ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

One of the big complaints I've been hearing is that the early game can get really repetitive. We started brain storming some ideas on IRC tonight on how to resolve this and a few good ones came up.

Yufra suggested adding far-portalesque random zones branching off of other zones similar to the temporal rift. These could be short and small with a weak mini-boss and randomly spawn similar to how vaults do.

Another idea that came up was to do a bunch of vaults geared towards low level players just for the starting dungeons. We could get the vault contest going again but focus it more based on what dungeons need vaults the most and try to get the new players involved (I could announce this on SA as well as in game chat). Assuming we can get a reasonable number of 'lowbie' vaults we could increase the vault spawn rate for these zones to spice them up.

The winner of the vault contest could get an artifact or unique named after them or one of their characters as a prize.

Thoughts? Any other ideas? I think some design an artifact or design a monster contests could be good too.

I'd be willing to help judge and help implement ideas of course

(And sorry, I'm sick. So if I seem scatter brained it's because I am :/)

I really like that first suggestion.

The idea of having "mini-zones" sounds fun. I think if we go down that path there should be a way of designing custom ones with uniqueness and such. So these zones could act like vaults in a sense. currently with vaults it can be used to make quests (I did that with dryad defense (see the vault contest)) and the idea of making zones that could support these.
As for rejuvenating the vault contest go for it. I would say declare a winner and then advertise it on the main page (not just the forums) and where ever else seems appropriate.

It might also be interesting to sometimes vary the level layout. There could be a 10% chance of an Old Forest to have a Trollmire style layout, and vice-versa.

Maybe add bonus zones somewhat similar to Bill's level in the Trollmire to each of the other starting zones as well, then randomly choose 3 or 4 to give each character at birth. For example, one character could have access to the Crystalline Passage, the Rhaloren Library, and Bill's Meadow, while the next could have access to Norgos' Den, the Shade's Coffin, and the Rhaloren Library.

I see those as fixed levels containing a stronger miniboss (Bill level), or several elites guarding treasure.

lukep wrote:Maybe add bonus zones somewhat similar to Bill's level in the Trollmire to each of the other starting zones as well, then randomly choose 3 or 4 to give each character at birth.

That would lead to even more incentive to do all of the starting dungeons every time, because you wouldn't want to miss your extra bosses and loot. And ultimately, more grind. Although the character could get starting quests about all of these bosses, so you'd only "have" to do the dungeons

On a different note: How about more along the lines of the lovely luminous horror triplets sometimes? Maybe as soon as a character is overleveled, take of the gloves and have gangs of three elite trolls, wolf packs, and similar things?

I think it would be cool to have more starting areas, but make it so only a handful are randomly chosen at the start of the game to be accessible to a character. This way every game will be a bit different.
Making the level size smaller, limiting zone depth to 3 levels, except maybe for a couple very special zones like dreadfell would also help.
Also, adding more CHOICE to the game would be great. Maybe you can only do rhaloren camp OR scintillating caves, and the choice have some meaningful outcome like a reward at the end? Maybe something like that?

I also like the mini-farportal idea, and I think that doing something to limit the other starter zones could be good. I don't know about just locking them, though. I'd say just remove the bosses from your non-racial zones. That way you can still go to, say, the Crystal Caves if you get a red crystal alchemy quest, or just to see if any nice items drop, but you don't have a chunk of XP and a guaranteed artifact waiting for you at the end of each one.

That could mislead new players, making them search the last level looking for the boss

Maybe a different random element like a rival adventurer also clearing dungeons. You'd get to a dungeon and find it empty because the other guy had already been there. Or you could find him (or he could find you!) in the middle of a dungeon.

That way, the first dungeons would probably be full of treasure but the chance would decrease with each one

It could also be an introduction for the adventurer parties on the world map, other guys looking for their friend?

If new choices appear (like the mini-farportal) there should be some way to keep more or less the same character level and length of the west quests

How about unlockable minilevels?
Completing a selection of notes unlocks a related starter bonus level for all your characters. During one (or both) of the racial starter dungeons, one of the levels will contain a (time?) portal of some kind. When entering the portal, the character can choose one of all unlocked bonus levels.
This will add gameplay value to uncovering all story pages in a way that is related to those pages, wich is currently only the case for the trollmire level, the necromancer poems and the old forest pages.

I definitely like the idea of somehow giving you a subset of the T1 zones instead of all of them, and shortening the T2 zones to 3 levels instead of 5.

Also if you only get some smaller subset of T1 zones in each game then the idea of adding more bonus zones like Trollmire's could work. That on top of the mini-farportal idea could compensate for there being less T1 zones available in terms of items and XP, while still increasing the variety and adding some much-needed random content.

I say give everyone only their 2 racial T1 zones - the other zones should not appear for the other races. It stops some gamification (like avoiding Trollmire in case of escorts) and gives true variety to the different racial starts. Xp gain is not affected much (it maxes pretty quick) andthe loot difference wouldn't be debilitating either. Lack of alchemist ingredients might be a nuisance (troll intestines and red shards), but I hope those quests will get revised at some point anyway. Besides, no one complains much about not getting ritch tails on non-yeeks at the moment.

With only 2 racial zones each then the prospect for adding extra random areas seems less imbalancing.

I'm not sure I really understand the idea behind restricting access to tier 1 zones. I mean, as it is now you can (and should, really) opt to skip a lot of them, and I don't think your character will really miss out. Neither on xp (these zones don't scale very high at all) nor on loot (most low level artifacts aren't very powerful / useful, and you pretty much always end up getting the few good ones). Or am I missing something here?

Grey wrote:I say give everyone only their 2 racial T1 zones - the other zones should not appear for the other races. It stops some gamification (like avoiding Trollmire in case of escorts) and gives true variety to the different racial starts. Xp gain is not affected much (it maxes pretty quick) andthe loot difference wouldn't be debilitating either. Lack of alchemist ingredients might be a nuisance (troll intestines and red shards), but I hope those quests will get revised at some point anyway. Besides, no one complains much about not getting ritch tails on non-yeeks at the moment.

With only 2 racial zones each then the prospect for adding extra random areas seems less imbalancing.

Yeah, I actually had this idea last night too Grey after I posted this.

I don't think it's going to be a popular solution but it's certainly an easy one.

One idea I had on how to implement this is to allow everyone access to all three levels of the Trollmire because of Bill. If Prox isn't one of your quests then the note will simply spawn on the ground.

Otherwise players would have access to one level and only one level of all the tier 1 dungeons. In other words, stairs would only generate if the player had the appropriate quest. This would give everyone access to 2 or 3 tier 1 zone bosses depending on class but allow them to check out the other zones and possibly get some loot and alchemist quest items if they wanted too.

I think denying players access to Bill though would be a shame, hence the Trollmire would always be three levels, Prox just wouldn't spawn for everyone.



All of that said, the ideas about more vaults for tier 1 still are good ideas, as is yufra's random zone with in zones idea.

tekrunner wrote:I'm not sure I really understand the idea behind restricting access to tier 1 zones. I mean, as it is now you can (and should, really) opt to skip a lot of them, and I don't think your character will really miss out. Neither on xp (these zones don't scale very high at all) nor on loot (most low level artifacts aren't very powerful / useful, and you pretty much always end up getting the few good ones). Or am I missing something here?

I admit that I can be pretty dense sometimes, but I too don't know why restricting access to those zones needs to happen. As someone else said in another thread (sorry I don't have a nice citation handy), if you like you can pretty much head straight to Dreadfell at level 1. I don't particularly like that idea, so I'd rather go to other areas first. What this proposed change seems to do would take a lot of those extra areas away and force me into Dreadfell earlier. I wouldn't mind so much if the mini-farportal idea gets put into place as well, so that I can in effect get some extra levels/items/whatever, but just saying "you're not a ______, so you can't go here at all" doesn't seem right. So, can someone tell me why the starter zones need to be restricted to certain races?