Quack Potions

[Vanguard]

Inventory decisions are only busywork when they're obvious or don't have meaningful consequences.  Trivial, obvious combat is busywork too.

Crawl's hunger clock isn't 100% pointless like Angband's is, but it's still pretty minor.  You can and should rest to 100% health in between most fights and there's no real cost to backtracking through the entire dungeon.  Crawl's hunger clock does not force you to think about how you will solve the next fight as you engage in the current one.  It keeps you moving and it doesn't let you grind indefinitely, which are both good things but other games have better hunger clocks that do much more than that.

I'm 100% in favor of multiple "levels" of victory, but hunger clocks are so important and so beneficial that they should be a big factor in even the easiest version of any roguelike.

[mushroom patch]

Inventory decisions are only busywork when they're obvious or don't have meaningful consequences.  Trivial, obvious combat is busywork too.

Sure, but the way ID works for scrolls in crawl, it is busywork. It has meaningful consequences if you forget to do it, in the way that failing to fill out a TPS report does, but there's essentially an algorithm for ID'ing your scrolls with minimal waste on average and whether you get screwed doing it is a matter of luck and not that important usually. Brogue does not sound wildly different from the scrolls perspective. You have some idea of how many of various things you're expected to have and you base your use-ID decisions on that. Whatever.

Crawl's hunger clock isn't 100% pointless like Angband's is, but it's still pretty minor.  You can and should rest to 100% health in between most fights and there's no real cost to backtracking through the entire dungeon.  Crawl's hunger clock does not force you to think about how you will solve the next fight as you engage in the current one.  It keeps you moving and it doesn't let you grind indefinitely, which are both good things but other games have better hunger clocks that do much more than that.

Yes, if you even slightly know what you're doing, hunger is not a real issue in Crawl. Time and resting is an issue if you speed run though, and since online competitive play is a thing in crawl and crawl has a sensible scoring algorithm that takes speed into account, this has a nontrivial impact.

I'm 100% in favor of multiple "levels" of victory, but hunger clocks are so important and so beneficial that they should be a big factor in even the easiest version of any roguelike.

Well, I think we can agree on the "clocks" part at least.


re: trivial, obvious combat is busywork too: That's an interesting point, but I don't know of a good proposal for addressing it, other than autofight (which is a decent solution, imo). If you have a system in which monsters generate independent of the player's actions and the player increases in power consistently thoughout the game, it seems to me that there's no way to avoid trivial combat without also making combat a pain in the ass -- e.g. by overly complicated tactics.

One way to go that springs to mind in light of the discussion here is that monsters spawns can be tied to the game clock. This is what happens in crawl in a limited way, but it could be applied much more aggressively.

[Vanguard]

re: trivial, obvious combat is busywork too: That's an interesting point, but I don't know of a good proposal for addressing it, other than autofight (which is a decent solution, imo). If you have a system in which monsters generate independent of the player's actions and the player increases in power consistently thoughout the game, it seems to me that there's no way to avoid trivial combat without also making combat a pain in the ass -- e.g. by overly complicated tactics.

One way to go that springs to mind in light of the discussion here is that monsters spawns can be tied to the game clock. This is what happens in crawl in a limited way, but it could be applied much more aggressively.

there are already roguelikes that solve this problem.

shiren the wanderer and brogue have proper hunger clocks that keep the health regen/hunger ratio low enough that small amounts of damage in separate fights can add up to a serious problem.  the end result is that you take nearly every fight seriously.  also in both of those games your enemies' power grows faster than yours does, so combat becomes more costly over time.  shiren's case is particularly interesting, because the high danger presented by most enemies and the game's rapid experience growth mean that weak enemies can be an opportunity and a blessing.

in sil you can easily die if you get surrounded, even if the enemies are beneath your level, and the AI is good enough that outmaneuvering them is nontrivial.  on the other hand, nearly any encounter can be survived if you play it well and you didn't make any serious character building mistakes

[mushroom patch]

I'm aware of the situation in sil -- I don't know to what extent this resolves the issue. The other examples are the same issues you run into if you speedrun, which is fine as far as it goes.

[Vanguard]

Yeah but you shouldn't have to use self-imposed rules like speedrunning to make a game consistently interesting

[Madmachine]

These mechanics are obsolete, and we must move beyond them! Time and tide wait for no man!
Out with the old and in with the new!

For every step forward, there must also be a step backward. This isn't a simple, "Oh, now that I have this +3 shortsword, I can drop this +0 short sword!" change here. There's a reason vinyl is making a comeback: analog recording has certain capabilities that digital recording doesn't. The hunger clock works badly in Angband because it's just a hard limit on how long you can stay underground, which is already covered by torches and consumables.

Regarding OP, I like the idea. I'd need to try it to see how it would play out, but it really seems like a clever and interesting mechanic. Just make sure the low-quality potions are useful as something other than just vendor trash.

[Vanguard]

Some mechanics really are better than others, though, and sometimes people discover better solutions to existing design problems.  This just isn't one of those times

[luctius]

This potion idea is great and I think some comments reveal that people are just jealous they didn't come up with this idea themselves.

Thanks

These mechanics are obsolete, and we must move beyond them! Time and tide wait for no man!
Out with the old and in with the new!

For every step forward, there must also be a step backward. This isn't a simple, "Oh, now that I have this +3 shortsword, I can drop this +0 short sword!" change here. There's a reason vinyl is making a comeback: analog recording has certain capabilities that digital recording doesn't. The hunger clock works badly in Angband because it's just a hard limit on how long you can stay underground, which is already covered by torches and consumables.

Regarding OP, I like the idea. I'd need to try it to see how it would play out, but it really seems like a clever and interesting mechanic. Just make sure the low-quality potions are useful as something other than just vendor trash.

True, all of these mechanics really depend on the whole ecosystem and it is in my opinion difficult to rate them on their own.
The idea I'm running with now is to make consumables quite valuable on their own right, but I'll have to see how that impacts the game.
<< I was about to say that I hope to have an alpha version available in a couple of months, but I know how it goes so I'll not say it . >>

Some mechanics really are better than others, though, and sometimes people discover better solutions to existing design problems.  This just isn't one of those times

You have given well thought-out reasons why you like the current ID system (if well implemented). I haven't really gone into that discussion because I'm
slightly ambivalent about it. I guess my biggest problem with it is that, at-least with the implementations I've seen, the ID game is mostly a system for low to medium
level play and does not really affect the later game because you either have identified everything or there are few options left.

I might have missed it, but I don't think I've seen you argue specifically against my proposal but rather in favour of the ID system.
Could you tell me why this doesn't appeal to you?

[Vanguard]

I just came here for the ID/hunger talk.

I think your potion system is randomness for its own sake, rather than randomness directed towards a worthwhile purpose.

I think it will function much like existing ID systems, except the potentially interesting experimentation phase will be replaced with grinding up your apothecary skill so you don't YASD from a healing potion.

[mushroom patch]

Yeah but you shouldn't have to use self-imposed rules like speedrunning to make a game consistently interesting

And yet so often you do. The fact is that games are generally designed to be played by more or less normal people who are terrible at things like games. Roguelikes are less like that, but I have to say, in retrospect, I'm shocked at how terrible I used to be at games like angband and moria (and to a lesser extent DCSS, which I'm still fairly terrible at). If making a game consistently interesting, by which I take it you mean challenging, to people who can already win it (without going for records, conducts, etc.) is the goal in, say, brogue, it's not hard to see how you get people like a certain former poster we both know who seemed to earnestly believe that no one can beat a typical roguelike without cheating.

[Ex]

I would like to point out that item ID systems are as important and central to traditional roguelikes as permadeath. Not making a value judgement about item ID systems, but if you're going for a traditional roguelike, it isn't one if it doesn't have an ID system and permadeath.

If item ID systems are removed, scrolls, potions, weapons, and armor with negative effects must be removed because they become pointless. Only positive scrolls, potions, etc. will remain in the game.

This cuts out at least 50% of scrolls and potions in most roguelikes.

[TheCreator]

If item ID systems are removed, scrolls, potions, weapons, and armor with negative effects must be removed because they become pointless. Only positive scrolls, potions, etc. will remain in the game.

Not true. You can have items that combine positive and negative effects. Even if you know these effects from the beginning, you still need a choice to be made, which is fun. What is more, in many games you can use some of 'negative' potions to your advance, for example by throwing them on enemies (or maybe by forcing an enemy to drink those potions -- interesting idea, by the way, or using them to build a trap, or leaving them on ground in a hope that a monster will pick it up and drink). Isn't it pure 'roguelikeness'? You usually don't experience such things in mainstream games.