ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

For me, it appears that ToME toys with me.
>Chooses an archmage
->2h swords/axes/mauls drop, daggers drop
>Chooses a berserker
-> Archmage gear drops

And well, what keeps me in right now is how I am getting just a little bit further in ToME every time I play.

What aggravates me is that I used to play it on my weakish laptop, but can't now that the shader requirements have introduced all kinds of bugs. (You know, you accidentally hit the Windows key, changing focus? Boom, crash. Hope you saved.) The sad thing is that 99% of my ToME playing used to be on my laptop, so I haven't played for a month or so.

What would keep me playing is just how different runs can be nowadays. There used to be all kinds of complaints about the starter zones being boring when you play them for the 100th time. There's so much additional random content now (rares and their items, random events) that you never really get bored.

Shader crash ?????????????????????????????????????????

darkgod wrote:Shader crash ?????????????????????????????????????????

When I play with shaders on, the game freezes as soon as I change focus. Posted about the bug here a while ago, but couldn't find anything suspicious in the log file. same happens sometimes with shaders off.

Sorry for de-railing the thread.

What aggravates: Marketing. I mean, this is the best game ever. It would deserve people who spread the word.

What keeps: Addiction.

What aggravates me: Since I updated to b42, the game became slower. Every time I kill a rare, the game would stop for one or two seconds. And sometimes a turn can take several seconds in maps like Old Forest and Dreadfell, probably because of the large map or numerous enemies. But I guess this problem don't happen to others, maybe it's just about my computer's compatibility with the game.

What keeps me in ToME:
Hard to conclude. I enjoy making further advances with each new character. I find trying new builds usually properly challenging and fun. Those classes using Psi energy, Equilibrium, Paradox and Vex are fun and seem natural in the game. I like the world of Maj'Eyal. And the game is still getting better. And I think darkgod is a nice guy. And maybe there are many more things I failed to mention here.

Running through the early dungeons (yet again) after I inevitably die in dreadfell is kind of a chore. That's pretty much my only complaint.

It'd be cool if there could be more variety or something for those early dungeons. Not sure what to suggest though. Throwing in more rand elites could help but then again that could turn away new players.

I'd also like to maybe see fewer "trash mobs". Particularly in old forest it becomes a chore to wade through legions of ants, bears etc. It's just a bit boring to bump kill endless hordes of those guys. Though those situations can turn deadly quickly if you make a mistake and get swarmed.

But ya, I would like to see fewer throw-away baddies in the early game.

Other than that the game is legendary .

Sources of aggravation:

• Restarting characters if I don't get the right escort quests. I think b43 addresses this in some way, but I'm not sure how.
• Slow downs, lagging, hanging and crashes. This game's in beta, so I know these issues will be ironed out eventually.
• Fylish is super buggy.
• Dev: Magical generation of methods and properties. It's difficult to find where things are defined in the code. I do see how this is useful in a lot of cases. It's just hard to get started understanding everything in the code.

Sources of attraction:

• Replay value is among the highest of any game I've played.
• Open source, modular design, easy to make addons.
• Class diversity. Psi, vim, paradox, equilibrium, etc. are awesome and interesting. The different classes were all very well thought out and I enjoy nearly all of them.
• Difficulty. This game is hard. That is a good thing. Level 25 elite fire wyrm in a vault when you're level 11? That's not unbalanced, that's awesome.
• Active development and good community.

Aggravation:
--> Almost entirely, I am aggravated with myself when I do dumb things.

I stay for:
--> The challenge
--> The scale
--> The unique setting and awesome "blur" of MMO and RL.

Aggravation:
Walking around a corner and seeing 3 uniques/rares and knowing I'm probably dead.

Coming Back:

Walking around a corner and seeing 3 uniques/rares and actually surviving.

Things that aggravate me:

- Lag. Oh god the lag. Once upon a time I thought that even though this old hand-me-down couldn't really play much in the way of modern games, at least I had my roguelikes. Well TOME4 brought that notion crashing down. With a lot of graphical setting disabled and playing in ASCII mode, it goes pretty smoothly, but still.

- Character Builds. I just find it really difficult to get a character started because there are just so many options and it just boggles my mind to choose between them often. As a result I tend to do better with the more focused classes.

- Tiny Little Bugs. I'm a little OCD and the game does have its fair share of bugs that really don't affect anything (much) but still bother me anyways, for example the double-projectiles glitch which has actually been working for me in my last few characters and the fact that for some reason the tiny little icons of the items don't display in my inventory. I resolve to try not to notice these things, but I always do.

Things that appeal to me:

- Character Classes. I'm rather impressed by just how differently all the different classes play out, coming from Crawl where all the backgrounds were just "starting packages" so to speak. On one hand, that was also nice in that you could develop a character in whichever way you chose, but generally speaking I have a good idea of what my character is going to be from the very beginning and actually having classes helps that.

- Depth of the World. I really do love how many different things can be done in this game, though I do admit that it does get a little repetitive once you've seen it all. As a completion, having lots of things to do is really nice, especially when they are all of reasonable difficulty and a good order can be established.

- Interesting Tactical Situations. I find that TOME4 tends to get you into interesting, difficult, but beatable situations and fairly early with that, in contrast to Crawl which I find extremely grating to play at times, especially during the time between the Ecumenical Temple and the Lair. I find myself doing just as much thinking against most T2 bosses in TOME4 as I have in Vault:8 and Zot:5, the most difficult levels of Crawl I have ever gone to.