Remove featherfall or make it useful

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by fizzix

If you ever go with Timo's suggestion a while ago to decouple resistances and abilities. (thread here: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=3379) I guess that would be as good a time as any to chuck feather fall. You may want to add Rstun as mentioned in the thread.

I'd also get rid of slow digestion at the same time. It's just as useless.

ImpHP and ImpSP also have slots but the only item that has it are rings of open wounds. These are pretty much junk. So if you're thinking of cleaning out the window, I'd chuck the rings and get rid of those two also.

I think the original intention was that ImpSP and ImpHP would appear on a much greater range of items, including randarts. The problem was that that was waiting for the overhaul of curses - a new wide range of curses that were all less painful than the cannot-drop "sticky" curse. I think we're still hoping to overhaul curses one day, but like terrain it lacks a champion.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

If we remove feather fall, then I'd also suggest removing pit traps. The point was made that they do trivial damage, so they have little reason to exist as well.

As far as it providing immunity to all traps: that basically implies that traps are of the "pressure plate" type. Don't really care for that. And, it's just too broad.

If we want it to be useful...instead of "feather fall" make it "levitate." That is: immunity to pit traps *and* trap doors. THAT would be nice-to-have, but obviously not essential.

On fizzix' point about slow digestion: wouldn't bother me to ditch this one, but I rarely run warriors. The issue would seem to be with a warrior, once you're talking about +15 speed...because IIRC your food consumption is fairly rapid at this point. If food consumption rates aren't a factor in this situation, then, yeah, slow digestion is pretty much meaningless.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Derakon

I do like the trap immunity / reduced burden ideas, though.

If we add terrains at some point then feather fall could make moving through mud or snow or stuff like that easier. Reduced burden would make it worth having as before stat-gain ability. Definitely better than what it is just now.

[buzzkill]

Getting rid of the current useless stuff may lead the the next best tier of items eventually being considered useless. There is a slope to be considered here. Not every thing can be "useful", because "useful" a relative term.

[Feloniousmonk]

Aren't rings of FF like scrolls of darkness? Useless sure but it adds flavor to the dungeon to have useless junk around.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

buzz, the 'slippery slope' argument is usually really weak. Fine, if there's other stuff that no one cares about...then we ditch that. Keep it to a high standard. The ONLY benefit for feather fall is avoiding tiny amounts of damage in one narrow situation. The damage is irrelevant once past the *very* earliest levels. There are damn few traps on those first 5-7 dungeon levels, and past that, you're probably high enough level to ignore the trap damage.

And it would probably be a good thing to remove some of the crap that's accumulated over, what, 20 years, umpteen updates and however many maintainers. With that kind of pattern, the game almost always just gets extended, with new things being attached. It's much less common to trim out. The result is a long-term tendency to bloat. And IMO there's a LOT of bloat when it comes to items.

[Hariolor]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

Getting rid of the current useless stuff may lead the the next best tier of items eventually being considered useless. There is a slope to be considered here. Not every thing can be "useful", because "useful" a relative term.

IMHO "useless"ness occurs when a given feature fails to provide a benefit. This can occur because it helps overcome an insignificant obstacle (featherfall), or provides a meager benefit (slay animal, orc, etc).

The fluctuating nature of Angband is great, but it also means that feature creep has led to a fundamentally imbalanced game. Not that it necessarily was balanced to begin with...

Well-balanced games tend to have specific obstacles, and specific solutions. The best ones make some of these solutions mutually-exclusive so as to force the player to make tough choices.

[will_asher]

Originally Posted by Derakon

I'm inclined to agree with Pete here -- I mentioned the gravity resistance as something that I felt was not a good idea because it makes gravity a lot less threatening.

I do like the trap immunity / reduced burden ideas, though. Trap immunity would mean that you wouldn't need to remember to detect traps all the time; I have trouble gauging the utility of that in a strict optimization sense (you do this, what, every hundred turns maybe?) but it'd make the user's life easier. And a burden reduction would be immediately sought out by mages.

It makes gravity a little less threatening, but not by a lot (at least in DJA). I think it works partly because feather falling really is already kindof rare except on the early ring (which has no other benefits) and as a random power. If you were in gravity hound depth, you would be sacrificing something else if you decided to wear a ring of feather falling.

Traps are already underpowered. They're very easy to detect, and if you can detect them, they're trivial to avoid. If you add trap immunity to the game, you might as well remove traps altogether.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Hariolor

IMHO "useless"ness occurs when a given feature fails to provide a benefit. This can occur because it helps overcome an insignificant obstacle (featherfall), or provides a meager benefit (slay animal, orc, etc).

The fluctuating nature of Angband is great, but it also means that feature creep has led to a fundamentally imbalanced game. Not that it necessarily was balanced to begin with...

Well-balanced games tend to have specific obstacles, and specific solutions. The best ones make some of these solutions mutually-exclusive so as to force the player to make tough choices.

Game is balanced when it is fun to play. Quake was fun (and is still fun when played head to head). It didn't have any specific solutions, just blast away your enemies. Sometimes a "unbalanced" feature leads to better balance in game. TY-curse in TY-era Z.

Even useless item is still an item, and as such affects generation rates of every other item. Useless feature in item affects ratio of useful features in those same items. Which we need to be very careful about. Too much good is not good at all, it just changes the scale of measurement of what is useful.

We don't actually need to axe "useless" items. We need to axe out "semi-useful" items. Those are the source of boredom in items. They dull out entire range of items. Actually we might need to have real junk to create contrast and flavor (shards of pottery, broken sticks, skeletons). Maybe even as non-squelchable items.

[Nomad]

Originally Posted by will_asher

Traps are already underpowered. They're very easy to detect, and if you can detect them, they're trivial to avoid. If you add trap immunity to the game, you might as well remove traps altogether.

I guess the other way to approach it is to nerf trap detection along with introducing immunity as an ability: remove the rods, give the spell only to rogues, and everyone else survives on a limited supply of scrolls and their own searching skills until rods of detection start showing up. Or at least have detection show all traps as the same, so you can't tell a lowly pit trap from a trap door or summoning runes until you unwisely try to disarm it in the middle of a vault.