Auto-ID for consumables

[Cold_Heart]

RE: departing from classic medieval/fantasy rpg, cursed items gone, id for free - I don't see departure from DnD ways and from roguelike ways as an improvement. Have you considered that some people actually like the current setup of things?

"lets depart from DnD even further because some people want so" "we already did it and it was "good"" "most games do this" sorry, not convincing.

[mushroom patch]

Good, so you stand on an argument from tradition or established practice. These are poor reasons to repeat a sequence of keystrokes hundreds of times per game. I've seen people argue that you should still have to press 'o' to open doors on these same grounds.

I have considered that people might actually like current ID. My conclusion is that they are refusing to genuinely consider alternatives. In particular, in your formulation, you would have me believe that you can either like it one way or the other. In fact, you could like it both ways. Or you could like it the other way better.

My analysis of the situation is that ID has a negligible impact on gameplay and that the impact it has is mostly negative. On the other hand, it's horrible from an interface perspective in a basically irredeemable way. This makes me think that people who claim to have a strong preference to keep it as is are probably mistaken in their judgement of the situation.

[Derakon]

Hey, mushroom patch: have you considered the possibility that enjoyment of games is subjective?

[Cold_Heart]

The problem with "tedium" can be solved by having AoE or everything-in-LoS id spell, by having the new item that will identify things for you when you touch them, or by having the id spell that works for duration of N turns and you basically identify everything on touch as long as that one is active (this is almost straight from ADnD 2E rulebook btw). Completely removing the need to somehow research the item found deep inside enemy territory before using it is just nuts though.

[mushroom patch]

Yeah, I don't consider angband dungeons enemy territory. I consider the dungeon my dark inner sanctum where I murder sleeping monsters and take their juice money. Enemy territory is level 99 and 100. I guess this just shows the subjectivity of video games.

@Derakon: Do you think it's impossible for people to be mistaken in their preferences? Perhaps you should review the story of Green Eggs and Ham.

[buzzkill]

How about lessening generated and dropped (except by uniques) items by 99%.

ID is no longer tedious.
Finding any item becomes an event, not a chore.
Gold suddenly serves a purpose (should you have any).

[Derakon]

@Derakon: Do you think it's impossible for people to be mistaken in their preferences? Perhaps you should review the story of Green Eggs and Ham.

My point is that you're treating the game as if there's an objectively right way to play that everyone will prefer best, and that's not how game development works. You try to find the game design that most players like best, but there's still going to be players who would prefer a different approach.

I mean hell, if you've played Limbo, it's an awful, awful game from a mechanics perspective, but plenty of people love it. I'm not going to say that these people are wrong for liking things that I think are terrible ideas.

In short: your attitude is ridiculously absolutist and you keep telling people they're wrong on matters that are not objective. A bit more politeness and acceptance that there's more than one valid perspective would be appreciated.

[mushroom patch]

If angband development is a popularity contest, fellas, I've got bad news for you. Game design is not about how to attract the most players or how to retain the ones you have. You have to do what's right for the game. In a 30 year old codebase that's been shedding outdated ideas for decades, this means you have to be ready to "identify" and remove the cruft, even if some people swear up and down that the cruft is the best part. You'd be amazed how often those same people come to realize they were wrong.

A genuine preference or a valid perspective generally has a clear, identifiable reason or idea behind it that stands up to basic examination. Not everything meets that bar. I'm not saying it isn't out there.

[debo]

I don't think mushroom patch is being particularly rude, and he is certainly not being as rude as many of the people in this thread have been when even fairly minor game changes were proposed (not even implemented -- just proposed.) And I still find it fascinating that despite his 'rudeness', literally no one has taken the time or effort to articulate what precisely they find fun about subjecting themselves to billions of useless keypresses every game just to find out what brand of junk they have in their hands.

You'd be amazed how often those same people come to realize they were wrong.

There are still vocal people on the forums who flat-out refuse to play Sil because it has a clock, despite the fact that you could fully explore every single floor and still make it to 950' with enough time to farm it until you want to claw your eyes out. So, I wouldn't count on changing minds by implementing changes that demonstrate how 'right' you are.

On this particular topic, what is sort of disappointing to me is that even the usual adage of 'that's variant territory' doesn't really work, because even Angband variants have some really weird obsession with ID games that don't really work. Sil is the only one where it has made sense to me, even if you were to get rid of loremaster (I just shuddered while writing that down.) The rest of them range from ridiculous to even more stupidly ridiculous.

I think there are probably simpler, less divisive changes that could make the game a lot more fun that can be done instead. I'd be interested to see what the folks here think about reorganizing / changing the spell lists, for example, as I think there's been some productive discussion about that before. It's not as core a mechanic as the ID game, but it's something! Nick also has a pretty good-looking roadmap, from what I've seen before.

[wobbly]

1. Theme is never an adequate justification for game mechanics. No matter how a game works, a thematic reason can be concocted. Moreover, there is no thematic reason angband should work one way or the other as it stands.

I disagree with this. I have little interesting in playing a game about an @ sign randomly bumping in to o's.

Tend to agree with buzkill on this one, if iding junk all the time is tedious it's because there's actually too much junk. Wouldn't go so far as he just suggested but the current situation is pretty much every orc dropping a plain cloak or pair of boots.

[Carnivean]

I don't think mushroom patch is being particularly rude, and he is certainly not being as rude as many of the people in this thread have been when even fairly minor game changes were proposed (not even implemented -- just proposed.) And I still find it fascinating that despite his 'rudeness', literally no one has taken the time or effort to articulate what precisely they find fun about subjecting themselves to billions of useless keypresses every game just to find out what brand of junk they have in their hands.

Those reacting to mushroom patch find his dismissive reactions to our subjectiveness "rude". It's a harsh assessment in most cases, but he could comfortably be labelled terse or brusque in most of his responses. I don't believe that he has any intent to cause offense, but I often have a visceral reaction to his posts.

It's not that we/I'm particularly arguing for "billions of useless keypresses". I genuinely believe that the endpoint of mushroom patches obsession with removing gameplay to be an ascii version of chess. Flavour is what differentiate games, what draws many of us to different games, and mushroom patch usually is arguing for its removal. It's as if we're discussing different games.

[Nomad]

My personal feeling is that the identification subgame adds elements of risk and excitement that the game would be less fun without. ID-by-use of consumables allows for a range of possible results you would never experience if those consumables were auto-identified before or as soon as you picked them up, such as:

- unexpected negative reactions (poison, summon monsters, trap creation, staffs with negative effects)
- forcing you to take unexpected risks (Deep Descent, unexpected teleport into danger)
- the chance to make desperate gambles in near-death situations (is that unID'd potion something that will heal a few HP or poison? Is that staff Teleport or Haste Monster? Shall I potentially waste a turn reading this scroll in the hope it's Phase Door?)
- fantastic good surprises like casually swigging a potion in the early levels and finding it's Augmentation
- the "Noooo!" factor of accidentally wasting an amazing find like a really early Rune of Protection
- ID-by-selling gambles (did you just ID a cheap consumable, or accidentally give away a potion of Experience?)

In this context, the existence of an additional way to ID consumables without resorting to ID-by-use rewards player caution and adds challenge to inventory management. A limited inventory and unidentified items forces decision making: ditch that scroll and hope it wasn't something good? Read it even though there's a chance it might be Deep Descent? Recall to town in hopes of ID being available to buy? Ditch something else like food or flasks of oil and keep carrying your unidentified stuff a bit longer? There is a sense of triumph and achievement in choosing not to immediately use a consumable, potentially wasting time and inventory space by lugging it around for ages, then finally getting a source of ID and discovering you were right to keep it because it's that early scroll of Rune of Protection. (And its necessary counterpoint, feeling like a chump for wasting an ID scroll on what turns out to be a potion of Boldness.)

Unlike mushroom patch, I do go after every unidentified item I spot if I possibly can, no matter how risky, and the fact I don't know if I'm going to get trash or treasure until I've retrieved adds to the fun. Being able to see at a distance whether the items are worth going for is certainly going to reduce the number of situations in which I take on or sneak past dangerous monsters to try and grab floor items around them. (Which may suit risk-averse players but makes the game more boring for gamble-taking players like me.)

I do think there's plenty of room for improvements to ID - I favour making ID-by-use of consumables always 100% successful, none of this {tried} business, and some form of streamlining to equipment ID so it's instant on walkover or pickup by the late game - but removing it entirely would definitely take many of the gambles, highs and lows, and minor triumphs or disasters out of the game for me.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

My personal feeling is that the identification subgame adds elements of risk and excitement that the game would be less fun without. ID-by-use of consumables allows for a range of possible results you would never experience if those consumables were auto-identified before or as soon as you picked them up, such as....

A great explanation, Nomad. I totally agree!

[fizzix]

My personal feeling is that the identification subgame adds elements of risk and excitement that the game would be less fun without. ID-by-use of consumables allows for a range of possible results you would never experience if those consumables were auto-identified before or as soon as you picked them up, such as:

I think this is sort of the goal of ID by use, except it doesn't work like that in Angband today, namely for two reasons. 1) ID is infinite and plentiful. 2) ID-testing can always be done in a safe manner (i.e. standing on stairs incase you hit a summon monsters).

Sil is probably the closest you get to the system you describe, and there you even get XP for IDing consumables. Yet even then, players dislike the ID game enough to prioritize the feats that remove it. (DCSS also has this system, but they don't really have the inventory constraint problem that Sil does, and ID is somewhat more plentiful.)

One of the main problems is you can always engineer the system so that you can conveniently test scrolls/potions without significant danger. The worst danger is the loss of a potentially useful later item, like !healing or !restore mana. The one exception is ?deep descent. But I'm not sure that's enough to justify the whole system. You could consider adding the stat-drain potions back in, along with the ?curse scrolls (which would just do a reverse enchant on the gear, not the previous dreadful behavior). These would put some risk into testing but even then, these just wind up being a temporary annoyance.

Now all that being said, there is something enjoyable about finding out what things do each game. If anything justifies the ID system, I think it's that.

[Therem Harth]

*stares at computer screen*

It's a game y'all. Calm down.

Anyway, I've gone ahead and implemented full auto-ID in Neoband, with the game loop calling identify_pack() instead of sense_inventory() every turn. Personally, I find this a lot more fun.

[Edit]

As far as justification, let's just assume that Angband characters do a lot of research before going off on their adventure, and stock their homes with books on alchemy.

Seriously though, most of the game mechanics already don't make sense. Hitpoints for instance are a ridiculous construct.