gorboth wrote:So, Cherek, in making it simpler like this, are you advocating that magic items would be switched so that they NEVER save? Meaning, we do away with the glowing mechanic entirely?
I am not sure how popular it would be for us to make magic items never glow. Or ... maybe I'm wrong?
G.
Well you could make it so they never glow, but I think my other option is better. That, is magic items can still save over Armageddon just like they do now. But only over Armageddon - once. They never save when you _quit_. That is the confusing part now, and is only ever used by newbies who don't know better. Right now these items save once when you quit, and then lose their saving properties. Thich is both a confusing feature for new players, and a frustrating thing for old players who accidentally quit with something glowing on them, and mess it up so it won't save over Armageddon instead.
I think magic items should still have the same randomness whether if they save over Armageddon or not, but perhaps we should simply adjust the "glow" thing so it's not confused with the forever glowing non-magic items. Below is my suggestion.
This is what happens when you type "save":
Herbs, gems, spell components, food, etc
They GLOW, meaning they save when you quit, and they also save over Armageddon, forever. So, just like it is now, but remove the three months limit on these items (if it's still in place?) That limit does nothing good anyway. I can't remember if Mercade removed it completely or just made it a very long limit though. but we should check that to make sure they save forever.
All your NON-MAGICAL items
They GLOW, meaning they save when you quit, and they also save over Armageddon, forever, until the break of course. Then they stop saving.
Your MAGICAL items that save over Armageddon
They have a FAINT GLOW, meaning they will NOT save when you quit, but they will save over Armageddon. (These are the magical items that glow today and have the "it looks like it will last a while"-message in their description)
Your MAGICAL items that do not save over Armageddon
They FAIL TO GLOW, just like today. Meaning they will NOT save when you quit and will NOT save over Armageddon.
So magical items stay exactly the same as now, except they will never save when you quit, and we now differentiate between stuff that saves when you quit, and stuff that saves over Armageddon.
So it would look something like this:
Code: Select all
Saving Cherek.
A soft leather backpack (open), 14 small red berries, a sharp sword, a wooden buckler, and a brown leather armour glow briefly.
A blue dragonscale armour emits a faint glow.
An ancient mithril chainmail fails to glow.
This makes it very easy to see what saves when you quit, what saves over Armageddon only, and what does not save at all. It's also easy to explain in help files and when new players ask. And it makes perfect sense gamedesign-wise. You can get decent stuff to keep forever, but the really good stuff has more limits and drawbacks. Exactly like you would expect. So, people aren't likely to complain as much about this approach, and even if someone dislikes it, the new players wont get exposed to magical stuff until later in the game anyway, so it won't be an issue until they're hooked anyway.
And, from a story viewpoint it's also logical. Common stuff that are in abundance can be kept forever, while the more rare magical items and the energies within are more fragile and won't last when you enter the void (when you quit), but they have a chance of surviving Armageddon once, but then they become too fragile to survive again.
I think this would work really well and be good for both new and old players, without messing too much with the Genesis core, rack systems, etc. Actually I think it'll make it better. Many racks are already overflowing with semi-decent stuff, better if they only contain magical items and people can keep whatever non-magical stuff they need on their person instead.
The only potential problem could be imbues. They must of course be treated as magical items, which also make sense. So, I suspect that once an item is imbued it should get a faint glow or no glow, just like normal magical items. Unless you prefer to make imbues never-saving. That could also work, but might not be something players will be happy about. On the other hand, one could perhaps upgrade the spawn-rate again to compensate. Either way, there are several ways to make imbues work in this system.