Print

Please login or register.

1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever

Login with username, password and session length

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

Okay, here's the idea -- currently the uniques are placed completely randomly. The idea is to make the system control the spawned uniques depending on player actions. In particular, for most unique weapons a given unique weapon can spawn only if the player has X kills in the given weapon class (examples below . So for example:

Code: [Select]

Butcher's Cleaver -- only if player has 10 melee kills
Dragonslayer -- only if player has 100 melee kills
Blaster -- only if player has 50 pistol kills
GCB -- only if player has 100 pistol kills
AFJ, Trigun -- only if player has 200 pistol kills
Assault Shotgun -- only if player has 100 shotgun kills
Jackhammer -- only if player has 200 shotgun kills
Minigun -- only if player has 100 chaingun kills
... etc.

This would need balancing of the rarieties, but I could do that.

Pros : the player would more often get uniques that fit his game, and not get weapons that he can't use (challenge) so often
Cons : the game would be easier, and less fun with finding things you cannot use. Also, there would be taken away the fun of changing the build mid-game because of a nice unique find.

Any other pro's and con's? If you vote, please also state your opinion!

[Captain Trek]

Well on one hand, no one likes finding the butcher's cleaver (except on AoB and sometimes not even then), but on the other, take away the randomness of uniques and you take away the air of mystery and excitement one gets upon reading the "you feel there is something really valuable here" message...

I impulsively voted "yes", but I'm already regretting that decision... Now that I think about it, I think it should only apply to the bottom one or two uniques that everyone can't stand and hates finding... Most of the uniques that can spawn have at least some use for most players and even though I'm sick of getting those bloody phaseshift boots for the umpteenth time, at least they have a useful function...

I think perhaps this idea is a case of taking a bludegon to a problem where a scapal is needed... Rather than force all uniques to only spawn under a specific set of circumstances, one could simply relegate the butcher's cleaver to AoB games only and tweak the RNG slightly so that the other low tier uniques (such as phaseshift boots) spawn slightly less often and the more valuable uniques slightly more often... That way, those phaseshifts would become less annoyingly ubiquitous while making finding something like a BFG 10K or a railgun when you also happen to be able to use it (the only time I found a railgun was on an AoMr game if memory serves) a event that happens "once in a blue moon" rather than "when pigs fly and Hell freezes over"..

[Gargulec]

No, no. no. Please, almighty Kornel, I beg you- do not take the rage of finding Nuclear Plasma Rifle on AoMr from us. Or Railgun. It's the part of the fun, after all.
And it would kill shuc a lovely situation like changing your build in the middle of the game, only because you have foun Jackhammer.

However, my idea is to make uniques spawn on normal levels far less often, but giving them huge chance of appearing on special levels. It could be adjusted, that high-end uniques spawn on Spider Lair, and low-grade on Hell Arena champion or Chained Court. It would make more interesting (wanma uniqes? TAKE RISK!)

[Captain Trek]

By the way, why does the blaster always spawn on level 2 when it spawns?

[Dervis]

I agree with this idea but i'd tackle it differently. Every unique would have a base chance incremented by number of kills. For example:

Butcher's Cleaver - 1% + 0,05% chance per melee kill

Although this would make uniques rather rare in the beginning, by late game the chance of finding a unique weapon you could use would increase a lot. You still might get a unusable unique but that's only because you slacked on the sacrifices to the RNG.

[Blade]

"No" without doubts. DooMRL is a roguelike, at least somehow, and i'd like to see it staying that way (i'd like it to be even more roguelike-ish, without the ability to take some path, like chaingun with EE and SoaB, doing it just as hundred times before, to win. But that's the different talk). Quite often uniques are forcing us to change totally the strategy that we was planning, they bring us a lot of disappointment and happiness, many praises and curses. And you want to take that all away. No no.

[Mr_Dead]

Ditto for what Blade said.

[Zi]

If uniques only spawned if they aligned with your build and strategy, it'd take away some of the variety.  Some uniques (that align best with other certain builds) are nice enough to utilize no matter what your current build is, so they're a joy to encounter.

Sure it's a disappointment when you come across something that's not useful given your current strategy (or worse, something that's never useful), but that's part of the game, the highs and the lows.  It makes finding the good ones that much sweeter.  And the player shouldn't learn to rely on finding a unique to win the game (although I will admit it definitely boosts one's chances).

The current system in place is pretty good, if it remained the same I would have no complaints.  (Buff the railgun, among other things, though.)

Dervis's suggestion is pretty good too - still mostly random but slightly more favorable to the player, but I'd want the INITIAL chance for uniques to spawn remain the same as before.

I'd also be in favor of a system where the chance of spawning a unique increases for every previous level in which a unique was NOT spawned until one is spawned (and the chance resets).  This "smooths" out the randomness a bit, and will give hope to a player currently going through a barren run.

[Behrooz Wolf]

I like the general idea of making uniques more useful, but only if there's still a significant level of randomness-- the player should not always get something that would be perfect, but it should be very rare for a completely useless unique to spawn, and if a unique does spawn, at least a 50/50 chance that it'll suit your current playstyle.

To that end, I propose a weighted random spawn generator, which can be altered by kill ratios, challenge modes, traits, and previously generated uniques.

For example, at level 1, start off with an evenly weighted selection process, one chance for each unique, selected from a random bucket,  giving a 1/23 chance of getting any of the 23 uniques.  As the player plays, the chances are altered. 

The effect of the weighting should be dependent on the degree to which any situation affects their gameplay options.

• Player starts with AoMR?  That's a big restriction that makes a lot of uniques useless, so we'll go with a big weighting change, +4 chances each to blaster/GCB/AFJ/Trigun spawn and -2 chances for non-pistol weapons.
• Player chooses Ammochain?  +5 chances to minigun, (assuming minigun works with ammochain) -1 chance for pistol-category uniques that nobody will bother with, +2 chances for non-phasing armor.
• AoB game?  -10 chance for non-melee weapons, +2 chances for melee weapons +1 chance for phaseshift/malek armors
• Player chooses Brute?  +5 chances to melee uniques
• Player has an armor unique in inventory?  -1 chances to armor uniques.
• Player is killing a lot with rockets?  +5 chances to missile/rev launchers.
• Shottyman?  +5 chances to pancor/assault shotgun
• Triggerhappy?  +5 chances to rapid uniques
• Hellrunner?  +1 chance to non-gothic armor uniques
• TaN?  +1 chance to armor uniques
• Fireangel?  +10 chances to missile/rev/AFJ/BFG10k
• SoAG?  +2 chances to pistol uniques

The difficult part comes in balancing the weightings, but I feel that a general guideline could look like this:
~50% chance of getting a unique that fits your current playstyle well.
<10% chance of getting something completely useless/unusable.

I'm also in favor of adding weird minor skews to some traits to encourage more random playstyles-- like eagle eye giving +1 chances to missile launcher and phase boots or ironman giving +1 chances to any unique that regenerates ammo.  Oh, and this weighting system should be at least mostly unknown to players.  Life is just more fun when you get a useful unique, let 'em enjoy it without worrying much about how it happened.

[Jimmy]

One of my favorite things in Doomrl is finding a unique that makes me decide to either: 1. adjust my build, even if some already selected traits become less useful or useless, or to 2. skip the unique.  Also, one reason I like shotguns is that they work well with generalist builds in the early game, so you can start with your weapon effectiveness traits after finding a unique (if you find one relatively early) without having already having had to do so just to survive. 

For these and other reasons I am completely against less random unique generation.

[Vestin]

However, my idea is to make uniques spawn on normal levels far less often, but giving them huge chance of appearing on special levels. It could be adjusted, that high-end uniques spawn on Spider Lair, and low-grade on Hell Arena champion or Chained Court. It would make more interesting (wanma uniqes? TAKE RISK!)

I second that. Also - at least one place should have a guaranteed random unique.

[ParaSait]

I agree with this idea. What about you also make it dependant on your general achievements in player.dat? You must've had at least X kills in total with a sort of weapon, before a unique of that sort starts spawning. Just an idea.

EDIT: Thinking of it, IMHO my idea only would be even better.. Then you actually kind of "unlock" spawning of certain uniques, rather than letting some higher mind place it for you, who observes which is your favourite weapon :p Also with my idea only it would still keep the variation in uniques... Now it would be ONLY pistollikes, ONLY shotgunlikes, ONLY chaingunlikes,...

EDIT 2: The bad thing here would then, if someone in general ALWAYS goes for a certain build, he's got about the same assurance, that wouldn't be fair either :S
Bah, I'm just thinking out loud you know :)

[Gargulec]

Gosh, PLAIN NO! NO! NO! <smashes non-random type unique generator lovers skulls with Gothic Armour). Please, leave it as it is. Please!

[ParaSait]

Gosh, PLAIN NO! NO! NO! <smashes non-random type unique generator lovers skulls with Gothic Armour). Please, leave it as it is. Please!

Yes, in a sense I do agree with you either... Kornel's idea would be kinda cool, but on second thought it could take a serious bite in balance, and also the "ooh I hope I'll like it" part will be gone, cause you're always sure you're gonna like it... You know

[Zi]

If every unique was nice enough that players would be happy finding them no matter what build they were doing, then this together with totally random unique generation would be truly ideal.  Right now only a subset of the entire group of possible uniques work with every build (special armors and boots, missile launcher, pancor jackhammer, etc), or are good enough to encourage players to change their builds to accommodate them (grammaton, assault shotgun, etc), so finding the uniques not included in such lists leads to disappointment.