Making the game harder, take three

[Timo Pietilä]

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 :-)

Drain rods, staves and wands? Destroy rods, staves and wands? Turn magical potions to water and scrolls to blank paper? Drain mana? Temporarily prevent spellcasting in addition to dispel all magical buffs? All spellcasting, including scrolls?

[Timo Pietilä]

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.

Consider getting SPEED -flag removed from your speed boots, and consequently getting double-moved and killed by monster you were fighting. I find that extremely bad event. Even if you survive it would make you vulnerable to death by any deep critter in dungeon so it just ruined your game.

Have a Hell Wyrm and GWoBalance in sight and get your IMM_FIRE removed. Same with major demons in sight. Or Dracolisk and FA removed. Your only gear with ESP getting ESP removed when you are already too deep to survive without. SI removed while fighting undeads. Suddenly you can't see what you are fighting anymore. Any stat-bonus removed: blows gone, speed gone, zero failure spells gone, excellent HP gone.

I find all of those very very very bad events. Death is less annoying. You would need to have restoration as 100% guaranteed item in town with 1gp price so that you could carry stack of those at all times with you as long as you don't have resist disenchantment, and those scrolls need to be able to restore ego-items as well as artifacts.

If you want to make disenchantment more dangerous just remove the restoration. Introducing it was a bad move.

[Magnate]

[re-worded version of earlier rant with identical content]

Yes, I know your view differs from mine. That's fine. Takkaria happens to agree with you, so all is well.

But since you mention it, I wouldn't remove a pval flag, such as STR or speed, in one go. Instead I'd drop the pval by one, which would be much less awful.

Yes, getting IMM_FIRE removed with fire-breathers in LOS would be nasty. As would getting your only source of FA or SI or ESP removed. As someone else said earlier in the thread, that would make multiple objects with the same flag no longer redundant, making equipment choice more difficult and interesting.

Please, don't feel the need to post the same objections again - you've expressed them very well twice, and I understand them. I'm sorry I don't agree with you, but it doesn't matter.

[ulrichvonbek]

I could see Disenchant draining charges and discharging items that can be zapped or activated. Kind of like letting your car battery get run down. It can be recharged, but you might not be going anywhere immediately. Even though having some key ability go from ready to charging is probably more dangerous than loosing a plus somewhere, I'd probably find it less annoying.

When it comes to spell casting, reduced damage/duration/range/area of effect might still be an interesting penalty to an unresisted disenchant without being as potentially disastrous as spell failure rates going up.

[buzzkill]

Drain rods, staves and wands? Destroy rods, staves and wands? Turn magical potions to water and scrolls to blank paper? Drain mana? Temporarily prevent spellcasting in addition to dispel all magical buffs? All spellcasting, including scrolls?

These are all *great* ideas! Once one learns not to battle dis enchanters while in LoS of of denizens of a greater vault, all will be well. Just because you lose one particular immunity, doesn't mean that you're not still packing a single resist, and maybe an unnecessary activation for double. If you boots of speed get wasted, then go buy another pair, or find them in the dungeon. It's not like they're that rare. I've a feeling that if this rDis stuff were to have gone through, and one was unlucky enough to defy the odds and have it affect you in a serious way, it would be a very short learning curve. What have you done with the real Timo? I don't know that my opinion was so opposite of your own (and I seem to be on Magnate's side for a change).

The "It just did what!!" moments are what makes the game exciting, not the "Here we go again" moments.

[TJS]

The problem with resists and immunities is that they make the end game too easy when you've got them all.

I think that immunities are overpowered and I'd make them just double resistance with inventory protection (You could separate the double resist and protection flags possibly).

Then you can have monsters that can cast vulnerability to certain effects. So if you get hit by vFire then you take 3 times more damage from fire attacks (and your inventory can be damaged even if you have the inventory protection). Double resist becomes single resist, single resist becomes no resist and so forth.

I wouldn't have monsters that can disenchant ability flags on equipment meaning you avoid those monsters even more than you already do without the resist (which is boring) and have to scum for restore item scrolls to fix them (increases tedium).

[Taha]

Immunities might be overpowered, but they should still appear on the rings of power. Those are designed to be pretty special, and if the rarities are increased as has been discussed elsewhere, then it would give you something special when the do happen. Get rid of the immunities and the low end ones barely compete with powerful rings of speed. See randarts, where they often don't.

The "vulnerability" thing is interesting, although problematic for exposure to instadeath. Those monsters just become "won't fight" unless I happen to have the double resist (like disenchanters without rdis prior to restore item scrolls), too many single breath kills from full health if you end up with rbase holes during a deep fight. Maybe have it temporarily remove one source of a resist, but leave you covered if you have two? Something like what was proposed earlier in the thread, except temporary.
________
EASY VAPE

[bulian]

If you boots of speed get wasted, then go buy another pair, or find them in the dungeon. It's not like they're that rare.

What game are you playing? I'd like to just restate my earlier idea of increasing the frequency of BoS but moving their bonus towards a DL weighted formula. BoS +10 before DL50 are game breakers. M8+1d2 comes to mind.

I think that immunities are overpowered and I'd make them just double resistance with inventory protection (You could separate the double resist and protection flags possibly).

+1. Fighting Lungorthin/Gothmog/Carcharoth/Huan without the appropriate immunity is currently silly. With Im Fi, the first 2 become almost trivial.

[myshkin]

What game are you playing? I'd like to just restate my earlier idea of increasing the frequency of BoS but moving their bonus towards a DL weighted formula. BoS +10 before DL50 are game breakers. M8+1d2 comes to mind.

In 3.2.0, leather boots are much more frequent than intended, and, as a consequence, so are boots of speed. The nightlies have reduced the frequency by quite a bit. I second the suggestion of a DL-dependent pval for boots of speed.

[Magnate]

The "vulnerability" thing is interesting, although problematic for exposure to instadeath. Those monsters just become "won't fight" unless I happen to have the double resist (like disenchanters without rdis prior to restore item scrolls), too many single breath kills from full health if you end up with rbase holes during a deep fight. Maybe have it temporarily remove one source of a resist, but leave you covered if you have two? Something like what was proposed earlier in the thread, except temporary.

There are two different issues here - one is the dispelling/removal thing, which has been discussed already. The other is vulnerabilities. These are already in the code as object flags, like an inverse resist - they *increase* elemental damage rather than decrease it. Probably time we started making them appear on some objects ...

[Rizwan]

What if the crippling effect on the gear was only for x number of turns? That way the effects would go away by themselves without having to carry any restorative measures but you might have to run away posthaste from whatever you are fighting. The duration could obviously scale with monster strength or whatever.

[TJS]

There are two different issues here - one is the dispelling/removal thing, which has been discussed already. The other is vulnerabilities. These are already in the code as object flags, like an inverse resist - they *increase* elemental damage rather than decrease it. Probably time we started making them appear on some objects ...

What I was getting at with vulnerabilities is that they aren't on your equipment, they are cast by monsters to make your character more vulnerable (for a limited time) which would have an effect whether you have the appropriate resistance or not. A sorcerer that can make you more vulnerable to the basic four would suddenly make that ancient dragon and even young/mature dragons nearby become much more dangerous.

It would also make a bit of a change from the usual routine of avoiding monsters until you've got the resistance and then never having to be scared of them ever again.

[Starhawk]

What I was getting at with vulnerabilities is that they aren't on your equipment, they are cast by monsters to make your character more vulnerable (for a limited time) which would have an effect whether you have the appropriate resistance or not. A sorcerer that can make you more vulnerable to the basic four would suddenly make that ancient dragon and even young/mature dragons nearby become much more dangerous.

It would also make a bit of a change from the usual routine of avoiding monsters until you've got the resistance and then never having to be scared of them ever again.

It would be nice if that went two ways - i.e. if characters also had access to items or spells that penetrated monster vulnerabilities for a brief time. Even if it was uber-rare, only in wands or artifact activations, and/or didn't work on uniques, it'd be an interesting wrinkle to gameplay.

[Mondkalb]

My 2 cents:
Take back the absurd behavior of "automatic trap disarming". Since this has been implemented traps are nearly no danger anymore. I stroll happily through the dungeon, casting detect traps now and then, relying on my char to take care of them. Well, he could play the game all alone then as well.

I remember countless games of stupid failures with traps - like stepping on a trap door while sorting trough stuff in a greater vault, loosing artifacts and other good stuff in the process. Yes, it was nerve wrecking and deeply taumatising. But it has been part of the "fun" of loosing the game.

[Estie]

... I'd like to just restate my earlier idea of increasing the frequency of BoS but moving their bonus towards a DL weighted formula. BoS +10 before DL50 are game breakers. M8+1d2 comes to mind.

I couldnt agree less. For some reason, the first impulse when it comes to making the game harder seems to be to cut off the power spikes of joy. People look at some rare occurence for <player> and go "oh, thats obviously overpowered, disable that".

I say dont. If thats the place you want to add an increase in difficulty, then by all means reduce the probability for it to occur, but leave the deviation high.

Imagine a thread about a character dump in the future: "...oh nice, dlvl 20 and you already have your +3 speed boots..." <later> "...oh, youre below 40 now, look out for at least +5 boots those start dropping here...." <later> "...yeah your good to take on P, I see you have your +10 boots and ...."


For what its worth, I think the best place to make the game substantially harder without ruining the fun is to be found in the monster offense. I might mow down rows of fire giants, but if theres a cyclops, I start treading carefully. Later in the game, a couple cyclopses dont bother me but if a titan makes an appearance, I have to watch out. Now imagine fire giants with the melee damage of cyclopses and cyclopse with that of titans.

Disclaimer: Yes, I do know that monster damage, especially melee one, can be avoided. Yes, I know that this affects some classes more than others. Yes, I know that this might shift the way the game gets played.
Despite all that, I _think_ it would make the game harder without making it less enjoyable. To be sure of that, it takes testing.

Making sure that noone goes over the speed limit of level 30, otoh, sounds awful.

Final discalimer: All opinions voiced by me are free to be considered by the actual dev people or not; by no means do I wish to push anyone in a direction they dont want to take.