Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[BlueFish]

I assume you don't play pacifists.

Nobody "plays" pacifists, they "work at" pacifists.

But yeah point taken. Artifacts could still drop from chests though.

[debo]

I fucking love shiren the wanderer.

Edit: You forgot to mention 'turn you into a rice ball'

[Patashu]

Edit: Maybe some sort of cat thief is in order. A cat that is largely not dangerous but can steal artefacts or swaps from your inventory at 650'-700' could be fun!!

Have you ever played any of the games (mostly they are on nintendo consoles and handhelds) in the Shiren the Wanderer: Mysterious Dungeon series? They have a lot of monsters with varied ways of messing with items, inventory, your stats and so on (stat down, level down, corrode equipment, curse equipment, turn stuff on the ground into weeds, turn stuff in your inventory into weeds, hypnotize you and make you use/do something random, steal money, steal items, knocking items off of your body, knock you down and make items spill out of your inventory...)

http://shiren.wikifoundry.com/page/Shiren+2+Monsters

http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/581042-...ren/faqs/14612 ctrl+F 2. Monsters

On the subject of armour swaps: What if you couldn't swap armour if any monster was aware of you? It would emulate armour swapping being an action too long to do in the middle of battle without it actually being multi-turn.

[taptap]

One way to keep all current systems in place and yet to solve the "lost artifact you never saw" issue would be to generate artifacts only as monster drops rather than pre-generated floor litter.

I assume you don't play pacifists.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In terms of realism, the current method (and the method it was designed to emulate) implies a sort of celestial compass the player uses to draw them to levels on which these finite artifacts were generated. It doesn't make realism sense that the first time a player visits 500', there's a greater chance of an artifact being there than the second time. But indeed that is the effect of the current system.

+1. The mechanic doesn't sound real-world realistic, but that doesn't bother me. A celestial compass is not unrealistic in Middle Earth, artifacts have a will to be found... Funnily enough the exact same reasoning can be used to justify preserving artifacts.

[BlueFish]

Here is a related, similar rule: behind the scenes, the game picks a certain set of artefacts that are in the dungeon in this run-through. Perhaps a fixed number, perhaps deliberately spread out over the different depths, or perhaps with some other tweaking. Then these artefacts are the only ones that can occur during that game. (This would obviously be combined with increasing the artefact generation chance to give about the same expected number of artefacts per game).

In this case, if you walk past an artefact, you won't find it again and the total number of artefacts you could find goes down.

I think that this would play almost the same as the current system. Indeed, it would be so similar, that I don't think it is worth implementing. But I mention it to show how it can be realistic (as well as balancing) to have the decreasing chance of finding artefacts as you go.

I guess I don't understand the motivation behind the whole concept of limiting artifacts beyond the implicit probablistic limit of making them rare drops. If artifacts are sufficiently rare and Sil has a certain turncount limit, that implies, for a game in which the limit is reached, a certain number of artifacts will be found, as a function of amount of dungeon ground explored and number of item-dropping monsters killed.

It seems like maybe the primary motivation for the current system is making the first couple artifacts more likely, rather than limiting artifacts in general.

Personally I'd be fine with (and would prefer) the simpler and more intuitive system of preserve=on and no fudging of the artifact rolls depending on number already generated. This might make the standard deviation of number of artifacts found greater, but the average the same. That sort of randomness is fun in its own right, and is a core gameplay principle of roguelikes, to me.

In terms of realism, the current method (and the method it was designed to emulate) implies a sort of celestial compass the player uses to draw them to levels on which these finite artifacts were generated. It doesn't make realism sense that the first time a player visits 500', there's a greater chance of an artifact being there than the second time. But indeed that is the effect of the current system.

One way to keep all current systems in place and yet to solve the "lost artifact you never saw" issue would be to generate artifacts only as monster drops rather than pre-generated floor litter.

[Derakon]

I tend to think that a system where the game pre-selects which artifacts are able to be generated, and then doesn't tweak generation chance based on artifacts that have been found/missed, would be preferable. I grant that they tend to produce similar effects, but the former feels more natural to me.

[AnonymousHero]

Yes, that would be an interesting rule.
Here is a related, similar rule: behind the scenes, the game picks a certain set of artefacts that are in the dungeon in this run-through. Perhaps a fixed number, perhaps deliberately spread out over the different depths, or perhaps with some other tweaking. Then these artefacts are the only ones that can occur during that game. (This would obviously be combined with increasing the artefact generation chance to give about the same expected number of artefacts per game).

This is an interesting hack and very similar to how Randarts work in Vanilla.i. e. no infinite "chances". I can't say that I, personally, am a fan, but I think the "defininteness" of it works for many people. (After all, we don't see that many people complain about the randarts in V.)

EDIT: Oh, and btw, welcome to popularity half & Scatha: You'll never leave!

[taptap]

Putting theft on a ranged combatant probably isn't going to work well. (Cat assassin try to keep distance usually afaik.)

The best system for artefacts is the one, that allows me to find the Shortsword of Galadriel and to forget about the fact, that there is a system. Decreasing chance is fine as any system. I also would like to mention, that there are some special items, which are as good or better than some artefacts. (Did I mention the [-1, 2d5] Mithril Corslet of Resilience +1 I found recently? I happily dropped artefact armour for it.)

[half]

Some good responses about acid damage. It is somewhat unforgiving! You can imagine an alternate ruleset which allowed damage to be repaired at forges, and then damaging artefacts would be more okay.

Yes, that would be an interesting rule.

This mechanic, like the forge smoothing, is not really intended for the player interaction, which is why we haven't publicised it.

Here is a related, similar rule: behind the scenes, the game picks a certain set of artefacts that are in the dungeon in this run-through. Perhaps a fixed number, perhaps deliberately spread out over the different depths, or perhaps with some other tweaking. Then these artefacts are the only ones that can occur during that game. (This would obviously be combined with increasing the artefact generation chance to give about the same expected number of artefacts per game).

In this case, if you walk past an artefact, you won't find it again and the total number of artefacts you could find goes down.

I think that this would play almost the same as the current system. Indeed, it would be so similar, that I don't think it is worth implementing. But I mention it to show how it can be realistic (as well as balancing) to have the decreasing chance of finding artefacts as you go. Indeed it was this effect that the current system is meant to be emulating (just with a quick and simple method). We don't imagine that all the artefacts in Beleriand are in Morgoth's halls, just that 10 or so are.

I'm not actually sure which system players would prefer to imagine being behind the scenes. Is it more annoying to know that there are some artefacts that can't be generated this game?

[debo]

partially you can get this by having it return with a twist (on a monster with extra abilities, for example, such as the cat assassins).

So, how about fast cat thieves with a darkness radius of 4 or something?

Or we can give them that "summons darkness" spell and pretend they're using a smoke bomb...

[Scatha]

On the question of more monsters with certain abilities or attacks: half has made the good points to me that if something becomes too commonplace it feels less special, and that it's nice to have the deep dungeon feel qualitatively different from the early dungeon, rather than just a harder version.

However, I tend to feel that for a good ability it's easy to get at least two uses out of it without breaking this feeling; partially you can get this by having it return with a twist (on a monster with extra abilities, for example, such as the cat assassins).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

A future version of Halls of Mist will have lots of reasons for armour swapping. I want to keep one turn armour switching, for the exact same reasons.

I'm planning to calculate armour encumbrance by totaling the weight of any pieces of armour you have, either worn or in your inventory. If the total armour weight > your strength, you'll get penalties. This should stop players carrying unrealistic swap items.

(The game won't track the weight of most items anymore. Stack sizes for big objects will be smaller to compensate. Weapons will have a required Strength rating but no weight as such.)

[Scatha]

This reminds me. I dislike single turn armour swaps. Sil's stealth system exasperates this, in that it can be tactically advantageous to sneak around in robes of stealth then change in to mail while an orc's wak-ing you with large sword. I try to ignore the option, but it is damn tempting sometimes.

I have mixed feelings on this. I don't like the realism issue of quick armour switches, and I don't like the gameplay encouragement to micromanage. On the other hand, with the single exception of forging, every action in Sil takes one turn. There is a simplicity to this which makes it easy to understand, and an elegance which makes it appealing as a mechanic.

There are some actions which are compound, and so in effect take more than one turn, such as tunnelling through quartz or granite, but I don't see an easy way to break up the armour exchange without demanding that you first spend a turn taking off your old armour -- which would get annoying extremely quickly.

[Scatha]

Some good responses about acid damage. It is somewhat unforgiving! You can imagine an alternate ruleset which allowed damage to be repaired at forges, and then damaging artefacts would be more okay.

Mikko: Every time an artefact would be generated, there's an independent 10% chance of it failing to for each artefact that has been generated before. This mechanic, like the forge smoothing, is not really intended for the player interaction, which is why we haven't publicised it. Rather it's meant to smooth out the player experience between games. Powerful characters can kill a lot more monsters, and clear a lot more levels, than weaker characters. We don't want power by a certain point to lead too inevitably to runaway increasing power (there is a bit of a problem with this in the game, but less than there was for a lot of development). The steeply decaying experience rewards stop these characters getting too far ahead by that route, and the decay in artefact generation stops the number of artefacts they find from getting too large.

This mechanic does, however, provide mild reasons not to abandon levels, particularly deeper (where artefacts are more likely; it's almost costless at shallow depths). This gives some reason to prefer to telegraph it to players. I'm not sure. I think a somewhat common reaction will be to like the effect of the rule's smoothing, but not like the sound of the rule (because it seems like you're missing out), so people might be happier not knowing.

BlueFish, debo: Yes, perhaps there should be a deeper thief. A cat would make some sense, although risks being even more annoying than the cat assassins!