It's been a while now...

[Timo Pietilä]

I haven't seen yet, but are potions of negative stat still in? Honestly if the restore potions are gone but stats restore on level up I don't really see the point of the change. It becomes neither a good or bad change overall but a straight wash. It may be a problem at high levels when you level slower, but by then, stat potions are ( or were ) fairly commonly found at the depths you'll be at and those will restore drained stats.

Sustains become more important with that change. You need to really think how to fight pack of Dreads if you don't have sustain STR because you can't fix your STR just by recalling to town and buying restore STR potion.

That one was a good change. It just removed grinding for restore potion for early levels and made stat potions important even after you have maxed your stats at high level.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I guess that the reason I like the changes overall is because, for me, it increases the "reality" I feel in the game. If it were the real world, creeping through the corridors and pits of Angband, it seems like I could pick up a dagger, fight with it awhile and realize it didn't perform as well as it should. In the old game, I couldn't get rid of that item until it was uncursed, where now I would chuck it. I still find lot's of OCD satisfying inventory management challenges, trying to get the right combination of resists, protections, melee ability, etc. I've often come to the late game and realized, "Damn, I wish I hadn't chucked that weapon (or armor) earlier, it had just what I need now..." But I realize my sense of what represents a "real" experience versus a contrived one may be very different from others - especially when, in the end, it is all of course contrived.

[Tyggs]

If there is any possibility of a bad item getting stuck to the character's body until Remove Curse is used, then the entire premise of ID-by-use for equipment is ruined.

So coming back to this because it's been bugging me, I'm curious here: How would you implement curses without them being totally meaningless? Why does ID-by-use HAVE TO be 100% safe?

...uh. If Summon Monster ever behaved like that, it hasn't for a very, very long time. I'm talking like before the 2.7 days. At the very least, I can't remember the last time I pulled a monster that was more than 300' OOD with Summon Monster, and basically every character I've ever played has ID'd scrolls by use in the early game (when Summon Monster shows up).

That said, I wouldn't especially mind if Polymorph Monster could pull any random non-unique monster, like it used to. These days you just get monsters of similar depth to the original monster; boring!

It might have been polymorph, it might have been summon monster. I just know I had a low level character fairly shallow finding himself facing a surprise Dracolich after an ID-by-use. This was near when I started playing around 1995.

Anyway, the initial shock passed, I'm not AS put off by these changes. I guess mostly I'm just hoping they're not indicative of a trend. I don't want to go as far as to make a "slippery slope" argument because I know that tends to be flawed more often than not.

Thinking about the cursed items = negative versions until uncursed idea made me wonder if an element of danger could be added back into ID-by-use on potions without going back to Potions of Death... For every good potion, there's an equivalent negative. For example, Potion of Cure Light Wounds/Potion of Cause Light Wounds. In the case of the various healing potions, they can never reduce HP below 1. They'd be dangerous to drink in a fight, but there are already some currently in game like that ( Slowness, blindness, salt water, confusion ). Just to add a bit of the risk back in there without making it too harsh. You can choose to be safe and ID by spell/scroll/etc, but you won't be screwed over too badly if you take the chance unless you're careless about WHEN you take the chance... Hell, put the potions of death and detonation back in with the "can't reduce the player below 1hp premise" even. Including Potions of Detonations being a rather nice thrown weapon.

Edit: And don't misunderstand me, I'm still enjoying the game. Just feels like some aspects have been padded and I worry about that going too far.

[buzzkill]

I feel your pain Tyggs. Just chiming in to let you know your not alone. Your disappointment might stem from a feeling of ownership you hold for old-school Angband, because Angband on some level was at some point a big deal to you. I feel the same way, but we seem to be the minority. Change, meh.

I'd like to recommend DajAngband and/or (older) FayAngband, also (older) FA and NPP are fine choices.

[Nick]

So coming back to this because it's been bugging me, I'm curious here: How would you implement curses without them being totally meaningless? Why does ID-by-use HAVE TO be 100% safe?

What I've done in FAangband is to introduce a variety of curses (eg random teleport, random cuts, random paralysis) which don't cause the object to be unremovable in addition to the 'sticky' curse. Also, it's not just as simple as "cursed item bad, uncursed item good" - there are a lot of items which have good aspects as well as bad. For example:

Soft Leather Armour (Wolfhide) [4,+0] <-2>
     -2 charisma. 
     Provides resistance to frost(56%). 
     Powers:  Renders you fearless. 
     Cannot be harmed by cold. 
     Curses:  Occasionally poisons you. Sometimes makes you hallucinate.

or

a Pewter Ring of Combat (+0,+10) <+3>
      3 dexterity. 
     Provides resistance to light(40%). 
     Powers:  Renders you fearless. 

     Curses:  Aggravates nearby creatures.

I've also made curse removal have only a chance to remove any given curse, and made repeated attempts to uncurse give a chance to destroy the item.

[Derakon]

So coming back to this because it's been bugging me, I'm curious here: How would you implement curses without them being totally meaningless? Why does ID-by-use HAVE TO be 100% safe?

It doesn't need to be 100% safe -- as you note, there are still bad potions and scrolls in the game. But it also needs to not be so bad that players aren't willing to risk the bad effects just to find out what an item does. If a player is presented a choice between waiting to ID an item until they have scrolls/staves/spells of Identify, or possibly ruining their character, then they're going to wait, every time.

For cursed gear, as I see it there are two main options. The first is mixed-blessing items, like some of the jewelry already in the game, or like the items that Nick described. The idea here is that the item has some penalty (which you might not immediately discover), but it also has an upside. Power at a price.

The second option is to make the player jump through unusual hoops to get rid of cursed items, instead of just returning to town for Remove Curse. For example (like Takkaria described), an item that is stuck to you until you kill some number of orcs. Or an item that aggravates until you kill a certain (preferably dangerous) unique. These items wouldn't be otherwise bad (so you wouldn't have a useless lump of metal occupying a vital equipment slot), but you'd still have an incentive to go out of your way to fulfill the requirements to uncurse the item.

[kaypy]

Here's a simple idea for use-by-id compatible curses:

Cursed equipment lies about its stats.

It has a hidden set of pvals that change the displayed stats from the pseudo/tested revealed values. A true ID will zero out the hidden pvals so it behaves as a normal item.

So you may have a Sword 2d5 (-3,-4) with curse pvals of +4,+8. When the player tests it, it pseudo ids as a Sword(+1,+4) but eventually the player will notice they don't hit as much as they expect, and they really should be doing more damage. At this point they can swap weapons in disgust (if they have hit a curse before, they may still be carrying the old one...)

It may be more difficult to handle other types. A Ring of Dexterity (-3) might be made to look like a Ring of Dexterity (+2), but will it make your stats display lie too? Would a cursed Ring of Constitution fake your HP display?

I think those things could still be made to work, but would be pushing out into variant territory, rather than something that might plausibly be put in vanilla. But I think 'minor interface screw on the item list' is as reasonable for vanilla as 'there are no curses anymore'.

[Timo Pietilä]

It doesn't need to be 100% safe -- as you note, there are still bad potions and scrolls in the game. But it also needs to not be so bad that players aren't willing to risk the bad effects just to find out what an item does. If a player is presented a choice between waiting to ID an item until they have scrolls/staves/spells of Identify, or possibly ruining their character, then they're going to wait, every time.

One solution is to remove magical means of ID completely. Then player would have no other choice than to ID by use. Unfortunately that would need to include selling in town even for zero gold and ID by use isn't useful enough for high levels yet. At high levels after epic fights you have hundreds of items to ID, you can't ID them all by wielding and trying. It would be just plain boring to do that.

ID using shops could be solved by making shopkeeper refuse to buy item that isn't identified.

That all said IMO sticky curses are just plain boring. There is no reason to ever include those again.

[Nomad]

One solution is to remove magical means of ID completely. Then player would have no other choice than to ID by use. Unfortunately that would need to include selling in town even for zero gold and ID by use isn't useful enough for high levels yet. At high levels after epic fights you have hundreds of items to ID, you can't ID them all by wielding and trying. It would be just plain boring to do that.

Rune-based ID might be the fix for that. Identify one weapon of Slay Orc by trial and error, recognise every other weapon that slays orcs from that point on. It worked pretty well in v4.

Would need some tweaking to allow for ID of consumables that do nothing, though. (For e.g., warriors can't currently ID potions of Restore Mana by use, and kobolds can't recognise Neutralise Poison because they never get poisoned.)

[takkaria]

Rune-based ID might be the fix for that. Identify one weapon of Slay Orc by trial and error, recognise every other weapon that slays orcs from that point on. It worked pretty well in v4.

Would need some tweaking to allow for ID of consumables that do nothing, though. (For e.g., warriors can't currently ID potions of Restore Mana by use, and kobolds can't recognise Neutralise Poison because they never get poisoned.)

Rune-based ID does seem like the answer to all our problems with ID. Only problem is what happens for artifacts and combat bonuses.

[Derakon]

Only problem is what happens for artifacts and combat bonuses.

For combat bonuses, if you can recognize +X, then you can recognize +Y as long as Y < X. Just store the player's max recognized bonus for to-hit, to-dam, and to-ac in the player struct somewhere.

For artifacts, my gut feeling is to say "Don't remove non-use ID; just make it rare and dungeon-only". Maybe about as rare as the old *Identify* scrolls used to be. This seems fair since using it also reveals all the unknown runes on an item for you, so you could be potentially skipping an awful lot of experimentation by using a single scroll.

[Timo Pietilä]

For artifacts, my gut feeling is to say "Don't remove non-use ID; just make it rare and dungeon-only". Maybe about as rare as the old *Identify* scrolls used to be. This seems fair since using it also reveals all the unknown runes on an item for you, so you could be potentially skipping an awful lot of experimentation by using a single scroll.

That could work. In old days figuring out what all the artifacts did after cleaning CGV required *ID*. This would pretty much restore the old situation with one crucial difference: when you get artifact you recognize most if not all of the runes if you are high level and have already figured out most runes.

Spellcasters should recognize runes related to their spells (resists, protections etc.) without need to ID-by-use, we would need to attach runes to spells too.

[Estie]

For combat bonuses, if you can recognize +X, then you can recognize +Y as long as Y < X. Just store the player's max recognized bonus for to-hit, to-dam, and to-ac in the player struct somewhere.

For artifacts, my gut feeling is to say "Don't remove non-use ID; just make it rare and dungeon-only". Maybe about as rare as the old *Identify* scrolls used to be. This seems fair since using it also reveals all the unknown runes on an item for you, so you could be potentially skipping an awful lot of experimentation by using a single scroll.

For what its worth, the biggest change that got me back to playing Angband again was the removal of *id*. I found it horrible when I used to find more artifacts than *id* scrolls. So no, please dont go back there.

The problem with that is that the means to identify the new artifact - searching for *id* - also is the means to get more artifacts - searching yields random stuff, not specific, unless you clone death quasits or something (which I used to do, and I doubt anyone here wants that to be the thing to do).

I am not sure I understand the problem. If you happen upon an unknown rune on an ego item, you do tests to determine the rune, and eventually the game discloses it. How would that be different if said rune is on an artifact instead ?

[Nomad]

I am not sure I understand the problem. If you happen upon an unknown rune on an ego item, you do tests to determine the rune, and eventually the game discloses it. How would that be different if said rune is on an artifact instead ?

Yeah, I was wondering the same. Maybe we're talking past each other? I was thinking of rune-based ID as in using a separate rune for each flag on an item, rather than each ego type having its own unique rune. (So rather than 'Resist Fire' being one rune and 'Resistance' being a different one, 'Resist Fire' is one of the four runes that you'll find on armour of Resistance.) Artefacts would just work on the same principle; if you've seen an item that resists confusion before, then you'll know what the Cap of Thengel does as soon as you pick it up.

[Derakon]

The main issue with artifacts that I was thinking of is that they're more likely to have uncommon runes on them, and in large numbers. But I definitely agree that they ought to use the same rune-based system that all other items do. So if you know Resist Fire and Fire Brand, then when you find Narthanc, all of its abilities will be automatically recognized. Well, I guess you'd have to activate it once.

In short, ID scrolls would be for "I've tried everything I can think of and still have no idea what this rune is, so please, game, just tell me."