Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

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Avenger
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Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by Avenger » Wed 20.11.2013, 05:31

I'm down to my last 8, and I get a new one in 7 maybe every 20-40 minutes. To progress, I'll need to spend inordinate amounts of time scumming the black market. Low levels aren't common enough to rely on as a source of heal potions, nor do they find all that many in any case - and there are also a lot more high level players offering stat pots, cash, and other nice things for heal pots then there will ever be low characters trading the opposite way.

I've also been advised to scum dungeon floors for them - but as a warrior with no source of true enlightment(rods and staves are screen only and no light or object detection) other then potions, I'd spend a hell of a long time doing that, too.

Perhaps the black market rate could be buffed slightly? Or more than slightly? Not to the point where heal pots are freely available like they used to be, but at least to a point where the amount of time a dedicated player would have to spend scumming for them wouldn't massively exceed the time it takes to go through them?
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Re: Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by PowerWyrm » Wed 20.11.2013, 12:46

What could be done is increase the turnover rate of shops. No need to hack the store code, just change a #define and recompile...

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Re: Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by Avenger » Wed 20.11.2013, 15:05

I don't particularly like that solution, mostly because they already turn over very quickly. It'd be even easier to lose good items you need to grab cash to buy, and wouldn't improve the generation rates of rare consumables very much. Still, it's an idea, and one that might help at least slightly.
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Re: Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by Avenger » Tue 26.11.2013, 15:14

I'm bumping this. I spend way more time scumming for heal/*destroy* then actually playing, and that's not the way a game should work.

I can understand endgame potions like *heal*(although I'll probably have more to say about this one once I start clearing page 5) and life, but come on, I'm still working toward endgame. The consumables I need to dive at a productive depth in relative safety should not be so damn rare.

At least give us a shop a step above 7, like Berendol's Mile Down Club, to cater to demand for the currently unreasonably rare consumables.
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Re: Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by Warrior » Thu 28.11.2013, 12:40

We had a small discussion about this in the team yesterday and and while we agree that the lack of healing potions is a problem, it'd also be problematic to make this change in the middle of an instance. Changing difficulty of the game in the middle of an instance would take away some of the glory from those who succeeded without "easy" access to important consumables. Some people may feel this isn't really a valid reason, others will agree that it's not fair - most players have worked hard for their place on the High Level Dead page (especially this guy). On the upside though; This could increase the chance of a new instance coming up sooner than expected :)

Also, just to clarify how we (most likely) will handle this:

What will happen is that we will modify the rarity of heal pots and possibly some other consumables, to make them more common in the dungeon, at the levels where it makes sense. Which means they'll probably be as rare as today down to 2k and from there, more common the deeper you get. It's possible that we'll also tweak how often they appear in the BM, but I have some doubts about that. I really think that we should encourage people to play. Like a wise man said "It is not a shopping simulator!"

Well, it is (among many other things...), but we try to reduce that factor as far as possible.
-- Mangband Project Team Member

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Re: Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by Avenger » Thu 28.11.2013, 16:21

If healing potions and other critical consumables were freely available in 7, people would be able to play the game, and it wouldn't become a shopping simulator anymore then it already is for other, more readily available consumables(like identify/WoR scrolls and CCWs at lower levels).

Now, that might take something away from priests, but to be honest, they're a little OP right now anyway - at least in my opinion. A bit more balance between the classes is always welcome.

Still, the fact that they're being adjusted in the way you described is probably good enough - on runs where I don't encounter uniques, I do tend to slowly increase my stock of heals. Still, I believe that anything players *need* to dive should be readily available, for an appropriate price. We could even have 7 sell magi/destroy/banish staves regularly, for significantly higher prices - and something like that would also help deal with the issue where gold becomes more or less meaningless at a certain point, which brings me back to some kind of uber-shop with semi-regular appearances of truly epic items.

Just my thoughts, of course. I know I've been gone a long time, and many of my opinions are still rooted in gameplay as it existed several years ago when I last played.

Speaking of new instances, any chance of that nasty hound bug getting taken care of?
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Re: Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by PowerWyrm » Fri 29.11.2013, 12:30

Currently, I don't see the point of having a new instance if the annoyances of the current code are not ported. Mainly: gravity breath bug, spell frequency not respected when not moving, inability to destroy a stack of items on the floor. probably some more (bugs fixed for 1.2 not ported to stable).

Concerning heal potions, the current rarity is "A:15/1:60/1". This means that the rarity is already minimal at depth of 750ft. To make them more common, you need to add more values to the allocation line, just like for scrolls of identify, so something like "A:15/1:30/1:45/1:60/1:75/1:90/1" would make them more common in the dungeon.

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Re: Heal appearance in 7 nerfed too hard?

Post by Warrior » Fri 29.11.2013, 13:08

The hound bug you refer to Avenger; http://mangband.org/developer/ticket/1016

And yes, we'd have to do more than just add some allocation lines if we were to set up a new instance.
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