Feedback about magic & class system in Tome 4.

[jemis_]

Hello,

first of all, thank you AGAIN for the great (at the moment, the best) roguelike. This game has really saved my summer vacation

General "feel" of the game has improved a lot. The game is much smoother and easier to adapt than Tome 3, mostly because of improved GUI.

Although, I think that the class system in tome 3 was much better. Classes in Tome 3 served as a "template" featuring special class properties, but the player was able to choose whether he wants to play the mage-style or warrior-style. Good example was alchemist. I won the game twice as alchemist, first playing with warrior style and then offensive mage-style (thaumaturgist). The game experience was totally different in both runs even thou the class was the same.

The magic was the funniest thing in Tome 3. It was great fun to hunt down the spellbooks and scrolls as a mage. Nowadays spellbooks don't exist. Transforming magic as skill based makes using magic too simple. In Tome 3 archmage was able to cast large scale of spells only by finding good spellbooks, but now i just have to wait until i have enough class points to get new spells.

What do you think? Was the magic and class system in Tome 3 more versatile than in Tome 4 or am I just imaging ?

[Postman]

I think I agree. As a former Crawl Stone Soup/Nethack player I think books/scrolls magic system is more natural, because it create completely different playstyle for "classical" mages, as opposite to fighters, hybrids and exotic magic users. Right now there is no principal gameplay difference between mage and for example archer.
For practical proposes introduction of complete book-based classes and book corpus itself would probably be too much work. However it could be made as slow, evolutionary change, by introducing book-artifacts with the same talent-learning functionality as escort quest. Books could be quest items, rare random drops and expensive items in shops. Also a new class "Loremaster" could be paired with them, class with most of category slots opened...

[Grey]

I think it just doesn't fit in with ToME4. The talent system is ubiquitous to the game, and indeed is one of its main attractions. Without that core ability structure the classes would be a lot messier (as they are in many games). The uniform talent system allows one to pick up and learn the game very easily, and to get to grips with new classes immediately. Mages may feel different, but quite frankly so do most classes in ToME4.

[jemis_]

Loremaster, i agree with you that the talent system is fantastic in all Tome-roguelikes. It's also one of the most attractive things in this game. But it was even better in Tome 3. As Postman Implied, playing the mage isn't that rewarding anymore. Playing magic based classes is really like playing the archer-class (which is great in this game by the way )

In Tome 3, I loved to combine dozens of spells in order to save my ass from the room full of angry Balrogs. The class system in Tome 3 enabled players to build combinations which were able to clear the whole level with couple of spells or hits. Good example was archmage with genocide or Alchemist with custom crafted sword hitting 99 times a row or Thaumaturgist with 999 different possible spell combinations. And these classes were not overpowered because enemies were so god damn tough (demons with over 100 000 hitpoints). In Tome 3 we had also some pretty damn crazy levels: summoners which casted the spells calling 50 demons in the same level. Player HAD to have a powerful character in order to survive.

I don't know, mostly im very satisfied with the new Tome, but on the other side, I miss the old crazy monster filled levels and the magic system, which really made this game different from Nethack or Dungeon Crawl.

[Grey]

Well, this is a different game, and I think the design decision to to specifically stick away from that sort of craziness. Instead it's quite tightly made with cooldowns and resources controlling the flow of battle, and things like infusions/runes making for interesting tactical decisions on even short fights.

[getter77]

Yep, I'd say it is best for things to stand on their own and pursue each direction in tandem.

I mean, nothing outside of the sheer forces of will and time, and perhaps some Engine features not yet there, nothing is really stopping somebody from going about a ToME 3 + or some such Mega-Module within T-Engine 4 to take that old spirit to new heights with the improved GUI possibilities and so forth.

At the current pace of polish and community growth, all manner of user modules will no doubt be undertaken. Sometimes things can go TOO far off the deep end though----even the infamous, yet largely unknown, Roguelike Portralis has recently began something of a wholesale reboot to keep the personality in tact but dial down some of the stuff that was leading it off the precipice in terms of system designs and such.

[greycat]

Every mention of ToME 3 in this thread is actually talking about ToME 2, right?

[madmonk]

Agreed! T3 really never got off the ground. T2 it is.