Rune-based ID

[Nomad]

Now ID by spell is not possible and testing always works. It feels that something good has been lost. It's hard to describe the feeling, but somehow by streamlining and limiting ID options the game feels more simplistic.

I think that the earlier ID by use functionality that allowed failure felt more immersive and less gamey.

Anyone else feeling like that?

I think ID-by-use that only worked when there was a visible effect was annoying for scrolls and potions, because it mostly affected cheap early items like Boldness or Detect Invisible where an experienced player could immediately tell what they were but still had to set up tests to get the ID. (Plus there were some that certain races or classes couldn't ID by use, like Restore Mana for warriors or Neutralize Poison for kobolds.) So I'm in favour of keeping the new "always ID on first test" approach for those.

On the other hand, I can see the argument for reverting to the previous "only ID on observable effect" system for wands, staves and rods. It does seem to have removed a bit of interest and risk now that you can happily zap everything in an empty room and discover that it's Haste Monster or Clone Monster without any chance of actually affecting a monster with it. So I'd be in favour of making it necessary to use them on a suitable target before you get the ID again, though I would tweak things so that status effect wands and staves (slow/confuse/scare/sleep) ID the first time they successfully hit a monster, regardless of whether the spell actually takes effect. Repeated attempts with "The [monster] is unaffected" is disproportionately annoying considering they're fairly useless items to begin with.

I guess my position is that ID-by-use should reward the player with instant ID when they take a risk. Quaffing a potion or reading a scroll is taking a risk, because it's using up a one-use item and could have unwanted effects. Zapping a wand at an empty square is not taking a risk, because charges are renewable and you've avoided any chance of negative effects. OTOH, zapping a wand at a monster is a risk, and so should give instant ID even if the monster is unaffected.

[spara]

I'm having mixed feelings about instant ID by use on potions, scrolls, wands etc.

Earlier you could id by testing, id at store and id by spell. ID by testing only worked, if you could observe the effect. I found tesing to be both exciting and frustrating, so I usually sold the potions/scrolls found from the first level to ID the basic stuff and later used ID spell to not waste a potentially good effect. In panic situations I could use an unIDd potion/scroll/wand/whatever in hope of a good effect.

Now ID by spell is not possible and testing always works. It feels that something good has been lost. It's hard to describe the feeling, but somehow by streamlining and limiting ID options the game feels more simplistic.

I think that the earlier ID by use functionality that allowed failure felt more immersive and less gamey.

Anyone else feeling like that?

It might be an idea to bring back the old uncertain ID by use and introduce a limited ID spell. "Identify rune" spell could become "Identify rune or effect" scroll. It could be used on runes, scrolls, potions, staves, wands and so on.

About Nick's three options, I'm for number 2. Simply because it feels the most natural one. And it gives options for the runeID mini game. Forcing everyone to play the runeID game in a same manner doesn't feel good.

[Nomad]

Auto-inscription bug: if you have a stack of unknown scrolls and ID them by selling one, the remaining scrolls in the pack do not auto-inscribe until you drop them and pick them up again.

[AnonymousHero]

As for auto-ID on walkover from the start - with the current setup, ten lines of code would make that a birth option

Yes, that's what I was thinking. It should be easy to implement, so let's just try it and see .

[Derakon]

As for auto-ID on walkover from the start - with the current setup, ten lines of code would make that a birth option

You know, we should do that, at least for a little while, and see what the reaction is. Right now the only people who can try that are the ones who are motivated and capable to make the change, and of course they're going to like it. It'd be good to get a wider opinion.

[Nick]

I feel like upping the frequency of ID scrolls in the dungeon and allowing the player to learn runes on shop-bought items might be enough to improve things for non-melee classes in itself.

I think trying that is at least worth a go (probably with the addition of spells as Estie suggests). By the end of this process, I think were going to have a fell for how a few options work, and be able to pick the least worst.

I'd go the other way and have a bitflag mask for properties which are intrinsic and not magical, so that oil isn't branded with magic runes. Would require storing another set of flags on object kinds but that should be all?

That's basically what has just happened with diggers and non-artifact lights - they have intrinsic non-magical digging ability/light that are no longer in edit files. I would suggest at least for now doing the same thing with oil, and removing the concept of it being fire-branded; and this has already made me realise that I should have done the intrinsic thing by flags in the first place (because there are already some that aren't runes).

Maybe we could keep the "learn a random as-yet-unlearned rune on levelup" concept, with the rate of rune learning depending on class? So mages would automatically learn runes rather quickly, while warriors get no freebies, and a spectrum in-between?

We already kind of tried this and it seemed a bit artificial; you never know, though, it might still come back from the dead.

What causes the id-game to become stale, and when?
Obviously that is subjective, and very much depends on the players familiarity with the game. I would say that a good cut-off point is reached when the question is no longer "what is this item" but "how can I identify this rune of resist disenchantment". For experienced players, that point is reached rather early.

For casters, the traditional way of identification via spells seems to work just fine to lower that cut-off point for them: an id spell, in one of the red town books, perhaps requiring lvl 25 for mages to cast and 30 for hybrids; and a similar spell in a green dungeon book, I suggest "Godly Insights".

The exact level requirement is open for debate, but I wouldn't want it to cost much mana or have high fail chance or any other tedium element, presumably to encourage more id-by-use: exactly this change, from hard to cast to easy to cast, had been made previously and it was a good change. Delay the cut-off as you wish, but make it sharp.

In the late endgame, id by walkover is the best; I would suggest giving that property to everyone upon reaching character level 45.

This is a great summary. My only point of difference is I think you don't need a hard ID-by-walkover point - once you know all the runes it is automatic, and if you don't have quite all of them finding one in the late game is interesting.

As for auto-ID on walkover from the start - with the current setup, ten lines of code would make that a birth option

[Estie]

Let me summarize to gather my thoughts:

Originally there were 2 systems of id in place, flavoured and non-flavoured. It was agreed that the latter lead to undesired tedium in gameplay when large amounts of items which each individually were very unlikely to be a worthwhile find had to be identified. Rune-based id makes all items flavoured.

Also, the danger from from id-by-use was reduced earlier to the point where it was profitable to test use an item rather than pay gold or carry it to town.

In the old system, the classes had different ways to get at the information of item properties; in particular, it was a feature of the mage that he had early accsess to cheap identification. This distinction between classes has been lost, and we are looking for a way to re-establish it.

So, for what they are worth, here are my thoughts:

It has been said that the whole rune-based id system is pointless if there are still id scrolls in the game. I disagree.
The point is not to force the player to complete the id-puzzle. It is to present him with new items of unknown properties and let him experiment. If at any point the id-game becomes stale, it can and should be cut off, and id scrolls can do that job.

What causes the id-game to become stale, and when ?
Obviously that is subjective, and very much depends on the players familiarity with the game. I would say that a good cut-off point is reached when the question is no longer "what is this item" but "how can I identify this rune of resist disenchantment". For experienced players, that point is reached rather early.

For casters, the traditional way of identification via spells seems to work just fine to lower that cut-off point for them: an id spell, in one of the red town books, perhaps requiring lvl 25 for mages to cast and 30 for hybrids; and a similar spell in a green dungeon book, I suggest "Godly Insights".

The excat level requirement is open for debate, but I wouldnt want it to cost much mana or have high fail chance or any other tedium element, presumably to encourage more id-by-use: exactly this change, from hard to cast to easy to cast, had been made previously and it was a good change. Delay the cut-off as you wish, but make it sharp.

In the late endgame, id by walkover is the best; I would suggest giving that property to everyone upon reaching character level 45.

[AnonymousHero]

As for everything known on walk-over, it makes ID fairly irrelevant. That may be what some people want, but even being a somewhat experienced player, I still find the ID-game relatively enjoyable early on.

Yes, that's the point. ID is deeply irrelevant as it stands. It's just tedium for no real reason. So let's try getting rid of it. I promise, it's (T2) a much better game for it.

EDIT: I might be a bit weird, but I really appreciate a game where you have ALL the information and you can still die... irrevocably.

[Nomad]

Honestly, I'm not sure we're solving problems that even need to be solved here - I feel like upping the frequency of ID scrolls in the dungeon and allowing the player to learn runes on shop-bought items might be enough to improve things for non-melee classes in itself.

[Derakon]

(- 1) for me, with all due respect to Derakon and AnonymousHero. I didn't like the random rune on level-up concept. It just seemed incongruous to learn some random something without taking any action. The system as it is now, with @ having to take an action with an item before learning a rune makes more sense to me.

You can gloss it as the player continuing to do some studies in the background, which reach fruition when they level up. I'd encore Carnivean's suggestion that certain spells teach you runes when you learn them, but it seems the problematic runes aren't ones that would reasonably be revealed by spells.

What if the Scroll of Runes was only legible to certain classes, or if its effects were dependent on class? Warriors might need to read 6 of them to scrape together enough information to learn a single rune, while mages can get everything they need from a single scroll.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Maybe we could keep the "learn a random as-yet-unlearned rune on levelup" concept, with the rate of rune learning depending on class? So mages would automatically learn runes rather quickly, while warriors get no freebies, and a spectrum in-between?

(As a bonus, this would allow me to resurrect a form of my Scroll of Runes pull request that Nick vetoed )

(- 1) for me, with all due respect to Derakon and AnonymousHero. I didn't like the random rune on level-up concept. It just seemed incongruous to learn some random something without taking any action. The system as it is now, with @ having to take an action with an item before learning a rune makes more sense to me.

As for everything known on walk-over, it makes ID fairly irrelevant. That may be what some people want, but even being a somewhat experienced player, I still find the ID-game relatively enjoyable early on.

[AnonymousHero]

Maybe we could keep the "learn a random as-yet-unlearned rune on levelup" concept, with the rate of rune learning depending on class? So mages would automatically learn runes rather quickly, while warriors get no freebies, and a spectrum in-between?

(As a bonus, this would allow me to resurrect a form of my Scroll of Runes pull request that Nick vetoed )

+1

... or just, y'know, have everything identified immediately? The contortions are getting pretty ridiculous at this point.

(I've been playing a private branch of T2 with ID-on-walk-over and it actually works really well. Granted, T2 has so much of a TMJ problem that even auto-ID + auto-destroy doesn't quite eliminate the TMJ problem, but I think that's probably a separate matter from the ID bit.)

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it... should we try a little A/B test in the competion? Maybe try the rune-based ID (as A) and auto-ID-everything-on-walk-over (as B)? I'm guessing the latter should be pretty easy to hack into 4.0 (or 4.1 if rune-based gets merged and released first). I probably won't participate, but I'm sure that the feedback of the people that do would be interesting.

[Derakon]

Maybe we could keep the "learn a random as-yet-unlearned rune on levelup" concept, with the rate of rune learning depending on class? So mages would automatically learn runes rather quickly, while warriors get no freebies, and a spectrum in-between?

(As a bonus, this would allow me to resurrect a form of my Scroll of Runes pull request that Nick vetoed )

[Ingwe Ingweron]

That's the problem with rune based ID... If you add an ID spell/scroll/staff/whatever, you make the whole system almost pointless, since you would learn everything in no time. Same goes with shops, which would act as an ID device when you buy items. With the current system, you learn runes too slowly... and some will require precise circumstances to learn them. Would it be possible to keep the rune system, but add ID that uses the old system (ID an item completely without revealing the corresponding runes)?

I don't think an ID spell for the non-melee types (aka mages and, to a lesser extent, priests) would make the runeid system pointless. As long as the mana costs and spell levels were increased and only one rune is learned, I think it would help level the playing field between the melee and non-melee classes. I would not advocate for staves or rods, though.

I also don't like the idea of Identify spell without a rune ID. I guess it depends on the point of rune ID in the first place. I thought it was to preserve some of the "ID game" for the early to mid-levels, but by the late levels to not have to bother with it. If that is the ostensible goal, then I think the new system is getting close to succeeding, but could use a couple tweaks:

• ID scroll frequency increased and costs inflated.
• ID spell (single rune) with increased mana costs and level for mages and priests.
• possibly, rune learned from use of scroll or potion (e.g., ?See Invisible will also provide knowledge of See Invisible rune).
• possibly, shop label on items and purchase will then provide rune knowledge (this gives another use for gold, which seems to be one of the ongoing complaints about the money aspect of the game).

I think those changes would make it reasonably likely that @'s from any class would have full rune-knowledge before the end-game, but still provide the early challenges and enjoyment provided by the ID game in the early to mid-levels. I also think those changes would make it reasonable for iron-man players to learn the runes without the access to shops.

[debo]

Might make for some complicated logic to make it work. If I'm in a room with orcs and trolls and my weapon lights up, then it could be either and I'd have to do some A/B testing to be certain. Other considerations would be LOS or in range, but then do you learn what it means if the weapon lights up but you can't see what for?

I regret that my brain pointed this out, because I like the idea.

A shining example of how a simple idea can result in many complications.