The new game version features a number of "elite" normal mobs, and the concept is interesting. But they have a dramatic impact, especially in the early game.
I've been able to run several toons through to the final battle, so I'm pretty familiar with the game. The new elites make things far, far too deadly far, far too soon. You run across creatures that can corner you in the intro dungeons, and the risk vs. reward is badly skewed. I like the idea, but this is just making the game almost unplayable for me - I've gone from rarely losing a life before dreadfall to losing multiple lives in the starter dungeons.
This needs adjustment in my opinion - especially at the earlier levels where characters simply don't have their full tool kits to deal with problems. (It doesn't help that some of the bosses are, like far portal ones, badly overpowered.)
Too many elites, too deadly
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Re: Too many elites, too deadly
I agree. Almost wholly, too many, too deadly.
I'd rather address why this is such an issue at the moment though, and provide an example.
What it is is that we're running into multi/many talented elites before players have answers to issues.
At any given point in time in Tome you're deciding how to deal with a threat, and that question is answered via escape, overwhelming damage (glass cannon approach), attrition (winning in damage over time), disable and damage (mitigate threat and kill), and harassment (damage, escape temporarily, damage and kill).
Come level 10, you typically have choices on this list for which you're capable of in relation to any given threat, and maybe even a couple of redundancies in case a specific disable doesn't apply to a given threat. Come level 30, you typically can choose any of the given approaches, whichever is best for the situation.
What we're running into is at level 2-5, you've not got these choices, and we're facing enemies where one certain choice on that list is the correct/survivable one.
Levels 2-5 are rough. You may or may not have any form of teleport for any measure of escape, and it's probably just phase door if you do. Attrition's not likely to get you very far verse elites with twice as many skill points as you, and disable and damage is a gamble because every now and then some elites just going to by chance be built to resist/handle that one form of disable you have at your disposal at the given moment. Couple that with an absence of relevant status effect resists you itemized for, and you have recipes for trouble.
Take for example my many many low level doomed attempts in the past few days.
I was having particular trouble with, for example, snake bulwarks. Willful strike wasn't protecting me from melee (where I was doomed, literally) consistently because he had knockback resist, and the beauty of norgos lair is that oftentimes you've got a packed hallway which gave him a backstop to prevent knockback even when it did go through. I couldn't hide behind shadows because he was able to kill them in single turns often enough, and was packing step up to immediately get back next to me afterwards. I couldn't run from him thanks to his higher movement speed. I wasn't able to hit him down before he was a mortal threat because I had short enough range, and not high enough damage to kill him in the two turn lead I had before he could punish me. If I packed a sun infusion, it just so happened snakes are immune to blindness (and fair enough. that makes sense).
Literally, my correct answer was phase door/teleport and I just needed to have come across one of those between trollmire lvl 1 and whatever levels of norgos's I had happened to have gone through until I ran into him. Otherwise, it was pretty much a crapshoot as to whether I lived and died based on the Snakes AI and whether he had targeted me or a shadow first.
That's the real issue, imho.
At higher levels when players have answers to choose from, you get tactics and spice and it's fun and interesting. At low levels, it's frustrating, and that's where the heart of the problem lies.
Of note: I faced several adventuring parties yesterday around level 22 or so, and with careful play they weren't the normal deathtraps they usually were, which is awesome. Balancing on elites has improved over the whole, and that's awesome. Overall I think we've actually had net improvement, and bravo at that! It's just so glaringly apparent the difficulty faced early level.
(Omni is Xali, Xali is Omni)
I'd rather address why this is such an issue at the moment though, and provide an example.
What it is is that we're running into multi/many talented elites before players have answers to issues.
At any given point in time in Tome you're deciding how to deal with a threat, and that question is answered via escape, overwhelming damage (glass cannon approach), attrition (winning in damage over time), disable and damage (mitigate threat and kill), and harassment (damage, escape temporarily, damage and kill).
Come level 10, you typically have choices on this list for which you're capable of in relation to any given threat, and maybe even a couple of redundancies in case a specific disable doesn't apply to a given threat. Come level 30, you typically can choose any of the given approaches, whichever is best for the situation.
What we're running into is at level 2-5, you've not got these choices, and we're facing enemies where one certain choice on that list is the correct/survivable one.
Levels 2-5 are rough. You may or may not have any form of teleport for any measure of escape, and it's probably just phase door if you do. Attrition's not likely to get you very far verse elites with twice as many skill points as you, and disable and damage is a gamble because every now and then some elites just going to by chance be built to resist/handle that one form of disable you have at your disposal at the given moment. Couple that with an absence of relevant status effect resists you itemized for, and you have recipes for trouble.
Take for example my many many low level doomed attempts in the past few days.
I was having particular trouble with, for example, snake bulwarks. Willful strike wasn't protecting me from melee (where I was doomed, literally) consistently because he had knockback resist, and the beauty of norgos lair is that oftentimes you've got a packed hallway which gave him a backstop to prevent knockback even when it did go through. I couldn't hide behind shadows because he was able to kill them in single turns often enough, and was packing step up to immediately get back next to me afterwards. I couldn't run from him thanks to his higher movement speed. I wasn't able to hit him down before he was a mortal threat because I had short enough range, and not high enough damage to kill him in the two turn lead I had before he could punish me. If I packed a sun infusion, it just so happened snakes are immune to blindness (and fair enough. that makes sense).
Literally, my correct answer was phase door/teleport and I just needed to have come across one of those between trollmire lvl 1 and whatever levels of norgos's I had happened to have gone through until I ran into him. Otherwise, it was pretty much a crapshoot as to whether I lived and died based on the Snakes AI and whether he had targeted me or a shadow first.
That's the real issue, imho.
At higher levels when players have answers to choose from, you get tactics and spice and it's fun and interesting. At low levels, it's frustrating, and that's where the heart of the problem lies.
Of note: I faced several adventuring parties yesterday around level 22 or so, and with careful play they weren't the normal deathtraps they usually were, which is awesome. Balancing on elites has improved over the whole, and that's awesome. Overall I think we've actually had net improvement, and bravo at that! It's just so glaringly apparent the difficulty faced early level.
(Omni is Xali, Xali is Omni)
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
I don't especially like them at early levels, especially the really deadly classes like archers. But I love the concept, and I think it's started on better footing than the random boss mechanic. It also boosts XP and equipment availability, which makes the early game so much more interesting.
Sorry about all the parentheses (sometimes I like to clarify things).
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
I haven't even upgraded from b38 yet, so feel free to ignore me. But from what I've read here maybe a good simple solution would be to wait to introduce the elites until after whatever starter area the character gets. Once you kill the first boss you should be up around level 5, and then the elites make the usual grind through the rest of the low-level areas much more exciting.
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
This I'm pretty sure is why random elites where added.
I think limiting them to monsters level 5 and higher is fair. I also think they should be stripped of abilities we strip when we clone (multiply for instance).
I think limiting them to monsters level 5 and higher is fair. I also think they should be stripped of abilities we strip when we clone (multiply for instance).
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
Ah, I've been wondering if there'd be a thread for this.
I had my suspicions when I first tried b40, then someone popped up with a nice rare appearance rate lowerer plugin and I decided to just play with that until I'd seen other comments. I don't *think* I'm bad at roguelikes, but you never know.
Basically, Rares are great in a vacuum, early. Even the most dangerous rare(now that Psi ones don't get Implode) is unlikely to kill you alone(though it is possible, with some classes on the wrong enemy; I've gotten 1v1 killed by a troll with Flame as an L1 Berserker, for instance.).
Alone. However, if they get support you tend to die. An enemy blocking off an escape, a boss nearby, etc., will drop you, and unfortunately this is just as common of a situation as the alternative. And you don't really get good options to deal with that, early. A good teleport helps, but few people even have Phase Door at L1-5. Good mobility options are similar. Walking slowly away from an enemy in an open area like Trollmire, when that enemy can have superior action speed to yours...well, that's not actually an escape.
To boot, many early areas are unsuited to certain classes, limiting the amount of just going to another area you can do, and since bosses tend to give the lion share of the EXP, you have to get to a boss. Getting cut off by a too-powerful elite a few times in a row could spell an end for that character, unless they can do something elaborate like buy a teleport rune with the loot they've managed to get and randomly teleport until they(hopefully) hit the next floor before they hit another rare. (To say nothing of rares that like to park near bosses.)
Basically, the earlygame is not well designed for extremely versatile/high damage enemies. This could be retooled by lowering talent level requirements(1/1/4/8 as an example) and providing more points on base, for example, perhaps. But even then, some rares actually outstat you at that point, too. It's probably just simplest to lower the appearance rate(making them only an occasional dungeon major threat, or removing them from the first dungeon or until L5...though I'm not entirely convinced every class will have the options to deal with them by level 5.) or their capabilities.
(Such as making them normal monsters but capable of doing a lot more than a normal monster; That is, no major damage bonuses on what they're normally capable.
A good way to do this could be to have the mage ones eat a universal damage penalty below a certain level, or to have them run out of resources very fast indeed, as earlygame mages, particularly at levels below 5, have a major advantage on physical classes, a balance issue that is addressed well in class structure IMO but not in enemy design right now. ToME's answer to earlygame mages being very strong was to not have them, or to have them be one-shot-bait, before now, and Red Crystals are still quite close to the top of earlygame killers IIRC.
Having mage Rares take a large durability penalty may also be an option, though I'm not sure if that's enough to keep the less mobile classes, like Sun Paladin, alive.)
Rares are, however, a good idea, in my opinion. There's just some kinks to be worked out. Happens with any new, major change to gameplay. It would be a true shame if they were just ditched or something, as they really are a neat concept.
I had my suspicions when I first tried b40, then someone popped up with a nice rare appearance rate lowerer plugin and I decided to just play with that until I'd seen other comments. I don't *think* I'm bad at roguelikes, but you never know.
Basically, Rares are great in a vacuum, early. Even the most dangerous rare(now that Psi ones don't get Implode) is unlikely to kill you alone(though it is possible, with some classes on the wrong enemy; I've gotten 1v1 killed by a troll with Flame as an L1 Berserker, for instance.).
Alone. However, if they get support you tend to die. An enemy blocking off an escape, a boss nearby, etc., will drop you, and unfortunately this is just as common of a situation as the alternative. And you don't really get good options to deal with that, early. A good teleport helps, but few people even have Phase Door at L1-5. Good mobility options are similar. Walking slowly away from an enemy in an open area like Trollmire, when that enemy can have superior action speed to yours...well, that's not actually an escape.
To boot, many early areas are unsuited to certain classes, limiting the amount of just going to another area you can do, and since bosses tend to give the lion share of the EXP, you have to get to a boss. Getting cut off by a too-powerful elite a few times in a row could spell an end for that character, unless they can do something elaborate like buy a teleport rune with the loot they've managed to get and randomly teleport until they(hopefully) hit the next floor before they hit another rare. (To say nothing of rares that like to park near bosses.)
Basically, the earlygame is not well designed for extremely versatile/high damage enemies. This could be retooled by lowering talent level requirements(1/1/4/8 as an example) and providing more points on base, for example, perhaps. But even then, some rares actually outstat you at that point, too. It's probably just simplest to lower the appearance rate(making them only an occasional dungeon major threat, or removing them from the first dungeon or until L5...though I'm not entirely convinced every class will have the options to deal with them by level 5.) or their capabilities.
(Such as making them normal monsters but capable of doing a lot more than a normal monster; That is, no major damage bonuses on what they're normally capable.
A good way to do this could be to have the mage ones eat a universal damage penalty below a certain level, or to have them run out of resources very fast indeed, as earlygame mages, particularly at levels below 5, have a major advantage on physical classes, a balance issue that is addressed well in class structure IMO but not in enemy design right now. ToME's answer to earlygame mages being very strong was to not have them, or to have them be one-shot-bait, before now, and Red Crystals are still quite close to the top of earlygame killers IIRC.
Having mage Rares take a large durability penalty may also be an option, though I'm not sure if that's enough to keep the less mobile classes, like Sun Paladin, alive.)
Rares are, however, a good idea, in my opinion. There's just some kinks to be worked out. Happens with any new, major change to gameplay. It would be a true shame if they were just ditched or something, as they really are a neat concept.
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
Personally the early elites make this game fun again. I was tired of spending a hour running through the first 8 areas, without ever running into a challenge. the addition of random elites has slowed down my play and introduced the need for learning more advanced tactics early, which i suspect, if the scaling of random elites is handled well will lead to an easier transition to the far east for most players. I don't mind having to restart 15 times just to make it to level 6. That said this could be a detractor for a lot of players.
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
Heh, I just got fearscaped on trollmire 1, with a level 6 doomed character!! Managed to best him, but heaven knows what a new player would do!
MADNESS rocks
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
Keeping the first 3 zones clean of them so that we can kill one boss to get tier 2 talents, then spawning them in all other starter zones should be a good compromise.
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
I know I'm unlucky and unskilled, but I've actually as of yet failed to get through any of the starter dungeons because of these. I think I'll come back in a version or two.
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tienhaoshu
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sun May 13, 2012 6:29 am
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
most of the class in earlier game can do very few with those godlike creatures
but overall scales with those elites has been fixed their skill cap
players can only deal it after LV 4-8,specially melee
with some drop/gold shopping
keep those beginning area clean I think is the most easy way
EX:
old player's berserker knows you can do almost nothing when you saw a
doomed/bulwark snake in Norgos' Lair which new player will end here straight.
lucky enough to see another alchemist troll trollmire with flames when moved
than gets KO in crystal cave by monster spit.....
but overall scales with those elites has been fixed their skill cap
players can only deal it after LV 4-8,specially melee
with some drop/gold shopping
keep those beginning area clean I think is the most easy way
EX:
old player's berserker knows you can do almost nothing when you saw a
doomed/bulwark snake in Norgos' Lair which new player will end here straight.
lucky enough to see another alchemist troll trollmire with flames when moved
than gets KO in crystal cave by monster spit.....
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
Yes - the starting levels are the introduction that new people get to the game. If it's harsh they won't continue. So I'd be in favor of simply omitting these creatures in the introductory dungeons - properly balancing them is challenging otherwise. And I'd debate whether they belong on the same level as the traditional bosses, as they can imbalance those fights too.
But I very much like them as a an idea and in other places, and they will be a nice addition once balanced out.
But I very much like them as a an idea and in other places, and they will be a nice addition once balanced out.
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
There is a large power gap between rares and other monsters. Usually i am just smashing buttons, and before I realize it I am almost dead when I bump into these rares. Once I am aware that its purple, I could usually kill it with my berserker (but usually pretty damn close). The weirdling beast owned my berserker. The weirdling beast was almost unkillable due to it's healing ability. After cheating many lives I finally killed it. Without cheating it would not have been possible (and as far as I am concerned that berserker is dead now, I just wanted to see how hard it would be to kill the weirdling beast in that game).
Maybe the game should play some sound effect when you meet a rare? Or add some funky screen flashes xP. This way they will be easy to recognize when you are playing at a high tempo.
Found a rare farmer in town with necrotic aura. I was like O_o wtf. I wonder what the other farmers though of him. *look, there is the weird guy with the necromancer aura*
Maybe the game should play some sound effect when you meet a rare? Or add some funky screen flashes xP. This way they will be easy to recognize when you are playing at a high tempo.
Found a rare farmer in town with necrotic aura. I was like O_o wtf. I wonder what the other farmers though of him. *look, there is the weird guy with the necromancer aura*
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
Pretty comprehensive discussion on the issue and someone noted on TOME chat that a patch was available if you compile from SVN. Definitely can confirm the effect of going from dying only when facing down adventurer spellcasters and Dreadfall mobs to dying 2-3 times on tier 1 dungeons...
Wanted to add that there is also an issue with rares with high speeds like insect swarms that are essentially impossible to escape from even if you do notice and try to retreat. Had the poor luck to die on two different characters to lvl 6 rare swarms on lvl 2 of Trollmire. I don't think they had any particularly deadly talents they were just faster than my Cornac bulwarks.
Wanted to add that there is also an issue with rares with high speeds like insect swarms that are essentially impossible to escape from even if you do notice and try to retreat. Had the poor luck to die on two different characters to lvl 6 rare swarms on lvl 2 of Trollmire. I don't think they had any particularly deadly talents they were just faster than my Cornac bulwarks.
Re: Too many elites, too deadly
I like new elites a lot. They return old school roguelike sadistic "Tough luck weakling, your are dead" feel. To compensate increase in difficulty I suggest instead of nerfing them improve their drop - only purple and occasionally orange items.