Shattered Kingdoms

Likely true, but it does put the looter to the choice. Junked means any beneficials won't be stolen by an enemy. Identified, as you say, will waste at least someone's time (but that's my enemy's time I'm wasting and from a brewers perspective that's fine). Gambled means they could take a negative effect (if the brewer has even opted to make one).

And what about planting of negative potions? No one has talked about that? There's a neat piece of tactics now available.

If I were an agent of chaos, I'd certainly run around and give people fake potions.

BUT lets put that aside and ask another question.

What would be so wong with having an unexpected result occur when drinking a potion? Someone might lose where they thought they'd win.

That is soo scarey to people I think that's the real cause of the gut reaction that's going on here.

See I don't see this as a bad thing, I don't see an unexpected result based on the reliance of an object a bad thing. I think it adds possibility to the game. Possibilities for stories, for triumphs, for loses. Possibilities for betrayals, for so many other things. This is the real merit of the suggestion from my perspective.

You can't brew negative conditions.

Only one location in the game (that I know of) sells potions that have any form of negative condition.

Which is why this idea falls flat.

I'm not going to speak for the others as you have tried to do, but I'm telling you that what I'm thinking is "This is a dumb idea because it can't be implemented in any reasonable fashion to achieve anywhere close to the idea of mystery / intrigue you think it might bring."

I covered the aspect of planting fake potions. When it comes to healing potions, a lot of people keep them in containers and pull them all out during combat. When it comes to word of recall potions, from my experience, it's pretty split. Some seem to have none in their inventory and do a "get potion backpack/quaff potion", others do a "Quaff potion/get potion backpack". It's a toss up, but I suspect the latter will revert to the former just to bypass it. This more or less reduces any chance of quaffing a fake vial.

It's a time sink, but not one people are above if they're forced to do it. Look at enchanting. Veterans hate it, but they spend all the time in the world getting it done right because it needs to be done. This will just be another thing to add to the "Time sinks I hate that SK forces me to do".

If you were randomly giving away potions as a chaos follower, they'd still get identified.

There -won't- be an unexpected result unless you get an identifier who lies to you, but that won't happen because there are so many ways to identify that you are guaranteed to have one guy who is all but guaranteed to be in your cabal/tribunal/clique. I know you think it'll add unexpected results, but no one who knows their stuff is going to fall to a "Oh no, I got a bad vials :C".

This is a long thread, so I understand not reading it all, but from the very beginning I noted we'd have to expand the list of brewables for potions, scrolls didn't seem to need that. I probably wasn't clear enough about that in the very first post, but I have answered this same question before. Anyway it's been a long thread. Yes you'd need to expand the allowables for brewing.

You're right, I think most players will brew things straight up. BUT that's why when the fake potion is mixed into the lot it will be unexpected.

BUT so far the only arguments against are basically as we've hashed out or admitted to before.

- More reliance on identifying (if someone wants to make it in their interest to investigate potions)
- Investment of coding for gain

We've talked about identifying enough. If a player feels the need to identify or chance unknown potions, that's their decision. Brewers can be as forthcoming or deptive as they want, als their decision. (Ultimately, like you say the majority of potions are likely still going to be honest, great people won't have to question things often or will be less inclined to question things when one bad potion is slipped in, great. All good from my perspective).

Investment for gain. This may not be the most investment for coding gain. I'm not sure how much investment is needed, it depends how the existing code was made. (It actually could be very simple, but it could be hard. Can't say, that's dependent on the existing code).

Either way, I'm not advocating this be done immediately. Frankly (if I were to make a priority argument) I'd rather some of the results of the Rp incentive discussion be implemented well before this. This could be 5, 10 years down the road. I don't care. It's a suggestion aimed at adding another facet to the game.

BUT an investment for gain argument, does imply some gain. Would you agree there is gain?

Perhaps the ability to plant items should be able to put things in containers too. And if someone is reliant on containers, then dirt kick and blind are going to be a lot more powerful, or can you get things out of a container when blind? (I don't know)

(As to being the follower of chaos, I meant I'd slip in potions unseen, aka by the plant skill.)

I'm not going to comment on the enchantment system, as I'm not sure how much of a time sink it is.

I do not this idea is worth implementing.

Now, or ever. If now, I understand, if ever would you care to elaborate?

I'm going to chime in with a "no," too.

The reasons have already been fairly well hashed out for you: People view it as an additional waste of time, vials already get labeled, it won't be a third as effective as you think it might be, and it won't actually strike up much additional roleplay. Let me add another thing to consider, though.

IF this was implemented, the vial should have a chance to fail at the brew level AND at the label level. More kaboom equals more time equals less fun for the brew-prankster. Which means people won't bother trying to do this. Vials cost money, tons of energy and already are a time sink.

I will certainly decide priority for myself, you don't need to worry about that. It's a gut decision based on things like how much the idea will help the game, how hard/time-consuming it is to code and whether players have reasons (that I agree with) for liking or disliking it.

In the case of titles, I think that is already live. Certainly I recall already working on it, but I am getting crushed by work this month so I am not sure if its active yet. Either way, I did it right away not because Aelandron was for or against it, but because it was pretty easy and could potentially have a big impact on newbie retention.

As for this suggestion, I think it is interesting and not entirely meritless. Particularly from the viewpoint of not wanting combat to be determined by potion wars. But even if everyone universally adored the idea, it still would be pretty far down my priority list.

Aelandron, OA and Finney are pretty trollish and will never change their mind on anything, so I wouldn't bother arguing with them.

I don't like the idea because it doesn't seem as if it would help the game. However neat the concept may sound, in practice it wouldn't be fun, and it would require extra unnecessary coding.