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[Mindmaker]

If there's a mechanic that never causes you to take a meaningful decision (but does waste your time with trivial ones) then it's useless.

Why not narrow the races down to strong-human, smart-human and sneaky-human then? The other races are useless after all. No rational human would pick them.

It's just that "a monster that causes you to walk away and drop your scrolls then come back" is not interesting.

For you.
Maybe we should remove elemental damage/mutations/any status effect that can be withstood with gear then, since they cause you to walk away, swap resistances and then come back.

[frostshotgg]

How do you jump from mechanic that never causes a meaningful decision = useless to races = useless? Race is probably the single most important decision of your whole run.

[Leafsnail]

Why not narrow the races down to strong-human, smart-human and sneaky-human then? The other races are useless after all. No rational human would pick them.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make.

For you.
Maybe we should remove elemental damage/mutations/any status effect that can be withstood with gear then, since they cause you to walk away, swap resistances and then come back.

Are you saying you actually find it interesting to walk away and drop your scrolls?  And in any case it's more interesting to decide if it's worth changing equipment than it is to know you have to do a specific set of actions to save your items.

[beorn080]

Why not narrow the races down to strong-human, smart-human and sneaky-human then? The other races are useless after all. No rational human would pick them.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make.

For you.
Maybe we should remove elemental damage/mutations/any status effect that can be withstood with gear then, since they cause you to walk away, swap resistances and then come back.

Are you saying you actually find it interesting to walk away and drop your scrolls?  And in any case it's more interesting to decide if it's worth changing equipment than it is to know you have to do a specific set of actions to save your items.

It is interesting to have to decide how much you are willing to risk at a given moment to item destruction vs how many panic buttons you wish to have, yes.

[Mindmaker]

How do you jump from mechanic that never causes a meaningful decision = useless to races = useless? Race is probably the single most important decision of your whole run.

Dropping stuff so it doesn't get destroyed seems like a pretty meaningful decision to me.
I was most musing about the liberal use of "useless" and "meaningful".

Are you saying you actually find it interesting to walk away and drop your scrolls?  And in any case it's more interesting to decide if it's worth changing equipment than it is to know you have to do a specific set of actions to save your items.

More interesting than having another tab-worthy enemy.

Where do you even draw the line here?
Why should poison stay in the game? It won't kill you other than on the first few floors, since you can just quaff curing and those are never rare, even moreso now that item destruction is gone. It's just an annoying game mechanic that causes a drain on a pretty common item. It's never a meaningful decision to use one.

[Rex_Nex]

poison kicks my ass constantly

[Leafsnail]

More interesting than having another tab-worthy enemy.

Is it?  If an enemy flashed up a message saying "TYPE OUT THESE TWO PARAGRAPHS PERFECTLY OR I WILL DESTROY YOUR POTIONS" would that be better than having an enemy you could just kill?

Where do you even draw the line here?
Why should poison stay in the game? It won't kill you other than on the first few floors, since you can just quaff curing and those are never rare, even moreso now that item destruction is gone. It's just an annoying game mechanic that causes a drain on a pretty common item. It's never a meaningful decision to use one.

Poison is deadly on early floors in a unique way is the main reason.  Also if you've gotten into a situation where poison is taking up your whole HP bar later on then there's a high chance you're in a very dangerous position (eg completely surrounded), so it actually might not be a good idea to spend a turn quaffing curing (making it a meaningful decision).  And with the change to the way poison damage works it doesn't waste much time if it isn't dangerous.

Compare this to item destruction which is never dangerous, never creates any life-or-death tension and which always wastes your time even if it appears in a trivial situation.

[Mindmaker]

TYPE OUT THESE TWO PARAGRAPHS PERFECTLY OR I WILL DESTROY YOUR POTIONS

I can imagine that in a Warioware roguelike. 10/10 would play.

Poison is deadly on early floors in a unique way is the main reason.

Dying because a critical scroll burned or a potion shattered is just as unique.

Also if you've gotten into a situation where poison is taking up your whole HP bar later on then there's a high chance you're in a very dangerous position (eg completely surrounded), so it actually might not be a good idea to spend a turn quaffing curing (making it a meaningful decision).

A more meaningful decision would have been not getting surrounded in the first place. Also in this case you actually die from being surrounded and less from the poison.

Compare this to item destruction which is never dangerous, never creates any life-or-death tension and which always wastes your time even if it appears in a trivial situation.

I remember a lot of times when I thought "I could have used some fog/blink/teleport/haste/HW/agility/might/etc. here. Oh, I wish I hadn't been careless."

I could also make a case against rot or item curses, which are "never dangerous, never createe any life-or-death tension and which always waste your time even if it appears in a trivial situation".

[Leafsnail]

Dying because a critical scroll burned or a potion shattered is just as unique.

That doesn't happen though.  Or rather if it does it's generally because the player got tired of playing the stupid item destruction minigame.

A more meaningful decision would have been not getting surrounded in the first place. Also in this case you actually die from being surrounded and less from the poison.

This is true but also unrelated to my point.  The fact that a mechanic gets less deadly later in the game is not a reason to remove it, and definitely does not follow from my argument with regards to item destruction (which is not deadly at any point in the game).

I remember a lot of times when I thought "I could have used some fog/blink/teleport/haste/HW/agility/might/etc. here. Oh, I wish I hadn't been careless."

"I wish I had typed out those two paragraphs perfectly instead of getting bored and letting him smash my potions"

I could also make a case against rot or item curses, which are "never dangerous, never createe any life-or-death tension and which always waste your time even if it appears in a trivial situation".

Non-Ash item curses are basically worthless in their current form, yeah.  They're likely to be removed or reformed soon.  But at least they aren't as actively annoying as item destruction (they make you read a remove curse scroll occasionally, which is less bad than constantly having to drop and pick up scrolls).

Rot is perhaps in a similar position due to the relative abundance of curing potions, but it has the advantage of attacking the player rather than their inventory so it lacks the fundamental problem that item destruction has (there's no tedious but 100% reliable way to avoid it).

[monk12]

I've never had a problem with rot in the course of a 3 rune ascension, but I typically run into problems with it in Tomb since it is the least immediately threatening of the death curses, and thus the most likely to be handled after the battle (giving it a chance to work and become a more serious problem if the battle drags on for some reason.)

Incidentally, how exactly is Chunkless currently implemented? Is there no food clock apart from Hunger costs, or a greatly reduced one, or what?

[beorn080]

Personally, I find distortion weapons to be meaningless. I mean, if you wield one early, you just never take it off, making it basically the same as a cursed item.

[Darkening Kaos]

     Personally, I find damage to be meaningless. I mean, if you take wounds early, you just sit there and heal, making it basically the same as a healing item.
     Why bother hauling around healing potions, spells, wands and coding complicated mutations and god-based abilities?  Just get rid of that nasty damage mechanic and all that trouble just fades away.  Then, of course, you don't need those items anymore, this solves encumberance problems and difficult decisions about what to carry and what to leave behind.

/sarcasm
     

[Mindmaker]

That doesn't happen though.  Or rather if it does it's generally because the player got tired of playing the stupid item destruction minigame.

Yes it does. Earlygame when resources are rare and destruction can hit the few ones you have.
Also I don't get the "tired" argument. You're playing a roguelike. These sort of thing are common and expected in most proper roguelikes. If you don't want to deal with them you play one of the coffee-break roguelikes (which will include DCSS soon) or you don't play roguelikes at all.

The fact that a mechanic gets less deadly later in the game is not a reason to remove it, and definitely does not follow from my argument with regards to item destruction (which is not deadly at any point in the game).

If consumeables are so fucking worthless, why are they in the game in the first place?
They are most important during the earlygame (when you just might have one or two of them) and during the lategame.

Rot is perhaps in a similar position due to the relative abundance of curing potions, but it has the advantage of attacking the player rather than their inventory so it lacks the fundamental problem that item destruction has (there's no tedious but 100% reliable way to avoid it).

Having to tiptoe around a floor because you saw a Ghoul as a melee character is "tedious". You either have to control manually or exclude the area, or skip the floor which is "tedious".
Getting the rotting Vault in Lair (could be wrong about the branch) used to be a fucking nightmare. A "tedious" affair of having to lure all the monsters out of the vault with shouting and scrolls of noise and then wasting resources to get past the rot clouds.

I've never had a problem with rot in the course of a 3 rune ascension, but I typically run into problems with it in Tomb since it is the least immediately threatening of the death curses, and thus the most likely to be handled after the battle (giving it a chance to work and become a more serious problem if the battle drags on for some reason.)

That's my point.
I'm not for it's removal, but I'm applying Leafsnails logic to different game mechanics.

[Leafsnail]

"There are other fairly worthless mechanics in the game" is not a good reason for keeping worthless mechanics.  Mechanics that aren't very intrusive will probably stay in because it would take work to get rid of them and they aren't doing much harm.  Turns out item destruction was annoying and worthless enough to warrant devtime to take it out, which is why it's going.

I frankly do not care whether you regard Dungeon Crawl as a "proper" roguelike or a "coffee break" one (although I would say you must have damn long coffee breaks).  It's clear that Stone Soup's philosophy is completely opposed to whatever you want it to be, so in that case I'd suggest you just play one of the many roguelikes that have all these mechanics left in.

[Retropunch]

It's clear that Stone Soup's philosophy is completely opposed to whatever you want it to be, so in that case I'd suggest you just play one of the many roguelikes that have all these mechanics left in.

But it wasn't always this way. DCSS has always been about being a lean RL with none of the nethack style obfuscation and weirdness. That doesn't mean that it needs to turn into a tab+o-fest, and I believe that up until recently there was no where near the zeal in mechanic and content removal.

All I'm wanting to see is a little more thought put into improving mechanics rather than 'no this is frustrating, we must ditch it'. I'm really not one for holding back development by not taking chances, but I don't see removal of mechanics which have kept a game going strong for many, many years being a good idea.

Most people enjoy DCSS for it's tactical and strategic complexity, and I don't see any of the recent changes furthering those aspects.