Randart and regular item overlap

[Psiweapon]

In recent games, I have found items like these:

an artifact ring that gives rF++ and rC-

an artifact robe of rC+

The kind of artifact that merits awkwardly throwing it into a lava pit. Generating artifacts that "suck" is okay because most of them could conceivably be useful if some other, arbitrarily specific, kind of character had found them; but generating artifacts with the exact same properties as regular items? why??

[and into]

Because it is random. Both of the things you list are things that one might conceivably use. Yes some artefacts end up just being lackluster, but that keeps the sense of a randart being an unpredictable grab bag of properties. Even if you stumble across a randart of a useful base type for your character, you are not guaranteed it will be useful, or even interesting.

[Curio]

Do not see anything wrong with this.

[XuaXua]

Amateur artificers.

[Psiweapon]

Because it is random. Both of the things you list are things that one might conceivably use. Yes some artefacts end up just being lackluster, but that keeps the sense of a randart being an unpredictable grab bag of properties. Even if you stumble across a randart of a useful base type for your character, you are not guaranteed it will be useful, or even interesting.

Random bad you mean.

Not that unpredictable, ~30% of artifacts are intrinsically useless (the ones I posted are not useless, only "exactly like a regular item"), and right now that is quite predictable.

Stopping the randart generator from spewing -5 cloaks of Vehumet's Condescendence (rF+, rC-, -cTele, -cast) or gold-plated copies of regular items would only mean removing uninteresting content that adds nothing whatsoever to the game. Well, the joy of throwing them into a lava pit, that's true, and one or three wasted ?identify/?remove curse, but that last thing (which is the only meaningful game interaction) is already covered by any potentially branded item.

Even if intrinsically useless artifacts weren't generated, you wouldn't be guaranteed that the artifacts you do find are useful for that particular character, which seems to be the argument for letting steaming crap artifacts be generated.

[johlstei]

rF++ and rC- on a ring? That doesn't replicate any items, sign me up.

[Psiweapon]

Whoops! My bad!

I never wear anything with vulnerabilities unless I can offset it and then some.

I still think that crappy artifacts should be axed from the game. To have NOTHING spawned in their place, not an awesome artifact. Less, more solid artifacts.

[duvessa]

Given that useless non-artefact items routinely generate and seem to be considered desirable, I don't see why artefact items should be an exception.

It is possibly undesirable that artefact status in crawl is intrinsically bad and finding a randart quick blade/pearl dragon armour/whatever is almost always worse than finding a non-randart one, but this doesn't really seem related.

[Speleothing]

Seems like artefacts could be guaranteed to fall withing a certain "usefulness range". Where good properties add "usefulness points" and bad properties subtract them, good properties would consider base type and whether it matches a player's skills and restricted slots*. The game tallies the points and rebuilds randarts that fail to meet the criteria.

This could then be extended to making sure that only useful randarts appear in certain vaults and branch endings, while less useful, or even worthless, ones appear in others by tweaking the acceptable level of usefulness that can generate there. Shop and floor randarts might still be allowed to run the gamut from useless crap to amazingly good.




*This has the hilarious side-effect of making armor you can't or won't actually wear even better than the stuff you can, since it counts as a negative in the tally.

[dck]

Why is that a thing we want though?

[Psiweapon]

Why is that a thing we want though?

Why are the current crap artifacts something we want either?

[crate]

well for one thing the current crap artefacts don't take work to implement!

[duvessa]

Dungeon generation depending on your character is terrible

[Speleothing]

It seems that there's already a way to force "good loot" to appear in a vault. This is just a way to make randarts that appear in those vaults also good. If it already exists, I haven't seen it mentioned.

[duvessa]

Vaults that use "acquire any" to make dungeon generation depend on your character are also terrible

[dck]

Why is that a thing we want though?

Why are the current crap artifacts something we want either?

I think current art gen is in line with the rest of items the game generates and is better than having the game look at your character to create items (which is awful).

[Psiweapon]

I think current art gen is in line with the rest of items the game generates and is better than having the game look at your character to create items (which is awful).

I haven't said anything about looking ar your character, what I'm talking about is "no -5 -cast contam *rage" artifacts.

[dck]

And my question was not directed to you but to the guy presenting his more digested idea right before my post.
I have no strong feelings against unquestionably shit randarts, although if one was to ignore the whole aspect of humor they can bring I suppose they really miss the point somewhat.

[Speleothing]

unquestionably shit randarts ... humor

If the game is going to generate items my character literally cannot wear because of slot restrictions, it should at least have the decency to make them hilariously strong.



It should also have the decency to have a good chance that things I may want to use appear when I clear Elf 3 or Crypt 5 looking for loot.

[Psiweapon]

And my question was not directed to you but to the guy presenting his more digested idea right before my post.
I have no strong feelings against unquestionably shit randarts, although if one was to ignore the whole aspect of humor they can bring I suppose they really miss the point somewhat.

Such a thing wasn't stated anywhere in your message, while you were in fact quoting me. Easy to misinterpretate.

[dck]

How the fuck was I quoting you
what is even going on

That's nice and all but I don't think the game's item gen should appeal to your concepts of decency regarding ambiguous humor.

[Psiweapon]

How the fuck was I quoting you
what is even going on

How, indeed?

Spoiler: show

thusly.png (15.52 KiB) Viewed 8404 times

That's nice and all but I don't think the game's item gen should appeal to your concepts of decency regarding ambiguous humor.

...wasn't you who brought up the humor thing...??

DCK Y U NO MAEK SENCE ;____;

[Speleothing]

If I may offer a timeline of the thread:

Psiweapon suggested that making randarts exactly the same as existing items is stupid. (Why bother to give it the artefact tag)
It was pointed out that this is a side-effect of random generation.
Psiweapon pointed out that putting lots of bad effects on randarts is dumb, and that we could lessen the total number generated in a game if they typically generated to be better. He didn't care if they were individually useable by a player.
I noted that it's possible to do this and take into account whether they're usable by a player, and even force randarts to generate at certain quality levels in certain locations.
Duvessa and dck shat all over the idea that the game's generated content can react and adapt to the player (possibly because it would ruin the realism of their underground monster dungeon simulator, possibly because it would involve effort)
Psiweapon got confused about who was replying to whom.
We are here.

[dck]

Holy shit.
MAN 1: Golly I love rocks we should make everything out of rocks.
MAN 2: Gee idk why do we want to do that?
MAN 3: Well why do we not want everything made out of rocks?
MAN 2: I think the other things we use for stuff right now are okay and it's better than tailoring all of our designs to the restrictions of rocks.
MAN 3: I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ROCKS WHY ARE YOU ACTING AS IF YOU WERE TALKING TO SOMEONE ELSE INITIALLY.

Annnnd since I am literally knee deep in stupidity what I said about humor is that the status quo wouldn't be different from the suggested change in terms of how useful items are (well it would likely be detrimental somewhat, but that doesn't matter) and I happen to find the status quo amusing. I am not saying either that humor should be tailored to what I find funny or not, but since changing things is effort and the improvement would be non-existant I don't see why things should be changed to make them funny in [i]some other[/s] way.

Spoiler: show

ROCKS IS AN EUPHEMISM

[dck]

(possibly because it would ruin the realism of their underground monster dungeon simulator, possibly because it would involve effort)

More like because it is bad to have the game base what things is creates on the race of the player. In the concrete case of crawl it gives the player the ability of influencing things he has no business whatsoever influencing and in a more general way it's not very elegant for a game that is supposedly using random generation as a mechanic for several mechanics, item gen included.
And in practice it would randomly make vaults silly.

[Speleothing]

It's more like:
MAN 1: "We've got this rock distribution machine, and pretty often it gives me rocks that are chalky, or even just lumps of sand that are kinda stuck together, we should do something about that"
MAN 2: "Nah, chalky rocks and sand are part of how the machine works."
MAN 3: "We could change the machine, maybe even make it so it tends to give you flint and obsidian after you've had limestone and granite for a while"
MAN 4: "Then it would have to judge when you're ready for flint and obsidian, and that's not how the machine works"
MAN 1: "But what about just fixing the chalk and sand problem?"
MAN 2: "We're pretty strongly opposed to having the machine take your needs into account. Let's not work on the machine"

[Arrhythmia]

No it's more like:

MAN 1: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
MAN 2: GGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[dck]

thx arrhy
hows your day going m8

[Psiweapon]

Okay guys going to take a leak now because I'm laughing so hard I might end up peeing a little. On myself.

CyC SH4FT NAO PL0X

X_DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[dck]

Man it should be illegal to suck the fun out of things with such surgical precision.

[Psiweapon]

Man it should be illegal to suck the fun out of things with such surgical precision.

Your fun. I'm splitting.

[Arrhythmia]

thx arrhy
hows your day going m8

Hi dck it's going pretty good today I ran 2 miles and then my phone tricked me into thinking I had voice mail (i didn't) and after that I read a little bit more of Gravity's Rainbow and then I ate dinner which pretty much brings us to now. What about you