Artifact and General Item Balance Discussion

[SageAcrin]

As a note, I rather like hidden stuff, as long as it's possible to design around it not being necessary.

This is usually quite hard, though. I like race/class unique stuff for that reason, though; The equip needs to be good anyways.

[HousePet]

I've used Nexus of the Way as a Halfling. It was still good after the funny lore based penalty.

[Doctornull]

The trouble with the "lore hints" is that they're really inconsistent.

Are you mad enough to eat the Heart of the Sandworm Queen? <-- risk: zero
Are you out-of-your-mind enough to open a certain door in the Vor Armory? <-- risk: non-zero

... so when the game tries to hint about something, like the Untouchable's "to fail but not die is to be untouchable", that tells me almost nothing. Sounds like it gives me a bonus life, maybe like the Blood of Life? OH BOY TIME TO EXPERIMENT, all I have to do is die and ... oh great, that test didn't illuminate squat, and probably hours of time down the drain.


Here are some examples of good documentation and design:

- Prox's Lucky Halfling Foot: you put it on a halfling, and you see exactly what the item's new (negative) effects are. It's good in terms of lore, it's entertaining to see, and it's very clear what the effects are.

- Vestments of the Conclave: it tells you that it's better for humans, and if you put it on a human, you see exactly how much better it gets.

That's how I'd prefer to find out about hidden features: give some VERY CLEAR hint that tells me that I'm not seeing all the item's properties, then once I trigger the condition, SHOW ME THE PROPERTIES. All of them.

The alternative is encouraging players who want to make rational decisions to go source-diving.

[Judecca]

The trouble with the "lore hints" is that they're really inconsistent.

Are you mad enough to eat the Heart of the Sandworm Queen? <-- risk: zero
Are you out-of-your-mind enough to open a certain door in the Vor Armory? <-- risk: non-zero

... so when the game tries to hint about something, like the Untouchable's "to fail but not die is to be untouchable", that tells me almost nothing. Sounds like it gives me a bonus life, maybe like the Blood of Life? OH BOY TIME TO EXPERIMENT, all I have to do is die and ... oh great, that test didn't illuminate squat, and probably hours of time down the drain.

This would probably be a much better point if not for the part where you'd likely be getting barriers from it in the act of taking damage to die, honestly.

[Doctornull]

This would probably be a much better point if not for the part where you'd likely be getting barriers from it in the act of taking damage to die, honestly.

Is that the trigger?

I recently won the game wearing the Untouchable, and I did not know that this was the trigger condition.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Yes. Taking damage generates a damage shield. There's some sort of proporitonal formula causing bigger hits to generate bigger shields. So it would be fairly hard to take massive gameending blows without seeing it.

If not knowing what the effect is creates an issue, then I have no objection to a line about hidden properties, and upon discovering them actually LISTING THERE EFFECTS. This would be nice, since then we could SEE how the item worked, and what we did to trip it. (Like the formula for untouchable).

[Doctornull]

If not knowing what the effect is creates an issue, then I have no objection to a line about hidden properties, and upon discovering them actually LISTING THERE EFFECTS. This would be nice, since then we could SEE how the item worked, and what we did to trip it. (Like the formula for untouchable).

Yeah, this would be perfect.

Some very blatant message that there's an unknown power, until I see the power work, and then just tell me what the power does.

That preserves the mystery long enough that I'm encouraged to try stuff until I get it to do its thing, and then it allows me to make rational decisions about what items I wear for important occasions.

[PureQuestion]

The Untouchable triggers if your life % at the end of a turn is at least 20% lower than it was last turn, in which case it generates a shield either equal to the difference or like, double the difference. Can't recall specifically.

[SageAcrin]

Well, ultimately, effects like Untouchable will be shown before you equip them, next version.

Race and class effects are hidden, but they are basically shown after equipping them. (If they raise any statistics, there is a message associated with it and it shows up on the stat sheet, and if it raises any stats it didn't already raise, their 0 bonuses will appear when de-equipped.)

[Zizzo]

Because this isn't Nethack,

Which is ironic, I suppose, since now that you mention it, Spellhunt Remnants' behavior actually does strike me as kind of Nethacky, in a "seriously, who would think to dip a longsword into a fountain?" sort of way.

and because it's a pretty safe bet that a pair of gloves with bad stats for an artifact,

? It's a tier-1 artifact, and not that far out of line with other tier-1 artifacts I've observed. Sorry, that's not going to raise any red flags.

and that have an ability that clearly mentions destroying things of specifically higher tiers than the gloves,

...And? Seriously, walk me through the logic that would get me from that activation description to the conclusion that, "ooh, I should definitely do that!", because I'm genuinely not seeing it. (Especially since you're also up against my packrat instinct to keep all the yellow artifacts as souvenirs, even the ones I can't possibly use.)

If this were an item with much higher stakes to test

It's not a matter of stakes; it's a matter of there being no discernable path from point A to point B --- nor any particular reason to believe there even is a point B to try to get to, for that matter.

(like, say, the ring of the dead) then that'd be one thing, though IIRC the lore for that or the artifact description or whatever gives you a pretty good idea of what it does unless you want to assume it's lying for the sake of it to cover up its otherwise bad stats.

(shrug) Well, just from your description (haven't encountered that particular item yet), it kind of sounds like it is lying, by omission. Do I need to make a note to self to go source diving when I find that item?

it's kind of hard to argue this in the case of Spellhunt Remnants unless you decide that whoever coded them was feeling intentionally spiteful for some weird reason,

...Why are you accusing me of attributing malice, when I've already described earlier my reaction to Spellhunt Remnants: "Huh? Why would I want to do that?" You still haven't offered any reason why the available in-game information should have led me to an answer to that question.

Or Coral Spray, where all you have to do is put it on, block in front of an enemy,

And you've already lost me, because I'd already given up on Block as not worth the effort by that point, and nothing in Coral Spray's description gives me any reason to reconsider that evaluation.

See, that's the same flawed logic again: "We can assume that the player will do X, and in response we can do our nifty thing." Well, no, you can't really assume in general that the player will do X, for pretty much any value of X --- that is, unless you've specifically told the player to do X, or given the player a clear and unambiguous reason why they would want to do X.

I mean, the shield isn't going to fly out of your hand and hit you for 3000 damage or spawn Atamathon on you or something.

Judging just from the in-game information, the shield isn't going to do anything particularly different from any other shield of the same tier, just slightly better (and with a handful of minor bonus features, explicitly listed in the item description). That's kind of my point.

If not knowing what the effect is creates an issue,

*sigh* The issue isn't not knowing what the effect is; the issue is not knowing how to trigger the effect. Again, you can't simply assume the player will just know the right thing to do, and without that rather crucial bit of information, no amount of "testing" can possibly help.

Race and class effects are hidden, but they are basically shown after equipping them.

See, I would question the point of even that much. I mean, I'm just as human before putting on the Vestments as after, am I not? Why, then, would I expect the Vestments' description to include its race-specific bonuses after I wear it but not before? Other item properties don't work that way; the Orb can tell me what an item will do if I'm hit while wearing it without me having to wear it, for instance.

[Now, whether to show race-specific bonuses to an off-race character? Meh, I file that along with things like whether to show glove damage info to non-brawlers; I tend to lean toward don't-show, on the grounds that said information literally cannot influence that character's game in any manner, but I can see the argument either way.]

[Doctornull]

(Especially since you're also up against my packrat instinct to keep all the yellow artifacts as souvenirs, even the ones I can't possibly use.)

As a fellow packrat, I empathize.

And there's a whole treasure room in the secret club house which caters to our packrat instincts!

[Now, whether to show race-specific bonuses to an off-race character? Meh, I file that along with things like whether to show glove damage info to non-brawlers; I tend to lean toward don't-show, on the grounds that said information literally cannot influence that character's game in any manner, but I can see the argument either way.]

Actually anyone can get Brawler behavior out of gloves. You may see it if your character gets disarmed.

Also, Adventurers can take Pugilism et al. but currently won't see any glove properties. This is frustrating.

[SageAcrin]

There is a question of how much idiot-proofing is necessary in a high complexity game.

Do I like things like Untouchable not having shown properties? No...but in a game that has had insanely huge discussions about equipment...like this thread...maybe you shouldn't be surprised that they turn out to have a point.

Does that defend Untouchable? Not especially, which is why that's been fixed.

Should Spellhunt list that it levels up the gloves to use the ability? Probably.

Should you be surprised that the ability isn't just Nethacky trap flavor and actually has a point? Well, basically every talent in this game does in fact have a point-some are better than others, but they're clearly designed to have a positive role for the player. Why would you expect trap abilities?

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate where you're coming from. But if you're not thinking about your talents or equipment from an analytic/strategic point of view, you're going to die, unless you are playing by rote out of someone else's book. That's outright true. If you're expecting everything to work the way you expect it to without double checking to make sure, you're also likely to die.

Talents cannot list every detail of every interaction, because there are so many possibilities-listing them all is as bad as not listing them, people just fail to get important information as their eyes glaze over. There is a certain requirement of experimentation and thought in the game.

So basically; I don't defend omissions, but I'm inclined to say that if these particular ones are major issues for you, you're going to get killed unless you start reading spoilers for everything. Which is a shame, as it doesn't take much thought to avoid that in ToME.

Doesn't mean they shouldn't be fixed, though.

Also, Adventurers can take Pugilism et al. but currently won't see any glove properties. This is frustrating.

Glove stats and the Empty Hand talent really ought to be granted with Unarmed Mastery. It's the one real hole in Adventurer, they don't get that specific Brawler trait.

Unfortunately, I didn't even know that when I was helping list stuff Adventurers couldn't get working.

[HousePet]

Comparing an item that says it can be activated to specifically do something, to a situation that involves a seemingly random combination of actions, is a bit harsh. (unless said fountain asks you what you want to dip in it? I'm not familiar with nethack...)
And every antimagic friendly character knows that arcane stuff is bad. You get rewards for dealing with arcane users in a special way, why wouldn't you expect a reward for dealing with arcane artifacts too?

As for Coral Spray, if you have already decided that blocking is useless, is there any reason for you to care about a small retribution damage effect?

Anyone who does use blocking will find themselves with either Coral Spray or the other one equipped, and have the block effect trigger. They are decent shields without the extra effect. But yeah, Untouchable isn't decent without the effect.

Personally I recognise that it isn't practial to list every detail of an items effects. Do we need to explicitly state which item completes a set and what the bonusses are before you combine them?

[Judecca]

Er, saying Spellhunt Remnant's stats at base aren't out of line with other tier 1 (or generally early game, anyway--some t2 artifacts can be found off the first few bosses pretty commonly) is pretty amazingly disingenuous. A quick check of using the spawn all artifacts command, and after glancing through about half of them and getting too bored to finish, here are other things you can find roughly around the same exact time:

Summertide Phial, Feathersteel Amulet, Eden's Guile, Mighty Girdle (probably one of the few thoroughly bad ones here unless you get Snow Giant Wraps, incidentally), Girdle of Calm Waters (note that this one is actually t1!), Iron Mail of Bloodletting, Bloomsoul, Emblem of Evasion, Surefire, Serpent's Glare, Silk Current, Thalore-Wood Cuirass, Coral Spray, Telekinetic Core, Spectral Blade, Ring of Growth, Wintertide, Eelskin Armor, Garkul's helm, Bill's Trunk. There's others, but like I said, I got lazy!

Are you really gonna suggest that 4 spellsave, 4 mindpower, and 1 mental crit is perfectly in line with the vast majority of those? There's already ample reason to believe that there's a "point B" in the form of common sense, and the supposed malice being attributed to you is because it takes a really high level of stubbornness to not at least try the silly gloves before completely writing them off and not thinking for even a second that the ability specifically coded for them just miiiight have a use. I mean, jeez, I'm a total hoarder too, so that's not even a good reason.

I'm going to have to agree with SageAcrin (because while I don't think there's a fix needed for this personally, it's trivial enough to change anyways that arguing it is kinda moot) in that really, there has to be a point where the player thinks for themselves. Coral Spray possibly errs too far on the other side of that because it's not like blocking is that important early on at the time you find it, though, to be completely fair, so upon thinking on it further I could see how its effect could be a tad obscure.

[Doctornull]

there has to be a point where the player thinks for themselves.

Hiding information prevents players from thinking for themselves. It encourages using spoilers, which are the ultimate NOT thinking-for-self.

Showing what an item can do enables players to think for themselves.

Seriously, how do you expect people to make rational choices without information about what those choices mean?

Coral Spray possibly errs too far on the other side of that because it's not like blocking is that important early on at the time you find it, though, to be completely fair, so upon thinking on it further I could see how its effect could be a tad obscure.

If I'm into blocking, then I'm going to want a shield which throws down some retribution damage. Plenty of shields do that, and say that they do that, and tell me how much of that they do.

The issue with Coral Spray is that if I've already got a decent shield, there's no reason to think it does any more than give some elemental resistances and bonus air, which is rare... "oh so maybe I'll try that if I do another underwater dungeon", is what I thought when I saw it.

In the mean time, I'll keep using this lovely steel shield which does 11 lightning damage on-hit when I block, or when I don't block, and does +11 lightning daze when I use a shield attack talent.