From the quote it looks like this is working exactly as intended.

How specifically do you feel this is harmful to gameplay? I don't have a particularly strong feelings about this; normally if I end up with more than two or three wishes in a game, the rest get wasted on stupid stuff or never used.

I agree. Changing every item separately was enough to stop wish engines IMO.

For players like me who just like the excitement of dipping their stack of 5-6 rings (there's hardly ever a larger one) when they stumble upon a potion exchange, the additional change described by Blasphemous is too hard.

If you want to really stop wish engines, but leave us the excitement of dipping even after a successful dip, then just grant a single potion of exchange per wish. This was one of the suggestions in the thread linked above. And who would wish for those except when having a wish engine in mind? Drinking them might be nice at the beginning for elves, but hardly worth a wish later in the game.

In the past, I used to be able to squeeze 2-3 extra wishes from ring dipping alone, on top of any I might have found randomly or gotten from pools.

To tell you the truth JellySlayer, you don't need wishes in the game at all.
You don't need 7LB or GoGS, you don't need AoLS or rings of regeneration, no need for concentration, find weakness, gardening or herbalism.
You can run around cursed, doomed, bare ass naked, wield a cursed broken rusty fickle sickle of weakness and still be happy about it.

However most people feel that the above mentioned items make the game more entertaining and enjoyable to play.
They are more eager to battle with more powerful monsters and explore more dangerous areas because of the feeling back in their heads, that they have items to rely on, aside from skills.
Normally, if I get five wishes in a game, I feel content. I will typically wish for 7LBs, AoLS, GoGS, Gardening, Find Weakness, Concentration, eternium-two handed swords...
Usually in this order but it may change depending on which of those items/skills I already have.
It doesn't break the game, I still have to be careful about lich royalty, molochs, mimics, dopple kings and a number of other nasty creatures and their combinations.

Obtaining those items in the game is of course possible but it often happens at a point where you've already been through the parts of the game where you can benefit from them the most.
This is how I play my adom games, if I get at least 5 stackable rings and a potion of exchange, I will dip them.
This is how the change is harmful to gameplay, as it takes away that option, or the purpose thereof.
Sometimes those items or skills are just not available to you from ANY other sources than wishes, when you really need them, or simply like to play with them.
I've had sufficiently many games without a single wish found until D:50, that I know it's doable without them, but not as much fun.

Some people like challenge, some people don't. For some people, getting many wishes and min-maxing their characters is the purpose and the challenge in itself.
That has been taken away from us.

I wouldn't use this (heaven knows, I don't think I've ever ring dipped successfully), but I would still like it changed back such that you can generate multiple RODS in a game. The change to ring dipping such that each ring in a stack was generated separately was a good idea and sufficient to prevent any abuse.

That's precisely my point. The thing with only one rods possible from dipping was overdoing it.

I just mean I find all of those sorts of items without wishes. Usually by the time I leave the Casino, there are absolutely no significant improvements to my gear possible except for rare ego finds or artifacts that wishes can't help with.

I want to find them earlier. In some situations - much earlier.
Access to casino means two things:

1) The fire orb has been recovered.
2) Either RotHK has been obtained or PC can afford to anger the eternal guardian.

Arguably the secondary option is entertained by CKs and very few other chars.
That leaves us with the tower of eternal flames, which is a sort of test for a character at this stage.
I often lack 7LBs, gogs, rings of ice, quadruple fire resistance, enough sources of healing or sufficiently powerful melee or ranged/spell attack to take on the wyrm, hence the need for mentioned items to give me a boost.
Maybe not all of them at once but at least one, usually more.
Gogs can have a huge impact on damage output and 7lb let you outrun dangerous stuff, which pretty much every third monster in the tower.
Ring of ice can protect those two from burning. That's three already. How many times did your character randomly find three such useful items before going to the tower?
I certainly remember no such situations in my games. Hence wishes.
Additionally, a single wish can be carried around in form of RoDS and used in emergency situations in the tower. I know because I've used it like that on several occasions, like ALL wands of digging burning up, no pickaxes found, prayers exhausted on healing.
Don't get me wrong, those items can be obtained without wishes but will they be obtained? Very often the answer is no and you struggle before the tower.
Can the tower be done without them? Of course, but it will be a painful experience.

That's not everything though. My suggested reverting to previous behavior doesn't make the game easier, it doesn't give you an unfair advantage or doesn't kill dangerous and difficult monsters for you.
It only gives you more options and that is ultimately why I posted about this. The change administered by the Creator in regard to RoDS is just plainly wrong because a previous fix already solved the problem, which was dipping 19 useless rings and getting 19 wishes.
That was wrong. The following behavior, with each ring polymorphed separately and independently was a great idea and that's where things should have stopped, as it fixed all the problems.

Apparently, the Creator who himself does not play the game frequently, implemented a "fix" for something that did not require one.
He tried to prevent mechanism abuse that was no longer possible and in the process damaged something else, namely our ability to use a logical and convenient feature - dipping useless rings to get a much more useful wish.
It's only 2-3 rings per game, what problems does it cause? Why not leave it as it was?

If Thomas Biskup reads this thread and tells me that this is actually intended behavior and he considered it thoroughly, with all pros and cons, I will rest my case, accept it and never raise the subject again.
But I doubt that will happen. After all, the players - us - provide the input and in this situation, the response to our input was a misinterpretation.
Just look how many people responded they can't replicate the bug with wish engines still being possible.
That was very much true, the polymorphing change was enough for this, anything more is overkill.

Oh, I dunno, I've made it past the ToEF perhaps 30 times in the past 14 years, and have never relied on dipping rings to do so. Also, there's now a guaranteed RoI in the game.

Heck I did it recently with a hurthling mindcrafter, and again with a dark elf farmer, neither of which are very strong classes. It's all about staging what equipment you have in such a way that you can make it through. Prayers + 10 or so PoEH + scrolls of power, a few wands of cold that you've dipped in booze, potions of invisibility, and some PoCC (you have a few guaranteed from Guth'Alak) or slaying ammo and you can get in, lure the wyrm out, and kill him. You're about to gain access to the Casino, so you should have no reservations about using or saving anything - literally use everything you can on the fight. Scrolls, potions of boost stat, whatever. You may not be able to charge in like a hero slaying everything in your path, but it's certainly possible. I've done it pretty reliably many times, and I'm nowhere near the best ADOM player.

You also now have the Ice Queen domain, so you can level up more before the tower. + at least one guaranteed artifact and plenty of loot from the vault.

Which is all to say, if your game relies on wishes, then you're kind of holding yourself back from all the options ADOM is giving you. I think the current situation is good - it rewards a creative player with the possibility of getting *a* wish from dipping rings, but that's it.

Agree completely with this RFE. The first change made, exchanging rings individually, was enough - I did like having 19 and potentially endless wishes, and made a joke about that in a bug report, but I fully concede it was too good. But yielding one RoDS per savegame is almost going all the way to the other side, and a killjoy for non-obsessed players.

Another similar change that bothers me is limiting precrowns to four or five or whatever it was now. Seriously, if some madman wanted to get 14 precrowns (and I've been that madman), what's the problem with it? It doesn't affect anyone else, and the time and effort wasted spent on the task (not to mention making further gameplay incredibly bland and nonchallenging by entering the CoC at level 50 with 14 artifacts) well balance for it.

I can't honestly say if I've ever had a character who had all three of those items simultaneously for the Tower, but I also can't say I've ever been in a situation where I've felt that those particular items would make the difference between success and failure (well, not having either an RoI or a blanket is pretty tough for some PCs). I definitely have never been in a situation where I lacked some critical tower items, but happened to have a bunch of stacks of identical rings and PoEX lying around.

Well, it obviously does make the game easier, at least for you. You just spent the last two paragraphs talking about how difficult you find the ToEF is without these extra wishes.

I think the current situation is fine. The game shouldn't encourage tedious grinding. If it were unbalancedly difficult to do the ToEF without wishes (which it isn't) the solution would be to balance the ToEF or add more loot, not to reintroduce grindy techniques.

It does affect. It encourages tedium. It makes tedium the optimal way to play. And the fact that "no one forces you to do it" doesn't mean it doesn't affect people who doesn't do it, as this is a game - would you think having a piece that could teleport and move five times a turn would improve chess, because hey, you don't actually need to use it and if some madman wants to do it then more power to him?

I actually think precrowns should be limited to zero and the game would benefit from it. If the player is to have more artifacts, sure, add more surges of power, more vaults - more occasions where she has the opportunity to fight for an artifact, which is fun. Rewarding the player with an artifact for spending half an hour real-life time performing a repetitive action with zero risk is just not interesting.

You asked for an example, I gave you one. I don't find the tower particularly difficult, only tedious and not enjoyable when you don't have certain items.
Sometimes I struggle there and that's it.
Of course ultimately it all boils down to making things easier.
When you find a weapon of devastation, it makes the game easier. When you find a potion of gain attributes, it makes the game easier; when you find random 7LB, it makes the game easier, you see where I'm going with that?
Every item has the potential to make things easier but that's not the point.

The point is that something that had no potential for abuse has been removed from the game and there are no benefits of that for anyone.
Those who didn't dip before, will not start now. Those who did, will still try to get at least that one RoDS.
The only thing achieved with that change was an illogical rule out of the blue, that limits the amount of rods from dipping to one.
No lore explanation for that, nothing.
A new player that discovers what blessed potions of exchange do, will never find out that he can only get one RoDS via dipping and will continue to waste his potions because of a hidden rule that only serves to confuse players.

Seriously, tell me what is the problem here? Why are some of you people so against this? We're talking about 2-3 RoDS from dipping throughout the gameplay with a single char, that it.
It doesn't harm you when you don't use this feature and it doesn't let anybody establish wish engines, no matter how hard they try.
This was at the core of the things - disabling wish engines - at that has been achieved with the polymorphy change. Why take it further?

Al, there is no such thing as optimal way to play. What you say about encouraging the tedious is actually the opposite.
Changes like the one I'm trying to get reverted only serve to encourage tedium, not discourage it.
If I can only get one RoDS from dipping, I will go to extra lengths to get it some other way; those extra lengths will probably equal 30-40 thousand extra turns per game.
How is that not tedium? How does that improve the game?
I don't intend to change how I play because this is my personal optimal way to play, just like everybody else has their own optimal ways.
I just don't like when something (that RFE in my link) is done to affect one group of players without being a tangible improvement of the game for everybody else.

Now, I am much more willing to grind through all the extra R1-R6 caves and clear every vault and every tension room when I'm in need of some items.
If that was indeed the purpose of that RFE, then well done.
With the previous behavior, I had a chance to get what I needed from a dipped RoDS and instead focused on progressing with the storyline rather than treasure hunt.
I was happy when I had three or more wishes in a game and could comfortably play the way I like. That is changed now and I am forced to grind to get what I need to enjoy it.

I don't mind that, I will grind because a part of me likes it. I'm just trying to show you that saying previous RoDS dipping behavior "encourages tedium grinding" is wrong because the effect is exactly the opposite.

The best answer I can give you is one you probably won't be satisfied with, but it's absolutely true;

Because having scummy aspects of a game discourages player improvement.

I know you'll probably say "but nobody is forcing them to use the scummy aspects", which is true, but honestly most players follow the path of least resistance and choose the boring over the exciting when given the chance, and that can degrade their enjoyment of the game.

I'll give you an example: back when herbs were a lot stronger, I used to spend ~30 minutes to an hour scumming herbs in every game, to get my WI/TO/DX up to 26 or 27 and get enough stoma for a pre-crown. I don't know why I did this, I guess I just knew it made the game easier, so I automatically did it.

Now that herbs have been weakened, I no longer spend nearly as much time farming, and will often pass up herb patches until later in the game. This has made ADOM a lot more challenging and interesting, and shortened the amount of repetitive grinding I've done early game. The overall result is a much better game.

The same is true of every scummy option that's been fixed - gremlin bombing, pick pockets, maze mapping, trap placement, etc. (Though a lot of them I never got in the habit of using) It's made scumming less tempting, and overall, it's improved the enjoyability of the game significantly. Instead of getting all the gear you want, you're forced to work with/find new uses for the gear you have, and that in turn allows a deeper appreciation and enjoyment of the possibilities the game offers.

In the case of the =oDS, it's perfect. It rewards a creative player with a ring, while at the same time discouraging scumming. You get the best of both worlds.

I'm sorry to say this but I think you're wrong on virtually all accounts here.

1) In a game as complex as adom, there will always be scummy techniques, no matter how hard you try to eliminate them. Without making the game linear and strategic drops fixed, there WILL BE scumming, period.
2) You need to define "boring", "exciting" and "enjoyment". I always say that each of those game aspects depends on the player and trying to find a common denominator for all of them is both wrong and impossible. It's a waste of effort. There is NO single definition for each of those 3 factors.
3) I don't mind herbs being weakened, as that makes potions of potential stats useful, with potions of potential toughness now a valid wish, that's a good thing. The fact is however that I spend as much time now as I ever did before on farming, more perhaps if I have gardening.
Why? Because I like it. It has tangible benefits. You don't like it - don't do it. But don't try to tell me what is boring or exciting to me, because you have no idea about that beyond the scope of your own characters. Don't apply your standards of enjoyment to other people's style of playing.
4) Define "challenging" and "interesting". I don't think having a panicking ancient chaos wyrm bolt you twice in a single turn and bring you from 190 HP to -20 is a "challenge" or an "exciting" feature. So, I will grind to have means that will protect me from that arbitrarily unfair death.
5) I only tried gremlin bombing once and that was it for me, it felt too much effort was put into establishing a gremlin contraption to generate loot. If there were players that did it and liked the process/effects - that's fine by me, let them do it. Nobody forced me to do it and I didn't mind when others did. It was changed though so what can I say? People seemed to recognize right away it was borderline cheating behavior, just like dipping 19 rings and getting 19 wishes. So the ring dipping has been changed to prevent that exploit.

But why the hell did it need any further changes? Why suddenly one dipped RoDS per character? I can't comprehend the idea behind this, it has no benefits, doesn't improve the game, it increases tedium, it encourages grinding.

Somehow I missed the previous RFE.

So by the endgame I've collected 3 !oEx, I dip my stack of 7 rings of stun resistance and get a RoDS. I'm happy and stash it for emergencies or wish for the cute doggy. I try my luck again with a stack of 6 rings of fire resistance and don't get a RoDS. But it's not my luck, it's a built-in restriction to prevent scumming.

I mean, wow.

Voting to revert to individual polymorphing fix. That change was more than enough. This one feels like a nerf for 10 people that are cool with getting 1000 rings and a killjoy for everyone else who doesn't bother. Not even close to gremlin bombing and herbs level of exploitedness.

If I understand the mechanics of Thomas' anti-wish engine fix correctly, he's removed the possibility of getting RoDS from the first couple of dips after you've already got one. That means getting one wish is no trouble at all (comparatively speaking). One wish is more than plenty to complete the game; the things Blasphemous lists that he likes wishing for are basically superfluous. AoLS or 7LBs are the only items I'd really miss if they didn't show up randomly (which they often do) and neither are essential. (Gardening??)

Of course, no one should feel that they need wishes at all to complete the game, because they don't. ADOM ain't rocket science, and there are plenty of magic items to be found in the normal way. There's always a sub-set of the player base that strongly feels that the methods in-game to create items cheaply, en-masse and with no risk of death are absolutely vital to their enjoyment of the game, and the one that strongly feels exactly the opposite and thinks those scumming methods impair the learning ability of players and promote an inaccurate public image of ADOM as a game. (It's already hard to convince people outside of the ADOM community that have only looked cursorily at the game that winning is not, in fact, 99% based on luck - pretty much the opposite. They're absolutely wrong, but can you blame them for thinking this when so many ADOM players swear by wish engines, precrownings, gremlin bombs etc. as part of their playing routine?) This is pretty much Pick Pockets all over again. These debates will go on endlessly and never be resolved. It's a massive waste of time and spittle and I'm a little afraid that it has gone on too long already and Thomas has already bowed out of reading this thread, judging it correctly to be pointless bickering by a community of obsessives and nerds. (Me most definitely included.)

What I agree with Blasphemous on is that if the goal was to only prevent wish engines from forming at all, even if players had the persistence to collect enough rings to do it, it's a very clumsy fix with an un-fun consequence that kind of goes against valid expectations made by the player. Why should the simple fact that you got lucky once prevent you from getting lucky again? Isn't that what gambling is all about?

Half the work was already done by exchanging the items in a 19-stack individually; to make endless wishing unsustainable, all Thomas had to do was to make potions of exchange a 1-per-wish item. That's not the only alternate solution possible, but I think it's the simplest, and the one that has the least impact on the game in general - the only reason anyone ever wished for PoExes was to make wish engines.

I definitely agree that wishing for potions of exchange should only grant one.
Even now, I don't wish for potions of exchange because I only ever use those I find randomly or buy from a shop.
That has always been enough as 4-5 potions of exchange per game with ~3 stacks of 7-8 rings usually meant I could get a wish or two.
That was perfectly fine I think.
Like _Ln_ said, luck factor has been replaced with a built-in restriction, to prevent scumming which from personal experience I've known to be impossible in the first place, after the polymorphy fix has been implemented.

It's not the first couple. After you get one rods, its impossible to get another using this method. As in - ever.
Why allow the player to be lucky once and then cut him off? That doesn't make sense.

I agree completely with this RFE. The first change made, was enough.

I would vote no. I have never used dipping for rings. Can't be bothered. And I would rather have Thomas and the team work and read about more important things to work on.