Re: [Crawl-ref-discuss] Too many inventory items these days, meld some

[David P. <dp...@ma...>]

On Tue, 30 May 2017, Nicholas Feinberg wrote:

> !resist is also a very inelegant (bad?) design, for similar reasons!

I think we have quite incompatible concepts of elegance! Perhaps it is 
worthwhile working out the differences.

In my world, consumables can get by with almost everything: as long as 
they're useful in certain cases, the limited access will do the rest.

Some items that have been added over the years: fog, fear, summoning, 
lignification. All of these feel like good design to me.

As you know, I'm about decision making. Consumables have an easy time with 
that. But there are nuances: I think the recent change from the three 
mutation potions (!mutate, !benemut, !curemut) to just a single potion not 
only reduced item types, but it actually improved choice making. It's 
still not perfect but you do have to compare your !mut stack against your 
current mutation set (with its good and bad sides) and evaluate. Much 
better than what it used to be.

This is why I think talking about individual items, and perhaps if/how 
they could be combined, is a good way forward. By contrast:

>> On Tue, 30 May 2017, Nicholas Feinberg wrote:
>>
>> If you want to reduce inventory item types to reduce inventory pressure, I
>>> would strongly consider just removing types, rather than combining them
>>> willy-nilly.

Apart from the willy-nilly which I've said enough about, I am afraid that 
this is unpractical: it probably just won't work because of the usual 
chain: discussion, disagreement, nothing happens.

In DCSS, we have *added* a few item types (rods, elemental evokers, 
scarves). We have never outright removed one.

To end on a constructive note: I could imagine (in the sense, I could've 
made this proposal) the following:

* combine !might and !brilliance into one potion
* give !agility also a Stealth bonus

My reasoning is that current !might and !brilliance have almost orthogonal 
use cases. We can combine them into one, making them rarer and providing 
exactly the same interesting decisions as now with one less item.

To me, !agility is the odd one out, as it seems to be more defensive. I am 
not a very good player, but that's my experience. Giving it a thematically 
fitting Stealth boost would open new use cases.

(And I believe that !res should give MR+ but that's for another day.)

Cheers,
David