Bug corpses abuse
issueid=2334 09-11-2013 11:58 AM
Senior Member
Number of reported issues by kordi82: 3
Bug corpses abuse
Clearing bug cave will leave multiple bug corpses which can be easily used to increase players speed

So any player strong enough to clear bug cave will have multiple bug corpses that can use to seriously increase own speed and dexterity. While corpses decrease willpower, once the player have 1 Willpower, there is no other negative outcome to the player for eating the corpses. Willpower can be easily trained back using morgia roots therefore even Willpower decrease is only temporary.

Possible solutions:
1. Once Willpower is at 1 - corpses no longer give speed and dexterity bonuses.
2. Once willpower is at 1 - potentials start to drop for willpower. This is more painful than Willpower drop itself.
3. Once willpower is at 1 - other stats start to deteriorate.

The final solution can also be a kind of a mix of the 3 proposed ones. So i.e. at first potentials start to deteriorate and once potential is at 1 other stats are next in line... etc.
Issue Details
Issue Number 2334
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Fixed
Priority 4
Affected Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 16
Fixed Version ADOM r48
Milestone (none)
Users able to reproduce bug 1
Users unable to reproduce bug 5
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




09-12-2013 10:14 PM
Senior Member
The only thing that you are missing in this riddle is that people think they actually have to clear both levels of bug cave. THEY DON'T. You can get speed abuse much earlier in the game by just visiting upper level, which is much safer and with no teleport restriction.

Tell me one thing, what's the actual argument for allowing infinite speed increase without any sacrifice? This is not only 30 speed. With enough persistence you can get it much, much higher. I really see no reason to allow thing like that.... I am not proposing to remove it. I am proposing to make it so that you have to pay for it in some way or the other i.e. in time or in corruption.

Also, one thing in your reply actually nails a bigger problem with the endgame play as a whole... You said it yourself that you do not bother, cause you do not need it and therefore this is not broken... cause you do not need it. Do you see where I am getting with this? In my opinion the balance in the endgame should be shifted so that you would actually need this and you would actually need to bear proper sacrifices to get it.

Besides... what's the big fuss about... if no-one needs it, then why people cry when I am proposing to tone it down?

09-13-2013 03:23 AM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by kordi82
I am proposing to make it so that you have to pay for it in some way or the other
As it was already pointed to you - payment is death.

Minotaur Maze and Bug Temple are optional. Both are very hard for average player and could kill a character that could dive to D:50 and complete the game normally. This is why majority of the players skip them and still complete normal game. Therefore, you could speak of Bug Temple "imbalance" only with ultra endings in mind.

09-13-2013 03:36 AM
Ancient Member
I would much rather keep the endgame on the easier side than require grinding of any sort. Forcing people to grind is terrible game design.

Maybe you're just better at this than I am, but I've always found that diminishing returns on bug corpses is such that it is very difficult to get your speed above 160 on bug corpses. For a typical mid-to-endgame PC, that's about +30 speed in my world. I think the sacrifice of all of your Wi score, plus the inherent risks of visiting the Bug area, plus the xp losses due to high speed, plus the time investment, both of hunting the bugs and of repairing your Wi score, makes it a reasonable cost/benefit calculation as-is. Not broken/don't fix it.

09-13-2013 07:07 AM
Ancient Member
There is DEFINITELY diminishing returns on eating bug corpses that requires you to get to burdened/strained/strained! [which is kind of dangerous] to obtain further benefit, so I don't understand this thing about there not being a cap - there most certainly is.

I basically agree entirely with JS's last two posts and agree that this is a "not broken/don't fix it" scenario.

09-13-2013 07:25 AM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by JellySlayer
I would much rather keep the endgame on the easier side than require grinding of any sort. Forcing people to grind is terrible game design.

Maybe you're just better at this than I am, but I've always found that diminishing returns on bug corpses is such that it is very difficult to get your speed above 160 on bug corpses. For a typical mid-to-endgame PC, that's about +30 speed in my world. I think the sacrifice of all of your Wi score, plus the inherent risks of visiting the Bug area, plus the xp losses due to high speed, plus the time investment, both of hunting the bugs and of repairing your Wi score, makes it a reasonable cost/benefit calculation as-is. Not broken/don't fix it.
Who says anything about grinding?

In my world death/danger and real game time are NOT any excuse for not calling something abuse. Why would you consider danger as an argument even? Once player it's strong enough it's no longer an issue. It's like saying that once player is overpowered he has green light to get even more overpowered. Pile of BS.
Real world time as well - i.e. I am killing beggars as my first kill every freaking single game. Then I hunt for them to kill 20 to get courage, which requires quite a lot of real world time. The fact it requires real world time never stopped me from doing so. Also, many things that have been fixed in 1.2 required PLENTY of real world time. Making wish engines being one of many examples....

The only reasonable argument is xp loss... still this is something that can covered for in multiple ways... slow monster, cold blood corruption. Once again I see no reason to let speed increase once Wi is at 1. There should be some kind of balancing mechanism. It can be subtle, but for everything there should be a price.

09-13-2013 07:53 AM
Ancient Member
I've never cleared the second half of the bug temple so I'm not going to discuss much about whether it's unbalanced or not (although JellySlayer's arguments make sense to me). But about this:

Quote Originally Posted by kordi82
Also, one thing in your reply actually nails a bigger problem with the endgame play as a whole... You said it yourself that you do not bother, cause you do not need it and therefore this is not broken... cause you do not need it. Do you see where I am getting with this? In my opinion the balance in the endgame should be shifted so that you would actually need this and you would actually need to bear proper sacrifices to get it.
No, please. The game is already long enough as it is, and it is fine that there are optional quests that you can complete for a reward, but don't really need to. This makes the game more varied, adds more decisions, and more replayability. I wouldn't like every character to need to go to the bug temple, library, minotaur maze, etc. Apart from the fact that it would be extremely difficult to figure out for unspoiled players.

09-13-2013 08:14 AM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Al-Khwarizmi
No, please. The game is already long enough as it is, and it is fine that there are optional quests that you can complete for a reward, but don't really need to. This makes the game more varied, adds more decisions, and more replayability. I wouldn't like every character to need to go to the bug temple, library, minotaur maze, etc. Apart from the fact that it would be extremely difficult to figure out for unspoiled players.
You are taking too literally what I wrote. What I was trying to communicate is that right now you don't need various buffs cause the game is too easy near endgame. Finishing the game on level 35 is nothing unusual. I believe this should not be the case.
What I would like is to make it so that the player would actually have too figure out how to buff the character to complete the game. There would be multiple options of doing so, but there would be prices attached too each path. Those choices would actually make the game interesting. Right now players skip various locations cause they are already overpowered and see no point in getting even more overpowered...

Edit:
I believe there is a consensus against my suggestion. I will not waste more time arguing for it. Subject closed.

09-13-2013 02:53 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by kordi82
Who says anything about grinding?

In my world death/danger and real game time are NOT any excuse for not calling something abuse. Why would you consider danger as an argument even?
Generally, something is considered an exploit when there are outsized benefits compared to the risks/costs involved. Death/danger are among the risks/costs involved in doing so. It's like saying grave digging is an exploit because it gives the potential for a huge pile of great loot, and ignoring the fact that you might have to kill a lich king or an emperor lich to do it. If you don't include risk in your calculations, well, yeah, you're going to get weird results. But a lot of people seem to--and often don't considering visiting the bugs at all to be worth it.

Once player it's strong enough it's no longer an issue. It's like saying that once player is overpowered he has green light to get even more overpowered. Pile of BS.
The Bug Temple is one of the few areas in the game that you have a real chance of losing a level 50 PC. I've certainly lost more level 50 characters in the Bug Temple than I have in the Scintillating Cave, for example (I don't recall ever losing a character in SC, as a matter of fact).

Real world time as well - i.e. I am killing beggars as my first kill every freaking single game. Then I hunt for them to kill 20 to get courage, which requires quite a lot of real world time. The fact it requires real world time never stopped me from doing so.
Good for you? You're welcome to do things in a way that takes a lot of real-world time. Not everybody enjoys playing that way. I'm adamantly opposed to the idea that the player should be required to do any such thing, as you suggested above. Five minutes of herb farming is about the limit on the amount of time-wasting exercises I'm prepared to undertake in most games.

The only reasonable argument is xp loss... still this is something that can covered for in multiple ways... slow monster, cold blood corruption. Once again I see no reason to let speed increase once Wi is at 1. There should be some kind of balancing mechanism. It can be subtle, but for everything there should be a price.
There are already balancing mechanisms. Your Wi score is reduced to 1. There is risk, corruption, time and xp loss associated with clearing out the bugs. There are pretty significant diminishing returns on speed, so your time commitment increases exponentially the more you want to gain--and if, as asdf has suggested, speed has been properly fixed along with other attributes, you can't get around this by wearing boots of slow shuffle or being strained! or some other nonsense. I'm just not convinced that this is a balance issue that needs to be fixed.

09-13-2013 04:05 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by kordi82

Edit:
I believe there is a consensus against my suggestion. I will not waste more time arguing for it. Subject closed.
......

09-17-2013 12:16 AM
Senior Member
Just for the sake of reliable information - not for the sake of further argument... My mist elf thief has just left Bug Temple with 185 base speed.....

09-17-2013 10:00 AM
Ancient Member
If you can grind and it takes more in-game time, you can also grind scrolls of corruption removal or chaos corpses for potions of cure corruption and then 90 limit means nothing. I did that in the past.
All that this RFE would achieve would be a more tedious game, where every clever idea is offset by some consequences that eventually mean more grinding. I'm against it.
No matter the amount of grinding, it can ALWAYS be offset by something else and the only final product is waste of time and a boring game.

09-17-2013 10:12 AM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Blasphemous
If you can grind and it takes more in-game time, you can also grind scrolls of corruption removal or chaos corpses for potions of cure corruption and then 90 limit means nothing. I did that in the past.
All that this RFE would achieve would be a more tedious game, where every clever idea is offset by some consequences that eventually mean more grinding. I'm against it.
No matter the amount of grinding, it can ALWAYS be offset by something else and the only final product is waste of time and a boring game.
185 was done without any grinding. I just cleared the whole temple. That's it. Not sure I understand what is clever about going to bug cave and killing everything in sight. I guess everyone understand "clever" in their own way.

All in all... subject is closed for further discussions. The more I discuss with you people the more I get a feeling that I posses some supernatural powers that allow me to break every character I put my hands on... Oh well... I will have to learn to live with this.

07-07-2014 07:18 PM
The Creator
I actually like the idea of slowly dropping attribute potentials if the attribute score is at 1 and you accrue further negative modifiers. I have added that for all attributes - although the decrease is limited somewhat.

+ Reply