I've never done a wish engine, and don't think I will, but I support this, partly because the current behavior is unintuitive.

Originally: I dipped 10 rings (of one type) in a PoEX and got 10 rings (of the same new type). You try this once, the rule is clear, and you're done. However, almost everyone agrees it was too powerful and was easy enough to encourage scumming for it.

The supposed fix: I dipped 10 rings (of one type) in a PoEX and got 10 rings (each of which could be different types). You try this once, the rule is clear, and you're done. Nobody seems to think this was too powerful. Perhaps it allows a scumming outlet and I agree that people will often gravitate towards easy scumming - but Archmage is total scumming and I don't see people asking to remove that. At worst, changing wishes to give only one PoEX would fix this.

The actual change: Once I get an RoDS via this, I can never get one again? That's going to *look* like bad luck to a player, it's not intuitive at all.

Adom has enough complicated obscure mechanics already - and I like a lot of them when they add interesting gameplay. I do not feel this one does, so I think it should be reverted so that you *can* get multiple RoDS from PoEX dips, even if it's hard because wishes only grant 1 and because each ring can be a different type.

That's exactly how it works right now. Completely illogical and misleading.

That's ok. :)

Well, yes. If I wanted every item in a certain set I could just scum the ID for a long time. And if I wanted loads of wishes, I could become an archmage and wish for everything I wanted. Or mine out 50 levels of the ID and smith up my armor to the point where I'm practically invulnerable. Or...

I think the main point I have is that scumming, where it exists, should be difficult and time consuming, or even dangerous. The point of the "hunger clock" - i.e, literal hunger in Rogue, the ghost in Spelunky, corruption and the 90/180/whatever day limit in ADOM - is to discourage such techniques so you have to balance acquiring all possible resources vs. running out of time.

Dipping rings repeatedly for the hopes of multiple wishes kind of defeats that. So does pickpocketing thousands of gremlins, or killing thousands of them with traps, or scumming herbs for a quick pre-crown. It basically breaks the game difficulty-wise, and can lead to people thinking they *need* to do those things to succeed, because they never learned how not to.

That's true, and I'm sorry if I can across as overbearing with that - your definition of enjoyable is just as valid as mine. I would say, in ADOM, I define "enjoyable" as finding new and exciting ways to overcome challenges. I don't particularly mind dying, since most of the time winning isn't really a huge priority, and I can always start over with another character. I will often just quit a character if I find they've become boring or hit a dead end. I find using the same cheap tricks or repetitive scumming as "boring."

I don't see how it increases tedium or encourages grinding.

Perhaps a message indicating that it only happens once could suffice, since that seems to be the main objection now.

But we are talking about 2-3 wishes, not dozens like with gremlin bombing or any of the previous scumming methods. Please don't compare mechanisms that are way out of scale to this.
If you are a lucky and diligent "dipper" then you may get perhaps 5 RoDS in a game using dipping alone. That's still way out of gremlin bomb league.

At some point nothing surprises you in this game, unless it's a newly added feature. At that point, different things become interesting and challenging.
Old challenges become tedious because you know exactly how to beat them. The problem that I'm addressing in this thread is that TB removed a flexibility option that allowed the game to retain some of it's appeal despite knowing it very well.
Take the ancient chaos wyrm for example. One can defeat it with dragon slaying missiles, if you have them. Another way is frost or magic bolt or ice ball, for which you need a book, arguably a wand with many charges. Yet another is 7LB and +speed items that give you the option to hit and run.
Another choice is opened with girdle of giant strength and high PV, which allow you to face the wyrm toe to toe. On another occasion, you may just choose to throw a potion of cure corruption at it and finish it off with any of the above methods.
My point is that it is right now entirely dependent on items you find or more importantly - items you don't find.
Having the option to use wishes makes this a flexible situation and you can do it the way you like instead of being forced to whatever RNG thinks is best with its item drops.
When I'm playing a duelist and don't find a good weapon ANYWHERE, then am I expected to resort to missiles, wands of cold or potions of cure corruption, just because RNG decided I'm not going to be a full time duelist?
We're talking about as important a battle as the one at the top of the tower. In that case I should have played an archer or a wizard if everything boils down to that.

Instead, I used to have the third option - ring dipping. I'd get 2-3 wishes - two or three tops - and get a nice one handed weapon, some piece of armor to have a safe PV margin and head to face the wyrm in direct melee combat, like a duelist is supposed to.
This is what I'm talking about, this is why I will grind and scum much longer than before and waste my time on treasure hunting - to get the same things and play my duelist as I want to play, not as RNG forces me to.
(For those who like to pick on details, duelist is just an example, one of many, that shows the general idea)
The challenge really shifted from getting enough stackable rings and potions of exchange - which in itself was an effort - to grinding through endless dungeons to find what I need in order to play comfortably.
It's no improvement, and rather quite the downgrade of gameplay quality.

No, I disagree. Message or no message, the mechanism is wrong in principle.
Dipping shouldn't be restricted to one RoDS per character, that is my main objection.
It's illogical and counter-intuitive. It's an overkill and was intended as a fix to a non-existent issue.
That is why I advocate reversing it.

Ok, if it's really just about wanting 2 or 3 wishes for every game, then just make an rfe for a game mode option that lets you start with a WoW. Or find one in Dwarftown I guess. The game is becoming customizable at this point, there's no need to rely on abusing an obscure game mechanic to make it enjoyable. I mean, heck, Nethack has a guaranteed wand of wishing halfway through the game. (I think it makes everything thereafter boring, but whatever, different strokes for different folks) But getting multiple wishes from dipping is an abuse of a game mechanic, there's no denying that or getting around it. And it was clearly unintended - because TB changed it once he realized how it could be abused.

I've had this argument with Stingray too about different issues, and my point is always the same: keeping buggy features in the game because it's popular to exploit them is bad design. It's like complaining about how trap randomization made the minotaur maze more difficult, so it should be brought back. Instead, TB did something to compensate - he made the prize better.

Likewise, if you really feel the creator fixing a broken mechanic has made the game less fun, then that's fine! But request something else be done to restore that balance instead of asking him to break it again. So, request a quest for a WoW, or some other way to get those wishes you need.

Finally, this isn't really a bug report, it's an RFE. Which is why I voted "no" - as far as we can tell, the game mechanic is now working exactly as described and how the creator intended it to, so it's hardly a bug.

It's not a buggy feature. It was a normal, perfectly logical feature. How is dipping 9 rings of the fish and among others, getting a RoDS a buggy behavior?
Then getting a stack of 8 rings of cold and dipping again and once more getting a RoDS? I'm not advocating bugs but this is no bug.
You can get 2 rings of slaying +9 that will arguably make the game MUCH easier, but nobody is calling that a bug or an abuse, because it's not. Same with RoDS.
I never liked trap patterns being predictable and I think that change improved the game.

This was not a broken mechanic. That's what I've been saying all along. You can get any other type of ring as many times as you want but you can only get rods once? <- that is a broken mechanic.
His fix made it broken because before that, it worked perfectly fine. I'm asking him to fix a broken mechanic, not break something that works.

The important thing here: Of all the people who stated that the additional fix was unnecessary and harmful, nobody did so just to have more wishes in the game.
Therefore the whole discussion on how many wishes there should be in a game does not really belong here. And frankly, suggestions such as "then just go and request a wand of wishing" etc are just putting words in somone's mouth to conceal the real topic.

Because this is not simply about getting wishes, it's about retaining excitement throughout the whole game.

It's the exact same reason I upvoted the "shields should have suffixes" RFE, even though I knew that they are super strong (maybe too strong) already. The point was, you just don't pick them up anymore, because you can't improve anymore. Unlike weapons, where I still draw a lot of excitement from even late in the game and after having found a penetration or devastation suffix. There can always be a better one and that's what keeps me interested in picking up and identifying them. So I would have loved to see that for shields and of course would have been ok with nerfing them to make up for it. The people now replying "ah, they just want more wishes" now remind me of the people going "ah, they just want even more powerful shields" back then.

I just don't want to walk past potions of exchange thinking "ah, already done that" just like walking past so many items that don't mean anything anymore late in the game. I want to pick it up, bless it, dip a small stack of rings, probably get crappy rings in return and walk on, but those few seconds of excitement are worth a lot to me. Because it could have been a ring of djinni summoning, just like every weapon I pick up can be the super double affix weapon I always dreamed of.

Long story short, I don't need the wish itself, but I need the possibility to get it, and I don't care how small that possibility is, as long at it will be there. The few seconds of excitement, the small increase of my heartbeat, that worth a lot more than the wishes themselves, should I really get them.

Dogbreath, this bug/RFE doesn't dispute the necessity of making wish engines impossible; it just argues that Thomas chose a crappy way of doing it. Playing a dungeon crawler is a lot like gambling. You want to keep pulling the lever and get sweet stuff. Getting lucky once just motivates you to keep playing. Artificially restricting the possibility of RoDS generated after you hit the jackpot once is akin to a betrayal. Getting lucky once shouldn't prevent you from getting lucky again. There were and still are much more elegant ways of making wish engines impossible. (I have yet to read any kind of argument that making PoEx 1-per-wish would not work.)

I was initially tempted to go off on Blasphemous in a very similar manner, what with him making the "you don't know the average gamer's plight" argument towards JellySlayer, but he's got a point. Getting lucky once should not prevent you from getting lucky again. Read Harwin's summary of the topic, it gets the point across cleanly and in very few words. And not by repeating the same sentence over and over.

Um, it's been pretty much all Blasphemous has been talking about. About how one wish isn't enough and he'd rather have "2 or 3 tops" in order to make the game fun for him. Seriously, read his posts. I honestly don't see why 2 or 3 rings is exciting and 1 ring isn't, if the point isn't to get more wishes. Which is exactly his point. The entire time he's been talking about how he wants more wishes pre-ToEF and why 1 won't cut it. So please don't say I'm putting words in anyone's mouth or trying to conceal anything. I'm doing my best to address his concerns as he's presented them, while being polite and respectful.

Silfir: Yes, I agree with you here. :) I read your post earlier and don't really have any issue with how your logic.

That being said, there are plenty of things you can only do once. Throw a potion of uselessness on D:49, get an artifact. Throw 20 more, nothing. A little more meta - you would think being rewarded by your diety for doing something out of the box would happen more than once, so you start trying really bizzarre things. Nothing else ever happens like that.

Find the SIL, leave, never find it again.

Likewise, get one RoDS from dipping, then that's it. Maybe there's only one in the pocket dimension all the rings get shuffled in. Worst case scenario? You waste a few PoExes. I already recommended using a message to warn the player, and got shot down. (Because wishes!) Like "you feel a strange disturbance in the fabric of the universe... you doubt you'll ever find this again." Or maybe, upon generating a RoDS your diety: "very clever mortal! One shall be enough I think." Or something better.

I consider "broken" to mean "does not work as intended." This mechanic obviously isn't broken, it works exactly as the programmer intended it to. :) (read his notes, they're pretty clear) Whether you dislike it is a different matter, but I really don't think you're in the right to keep insisting this is a bug. It's obviously not. And it's kind of weird that you keep insisting it is.

Again, to be clear, I'm not saying you shouldn't suggest this as an RFE or that you can't disagree with various features in the game. I disagree with plenty of them and have my own changes I want made. :) Just that your insisting that, somehow, you understand ADOM better than the man who made it, and a feature he designed and implemented is a bug (rather than a feature you want changed) is either arrogant or a little delusional. It wouldn't even be a big deal if you weren't so strangely insistent about it.

Ok then I'll cut to the main thing: Thomas implemented a change that aimed to remove wish engines.
He failed to notice that wish engines have already been rendered impossible by the polymorphy change and his new RFE, that notably he himself posted, only affected players negatively.

Yes, I mentioned wishes specifically but Silfir and Cactus captured the essence of this all - the excitement of possibility.
Notice how few potions of exchange are found in the game and how rare a stack of ~10 rings really is in the process of normal gaming.
I'm not asking for hell knows how many wishes handed to me on a platter.
Dipping used to fail me more often than not and I would simply go on without wishes, those were perfectly enjoyable and legitimate games.
I wasn't lucky but next time I might be.
This bug (and I refuse to call it anything else) replaced "not lucky this time" with "lucky once and never again, just because".
That is wrong.

For fifteen years or something at least, you were perfectly able to get more than one RoDS from dipping. If the restriction was put in for flavor and setting reasons and already came with a message along those lines, we would be talking about another thing entirely. But as far as what Thomas actually said or did goes, this was intended to be a fix to prevent wish engines from forming and nothing else. The potential defenses you've thrown up are baseless suppositions. Sure there are things in the game that you can only do once, but getting magic items is not one of them. If you found 7LBs, you can still find more 7LBs. If you found WoWis, you can still find more WoWis. If you found a RoDS, you can still keep finding RoDS. The big exception are artifacts. And RoDS are not artifacts. One thing the game has never done up to now is adjust item generation rates based on what was already generated, or even take items out of the pool entirely.

Getting lucky once should not prevent you from getting lucky again. It's never done before in ADOM and there is no reason it should now.



@Blasphemous: Wish engines weren't made impossible by the initial PoEx change, they just required a whole lot more rings. You used to be able to collect one stack of 19 rings and reuse that over and over; with the change each time 19 identical rings were dipped, they were turned into separate rings of much smaller stacks. But you could still get the numbers, and keep up the wishing process indefinitely with wished-for PoExes, if you had the patience to gather more rings to form 19-stacks again and again. Thomas had this pointed out to him (if I read things right) and so made the change we're disagreeing with right now. So we do need to address alternate solutions, and the most-suggested and still uncontested one is making PoExes 1-per-wish.

You have my full support for one poex per wish, just like it is with poga.
Potions of exchange are powerful and useful as it is.

However, I disagree with your assessment of wish engines.
I had an archmage in r46 or around that time, before the current implementation.
I tried establishing a wish engine with rings and potions and after using the spellbook to wish for 200 poex and over 1,5k brass rings and dipping everything, I ended up with ~50 rods and a great number of stacks of 2-5 rings.
In normal gameplay, you could never reach that amount.
50 is a finite number that could never be turned into an actual engine like dipping 19 rings and getting 19 rods.
Polymorphy on a "per ring" basis effectively eliminated wish engines.

In the past, it was all about getting that first stack of 19 rods. From there, more rods was just a matter of time.
After polymorphy fix, you could not increase the chances of getting more rods simply because dipping a stack once diluted it to stacks of 2-3 rings.
You'd have to somehow get ~200 rings and a tenth that amount of poex to even think about getting ~10 rods out of it.
That is no wish engine and it equals simply killing monsters and collecting the loot for a long time.
You will eventually get as many wishes as you need but that is far from a wish engine.
It simply rewards with nice items the excess time you put into playing, and lowers the score dramatically for late ending.

From the quote in the OP, it is quite clear that this fix was designed to do more than prevent wish engines.

"Wish farmers are out of luck" was the critical phrase for me. Farming implies sustainability.

In this fix, there is no middle ground between farmers and one timers, while there should be.
Sustainability in my book means that once you obtain something, you can obtain it again using the same method.
But the resources, such as stacks of rings and potions of exchange are finite in a given time of playing a character, hence there is no sustainability.

I think someone calculated how many rings you need to sustain the wish engine with each item polymorphing and it was somewhere in hundrerds.

Basically, to create a sustainable wish engine, you need to create a whole bunch of items from some source. As ADOM is right now, you need to perform some reeeeeeeeally extensive farming to set it going.

Therefore, it is rightfully the fix to kill "wish farmers". Unfortunately, "wish farmers" are probably calculated just about in tens. From a purely technical standpoint, removing RoDS from PoEX will void about 10% of the whole farming required to get a wish engine.

Now, ask yourselves, is this a positive thing to remove a chance to get, say, 3 RoDSes in the endgame (there is no other way to get an even remotely usable stack of rings and potions)

For the reference, I will add an endgame inventory snip from the last char of mine on the server (being a packrat I carry everything with me, especially rings).
That's about 50 rings I've collected in 71k turns. There are two stacks of rings that have a somewhat remote chance of giving me a RoDS. Why would a fix for a few extreme people out there that play ADOM in a really obscure way (and by that I mean restocking shops, grinding BDC) prevent me from getting 2 RoDSes out of two stack of 5-6 rings in an epic surge of luck?

No real reason, honestly. I think stuff like ring dipping can be fun and exciting, and I see no problem with your scenario. (End of the game, holy shit, 5 RoDS! It makes for an awesome YAVP)

My issue is with what Blasphemous describes, scumming for rings and PoEs so s/he can have 2 or 3 guarenteed wishes for the ToEF. At that point (especially if you're a newer player) you begin to feel the need to repeat those same scummy actions over and over in order to progress past a certain point, and it becomes something of an issue. I've mentioned how herbs and the belief I needed 25 toughness and dexterity held me back for a long time, until I later learned how to do without, and my enjoyment and skill level both improved considerably. Well, all good games (or at least, Roguelikes) have this: mechanics by which you're coaxed along and progressively forced to become better and better to progress further. In Tetris, the blocks fall faster. In Rogue, you get hungry. In Spelunky, a ghost appears and chases the player. More complex games have more nuanced mechanics. ADOM has several interworking and progressive mechanics that work remarkably well, which is probably why it's so great and fun to play. I.e, beginning mechanics like hunger, money, sickness, poison, and traps get solved right around when more advanced mechanics are introduced, like corruption, equipment challenges, boss monsters, etc, and they all work pretty well to progressively improve you as s player until the late game. (Which I think needs a little more work)

I'll be the first to admit I don't think this is a big deal, or anywhere near as important as, ssy, gremlin bombing or stairhopping or herb stat scumming or what have you. My opposition is based on principle (good gameplay mechanic vs bad gameplay mechanic), and mostly because I'm opposed to the sort of scumming Blasphemeous describes.