's clear which one of your body armours is the best to wear at that moment.
The antimagic and vampiric brands do make weapon selection more interesting in the rare event that they appear on relevant weapons, but that's about it.
Randarts exist more as an oddity or a psychological carrot, not something that adds meaningful depth.