PDA

View Full Version : Scummy tactics: which ones would you remove/solve from Adom/Jade? How?



Anonymous
10-01-2009, 06:48 PM
How much do you consider any of them to be scummy? (from 1=not at all to 5=totally). How would you resolve it?


Gremlin bomb - creating lots of easy to kill gremlins and using them to get easy loot, be it by killing them, or by pickpocketing and then killing them, or having a pet kill them for you (and pickpocketing them). It's not workable for XP since gremlins give few to begin with, and thought they grow more experienced, XP gain is reduced the more often you kill a monster. Note that having items and the knowledge of how to use them are different things.
Scumm-o-meter: 4
Solution: in my opinion, the only thing that have to be changed is the pickpocket skill. It's ok in my opinion to flood a cave with gremlins and kill them; ok, you gain lots of drops, but you also spend a lot of time and after 3k gremlins killed they start to become strong. But it's not ok to spend lot of real life time using that skill and getting lot of great stuff; furthermore it's very unrealistic to pickpocket something that doesn't existed if you kill a monster. So my solution is to change pickpocket making it a skill useful only in new quests, npcs or situations (imagine a level where you have to flee from some really hard enemies). Another possible solution is to add a 1% possibility that a water trap will break when triggered.

ID stairhop - continuously going up and down stairs between two certain ID levels. One could also explore them instead, but stairhopping exposes a maximum of floor tiles per turn. Loot created inside the room is picked up, and accumulates over time. Requires some patience, but is very safe in general, much safer than trying to find the respective loot in-game. Refraining from this technique - or, indeed, from entering the ID at all - will make the early game considerably more challenging.
Scumm-o-meter: 4; this is unrealistic, boring and gives too free stuff.
Possible solution: making every ID level with two stairs up and one stair down; every time you go down, you enter the other level on a stairs that if taken will take you to the level you just explored. The other stair up is in another room (just like the stair down).

Piety overflow - abusing integer overflow to turn big negative piety into big positive and milk your god for goodies. At current time this is considered to be very cheap and exploitish by most ADOM players, but some legit Hall of Fame entries used it. It should be kept in mind that if there was an opportunity in game to achieve integer overflow of experience, it would most certainly defeat the purpose of almost the entire game; this only defeats the purpose of the sub-game of dealing with divine forces and provides virtually unlimited prayers, with all their benefits.
Scumm-o-meter: 3; not game-breaking, just wrong.
Possible solution: I think this is an easy coding matter.

Dragon gold doubling - Dragons which pick up gold drop double the amount drop it in addition to their own gold upon death. Currently there is quite a debate if this is a bug or an intentional feature. Due to its exponential nature, this can easily be used to create truly game-breaking amounts of gold, which are commonly spent on getting piety for precrownings or to pay for Garth's training. There is a bit of risk involved since many types of dragons can destroy entire heaps of gold with their breath attacks, and dragons are relatively rare in the early game and cannot double more than once. Even if the player wants to avoid this effect, it's not always possible to keep dragons from picking up gold in tension rooms or vaults.
Scumm-o-meter: 2; ok, the effect is quite big, but there are risk involved.
Possible solution: maybe raising a little the risk of a dragon brething at the player then dissolving the money.

Stat lowering - intentional lowering of stats by controlled sickness and/or starvation to train stats beyond the common limit of certain methods, such as herbs. Requires some cautiousness. Is not considered to be heavily game-breaking, it only squeezes out a bit more extra stats from a very safe stat training method, and opens up the possibility of being ridiculed for dying of starvation in this manner (even sickness can be deadly, but players will usually have it removed before that happens).
Scumm-o-meter: 1; this is risky and not unbalancing.
Possible solution: -

Wish engine - mostly considered to be to game breaking - once it gets going, the player has basically unlimited wishes at his disposal, which makes the rest of the game about as easy as it can be. The fact that 19 rings can be dipped at once, and a wish for potions of exchange usually returns three potions contribute to the effectiveness of this method. Even 19 wishes, as gained from one successful dip, are more than enough to increase the character's power to game-breaking levels. To gain enough potions of exchange and a stack of 19 identical rings Gremlin bombs are frequently employed.
Scumm-o-meter: 4. Ok, not easy to do, but 19 wishes is game breaking.
Possible solution: making the ring of djinni summoning more unlikely to come out (at the point that an engine is euristically impossible). However, solving the pickpocket skill as I writed before would also solve this problem.

Ring of weakness - easily abused, combined with some potions of exchange and plenty of food and time almost all of your important stats can be increased to 99. Very game-breaking - the player can only die to severe cases of carelessness afterwards.
Scumm-o-meter: 5; 99 to every attribute must not happen.
Possible solution: when wielding a ring of weakness, str goes to 2 and it stops training.

Self education - writing lots of scrolls of education and using them to raise/get some skills. Under certain not really known conditions scrolls can be created without any stat drains, but losing a few points of mana is not unexpected, even with a blessed scroll and writing set. Not that scummy since it does require magical writing sets, rather rare tools, and getting really good skills is not common.
Scumm-o-meter: 1; just a little unrealistic, but interesting feature.
Possible solution: -

Grinding - usually staying on cavernous levels with high monster generation to kill lots of monsters gaining xp, items and weapon skill marks in process. Not very scummy since it is not entirely risk- and hassle-free, depending on the location where you perform it. More dangerous locations will yield greater returns, so for a challenge choose a place where you will be faced with monsters that actually give a fight. Since you will naturally meet monsters and kill them while pursuing your regular goals, such as the overarching quests or exploring dungeons, you often don't have to specifically grind at all.
Scumm-o-meter: 1; time passing = corruption and stronger monsters, so it's ok.
Possible solution: -

Shop restocking - repeatedly buying out all of the items from a shop so that a shopkeeper will produce more items. Can be combined with kick robbing occasionally. Provides a challenge in that obviously you have to get the gold somewhere; of course, gold is not exactly an issue if you use other scumming techniques such as dragon gold doubling.
Scumm-o-meter: 1; it takes game time.
Possible solution: -

Kick robbing - opening a hole in a store wall that allows the PC to kick items out of a shop without enraging the shopkeeper. Most definitely not supposed to be possible, as it usually happens in plain sight of the shopkeeper, and pretty exploitish.
Scumm-o-meter: 2; should be solved because it's unrealistic, but non game breaking at all
Possible solution: making the shopkeeper upset when unpaid stuff goes away from the shop.

Milking - some monsters always, eventually, throw/shoot things at a character which they would not ordinarily drop if they were killed instantly. Allowing them to attack you will ensure you get these items. A common method to stock up on arrows or quarrels, or obtain an orcish spear as early in the game as possible.
Scumm-o-meter: 2; unrealistic but not gamebreaking.
Possible solution: making those monster always drop the stuff they throw when they die.

Pickpocketing - used to gain more items from monsters, as after a certain point about 99% of the creatures you will encounter are weak enough that you can easily afford spending another turn on a Pick pockets attempt. Everything that weighs 10 stones or less can be pickpocketed from any applicable creature, and items pickpocketed will not in any way lower the amount of items you gain from killing - in other words, you will find easily double the (below 10s) items in total, and thus be much more powerful than another player who did not pickpocket at all by sheer availability of resources. There are no good reasons to not pickpocket other than it involves pressing additional buttons (at least two), while most small fry is usually killed in one or two hits. Due to the heavy increase in total loot, a habit some find worthy of picking up, and others can't stomach. The difference is considerable, but nothing which will decide over life and death; a non-pickpocketer will probably simply find himself grinding more often than the pickpocketer.
Scumm-o-meter: 4; boring and quite game breaking.. not to mention it's very unrealistic
Possible solution: making pickpocket steal only stuff that the monster already have (and if not pickpocketed will give when dead).

Banshee in animated forest. One of ways to scum for items is to bring banshee into animated forest. High rate of tree spawning combined with area instakill effect leaves some items rather soon. Although there is danger in banshee gaining some levels and becoming rather dangerous in melee too.
Scumm-o-meter: 1; this is a clever one-time trick and it's ok.
Possible solution: -

Silfir
10-01-2009, 09:28 PM
I pretty much agree with your assessment. I think Thomas is going to give most features he reintroduces from ADOM a second consideration. With the way his engine is set up I doubt Pick Pockets will work as before, for instance, and with the sheer size of the procedurally generated game world I don't think an ID will exist either.

It's best to wait for the first JADE version and look what kind of game-breaking stuff we can find in there so we can complain about it then :)

grobblewobble
10-01-2009, 09:37 PM
> Banshee in animated forest.
> Scumm-o-meter: 1; this is a clever one-time trick and it's ok.

I beg to differ. You get tens of high-danger level items in a very short time. This one is at least as good.. uhm.. I mean scummy! scummy! as a gremlin bomb. Also, if you have 7lb there is no real danger in it.

> Stat lowering - intentional lowering of stats by [snip] starvation
> Scumm-o-meter: 1; this is risky and not unbalancing.

Again I beg to differ. Folks who know what they are doing are not taking any risk.

JellySlayer
10-01-2009, 10:47 PM
How much do you consider any of them to be scummy? (from 1=not at all to 5=totally). How would you resolve it?

My fixes:


Gremlin bomb

Summoned monsters don't drop items and can't be pickpocketted.


ID stairhop

Remove the ID entirely would be one option. Removing floor drops in the ID would work too.


Piety overflow
Possible solution: I think this is an easy coding matter.

Ditto.


Dragon gold doubling

I think this is a bug and should be removed entirely.


Stat lowering

I would make it that stat potentials either can't increase, or are much more difficult to increase than simply training stats (eg. only can increase by appropriate potions, maybe athletics skill, etc.). As it is, stat potentials don't really do anything, so this seems a logical way to make them useful. I would then eliminate the "hard caps" on stat scumming and let potentials take care of this. So if your To potential is 40, you can train up to 40 with morgia. If your potential is 12, you can't train higher than that with morgia. This would have huge effects on racial choices overall, but I think it would make it more realistic. I'd also make it that you need to train harder to raise a stat the closer it is to its potential max. In simplest terms, if you have potential To of 20 and To of 10, you need 5 morgia to raise. If you have potential 11 and To 10, you need, say, 25 morgia to raise.


Wish engine

Make PoEX unable to dip multiple items (see Potion of Raw Chaos) would go a long way to solving this. Archmage is a separate problem, but considering how difficult archmage is to set up anyway, I'm inclined to allow this to remain ingame.


Ring of weakness

Solution with potentials above would fix this problem as well.


Self education

I don't have a problem with this. Scrolls of education and writing sets are pretty rare as it is. You could up the penalty incurred for writing scrolls of education if you felt this was really abusive I guess.


Grinding

I would like to see corruption behave as it was intended (background corruption doubles every 90 days), but generally I don't really care if people grind.


Shop restocking

I would change it so that just moving all of the items into one corner of the shop doesn't trigger a restock. Other than that, I don't think I'd really change this.


Kick robbing
Possible solution: making the shopkeeper upset when unpaid stuff goes away from the shop.

Agreed.


Milking

I don't really have a problem with how this is currently handled.


Pickpocketing

If gremlin bombs are eliminated, pickpocketting would be fine as it is IMHO.


Banshee in animated forest

Make trees immune to banshee wail. Or make beeswax melt over time even if you aren't hit by fire attacks.

Silfir
10-02-2009, 04:10 AM
Most of these suggestions are basically suggestions for the non-existant ADOM II project. Keep in mind JADE is redone work from scratch, so code oddities such as Pick Pockets magically creating items (which makes no fucking sense and pressures players into annoying habits - or will any of the pickpocketers around here come forward and state "I pick pockets because I enjoy pressing two buttons extra per humanoid monster every blooping time and I would still do it even if it didn't give me moar items"?) will hopefully disappear, and we'll see if JADE even has animated forests or banshees...

Though piety overflow fixing is something for the bugfix ADOM (Silfir-codenamed 1.1.2), which Thomas has hinted at at one point. I really have no clue how dragon gold doubling could be a bug - how does one write the code for that by accident? Kick robbing is something I think that fits within the scope of a bugfix - the easiest thing would be for the check that has the shopkeeper protest about you kicking items in his shop to check whether the item that would be kicked is unpaid, not whether the player is standing on a shop square. Probably easier to do than modify the mapping code to damn well make sure that ALL shop walls cannot be dug.

Honestly, the stat raising balance will and should look entirely different in JADE. Take away the stat raising herbs, and treat potentials as truly hard caps, and make stat potions extremely rare. Maybe taking out wishes should be considered. The thing is, in ADOM the character was on his own on a quest to save the world in a limited timeframe (agreed on the doubling every 90 days btw), so it made sense for him to become a superhero over time - the stat pumping methods don't feel out of place. in JADE things will get a lot more sandboxy.

almack9
10-02-2009, 06:09 AM
Most of these suggestions are basically suggestions for the non-existant ADOM II project. Keep in mind JADE is redone work from scratch, so code oddities such as Pick Pockets magically creating items (which makes no fucking sense and pressures players into annoying habits - or will any of the pickpocketers around here come forward and state "I pick pockets because I enjoy pressing two buttons extra per humanoid monster every blooping time and I would still do it even if it didn't give me moar items"?) will hopefully disappear, and we'll see if JADE even has animated forests or banshees...

Though piety overflow fixing is something for the bugfix ADOM (Silfir-codenamed 1.1.2), which Thomas has hinted at at one point. I really have no clue how dragon gold doubling could be a bug - how does one write the code for that by accident? Kick robbing is something I think that fits within the scope of a bugfix - the easiest thing would be for the check that has the shopkeeper protest about you kicking items in his shop to check whether the item that would be kicked is unpaid, not whether the player is standing on a shop square. Probably easier to do than modify the mapping code to damn well make sure that ALL shop walls cannot be dug.

Honestly, the stat raising balance will and should look entirely different in JADE. Take away the stat raising herbs, and treat potentials as truly hard caps, and make stat potions extremely rare. Maybe taking out wishes should be considered. The thing is, in ADOM the character was on his own on a quest to save the world in a limited timeframe (agreed on the doubling every 90 days btw), so it made sense for him to become a superhero over time - the stat pumping methods don't feel out of place. in JADE things will get a lot more sandboxy.

Thats exactly what id like to see out of jade. I wouldnt even mind if there wasnt a central storyline...a life simulator if you will. I VERY much would like to be able run as a caravan guard, then maybe join the merchants guild, then after that if I should so decide I could leave and join the militia, and perhaps become a blademaster and have people seek me out to teach/duel them.

Also, as far as stats go. I wouldnt mind a purely morrowind esque way of raising stats...quite simply...you swing around a big axe all day you get stronger...you play with a sword all day you become more dexterous etc etc

Laukku
10-02-2009, 08:16 AM
Stat lowering - intentional lowering of stats by controlled sickness and/or starvation to train stats beyond the common limit of certain methods, such as herbs. Requires some cautiousness. Is not considered to be heavily game-breaking, it only squeezes out a bit more extra stats from a very safe stat training method, and opens up the possibility of being ridiculed for dying of starvation in this manner (even sickness can be deadly, but players will usually have it removed before that happens).
Scumm-o-meter: 1; this is risky and not unbalancing.
Possible solution: -

Ring of weakness - easily abused, combined with some potions of exchange and plenty of food and time almost all of your important stats can be increased to 99. Very game-breaking - the player can only die to severe cases of carelessness afterwards.
Scumm-o-meter: 5; 99 to every attribute must not happen.
Possible solution: when wielding a ring of weakness, str goes to 2 and it stops training.


IMO when training/increasing attributes, the game should check the original unmodified value. For example, if your strength really is 50 but is reduced to 1 because of a -60 modifier, the 50 value should be checked instead of 1.

And I agree that potentials should be much harder to increase. Get rid of potential increasing potions and make other potions not increase and attribute if it's already at its potential.

Regarding ring wish engines: I think that used rings of djinni summoning should disappear (the djinni would want to destroy his former prison, wouldn't he?). This should make ring wish engines impossible, allowing a maximum of 19 wishes.

Al-Khwarizmi
10-02-2009, 03:43 PM
I really have no clue how dragon gold doubling could be a bug - how does one write the code for that by accident?

Easy... have two slots in dragons' inventories point to the gold instead of one. Imagine if you unadvertently do something like this:


Item ** inventory = ( Item ** ) malloc ( ... )
Item * leftHandSlot = inventory[0];
Item * rightHandSlot = inventory[1];
Item * goldSlot = inventory[2];
Item * headgearSlot = inventory[2];
...

There you go: when the dragon picks up some gold, you store a reference to it in inventory[2]. Then, when the dragon is killed, you drop the items in each slot. So you drop the gold two times, once as gold and another time as headgear.

For me, it's clearly a bug, and I'll think that until I see TB declaring it a feature.

Al-Khwarizmi
10-02-2009, 03:46 PM
By the way, I would add a simple condition that any dungeon levels's danger level increases by one for every, say, 1000 turns spent in it. That would make much harder things like gremlin bombs, scumming for precrowns, massive herb farming, etc. etc.; and it would also work for possible forms of scumming originating in JADE that we can't even imagine with ADOM. In general, player staying for very long periods in the same place -> scummer. So add a penalty to that, and by adjusting it it can provide an interesting form of level scaling even for non-scummers (say, the top CoC levels would become somewhat more dangerous if traversed very frequently).

Anonymous
10-02-2009, 04:18 PM
I must say there are some really clever ideas here.

Laukku
10-02-2009, 04:59 PM
By the way, I would add a simple condition that any dungeon levels's danger level increases by one for every, say, 1000 turns spent in it. That would make much harder things like gremlin bombs, scumming for precrowns, massive herb farming, etc. etc.; and it would also work for possible forms of scumming originating in JADE that we can't even imagine with ADOM. In general, player staying for very long periods in the same place -> scummer. So add a penalty to that, and by adjusting it it can provide an interesting form of level scaling even for non-scummers (say, the top CoC levels would become somewhat more dangerous if traversed very frequently).

I don't like that. Innocent players can spend a lot of time on a level (such as clearing a large/tough vault), and scummers can just leave and re-enter the level every 999th turn. And it's very unrealistic.

Al-Khwarizmi
10-02-2009, 06:17 PM
Probably I didn't express myself very clearly, but I was thinking about a cumulative counter. So if you leave the level on the 999th turn, the counter for that level remains set to 999, and when you return to it, the danger level raises instantly.

Of course is not realistic but neither is that enemies of a species get more experience when you kill others similar to them... it's a level scaling feature. This would be another kind of level scaling feature, but aimed to prevent scumming. In fact, any monster generation in dungeons is unrealistic... in the real word, if you kill everyone in a building, new people don't appear at corners when you turn your head!

Newbies would have to learn that if they stay in a place for a long time things somehow start to get more dangerous... yeah, it's an added difficulty but I wouldn't say it's harder than other things they have to be careful of in ADOM and other roguelikes.

JellySlayer
10-02-2009, 06:58 PM
I don't like that. Innocent players can spend a lot of time on a level (such as clearing a large/tough vault), and scummers can just leave and re-enter the level every 999th turn. And it's very unrealistic.

I don't think it's quite as bad as it sounds. Increasing the DL by 1 for every 1000 turns is not going to have a really significant effect, since 1 point of DL is pretty much not really notable--it's unlikely that you notice the difference between D:5 and D:6, for example. If you spent many thousands of turns on the same level (eg. smithing, herb farming, going for sacrifice precrowns), then you might start to notice a difference, but such levels might be pacified anyway. If you spent >10k turns on the same level grinding, I suppose would see a difference, but that's a really long time to spend on one level. Average time to win the game is probably ~120-150k turns for a casual game, so it's unlikely you'd see a single level gaining more than, say, 5 danger levels.

fazisi
10-02-2009, 09:53 PM
The only time I spend more than average turns in any place other than Big Room (which I pacify) and DT (which I don't unpacify unless I'm feeling extremely chaotic) is in early game on a character without healing that I decided to dive SMC/UD instead of getting healing first and I end up running into a mixed tension room/mixed lesser vault both on UD1 and I don't dare exit to SMC so I just hide in a room with the door closed and cower until my pitiful hp slowly climbs up to sustainable numbers.

Otherwise, I normally don't spend much time on a level unless forced to by spawners/summoners filling my path with ungodly numbers of -foo-. Then it's just a hassle.
________
SHEMALE MOVIES (http://www.fucktube.com/categories/36/shemale/videos/1)

grobblewobble
10-04-2009, 12:33 AM
I don't like that. Innocent players can spend a lot of time on a level (such as clearing a large/tough vault), and scummers can just leave and re-enter the level every 999th turn. And it's very unrealistic.

Seconded. If you want to scum you WILL find a way around it (like, for example, start a new gremlin bomb on another dungeon level or something.)

And if the effect is dramatic enough to seriously affect scummers, it will affect newbies and people who just want to do some smithing even harder.

Laukku
10-04-2009, 11:09 AM
If you want to scum you WILL find a way around it (like, for example, start a new gremlin bomb on another dungeon level or something.)

My thoughts exactly.

I think it's better to deal with scumming tactics individually, instead of general rules like this.

almack9
10-04-2009, 02:25 PM
You guys have to think, Jade should be quite a bit larger of a world than Adom was id imagine. So that 1k turn rule potentially could never come into play. Unless you intentionally revisit old places, on the other hand. Levels could be alot bigger too, making this always happen.

fazisi
10-07-2009, 02:22 AM
I would give the casino house advantage. Also, somehow screw up poex wish engines. I made my first one yesterday and I felt dirtier than most all of my other scumming combined.
________
Medical Marijuana Patient (http://mmjp.org)

Sinayfae
03-14-2010, 01:41 PM
It truly amazes me that you can sit around and think of ways to make a difficult game more difficult. Face it you do not like pickpocketing becuase you personally do not like to take the time to do it so people who do have an advantage over you and you do not like it. To rank pickpocketing as more scummy then piety overflow which is a blatant abuse of a bug vs an in game skill created by the creator is moronic imo. As for summoned monsters not having items....then when a warrior is summoned they should be naked, without a sword or even clothing? I have played ADOM since mid 90's before and after and pickpocketing hasn't broken the game for me. And now farming herbs is scumming, wth? Who made you the police of ADOM...if you weren't meant to farm herbs then what, pray tell, do farmers do? So self righteous you all are yet you'll use Darkness all day and night and not say a word about how you can stand in the dark and beat a mob to death without it ever hitting you once (and you say summoned mobs having items is silly Using Darkness: Scum level 5 game breaking). Or you'll stand in a doorway invisible bolting mobs to death never asking why they can't figure out someone's standing the the doorway Invisi bolting scum level 3. Your suspension of disbelief seems rather convenient. So tired of hearing the whine about Pick Pocketing suddenly you all and not the creator decide how the game was meant to work? I just can not seem to figure out where you all became the ones who decided what ADOM was supposed to be. How about you write your own game or play something else and leave ADOM to the people who love it as it is (even with its sadistic RNG). I have played ADOM for years ad only now know about stuff like gremlin bombs and wish engines since I never bothered with spoilers (another thing you all seem to have no problem with there's some realism for you having a guidebook Using Guidebook scum level 10^6 absolutely game breaking!) but I do not begrudge people who use them thier victories because mine were insanely hard and lucky. I never used a Guide Book or a website to get info and figured it all out on my own but I am not belittling your wins I'm just showing that it's all a matter of perspective...stop complaining and start enjoying...

Al-Khwarizmi
03-14-2010, 05:07 PM
"Scummy tactics: which ones *WOULD YOU* remove/solve from Adom/Jade? How?"

I fail to see how in a thread with that title we can be "deciding how the game is supposed to work". We're giving opinions just like you.

You have a point with darkness, I think it's scummy too. I do use it but I don't feel good doing it.

JellySlayer
03-14-2010, 10:57 PM
I actually think changing how AI behaves around darkness and invisible PCs would be an improvement that would be worth considering. Either 1) mobs run away immediately if they are attacked and don't respond or 2) they act like current blind monsters and may stumble into the PC to do damage. I'd also add proper resistances to blind, confusion, stun, and paralysis, which are all pretty overpowered.

I think the OP just took the list of "scummy tactics" from the Wiki page on the subject. That list is not necessarily exhaustive.

Sradac
03-18-2010, 04:56 AM
I'd say the only one that seems like a huge exploit for me is scumming for stats after purposefully making yourself sick

Sadface
03-18-2010, 11:58 AM
I would probably do away with starving stat training, too.
With patience you can get your Wi and Dx to about 45-50.

Laukku
03-19-2010, 08:13 AM
That could be fixed simply by having the game check the unmodified value of the attribute instead of the modified one. If your Dx really is 30, but have a -20 modifier, checking the stat when raising it should return Dx:30 instead of Dx:10.

Dudley
03-19-2010, 11:14 AM
The ONLY problem i see with that is that it doesn't take corruptions (which after all are how your body IS, not supposedly impermanent) into account. To me, training via corruptions are a valid feature and not a exploit.

Sadface
03-19-2010, 11:44 AM
Maybe have three values for stats, say, call them "modifiedStat",
"unmodifiedStat" and "damagedStat". The value of modifiedStat
would be the totals for each stat after modifications such as
corruptions and magical enhancements. The value of unmodifiedStat
would be your base stats, without anything boosting or lowering
them. The value of damagedStat would be the totals of each
stat after magical or natural detriments are taken into consideration.

To display your "real" stats:

The game would first take the unmodified stat, and then figure out
for each stat the difference between modifiedStat and damagedStat
are. For example:



unmodifiedStat:
St: 11 Dx: 14 To: 13 Ch: 9

modifiedStat:
St: 14 Dx: 30 To: 20 Ch: 9

damagedStat:
St: 11 Dx: 4 To: 20 Ch: 1




The difference between each value:
unmodifiedStat
St: 11 Dx: 14 To: 13 Ch: 9 //That is, this is the base.

modifiedStat
St: +3 Dx: +16 To: +7 Ch: +0

damagedStat
St: +0 Dx: -10 To: +0 Ch: -14


From here, it would add both modifiedStat's and damagedStat's
differences to your displayed stats. For training purposes, the
game only uses modifiedStat's values. Damaged stats are, for
example, St set to 2 because of a ring of weakness, Wi lowered
because of starvation, etc.

Silfir
03-19-2010, 02:36 PM
My favorite solution would be to make potential maximums hard. If we allow stat potions to raise them, make stat potions rare. ADOM was a save-the-world game where becoming a superhero was quite in line with the setting. JADE doesn't have to go the same route.

Sradac
03-20-2010, 05:38 AM
I agree with you on that Silfir. Heck theres multiple endings where you yourself end up being a god, an avatar, a demi god, etc. JADE in my mind is a much larger world with a lot more "heros" about than adom did. I think it should be EXREMELY hard to get an ending where you achieve that status. Make it the most epic of epic quests to do.


ya know I just had a thought though...

wouldnt it be so awesome to play JADE online with others? They already have online *bands. Of course most of those arent very fun and the real time aspect of it makes it a bit hard to keep up with.

I just think it would be so hilarious to see that Gut worked hard to become a famous character in a certain area of the world, did all this hard work, became lord of some keep, and Grey comes along with his warband of trolls he somehow befriended and knocked all that hard work in the dust.

Dudley
03-20-2010, 06:11 AM
SO THAT'S HOW ANCARDIA WAS CREATED!!! a meeting between the force of chaos and of law.

Silfir
03-20-2010, 08:06 AM
True online JADE (there's already MUDs, after all) won't happen in a million years, but perhaps the ability to export a world for others to play in, including your character?

Sradac
03-21-2010, 04:40 AM
I wouldnt think that'd be too hard, dwarf fortress has that feature and dwarf fortress seems a lot more complex than jade will be. Goes back to the whole persistant world where a previous characters actions can be noticed by new characters made in that world.

Silfir
03-21-2010, 08:58 AM
I was thinking of Dwarf Fortress when I said it, yeah. Dwarf Fortress already does a couple of things JADE is trying to achieve, I think; I haven't tried Adventure mode there yet.

vogonpoet
03-25-2010, 01:26 PM
I am always crap at remembering my dreams, so the details are pretty vague, but I thought I would share this anyway. It was weird.

My dream last night:

I am in some sort of stone building. I become aware of the fact its actually some sort of simulation, not a real building. At some point I get into a discussion with the simulators creator. I can't believe the level of realism. The creator explains its a new version. He invites me outside to look around. We go outside, it looks like Causewayside, a street I used to live in in Edinburgh. We get into a big black car. I realise the creator of the simulation is Tarn Adams. We have a weird discussion about the limits of the simulation, during which I realise that I am actually Silfir. The car drives around the place which looks like Edinburgh, whilst I, Silfir, chat with Toady about whats going on around us.


WTF???

Silfir
03-25-2010, 06:10 PM
I'll say! How did you know you were me? Just... how?!

Elone
03-25-2010, 07:52 PM
TL;DR but to answer the original post, JADE will not be ADOM. What makes you THINK that you'll be able to create a gremlin bomb in JADE, that makes you hurry to "fix it before it breaks the game"? What makes you think that god interaction will be through the piety points, and not some sort of item/favour method? Why arent you more realistic? Your topic is more suitable in the "Release of ADOM source" section, because you're obviously talking about ADOM here, and not JADE, because JADE doesnt have even concepts as gremlin bombing, and the original post clearly shows what he'd do with the ADOM (not JADE) if there were just means to edit it, meaning the source code. Bah, now I remembered why I never read JADE section anymore. I'll stay away til I next forget.

vogonpoet
03-26-2010, 07:18 AM
TL;DR ... Bah...


There are indeed a lot of posts on the JADE forum talking about JADE as if its more like ADOM 2.0 rather than JADE 0.1. Clearly JADE will have ADOM influences, what with being made by the same guy and all, but none of the posts which assume JADE will have the same game mechanics make much sense. Still, in the absense of an alpha JADE release, all we can do is speculate based on what we know, i.e. ADOM, and at least that speculation can theoretically remind the Creator that we are still here, out there, hoping for JADE, as attentive an audience as ever....


Just... how?!

What can I say, it was weird. Day before, I was pondering in the back of mind whether one of the guys making a Dwarfputer over on the Bay12 forums could make a working Conway's Game of Life sim in DF, then I read this thread just before going to bed, and its pretty much your fault alone that I got into DF, and in the dream eventually Toady was addressing me as Silf, and it made sense at the time :D.

Silfir
03-26-2010, 08:35 PM
Oh yeah, the Dwarfputer! That thing is epic. I take it we're both pretty anxious for the new version right now? ;)

vogonpoet
03-27-2010, 04:59 PM
Reasonably anxious yes :D

My current fort is a rather military build - I have just over 100 dorfs (including the queen, stupid early adamantium), about 75 of which are military. I shall keep building up the military, then, once the new version is out, have some HFS related fun.

Anyway, to try and drag this back on topic - I suspect the size and more open ended nature of the JADE world will make a certain level of grinding possible, but I don't care.

ADOM and JADE are single player games, so people should be able to scum as much as they want, if thats what makes them happy. Despite several ring of weakness related deaths, the highest I ever got even one stat in ADOM was probably with a Wi 70ish wizard. I keep on telling myself to do a proper scummy game, wish for or otherwise obtain a RoW, and !oExchange my way to 99 in all stats, but I have never done so, as more anemic PCs are fun. One day though.

SinsI
06-09-2010, 10:02 AM
I think only piety overflow should be eliminated. From everything else, you do gain the benefits, but it is really tiresome to exploit them; it's not like you are in multiplayer, so balance is a non-issue. Just look at uberjackal problem - that's what happens if you try to fix "scumming"!

Rather, there should be easier methods to gain similar benefits without that much hassle - i.e. there should be more (guaranteed) shops, and they must restock instantly after you buy them out;

Dudley
06-09-2010, 12:32 PM
Disagreement :
-If there's more shops which restock immediatly, what's the point of killing monsters?
-Scumming is mostly fine, those who give themselves the pain to scum, well, too bad for them if it bugs. The boringness usually destroys the interest of rewards.

SinsI
06-09-2010, 02:45 PM
Maybe shops should serve as an "exchange" kind of shops? You sell ten items of junk, you get one good item you desire in return. No need to offer it all back to the player.

The problem with fighting scumming is that it actually forces players to use MORE scumming.
Limit on herbs/corpses/crystals of knowledge/potions of balance? Now we have to stairhop in ID, wait for eternity to get enough stomafillia for sacrifice and use gremling bombing - and this is far more tedious and boring. Uberjackals as a way to "fix" grinding actually made the game much less interesting.

P.S. limit on stat increase via Potions of Balance was not a good idea - they are almost as limited a resource as PoGA.

Dudley
06-09-2010, 02:56 PM
Maybe shops should serve as an "exchange" kind of shops? You sell ten items of junk, you get one good item you desire in return. No need to offer it all back to the player.


No, it's really easy to find bad items, and again, people would scum for those "bad" items just to get the good one in the shop. Displacement.



Now we have to stairhop in ID, wait for eternity to get enough stomafillia for sacrifice and use gremling bombing - and this is far more tedious and boring.

If you tell me who FORCES anyone to scumm, he'll rapidly have a vanquisher and an executor planted in his back

vogonpoet
06-09-2010, 03:42 PM
The problem with fighting scumming is that it actually forces players to use MORE scumming.


Dude, if you find yourself having to scum the ID in order to survive your jackal based scumming sessions, then believe me, you are doing something wrong. Very wrong.

There is no need to scum at all in ADOM, its perfectly possible to just advance steadily though the quests, gaining levels as you go, and complete the game.

fazisi
06-09-2010, 07:00 PM
I scum ratlings for gauntlets.

SinsI
06-10-2010, 05:33 AM
Dude, if you find yourself having to scum the ID in order to survive your jackal based scumming sessions, then believe me, you are doing something wrong. Very wrong.

There is no need to scum at all in ADOM, its perfectly possible to just advance steadily though the quests, gaining levels as you go, and complete the game.

If you are playing wizard - yes, if you luck out and find the right books(and ID stairhop is still the easiest way to do it).
But if you are playing an orcish merchant, you need every trick up your sleeve - gold doubling, stairhop for blink dogs, herb farming to get pre/crowned... And uberjackals become a problem because you have no reliable way of quickly dispatching jackalwares.
You can't just "steadily advance" because old monsters have already grown strong and give very little exp, and new monsters that should've replaced them in your kill list are still too strong and are a sure way to die.

JellySlayer
06-10-2010, 06:57 AM
If you are playing wizard - yes, if you luck out and find the right books(and ID stairhop is still the easiest way to do it).
But if you are playing an orcish merchant, you need every trick up your sleeve - gold doubling, stairhop for blink dogs, herb farming to get pre/crowned... And uberjackals become a problem because you have no reliable way of quickly dispatching jackalwares.
You can't just "steadily advance" because old monsters have already grown strong and give very little exp, and new monsters that should've replaced them in your kill list are still too strong and are a sure way to die.

Orc merchant, no ID, no herbs, no gold doubling, gremlin bombs, piety scum or other obvious exploits? Sure, I'll take that challenge.

vogonpoet
06-10-2010, 10:10 AM
I might take it too, if I don't get fed up with merchants soon - as well as my weakest link merchant, I have a dwarven maximum precrowns merchant attempt on the go at the moment as well... the latter is definitely scum-tastic though, by definition :)

JellySlayer
06-14-2010, 09:35 PM
If you are playing wizard - yes, if you luck out and find the right books(and ID stairhop is still the easiest way to do it).
But if you are playing an orcish merchant, you need every trick up your sleeve - gold doubling, stairhop for blink dogs, herb farming to get pre/crowned... And uberjackals become a problem because you have no reliable way of quickly dispatching jackalwares.
You can't just "steadily advance" because old monsters have already grown strong and give very little exp, and new monsters that should've replaced them in your kill list are still too strong and are a sure way to die.

Just for you SinsI: Scum-free Orc Merchant (http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread.php?t=10605).