Remove Adria Refill #7434
Remove Adria Refill #7434
Conversation
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Counterpoint: It's also kind of an accessibility feature, in that you can't effectively softlock your Sorcerer by running out of both gold and mana. Along the same lines as the Invincibility or Infinite Stamina features in Celeste, except that this is actually quite a bit less helpful than those. I don't honestly think it's super necessary to have this to avoid softlocks since you can always take your character back to dlvl 1 in a new game and OHK the monsters with a slow-motion chop of the hand. However, I don't get the impression that this feature has any real negative impact so I struggle to accept the justification for its removal. For additional perspective, this is approximately as harmful as allowing the player to create a new character and deposit their starting gold in the stash. |
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You may call me a dirty cheater, but I rely on this in my sorcerer games, with mana not regenerating |
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This is a feature brought over from the unofficial Hellfire patch, it was something a lot of Hllfire players had gotten used to as a consequence so was added as a way to ease there transition. |
To be fair, it almost certainly would be. |
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Glad to see this being reversed (or at least the proposal of reversal, since it wasn't merged yet). |
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I feel like Adria restoring your mana essentially just acts as a click saver. Without it, you're buying one extra potion every town visit. Because the reality is the game gives you plenty of gold. In the time spent running back to her to "save 50 gold", you'd have made far more than that chugging a potion and continuing to fight. This is no more a way to save money than it is going to Pepin every time you're low hp. |
A full mana restore is equivalent to 150 gold. I would have suggested Adria's refill consuming 150g from your inventory (if you have it, otherwise not giving you the refill), or adding a menu option that gives a refill at the cost of 150g without purchasing a pot (saves clicks), however staphen argues that this feature is to prevent softlocks for Sorcerers, so that would invalidate this kind of suggestion. |
I've thought about this, and I'm not sure I agree with this statement; I think it effectively asserts that if the player is able to do something under normal circumstances, a features that does it for them is justified. Such comparison could be made about many other things and have been made, needless to say. I just don't think it's a fitting feature for the game. I think it would have been quite easy for Blizzard to have given this feature to Adria, but chose not to, and I speculate that's because it makes early game easier for the Sorcerer by allowing him to keep retreating back to town and getting free refills. My argument isn't meant to appeal to players running the game with high level characters, as at this point the QOL feature it provides is simply QOL and gold reserves isn't really an issue, even without the stash. Referencing my last comment, I would be okay with this QOL feature if it in fact did consume gold pieces, as it would offer a quicker way to restore resources with fewer clicks. |
No, the comparison is meant to indicate the level of impact using an analogue to something else that is also currently possible. Were I to spell it out without an analogy, I would say it is very low impact. |
My interpretation is that it goes against the lore, she setup shop, she isn't part of town. She is there to turn a profit, not run a charity, unlike Pepin. The menu option for 150gp does sound interesting. |
A lot of town visits happen because you're full of sell loot rather than being potion depleted. That's why I think that the average amount of free mana restored is probably closer to that of a minor potion. She is also much farther away than Pepin and it would be incredibly boring to use her as a way of avoiding potions. |
@FitzRoyX isn't this yet another argument for removing that feature? By having it, you are actually encouraging players to go back and restore mana at Adria for saving money, and you just pushed a very boring gameplay flow into people (particularly people just starting the game, that don't yet realize going back and wasting that much time is probably not worth the savings in most cases). |
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Unless you hell out for rejuvenation then you have to go to her to get mana, free or not |
I meant scenarios where the player would avoid using mana potions in favor of going back to her to refill for free. |
I don't think it changes behavior any more than d2 did. All the free restore does is streamline the process of restocking your belt by avoiding the need to immediately use one of the potions you just restocked. |
@FitzRoyX I do admit this part right here feels quite weird... My "solutions" to that problem would be to limit the number of potions sold in town, and limit access to town, but of course none of those are DevilutionX proposals as they completely alter the gameplay. |
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After I complete the stores cleanup (if it gets merged), I'll work on a new PR that adds a store option to Adria that offers "Restore Mana (150 gold)", effectively solving the suggested problem of players having to buy potions and then drink one of them right away. As @FitzRoyX made a case that it's unlikely low level players are exploiting her current behavior to get free refills, charging the player 150 gold for the refill should have very little impact on the player. |
If I may offer a suggestion there, you could consider making the cost dynamic, based on the percentage of mana to be refilled: 100% mana refill -> 150 gold, and then decrease linearly based on the total mana that needs restoring (so 50% mana restore -> 75 gold, so on and so forth). I feel like that would be a bit fairer and would get used more. |
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I like the idea but would suggest only 3 breakpoints for the remaining hit points: |
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I disagree on the basis that this is introducing new restoration behavior. Either we have a 50 gold mana restoration that behaves exactly the same as a Mana Potion, a 150 gold mana restoration that behaves exactly the same as a Full Mana Potion, both, or neither. |
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That's exactly what I wanted to propose too. Just with a step in between that mirrors the effect of drinking 2 small mana potions. I was under the impression that small mana potions behaved in the way I described. I should have clarified that I only presumed to know how much mana was restored on drinking one. |
Mana Potions behave differently per character class, and it's possible for a single Mana Potion to fill less than 1/3 of a player's mana. |
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Thank you for clarifying. I guess replicating this behavior would be rather overkill. Your solution sounds really nice then |
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Could add a gamble option that runs it in a loop until at 100% :D |
@kphoenix137 I'm not sure why it needs to be coupled to the existing 2 options for mana potions. To me, that restriction makes no sense, after all, these are not potions. It was just a suggestion though, up to you. |
I think it's important to maintain the consistency with existing mechanics, which is why I suggested coupling the feature to the existing potion costs. The idea behind this is that the feature isn't introducing a new way to restore mana but is instead streamlining a process that already exists—buying a potion and drinking it. Having the restoration cost scale with the amount of mana restored would introduce a new behavior that deviates from the original game mechanics, where potion prices are fixed regardless of how much mana a player needs. This is intended as a simple quality-of-life improvement to save players some clicks, not to alter how mana restoration works in the game. That's why I think keeping it aligned with the existing potion pricing makes the most sense. |
I'm just going to add that d2 made some very popular changes that have become modern diablo staples, and free mana restore in town is one of them. I don't see it as some special case that impacts balance more than the others. You could similarly argue that item labels get you way more gold per minute by not missing drops. You could argue that enemy hp bars reduce the amount of damage taken by letting the player see which surrounding enemies he can kill faster. Player stash expands your item and gold carryover into new games dramatically. The kind of person who enables this feature doesn't want to click "buy restore" or spend time thinking about it. The original devs overthought this, there is no major downside to restoring mana for free the way pepin restores life for free. It speeds up belt restock. |
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People are shocked when mana doesn't regenerate over time, some even report it as a bug. |
I would be shocked should it start being regenerated (because it never did in the original game / for the original balance). |
Agree to disagree here.
True if you have poor attention span, false otherwise (and if you are used to paying attention to item drop sounds and picking the items as soon as they drop). Still a valid point though.
True.
Also totally true.
The difference here is that the refill rework is being done as an unconditional feature, whereas the things you mentioned earlier (health bars, stash, etc) can all be turned off and thus stop impacting balance, original intent.
Again, disagree here. Having to be aware of mana expenditure and having to always waste gold to refill it even in town does affect balance for the sorcerer substantially in the beginning of the game, particularly for new players. |
If that's the difference you perceive, then there is no difference. The refill logic currently is conditional in the same way monster health bars is. Most if not all of the discussion about reworking this feature have been proposing an explicit option in Adria's menu which would make it conditional in the same way stash is. Either way, you must opt in to have your mana refilled by Adria.
I'm somewhat inclined to agree with FitzRoyX here. I mentioned this before, but I consider the worst case scenario for the Sorcerer who is completely out of mana and gold is to create a new game and start swinging his fists at the weaklings on dlvl 1. This is a viable strategy even for a clvl 1 Sorcerer. Free mana refill is just an optional feature that enables the user to skip that tedium and jump back into Sorcerer gameplay in a way that he was meant to be played--namely, casting spells. That said, I do think that the lack of mana refill is likely derived from the inspiration the devs took from the roguelike genre. From that perspective, managing your mana is simply an aspect of the game that must be considered when starting a new Sorcerer, but the fact that the devs provided a New Game option undercuts the decision to exclude an option for free mana refills. Therefore if you are a seasoned player who wants a more hardcore experience, you can turn the refill option off again and forbid yourself from choosing the New Game option. |
Oh I see. I was under the (wrong) impression that with this change you'd remove the feature toggle around it. If it's still going to be togglable, then I don't have any further reservations with it.
Yeah... I think most of this is conditioned on the availability of that "New Game" option at any point. To me, that's never an option (in the sense that I self-impose that restriction, of never using "New Game", on myself), so I consider the "lack of gold + no mana" scenario a soft game over for the sorcerer. That's the scenario I'd not like to be removed, so that's what I was worried about basically (in terms of balance). All of that concern goes away as the feature will still be togglable though. |
If you're talking about the changes initially proposed by this PR before it was closed, it's actually the opposite. This PR simply removes the option altogether, with no option for free mana refills. |
Sorry, I was alluding to this comment here (so another PR): |
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To make it more clear what I am suggesting as a replacement for this PR:
This feature wouldn't require an opt-out toggle, since like Stash, the impact it has is completely optional as the player can just decide not to use it. It doesn't introduce a new behavior that impacts game balance in any capacity, which also justifies not needing to have a toggle, since as previously stated, it streamlines a process that already exists by saving you a few clicks. |
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Somebody explain to me what's the point of this? it's an option, you can turn it off if you want. |
The PR has since been closed without merging @Jimmy-Z , so at this time, not much of a point at all 😅 Now, if you were asking why would someone ever remove optional code in general (if I got your question right), I would say that supporting optional things adds maintenance costs to a project, and that should be reason enough to consider not doing it. Additionally, keep in mind that every extra setting that is exposed makes UIs and even configuration files more and more convoluted, to a point where it just will not scale anymore. If you can minimize the number of settings, you make the overall project simpler to configure for everyone. Hopefully those reasons make sense. |
I thought I adequately stated the purpose of this PR already, but to reiterate, I was suggesting its removal due to the fact that it introduces an additional feature that wasn't intended by the original developers that has a direct balance impact, albeit small. Now I'm instead suggesting to replace the feature with a new feature that mimics the function of the original feature but doesn't have balance implications. |
Again, it's an option, nobody forced you to turn it on, so, what's the purpose of removing the option? |
This removes the QOL option to have Adria refill your Mana when speaking to her.
Rationale: This QOL option has a direct impact on game balance with a greater emphasis on very early game progress. Despite being quite convenient and a cool feature on it's own, this offers a resource to the player for free when it would normally cost the player 150 gold pieces. Pepin's Auto Life refill doesn't impact game balance because the feature for restoring life already exists; it's just made to be automatic rather than requiring the extra click. I believe Adria's refill could be comparable to if Cain identified the first item for free, or Wirt showed his item for free, which would all be methods of saving the player gold for things in town that normally cost gold pieces.