Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[taptap]

That sounds pretty good to me. I might be an outlier in this regard, though; for example I'm not certain that artefacts should all be immune to acid damage.

I like the possibility to destroy artefacts. (I did even destroy Calris last time I saw it just for roleplaying reasons.) I like when artefacts can be stolen, although this will remain a very rare case of actually have unworn/unwielded artefacts when meeting orc thieves. I also believe it is clever for orcs to carry away orc slaying weapons (other orcs will be mightily impressed).

Acid damage to artefacts, however, would be truly awful. Yeah, the robe of Aredhel [-2] or the -3, -4 2d2 Corslet of Fingon - enjoy! It would make low perception play (resist status effects w/ will and acid with appropriate armour) much weaker. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem for me, but adding bottleneck skills everyone has to have isn't good.

I agree that is an interesting challenge, but in practice most items orc thieves pick up are out of the players LOS.

Spot on. I never had it with artefacts. But it is quite common that the early wooden chests which are quite common in this depth are carried away. On the other hand, if you manage to trail a orc thief with a stealthy char his behaviour can be quite telling. One of the few hints you get for IDing items apart from meta data such as the depth it was dropped first or actually consuming them.

[AnonymousHero]

He also convinced me to get rid of Angband's tradition of saying that orcs can't pick up weapons of orc-slaying

WAT?!?! I never realized that this was the case, but a little code diving seems to confirm it... Assuming "rf_is_inter(m_ptr->race->flags, mon_flags)" means what I think it means.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Did I understand this right: exiting a dungeon level that I haven't mapped completely might reduce my chances to find artifacts later (not only the one that was on the level)? Does the game telegraph this to the player somehow? Sorry for repeating questions, but I'm not a Sil expert and I don't think these were answered in the thread.

I like artifacts getting stolen or destroyed.

[wobbly]

I don't mind artifacts being destroyed, but it would bug me a lot if it created a situation were I was tempted to constantly un-equip items before a fight. This already annoys me with green worms. I can carry enough junk armour at that stage to swap in to before a green worm fight.

[debo]

Though whenever I kill a thief, he tends to drop a backpackfull of stuff, so I know he's been sweeping the level.

Just in case you didn't know this yet (I certainly didn't for a long time) -- if you examine an orc thief when they're in LOS, you actually get to see everything they're carrying

[debo]

That sounds pretty good to me. I might be an outlier in this regard, though; for example I'm not certain that artefacts should all be immune to acid damage.

I actually assumed that artefacts _could_ be stolen. I think this is a pretty large nonissue either way, though -- the only times I've ever had artefacts at shallow enough depths for orc thieves, I can more or less guarantee that I was wielding them

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!!

[debo]

Did I understand this right: exiting a dungeon level that I haven't mapped completely might reduce my chances to find artifacts later (not only the one that was on the level)? Does the game telegraph this to the player somehow? Sorry for repeating questions, but I'm not a Sil expert and I don't think these were answered in the thread.

I like artifacts getting stolen or destroyed.

The probability of an item generating as an artefact is based on the # of artefacts that have been generated in the past. So yes, if you dive past artefacts without finding them, it will hurt your chances of finding more later.

In practice, I find this to be a nonissue as well, aside from the gnawing feeling that you're missing out on something. Artefact rarity isn't exactly a problem in Sil, imo -- if anything, it's the opposite. It's pretty common for straight-up fighting winners to come out of the dungeon having found 8+ artefacts, if you look back at past dumps.

What might be entertaining is to be shown the list of artefacts generated in your game upon death -- imagine the delicious anguish of dying at 700' only to discover that Ringil had shown up on a floor that you dove past!

(Seriously, can we please have this as a feature? I mean it.)

[wobbly]

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 a large sword. I try to ignore the option, but it is damn tempting sometimes.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

In practice, I find this to be a nonissue as well, aside from the gnawing feeling that you're missing out on something.

OK! So this not the most important of game mechanics, but a minor mechanic discouraging going up and down repeatably, and maybe pushing you to map a bit more of each level before you descend. Which is not bad.

[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!

[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.

[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]

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).

[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...

[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?