The case for simplicity

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by AnonymousHero

I don't play much Vanilla (nor any other *band, actually) right now, but that's exactly my feeling too.

For noobs it's a "what's a Phial?" moment, for experienced players it's "ah, cool, at least that's sorted" moment.

Ok, so we like this effect for light sources but we don't like it for anything else? Spellbooks, 4d5 longswords, amulets/necklaces etc.?

This seems to me like the kind of special-casing that I thought the OP was getting at.

[bio_hazard]

I'd agree that a few "special cases" are, if anything, beneficial to the game. There's 99 levels of sameness, so having a few special things to look forward to or check off your list are not a bad thing. In general, logical rules and predictability emerging from these rules are a good thing, but at some point there's got to be some sort of flavor. I don't have a problem with monsters picking up artifacts, but I don't see the need to ensure Phials look like lanterns or to make non-artifact or cursed phials just for the sake of making detecting Galadrial's phial more difficult. Probably everyone has their own things they like or don't like.

[AnonymousHero]

Originally Posted by Magnate

Ok, so we like this effect for light sources but we don't like it for anything else? Spellbooks, 4d5 longswords, amulets/necklaces etc.?

This seems to me like the kind of special-casing that I thought the OP was getting at.

I don't see it as a special case; it just a little side effect of there not actually being any non-artifact Phials. But maybe that just my programmer mentality showing .

Either way, I don't think it's hugely important .

[TJS]

Originally Posted by AnonymousHero

I don't see it as a special case; it just a little side effect of there not actually being any non-artifact Phials. But maybe that just my programmer mentality showing .

Either way, I don't think it's hugely important .

Yes exactly. Adding in code specifically to hide the phial would be adding in extra rules to cope with what is perceived as a special case.

[TJS]

Another example I've just thought of is regards to rings of escaping. They give a speed boost, but grant fear to the player acting as a trade off that could create some interesting tactical decisions.

So you could carry !heroism and use that to offset the fear, giving you a usable speed boost so long as your potions don't run out that sort of thing.

But if it is decided that would be overpowered my preferred solution would be to reduce the speed boost of the rings or making them deeper and rarer. Instead a new type of fear was created that isn't affected by removing fear!

In other words the whole mechanic of fear and the way the player deals with it was fudged in order to compensate for one item that was deemed overpowered.

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by TJS

In other words the whole mechanic of fear and the way the player deals with it was fudged in order to compensate for one item that was deemed overpowered.

... and in IMO that was a failure of management. The obvious, simple and correct solution would have been to adjust the item or shelve it until it could be fixed, but it was somebody's pet project and so it stayed and the game itself changed to accommodate it, and then we got the line that 'things just are out of balances right now and all will be well eventually'... and now we have v4 so I guess it worked itself out to a degree.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

... and in IMO that was a failure of management. The obvious, simple and correct solution would have been to adjust the item or shelve it until it could be fixed, but it was somebody's pet project and so it stayed and the game itself changed to accommodate it, and then we got the line that 'things just are out of balances right now and all will be well eventually'... and now we have v4 so I guess it worked itself out to a degree.

That sounds like a swipe at me but I honestly don't remember having anything to do with rings of Escaping. IIRC they were already in the game when I joined the devteam in Jan '09, and haven't been touched since. FWIW I don't think they're particularly unbalanced if you play with no_selling, though the fear penalties for shooting/casting could always be a bit tougher, and/or the speed bonus could be lower.

Or have I lost track of this thread and we're not talking about rings of escaping any more??

[Djabanete]

Fear through resist was in the original formulation of the idea

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...comes#post7486

edit: Yes I am shameless.

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by Magnate

That sounds like a swipe at me but I honestly don't remember having anything to do with rings of Escaping.

No, it wasn't aimed at you, or anyone in particular. I couldn't tell you where the rings came form either. It's just the 'no it's not great, but we'll somehow fix it later' or 'players like early speed, so we'll force it to work and hope for the best' rather than 'this is causing other problems, we'll get rid of it until we sort it out' attitude that seemed to permeate V development in recent years.

You guys accomplished did a lot of good work on V, I just wish v4 happened earlier. I wonder where we would be now if v4 didn't happen?

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Djabanete

Fear through resist was in the original formulation of the idea

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...comes#post7486

edit: Yes I am shameless.

Neat - I always wondered where shadows/delving/light came from (though the edit files say the lantern of shadows is from NPP ...).

Doesn't really sound as if it was a dev's pet project then. More like an idea that was implemented which some consider overpowered. I don't remember any loud consensus to change this though.

Btw, I can't find "Djabanete" in the thanks file - are you in there under your real name? And if not, would you like to be?