Rune-based ID

[Nomad]

Weapons other than diggers don't seem to show their digging properties on the inspect screen any more.

[PowerWyrm]

New builds up - Windows and OS X.

Changes are:

• Starting characters have money again
• Slime molds (and related things) don't get a ??
• Rings of Flames, Digging, etc ID properly
• Basic lights and diggers no longer have a magical digging bonus - instead their light and digging abiity is innate. This makes them ID more sensibly, and (for example) a Torch of Brightness will have a +1 to Light, for a total light radius of 2.

I haven't done Nomad's suggested improvements to messages yet, but I plan to; I also haven't changed ID to consumables at all, and I don't plan to for now.

For the issues with *Slay Animal* weapons, I'm inclined to reduce the time to ID time-based things like Slow Digestion, or give the *Slay*s a random power instead of a fixed one, or both.

I was looking at the latest commit (63bd9e1) and in obj_known_light() the radius of lanterns is set to 1 instead of 2.

[PowerWyrm]

You've got a point, but the ID system is currently being designed around all the junk being so tedious to sort through eg. Consumables id on use, adding scrolls to learn random runes etc.

What I love about Tales of Maj Eyal (ToME4) is that you don't have potions and scrolls anymore. Fixes the problem of consumables once and for all.

[Nick]

Ya the first thing to do when thinking creatively about game design is to throw out of the window any balance considerations. Each and every idea posted here is met by "but balance!". Rip it out, like the pages of the school book in dead poets society.

Balance has to be considered AFTER decisions about game mechanics are made, not thrown in the path of same.
Not all ideas turn out good, but never is balance the reason why they dont.

This tallies with my ideas, and experience.

A major redo of ego items is not part of what I'm intending for 4.1. My plan for 4.1 is to deal with a number of things which have been recognised as problems for a long time - ID and traps (and doors) being the big ones. But bigger object changes are certainly a possibility in subsequent releases.

[TJS]

What? I thought we were talking about levels 1-20. That's where !rHeat and !rCold show up, and the only escape you need is ?phase + ?recall, along with a stack of !CLW. I am pretty sure more than 5% of players make it past that stretch.
By level 20, there is significantly more interesting stuff than !rHeat to worry about.

Edit:
I was somewhat amazed to see !rHeat show up as an example of something boring, which is why I commented in the first place. That is actually a relatively useful item. I agree it is less useful than it was before the ring of fire+cold resist made resistance rings a no-brainer. But it is still useful against Smaug and the like, if you haven't found Scarabatrices. Boring is a huge pile of average and good stuff, slay weapons and single-resistance armor and shields, along with stat gain. I totally agree with the posters who want more interesting ego items in the mid game. Potions I can ID from across the room, or simply squelch so I never see them. Actually having to examine half a dozen piles of stuff, 6 items each, and finding bupkis, that is a pain. I agree there is too much junk. I just think the place to focus on is the long midgame rather than the short beginning and ends.

My point was that !rHeat shows up on the first few levels and isn't useful for ages. Smaug has a depth of 47 for example.

Finding and identifying !rHeat when there are dangerous breathers about is interesting. Finding it on level 1 not so much.

I also think that making the first 20 levels more interesting is definitely worthwhile. They are the only levels that everyone plays every game.

[Pete Mack]

What? I thought we were talking about levels 1-20. That's where !rHeat and !rCold show up, and the only escape you need is ?phase + ?recall, along with a stack of !CLW. I am pretty sure more than 5% of players make it past that stretch.
By level 20, there is significantly more interesting stuff than !rHeat to worry about.

Edit:
I was somewhat amazed to see !rHeat show up as an example of something boring, which is why I commented in the first place. That is actually a relatively useful item. I agree it is less useful than it was before the ring of fire+cold resist made resistance rings a no-brainer. But it is still useful against Smaug and the like, if you haven't found Scarabatrices. Boring is a huge pile of average and good stuff, slay weapons and single-resistance armor and shields, along with stat gain. I totally agree with the posters who want more interesting ego items in the mid game. Potions I can ID from across the room, or simply squelch so I never see them. Actually having to examine half a dozen piles of stuff, 6 items each, and finding bupkis, that is a pain. I agree there is too much junk. I just think the place to focus on is the long midgame rather than the short beginning and ends.

[Carnivean]

Um. I don't care about the first few levels of the game. They exist to learn the mechanics of the game, and to make it expensive to get home from more interesting levels without recall.

This is the same short-sighted nonsense that we hear from veteran players, aka snobs, every time. The game isn't designed for the 5% of players that have played for the last 100 years and know the game inside out.

Just because you're too cool to give a shit about the levels that 50% of players never get past doesn't meant that we shouldn't make them interesting.

[Pete Mack]

Estie--we already don't see MoD (+2) Extra Attacks every game. In fact, the two big MoD ego weapons together only show up in only a fraction of winners. BoC is even more rare, I think. Nerfing the "common" case in favor of something even more rare seems, well, not very exciting overall. I have no problem making ego items competitive in the midgame. Just don't mess too much with the endgame; since M is vulnerable only to big dice and slay evil, so there is not much you can do about it. Hence: HA and +attacks. (Note that Acid Brand is even more rare.)

Focus on the lesser ego weapons. HA and +attacks are already at the extreme (though Gondolin isn't that far back, but I almost always find a better artifact than Gondolin.)

Finally one popular way to supercharge ego weapons is to add dice (for weapons with big sides) or sides (for weapons with big dice.) A Great Hammer 8d2 is a very nice find, especially with brands or slays.

[Estie]

The typical path of power with melee weapons is dagger, magic dagger, high ego, artifact, great weapon with high ego. Basically, once I have a good artifact I squelch all egos, and replace the artifact with a great ego weapon.

So the mid game is dominated by artifacts, while the endgame is dominated by egos; a scenario where I see no problem moving in the opposite direction.

The branded MoD of extra attacks would indeed be rare, meaning you dont see one every game; isnt that what we want, creating extremes ?

But this is all the balance swamp again; I want to get out.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The reason I love Diablo´s pre/suffix system is its internal structure, the way it distributes power levels. The assymetry in probabilities for pre and suffix, the difference in average power:

Prefix only: 20.8%
Suffix only: 62.5%
Prefix and suffix: 16.7%

This is the distribution, from Jarulf´s guide. On average, prefixes are more powerfull than suffixes (in D1).

Its this kind of structure I am after; away from the simple linear "the deeper the better". Yes, making speed boots +2 on dlvl 30 and +6 on 70 and +10 on 99 lets you find more than one useful pair, and its all very balanced, but its booooring.

Getting egos in line with artifacts can be done in whatever way you prefer.

[Pete Mack]

That's great against Sauron, but it is
* vastly more rare than an ordinary +2 attacks weapon (0.3*1/5 = 6% as common)
* still not as good against M, who is much harder to kill anyway.
* vastly overpowered against acid vulnerable creatures. It's one thing to slaughter undead with 1000dam/turn. It's another to slaughter a large fraction of everything in the dungeon. Nite that this holds for ALL brands, not just Acid...and since the thing is already deadly against undead, cold and poison brands don't have their usual holes.

And yes, i understand there is more to the endgame than killing Morgoth (despite the classical advice on how to win the game.) But figuring out how to balance the game in part starts with endgame weapons and works backwards. So find out what the power is at various levels, and find ways to reach it.

Finally, remember the problem with "all brands and slays" artifacts that are still not as good as something more basic with bigger dice. If you make ego weapons overpowered then rebalance them b ly nerfing the base weapon, you end up with a "jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome.

I have NO PROBLEM with enhanced ego items as a concept. But they need to be balanced the way artifacts are (mostly) balanced. We already learned that lesson once.

[Estie]

Bleah. The great weapons are the only ones that are worth keeping as ego items in the endgame. Nerf their dice and HA/+attacks(+2) become just one more boring find. For them to work, they *have* to be able to do artifact level damage to the final bosses. If you are going to do this, nerfing the extremes is the wrong way to go. That's what happened to Crown of Might(+3), which almost never happens anymore. An earlier poster mentioned power rankings for modified ego weapons. That is the right way to go. Don't nerf existing extremes; enforce them on new types.

Err yes, they will be fine as acidic MoD of extra attacks (+2) (4d8) (+15, +15). While that still outperforms Ringil, at least its harder to get than a simple MoD +2 attacks.
Wasnt your complaint that double egos would overperform ?

Anyway, I agree completely with your point about nerfing the extremes. The thing is, crowns of might used to be rare. There have been changes that made the rare egos much more common at depth. With the current frequency, finding a +3 crown would be trivial if the chance for any crown to be +3 were 1/3. So while I dislike mixed pval crowns, going back to same pval without other changes doesnt seem right, either.

But one reason I love the diablo affix system is that it creates extremes.

Anyway, Nomad made the suggestion to chunk down the big egos before doubling them; this sounds good to me, too.

[Derakon]

Bleah. The great weapons are the only ones that are worth keeping as ego items in the endgame. Nerf their dice and HA/+attacks(+2) become just one more boring find. For them to work, they *have* to be able to do artifact level damage to the final bosses. If you are going to do this, nerfing the extremes is the wrong way to go. That's what happened to Crown of Might(+3), which almost never happens anymore. An earlier poster mentioned power rankings for modified ego weapons. That is the right way to go. Don't nerf existing extremes; enforce them on new types.

There's more than just the endgame, you know. A lot of this discussion seems to assume that all of the levels prior to around 1500' "don't count" and anything that's important in those areas ought to be ignored.

[Pete Mack]

Bleah. The great weapons are the only ones that are worth keeping as ego items in the endgame. Nerf their dice and HA/+attacks(+2) become just one more boring find. For them to work, they *have* to be able to do artifact level damage to the final bosses. If you are going to do this, nerfing the extremes is the wrong way to go. That's what happened to Crown of Might(+3), which almost never happens anymore. An earlier poster mentioned power rankings for modified ego weapons. That is the right way to go. Don't nerf existing extremes; enforce them on new types.

[Estie]

Ya the first thing to do when thinking creatively about game design is to throw out of the window any balance considerations. Each and every idea posted here is met by "but balance!". Rip it out, like the pages of the school book in dead poets society.

Balance has to be considered AFTER decisions about game mechanics are made, not thrown in the path of same.
Not all ideas turn out good, but never is balance the reason why they dont.

As for the case at hand, I had given it consideration and come up with a simple change to downpower ego items: namely to reduce the dice of great weapons. Other ways can be conceived, but the order is to first like or dislike the idea; if wanted, to establish balance, if not, to move on.

[Nomad]

ToMeE two is balanced for "leveled Orcs" and the like, to the extent it's balanced at all. Making "super-ego" weapons is a good way to unbalance angband: Adding brands is already known to unbalance it (as was discovered with branding rings.) start conservatively by messing with *slay* weapons. Those are weak enough that they can't really be unbalanced. Westernesse and +attacks are already pretty powerful.

Agreed. Also, while I'm definitely in favour of more randomness and a wider range of egos, I think having too much possible variation under a single ego name just reintroduces the issue of having to inspect everything to check its properties. V4 had an affix system where ego items could be generated with a wide range of random properties, and finding a way to give them sensible names that conveyed enough information to the player was a big issue with that.

I think if we did move to a suffix/prefix system for egos in V, then rather than combining the existing egos into super-egos, it should probably be done by breaking them down into smaller blocks of runes that can then be mixed and matched. For instance, you could split the current Westernesse properties into multiple separate egos, so that say the three slays (Orc/Troll/Giant) are a suffix called "Westernesse", the stat boosts (Str/Dex/Con) are a separate prefix called, um, "Mighty"?, and the FA/SeeInv properties are a parenthetical suffix called... something else. That way to generate the existing Westernesse you'd have to roll an object that has all three together, but you could also get egos that have only one or two of them, or where they're mixed and matched with different properties. (But even so, as Pete points out, some thing like brands and extra attacks are just too powerful to combine with anything else, so you'd probably need some sort of power rating system like with randarts to restrict how good a combination you can get on a single item.)

I do think rune-based ID (and the potential for rune-based squelch) does open a lot of opportunities for making egos more interesting and variable, but the more measured approach is probably to experiment with randomising a single element of existing egos, or creating a few new equivalent egos with random elements (say, an armour type with two base resists and a random higher resist, or a cloak that gives one random protection). Slay and brand levels could also maybe be randomised a bit, so instead of a fixed x3 or x5 you might get x2 brands or x4 slays in the mix as well.