Non-drop artifacts

New ideas, features you wish were in the game.
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PowerWyrm
Balrog
Posts: 1574
Joined: Sun 27.11.2005, 15:57

Non-drop artifacts

Post by PowerWyrm » Mon 03.03.2008, 16:29

So a party of two players, a mage and a priest, clears a troll pit...
After all monsters are dead, they decide to split the loot equally. However, as identifying the items they just picked up, the mage finds out he picked up the spear Aeglos and the priest finds out he picked up the spear of Orome...
Our fellow players are very happy... they just found out two great weapons for a mage and a priest! But wait... it would be better for them to exchange their newly found spears... and... they can't???
After a few minutes staring stupidly at their screen, they have no choice but do one of the following actions:
- carry on with the weapon they found... after all it's probably better than what they currently have
- recall to town and sell those to the shops... they can probably buy some correct items with 100k, and they need their *slay demon* and *slay undead* weapons for INT and WIS anyway
- kill themselves and resurrect one by one, so that the bloody artifacts can be picked up from the ground again... after all two great items like those are worth losing 50% of xp
- destroy the artifacts in a fit of rage and start ranting about idiots coding stupid features
- suicide their characters, remove MAngband from their computer and never play this stupid game again

So this is what could happen if this feature is implemented... Of course, the last solutions are quite extreme, but I'm sure some people could react like that. I prefer the ideas exposed in #348 (destroying artifacts is totally ridiculous IMO)... although I'd still keep the possibility of trading artifacts (you don't want the silly situation exposed previously to happen, do you?). In PWMAngband, I've restricted artifact dropping to the town (but not in houses) and the dungeon... and it's working quite well.

Ace
Crystal Ooze
Posts: 368
Joined: Fri 15.02.2008, 12:50

Post by Ace » Tue 04.03.2008, 11:52

What is the reason of restircting this?

Are all artefacts cursed? What happens if i find a second artefact which is better than the first one?

Also in this feature I don't see the point :) Hopefully this can be controlled by a server setting....

Are these limitations to keep the player from getting to powerful?

Solution would be:
- Make artefacts very heavy so only a few can be carried
- have all artefacts drain exp so if you carry to many you wand advance or even lose exp (requires balancing)
- make artefacts non-repairable so sooner oor later you'll throw them away
- allow only X artefacts per player more can simply not picked up because of mystical energies holding the player away from it... :)

PowerWyrm
Balrog
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Joined: Sun 27.11.2005, 15:57

Post by PowerWyrm » Tue 04.03.2008, 12:17

Lol... no, the feature has been added to prevent people from hoarding all the artifacts in houses and giving the ones they don't need to their other chars. I just think that how it is implemented as #194 is way too restrictive, and preventing players to drop artifacts in houses and in the wilderness would be enough to fix the hoarding problem.

Jug
King Lich
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Post by Jug » Fri 14.03.2008, 19:11

preventing players to drop artifacts in houses and in the wilderness would be enough to fix the hoarding problem.
Sadly, it wouldn't. This just encourages people to use storage characters. As seen in many other games.

There have been many, many hours of discussions regarding the hoarding problem and a possible solution. This is the simplest solution in the short term. Is it ideal? No. But it's the lesser of two evils. It's better than having no arts available for anyone other than the most experienced players to find.

Prior to the next stable release there will likely be a patch to allow dropping of artifacts at or below their base depth. But this hasn't been committed yet.

Going forward there have been better solutions discussed. But this works for today, it means the less experienced players get to find artifacts... which up until now has been a rare thing in MAngband.

- Jug

Jug
King Lich
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Post by Jug » Tue 18.03.2008, 09:48

In fact this is now out of date. In the current beta artifacts can be dropped at or below their base depth. They can not be thrown and they can not be destroyed.

PowerWyrm
Balrog
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Joined: Sun 27.11.2005, 15:57

Post by PowerWyrm » Tue 18.03.2008, 11:49

So if two chars want to exchange Aeglos and Orome, they just need to dive to 750ft... sounds fair. Not a heavy constraint and it totally removes the cheeziness of using storage chars. I'm gonna do the same for PWMAngband...

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