ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Disclaimer! First, thanks to DarkGod for being so receptive and in general bad-ass! This is mostly just to throw some idea's DarkGod's way, so that hopefully his natural compulsion for evilness kicks into high gear and we can make sure of a sufficient ramp-up. Also, I'll go into why I think it's necessary and the factors that relate to that (mostly because this is my favorite issue, but also for clarity!). I'll break it into a quick background, reasons, and suggestions part, so if you're already familiar with the first two you can go ahead and skip to the third.

Also note, I’m not suggesting/reccomending any changes to existing difficulties. Nor am I in any way impugning or casting aspersions as to the manliness of people who don’t enjoy the kind of masochistic, mind-bending challenge those like me prefer!


Background

A few weeks ago, when there started to be a slew of Insane wins, we had a kind of overall game discussion with his evilness and he agreed to add another difficulty level once we had Insane wins with more than half of the classes. This is the DG challenge, and Stition and I have been chewing through them in order to complete it, which should happen sometime in the next couple days.


Reasoning

Fundamentally it breaks down to the fact that Insane just isn't insane anymore, compared to former versions of the game. There are two main issues to this. First, why does this matter, and secondly a look at why it is objectively the case.

Whyfor does this matter, grmblfzzz? Well, several reasons. First and most importantly, because DG apparently agrees! And really, when it comes down to it, that’s all that matters.

Secondly, from a game design standpoint, the whole point of having different difficulty levels widens the player-base, in that it's a more customizable playing experience. Most people, in anything, will always play on Normal difficulty, so of course most focus and balance should be centered around that. However, some fraction of players are just challenge junkies, and have more fun ramming their heads into walls and cryomancers. I'd also gathered that DarkGod thought this way too, as he initially put in Nightmare/Insane, after all.

Overall, probably my favorite part about ToME has always been the ludicrous challenge of Insane, which just strait-up out-roguelikes all other roguelikes, which are classically the hardest single player genre. Note, although vastly insane-er previously, the old-school insane was definitely still beatable. I got 2 guys to sanctum in the days of paralyzing Flameshocks, and died do to noobtastic behavior, not because it was out of hand. That's the kind of challenge that's currently not provided by modern Insane.

Lastly, and I think this is crucial: part of the enjoyment and fun from ludicrous difficulties is the possibility of pushing the forefront, of having the chance to nab world first of something. Already having a bunch of winners takes out a lot of the incentive and challenge for people of my mindset. That’s what kept me playing Insane and only Insane so long!

Why do you think Insane is getting easier, and perhaps you're not just getting better? The short answer is: general power creep, generally (though gradually) nerfed enemies, and overall gameplay improvements. Note, in most ways these are good and desirable things. The game is unquestionably much more pleasant all around than at any previous time! It’s just that this tends to overall make it easier, and is something that requires occasional adjustments to maintain desired challenge levels. Once again, only really a factor on Insane+ as otherwise things seem to be in a good place.

Real quick explanation: Power creep occurs in many forms, and is somewhat inevitable. For instance: Adding prodigies to the game (mind you, I think they’re awesome and help build diversity/fun!), the extra stats/points you get at lvl 50, general item tweaks (more/better arts and regular ego’s, rebalancing underpowered trees, etc). All good things, but they do ramp up player power with no compensating factors for difficulty.

Nerfed enemies: Things like removal of paralyses effects (bar sleep), capping confusion, the scaling tweaks that are going in next patch. Again, the vast majority of players want this, and they’re probably for the best overall... but easier.

Overall Game Improvements: More classes/UI improvements/new stuff of any sort/more quest rewards/improved auto-use/etc. Excellent, but you get the picture


Suggestions for Madness!

First, just for ease of speaking, I hereby grant the new proposed difficulty the codename “Madness” untill DG says otherwise.

DG already mentioned jacking up the amount of rares all over the place, which is excellent and should help. However, I feel compelled to add that if that was the only change, it wouldn’t be nearly the difficulty boos that most people might assume. I’d guess we’d have a win on it in only a week or two if that was the case, specifically. So, here’s some suggestions I have in order to bring it to a level more on par with old-school insane.

1) Most importantly (also conveniently probably most easily), the scaling needs to be pumped up again. I would hope for at least 150%+10, probably with 150% talent levels. Although, I’d also say, the higher the better.

2) Part of the problem is that even if every mob was a super-ultra-rare, once you get around/defeat them, the crucial plotline chokepoints wouldn’t be significantly more challenging. Specifically (and by far most important), the last bosses. I’d recommend tweaking them somewhat, either by adding more classes to them (i.e. Cursed to the Reaver dude), or adding a random rare into the mix. Or both Also, conveniently pretty easy to do.

If those first two were in effect, that’d probably be all that was needed. Also conveniently pretty easy. But since I’m a masochist, I’m going to throw out a few more ideas to appeal to DG’s evil nature!

3) Buff/Uncap enemy status effects and whatnot. I miss 180% Confusion! Or, and most people will hate me for this, paralyzing flameshocks and super stuns in general! There are plenty of tools around these things if you’re playing optimally, as is.

4) Disable the Vault on it, or, more reasonably (as that would probably upset people), make it so you can only get Achievements on Madness if you haven't used it/addons. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that I could just choose to not use it, but it’s different playing with self-imposed handicaps vs trying everything you can to win normally. Otherwise, I could just be playing Ironman Adom or No religion Crawl, etc.

5) Anything evil you can think of! Bigger zones, unskippable high peak stair guardians, anything!

6) SageAcrin's suggestion. Basically that there is some sort of improved enemy awareness of the player. Giving enemies some sort of vimsense/banshees sight within a certain radius so they start tracking you down. See his post for a more detailed/clear explanation. This would make it so you'd have to make more on the fly tactical decisions, and would help with almost all of the plot chokepoints I spoke of in suggestion number 2 (although, still recommend a last boss tweak of some sort, and it'd be possible to carry this a little too far into Stition's land of terror)

Uh, I think it's very possible to go overboard and have it objectively impossible, which isn't fun or pointful to play.

If you started surrounded, sure that'd guarantee nobody ever beat it, but there must at least be the illusion that it's possible to win.

Some of the insane stair guardians are already impossible. I recall a champion or Uhrock? shadowblade that would charge around a 1 shot 85 resist all treants, that would just add randomness where sometimes it'd just be impossible to progress. Part of the fun is that most challenges in the game aren't mandatory, that's where I think the randomness belongs (so a character isn't wasted b/c they got unlucky instead of a player's mistake).

I have faith in DarkGod, so am not too worried, but this post made me think of how easy it would be make it logically unbeatable. I got scared.

Edit: I do agree that insane isn't insane anymore, just like the illusion that it's possible to win and eagerly await whatever is coming.

The prodigies are getting overhauled, but I haven't kept up on all the changes and disabling them for this difficulty would help I think. One less tool for the player to abuse.

My idea:

Void

Enemy Talent and Level scaling are increased to 150% and 150%+10 respectively.
The player is not elite.
The player has their alldamage% reduced by 20%.
The player has the Hunted passive talent.

The Hunted passive talent gives a 2-3% chance each turn(Possible alternative: 1%+(level/10) chance) to apply the "Hunter" status to all enemies within (RNG range 15...35, possible alternative is to have a low end of 10 and a high end of [15+level]) radius. Enemies that have this status will know where you are for the next five turns(ala Vimsense), and it will lift In Vault status. (Note: If I understand the AI correctly, even if they lose track of you after those five turns, they'll still move to where you last were known to be.)

The idea here was that, rather than intensify the standard setups in the game, that you'd instead have to deal with more reactive situations-instead of, say, carefully kiting a given boss, they'd charge up to you. Maybe. Instead of hiding from enemies, there'd be no place to hide. It would be a more active(and dangerous) situation throughout the game, rather than just linearly upgrading enemies.

I got the idea from several states the game used to be in-In Vault enemies used to break out of vaults all the time, and there was a short period in the Release Candidates where enemies would target pass across a good chunk of the floor, vastly complicating normally simple combat. These vastly complicated, in a nasty way, fairly simple situations, and I think it could be an interesting way to change things up rather than just more stats.

(Yes, I have been thinking about this. )

Concievably, buffing the rate of rares, and allowing bosses to be rares, could be added on top of that, though actually beating that might just be nigh-impossible.

SageAcrin, that's brilliant! I'm going to add the suggestion to the initial post, as I really like it. This would fulfill basically the same role as buffing specific boss encounters, if they were more aware of you/relentless. Though, I still think the last dudes need a little tweak. Overall, I was trying mostly to suggest things that wouldn't be too much of a pain in the ass to implement... and I don't really know how hard it'd be to add what you suggest, but I heartily approve! A few notes/caveats though:

I like the idea at maybe 15ish, maybe 20 range? Perhaps a little more, but there'd be a point where it might approach what Stition fears if, say, everyone on a High Peak 100 square level was aware of you and came a-charging. You'd still want to maintain the ability to do a little bit of pre-planning and risk assessment.

I wouldn't mind if "Hunted" was its own gameplay option separate from any difficulty setting. I think it could be just as interesting and different on Normal.

For the "all rares" part that you talked about, I actually modified a little addon that made rares be 100% of normally-possible monsters, and random uniques have the same rarity as the old rares. I got to ~lvl 25, and it was actually fairly easy up to that point (then a new version came out). If the XP and drops were reduced, I could see that being a very viable boost to difficulty.

Hum, so rather than making a strictly higher challenge, maybe just making challenge modes would work?

Rarified: All enemies are rares. (Addon based challenge)
Hunted: (See my concept on the talent there)
Dullard: All EXP gains are halved. (Another addon based challenge, I believe tiger_eye came up with that.)
Linear: You can only do dungeons that appear in quests. (Your two starting dungeons, the four tier twos, Dreadfell, Reknor/Cave, Vor Armory/Briagh's Lair, one of Telmur or Fearscape, the Prides, High Peak.)
Short: You can only do required dungeons(Dreadfell->Reknor/Cave->Prides->Dreadfell). You start at L10 and EXP gains are tripled.
Sensitive: You can't have inscriptions. Your skin's too sensitive for that. (Maybe just make the starting slots 0, but allow them to be bought still?)
Scavenger: Enemies don't drop items(except for plot items). Only the floor god and stores for you! Could also do this the other way around(no floor items, just drops and stores) but it's less effective.
Harmless: All damage you deal is halved. (I think this was another addon.)
Irresistable: Your resist caps are locked at 0%, and all of your status resists are -1000%, effectively making it impossible to resist anything.

Just some thoughts.

Would certainly be... interesting.

I think some challange modes would be better than just pumping difficulty ad nauseum.

Or do both.

All bosses should come with randboss sidekicks!

I'm not into the higher difficulties myself but challenge modes sound...interesting. Random thoughts:

"Back in my days..": Pseudo-old-style. You have to pay for food, ammo, recalling...Yes, lots of extra annoyance but that IS the point Abstracting by having resting/passing of time, reloading and recalling take gold(why, yes, that Rod of Recall CONVENIENTLY burns up your money) would work but perhaps be too simple. Also, maybe inscriptions all have charges?

Time is of the essence: Level of ALL actors increased based on total turns spent. Gives a reason not to rest for full with non-decaying resources, and not do all zones. Alternatively, increase 'enemy'world patrols based on total turns spent.

Let Them Come: A variation on SageAcrin's 'Hunted' idea. But this isn't a timed effect. Basically, enemies ALWAYS know where the player is(well, stealth, invisibility would work as normal, but I think you know what I mean)

As Inspiration Strikes:Every time you enter a level for the first time, your talents are randomly rearranged, though they still respect requirements and the like. You cannot respec, also.(needs a better name)

Nostalgia - Not allowed to change your gear ... go through the game with starter gear ...

Weakling - only 25%(??) carry capacity, Transmogrification Chest don't lower weight

I've seen stition solving all problems late insane presents with pets (video of master not attacking the player even once: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQPsM2HwkXE).

Instead of (or maybe complementary to) the Hunted idea could be:
Priority target - if it's possible to target the player with an ability, monsters will do so before doing anything else.

This would make the usual approach to insane impossible.