ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

After making my presence known when playing this evening I was asked to post on the forums why I started playing TOME and any recommendations I had for drawing in new players. So here I am.

I started playing roguelikes (Nethack to be exact) when I was about 11, and at that age, I had both the time and patience to learn the extremely complex UIs involved with most Roguelikes of that day, as well as hours to spend creating new characters and dying over and over again. I learned (and, well, not mastered, but, "became adept at") Nethack, Angband (and a good dozen variants), ADOM, Omega, and of course, Rogue. After playing them all on and off for a few weeks at a time, I settled on ADOM, which quickly became my favorite game. (I've clocked nearly a thousand hours playing it in the past 11 years, I'd estimate) Over the years as I got busier and less patient with massive learning curves, I found I kept having the same experience with roguelikes:

1) I'd hear about some great new roguelike and get really excited.
2) I'd download said roguelike.
3) I'd spend 17 hours trying to remember 270 different commands (like the exact 14 step process to wear a half-mithril/half gold ring of +15% wind damage against orcs wearing teal tutus on your right pinky finger with the diamond mount facing due NNW when the character's arm is resting...)
4a) I'd give up in disgust and say "I'll figure it out later" (and never play it again) or;
4b) I'd play it and find the game is still very alpha and buggy, but the creator swears he'll develop it more as soon as he has some free time...

Needless to say, around 2005 or so I almost stopped playing new roguelikes altogether - DoomRL was the last one to really drag me in. More traditional RPGs, Dragon Age, for example, may not be as in depth or as fun as roguelikes can be... on the other hand, I was completely absorbed in Dragon Age within 10 minutes of installing, and had a pretty good time playing it, and it didn't take much effort on my part to get into it. When you work 60 hours a week, that's pretty important.

Anyway, for the past year or so, while I've been monitoring the progress of JADE, I kept on hearing TOME4 being heralded as the great new "epic" roguelike to rival even ADOM or Nethack or Angband. And I wanted to play it, very much, but I could never find the time for what I assumed would be a week long (at least) orgy of masochism and frustration before I got the swing of things. But I was home for Christmas, and on leave, and bored, so I gritted my teeth and downloaded TOME4...

And I started it up...

And within 10 minutes I was gleefully hacking away at trolls, discovering treasure and the notes of an unfortunate adventurer who had gone before me. I was actually having fun. The keybindings and skill system are as simple as, say, Torchlight, but don't feel restrictive at all in the way Torchlight feels small and restrictive. I killed some big troll, and then sold a lot of loot in town, and then got halfway through some ancient ruin before saving for the night and posting this. I can see, just from the weapon prefixes and the skills and the notes and the vague murmurings of people on the built in IRC channel (cool idea btw), that the game is almost infinitely larger than the tiny bit I've tasted. But the thing is, *I don't care.* I don't feel overwhelmed. I don't feel the need to go online and spend 20 hours reading through some wiki trying to figure the game out. I don't feel as if I won't be able to sleep until I visit every place and figure out every game mechanic. I feel that my current understanding of the game is sufficient to get me through my current adventure - and that my understanding is growing at about the same rate as the difficulty is increasing. In other words, TOME4 is a roguelike that is actually designed to be easy to play, which is almost a revolutionary concept for me.

So, things that could help draw new players in:

- Play up the fact that it's really easy and intuitive to get into. A lot of times I've seen TOME mentioned, what's mentioned is the epic scale, length and complexity, which in roguelikes usually means it's also obscenely hard for a new user to start without reading 300 pages of wiki entries beforehand. (I'm probably one of the last people to have learned Nethack from scratch) The fact that the UI is both pretty *and* functional is a huge plus - other than DCSS (which I dislike for other reasons), it's the only tile set I've seen that I've liked. (never bothered with DF, though I hear that has tiles too)

- Play up the fact it has actual quests, and towns, and NPCs, and journal entries, and a real story. In many ways TOME feels like an old school, Ultima/Gold Box style game, but with a roguelike rule set. I loved those old games as a kid, and I think the biggest draw of ADOM for me was I felt like I was doing something more than just killing random bosses in random dungeons. I like the fact that the quests are more than just "kill 14 hobgoblins on level 47" or something like that, too.

- Perhaps play down the relation to earlier versions of TOME, and especially Angband. TBH, until I played it, I thought it was basically another glorified *band. (I've played dozens of them and liked none of them, except Zangband)

I'll continue to play, though I doubt I'll post here much. I already have more forums I post on that I can allocate time to read. Just wanted to say I really love the game and what you've done with it, and I hope to have a lot of fun with it over the next few years.

People that suggested you post here were right to do so
Thanks for your comments, that's the kind of thing that "justifies" all the time I spend creating T4 and it's very very nice to hear I must admit.

Your points about how to market it are very true too; thing is I did not even try to market it at all yet, not while beta is still going on.

Do I have your authorization to use part of your post in future marketing campaigns ? Nothing rings truer than people's feelings

Yeah and it actually has tutorials!

I have to agree not just pretty, its functional and easy. Also a great community.

darkgod wrote: Do I have your authorization to use part of your post in future marketing campaigns ? Nothing rings truer than people's feelings

Yeah, go ahead.

If you don't mind me asking, what other projects (non-roguelike) have you been involved in? I could've sworn I've seen the "darkgod" moniker before in other places, but then again it may just be a common username.

I do have to say that escort missions are maddeningly difficult - because the dude I'm escorting always runs right into monsters and then fights to the death, instead of holding back and letting me do the killing.

While I have nowhere near the same level of experience with roguelikes as dogbreath, even though I think I'm looking at things from a slightly different angle, I do have similar impressions about the game after a couple of weeks of playing. I'm a powerplayer at heart, I don't care for discovering things on my own, I just want to have the information I need to build efficient strategies. My first few days in tome I kept looking for precise documentation on the game's mechanics. I didn't really find much, but I quickly realized that I could still do a lot without it. Sure, the game seems quite difficult to win, but it also feels like it's giving me time to learn, and it won't suddenly kill me for going one step wrong; there were warnings beforehand (in most cases, at least). I think the fact that pretty much everything is spoiled in tooltips helps a lot with that (I've found a couple exceptions to that, if it's of interest to anyone : flare doesn't say what the chance to blind is based on, and belts of shielding don't say anything about the shield's capacity, or what it scales with).

If you're looking for other things to play up, what really made me excited about the game is that it has some original classes, with very distinct playstyles (at least on paper, haven't tried a lot yet). It's not just the old warrior / thief / mage trio with minor variations (Torchlight, eh?). You get to play with time magic, how many games let you do that? (I really had to play as a chronomancy character as soon as I unlocked one; I'm a tiny bit disappointed that precognition is not more useful, but hey).

Dogbreath wrote:I do have to say that escort missions are maddeningly difficult - because the dude I'm escorting always runs right into monsters and then fights to the death, instead of holding back and letting me do the killing.

These have actually grown on me. It's quite satisfying when you manage to save escorts from the difficult situations they keep getting into, and it's an occasion to use skills in unusual ways (I once saved one by knocking him back and dazing him with that shield skill whose name I can't remember, it was a very satisfying moment).
Maybe a hint that one can from time to time ask the escort to stay where they are for a few turns wouldn't go amiss?

Escort rewards should probably less useful - you shouldn't feel crippled if you don't pick up Providence or gimped if you don't max Imbue Item. I never assume I'll have access to a particular reward talent or activated item, and build my character appropriately.

Some of the vagueness on items/talents is a consequence of gameplay revisions. There are also some descriptions that are misleading - many spells scale with Spellpower, not Magic. If I'm agonizing over a talent or equipment choice, I just pop open the code and figure out what's really going on. Not an option for some players.

As this apparently evolved into a 'my first experiences' topic, I'll throw in my few cents.

The web profile says I played for over 8 hours during this weekend. I've played ToME4 before, but only for a couple of minutes, and didn't like it very much. Not really sure why.

This time however, beckoned by the 'Roguelike of the Year' poll results, I've sat down and played for a while (it was either that, or doing something productive, so of course I procrastinated). The game sucked me right in. About the third time I've died to the Shade I had so much fun, that I made fourth character (same class/race) and beated him. From what I've seen, after I finish the game with my n-th cronac bulwark character, I'll have at least 4 or 5 times as much fun trying other character combinations. This is awesome.

I am relatively new to roguelikes, having only about a year of experience with them, but I don't mind learning difficult commands and keystrokes (ADOM however went a bit over the board for me). ToME is a nice suprise, having an interface learning curve comparable maybe to Diablo, etc. (I am biased, since I play games for about 13-14 years now, and really can't speak for complete newbies). Only thing about interface I don't like is that talent description is sometimes obscured by my small netbook screen size, and quick comparison of them is impossible.
What I don't quite like with ToME is the amount of choice I have. Most of the time I don't know what should I spend my points on. At the same time, I feel like I only use about 3-5 different talents, as the rest looks useless or redundant.
ToME is not quite my cup of tea when it comes to roguelike concepts: I am mostly a *hack/Crawl/(B)rogue player and the mix of ADOM's fixed overworld and Angband's hack'n'slash with shops is a bit... strange to me. However I am having a blast, and even repeating of the first few sections of the game (same bosses, same artifacts, with some exceptions) is not too tireing (I am playing with permadeath, so no respawn for me).

All in all I really like the game. I will recommend it, will watch it's developement, probably report some bugs (in fact I will do so in a minute), and DarkGod can expect a donation from me. I've already had more fun with this game then with some shooters I used to play a lot in a day.

If you're finding it too hack n slash then try out some other classes. The Alchemist in particular is quite different, and the Archmage and Cursed classes are very fun and easy to unlock early.

I have played most of the historical Roguelikes since I discovered Rogue in about 1986 and won them all. The original Rogue (on Unix, Mac, and PC), Hack, NetHack, Moria, Angband (several flavors, but primarily vanilla), Omega, ADoM, etc. I've eschewed the majority of the new perfusion of graphical Roguelikes and their derivatives. I'd say I've played Angband the most, and won it with most of the different classes therein (priest being far and away the easiest).

I've been playing TOME for about a month and can say without doubt I'm completely addicted. It is the best Roguelike I've ever played. The depth of character variation, strategy, and creativity brought to bear in this game are nothing short of astounding. Even the story is pretty solid, what I've seen of it, at any rate. It's the first Roguelike I've ever played that I actually felt was worth paying for, hence my donation about 2 weeks ago.

I am a little frustrated, though. This game has a deceptively steep learning curve. Thanks to the terrific advice of people like Skvader (IN GAME, no less!!), I have progressed quite a bit, but even following that advice and building what should be a dominant character, I'll still eventually make it to a point where I simply can't go any further no matter what tactics I use. That's disheartening. But I think it says something about the quality of the game that I keep coming back for more, no matter how frustrated I get!

I'm not very experienced with roguelikes, so you might think of me as casual gamer, who accidently stumbled upon Tome.
The game is gorgeous. The world is BIG and interesting. Halfling as most militaristic race is certain win.

And i have only one major consideration by now.
I might be wrong but for me the game suggest very little customization.
Yes, we have a whole bunch of classes and subclasses with neat features. But after one made a choice of race/class - most of the time he simply going on rails.
I played alot as alchemist. And I'll use him as an example:
Maxing out golem and taking advanced golemancy is a must. No decent alternatives at all.
Next, with it's >500dmg in early game DoT and blinder, which ignores saves, fire alchemy seems to be also superior for any other talents.
And, of course, since alchemists do not use much mana - you just have to max-out magic and constitution.

So in fact i had choice only in the area of Staves vs Bombs. And since infusions provided neat status effects and made DoT even more versatile - it also was pretty straight forward.

Similiar uniformity I have seen in other classes.
Thus my experience on the leveling up scheme was really much more about finding the only right way, planted by author, than trying building up char, as I see fit. Most of my experimental alchemists or shadowblades or archmages, who refused to follow the obvious optimal ways, have died pretty early - in fact noone of them was able to get to 30lvl.

I think there are many alchemist players who will disagree strongly with your points. A non-golem win has certainly been proven possible for a start. Also you have to consider not just the end point, but also how to get there. Some people prefer concentrating on bombs early, and golem later - others prefer the reverse, or a mix. And many of the other classes have far more complex and varied choices (check out Archmages for instance).

Alchemist is extremely lacking in development options, though. They have a whole tree dedicated to choosing your favorite flavor of ice cream I mean damage. I find myself playing the later-unlock classes very often, since they tend to be a little more intricate. That said, I agree with Grey - it's more about the path you take.

New player here as well. And I think I've always enjoyed the CONCEPT of a roguelike, more than the actual execution.

At this stage in my life, with a full-time programming gig, two young kids at home, and a body that requires a lot more sleep than it used to, I honestly don't have the will, the patience, or the time to learn something as complex as NetHack. I tried once or twice, and ended up falling asleep on my couch.

My aged brain simply can't take a full day of looking at an IDE, and then coming home to look at a terminal window.

I don't mean ANY offense to the folks who dig more complex/crunchy roguelikes; some people still play the original AD&D, too, and I've got no quarrel with any of them. It's just not for me.

ToME though? Man. I'm sold.

I think I looked at ToME, briefly, a few years back, because I was interested in the module-making tools*. But I looked at the modder documentation more than I did the actual game, and eventually moved on to something else.

For the last couple of years I've been getting my roguelike fix from DoomRL, and playing a lot of commercial RPGs (Bioware stuff, mostly). So when I recently read the DIYGamer write-up on ToME (which directly invoked Dragon Age) I decided I'd give the gameplay another go.

And I'm glad I did. The Dragon Age comparison in the game mechanics was incredibly apt.

I'd also second everything that Dogbreath suggested about bringing new players to the table. He and I seem like we're in (very roughly) the same demographic.

Regards,
Corporate Dog

* And I find myself in that same position again, for what it's worth.

Corporate Dog wrote:I think I looked at ToME, briefly, a few years back, because I was interested in the module-making tools*.

...

* And I find myself in that same position again, for what it's worth.

To you and any aspiring ToME tinkerers, I encourage you to visit the IRC channel. There have been more and more players visiting the channel, but the majority of devs hang out there, too, and we always enjoy adding to our number.

yufra wrote:To you and any aspiring ToME tinkerers, I encourage you to visit the IRC channel. There have been more and more players visiting the channel, but the majority of devs hang out there, too, and we always enjoy adding to our number.

Thanks for the invite! When I actually start doing some tinkering, I'll be sure to check it out!

In the meantime, I'm just having fun playing the game.

Regards,
Corporate Dog