Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides


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Post Thursday, 15th February 2018, 17:45

Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

amaril wrote:If swapping amulets is undesirable, just make them all fragile and ID on sight. Bonus: if you did this there would no longer be a reason for mostly harmful gimmick amulet id traps to exist.


I think that Amaril's proposal is really good. The positive effects I see:

-- It makes things much easier to learn for new players.
-- It introduces decisions with lasting, definitive, easy-to-recognize results.
-- Late- and early-game swapping gets about the same weight; right now, the danger of swapping Harm is very different between the early and the late game. Since the game already is unbalanced by making early game more difficult, it would be a step towards correcting this problem.
-- It makes certain odd cases rarer, like Harm draining undead characters.
-- Turns amulets into a new kind of item: consumables with constant effect.

I don't see many difficulties in the implementation. Clothes with the same ego as amulets don't need an anti-swap mechanism, because they already take 5 turns. (AFAIK the only non-artifact amulet effect found on armour is Spirit Shield; some artifacts have regen, possibly more I am forgetting.)

I think that, if this were the road taken, then amulets of the same kind should stack, like all other consumables I can think of.

It can still be argued whether auto ID is OK or not, and whether cursed Inaccuracy should remain, but those are side issues.

Any opinions?
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Post Thursday, 15th February 2018, 17:56

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

If amulet swapping is undesirable, along with perhaps ring swapping, why not make them take 5 turns as well? Normalise jewellery with armour. It'll be less interesting as there is less differences with armour, along with losing the positive effects which you see. The only problem is if you want to immediately take off a jewellery slot or want to mix up jewellery to get desired intrinsics.

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Post Thursday, 15th February 2018, 18:19

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

I don't think swapping amulets is undesirable, and that the current costs involved are intentended to make swapping something that happens occasionally (and strategically), rather than tactically.

If I have an amulet with my only source of a resistance on it, currently I might swap it out at a cost of some drain or loss of piety in order to handle some situation. The loss of the *generally more useful item* is a much larger cost, strategically, than the temporary penalty imposed by removing those items in the current system.

Also, personally, I hate fragile, *particularly on unidentifed items* it feels awful to have an item that might have some situational use, but which has fragile on it, so you can't equip it situationally. (The problem's multiplied by having all amulets be fragile, as you lose not just the situational item, but also the generally useful one you were switching from)

These problems could be obviated by making amulets slightly more common, (thereby increasing the likelihood of being able to switch back to a generally useful item from a situationally useful one) and removing all artifact amulets.
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Post Thursday, 15th February 2018, 19:03

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

I've made requests similar to this, and the reason they've gotten shot down is that it encourages the player to stockpile/stash duplicate amulets for future swap use. Artifacts are often one of a kind, so *Fragile works to encourage you to not get rid of the only instance of that particular item in the game unless you no longer need it.

You would need to find a solution to this to make ground with this proposal.

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Post Thursday, 15th February 2018, 20:06

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

You could possibly make each kind of amulet only generate once per game so it's a meaningful sacrifice. Don't know how hard that would be with crawl's codebase.

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Post Thursday, 15th February 2018, 20:06

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Plantissue wrote:If amulet swapping is undesirable, along with perhaps ring swapping, why not make them take 5 turns as well? Normalise jewellery with armour. It'll be less interesting as there is less differences with armour, along with losing the positive effects which you see. The only problem is if you want to immediately take off a jewellery slot or want to mix up jewellery to get desired intrinsics.


That actually came to my mind after I had written the post. The thing is, amulets generated as a category -- jewels -- that has fast-swap as its trademark. Which looks like the kind of items you want for immediate, tactical adjusting of your character to a situation.

Amulets then lost this focus (1 turn swap), which was redirected to their egos. So amulets became the jewels that bear egos that can only be OK if they aren't combined with each other (I guess this from the explicit inclusion of species with two amulets in the DON'T list).

Amulets later were decided to be scarcely swappable. The reason for this was, I guess, more one of improving playing experience, than one of power tradeoff. But the ways in which this was implemented left us with many amulets essentially becoming their own world.

So we have two amulets that you want to equip before a fight, even if it will come to blows in 1 turn (regen, MPregen)
one amulet that you want to equip when you have some 40 or more turns without enemies around (spirit shield)
one amulet that has nothing to do with fighting and whose effects improve over time (gourmand)
two amulets that don't care about swapping (berserker, reflection)
two amulets that will have negative repercussions after unequipping (piety and harm).

And so fast-swap is kind of irrelevant for amulets, unlike for rings, because you are very rarely going to benefit from it.

Getting back to the 5-turn question, I think that the answer are things like doors, fast characters, and other escape ways. If you can safely interrupt a fight, you can e.g. choose to only equip faith when you are with Oka, TSO, or Dith and meet a conduct enemy. So this becomes like swapping, only it takes more effort to do it, it gets even more boring than it was, but it's still perfectly doable. However, faith and harm are the only two cases in which this would be a step back. For all the other amulets, things would work like they do now, if they had the 5-turn rule.

BTW, I only learnt today that faith only makes you lose 1/3 piety, and not always 2 stars. :lol: Call me attentive...
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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 00:52

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Floodkiller wrote:I've made requests similar to this, and the reason they've gotten shot down is that it encourages the player to stockpile/stash duplicate amulets for future swap use. Artifacts are often one of a kind, so *Fragile works to encourage you to not get rid of the only instance of that particular item in the game unless you no longer need it.

You would need to find a solution to this to make ground with this proposal.


From my point of view, this would be an expected behaviour. I would have the amulets of the same kind stack, to avoid excessive inventory loss and the need to stash them away. It wouldn't be any different from all other consumables. If there's a problem, I think it's more general, and it wouldn't be with amulets in particular, but with Crawl's stash-consumables interaction in general.

Amulets could stop generating randarts, and their randart attributes (not the base ones) be moved over to scarves. I am fairly sure that I found an artifact scarf once, as an Oka gift, but they are very rare right now. But it would require some playtesting, since you'd have to give up cloaks for that.

The amulet fixedarts would mostly be unaffected, by which I mean that they could remain unbreakable as they now are; however, bloodlust and vitality are based on normal amulets, so they deserve some thought. But, unless you swap the fixedarts among themselves -- which you can already do with no downside, except for vitality -- you would still have to give up another amulet to swap them in, so it would still have a cost.
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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 12:51

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

I feel like this is mostly a non-issue. Amulet swapping hasn't been a thing for me since rMut and clarity amulets were removed.

The garbage:
Gourmand --> wear it until you find something better, food is a joke currently, end the game with 100 rations...
Harm --> it's just a plain annoying *ha ha you got drained, it won't stop me from attempting to ID amulets without ID scrolls
Faith --> it's an annoying *ha ha lose some piety getting rid of it, you're better off with something else unless you have Oka perhaps
Rage --> yeah, I really want to risk passing out each time I use it, and don't need it if I worship Trog.... *chuck in trash*
Spirit Shield --> The best of the bad amulets, you're better off saving MP for emergency invocations, but it can be okay until you find better if you have no use for MP

Reflection --> It's pretty decent, doesn't have any swapping issues for me because I'll generally ditch it for one of the amulets below:
RegenMP --> pretty decent if you're a caster, but you're still better off using sublimate and regen amulet if possible
Regen --> Clearly the best amulet, no real reason to take it off ever unless you find some balling artifact amulet

Who has the space for multiple amulets in inventory anyways? You're better off keeping more weapon/scroll/potion/evocable options.
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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 13:30

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Faith is great if you have a god with piety (unless faith has been nerfed recently?). Guardian spirit is excellent for a non-caster and still good for casters. Rage is good but I hardly ever use it. Regen if no faith or GS, reflection if also wearing a shield, regenMP/gourmand if nothing else. Imo.
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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 16:19

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Guardian spirit is the best amulet for Fe and Sp, no matter if caster or not. Rage is an equivalent of a consumable and should be removed IMHO. Or alternatively add amulet of treeform (there was a species with unlimited treeform on demand in circus animals fork, that was fun).
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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 16:27

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

svendre wrote:I feel like this is mostly a non-issue. Amulet swapping hasn't been a thing for me since rMut and clarity amulets were removed.


As a quick example for existing amulets:
-Player finds nasty melee unique that must be dealt with for whatever reason (ex. Mennas blocking stairs)
-Player is currently wearing a reflection amulet, and has a spare reflection amulet (of similar enchantment) and a Harm amulet in inventory
-Player swaps on Harm amulet while at a distance to deal extra damage to Mennas at range before the distance is closed
-Player swaps in spare reflection amulet before receiving a melee attack from Mennas to remove Harm debuff and gain extra SH
-Player dies because they fought Mennas instead of luring and teleporting away

I am for making amulets fragile but this is the type of scenario the dev team disliked, as it turns amulets into weird consumables.

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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 17:35

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Rage is simultaneously the most powerful base amulet and the biggest culprit of amulet swapping... Tbh the whole amulet swapping issue would be mostly mitigated if you just removed rage. Make trog (and those ~7 unrands) more unique!

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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 19:58

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

It's an absolute blast of an idea for me. It's all dependent on one's approach to the play. I can easily see how concentrated, meticulous players will look at this dismayed.

But, for myself, being a XL1 set-skills, no-evo, no-active-skills, minimum input simple goded tabstormer, that idea is a marvel.

See, some people play crawl as a sim, just slightly adjusting all the variables (necessary eq swaps, small changes to their DESIRED skillset (no fine tuning)), and then they go tabstorm a hydra and see the result.

Appaling, might this seem to the hardcore base. Myself, I find OP's proposal revolutionary, in how it can enhance and diversify AND create new channels of creativity in the bloated world of dcss mechanics.

Sorry for any bad english, non native.

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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 20:11

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

I like this idea. It also means we can remove the delayed activation conditions. Regen/regenmp/gourmand can all start working immediately and spirit shield doesn't need to drain MP.

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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 21:48

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

mrob wrote:spirit shield doesn't need to drain MP

we really don't need an amulet that effectively acts as a heal wounds potion

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Post Friday, 16th February 2018, 21:52

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

svendre wrote:The garbage:
Gourmand --> wear it until you find something better, food is a joke currently, end the game with 100 rations...
Harm --> it's just a plain annoying *ha ha you got drained, it won't stop me from attempting to ID amulets without ID scrolls
Faith --> it's an annoying *ha ha lose some piety getting rid of it, you're better off with something else unless you have Oka perhaps
Rage --> yeah, I really want to risk passing out each time I use it, and don't need it if I worship Trog.... *chuck in trash*
Spirit Shield --> The best of the bad amulets, you're better off saving MP for emergency invocations, but it can be okay until you find better if you have no use for MP

Reflection --> It's pretty decent, doesn't have any swapping issues for me because I'll generally ditch it for one of the amulets below:
RegenMP --> pretty decent if you're a caster, but you're still better off using sublimate and regen amulet if possible
Regen --> Clearly the best amulet, no real reason to take it off ever unless you find some balling artifact amulet
Wow.

I mean really, just, wow.

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Post Sunday, 18th February 2018, 21:54

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Floodkiller wrote:
svendre wrote:I feel like this is mostly a non-issue. Amulet swapping hasn't been a thing for me since rMut and clarity amulets were removed.


As a quick example for existing amulets:
-Player finds nasty melee unique that must be dealt with for whatever reason (ex. Mennas blocking stairs)
-Player is currently wearing a reflection amulet, and has a spare reflection amulet (of similar enchantment) and a Harm amulet in inventory
-Player swaps on Harm amulet while at a distance to deal extra damage to Mennas at range before the distance is closed
-Player swaps in spare reflection amulet before receiving a melee attack from Mennas to remove Harm debuff and gain extra SH
-Player dies because they fought Mennas instead of luring and teleporting away

I am for making amulets fragile but this is the type of scenario the dev team disliked, as it turns amulets into weird consumables.


Say what? Put on harm before fighting Mennas, then swap it off and get drained for melee? Well, first of all you could take more damage with harm on, secondly you're spending time to change amulets which would equate to either missing ranged damage as he closes the gap or taking additional melee damage. Finally, you're in a drained state while fighting melee with Mennas, which means you will have lessened defenses in other categories and lessened offenses to finish the job.

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Post Monday, 19th February 2018, 18:29

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

svendre wrote:
Floodkiller wrote:
svendre wrote:I feel like this is mostly a non-issue. Amulet swapping hasn't been a thing for me since rMut and clarity amulets were removed.


As a quick example for existing amulets:
-Player finds nasty melee unique that must be dealt with for whatever reason (ex. Mennas blocking stairs)
-Player is currently wearing a reflection amulet, and has a spare reflection amulet (of similar enchantment) and a Harm amulet in inventory
-Player swaps on Harm amulet while at a distance to deal extra damage to Mennas at range before the distance is closed
-Player swaps in spare reflection amulet before receiving a melee attack from Mennas to remove Harm debuff and gain extra SH
-Player dies because they fought Mennas instead of luring and teleporting away

I am for making amulets fragile but this is the type of scenario the dev team disliked, as it turns amulets into weird consumables.


Say what? Put on harm before fighting Mennas, then swap it off and get drained for melee? Well, first of all you could take more damage with harm on, secondly you're spending time to change amulets which would equate to either missing ranged damage as he closes the gap or taking additional melee damage. Finally, you're in a drained state while fighting melee with Mennas, which means you will have lessened defenses in other categories and lessened offenses to finish the job.


This is a hypothetical for the proposal of replacing anti-swap downsides with fragile. You're right that most people don't swap Harm currently because of the drain effect; you take that away, and the only thing that stops them from swapping is if they have a replacement after they take it off and if they don't mind losing amulet they have equipped before swapping on Harm. Both of those issues aren't as big a deal if you stash every possible amulet you find.

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Post Tuesday, 20th February 2018, 23:10

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

duvessa wrote:
svendre wrote:The garbage:
Gourmand --> wear it until you find something better, food is a joke currently, end the game with 100 rations...
Harm --> it's just a plain annoying *ha ha you got drained, it won't stop me from attempting to ID amulets without ID scrolls
Faith --> it's an annoying *ha ha lose some piety getting rid of it, you're better off with something else unless you have Oka perhaps
Rage --> yeah, I really want to risk passing out each time I use it, and don't need it if I worship Trog.... *chuck in trash*
Spirit Shield --> The best of the bad amulets, you're better off saving MP for emergency invocations, but it can be okay until you find better if you have no use for MP

Reflection --> It's pretty decent, doesn't have any swapping issues for me because I'll generally ditch it for one of the amulets below:
RegenMP --> pretty decent if you're a caster, but you're still better off using sublimate and regen amulet if possible
Regen --> Clearly the best amulet, no real reason to take it off ever unless you find some balling artifact amulet
Wow.

I mean really, just, wow.

I didn't think it was too far off of a list. Obviously it's missing certain cases: guardian spirit is very powerful for a certain type of character who doesn't rely on mana or antimagic weapons, for example using it on FeBe is basically +50% hp on a race that desperately needs it.

Faith depends on the god, and also on your character's strength. When I play chei on a powerful character, it's worthless because I'm sitting at 6* (and likely within a few points of 200 piety) at all times. If I'm playing chei on a character who's still somewhat marginal in the early game, I'm probably leaning on slouch to save my life fairly often, and the bonus piety could very well be the difference between life and death. It's also very strong if you find it before/as you take a god, to get the initial piety ramp up over with quickly. Later on, on a character who doesn't need to invoke god powers often, it's not terribly strong.

Rage is a super strong effect but the risk of passing out means it's not a chance I really want to take. Certainly it can be good with careful use but I'd really rather not risk shooting myself in the foot.

Regeneration is the best amulet for most general cases once your character is established. Faith is often better early on, but you also don't often have one super early. Exceptions apply, of course.

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Post Wednesday, 21st February 2018, 01:04

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Ok here's my amulet list since we're doing these now.

Trash tier:
  • Inaccuracy. The only strictly negative amulet, obviously never wear this unless it's a very good randart or amulet of the air.
  • Gourmand. Functionally no amulet in all but exceptionally rare edge cases. Worth wearing if you have nothing else because it's convenient though.

Bad tier:
  • RegenMP. The amount of MP/turn you get from it is tiny, especially in the earlier parts of the game where mp regen could be a big deal. Still better than the trash tier amulets if you use MP at all.
  • Regen. Regen amulet is in the running for most overrated item in the game. It's 0.4 hp per turn. Unless you are in some sort of Benny Hill chase sequence where you somehow can't escape and also aren't going to die for dozens of turns, you aren't getting much out of this. Like regeneration the spell, it's better if you can't retreat or rest easily, so it's somewhat more useful in parts of extended or if you pick fights in bad locations with no escape routes. Also like regeneration the spell, it does make resting out of combat faster if you want to save piety/turns (but you save way less piety than you get from faith with reasonable play).
  • Harm. Technically strong for certain types of characters if you remember to swap it out and eat the drain when something bad happens. Worse than no amulet if you forget to swap it out when something bad happens. Obnoxious to use properly and bad if used improperly, so I don't bother to use it. Please replace the drain on swap effect with a temporary status that retains the incoming damage increase without the outgoing damage bonus; this solves the harm swapping problems in both directions (though it does make the amulet worse).

Optimal tier:
  • Reflection. Low enchantment is mediocre but still likely on par with regen imo. +5 or +6 reflection is very solid and useful for any character, but I often want to wear one of the other good amulets instead.
  • Rage. Infinite berserk if you actually remember to use it. You can avoid dying from passing out by learning when to berserk safely. Trog berserk is better than non-trog amulet berserk, but berserk on demand is still good. I tend not to use it because I forget to activate it though, and of course it's not very useful lategame if you aren't invested in a melee weapon.
  • Faith. Gives you more god ability uses for free. Potentially optimal with a lot of gods that have active abilities. Okawaru is the "classic" example here, but it's excellent with Ely, Fedhas, Kiku, Lugonu, Makhleb, Qazlal, Trog, Uskayaw (especially due to how the piety works), Yred, and Zin to name a few. If there's a god ability I want to spam in every significant fight, I'm at least considering Faith.
  • Guardian Spirit. It's free hp that works against everything but poison, turns your mp regen into hp regen, and lets you use potions of magic like potions of heal wounds. Regen amulet takes like a hundred turns or something ridiculous before it breaks even with spirit shield for a typical character. Naturally, it's better the more mp you have and the less you use it, but it's still a positive on conjurations-oriented characters. It's very easy to not run out of mp for your emergency spells or god abilities, and generally if you do run out it means you might have died without spirit shield. I find myself wearing this a little less often now that you can get scarves with the spirit shield ego though.

Not rating acrobat because I haven't used it yet. I suspect it's not as generally useful as the optimal tier amulets but would be good when doing ninja strats or if you want to wait/reposition in combat a lot.

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Post Wednesday, 21st February 2018, 01:27

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Said it before, saying it again:

If the total amount of inventory slots were cut down to 26 or 10, and base item types merged/cut to fit the new paradigm, individual inventory slots would become much more valuable *choices*, meaning that *EVERYTHING* could go perma-fragile, meaning that noncritical situational gear-swapping would become a thing of the past, meaning that the gameflow would become that much smoother once players become used to the new status quo, at the cost of players initially taking more time to decide what they need to keep while they adapt.

To me this is one of those things as obvious as shifting the game off of rest-to-heal, getting rid of stairdancing, actively incentivizing moving into black, getting rid of food, moving to squarelos, etc.

But hey look who else is posting in this thread anyway~

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Post Thursday, 22nd February 2018, 20:14

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

I think what will actually occur from reducing inventory slots drastically would be an insane amount of stashing and backtracking.

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Post Friday, 23rd February 2018, 01:15

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Implojin wrote:Said it before, saying it again:

If the total amount of inventory slots were cut down to 26 or 10, and base item types merged/cut to fit the new paradigm, individual inventory slots would become much more valuable *choices*, meaning that *EVERYTHING* could go perma-fragile, meaning that noncritical situational gear-swapping would become a thing of the past, meaning that the gameflow would become that much smoother once players become used to the new status quo, at the cost of players initially taking more time to decide what they need to keep while they adapt.

To me this is one of those things as obvious as shifting the game off of rest-to-heal, getting rid of stairdancing, actively incentivizing moving into black, getting rid of food, moving to squarelos, etc.

But hey look who else is posting in this thread anyway~

I suspect, rather than using the existing fragile option, what you'd actually *want* in that sort of a game was a simple destroy-on-drop, for everything, no leaving things behind ever. Also I'd say in such a game, you'd auto-pick-up everything when a monster died (Or maybe get the option to equip or destroy every item when the monster who was carrying it died). I don't think it's actually good for *crawl* because backtracking, and a wide dispersal of medeocre items is so entrenched in the current game balance, it would require a whole lot of work to make sure that you'd actually get meaningful items at appropriate times and that they wouldn't be over- or under-powered for where you were in the current game, it'd be a vasty different loot generation thing than we have now, possibly a better one, but definitely one that requires work to create.

The "destroy all on drop" would probably be more appealing on a no backtracking sort of game like hellcrawl. Particularly in combination with the "you get to choose whether to equip or destroy every item when it drops" sort of mechanism (assumedly this would also happen for floor drops in some fashion or they'd simply be removed entirely)

Overall that's a very different sort of game (one with a great deal less "persistance" than crawl has) which is fine, and maybe the sort of game some people prefer, and maybe it's not the kind of game that the majority of *crawl* players prefer (after all, if that was what you were after, there's plenty of choices, people choose to play crawl for it's crawl-ness after all)
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Post Friday, 23rd February 2018, 17:16

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

About inventory slots: as long as the game requires you to carry 1 resistance for Tesla, 1 ring of rF for this portal, 1 of rC for this other portal, etc., any number of slots would probably be too few. An oddball proposal would be to e.g. remove items of elemental resistance and substitute them with increased generation of potions of resistance. I have no idea of how that would play, but it sure would make the inventory less congested.

About Harm, a discussion of it would require to know what place it is supposed to have in the game, something I have always been wondering. I don't think I ever read anyone saying "Harm is useful and desirable, because...", more like "You can survive wearing harm", "harm is detrimental", and "harm is meant to make equip-ID non-optimal for amulets until Lair". The thing is, Harm already has effects that are normally found in consumables: it gives you a combat boost, associated with a combat handicap, like !rage, !treeform, and especially like ?vulnerability. Because of this, it's not surprising that a change like the one I proposed would turn it into a straight-out consumable: Harm, as an equippable, would be useful through wild swapping (=bad gameplay experience), if it weren't for the drain factor; without free swapping, it is undesirable; as a consumable, however, it already has three similar items, and, because of limited quantity, it wouldn't need the drain.
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Post Friday, 23rd February 2018, 19:48

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Shtopit wrote:About inventory slots: as long as the game requires you to carry 1 resistance for Tesla, 1 ring of rF for this portal, 1 of rC for this other portal, etc., any number of slots would probably be too few. An oddball proposal would be to e.g. remove items of elemental resistance and substitute them with increased generation of potions of resistance. I have no idea of how that would play, but it sure would make the inventory less congested.

Presently the number of inventory slots is sufficient to carry everything you need to win the game in all cases. If you are struggling, you are a packrat and need to give up on some items you just flat out don't need to carry around. People typically complain about inventory space in crawl because they don't understand what is actually a priority, and which items aren't needed. Typically I actually have 2-5 slots for "extra stuff I might want later and don't want to inconvenience myself to travel back for" but I'm pretty harsh about divesting myself of things I don't actually need, and have a clear idea of what is and is not useful for every character.

The objective behind inventory slots *at all* is not to have "more than enough to carry anything I might want with no consideration of priority" the idea behind having a limited inventory is two fold: The primary objective is to have a convenient UI, such that what you have available to you during your run of the mill turns during combat is not an overwhelming list of untenable size. The secondary objective to present you with meaningful choices as to what is, and what is not, important to have available during an arbitrary encounter. If you attempt to cull the list of useful things to the point where all things one might possibly ever want fit into a single inventory, or attempt to expand the inventory list to encompass all things that one might possibly ever want, you've negated at least one of the two points above, if not both.
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Post Sunday, 25th February 2018, 17:15

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Siegurt wrote:
Shtopit wrote:About inventory slots: as long as the game requires you to carry 1 resistance for Tesla, 1 ring of rF for this portal, 1 of rC for this other portal, etc., any number of slots would probably be too few. An oddball proposal would be to e.g. remove items of elemental resistance and substitute them with increased generation of potions of resistance. I have no idea of how that would play, but it sure would make the inventory less congested.

Presently the number of inventory slots is sufficient to carry everything you need to win the game in all cases. If you are struggling, you are a packrat and need to give up on some items you just flat out don't need to carry around. People typically complain about inventory space in crawl because they don't understand what is actually a priority, and which items aren't needed. Typically I actually have 2-5 slots for "extra stuff I might want later and don't want to inconvenience myself to travel back for" but I'm pretty harsh about divesting myself of things I don't actually need, and have a clear idea of what is and is not useful for every character.

The objective behind inventory slots *at all* is not to have "more than enough to carry anything I might want with no consideration of priority" the idea behind having a limited inventory is two fold: The primary objective is to have a convenient UI, such that what you have available to you during your run of the mill turns during combat is not an overwhelming list of untenable size. The secondary objective to present you with meaningful choices as to what is, and what is not, important to have available during an arbitrary encounter. If you attempt to cull the list of useful things to the point where all things one might possibly ever want fit into a single inventory, or attempt to expand the inventory list to encompass all things that one might possibly ever want, you've negated at least one of the two points above, if not both.


The issue I see is that what you want to use can change based upon what you find. Sometimes amazing artifacts can be enough of a good reason to alter your build. Even if you don't find something like this, the properties of all the "good" items you find continually alter the relevance of previously found items. Sometimes melee wants to add spells but later, or the other way around. On top of all this is that there is a case to be made that different branches have differing requirements for what would be sensible to use in them. For me, these are some of the reasons why a stash comes into play. You can't build a stash effectively without a silly amount of round-trips unless you have some room in inventory to pick up items in addition to what you want to keep on hand for tactical use. It's clear there are a number of strategic items, like enchants, amnesia, etc. which you have little reason to need in inventory for fights. If you choose to carry those strategic items with you at all times, you limit the number of tactical, items useful for a fight that you can carry. If the response to needing items later on is just control-F search and go grab things, with little consequence (other than being annoying because things are scattered), then what is the reasoning in causing stash building to be tedious for lack of room in inventory? I'd say that having tons more room that you can use for tactical items would not be great. How do you solve this? There are lots of suggestions, one of mine was to seperate inventories to active usable and "in the big bag, requiring time to put in or take out." Anyways, I don't think the answer is so simple as "don't be a pack rat", because you can absolutely without a doubt state that items in the game do make a difference, and you absolutely cannot take everything with you.
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Post Wednesday, 28th February 2018, 00:17

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

@siegurt IMO point #2 doesn't really work. I don't remember a game in which I thought, "Wow, I made a big choice, picking up this instead of that". There are multiple reasons for this, but the main one is that Crawl has a lot of "gates" for performing an action effectively. So the key to using a sword well is STR and LB, to using a wand it's evo, to a spellbook it is spell levels + int + skills + XL, and then how many scrolls you have invested on the equippable. So the choice normally isn't what you pick up, it's what skills you train and what attributes you pump up, whether you want spells, etc. In practice, the only items that ignore these strategic aspects are potions, scrolls and rings. So point #2 would be limited to them.
Also, you can always go back and pick it up again.
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Post Wednesday, 28th February 2018, 01:18

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Shtopit wrote:@siegurt IMO point #2 doesn't really work. I don't remember a game in which I thought, "Wow, I made a big choice, picking up this instead of that". There are multiple reasons for this, but the main one is that Crawl has a lot of "gates" for performing an action effectively. So the key to using a sword well is STR and LB, to using a wand it's evo, to a spellbook it is spell levels + int + skills + XL, and then how many scrolls you have invested on the equippable. So the choice normally isn't what you pick up, it's what skills you train and what attributes you pump up, whether you want spells, etc. In practice, the only items that ignore these strategic aspects are potions, scrolls and rings. So point #2 would be limited to them.
Also, you can always go back and pick it up again.


Yes, there are a selection of items that it's always optimal to have, it's always optimal to have at least one weapon, point #2 comes in when you have to evaluate things like "should you carry an extra weapon with a different brand, or that only sometimes useful wand", or "Should I carry 4 types of ammo, or only 3 and use that extra slot for some consumable that you might not use". Obviously the highest priority items that you've got the XP for will be selected first, but that's a pretty small number of items in total (say 10-15 of your 52 slots are filled with things that you don't have any prioritization choice about, because they're always optimal non choices like "you should carry your best weapon so you can hit things with it")

It's certainly not a "Wow" kind of thing, but at some point you'll have to choose between items (even if it's a lower priority choice) and that will effect what you have in your inventory during combat.
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Post Wednesday, 28th February 2018, 19:45

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Plantissue wrote:I think what will actually occur from reducing inventory slots drastically would be an insane amount of stashing and backtracking.

Maybe. Probably, even. But to be honest, I rarely use half the crap I am dragging around, including most of the consumables. Quick answer to that problem is use an item destruction mechanic for dropped items. Now it's a choice again, if it ever was in the first place.

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Post Thursday, 1st March 2018, 07:24

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Why does Harm still magnify incoming damage instead of just applying -17% max HP (or whatever) again?

For this message the author Doesnt has received thanks:
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Post Thursday, 1st March 2018, 07:51

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

To make torment scarier I suppose.
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Post Thursday, 1st March 2018, 12:59

Re: Make All Amulets Fragile, Remove Anti-Swap Downsides

Doesnt wrote:Why does Harm still magnify incoming damage instead of just applying -17% max HP (or whatever) again?

This would be nice, because it's simple and less spiky. It would also remove the DD special case with shaving.
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