Remove identification

[Grey]

So this has been brought up a few times before, and I've argued both sides in the past... But having to identify artifacts is increasingly making little sense in the game. A few issues with the system:

- Elisa doesn't exist any more. Her conversations have no context and make no sense.
- Elisa's services stink of magic, which many characters would not appreciate.
- Artifact iding takes up a hotkey placement, which I find in many games I have to keep rebinding
- Artifacts are cool, but aren't all that special compared to a really great purple
- Artifacts are already distinguished by colour and a piece of lore
- There is some faff if you don't realise you have an artifact until you hit the transmo at the end of the level. You suddenly have to send it into your inventory and hit identify and then check it out and choose to transmo or keep it - a whole extra layer of nuisance!
- If you're an experienced player you know what many of the artifacts are anyway from their unidentified description, so there's no really tension to slapping the orb on except for with randarts, which are mostly not great.
- If you're a new player the system is a little weird and confusing.

[NEHZ]

-If it's indentified and you get the lore popup when you pick up the item, it brings back some of the "ooh, I picked up an artifact just now, let's open up the inventory to look" exitement.

[King Gainer]

Agreed, in the game's current form identification is mostly pointless.

[PureQuestion]

The only real loss I can think of is the fun little un-IDed names (Which I like, but eh). It't not really a huge deal except for flavour reasons, really.

But no more special than a good purple? Grey, you offend me!

[Grey]

There's some good purple out there, man :) Your artifacts are too well-balanced! :P

[bricks]

+1000

I find the Undead ID method to be especially awkward.

[Frumple]

... why not make it an option? I kinda' like ID as it is, m'self (among other things, I like seeing how many un-ID'd artifacts I can collect before I have to ID something. Don't use the new individual ID thingy, meh.), but it doesn't exactly add much to the game, nor would removing it take much away. So... why not let the player make the choice of it? Those of us that want it can have the pseudo-suspense and minor lore flares (re: undead and yeeks), and those that don't can not.

[SageAcrin]

Make a "Can you use this to identify things when I pick them up?" option for the Orb.

Or I suppose it could be an enhancement at the fortress for free, if the thematics of that aren't good enough.

[notmiki]

I kinda like identifying items. it's like opening presents. In any case, unidentified item color should be changed to orange/yellow in the inventory. That way, people will notice it and not accidentally transmog it.

[Papagelos2]

I actually remember when you had to clear entire dungeons to get 1-2 scrolls of identify for 70g each, and then
you could identify one item per scroll. Man, you really had to choose what item to waste them on. And if the item
was cursed and the shopkeeper didnt want to buy it from you, you lost a lot of gold.

And sometimes you would id a plain sword that he wanted to buy for 1g, and it would be a goldmine and worth 200g.

Anyways, things sure have evolved since. Thankfully we dont have to buy scrolls, or carry around food anymore.

Personally I use a macro for Identifying things, and everytime I pick up such an item I press shift+6 or whatnot and
get to be excited for a second over what my find might be.

I'd vote yes on removing the need to have to press a macro to find out the ID. It takes up screen space for no particular reason.
Less clutter = good.

[Ragnarok]

Less clutter is fun but some people just like IDing stuff.

Should be an option while booting up the game with a new character.

[Mewtarthio]

You could always just make an addon that puts identification back into the game. I think the default should be no identification, though, for two reasons:

1) It's more streamlined. We want to put our best face forward.
2) It actually is a little confusing. When I first started the game, I noticed some orb in my inventory that I'd apparently gotten from some halfling scryer, and I assumed I'd run into some sort of glitch and that the orb was supposed to be a later quest reward.

[Sradac]

im on the fence on this. While I see all of greys points as being valid except the hotkey one, just dont put it on your hotbar that solves that problem, I also like to identify stuff.

With every new version of the game, a few new artifacts are put in. And then when I find them in their un-identified state I see that gray name as something i've never seen and I get excited "Ooh! Something new! what is it!"

IDing makes me feel like a kid on christmas, especially randarts. "Shining voratun longsword! I wonder what it is!" then when you unwrap it it could be something awesome, or it could suck like a pair of new socks from grandma

[Grey]

im on the fence on this. While I see all of greys points as being valid except the hotkey one, just dont put it on your hotbar that solves that problem, I also like to identify stuff.

Not having it hotkeyed is even more of a nuisance!

I understand the rest of your points, I just personally find them outweighed by the negatives :) at the very least the whole Elisa thing needs reformed as it makes zero sense for newcomers.

[supermini]

I never quite understood who or what Elisa is, and I've been playing ToME for a year. I couldn't say it really bothered me, but it was always weird.

What did bother me was the whole 'you remember this from your past life' thing the undead get. Unless I was some sort of lore master or artifact collector in the past life, there's no way I'm remembering all of that!

In any case, you could have the identification be automatic and the lore to pop up automagically and I don't think we would lose anything in the process.