Making the game harder, take three

[Magnate]

Just to clarify, I was talking about effects without rDisen (and fighting Tarrasque without rDisen is obviously not a very good idea). Compare to nexus: stat scramble effect is 1 in 7, you have a saving throw, it's not an instant kill and it can even turn out favorably.
I agree that rare very bad events add little value to gameplay, if any. I still think, however, that big disenchanters should produce more "interesting" effects apart from pure damage. Even if 99% of players would never walk into them without rDisen. For the sake of "he just did WHAT?!" effect :-)

I see having disenchant remove a flag from an object as what fizzix describes as a "moderately bad" event, not a "very bad" one. It's like having a stat drained: it's irritating, but restorable - and there are lots of other objects out there.

I accept that I am in a minority with this view - now that takkaria has spoken you can be sure that it isn't going to happen in V.

[d_m]

There's an aspect of making the game more difficult that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I've been super busy so I don't have time to really respond or comment but I just wanted to say that I think this is a really useful and important observation.

[Ycombinator]

Just to clarify, I was talking about effects without rDisen (and fighting Tarrasque without rDisen is obviously not a very good idea). Compare to nexus: stat scramble effect is 1 in 7, you have a saving throw, it's not an instant kill and it can even turn out favorably.
I agree that rare very bad events add little value to gameplay, if any. I still think, however, that big disenchanters should produce more "interesting" effects apart from pure damage. Even if 99% of players would never walk into them without rDisen. For the sake of "he just did WHAT?!" effect :-)

[fizzix]

There's an aspect of making the game more difficult that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

There's an asymmetry between rare very good events and rare very bad events. Rare, very good events (say, finding BOS+8 on dlevel 10 once every 1000 games) are good for gameplay. Rare, very bad events (if Disenchant had a 1% chance of trashing an artifact) is bad for gameplay. I haven't quite figured out why it is, but I'm pretty sure this is fundamentally true. Furthermore it's obviously affected gameplay considerations up to now. For example, giving the player the first move on a level is a method of removing the rare, very bad event of descending into a room full of time hounds and dying before getting a move off.

Another thing that's bad for gameplay is a very strong negative effect that is removed by a simple, yet annoying, action. An example of this was the old stat-draining, which can be fixed by town-scumming for restore potions.

That being said, making the game harder should not focus on removing extremely good events or adding very rare bad events. Rather it should make very good events more rare and add (or make more common), moderately bad effects.

Artifacts need to be rarer at the dungeon bottom. This is the biggest problem by far. It is possible to win with a very basic kit as Eddie and Bron have shown. Artifacts aren't necessary, and every artifact in your kit should be a lucky find. Right now, you scum dlevel 99-100 for consumables, you should be scumming it for gear, or going down to fight with a suboptimal kit but plenty of consumables.

Then start adding rarity to powerful egos. TMJ will rear its head again, so I re-propose adding a dlevel dependent auto-squelch. If the game tries to make a weak item, it gets squelched automatically, the idea being that weak items would have been dropped and trampled over.

[Ycombinator]

I haven't set my mind on "advanced" disenchantment effects yet, but there is something I want to point out: there is currently no difference in effects between breath of chaos drake and Tarrasque, or disenchanter eye gaze and nightwalker blow. Only damage differs. I think it's worth fixing. I am perfectly willing to accept that particularly unlucky Tarrasque breath can turn your shiny artifact into mundane piece of metal. OTOH, getting caught by a storm of unmagic will most likely cost you a point or two of combat bonuses, just like it does now.

[Magnate]

It seems as though most people are assuming the disenchant modifications are permanent? Perhaps I misunderstood the original premise, but I thought the proposal was with regard to temporarily removing flags which could be recovered using ?restore items. That's not quite so bad.

You are correct - that was the original suggestion. But Timo's assertion that you would "have" to carry ?restore_item at all times seems to be the majority view. If that were true then of course the idea would be untenable.

What fascinates me about this is that people are much more willing to accept permanent destruction of entire items by fire and acid, which are *far* more common attacks.

The difference seems to be that people don't like surprises. Even a [1,+1] item will not get destroyed until its third acid hit, on current proposals (going to [0,+1] and then [-1,+1] before being destroyed). So you have time to think and act between the first damage and the loss of its precious flags. That's the only difference I can think of, but it is significant.

[camlost]

Agreed - as it should be. A magic user without RDisen is like a doctor who smokes.

That's all well and good, but it's not exactly readily available. Though I for one think that making that the side-effect of disenchantment is much better than object-ruination. I think I'll go write myself a ticket for this.

[Derakon]

Loss of buffs seems like a rather weak side effect to me - do people regularly use heroism/holy chant/etc? I guess the loss of haste or double resists could be pretty bad. This seems to hurt warriors more than others.

My warriors routinely use Heroism and are perfectly willing to use Chant if the temple has the scrolls in stock. Moving to no-selling increases the viability of these items. Additionally, everyone uses temporary speed, though warriors and holy casters have to rely on staves and potions.

[Nick]

Actually I think this hurts priests/mages a lot. Things like Essence of Speed, Resistance, Blessing, etc. could all get wiped. Warriors rely on these less (IMO) because they run out of consumables.

Agreed - as it should be. A magic user without RDisen is like a doctor who smokes.

[d_m]

I am against permanent loss of resists/abilities as well. Loss of buffs seems like a rather weak side effect to me - do people regularly use heroism/holy chant/etc? I guess the loss of haste or double resists could be pretty bad. This seems to hurt warriors more than others.

Actually I think this hurts priests/mages a lot. Things like Essence of Speed, Resistance, Blessing, etc. could all get wiped. Warriors rely on these less (IMO) because they run out of consumables.

[bulian]

If we're going to the trouble of temporary flags (and I'm not saying we are, but the gory details are in the essay and my recommendation is that we should), there's no reason that all temporary flags have to be additions ....

... when ?restore_item was introduced it immediately elicited complaints that disenchantment was effectively nerfed, no longer a concern. But what if disen were expanded - instead of just affecting +hit/+dam/+ac, that it could remove *any* property from an object? So your cap of ESP just lost, er, the ESP flag ....

It seems as though most people are assuming the disenchant modifications are permanent? Perhaps I misunderstood the original premise, but I thought the proposal was with regard to temporarily removing flags which could be recovered using ?restore items. That's not quite so bad.

WRT randart games, rDis is a standard feature on "weaponmastery and also appears on other egos.

I am against permanent loss of resists/abilities as well. Loss of buffs seems like a rather weak side effect to me - do people regularly use heroism/holy chant/etc? I guess the loss of haste or double resists could be pretty bad. This seems to hurt warriors more than others.

[Djabanete]

I think that crippling your gear is too harsh an effect to be fun.

I think that having unresisted disenchantment dispel your buffs is a great idea.

[will_asher]

These threads make me so very sad, since I have yet to even lay eyes on Sauron. If the game gets harder, I despair of ever reaching DL99.

I've never won (or reached dL99) either, but I don't mind the game getting harder. For one thing, I have fun whether I win or not. For another, I think I'll win someday, and it'll be a greater accomplishment to win a tougher game than an easier one.
That said, I've played vanilla very rarely since making my own variant, but I think the same sentiment applies because I like (and implement in my variant) a lot of the ideas which happen to have the side effect of making the game harder. maybe I'm a masochistic kind of gamer.

[Atarlost]

4. Stat and speed boosts should be treated like melee bonuses, such that boots of speed +10 would need to be hit 10 times before being worthless.

This might be viable. Reducing pval by one hurts more than dropping hit or damage or armor particularly when stacked, but it won't instantly ruin your kit like taking away a resistance or a whole item's worth of speed or con.

[Starhawk]

These threads make me so very sad, since I have yet to even lay eyes on Sauron. If the game gets harder, I despair of ever reaching DL99.