ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

It's come to my attention that the Insatiable ego is grossly imbalanced.

So my suggestion is to remove it. The game was fine without it and we've been writing and balancing resource mechanics under the premise that resources are limited except under a few rare circumstances or with certain talent choices. Insatiable takes all of these balance considerations and throws them out the window. It limits choice because it's almost always the best option, which limits which weapons players will use (insatiable + whatever) and it makes talents that improve resource management meaningless as well as marginalizing penalties on resource pools like fatigue and sustains.

It was an interesting idea but it's just not right for the game. If stamina classes need interesting ways to restore stamina Bulwarks and Berserkers could both stand to have more generic trees and could learn the conditioning tree. If Cursed hate mechanics are to crippling then they can be toned down (Benli is already talking about this).

Insatiable isn't the answer.


And while we're on the subject of nerfing egos. Could we add a saving throw to slime damage or reduce the slowing affect to 10%? It's also imbalanced.

I'm not as sure about the removal of the ego, though I don't rely on it for my characters, when obtained it does offer players a bit more freedom with talent choices...idk.

How about the ego gives -% damage/all?
Or what if the item itself has lower base power because of the ego?

-all damage might actually make it worse. I know of at least one player who was off-handing elemental and relying on the freeze proc to actually lower his damage so he could get more out of insatiable while the monster was basically unable to act.

Someone else told me they avoided upgrading away from an Insatiable weapon on an Anorithil and Doomed. Which of course would make the base attack power of the weapon meaningless since this is a class that isn't even attacking with the weapon.

Plus it's not even a real 'leech' affect. It's a chance to heal your resources every time you damage something. It doesn't matter if the enemy has the resource bar all that matters is the number of times you can deal more then 0 points of damage in a single turn (another reason off-handing elemental while main-handing insatiable is grossly imbalanced).

If resource leech mechanics stick around, I'd prefer them to be either on a few artifacts or spread out over a bunch of resource specific egos and they should be real leech effects. If the enemy doesn't have the resource you get nothing. Finally they should only trigger once per turn period. That's how I can see this being balanced.

So in short, the resource leech I feel could be good for the game is nothing like Insatiable at all.

Yeah, I strongly support removing the ego altogether.

I guess it does make the game too easy for some classes...I vote yes for removing the ego, reluctantly.

I also vote for removing the ego as it is currently implemented.

If a replacement is desired, I would have it change the damage type of the weapon from "Physical" to a custom "90% Physical + 10% resource leech" damage type, and have it actually drain the enemy's resources to refill yours (also giving it some extra utility in draining enemy resources).

I firmly believe that altering (nerfing in this case) is always a better option than completely removing, leaching is an interesting mechanic and taking it out altogether just reduces complexity and choices. It certainly needs to be fixed, but if it was balanced properly it would make for interesting gear choices for resource-starved classes (looking at you vim and hate!), or for switching to for fights you know will be extremely prolonged.

Also I believe as far as ego balance is concerned, slime is an equal or greater problem than insatiable. Certain classes (those mentioned above, rogues, etc) benefit disproportionately from insatiable, but by far the dominating ego for almost all melees is slime. Both are interesting conceptually, and I'd vote for a nerf before removing (even an extreme nerf like 1/3 effectiveness just to keep more options in the game). As it stands I believe weapon priority for the classes goes something like this:

dual-wielders; optimally slime-or-vile + insatiable, if you have to choose it's class dependant
two-handers; slime-or-vile in almost all cases, swap to insatiable situationally
sword+shield; slime-or-vile + shield in almost all cases, swap to insatiable situationally

NOTE: Only semi-on topic, but I also believe Gaping Maw should be looked at. Pretty confident I've seen every non-randart weapon, and Gaping Maw is clearly superior to all of them for general use (excepting if you need stun immune/dmg pen/etc). There is always going to be a "best" weapon, but the problem is that it seems very common and available too early to me. I generally get it around reknor or shortly after, and it pretty much takes out the excitement of finding any 2-hander after that. Making it rarer, nerfing it specifically, or nerfing slime would all be valid solutions.

grmblfzzz wrote:I firmly believe that altering (nerfing in this case) is always a better option than completely removing, leaching is an interesting mechanic and taking it out altogether just reduces complexity and choices.

I disagree - taking it out opens more choices. There is such a thing as so many choices you only choose one, thus reducing complexity. Any element of resource leech I think is bad for the game as it severely upsets the balance of so many classes. This is, in my opinion, unfixable, unless it's toned down to the point of no one ever choosing it.

Slime does need toned down, yes, and possibly others buffed, etc, but resource leech is one that just can't work in the game. If it's effective it gets abused, if it's ineffective it's pointless to include.

I apologize for being unclear, what I meant was that the more valid and balanced choices you have increases complexity and is good for the game. While I certainly agree it would be difficult to hit the exact point where it is balanced with other ego's, I'm quite sure it could be done.

Take for example Abyssal staves (I believe that's the insatiable equivalent, if not feel free to correct me). They can get up to ~40% +17, similar to voratun insatiable weapons. However, I believe that unlike for melee's they are in a spot where they are an interesting choice instead of a requirement due to other very compelling staff egos. Channeling, ruination, stars, radically more powerful staves such as Terelions, or even (situationally) conveyance (e.g., if you don't have the teleport tree/can't spare the rune slot/don't have any wands).

There are certainly some difficulties in that melee's tend to have more types of resources that have to be balanced for. Thus you would have to choose which to balance it around, ideally that would probably mean making it weak enough so it isn't clearly superior for any of them, but the most resource starved found it an interesting choice.

As an aside: I do realize that the game is still in beta, and that there are more important things to worry about than fine tuning balance issues. Balance is typically something you worry about after adding all desired features/fixing serious bugs, etc. As such, simply removing it and adding in some other system later or just focusing on the other egos viability could easily be the best move.

I wouldn't mind to see insatiable items go, but this

edge2054 wrote:or spread out over a bunch of resource specific egos

would IMHO be very bad. If I understand this part of the proposal, you'd have an ego that leeches stamina and a different ego that leeches hate and so on. That ould only make it more likely that you'd find useless items (like a stamina-leeching thing on a cursed), while not reducing the right item's usefulness in comparison to others.

Consolidating all types of leeching into one ego was good design and should be kept unless insatiable gets dumped completely.

Perhaps as a way of keeping the effect in it could be changed to an activate on the weapon which gives the effect for 5 turns, with a recharge time of 80 turns. That way it's not a passive, always-on effect that keeps your resources chugging away, but something you have to make tactical use of at the right moment in battle.

Maybe remove the ego and add in a few artifacts (2h axe, 1h sword, dagger, staff) that have the insatiable effects, plus some significant penalties that wouldn't be amiss on an artifact - save penalties, resource draining (interesting tradeoff but perhaps not very fun), reduced immunities.

I would completely back any suggestion to remove the ego completely from the game.

I would also suggest that there be a weapon or armor [preferably a shield! ;) ] that DOES do this, and it be a unique artifact.

I dislike the idea of removing features in order to balance a game; if you want balance that bad, how about just drop all special item effects, removing all resources except for hp and mana, and restrict everyone to using "Balsa Stick of Balanced Damage" which gives exactly 5 points of damage and ignores all armor, resistance and saves. Then everything is the same...

Anyway, I've seen many games absolutely ruined by over balancing. What's the point of having different classes if they're all inherently the same? Or equipment? Or... (insert game feature here)...

But, rant aside, to this specific case:

How about the ego'd item have a threshhold? i.e. as you leech, whatever amount of resources you gain from it, that amount is added to threshold.

Example: a lower level 'insatiable' weapon with a threshold of 50. You leech 10 hp, and now have a threshold of 10/50. You cannot leech anything over the threshold, and once it is reached, must wait for it to come down (which it would at a steady rate, maybe 1.5/turn or have it dependent on something else).

This would allow it almost the same level of usage, while taking away option for "abuse." I put abuse in quotes, because I don't consider using an item for its intended purpose as constituting abuse...

Devorius wrote:I dislike the idea of removing features in order to balance a game; if you want balance that bad, how about just drop all special item effects, removing all resources except for hp and mana, and restrict everyone to using "Balsa Stick of Balanced Damage" which gives exactly 5 points of damage and ignores all armor, resistance and saves. Then everything is the same...

Sometimes removing features is the best way to balance the game. For example, this character abused life leech curses very heavily, getting 37% chance of 75% life leech by using cursed weapons. I think that the best solution was to remove them entirely in that case.