Rune-based ID

[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.
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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]

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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Nomad]

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

[Nomad]

Sustains are a massive pain to find a way to ID by use, and hold up full identification of items that are obvious to an experienced player (e.g. Amulet of Wisdom). Could they be made apparent on wielding, or perhaps somehow bundled in with the appropriate stat so that learning the rune for Wisdom allows you to recognise Sustain Wisdom too?

[Pete Mack]

Well, !rFire and such are useful in Quickband a lot earlier. If I fnd it early, I will carry it so I can kill baby dragons at cl3. The thing to do isn't to get rid of !rHeat. It's to make sufficiently dangerous monsters show up early enough that the potions are actually useful. Set skip-level to 3 and you are all set, or reduce native depth of some breathers.

[fizzix]

Well, !rFire and such are useful in Quickband a lot earlier. If I fnd it early, I will carry it so I can kill baby dragons at cl3. The thing to do isn't to get rid of !rHeat. It's to make sufficiently dangerous monsters show up early enough that the potions are actually useful. Set skip-level to 3 and you are all set, or reduce native depth of some breathers.

Not breathers. But instead a slow moving monster with a fire based melee attack. Or something like an optional room with ambient heat where you need !rfire to get through it without taking fatal damage. The goal is to provide a use not a necessity. And I'd much rather not have the "it breathes, you die" on level 1-5.

[Carnivean]

Or something like an optional room with ambient heat where you need !rfire to get through it without taking fatal damage.

Lava-moated mini-vault?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

The interaction between the knowledge branch, destruction, and map area is slightly flawed.

When @ destructs an area and then uses map area to see the new configuration, the new map shown is in error. There are many places that show as rock but are actually open, and vice-versa. This causes problems when fighting Morgoth. For example: @ destructs area, casts or uses a scroll, staff, rod, Star, Arkenstone, or !Enlightenment to map the "new" area, and sets up as Morgoth approaches to be out of LOS. BUT, it turns out @ isn't out of LOS because the map shown isn't accurate!

[bio_hazard]

Lava-moated mini-vault?

+1. Not expecting this in 4.1 but eventually would be great to see terrain that requires tactical use of resistances, speed, rFear, rConf, etc...