GOOD and GREAT

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by fizzix

that's true. However, my point is that it's not clear that allowing consumables into vault 8s will decrease the amount of times you are willing to take on a fight to get the item, at least in standart games.

I fail to understand how standart games differ from randart games in this. To me allowing consumables in 8-blocks definitely would decrease my willingness of checking what the item is.

[dos350]

standarts is rofl i havnt played it since i won this game also nn4this imo~

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

I fail to understand how standart games differ from randart games in this. To me allowing consumables in 8-blocks definitely would decrease my willingness of checking what the item is.

I think my problem with this is that all consumables, which can drop at the given level, are assumed to be equally good. That's wrong. ?ID and ?WoR drop throughout most of the dungeon, but that doesn't mean that when you're at dl90 they should be considered competitive with ?Banish and ?MassBanish.

I don't think I have any issue with fizzix's proposed changes to the good/great mechanics, but I don't think they go far enough if they don't distinguish between low-end and high-end consumables.

By exactly the same token, they don't solve the problem of basic, non-magical DSM being better than most "good" non-DSM armours. (Ditto blades of chaos etc.)

Nor do they address the issue that having plusses to hit/dam/AC doesn't really make most weapons or armours any better than +0, except in the very early part of the dungeon before ego items begin to appear. For the vast majority of the game the definition of "good" is wrong.

So I would add to fizzix's proposals the following:

(i) Redefine "good" to include low-end egos for weapons and armour (single resist, single non-* slay, etc.), plus DSM/BoC et al., and also to include a set of high-end consumables (staves of destruction, stat potions etc.), along with the existing jewelry and early dungeon books

(ii) Redefine "great" to mean the rest of the egos for weapons and armour, and the very top consumables (staves of magi/power, wands of annihilation, Kelek's/WoG etc.)

This means changing the creation mechanic so that instead of settling on the base item and *then* checking for good/great, you do that check first so that you can then select from base items that are good/great. This should address the DSM/BoC problem, and also avoids any hackishness about '8' squares excluding consumables (because you know that they'll be great ones).

EDIT: I'd quite like to make jewelry follow the same mechanisms as weapons and armour, i.e. have base items that can get ego types - but that's a slightly separate suggestion from extending fizzix's proposal.

[Nomad]

Originally Posted by Magnate

This means changing the creation mechanic so that instead of settling on the base item and *then* checking for good/great, you do that check first so that you can then select from base items that are good/great. This should address the DSM/BoC problem, and also avoids any hackishness about '8' squares excluding consumables (because you know that they'll be great ones).

This seems like the right way to go to me. Would this mean de-coupling the rarity of artefacts from the rarity of their base items? I think that's probably a good move, even if it requires some tweaking to keep things like Deathwreaker suitably rare.

[PowerWyrm]

Nice ideas here...
I'd also like to see more intelligent, class-based drops: for example, it's always frustrating when you play a warrior to kill a high level unique and see him drop a bunch of high level books. High level books are "good" to spellcasters... but they're useless to warriors. To push the concept of good/great objects, it would be nice to attach it to player class too. Using the same example, a high level mage book would be "great" for mages/rogues/rangers, and "good" for all other classes.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

Nice ideas here...
I'd also like to see more intelligent, class-based drops: for example, it's always frustrating when you play a warrior to kill a high level unique and see him drop a bunch of high level books. High level books are "good" to spellcasters... but they're useless to warriors. To push the concept of good/great objects, it would be nice to attach it to player class too. Using the same example, a high level mage book would be "great" for mages/rogues/rangers, and "good" for all other classes.

This is a nice-to-have, but it's a slightly different project from changing the fundamentals of good/great. UnAngband does this in spades, and it works well.

@Nomad: yes, this would mean making all artifacts generate by passing through good/great/artifact checks first, then rolling for exactly which artifact is created. This will mean that artifact rarities will become totally independent of base item rarities - so they'll need recalibrating to ensure that standarts have the same relative rarities as they do now (i.e. 'thancs more findable than Deathwreaker etc.). Overall we want to reduce artifact drops back to pre-3.1 levels.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

Nice ideas here...
I'd also like to see more intelligent, class-based drops: for example, it's always frustrating when you play a warrior to kill a high level unique and see him drop a bunch of high level books. High level books are "good" to spellcasters... but they're useless to warriors. To push the concept of good/great objects, it would be nice to attach it to player class too. Using the same example, a high level mage book would be "great" for mages/rogues/rangers, and "good" for all other classes.

Drops should not depend on the player class. They can depend on the monster, sure -- liches could be more likely to drop spellbooks, and dragons more likely to drop jewelry, or whatever. But they shouldn't depend on the player's class.

[Nomad]

Originally Posted by Magnate

@Nomad: yes, this would mean making all artifacts generate by passing through good/great/artifact checks first, then rolling for exactly which artifact is created. This will mean that artifact rarities will become totally independent of base item rarities - so they'll need recalibrating to ensure that standarts have the same relative rarities as they do now (i.e. 'thancs more findable than Deathwreaker etc.). Overall we want to reduce artifact drops back to pre-3.1 levels.

Presumably it would also mean an end to the awkward subdivision between 'special' and 'ordinary' artefacts, since if you make an artefact, choose one from the list and then generate the appropriate object, it doesn't matter if that artefact has a special base. And you could even create artefact versions of things other than wearables, such as converting the dungeon books to artefacts so they wouldn't drop more than once per game.

[fizzix]

@timo: the only difference in standart games, is that with standarts, if you see a short sword, you know that the best you can get is Sting, with randarts, it could be an amazing weapon. There's more of an incentive to seek out items there. It's a subtle difference, but it's actually the main reason I play randarts.

@magnate: The decision of whether an item is good or not is kind of a clusterfuck. There are currently 3 separate places.

1: item is declared good or great based on carrying monster or floor space
2: item is delcared great because it failed to become a special artifact
3: item successfully rolls for good/great.

Only the third one comes after the decision on what type of base item it is.

If you're really worried about good/great consumables being overrun by ?phase and the like, I'd prefer a level based approach to determination, rather than hard-coding certain consumables as good or great (like what's done currently with jewelry). Some sort of dependence on min-level could probably work, as this would eliminate the consumables that appear throughout the dungeon.

I don't have a problem with junk getting created, I think junk is fine. I actually think the problem is more on the other side. Too many high level egos get created in the mid-levels.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Nomad

Presumably it would also mean an end to the awkward subdivision between 'special' and 'ordinary' artefacts, since if you make an artefact, choose one from the list and then generate the appropriate object, it doesn't matter if that artefact has a special base. And you could even create artefact versions of things other than wearables, such as converting the dungeon books to artefacts so they wouldn't drop more than once per game.

Precisely. You see where we're going with this (you just mentioned tickets #1014 and #353, which are the two artifact-related tickets slated for 3.4.0 ...).