Question about 1.3 and some personal thoughts about Tome

[Marcus Aseth]

Hi guys,I've played this game last time months ago on Steam,I had 150 hours of gameplay but never managed to finish it,I didn't dropped the game because I was frustrated or anything,in fact I played 150 hours because I loved the challenge,but I dropped it because it became boring/stale,let me explain why.

Basically for what I remember,once you're done creating the character you have to spend quite some time doing the usual run/rush of cleaning up the dungeons in the usual given order (which you learn by yourself by trial end error after 10-20 deaths maybe),because you need the levels if you want to survive,after that boring run you can really start playing. So as you can see,the problem is that the level of randomness is too low,and everytime feels like replaing the last game session over and over.
This feeling is strengthened by the item drop,this is also not random enough,or maybe the number of unique items is too low,problem is I always end up with that stupid halfling foot and every run has the same unique items,expect maybe for few.

So even if I love the challenge,at a certain point the repetitiveness becomes clear,and even if I tried to ignore it as far as 150 hours,it is still there and I think anyone can see it.

So I'm now here posting because yesterday I happened to read about 1.3 update and I got curious,is the 1.3 going to fix my problem and bringing me back to this game?
My biggest hope is that it would add a lot of new unique items and do something about breaking the repetitiveness of each run,because no matter how many class or race you throw into the game,as long as a player is forced to a run that is 80% the same every time,the game will simply get boring :\

Let me know

[HousePet]

Well if you feel you must do all the t1 zones to get levels, nothing is going to help you. You don't really need to do all of them and doing all of them means you are going to spawn lots of t1/2 artifacts.
1.3 doesn't have much in the way of zone changes, but there is a new dungeon to find.
There are some new artifacts, but more t1/2 randarts being generated on birth might be a good idea.

[Marcus Aseth]

Is not that I feel that I have to do,is just that I have in order to survive nightmare xD
Every single point of exp or piece of gold can make the difference between me living or dying

[HousePet]

Well if you are going to play on Nightmare, then there is also no hope for you.

[Skafsgaard]

Actually, this made me think.

Just as you can disable permadeath, if you're a more casual player, it might be nice to introduce a "late start" option for the game?

The tier 1 and tier 2 dungeons are somewhat time consuming, but rarely provides too much challenge, but are still fairly necessary to run to get a character going - but the real game only really starts after those.
Maybe there should be an option to start at a higher level and with either some decent, level-appropriate randomly generated gear or some predefined gear, and with those dungeons cleared? There could be three options - a "fresh start", which would be like the game is now, a "tier 1 start" where all the tier 1 dungeons are cleared and you start at level 10 or early teens, and then a "tier 2 start" where all the tier 2 dungeons are cleared and you start at level 20 or late teens - with all skill and stat points being able to be freely distributed. Whether or not side areas and their rewards should also be cleared and given, I'll leave up to darkgod and the designers to figure out.

Just my two cents. It might be something that makes the game more approachable for intermediate players that fairly consistently clear the early tier 1 and tier 2 parts of the game, but still struggle with getting past Dreadfell.

[Isotope-X]

I agree that a "quick-start" option would be really nice, but I suspect it would be a nightmare to code.

[twas Brillig]

The big issue would be providing class-appropriate gear. It's easy enough to not stuck mana-users with magic-disruption gear and vice versa, but that doesn't really help you build for anything.

One sort of overwhelming option would be to just...start people with the loot they would have gotten from the first few dungeons. Maybe give an option for auto-conversion of some categories (most people don't care about white gear, but alchemists would like to convert them).

You could also apply a similar idea to higher difficulties, letting people start later without having to go around drowning NPCs.

[Marcus Aseth]

I personally disagree with that because even if you start let's say at lvl 20 you are still facing the same situation where then you get used the the path you have to follow in order to advance smoothly,so has changed the range of level but the situation still remain,which is the player ending up feeling like he/she is always doing the same path,like in a tunnel. Not to mention that starting high level and not seeing your hero growing up from ash kind of kill the rpg spirit for me and it also feels very cheaty,not worth playing at all.

In my opinion the solution to this is throwing some serious randomness into the dungeon,meaning that never has to happen that I enter a dungeon already knowing what level range of opponents I'm going to face,so maybe I could end up in a run where the weak level 3 monsters are in the graveyard and the badass lvl 30 beasts are in the minotaur labirinth. This way,each run must be carefully thread as it's own unique situation requiring exploration/scouting and a lot of care.

[Effigy]

It's fine if you like games with a high degree of randomness, but ToME isn't one of those games and it's not really reasonable to expect it to change. I like ToME because it's not super random, among other reasons. That's one of the features that differentiates ToME from other roguelike games.

I don't really like the idea of a "quick start" option either because the first half of the game is generally the most challenging. Once you beat Dreadfell, you're probably going to win unless your build sucks at endgame for some reason. If the early game is too easy, you should probably try playing on a higher difficulty.

[HousePet]

Deliberate randomising of the zone difficulty is never going to happen. You can always do the zones in a different order.

[Marcus Aseth]

There is a particular reason for you guys to be so sure that is never going to happen?

Beside that,then the only other way to make it less stale I think would be more items and random drops. At least for person like me,who keep playing with the same 1-3 classes until beating the game with it lol

[Castler]

I agree that the opening dungeons of ToME can get a bit time consuming. By the time I've reached level 12 or so, T1 dungeons aren't a challenge, but I don't want to reduce my survival chances by skipping them, so I slog through them.

Playing different races and characters helps keep things fresh, but what about borrowing some ideas from ADOM? ADOM has several mutually exclusive starting options, and it does a lot to keep the opening game varied and interesting:

1. The small cave has a couple of useful guaranteed items, but the difficulty level increases twice as fast as the player's level, so you'd better go here first.
2. The unremarkable cave can only be accessed through the small cave, so trying to reach it after other options is very dangerous.
3. Kranach the raider gets scared and leaves once the player reaches level 6 (which tends to rule out everything except the small cave)
4. The puppy cave has a strict time limit (which tends to rule out everything except the small cave)
5. The village dungeon is only accessible if you take a quest that's mutually exclusive with the druid dungeon quest
6. The druid dungeon is only accessible if you take a quest that's mutually exclusive with the village dungeon quest
7. The Infinite Dungeon is always available, relatively safe, and relatively unrewarding.

So, if you're feeling strong, you can try 1,3 or 1,4 before coming back for 5 or 6; if you're feeling particularly risk-averse, you can skip to 8; if you really want the rewards of 2, you can push for 1,2 regardless of the risk; etc.

What about adopting a similar idea for ToME and randomizing the available level 1 dungeons in each game? E.g., both of your race's own level 1 dungeons are available, but only one of each other pair exist; the others are simply absent (or are absent until later in the game and are vacant then - e.g., cleared out by other adventurers). Or, after setting foot in 4 dungeons, the last 2 have already been looted and are vacant?

[HousePet]

There is a particular reason for you guys to be so sure that is never going to happen?

Because wandering into a dungeon that you are under levelled for is a good way to die. Making it hard to work out where that happens is not going to be an improvement to gameplay.

With the current situation, you only need to do about 4 t1 dungeons to be suitable level for the next set. The way all the dungeons have a range of levels and scale to your level means that you can skip dungeons and change the order around. There is nothing forcing you to do all the dungeons or doing them in the same order each time.

For ADOM, I tended to always do 1,3,4,5/6,2. The options didn't really make anything except 5/6 as a choice.
4 for example, doesn't actually have a strict time limit, unless you are desperate for a piece of candy.

[Death From Above]

Just to roll back a few posts. In terms of a "quick start", isn't this exactly why Arena Mode exists? Sure you still start at low level but it's not exactly a mode where you hang around very long.

[donkatsu]

If you find the tier 1 dungeons boring but you have to do them repeatedly because you die in the later dungeons, why not play on exploration mode? Having to start over is a penalty for dying, and it sounds like you don't like that penalty. Luckily, ToME gives you the option to bypass it, so why not?