Make all artifacts instantly recognizable
issueid=5985 02-04-2018 04:08 PM
Member
Number of reported issues by Tannis: 4
Make all artifacts instantly recognizable
no artifact should be indistinguishable from normal items

I just beat the game with a Dark Elf Thief who had a great run. After leaving the chain I checked my scoresheet and looked at the artifact spawn list to see what I missed. I missed three artifacts: whip of the vampire snake, chain mail of the martyred crusader, and hornet's sting. These artifacts all have something in common. Per the ADOM wiki:

Hornet's Stinger "appears as a rapier when unidentified, making it indistinguishable from normal iron rapiers."

The chain mail "appears as a chain mail when unidentified, making it indistinguishable from normal iron chain mail."

Whip of the vampire snake "appears as a whip when unidentified, making it indistinguishable from normal whips."

Compare that to skullcrusher, for example, which dropped for me in the earth temple. It dropped as a runed-covered club so I instantly knew what I had. No risk of missing it. All artifacts should be like that.

The current system is not only arbitrary: some artifacts can be readily identified just by looking at them like robes of resistance, ring of immunity, executor, etc, and some artifacts are indistinguishable from normal useless items. Even worse, it encourages tedious behavior. I cleared 3 greater vaults in my run. I fought monsters at chokepoints, the ideal strategy, so there were piles and piles of loot on a single tile. The current system where some artifacts aren't obviously artifacts means that optimal play is to pick up everything just in case. 99% of the time it's junk and you have to waste time dropping it again, but if you don't pick everything up you might miss that one time where that 15s whip is an amazing artifact. That is the sort of tedious gameplay that ADOM has been moving away from, and when you look at a scoresheet after the fact and see that you missed an artifact it's a bummer.

So, TLDR: change the unidentified appearance of any artifact that is currently not clearly an artifact at first glance. This can be done by giving them titles like "writhing whip" or "gleaming rapier," or giving them highly unusual weights. I prefer the former, but even the latter is better than the status quo. No one is going to leave a 14s whip lying there.
Issue Details
Issue Number 5985
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Implemented
Priority 7
Suggested Version ADOM 3.1.0
Implemented Version ADOM 3.1.0
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 16
Votes against this feature 9
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




02-08-2018 02:44 PM
Member
I think the current ID system in general should remain because of the fun it adds to the early game. Sometimes when I'm in a hopeless situation I'll zap an unknown wand at the enemy. Sometimes it's a wand of fire and I nuke him. Sometimes it's a wand of ball lightning and it goes the wrong way and fries me. Those moments make ADOM what it is. Another classic example: chugging an unknown potion in a desperate attempt to live. Sorry bub it's a potion of poison.

Not knowing what every wand, potion, and scroll is adds a lot to the experience. Equipping random armor knowing that trapped armor exists is always a small gamble. The ID system really enhances the early game. Making me pick up every single item in a greater vault when I'm level 32 and have basically infinite ID scrolls does not enhance the late game.

I agree that there are flavor reasons for why some powerful items should not be instantly recognizable. Look at the One Ring in LoTR. But this is a videogame, not a novel, and flavor has to take a backseat to game design and mechanics. Flavor is not reason enough to keep a bad mechanic.

02-08-2018 04:59 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Tannis
I think the current ID system in general should remain because of the fun it adds to the early game. Sometimes when I'm in a hopeless situation I'll zap an unknown wand at the enemy. Sometimes it's a wand of fire and I nuke him. Sometimes it's a wand of ball lightning and it goes the wrong way and fries me. Those moments make ADOM what it is. Another classic example: chugging an unknown potion in a desperate attempt to live. Sorry bub it's a potion of poison.

Not knowing what every wand, potion, and scroll is adds a lot to the experience.
http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Mater...ify?oldid=8930

You know... once you use it unknown wand can be assorted to group. I think esoteric stuff like name groups by material sucks.

02-08-2018 07:14 PM
Member
Quote Originally Posted by Soirana
http://ancardia.wikia.com/wiki/Mater...ify?oldid=8930

You know... once you use it unknown wand can be assorted to group. I think esoteric stuff like name groups by material sucks.
Lol I've never considered using wand weight/material to make educated wand guesses. Even now knowing that I probably won't bother doing that. I enjoy the surprise of zapping an unknown wand.

02-10-2018 12:49 AM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Taederias
While your statement may be true, your analogy is somewhat flawed. Jackals becoming the Ultimate Monsters of Doom because you kill a bunch of them does not make much sense in any way, and is definitely not intuitive. That some powerful items would stand in an immediately apparent fashion ("Hey, this weapon is covered by some weird red runes, I wonder what it does... Ah it coats itself in fire and incinerates my enemies."), but other times powers manifest in less obvious ways ("Oh here are some undead, let's equip the sword I just found... Oh wow, it's as if my hand's guided to make the most deadly strikes!" (undead slayer property)) is/would be something that can definitly have a place in a game world.
You keep making this point about the flavor of it, but as it stands this isn't how the game works at all because you can identify every artifact in the game by it's unique tile. In some cases you can even tell in ASCII because it has a different color. So even if your way was better, and I'll admit I do agree with Tannis here, you would still need make it so none of these artifacts had unique tiles or colors, or change it so that they only had unique tiles and/or colors after identification. I would also point out that this means that ASCII and Tiles players are not having the same gameplay experience.

Also, it would be remiss of me to mention that these criticisms are also true of some of the magical staves, with the same weight and un'IDed description as some level of quarterstaff, but with unique and easily distinguishable tiles.

02-11-2018 09:27 PM
The Creator
@ixi: Actually I have been wondering the same. For Ultimate ADOM (http://www.adom.de/ultimate) I'm actually very seriously considering to getting rid completely of item identification. Just let everything be identified right away and that's it.

02-11-2018 09:31 PM
The Creator
To keep things in ADOM like they have been I have adjusted the weights of the three artifacts mentioned above to somewhat unusual values. So if you are an observant player (which you need to be in any case to win ADOM) you now can notice these special items.

02-11-2018 11:17 PM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by adom-admin
@ixi: Actually I have been wondering the same. For Ultimate ADOM (http://www.adom.de/ultimate) I'm actually very seriously considering to getting rid completely of item identification. Just let everything be identified right away and that's it.
I didn't actually reply before, but I wanted to mention that I got more or less convinced that artifacts having *some* unusual characteristic should be the default, with possibly only *very* justified exceptions.

I was also partly concerned because the conversation seemed to be nearing to topic of getting rid of identification altogether. This has now happened in the context of Ultimate ADOM, so here's what I think about that:

Preserving the system in some form I firmly believe would be desirable. Just seeing an item and magically knowing its characteristics, as much as it is commonplace in "modern" RPGs, is not necessarily a good thing, especially if more interesting mechanisms could be implemented. With the limits of UADOM's game systems and even its visual interface yet unclear, just in vague terms I think that presenting players with more information than "black wand", but not outright having a user guide and warranty attached might be possible, like revealing more information that you could conceivably get if you were there physically. This could be engravings on the handle of a weapon, or carvings on a wand, or some specific decorations on a shield that could be similar to something you've seen already, or certain words on a scroll that you know (say, scroll of peace and scroll of danger have similar, just reversed functions therefore they contain similar incantations).

This might work exceptionally well with procedurally generating items (in some controlled fashion), as you would have no way to bypass having to deduce an item's properties from examining such clues and experimentation (or applying magic to find it out). But this isn't even necessary. Even with a fixed list of items the actual clues you get from their appearance could be randomly generated.

Nature's Companion would sometimes have an elaborate embroidery of a tree, or flowers, or have small vines incorporated into it as threads. Or it might not look special, but you'd see it rejuvenate withered plants when near them. Wands of trap creation and trap detection might not always have the same look or material, but sometimes their shape, or some carving or some unusual material would relate them to each other. Scrolls of danger and peace would not have the same exact words each and every time, but rather would have significant similarities in the wording between each other; these would be just a few words long, randomly, but not independently generated gibberish. Thus deductions about items' functionalities would have to be done in the game, foreknowledge and experience would not make it irrelevant.

While some of these ideas may not be feasible, I say it with the hopes that others are not completely outlandish.

02-12-2018 02:35 AM
Member
Quote Originally Posted by adom-admin
@ixi: Actually I have been wondering the same. For Ultimate ADOM (http://www.adom.de/ultimate) I'm actually very seriously considering to getting rid completely of item identification. Just let everything be identified right away and that's it.
I think you have a nice ID system already, so losing it would be overkill. Unique weight would be a clue, or some other info like aura on the item or some room effect if one is present.

02-12-2018 11:34 AM
ixi ixi is offline
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Taederias
I didn't actually reply before, but I wanted to mention that I got more or less convinced that artifacts having *some* unusual characteristic should be the default, with possibly only *very* justified exceptions.

I was also partly concerned because the conversation seemed to be nearing to topic of getting rid of identification altogether. This has now happened in the context of Ultimate ADOM, so here's what I think about that:

Preserving the system in some form I firmly believe would be desirable. Just seeing an item and magically knowing its characteristics, as much as it is commonplace in "modern" RPGs, is not necessarily a good thing, especially if more interesting mechanisms could be implemented. With the limits of UADOM's game systems and even its visual interface yet unclear, just in vague terms I think that presenting players with more information than "black wand", but not outright having a user guide and warranty attached might be possible, like revealing more information that you could conceivably get if you were there physically. This could be engravings on the handle of a weapon, or carvings on a wand, or some specific decorations on a shield that could be similar to something you've seen already, or certain words on a scroll that you know (say, scroll of peace and scroll of danger have similar, just reversed functions therefore they contain similar incantations).

This might work exceptionally well with procedurally generating items (in some controlled fashion), as you would have no way to bypass having to deduce an item's properties from examining such clues and experimentation (or applying magic to find it out). But this isn't even necessary. Even with a fixed list of items the actual clues you get from their appearance could be randomly generated.

Nature's Companion would sometimes have an elaborate embroidery of a tree, or flowers, or have small vines incorporated into it as threads. Or it might not look special, but you'd see it rejuvenate withered plants when near them. Wands of trap creation and trap detection might not always have the same look or material, but sometimes their shape, or some carving or some unusual material would relate them to each other. Scrolls of danger and peace would not have the same exact words each and every time, but rather would have significant similarities in the wording between each other; these would be just a few words long, randomly, but not independently generated gibberish. Thus deductions about items' functionalities would have to be done in the game, foreknowledge and experience would not make it irrelevant.

While some of these ideas may not be feasible, I say it with the hopes that others are not completely outlandish.
This. An awesome suggestion for the game like ultimate ADOM. Don't think I ever saw such an advanced id system in any roguelike. But seeing it and playing around with it would be damn cool. Meaning the game gives enough info to guess or partially identify an item by solving a puzzle. Of course not for the current ADOM...

To me solution implemented looks like a fair tradeoff.

02-12-2018 02:25 PM
Member
Thank you TB for implementing the fix! There are actually other artifacts that share this problem. In case you wish to apply the same or a similar fix to them, here is the list for your convenience:

Arak’s Guard: 100s halberd (like iron halberd)
Black whip of extinction: 15s whip
Bloody Rose: 15s whip
Cat’s claw: 10s thin dagger (like throwing dagger)
Eagle’s claw: 40s scimitar (like iron scimitar)
Fang: 10s dagger (like iron dagger)
Harvester: 55s sickle
Headman’s Hand: 105s great axe (like a regular great axe)
Kalmius Shield: 40s quarterstaff (like a quarterstaff)
Lust for Glory: 50s small shield
Nature’s Breath: 30s quarterstaff (like a staff of smiting)
Nature’s Friend: 80s wooden shield
Protector: 46s medium shield (like an eternium shield)
Purifier: 200s heavy mace (like any other heavy mace)
Quicksilver bracers: 10s silver bracers
Scorpions Sting: 50s spear (like an iron spear)
Silence of the Dead: 10s dagger
Soaker: 100s long spear (like an iron long spear)
Staff of the Wanderer: 40s quarterstaff
Wyrm’s Behest: 220s chainmail (like eternium chainmail)

02-17-2018 06:25 PM
Junior Member
One way to keep IDing around in the early game and gradually phase it out would be to start auto-IDing items after X number of a kind of item has been encountered. This could make artifacts stand out in mid/late game by nature of their not being auto-IDed.

Of course, phasing out IDing would also phase out the value of some talents (e.g., appraisal).

03-03-2018 03:09 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by adom-admin
@ixi: Actually I have been wondering the same. For Ultimate ADOM (http://www.adom.de/ultimate) I'm actually very seriously considering to getting rid completely of item identification. Just let everything be identified right away and that's it.
This would be a pity. While I do agree with this RFE and the solution you have implemented, as I never liked the mechanic of undistinguishable artifacts, I do think the item ID feature adds a lot of fun in the early game. Taking a risk when you're desperate by drinking an unknown poison or zapping an unknown wand is very exciting and often leads to the epic (or tragic) moments that make ADOM great. Getting rid of cursed weapons and armor is an interesting challenge. I hope those features will still be present in Ultimate ADOM.

As stvc0 says, there are also middle grounds. Some RPG's (Ultima Underworld comes to mind) had some kind of "Lore" skill that would auto-identify some items according to their value. Another option would be to always auto-identify items that have been encountered before, including weapons and armor. I would support that kind of solutions but removing the feature would really be a pity.

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