Post your top feature/option wish for Vanilla

[Hariolor]

This is almost certainly variant territory - but it would be fun to drastically reduce the number of artifacts, make them all more powerful overall, but allow them to "level up" with the PC (earning equal exp to the PC as long as they are being used), granting new abilities as they gain levels. Artifacts found deeper in the dungeon could still be better overall, regardless of the CLevel of @ when they're found.

Thus the phial might start off as just another everburning lantern, but over the course of the game could add activation for light, then an Rdark flag, then Rfear, etc etc.

I won't go into more detail because it's not a detailed thought, or one likely to see implemented. But since we've been discussing changing artifacts to make them more special...

[Derakon]

ToME has "sentient" weapon artifacts that gain experience when you make kills with them, giving access to various elemental realms that each have sets of powers that can be randomly "purchased" by the artifact when it levels up. It's a very complicated system with the practical upshot that you eventually end up with an earthquake brand and find a new weapon.

[camlost]

1. Very nice to see no selling mentioned so often. I'll make a renewed effort to persuade Takk to do this.

I implemented this in S as a birth option, and turned it on by default. I don't recall it being difficult. Also, I'll probably be getting reports back soon regarding the popularity of the change.

[PowerDiver]

I implemented this in S as a birth option, and turned it on by default. I don't recall it being difficult.

The coding is trivial. The problem is balancing money drops. Currently in V, you can collect all of the money from the first 3 levels and possibly still be unable to buy an average sling. In the old days, or in S I imagine, a single money drop would buy that sling.

[nullfame]

2. Disappointing to see so many requests for an expanded home and/or inventory.

+5

4. Someone mentioned "player artifacts" in the same breath as player ghosts. Tell me more ...

That would be me. Like any good Angband player I dream of my own feature/variant ideas. What I am thinking is like this:

Before my first win I had a very promising character named Wait. To this day she is my second deepest non-winner. I remember her as wielding Aglarang, branding rings and most often being fire, having pretty good (heroic) stealth, and even once wearing and activating a red dragon armour (3.1.1). Eventually she bit off more than she could chew: Tselakus. It would be nice to have an artifact that commemorated her kit choice. Maybe The Red Dragon Scale Mail of Wait with a small stealth and/or speed bonus and fire branding.

I'm thinking somewhere on the side (in the savefile, somewhere else, I haven't thought about it but you asked so I'm freestyling) save player statistics and artifacts. In some X% of the games include some very small N of those artifacts in the artifact set. While a player is playing track equipment she uses and their attributes. Did she have fire brand a lot? Maybe she carried a high stealth item for a long time? Had the same dagger for 30+ dls? Or had chaos covered since dl15? Those things become the essence of her as a character. If she crossed level Y then upon death or retirement there is a Z% chance an artifact is created based on some randomly, maybe weighted, selected number of these essences with a proper depth and rarity (which I assume exists elsewhere).

[buzzkill]

I'm thinking somewhere on the side (in the savefile, somewhere else, I haven't thought about it but you asked so I'm freestyling) save player statistics and artifacts. In some X% of the games include some very small N of those artifacts in the artifact set. While a player is playing track equipment she uses and their attributes. Did she have fire brand a lot? Maybe she carried a high stealth item for a long time? Had the same dagger for 30+ dls? Or had chaos covered since dl15? Those things become the essence of her as a character. If she crossed level Y then upon death or retirement there is a Z% chance an artifact is created based on some randomly, maybe weighted, selected number of these essences with a proper depth and rarity (which I assume exists elsewhere).

This sounds very cool, as least to me. I spend a lot of time playing a successful character, probably months, and become attached to them. I've always had a love/hate relationship with players ghosts in FA, this is just more of the same... in a good way.

Hey Will, how about player ghost statues for DaJ?

[Hariolor]

This does sound very cool - but I'm thinking there will be an awful lot of player-artifact Stars and Phials...not that that'd be a bad thing..

[Derakon]

This does sound very cool - but I'm thinking there will be an awful lot of player-artifact Stars and Phials...not that that'd be a bad thing..

Two ways to fix this:

* Simply disallow "special" artifacts (light sources, jewelry, and Morgoth's set) from becoming player artifacts.
* Track which artifacts are commonly used across all players, and don't allow those to become player artifacts.

[zaimoni]

So the price difference between a +2 and +3 heavy crossbow should be at most 100 * probability of success, same for a chaos blade. Just maybe that would get things in line.

Isn't that 100/[probability of success] through +15 (making each + more valuable than the last)?

[PowerDiver]

Isn't that 100/[probability of success] through +15 (making each + more valuable than the last)?

Now I wonder if I have it backward. Thinking out loud

Price is proportional to power^2 I believe, but IMO the proportionality constant is currently far too high.

The question isn't so much what a plus is worth. It is what a scroll of ?+dam is worth. That's got a list price of 150 or so, and its affect should be less, how about say 100. You shouldn't be able to take an item, read ?+dam on it, and increase the expected price by more than 100. That's my premise.

100 + price(item) >= price(item) + success prob * [price(ench item) - price(item)]

That should be true for all items, and should give an upper bound on the scaling factor in the price ~ power^2 proportionality. I don't know what it works out to, but I'd sure prefer prices maybe 1/4 what they are now. Maybe even less. I just sold a random good object, a maul +5+5 for 3485 gold. That's what ego items used to sell for. I'd be much happier if it sold for 500. Should it really sell for more than a wand of frost bolts?

[zaimoni]

The question isn't so much what a plus is worth. It is what a scroll of ?+dam is worth. That's got a list price of 150 or so, and its affect should be less, how about say 100. You shouldn't be able to take an item, read ?+dam on it, and increase the expected price by more than 100. That's my premise.

While my premise is that if +0 to +1 is an increase of 100g, then the wastage rate of ?+dam scrolls should increase the change in price for each additional +. In particular, at the V3.0.6 0.1% success rate the +14 to +15 step should be 100,000 gold.

Basically, to make things line up, power-based pricing requires retrofitting the enchant probabilities and/or ?+dam cost to the power-based pricing for weapons. It may be necessary to have ?+melee dam, ?+missile dam, and ?+launcher dam to make power-based pricing work.

[PowerDiver]

While my premise is that if +0 to +1 is an increase of 100g, then the wastage rate of ?+dam scrolls should increase the change in price for each additional +. In particular, at the V3.0.6 0.1% success rate the +14 to +15 step should be 100,000 gold.

That makes no sense to me. The artificers don't use ?+dam to create objects. They use something much more efficient capable of creating e.g. plusses in the 20s without too much trouble, given the number one finds in a typical game. The ?+dam are a method by which the non-artificers are allowed to boost items, presumably quite inefficiently.

Anyway, take a stand on the underlying problem. Do you think a random good weapon found at DL24 where I think I found that one, say +5+5, should sell for thousands or for hundreds? The baseline is determined e.g. by a staff of teleport being a couple thousand. The rough "couple thousand" is becasue it's a little tricky to talk about price, seeing as the thing I sold for 3485 would cost 4347 to buy back. Or use the pricing on ?map or -frostBolts if you prefer.

[Derakon]

I think the problem here isn't so much the buying prices for items, but rather the selling prices, which are still a constant multiplier of the buying price (something like selling price = .5 buying price). IMO the relationship shouldn't be linear; it should be something more like selling price = (buying price)^.8, so that armor that you can buy for 18k AU you can only sell for 2536 AU. On the flipside, a mildly enchanted dagger, buying price 1800 AU, would sell for 401 AU.

EDIT: the relationship doesn't have to be nonlinear, but it certainly should not be so favorable to the player. Simply going with selling price = .1 * buying price might do the trick.

[nullfame]

Track which artifacts are commonly used across all players, and don't allow those to become player artifacts.

Or at least don't count the commonly used characteristics towards the "essence" of that player unless they were found ridiculously out of depth (Phial on dl1 for example). I wouldn't have a problem with the occasional light/jewelry being made based on non-special item characteristics (using my above example a light that gives +4 stealth). I don't know enough about the artifact code and generation to speak intelligently. Just an idea that's been kicking around in my head.

[Magnate]

Two ways to fix this:

* Simply disallow "special" artifacts (light sources, jewelry, and Morgoth's set) from becoming player artifacts.
* Track which artifacts are commonly used across all players, and don't allow those to become player artifacts.

I've been toying with tracking randarts in a similar way (ticket #1165). How would people feel about the game checking for an internet connection and sending me some stats? I promise not to hack into your bank accounts.

If it works for randarts, it could do these player artifacts too. Though IIRC the original player ghost code made *local* ghosts, so every angband installation contained the ghosts of who had died there. I guess player artifacts could be done the same way (but it would be nice to share them).