ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Please see this thread: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... 25&start=0

Currently some people are unhappy with the naming of Normal/Hardcore. Please give your preference in this poll. You may select as many options as you like (and should choose a minimum of two unless you don't care!)

Not that this is purely about a naming change, with no implications on actual gameplay. Also DarkGod may not listen to us mere mortals and will do his own thing regardless ;)

In my opinion, a true roguelike game does not grant extra lives. The term derives from games that are like rogue and rogue did not have extra lives. Traditionally, TOME also did not have extra lives.

I feel like this game is already plenty hard enough with lives. I don't think we should make so that people that haven't sunk year of their real life into rogue like should be demoralized for picking normal mode. I picked purist for Hardcore mode.

Hehe.. I've played roguelikes for some 20 years, and I've only been able to 'finish' with, I think, less than 1% of all characters I played. Now, I'm not that good a player, I tend to meet YASD just a bit too often, but, a roguelike is supposed to be hard. You are not supposed to be able to finish a roguelike in a few days, or weeks, except when you are using a *lot* of spoilers, which isn't fun IMO. And even then, you will die unless you play carefully.

This is, for me at least, what makes roguelikes so long-lived. Not only is there replayability through random generation, but they pose a real challenge, and provide a feeling of accomplishment every time a character progresses yet a bit further into the game's depth before dying, which lingers after the character dies, making the player yearn for more.

Getting an extra life, or extra lives after dying feels, to me at least, like 'cheating' in this genre of games.
More importantly, it breaks the suspension of disbelief.
Some roguelikes have an item similar to the 'Blood of Life', which grants a single resurrection.
This does not break suspension of disbelief, as it is part of the game's universe.
Getting extra lives, out of nowhere, does.

Gandolfo wrote: This underhanded lobbying to revert the modes is rather disgusting to me.

I kinda have absolutely no idea what you are talking about

I don't know why people say that having multiple (but finite) lives make for a totally different game that is no longer a roguelike.

For me, extra lives is simply another way the game can permanently punish the player without an instant game over. What are the other permanent punishments available in a roguelike?
- Death (can still happen, even with lives remaining through getting stuck in an hopeless ambush or something similar)
- Permanent injury (like extra lives, but with an additional debuff, present in GearHead 2)
- Forcing the use of a item in finite quantity to survive (an example would be a potion that heal fully, but can only be gotten through a quest)
- Losing access to a non-replaceable reward (already present, with many of the quests)
- Lower score or reduced achievement when winning

The thing is, having death as the only possible punishment often makes for a boring game, as it forces players to always try to minimize risk, as loosing a bad bet forces them to restart from scratch. Furthermore, if they don't get killed, there isn't going to be any long (or even medium) term consequences. This leaves the game designer in a very precarious balancing act between "the cautious player is never going to die" and "the player can get killed through no fault of his own".

As for the topic: I would just keep the names as they are.

Gandolfo wrote:

martinuzz wrote:This underhanded lobbying to revert the modes is rather disgusting to me.

Eh? Who's being underhanded? I think everyone has been pretty honest and straightforward about their opinions.

Marcotte wrote:I don't know why people say that having multiple (but finite) lives make for a totally different game that is no longer a roguelike.

I think you learn better from a more permanent failure. If you lose a life in a situation but have several more then you don't stop to reflect on what you should have done differently, or how you should have built the character differently. You might get farther in the game and eventually lose a lot more lives and still not learn a lot of vital lessons.

I also think it's important for the replayability. One of the attractions of the genre is that the games are eminently replayable, with the random content meaning the frequent deaths don't lead to repetition. Having said that I think ToME4 could use a bit of focus on the very early game to make it more replayable (the idea of random starting dungeons was a nice one).

And dying is fun. Dying is a big part of the game, and should be enjoyed in all its blessed form. The agony of death makes the survival more thrilling, and makes every battle more tense. There is no room for relaxation when just a few wrong moves can mean the utter end for your character. Allowing extra lives takes away a lot of the game tension and promotes more gung-ho gameplay.

These are all, to me, big things that change the game completely, and add a huge amount of fun to the gameplay. The difference is not trivial.

Of course I'm not against having other game modes. Heck the game could even have a real-time mode, as long as it doesn't go calling it "Normal".

As was mentioned in the other thread, a roguelike is a game with one life. That was a feature in Rogue and it's one of the defining features of the game type.

Renaming the difficulties is a way of keeping ToME a roguelike. If the standard difficulty (which is another name for normal) gives you multiple lives then ToME really has no business calling itself a roguelike.

Hence... call normal something else, anything else, and put the Hardcore name either back to normal or call it roguelike mode. If the standard way to play the game gives more then one life Tome is no longer a RL .

well...

off the wikipedia entry for roguelike:

"The gameplay elements characterizing the roguelike genre were explicitly defined at the International Roguelike Development Conference 2008.[3] Some of the "high value factors" used in this definition include:

...

Roguelikes traditionally implement permadeath. Once a character dies, the player must begin a new game. A "save game" feature will only provide suspension of gameplay and not a limitlessly recoverable state; the stored session is deleted upon resumption or character death. Players can circumvent this by backing up stored game data ("save scumming"), an act that is usually considered cheating."

So. Maybe ToME is not a traditional roguelike.

I still like permadeath.

Grey wrote:I think you learn better from a more permanent failure. If you lose a life in a situation but have several more then you don't stop to reflect on what you should have done differently, or how you should have built the character differently. You might get farther in the game and eventually lose a lot more lives and still not learn a lot of vital lessons.

You are not the only one making the argument about learning. But I find this argument extremely circular. With a single-life game, dying help you learn only a single thing: how not to get killed. It's all about not taking risks and playing as slowly and carefully as possible. But is playing that way actually fun? Some would say yes, some would say no (I would be in the second category). I much prefer games which reward risk-taking, with rewards balanced with the potential danger.

Obviously, the balance of a single-life game should be different than the balance of multiple-life game. Insta-deaths are more palatable in the first kind, and death should in general be more frequent.

Easy => Discovery
Normal => Easy
Hardcore => Normal

What about:
Discovery => Discovery
Normal => RPG mode
Hardcore => Roguelike mode
remove nightmare
Insane => Insane

?

Darkgod, I think that looks good. Now how about an ego monster system to make Insane difficulty insanely difficult?

Heh, I'm sure there's be plenty of nitpickery about that abuse of the term "RPG". Most roguelikes are RPGs, and ToME doesn't stop being an RPG on Roguelike mode :)

"Default" was mentioned in the other thread. I don't like it much, but it's better than "Normal".

I'd prefer normal to stay as normal, but adventure isn't that bad. But Arcade? Am I supposed to chip dimes into my cd slot drive?