Things I don't like about current V (long-ish)

[fizzix]

I think if you removed food or light, conservative players would go nutzoid. They are venerable parts of the game.

Sure, but honestly, conservative players go nutzoid over everything.

The light clock is doing no great harm at the moment. Players can manage it very trivially (except in Ironman where it may inject some genuine interest).

The harm is that it's added complexity for little to no gain. I think this is a sufficient enough negative to remove it. Similar to Chr, haggling, raced based shopkeepers, etc. It also is not interesting in ironman. If you don't find enough light, you die, end of story. Same with food. (luckily a character is never in the risk of either..unless you're a half troll warrior which I actually had starve to death in ironman.)

Food could be better than it is. Based on this thread, how about this formulation?

• Change 1: All food types have beneficial effects (like healing a few HP and/or SP, restoring drained stats or curing status effects)
• Change 2: A satiation mechanic slows the rate at which you can eat food and hence gain these benefits
• E.g. you may have to choose between restoring a stat or healing some damage, knowing that you can only eat one food before becoming full
• Change 3: Players get hungry more rapidly than currently
• For characters who are unable to retreat to town 'at will' (ironman, semi ironman, no WOR yet, lost all your WOR), starvation becomes a real risk that needs to be countered by seeking out food in the dungeon and avoiding overuse of resting
• Change 4: Foods available in town are much heavier, more expensive and less stackable (e.g. 6 iron rations cost 180 gold, weighs 36 lb and takes up two slots in inventory)
• This creates a strong incentive to search for food in the dungeon rather than carrying around large stacks of town food
• It may also mean that some characters cache town food shortly after they WOR into the dungeon rather than carrying it around, which might be an interesting dynamic
• It may also create a strong disincentive to hit 'R9999' every time you finish a fight (unless you are willing to carry heavy food about or return to your cache often)
• Change 5: Some monster attacks can destroy food in your pack, forcing you to fall back on cached food, search for new food, or leave the level (if possible).
• Change 6: Some monsters leave edible corpses (notably killing a mushroom patch creates mushrooms).
• Ironman characters can make a habit of eating corpses in order to eke out the food clock, but these foods may have detrimental effects (poison, stat drain)

A.

P.S. Eating high-end foods might actually become the primary way of restoring stats (replacing the current level-up mechanic)?

In general having food work as the way to heal things is ok. At least it has some purpose besides annoyance. However, it's really hard to get right. DCSS doesn't at all, for example, despite the amount of effort they put into it. In other words, this is a complicated system for what I think is very limited gain. It's better than the current system for sure, but I don't think it's worth it.

[Antoine]

I think if you removed food or light, conservative players would go nutzoid. They are venerable parts of the game.

The light clock is doing no great harm at the moment. Players can manage it very trivially (except in Ironman where it may inject some genuine interest).

Food could be better than it is. Food in V could be as interesting as light in Sil.

Based on this thread, how about this formulation?

• Change 1: All food types have beneficial effects (like healing a few HP and/or SP, restoring drained stats or curing status effects)
• Eating high-end foods might actually become the primary way of restoring stats (replacing the current level-up mechanic)?
  
• Change 2: A satiation mechanic slows the rate at which you can eat food and hence gain these benefits
• E.g. you may have to choose between restoring a stat or healing some damage, knowing that you can only eat one food before becoming full
  
• Change 3: Players get hungry more rapidly than currently
• For characters who are unable to retreat to town 'at will' (ironman, semi ironman, no WOR yet, lost all your WOR), starvation becomes a real risk that needs to be countered by seeking out food in the dungeon and avoiding overuse of resting
  
• Change 4: Foods available in town are much heavier, more expensive and less stackable (e.g. 6 iron rations cost 180 gold, weighs 36 lb and takes up two slots in inventory)
• This creates a strong incentive to search for food in the dungeon rather than carrying around large stacks of town food
• It may also mean that some characters cache town food shortly after they WOR into the dungeon rather than carrying it around, which might be an interesting dynamic
• It may also create a strong disincentive to hit 'R9999' every time you finish a fight (unless you are willing to carry heavy food about or return to your cache often)
  
• Change 5: Some monster attacks (including poison breaths) can destroy food in your pack, forcing you to fall back on cached food, search for new food, or leave the level (if possible).
  
• Change 6: Some monsters leave edible corpses (notably killing a mushroom patch creates mushrooms).
• Ironman characters can make a habit of eating corpses in order to eke out the food clock, but these foods may have detrimental effects (poison, stat drain)
  
• Change 7: Player races differ greatly in terms of how they eat.
• Hobbits can eat a lot without going from normal to gorged (so they can eat lots of beneficial food) but quickly fall from normal to hungry (so they need to eat often. Second breakfast!)
• Dwarves can eat a lot without going from normal to gorged (so they can eat lots of beneficial food) but take a very long time to get hungry (they have great endurance to privations)
• Elves very quickly go from normal to gorged (they eat like birds)
• Half-trolls need to eat very often and may not get much benefit from plant-based foods

Critique?

A.

[Scatha]

Light and hunger clocks both have some weak flavour benefits, but I agree with the general sentiment that they don't add much to the game. If we found a natural way to phase them out of the game, I'd be interested in exploring that, but doing the planning work to arrange it isn't at all urgent.

Light as a consumable could be pretty interesting if it was bonus light over a shorter time-frame. For example if special fuel burned brighter (+1 to +3 radius), but only for about 100 turns after application. (Or similarly if a staff of light temporarily added to your light radius.)

Then there would be tactical interest about when to burn your light consumables, rather than just the simpler strategic question of whether to equip the lantern the whole time.

Note that it's kind of interesting and fun to run out of light altogether occasionally, but it can also be frustrating. It's not clear whether it's good or bad overall.

[fizzix]

I agree with what debo says here, but I also see fizzix's point. It is not clear that the hunger and light clocks in Sil add enough to justify their extra forms of complexity (i.e. for that level of cognitive overhead for the player and fiddling with inventory could there be something cooler instead?). I'm reluctant to remove it, but I don't think I'd be bursting at the seams to add it in if it weren't there already.

Well, I will say that the light clock much more useful in Sil than in V.

However, looking more critically at debo's violet mold example. IMO the calculation is simple. Is it acceptable to get drained by a violet mold or not. If not, you choose one of the mitigating options (take inner light, invest in will, forge a +0 Con amulet, wield your +2 light radius item, maybe more?) Once you've made your decision, you stick to it for the rest of the game at least. Furthermore this requires a lot of effort from the designers to keep the light sources reasonable. Looking at debo's recent let's play game there's way more light than he needs. He's throwing away light turns left and right here. Maybe this is atypical, I'm actually bad enough at Sil that I don't know the drop rates.

Hunger however, is very uninteresting to me, even in Sil. The monsters that cause hunger could just as well speed up the min-depth clock for a more urgent effect. Same thing with items that cause hunger. For the life of me I just don't see the reason to have a hunger clock and a min-depth clock. (and I see absolutely no reason to have a hunger clock at all in V.)

[half]

The light clock in vanilla is not interesting because you can always buy more (non ironman). You can't do that in sil, and there is an interesting (imo) risk of running out of light if sneaking around in stealth mode, or deciding to use a brass lamp early to avoid purple molds when you might need it later to see shadow spiders. It also gives some inventory tension -- even when you have a lamp, you prob want to carry around torches for a while in case you don't find more oil.

I don't think multiple sources of tension are bad just because they both involve numbers that are ticking down as you play.

I agree with what debo says here, but I also see fizzix's point. It is not clear that the hunger and light clocks in Sil add enough to justify their extra forms of complexity (i.e. for that level of cognitive overhead for the player and fiddling with inventory could there be something cooler instead?). I'm reluctant to remove it, but I don't think I'd be bursting at the seams to add it in if it weren't there already.

[debo]

The light clock in vanilla is not interesting because you can always buy more (non ironman). You can't do that in sil, and there is an interesting (imo) risk of running out of light if sneaking around in stealth mode, or deciding to use a brass lamp early to avoid purple molds when you might need it later to see shadow spiders. It also gives some inventory tension -- even when you have a lamp, you prob want to carry around torches for a while in case you don't find more oil.

I don't think multiple sources of tension are bad just because they both involve numbers that are ticking down as you play.

[fizzix]

I often carry along more than one light source in Sil and it can be a requirement for some challenge builds.

You need a certain light radius in order to see darkness monsters which cast a dark aura about them and is cumulative if you get more than one, however light sources are one of the best sources of SeeInv and rBlind from TrueSight ego. Therefore you may want to carry a large radius light and a TrueSight light. Also lights dropped on the floor emit light and that can be valuable in a fight against darkness monsters if you want to see what is around you.

Yes, but this mechanic is independent of fueling these light sources, right? This is the part of Sil that makes light interesting. The part that makes you handle the number of turns on each light source is not interesting.

I should be clear. I think in general light in Sil is interesting. This is not my beef. My beef is that the light clock is not interesting. Sil has a min-depth clock to force the player down. I don't see any reason for the other clocks. Angband has no min-depth clock or hunger clock that forces descent, nor does Nick have the desire to put one in (and I think this is fine). In such cases, the light clock and the hunger clock are mere annoyances. In V is doubly bad because it's annoyances only for beginning characters!

[debo]

Removing time and making nexus a time-lite is a good idea IMO.

The light mechanic in Sil is awesome and fun, in V I guess I barely noticed it after I found the Phial. Maybe in dark rooms where there could be a breather hiding before I found ESP, but even then all I had to do was activate Phial or something to light up the room IIRC

[Psi]

@wobbly: it's not that interesting. Even in Sil which focuses on light as a major game mechanic. I don't think it's interesting enough to force the player to juggle different valued light sources. It's certainly not interesting enough in V.

I often carry along more than one light source in Sil and it can be a requirement for some challenge builds.

You need a certain light radius in order to see darkness monsters which cast a dark aura about them and is cumulative if you get more than one, however light sources are one of the best sources of SeeInv and rBlind from TrueSight ego. Therefore you may want to carry a large radius light and a TrueSight light. Also lights dropped on the floor emit light and that can be valuable in a fight against darkness monsters if you want to see what is around you.

[fizzix]

@Raxmei: Yeah these are on my list too, I would do something like the following for the elements.

Combine nexus and chaos into chaos (remove nexus, chaos does not cause confusion)

Combine plasma, force and sound into sound, sound causes confusion

Combine inertia and gravity into gravity

Remove time, allow nether to randomly drain a stat or Exp

Remove light and shards

Remove cutting and hallucination statuses

Remove acid as a damage source. Acid purely becomes and equipment damaging attack. Monsters that were based on acid breath become poison breathers (black and green dragons combine) Yeah, this is crazy, I'm not sure it'd fly. The end goal would be to increase gameplay variance by having different combinations of monsters that you are forced to interact with at the same time, rather than monsters that have any from a zoo of attacks.

For summoning, I was going to write a paragraph on that but I forgot. But yes, summoning is a late game problem but it's one with many solutions. A simple one is to have summoned monsters disappear after some amount of time. This alongside with changes that allow the player to face multiple monsters at once greatly reduces summoning's power. Summoning could also take multiple turns.

Derakon: To me the simplest way to go is to normalize everything into one attack as Sil does. Monsters do one of 4 things chosen randomly rather than all four things.

@wobbly: it's not that interesting. Even in Sil which focuses on light as a major game mechanic. I don't think it's interesting enough to force the player to juggle different valued light sources. It's certainly not interesting enough in V.

[wobbly]

I also think light should always be everburning. Yeah it's unrealistic. But light resource management is also boring and gives very limited fun for the players.

I agree when it's a choice between 0 light & 1, but when it's a choice between 1 & 2 or 3 it becomes interesting. Un-limited basic light. Limited extended light.

[Derakon]

One thing I'd like to see is a reduction in message spam. The way I've coded attack messaging in Pyrel looks like this:

You attack/burn/smite/etc. the Foo (37, 42, 65!, miss, 99!!!)

The exclamation points indicate critical hits, stealing Sil's idea of multiple exclamation points for better crits. I guess you lose a tiny bit of flavor this way (no "*GREAT*" hits) but the messaging is far, far more compact this way.

Compacting monster attacks is trickier, as each attack may do something different. I could imagine something like:

The Master lich attacks you (touch drain experience 0, touch drain charges 0, miss, touch drain DEX 6). 
You feel your life force draining away! Energy drains from your pack! You feel clumsier.

That's only marginally more compact, but oh well.

[Raxmei]

Quite a lot of overlap with my feelings. The other things I dislike about V would involve massive changes, making them not so much a pet peeve issue as they are fuel for a variant.

x+1 : Too many elements. We've already cut out confusion as a damage type. I could imagine doing with just fire, cold, poison, and nether. In the process cut way back on the Zephyr hounds. Resistances become both much rarer and additive. Yes, I am aware that Sil already is much like this.

x+2 : Summoning. It really warps the late game. Battles shift from dealing with the thing you're fighting to containing the flood of junk they vomit up. The summoning system could be revamped or at least just cut way back on how many monsters can do it.

[Patashu]

They currently fight in melee when pinned against a wall, and only flee from that position if afraid. They used to do better by always trying to flee from that situation to get back to archery. This is commented in the source as 'artificial stupidity'.

Yeah, that is definitely a change I would not want reverted (unless for a specific new kind of monster?)

[fizzix]

Has anyone here played poscheng? I'm pretty sure dying of starvation is a real danger against the final boss, as he hits to make you mega hungry while summoning and doing a billion other things. I've seen clouded fight him several times, and I thought it was sort of neat. Maybe not a good fit for V, though.

You can go this route. In which case hunger is sort of a second health bar (that constantly decreases over time). But IMO you need a really good gameplay justification for a second health bar. And if you're going to go this route, then hunger status needs to be displayed in the same level of detail as HP.