ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So tell me please what you think

Interface is top-notch, but I think there are some elements of balancing (random bosses) and early game variety that need to be addressed. Still, when you look at how far the game has come it's clear that it's close to being about as perfect as it can be. It's gotten to the point now where any major changes made tend to introduce other problems, and no truly perfect state can be achieved.

Certainly I think it should enter a polish phase now, and b38 is an excellent example of a release which emphasises that. The long gap from b37 to b38 helps, and I think in future you should leave similar timescales between releases to ensure all bugs are swept up and the next release can be more and more polished by SVN players. The game has plenty of content, and would benefit more from refining the existing content than adding new stuff.

I agree with Grey here. We have plenty of content, many players even complain that the game is to long. The early game needs to be refined so it feels like there's much more variety on that end.

If I had to put a beta count on it... well I couldn't. It would really depend on everyone's real life schedules and how anxious we are to get new changes to the player base.

Things I would like to personally see/do before release.

More set uniques like the ones just added to Dreadfell
Traps refined (and drastically reduced in number early game)
All of the egos gone over and looked at (I'm in the process of this)
One or two more psionic classes added to the game
Summoner and Wyrmic abilities looked at and possibly moved away from Strength and Will scaling (and to Physical Power and Mindpower)
Better world map encounters (such as the merchants that I've brought up before)
Some set but random world map encounters (Dgrey and I have talked about this, stuff that you just don't see every game)
Something done about the length of the very early game (six or eight starting dungeons is to many)
Wands dealt with in one way or another
More Runes and Infusions, specifically some artifact ones (this is on my near future to do list)
More variety in early to mid game monsters (either by spicing up the old ones or adding new ones)
Set dungeon levels for the last level of each pride and the last level of Dreadfell (this becomes more important as we introduce more set uniques into the game to maintain balance on these encounters... plus.. I loved orc town in Tome 2 and similar set levels and the other players I've talked to generally feel the same).

Interface complaints:

Before you unlock the [spoiler redacted], selling mass quantities of items is tedious. It's not the end of the world. Said item really changes inventory management, to my joy.

This one is a little more vague and probably dependant on my setup, but sometimes targeting is a real chore. The screen seems prone to jumping around so when I try to select an ability and target an adjacent character I wond out with the target cursor like 5 squares off in some weird direction. I wish focus stayed on the character when targeting, but it seems to follow the cursor and this creates some wonkiness for me at times.

Gameplay complaints: few to speak of. I can consistently (but not 100% of the time) get characters to around Daikara without deaths. It's here I hit make-or-break. Do I have enough confusion resistance (I start opening shops now en masse if I am lacking)? I'm not 100% certain on this front, but I think as Bulwark/Berserker (the two classes I have played the most) I need it more there than Lightning or Cold (until the boss, anyway). All of my failures in Daikara - and most of my characters in Adventure mode end here, but I have beaten it last 3 out of 4 tries - seem to be a result of confusion resistance being minimal. Knockback is a problem but not as much of one (and is not a problem for Bulwarks). I'm finding the game much tougher* after this, but I think that's just due to my still honing skills (though the upper levels of Dreadfell get tricksy I find).

I think my only complaint about the game, up through the tier 2 zones, is the distinct lack of random bosses. Or maybe I just never see them, but some the potential for level appropriate (for the area) random bosses would spice things up considerably. As it is, there's only the occasional vault to look forward to (lesser vault I assume, if the game recognizes such internally), and the hope that some interesting gear with drop. I don't mind the bulk of the starter areas as is, I just think the chance for a boss to appear unexpectedly will increase the joy of them.

Oh, as a matter of taste - as a Cormac I'd prefer to go ahead and spend my free level 1 category point at level 1, even though I can't use it yet. I realize there is an incongruity there for new players, but I hate having the level up display triggered when I can't do any leveling up. This is a small thing.

Technical issues: sometimes the game slips into an unplayable state. Not a hard crash (Task Manager think it's working ok, anyway; this is win 7 x64, mind). It's obnoxious to get the game to shut down at this point, though. I had to pin Task Manager to the task bar to get it to open in a sane place ( 2 monitor setup, it was always opening beyond the boundary of the right monitor). The game is alt-tab friendly where my second monitor is concerned but anything running on the primary seems unavailable when TOME is running, which is mildly weird.



*some areas anyway. Mostly dreadfell, once you get into the mid levels.

I have a different perspective on the beta -> release status, and that is of T-Engine itself as opposed to ToME4. These don't have to come out of beta at the same time, but if you were planning on doing that I suggest that we take a hard look at the documentation and APIs to make sure everything is in prime working order. We want new devs to start using this, and even if Grey advocates on every RL Radio episode from here to eternity about how great T-Engine is, if the initial experience is poor we will loose people. Thoughts on this?

I agree that the engine itself is very badly documented, and needs much further polish in this area. I don't see this as being of importance to ToME though.

I am unsure.

I don't see that many people will complain if you said. Ok version 1.0.0.

What I think is very positive to call it 1.0.0 is that an orc campaign or similar may come sooner rather than later.

Balance wise I still believe that stamina based classes are pretty tough especially early on. But balance can be done in point releases.

Less PD and teleport runes (one is like the other, all you look for is reduced cooldown, slightly increased range (PD), not a too big range (TP))... More shield runes.

I think a 1.0.0 release should be special. It should signify a balanced and polished game, with all intended features in. It should mean, for instance, that save games from then on retain compatibility (something expected of a release on Steam - the Dredmor guys got a lot of shit for not making sure of this). It should mean no blatantly unfair deaths. No obvious player exploits. No game-stopping bugs. You may point at some AAA titles that don't have these, but remember that this is a) new IP that needs to build support and make a good impression, b) a roguelike, which can be punishing on player death, and c) an indie game, which can easily be ruined by a bad online rep.

1.0.0 should reach to a much larger audience than the game has already achieved. We all know *this* is the roguelike that people outside the genre can truly enjoy, with all the modern whizzbangs to impress people whilst retaining the funnest core elements of roguelike gameplay. 1.0.0 needs to be ambitious and needs to be making a loud noise outside of just niche forums. To do that it needs to be invulnerable to criticism whilst flouting its greatest elements for all to see. b38 is getting close, but it's not quite there yet.

Grey wrote:You may point at some AAA titles that don't have these, but remember that this is a) new IP that needs to build support and make a good impression, b) a roguelike, which can be punishing on player death, and c) an indie game, which can easily be ruined by a bad online rep.

This is even less excusable with AAA titles in my opinion. When I pay $60 for a game and it's barely playable on my ps3 (*cough* Skyrim *cough*) I feel like filing a law suit.

Though I agree about polish. Maybe I should have clicked 'still needs some work' instead of 'close'. Then again, six months feels pretty close to me The game's been in active development for a lot longer then that after all. And even shooting for a New Years release sounds good to me.

Well, yeah if it's gonna be released on Steam. Then yeah, a good 3 months of feature freezed testing. And bugfix updates via the server from there on in.

Still waiting on a Mac release, but I think I follow the development enough to have an opinion. Here are my main complaints:

Classes that feel too undeveloped. These are the classes that, unfortunately, probably also receive the least attention from players. Reaver is one of my favorite classes, both conceptually and in practice, but it lacks character development options. Alchemist and Mindslayer are two classes I intensely dislike because they lack options and feel more like jumbles of ideas than actual classes. Not to say they don't have potential; both are fun concepts. Other classes feel too plain, like Archmages, Berserkers, and Archers. They probably came very early in the development cycle and haven't seen much revision since.

Inconsistency between early and late game. While any RPG will have its "acts" and power-scaling, there's clearly been a change in development paradigms as the game has grown. The zones start out somewhat tedious, then become incredibly drawn-out, then you hit Dreadfell. If you make it past Dreadfell, the rest of the game feels very fast (and it's mostly fun), though some of the fun is lost in how it basically becomes a powerleveling/artifact/boss rush. The story is also completely nonexistent until you beat the dungeon that most would call the halfway point (and honestly, it feels like the 2/3rds point). Couple that with the fact that unskilled players like myself will be replaying certain parts of the game many more times than others, and it all begins to drag.

Difficult or time-consuming unlocks. I think Grey has said more on this in multiple places than I ever can.

Stun-locking players. I can attribute almost all of my character's deaths to effects like Stun and Daze. Yes, you can collect immunities, but that's not actually fun, especially when the egos that grant immunities only give a pittance (why should an ego give 5% at an early level but 30% later?). Diminishing returns would be a really nice addition.

Speed-altering effects. I've thought about these a lot for my own (vaporware) roguelikes, and I've concluded that anything that alters turn order should be used with extreme caution. ToME has dozens and they tend to clash in unpredictable fashions.

Generally unbalanced NPCs or skills. Random bosses are the biggest violator here, followed by any NPC with the Freeze talent. This is the primary reason I don't play the game much any more; after I get past the part of the game I've done dozens of times, I'm probably going to die to something I can sort of anticipate but really don't know how to handle. Dreadmasters, NPCs with Rush, random bosses, necromancers with mountains of powerful minions, corruptors with super-critting spells. If it didn't take hours to get to this part of the game, I'd be less bitter about it.

TL;DR. The game needs to be reviewed as a whole before release. There's too much inconsistency between content and too many areas of over- or underdevelopment. That's probably just common sense, but it strikes me as an urgent need as opposed to polish.

I've played this game a lot, too much in fact. I've got most unlocks and most classes to the east.

And having read the comments above, I agree most with bricks. It is huge imbalances that are most problematic. Random bosses in far portal, adventurer parties in the west, shops that are mostly useless, etc.

I also agree that the classes are inconsistent in many ways. Try playing a skeleton cursed with generic point distribution!

Too many lua errors still - orcs with Tornado in a Pride! Yuck!

So a great game, but unbalanced and too buggy still.

Also in the Still Needs Work camp. From the sense of things I get, and let's assume at least a bi-monthly release pace from here on just to be rather extra conservative---by the last release of December the game should be in a state to where the very next following release to kick off in early January 2013 should be "there".

The volume and variety across the board are among the biggest of things, and these things simply take time and release after release to get populated. As opposed to the general scattershot ones thus far, perhaps now is as good a time as any to aim a given release at one particular area or another, with only minimal scattershotting outside of fixes such that each part of the final run up is more pronounced?

I'll add a couple of things:

The story in the beginning doesn't feel very well connected or very purposeful. Some of it does provide good background, but I wouldn't mind seeing a common thread inserted that involves the player or her race/class somehow. I'd also like to see it be a little more interactive. When you get/complete one of the main story quests, maybe it should pop up a dialog explaining that rather than just sticking it in the quest log. I think many of the early dungeons and quests where designed before a story really existed.

The add-in feature adds a lot of potential to create content after 1.0 comes out, even if game development stops or slows. I haven't worked with it so I don't know how it all fits in, but it would be great if new user content were easy to add and integrate in a safe, side-by-side way. The special random encounters people have mentioned sound like a good canidate for add-in content. For balance, it would probably need to restrict special encounters (for example, 1 in the west and 1 in the east). It would be great if new random encounters could be built by people and dropped into that framework. Same goes for dungeons: a couple of dungeons in the west could be randomly chosen from a list that people could create new dungeon add-ons for. Other things like add-in vaults, items, traps, etc could be good too. This lends itself to easy templates for people to start with.

Strongly agree with everything bricks said, except for the criticism of some classes. Every game needs some "basic" classes, and Berserkers and Archmages fit these roles very well, in my opinion. They've got a coherent fighting style, a plethora of options, and they're fun to play. Mindslayers are also good, except for the weird scaling on Auras. Alchemists, and other classes that only have two unlockable native talent trees could use some more (yes I know you can spend cat points on other things), but it's not as urgent as, say, fixing random bosses and status effects.