ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

My wife (finally) gave ToME a shot last night and it made me realize how inaccessible the game is for people that aren't used to the genre. While ToME is probably the *most* accessible roguelike, I think we still have a lot of work to do before it's easy for the average gamer to get into.

Little things like.. "How do I pick up stuff on the ground", "How do I talk to that guy with the bubble over his head", etc. etc.

So I think a couple of things should be done to improve upon this.

First of all we need to put together a basic helpfile. I think this could probably be organized through a lore type sub-menu and that many people could contribute to it. We'd want several headers for it and probably a very accessible (ie obvious) button in the UI shaped like a question mark or whatever to pull it up.

Specifically...

- Controls
- Game Concepts (tiering, stats, saving throws, the most common status effects should be covered here such as stun and confusion)
- Basic Play Strategies (corridor fighting, infusions and infusion saturation, keeping escape mechanisms handy, dealing with casters, etc)
- Spoilers (any spoilers or guides people want to write and contribute)

Second of all I think an ingame tutorial would be good (as in, during the campaign not one packaged with the module). Most modern games try to teach players the basics until they've done them. So in the pick up item example above.

Wife walks over item. Flyer pops out (press 'g' to pick up objects). Wife presses 'g'. Game flags this tutorial as complete and doesn't bug her about it again on this character.

Wife picks up object. Flyer pops out (press 'w' to wear equipment). Wife presses 'w'. Dialogue pops up giving a quick explanation of how to compare gear, equip it using the various menus, etc. Wife wears an object. Game flags this tutorial as complete and doesn't bug her about it again on this character.

And so on and so forth.

Of course, we'd want a game option to turn off tutorials completely. So veterans aren't bothered by them every time they start a new character. But I would prefer to see the 'done' flags tied to the character rather than the account. So if someone doesn't play for awhile they can get a refresher course.

Thoughts?

Any feedback on things you guys struggled with when you first were learning? This is thread for it and the time for it. So let's hear what you guys think could make the game more accessible if you tried to get a non-roguelike player into it.

A few other things.

Using the rod of recall to leave the trollmire wasn't readily apparent to her. And when I said you could she didn't want to waste the charges. Which signifies that we need to both explain the rod of recall better to new players and that we need to explain 'charges' better as well.

Cross posting onyhow's help files he started on.

If anyone would like to contribute to onyhow's project please do. I'll go through and check everything for correctness, completeness, and make sure that it's up to date and if we can get Darkgod to build an engine class so I can easily add it in I'll port the data over.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=33823

Yeah, i have to agree. I think short tutorials is a great idea, and making the game genre noob frienlier should be a constant focus.

Check out Dungeons of Dredmor for a great example of these mini tutorials. Powder too.

I think there should be bump-to-chat where possible - no need for an extra command.

And more people should try the game out on their uninitiated friends - you learn so much from seeing how people play.

Also, it's spelled "Accessibility" :P

Grey wrote:Also, it's spelled "Accessibility"

Spelling is for people who've had their morning coffee, I had not when I made this post

It's been a long while since I did the tutorial, but from what I remember, it did a good job explaining how you shouldn't let yourself be surrounded. In my opinion, the tutorial was far less bothersome than that of dungeons of dreadmore. I'm not saying it's sufficient (because I simply don't know that), but if you want to expand it I suggest not going for the dungeons of dreadmore style.

That reminds me, the tutorial is out of date. I forget exactly what, but some of the formulas it tells you are wrong.

A friend of mine started to play, someone who is new to roguelikes, but a seasoned pc gamer, and he asked me more than once how to pick up items, also how to chat with NPCs and couldn't understand the charges of items, specially the ones from charms. He didn't know if he could recharge his stuff, or if they were one-use items, and so on. I mean, it's really confusing to see a digger with a "cost of 1 out of 1/1".

I support the idea of an in-game tutorial, that runs per character as edge said, and that you can decide to activate through a checkbox in the character creation screen.

This friend I mentioned also told me he searched through the internet for build suggestions and he couldn't find anything, to me it's kinda obvious, but nowadays is very common to have access to different builds and tools to promote them. It could be a long term goal.