V standarts are horribad

[Sky]

again, it's not the weapon, or the speed. It's the fact that cloaks, gloves, armors, are pathetic. Midrange weapons are pathetic. You don't get cloaks +6 DEX rChaos rDisen pStun +2 Spd with standarts. There's no boots +10 Spd +3 CON +3 DEX *Cold A:Tele_Self.
You get miserable stuff like the plate of Isildur (which you would imaging is a majestic artifact of infinite splendour) which has a pathetic +1 CON, rNexus and pConf.

The armor i am wearing NOW for my randart troll (nowhere near DL97) has +4 INT (don't need it), +5 CON, pConf/Stun/Blind, dark/shards/disench.
I have 4 sustains, *Elect, STR/CON/WIS capped, and frankly, this is one of the most mediocre randart sets i have ever played.

Here is the cloak i was wearing until just now:
+6 WIS, rLight, pBlind, pStun, SI, A: Detection.

Every item is full of things; they are random, but there's enough that by moving around the gear, you can easily get everything that you need.
Instead standarts are .. "themed". WHY does Thorin need -stealth. *Acid too powerful? Come on.
Standart set is scared to give you a +4 CON item without attaching some downside to it. I'm at +14 equipment bonus and have been for a considerable time, with the other character i was at 18/190 for ages. Randarts are so powerful that you can vulgarly throw together a set without even bothering to read them fully, and you'll still be overpowered.


Nick, if you are reading this .. and you are .. you need to add a floating, few randarts to the standart set. As it it, it sucks.

[Pete Mack]

@Sky--
Not so. There are two excellent pairs of gloves in the standard artifact set. Each gives good damage and helps in melee stats. (There is a third that makes a viable imFire swap.) That you find Cambeleg underpowered almost certainly means that randarts are unbalanced; not so much because the randart gloves are more powerful, but because they give so many options that making an Uber kit is too easy. Standarts are balanced by strictly limiting the capabilities in each slot.

[Nick]

again, it's not the weapon, or the speed. It's the fact that cloaks, gloves, armors, are pathetic. Midrange weapons are pathetic. You don't get cloaks +6 DEX rChaos rDisen pStun +2 Spd with standarts. There's no boots +10 Spd +3 CON +3 DEX *Cold A:Tele_Self.
You get miserable stuff like the plate of Isildur (which you would imaging is a majestic artifact of infinite splendour) which has a pathetic +1 CON, rNexus and pConf.

The armor i am wearing NOW for my randart troll (nowhere near DL97) has +4 INT (don't need it), +5 CON, pConf/Stun/Blind, dark/shards/disench.
I have 4 sustains, *Elect, STR/CON/WIS capped, and frankly, this is one of the most mediocre randart sets i have ever played.

Here is the cloak i was wearing until just now:
+6 WIS, rLight, pBlind, pStun, SI, A: Detection.

Every item is full of things; they are random, but there's enough that by moving around the gear, you can easily get everything that you need.
Instead standarts are .. "themed". WHY does Thorin need -stealth. *Acid too powerful? Come on.
Standart set is scared to give you a +4 CON item without attaching some downside to it. I'm at +14 equipment bonus and have been for a considerable time, with the other character i was at 18/190 for ages. Randarts are so powerful that you can vulgarly throw together a set without even bothering to read them fully, and you'll still be overpowered.


Nick, if you are reading this .. and you are .. you need to add a floating, few randarts to the standart set. As it it, it sucks.

Yes, I am reading this

I will express my opinion about this now, so there is no doubt.

The problem is not the standard artifacts, it is randarts. The standard artifacts are designed with game balance in mind. Randarts are meant to be similar in power, so they give a similar game experience but allow a player who is overly familiar with the standard artifact set to get more surprises. The problem is that trying to make a "random" set of artifacts is a long way from being a clearly defined problem.

The current algorithm scans the standard artifacts to get a distribution of properties across them, and then attempts to pick randomly from that distribution. But it is far from clear what that actually means, so the history is that there's an attempted algorithm, people complain about the results, and then the algorithm is tweaked until people stop complaining. The only virtue of this is that people aren't complaining (much) about randarts.

So my three options for randarts currently are:

1. Do nothing beyond the odd minor tweak;
2. Nerf the hell out of them;
3. Throw the entire algorithm away and start again, probably at the same time doing a rethink of the standard artifacts, ego items and possibly the combat system (as foreshadowed here).

Discuss

[Pete Mack]

The trouble is that the distribution of facets goes across equipment types for randarts, while they are limited by equipment type in the base randarts. In particular, you can get fantastic resistances on bows, lights, and gloves, which really opens up possibilities. Not to mention extra blows, slays, or movement on just about anything.

[Mondkalb]

Randarts can also have loughable outcomes like stuff with nothing but one bonus to an attribute or one resistance.
Also, the rings are usually not so good as the elven rings, often they lack ESP or speed.

But I am not complaining!
There are often nice surpirises like immunities or speed on other items. It usually is just another mini game of shuffling around gear than with standard artifacts.

Still, it could be interesting to alos have ego powers shuffled.

[Pete Mack]

Sure, you get a few useless artifacts every game. Like Elvagil, and that ceappy saber.

[Estie]

Randarts are meant to be similar in power, so they give a similar game experience but allow a player who is overly familiar with the standard artifact set to get more surprises.

This is ONLY true if randarts are considerably more powerfull than egos, so you end up using predominantly artifacts in your kit; getting unusual modifiers on items youre not going to use is of no concern.

It used to be that the power distribution between item types looked something like this

(with
1 - magic items
2 - egos
3 - standarts):

1------2------3

Then the standarts got nerfed (at least once in a big way, possibly more often*), so now it looks more like this:

1------2-3

Now randarts have more variance so in any given slot you might end up with more power than the standart would provide - right of the 3 - or with less, which might push you left of the ego, so you end up using the ego.

I believe it is already the case that randart @s use egos in more slots than standart @s.

What *should* have been done, when standarts got nerfed, is this:

1------2------3 -> 1----2----3

That is, also reducing the power of egos.

If the egos would have a (relevant) random element, it wouldnt matter much what you do with the artifacts since you end up with unpredictable items in every slot anyway.

I have raised this point before, more than once I am sure. And of course, the same thing is about to happen again, and after that, its probably time for yet another nerf of teleport other.




*and in a bad way, too, best illustrated with Sting: Instead of removing one of the stat bonuses, going from (+2, +2, +2) to (+1, +1,+1) makes each individual bonus (even more) meaningless; its a boring, one-dimensional layer of power with no choices to make.

[Pete Mack]

Estie--i see it differently. Sure, a randart set may have a weakness in a particular slot, but in that case an ego is better. (The same regularly happens for standarts--Crown of Might, or MoD (HA), or Ring of Speed/Damage, let alone PDSM (Dwarven).)

The issue is the other slots, where object type is limited by design (gloves,lights, boots, cloak, amulet, bow), the randart set has no such limitation. So you will almost invariably have artifacts in those slots that increase character power relative to the norm--be that norm artifact, ego item, or base item.

[Estie]

Pete - certainly!, but how do you propose to make the kit random ?

[Pete Mack]

Put strictly limits on slots, say "at most 1 resistance on gloves". "No resistance on bows". Etc.

[Estie]

And are you going to change Amrod to abide by those rules, too ?

[wobbly]

Then the standarts got nerfed (at least once in a big way, possibly more often*), so now it looks more like this:

I don't think this is true. As in I'm literally comparing the artifact file from 2.9.3 and 4.2.

Sting loses 1 str/dex/con and gains +3 spd, slay animal. Hard to argue that was a large nerf.

Thalkettoth gains +3 spd which is a nerf in reverse.

[Estie]

I don't think this is true. As in I'm literally comparing the artifact file from 2.9.3 and 4.2.

Sting loses 1 str/dex/con and gains +3 spd, slay animal. Hard to argue that was a large nerf.

Thalkettoth gains +3 spd which is a nerf in reverse.

It was a shaving off everywhere, right at the time when independant pvals were introduced. Thorin, Elessar, many others.

Thalkettoth has 3 speed in tome2, so it must be there since ages. I am talking about more recent times.

[wobbly]

I'll have a look at version 3 sometime, because all I'm seeing here are large buffs. Forasgil changes from 1d6 to 1d12 for instance. I know that most of the artifacts were buffed at some point because Gwarl buffed artifacts going from PCB to CPB to bring them into line with the modern V versions.

[Estie]

The early light weapons have always been strong; *thancs went back and forth between 1d4 and 2d4 base a couple times, but either way they are more powerful than what youll get in a randart set at that time.