In all honesty, I'd much rather get locking armor in the early game rather than mid-game. It's pretty easy to get rid of it in the early game because most armor is leather, cloth or iron so it's just a trap away from removal. By mid game though if you are still equip iding armor it's pretty stupid and you may be stuck with a crystal item for a long time.

In all honesty. What the hell are those instant changes? His rant was obviously put in a good way to describe the complexity of the game and all the possible dangers that can occur. You just removed one of them for no apparent reason.

Auto-locking is just auto-cursing armor. If you have access to an altar it should be easy to remove (holy water or prayer). Trapped armor is the type that isn't possible to remove even when uncursed.

Changing the rules on whether equip-id'ing armor is safe depending on character level is really weird in any case.

I'm with the players above as to this change not being really necessary, but really this has to do with player experience, not PC experience. What about changing the formula to having 10 entries in the highscore, instead of the PC being above a certain level?

While the concern about making the game easier accessible to new players is good and sympathetic, trapped armor is not nearly the most pressing issue.

The biggest two newbie putoffs are probably:

1. It is very hard to find out what altars are for by yourself; some more in-game hints might help.

2. Waldenbrook is very easily angered and if you ever sold him an artifact, he will destroy you with ease.

Regarding the second problem, what really makes it bad is that dwarves take offense from being switched around, while the new autoswitch feature makes accidents nearly inevitable.

Actually I think there is a feature request for the latter somewhere. Anyway, these are probably the two biggest newbie frustrations in the game right now.

As others said, trapped is the problem, auto-locking is fine.

My problem with it is that it disincentivises trying out armors. The vast majority of armors in my games go unchecked and this is a significant factor for me.

I hate trapped so much I proposed removing it completely, although this was unpopular (http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3022).

(would auto-locking make more sense renamed 'auto-cursing'?)

Wow. That seems kind of reactive. Are gaunts of peace included? Ring of fish? Door traps... Maybe put the handholding stuff into exploration mode?

Hmmm, I'm not sure we should be removing stuff because of one guy getting mad at a game mechanic. I don't think this should be necessary.

Pls,can Creator add some "wack mode" for new players?or give em one aols,if they suffer ingame...

What!? And why don't you remove some nasty monsters like Vortices, stuff 'of devastation and mayhem', don't make shopkeepers attack until level 15, restrict going into ID and CoC to way deep, make all invisible stuff seen?
No, seriosly, if being pissed of once is a problem - it's juat not a game you would be able to play. If it happens consistently better idea would be tweaking the chamces of cursed, good and bad items based on your luck, progress, difficulty and whatever else.

Wow, I might be the only one to agree with this then. :) What's with all the "well, you should remove x instead" ..that's not really an argument, except for another RFE.

..surely it's good to encourage trying armour in the early game? I don't see any real downside to removing auto-locking armour from the early game.

Not sure what specifically you are referring to, but "why not remove x too?" is a rhetorical question from the perspective of x being a thing that shouldn't be removed. It's an argument for neither auto-locking nor x to be removed, not for both to be removed.

Amazing opposition :-)

So let's try it the other way around: Why is it a good thing to keep the auto-locking feature in the early game? What do you learn from it?

(and if someone asks: why is it a good idea to have it in the game at all, my response would be: "Because it adds a challenge". Why not early on? "Because new players should be tempted to experiment with items to learn more about the game - having cursed ones at all already poses a significant challenge. But the original poster in the forum convinced me that this feature is particularly disappointing for players learning the game because you don't see it coming... and why not remove vortices, traps or other polemic requests? Because they are part of the inherent challenge - if you fear traps or monsters, don't play a roguelike game).

You learn that it can be dangerous to try on unidentified items, even if they are uncursed. This would be true even if you completely removed auto-locking armor from the game. Rings of the fish, rings of doom, rings of weakness, gauntlets of peace, amulets of hunger, and trapped armors are all impossible to avoid just by looking at their B/U/C status. Such items also add value to the Appraising skill, which would otherwise be worthless after an altar is found. After a few games, new players can figure out various solutions to the auto-locking/trapped armor problem that become obsolete later on in the game: intentionally triggering traps to destroy armor, avoiding unidentified armor if it's likely to be worse than your current armor, using rust monsters to destroy iron armor, praying for uncursing, or even praying until worn equipment is destroyed.

Digging yourself out of a hole (or skirting the edge) is usually more fun and interesting than everything going smoothly. Note that the frustrated player who prompted this RFE still seemed to be having fun, and didn't give up on his character (or ADOM).

If we remove auto-locking from early game armours, we should remove sickness & dooming from early game pools. Risk assessment is a core gameplay element, as is the competition between rolling the die early hoping to get lucky (notice the guy in question had a mayhem weapon and slaying missile), or hanging on to something until later and having your bases covered (a nearby altar in case of pools, a means of id'ing/uncursing in case of gear).

It seems a bit reactionary to start worrying about 'harsh' things discouraging people from playing, given that the game is built around such experiences. I'd interpret the fact that he wrote that post at all as signaling that he is invested in the game. Taking these things out of the game will just rob the community of interesting anecdotes.

Grond said it very well. In addition to what he already mentioned, I'd like to point out that drinking unidentified potions or reading unidentified scrolls are likewise risky moves.

So yes: the lesson is that using items before identifying them is risky. Although it can still be worth the gamble. Assessing when to risk using unidentified items is one of the major skills you develop as an ADOM player. Also please note that the player explicitly said in his latest post in his thread that he was being humorous and it was not his intention to ask for the feature to be changed.

In a way I would say you answered your own question :p it's part of the inherent challenge. I think it is better to learn from your mistakes and think "I should be more careful about wearing or drinking unknowing items in the future".

In additiin to what has been already said. This removes one of early-game challenges entirely. And it doesn't encourage players deal with challenges and not to get too way attached to their character (correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there even an achivement for the first death?).

Another thing to bear in mind, there are a lot of challenges which might screw the player: river on the way, nasty swamp ambush, 1st curruption if it's mana battery, poison hands or stiff muscles, undentified wand of bouncing bolt, paralasys or other matters to die instantly, altars if someone scarifices you or god gets mad on you companions that might turn on you, doom condition with all the consequences.

Finally, why don't you just tweak possibility rather than remove entirely or even make it level in-game progress and difficulty dependant. For any challenge, not just for this one.

For the record, I agree with this change completely, for the reason already stated by Thomas and shockeroo: auto-lock ignored the B/U/C status of an item, so there's virtually no way to tell what it is without a scroll of identify, which itself often remains unidentified or unusable until level 8 or so (even longer for illiterate characters). Additionally, if it's a quality item (e.g. non-cursed, non-cloth), it will likely get you killed before it's destroyed by natural means. Skewing risk management this badly completely disincentivises wear-ID'ing in early game, which is more fun and important than having tacked-on challenge where it doesn't belong. Trapped armor isn't bad per se, but it does make a lot more sense to encounter at a time where you can have countermeasures for it (e.g. affordable means of identification and worn item destruction).