Rune-based ID

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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 .

[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.

[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]

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]

You're right Nomad, earlier it was a pain to to test for example neutralize poison potion. And I don't want that back. I think you pinpointed the cause for my uneasiness. It's probably that using a wand to a door and finding it confuses monsters. It would be sensible to require that a monster affecting effect really needs a monster to reveal it's nature. Even though the monster is unaffected. So a wand of sleep monster would reveal itself only when targeted to a monster and even though the monster is unaffected. "The monster is unaffected by your wand of sleep" or something like that.

[Derakon]

I suggest we add a bunch of flavors for potions. And I mean literal flavors, like "Mmm, tastes like lemon!" And that can be the gloss for how the player is able to ID potions that have no observable effect.

[HermannD]

I suggest we add a bunch of flavors for potions. And I mean literal flavors, like "Mmm, tastes like lemon!" And that can be the gloss for how the player is able to ID potions that have no observable effect.

I like that. More flavourtext is usually neat. (= It might also make sense to add something similar for other stuff:

You aim the wand at it.
Its eyes close but immediately reopen. (It resists the effect.)
You have one wand of Monstrous Sleep.

However, I don't like how acid is currently handled:

It spits acid at you.
Your cloak is damaged.
Your “Cloak [1]” became a “Cloak [1] {??}”.

What might those “{??}” mean? Acid should probably be rolled into the intrinsics or something. It's not really interesting from an ID-minigame perspective and breaks immersion if one, as I do, imagines actual runes or another magical explanation for the ID stuff.

Other than that and the cheap ?ID in the BM, I like the change a lot, now that I managed to play an hour.

[Nomad]

I suggest we add a bunch of flavors for potions. And I mean literal flavors, like "Mmm, tastes like lemon!" And that can be the gloss for how the player is able to ID potions that have no observable effect.

That's a neat idea, actually - not necessarily just literal flavours, but giving all the 'silent' consumables some kind of observable physical effects that @ would be able to recognise. There's already the function to add a 'msg' line to entries in object.txt so they display a flavour message on use, though it's only used in a small number of cases ("You hear a low-pitched whistling sound" for scrolls of Trap Creation, "A line of shimmering blue light appears." for wands of Light, etc.). It should be trivial to add a bunch more of these to give all the consumables a vaguely thematic effect on use, e.g.:

"Fiery spices inflame your senses. You identify a potion of Boldness."
"The cool draught soothes your stomach. You identify a potion of Neutralize Poison."
"The stones around you glow briefly. You identify a scroll of Trap/Door Destruction."

[Nick]

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?

There is some middle ground here. The old system was that effects were noticed when they were noticeable - or because they were too annoying or impossible to notice. A number of effects are made noticeable in a fake way - Trap Creation is a good example.

So what we could do is establish which effects should need testing for, and which shouldn't, and set them all individually. Anyone want to do that?

[HermannD]

So what we could do is establish which effects should need testing for, and which shouldn't, and set them all individually. Anyone want to do that?

Yep, but given that I'm quite the noob, I might not be the best suited. I would need pointers to where I could find a complete list of all effects, too.