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I think there are many people who think the game is currently too generous with generation of ego items (and artifacts). In fact one of the ways to make the game harder is to reduce the frequency that these things show up. However, if you make egos less common, then you make more junk that the player has to sift through, which is annoying from a gameplay perspective. I think lots of us here have ideas for what the ideal way to go forward on this, and I'll share mine.
For squelch settings, I want to add more granularity. We may move to a rune-based system or a squelch-by-power system, but in the meantime, maybe a more limited but easily implementable approach could work. Here's an outline of the different settings:
bad, average, good: (same as current, excepting DSMs, see below)
very good: with 1 resist: (for single resist armors)
*very good*: Items with more than one resist: (armors of resistance)
Excellent: with one high resist or ability: (probably robes of permanence here, DSMs go here because of the breath abilities, unfortunately would get put here, boots of stability)
*Excellent*: with more than one high resist or ability: (High level DSMs are here, shields of preservation, crowns of serenity, helms of seeing?)
Splendid: (these are all the *slays* that don't have a random ability, also branded and blessed weapons, armor that only affects a single stat goes here, including boots/cloaks of stealth, helms of INT, WIS.)
*Splendid items*: (slay evil, gondolin, westernesse, holy avenger, dwarven and elvenkind armors, anything with +speed, +blows, +shots or +might)
Obviously we have to take care of some other tricky items. Helms of beauty get removed from the game altogether, because I hate them.
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On its own these additional squelch settings help a *little* but not enough. You still need to physically ID a weapon or armor in order to determine it, so we need to improve here. Basically, what I would like is a squelch on sight for all classes at a certain clevel. This can be dependent on class/race, I don't care. But the average clevel that you get this ability should be around clevel 25. When you get this ability you can squelch everything immediately. This gets rid of TMJ and eliminates the ID minigame which is painful the first time you clear out a dragon pit or a greater vault.
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The next thing that needs to be done is to change the item drops. DROP_GOOD gets removed from most of the high level monsters. There are only 2 monsters greater than dlevel 60 that drop items but don't have DROP_GOOD (the dreadlord and the jabberwock). I would limit DROP_GOOD to GWoMC, GWoB, Pit Fiend, Black Reaver, GMM, Archlich and uniques. Every other monster would be stripped of DROP_GOOD.
The next thing is to change how the game decides good and great objects. This is a recent change (3.1 I think?) and looks like,
These are the percentage that an item is good or great. Basically at dlevel 10, 1/3 of the items you'll find are 'good'; and from dlevel 40 onwards, 1/2 of all items you find are great. If the item passes this roll, it gets an automated artifact roll.
Now there's one other piece hidden in the code which allows a shortcut of these rolls.
Basically a good item has a 10% chance of getting an artifact special roll. If the roll succeeds and the artifact generation fails, the item is forced great. Forced great items get 4 normal artifact rolls! In some sense, this is good because it makes DROP_GREAT monsters 4 times more likely to drop artifacts. DROP_GREAT items are only found in specific vault squares and are very special uniques. That is good, we want artifacts to be created in these situations.
What I propose is to:
1) good items that pass the special_artifact roll remain good, and do not turn into great items.
2) the curve for good and great items is made much more flat. The current great curve should be the good curve and the actual great curve should max out lower. This needs some tweaking.
These changes would be bad if we don't add squelch by sight and improved granularity.
For squelch settings, I want to add more granularity. We may move to a rune-based system or a squelch-by-power system, but in the meantime, maybe a more limited but easily implementable approach could work. Here's an outline of the different settings:
bad, average, good: (same as current, excepting DSMs, see below)
very good: with 1 resist: (for single resist armors)
*very good*: Items with more than one resist: (armors of resistance)
Excellent: with one high resist or ability: (probably robes of permanence here, DSMs go here because of the breath abilities, unfortunately would get put here, boots of stability)
*Excellent*: with more than one high resist or ability: (High level DSMs are here, shields of preservation, crowns of serenity, helms of seeing?)
Splendid: (these are all the *slays* that don't have a random ability, also branded and blessed weapons, armor that only affects a single stat goes here, including boots/cloaks of stealth, helms of INT, WIS.)
*Splendid items*: (slay evil, gondolin, westernesse, holy avenger, dwarven and elvenkind armors, anything with +speed, +blows, +shots or +might)
Obviously we have to take care of some other tricky items. Helms of beauty get removed from the game altogether, because I hate them.
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On its own these additional squelch settings help a *little* but not enough. You still need to physically ID a weapon or armor in order to determine it, so we need to improve here. Basically, what I would like is a squelch on sight for all classes at a certain clevel. This can be dependent on class/race, I don't care. But the average clevel that you get this ability should be around clevel 25. When you get this ability you can squelch everything immediately. This gets rid of TMJ and eliminates the ID minigame which is painful the first time you clear out a dragon pit or a greater vault.
--------------------------------
The next thing that needs to be done is to change the item drops. DROP_GOOD gets removed from most of the high level monsters. There are only 2 monsters greater than dlevel 60 that drop items but don't have DROP_GOOD (the dreadlord and the jabberwock). I would limit DROP_GOOD to GWoMC, GWoB, Pit Fiend, Black Reaver, GMM, Archlich and uniques. Every other monster would be stripped of DROP_GOOD.
The next thing is to change how the game decides good and great objects. This is a recent change (3.1 I think?) and looks like,
Code:
/* Chance of being `good` and `great` */ int good_chance = (lev + 2) * 3; int great_chance = MIN(lev / 4 + lev, 50);
Now there's one other piece hidden in the code which allows a shortcut of these rolls.
Code:
/* Try to make a special artifact */
if (one_in_(good ? 10 : 1000)) {
if (make_artifact_special(j_ptr, lev)) {
if (value) *value = object_value_real(j_ptr, 1, FALSE, TRUE);
return TRUE;
}
/* If we failed to make an artifact, the player gets a great item */
good = great = TRUE;
}
What I propose is to:
1) good items that pass the special_artifact roll remain good, and do not turn into great items.
2) the curve for good and great items is made much more flat. The current great curve should be the good curve and the actual great curve should max out lower. This needs some tweaking.
These changes would be bad if we don't add squelch by sight and improved granularity.
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