What is the point of slow pseudo-ID?

[Starhawk]

So I got tired of months of sending a steady stream of rogues to their deaths in the depths of Angband, and decided to take my first stab at a divine class.

(Wow, paladins are pretty sick.)

But one thing that has been making me INSANE is the pokey pseudo-ID. What is the point? It makes the ID mini-game in the middle phase of the dungeon just annoying.

To clarify, I consider the ID mini-game split into three phases:

1) Early in the dungeon, you don't have consistent ID (it's too expensive) and you're scrabbling for basic gear, trying everything on to determine function, usually before even fast pseudo-ID would kick in.

2) For a huge chunk of the game, you've got just enough ID to get by. You pick up an item and rely on pseudo-ID to tell you whether to blow an ID charge, scroll, or spell on the item. i.e. not bothering to ID "magical" items, only egos.

3) Late in the game, you're just looking for artifacts and pseudo-id becomes irrelevant, since artifacts pop on pickup.

So is there really a point to making some classes fiddle-fart around waiting for pseudo-ID to pop through? Later in the game when you're trying to wade through big piles of gear, it gets quite tiresome.

[Malak Darkhunter]

A mass identify spell I feel would help speed things up, but their seems to be a problem of TMJ, I am kind of leaning towards the point of view of regular monsters not dropping items, and uniques having the ability to drop_good or drop_great, or certain uniques dropping cursed items, and the items lying on the floor giving an object generation chance boost, but not sure how it would all be balanced.

[buzzkill]

How about this. Add an addition step to item generation. Every non-consumable/non-artifact must pass an additional check (post generation) in order to be 'dropped' by a non-unique. % chance = inverse of dungeon level.

So, at level 1 everything drops, at level 100, nothing (non-consumable) drops except from uniques.

Expected results: Consuumables will come largely from trhe masses. *Superb* late game equipment will come largely from uniques and vaults.

[fizzix]

So I got tired of months of sending a steady stream of rogues to their deaths in the depths of Angband, and decided to take my first stab at a divine class.

(Wow, paladins are pretty sick.)

But one thing that has been making me INSANE is the pokey pseudo-ID. What is the point? It makes the ID mini-game in the middle phase of the dungeon just annoying.

What version are you playing? The rest of the comments are related to the upcoming 3.4, which does attempt to address some, but not all of your problems.

1) Cursed items are gone except for a few artifacts. You can test-wield weapons and armor without fear of a sticky curse, provided you pick it up first.

2) Items pseudo much faster when wielding, even for slow classes.

3) Weapons get to-hit/to-dam ID'd as soon as you use it in combat. So you can speed up the process by finding a wimpy monster and attacking it. This won't tell you slay unless you guess correctly unfortunately.

4) The number of weapons on a level has been going down in recent versions, although it's pretty flat now. You aren't going to find more than 2-3 weapons per level in the early part of the game unless you clear out an orc pit. Test-wielding this amount of weapons is ok for gameplay. Problems don't start arriving until late game pits and greater vaults which have tons of weapons to ID.

I don't really find pseudo-id to be a problem with any class in 3.4 early game or mid-game. ID only is annoying for me in the very late game.

[Malak Darkhunter]

How about this. Add an addition step to item generation. Every non-consumable/non-artifact must pass an additional check (post generation) in order to be 'dropped' by a non-unique. % chance = inverse of dungeon level.

So, at level 1 everything drops, at level 100, nothing (non-consumable) drops except from uniques.

Expected results: Consuumables will come largely from trhe masses. *Superb* late game equipment will come largely from uniques and vaults.

I like that- uniques would be more exciting to try and kill, and vaults would raise the excitement level quite a bit, and would probably speed the game up over all at end levels, hunting mainly for uniques and vaults.

[buzzkill]

I like that- uniques would be more exciting to try and kill, and vaults would raise the excitement level quite a bit, and would probably speed the game up over all at end levels, hunting mainly for uniques and vaults.

... and no more scumming DL98 for rings of power, etc... You would probably have to, in a more natural manner, acquire your equipment throughout the course of the game. It would probably eventually result rarities being eased up a bit to compensate.

Every day I want to launch my own variant a bit more than the day before. My ideas are so superior to everyone else's .

[Derakon]

Such an approach would require tweaking the probabilities of various drops so that you'd still have usable gear in the endgame despite having gotten maybe 1% of the total drops that you'd get in a "normal" game. Also, why would you fight all the monsters who simply won't drop anything? Or stay on a level if there's no vault or unique (that you think you can handle) on it?

I'm not saying it couldn't work, mind, just that it'll need some careful thinking.

[fizzix]

... and no more scumming DL98 for rings of power, etc... You would probably have to, in a more natural manner, acquire your equipment throughout the course of the game. It would probably eventually result rarities being eased up a bit to compensate.

I think the main issue I have with this proposal, is it gives incentive for someone to go back up the dungeon in order to get gear. Generally, this has been avoided. Maybe it's not so bad though.

One of the biggest difficulties with Angband is it really doesn't try to force any style of gameplay on you. You want to slowly descend and level clear each level 5 times, fine by me. You want to dive to the bottom and scum for treasure, that's ok too. You want to ironman it up, sure! Anytime anyone makes a change to favor one style over the other it's bound to piss off people who enjoy the game in another fashion.

This suggestion isn't entirely related to your comment, it's just one of the major difficulties that Angband has (which variants, like the Buzzkill variant!) wouldn't necessarily have to deal with. Essentially, what it implies, is that if you like Angband, there is a (perhaps not yet created) variant that you will like better. I think that's a reasonably good structure actually.

[buzzkill]

Also, why would you fight all the monsters who simply won't drop anything? Or stay on a level if there's no vault or unique (that you think you can handle) on it?

Well, you would still need those high end consumables that non-uniques can drop (at the normal rate), that you can't buy in town. And, of course, in any variant I might create, the stores would certainly operate on the theory of (supply and) demand pricing. You might not be able to afford the things you want to buy despite your 100's of 1000's of GP.

At level 70, you would still get 30% of normal wearable drops, so you might stick around there if your kit is significantly lacking because going deeper, the drops are going to get exponentially more slim.

I'm not saying it'll be perfect. Any attempt at modifying one area of the games is going to cause problems or push players to abuse other areas.

[fizzix]

drops are going to get exponentially more slim.

exponentially? I thought your scaling was linear.

[buzzkill]

exponentially? I thought your scaling was linear.

You're right, that may be the wrong word. Progressively? Moving for DL1 to DL2 will result in aprox 1% reduction in drop rate, from 100% to 99%. Going from DL99 to DL100 will result in a 50% reduction (2% to 1%), or something like that.

[Starhawk]

What version are you playing? The rest of the comments are related to the upcoming 3.4, which does attempt to address some, but not all of your problems.

1) Cursed items are gone except for a few artifacts. You can test-wield weapons and armor without fear of a sticky curse, provided you pick it up first.

I'm still on 3.3.2.

I'm not concerned about curses anymore. And in the early game, ID-by-use is just fine, and I like doing it. I'm thinking more in terms of the early midgame, when I have all magical equipment and I'm starting to do things like look for a shield with a specific resist, or keep an eye out for a decent pair of ego boots. I don't mind burning an ID on those items, but what really galls me is having to keep them in my inventory forevvvver to find out whether they are {ego} or just {magical}.

2) Items pseudo much faster when wielding, even for slow classes.

Eh, well, this might be the answer to my gripe then. Although I'm not looking forward to fuzzy detection, but that's a whole 'nother thread. Hehehe.

I don't really find pseudo-id to be a problem with any class in 3.4 early game or mid-game. ID only is annoying for me in the very late game.

I didn't have a problem with it while I was playing rogues. Pseudo-ID speed became a very jarring difference when I moved to playing paladins for the first time. It just seems a little bit of a pointless distinction, I guess.

[DaviddesJ]

I think pseudo-ID is working great in 3.4, the only thing I would suggest is add a chance to pseudo-ID any item you are standing on, just as if it were in your inventory. That would save considerable time with picking up and dropping items (especially if your inventory was full), without giving you anything you couldn't do anyway.

[quarague]

I'm still on 3.3.2.

I don't mind burning an ID on those items, but what really galls me is having to keep them in my inventory forevvvver to find out whether they are {ego} or just {magical}.

My understanding was, that the differences here are made on purpose accounting for different char abilities. Warriors suck at magic and pseudo-id very quickly, mages take forever to pseudo-id but they can cast proper id so it balances it out. A warrior usually also has the strength to carry around half a dozes full plate armors without significant speed loss while a mage has not. Other chars are somewhere in between but in general it seems like a good feature to me.