Nerf Transmogrification

[Miruko]

Since the fortress has an "alien" background, i think some kind of forgery should be enabled, maybe with some strange and unique egoes wich cannot be generated elsewhere, it could make transmogrifing wothwhile.

ps. there is no cow level.

[Frumple]

ps. there is no cow level.

It's called Maze 5, pre-backup guardian

I wouldn't mind spending some fortress energy horror marking my kit, though. Might be interesting.

[Aquillion]

That'd be a nice place to stick another dialogue or wreck the town entirely, actually. Preferably th'first. Maybe a 50/50 chance to change the town's faction to either whatever magetown's is or Ziggy 'em. I could see a new shop opening up in that spare building afterwards, hmm, based on which faction they switched to.

Wouldn't that be rewarding players for not doing the quest?

[benli]

It seems to me that the majority of people don't like having to manage unwanted inventory. I know I don't. That includes transmogrification. The transmogrify dialog replaces the pickup item dialog, but it does the exact opposite. I've transmogrified good equipment after accidentally selecting it in that dialog. It also doesn't make a lot of sense as a concept. Why do items turn to gold? Is there a goblin in the chest with an expansive price sheet?

Here are a few ideas for eliminating it that wouldn't change the game too much and would make inventory management only about the stuff you want to keep:

1. No selling in shops, except gems which sell at near full price.
2. Dramatically increase the amount of gold in a pile of gold. Gold and gems would be the main source of income.
3. Have the transmogrification chest only work on artifacts (without rewarding any gold). The energy level could be measured in # of artifacts for added clarity.
4. Have shops restock every 5 or 10 character levels to keep the items useful. Avoiding shops until you need them makes no sense. (That's how it works now right?)
5. Add a destroy key that players could map to destroy things lying on the floor. Possibly require a double-tap.

This could require some rebalancing of special costs in the game (the arena, etc), but I don't think there are very many of those.

It would be nice to have gold be a cool find instead of an afterthough. It might also be nice to have a few quests add gold as a bonus. If local town rewards for killing bosses are added, that would make a good reward. A few town halls could be added that post rewards that you could collect. These could give you the option of choosing an artifact instead.

[Frumple]

5. Add a destroy key that players could map to destroy things lying on the floor. Possibly require a double-tap.

That, more or less, is m'personal problem and why I both don't want to see shops go and was fairly violently annoyed by the few versions we had gem/artifact only selling.

When you can't sell/transmog (or do something besides link the thing for posterity or put it in the fortress for decoration) or use an item, it becomes precisely useless. There's absolutely nothing you can do with it. Its existence is utterly meaningless except to punish the player.

More directly, there's no reason for the item to be there except to rob the player of items they could actually use. This makes a freakishly huge amount -- a very clear majority -- of the items generated in the game be there strictly to limit the player's choices. And not in a sexy way, like monsters or whathaveyou. This could be done much more efficiently by simply radically reducing the drop rate and only producing class-usable equipment.

Basically, why have the items exist at all if they're only going to be there to kitblock you?

Beyond the idea I linked earlier (class specific and growing kit sets), other ways I could see working without being quite so violently annoying/punishing would be to either literally class-tailor the drop tables -- either with a class default set (Fighters get sword/board and massive, g'day to you) or one customizable by the player (I want 2handers, plate, and runes this run!) -- and drastically reduce the drop rate (as above), so that the actual amount of usable equipment is unchanged, or remove the gold from the chest detritus (lore reason for gold, by th'by: Waste material! Also magic.) and drastically expand the uses for fortress energy -- this would allow you to do something with the stuff you can't use without ending up with vaguely insane amounts of gold.

Simply adding a new key for direct transmog-everything-on-ground would reduce the inventory management annoyance a fair amount. I know that assigning the chest to a very accessible hotkey (usually * on the numpad, in my case) makes vacuuming everything much less of a hassle.

Quick E: Basically, though, it's not about the stuff you want to keep, for me. It's about all the other stuff that's just sitting there. I can already ignore everything but usable kit, if I want to.

4. Have shops restock every 5 or 10 character levels to keep the items useful. Avoiding shops until you need them makes no sense. (That's how it works now right?)

Sorta'. If you're not specifically doing shopping trips, you'll probably have shops in new towns keep up with you fairly well. If you're making round trips, though, you want to hold off until the absolute latest you can. The current system also powerfully rewards people that know about it (and them mechanics of it are completely opaque) and can tailor pick which shops to visit at what points in the game. If you know to only visit one weapon shop to get you started instead of all of them to see what's available, you'll come out pretty far ahead of someone that just wanders around.

I can definitely say that I like the limited restock system a lot better than when it was more along your proposed lines here, though. Less incentive to do shopping trips constantly to see if anything useful has popped up -- I didn't even realize how much of a hassle that is until I started saving up shops for when I hit higher levels. Doing a round trip shopping tour before and after Dreadfell is kinda' annoying. Also gives a lot more time to drum up gold for the nicer stuff, though just not visiting shops until you have plenty of cash does about the same thing.

[benli]

Basically, why have the items exist at all if they're only going to be there to kitblock you?

I guess I don't understand what you mean. Having random items laying around is good because they might be useful or they might give you ideas about things that will be useful later or with other builds. They also add some flavor to the game. And what's a kit anyway? Some classes might need a specific item or two (like a shield or a staff), but the rest is pretty much up to the player. There seems to be a push at the moment to make characters more flexible in how they are built out. Its not uncommon to change directions on a kit mid-game or carry around some things you think might be useful later.

Also, if you can gain 100 gold and 100 fortress energy per level by transmogrifying every single item on the level -or- by finding piles of gold and transmogrifying an artifact now and again what is the difference? The difference is that having to transmogrify every item is more tedious work. If what you want is interesting items (and I wholeheartedly agree with that!), then the game should have more interesting items. One of the problems with the push to remove boring stuff like eliminating vanilla item drops or selling at shops, etc., is that the new "fun" way of doing things starts to become vanilla. For example, powerful egos with lots of +this and -that are now the new norm in the game. So how do you fix it? By making things more interesing. For example, I proposed making gold piles more fun to come across because they would provide a rare commodity. I proposed making artifacts more special by making them the sole source of fortress energy. Pushing specialization like that is a good way to make the individual elements of the game more interesting without needing to resort to tedious tasks.

As for the "desrtoy floor items" key, I only mention it as a way of marking what you've looked at. A twinkle on the item's icon might work even better.

As for re-stocking shops, I know others have had more in depth discussions on that and I'd defer to them. I know there are trade-offs.

Anyway, I just proposed that list of changes as a way to eliminate the boring bits but leave the existing game elements. The game as it is now isn't excessively tedious.

[Frumple]

I guess I don't understand what you mean. Having random items laying around is good because they might be useful or they might give you ideas about things that will be useful later or with other builds. They also add some flavor to the game. And what's a kit anyway? Some classes might need a specific item or two (like a shield or a staff), but the rest is pretty much up to the player.

To clarify when I tongue-in-cheek'd "kitblock", what I meant was the fact that when an item you can't use generates, it prevents an item you could have used from generating. A Ziguranth is still going to be up to their eye teeth in staves and arcane items. Someone without the shoot talent and with zero points invested in dexterity is going to be tripping over bows and slings. The poor bugger with 10/10 in armor training is still going to be able to make tent cities out of robes and leather armor.

It's flavor and possible inspiration for future builds, yes (and this is a good thing!), but it's also a direct (if somewhat obscured) penalty to the player, or at least can be. Beyond that, it's the knowing that this neat thing you just came across has absolutely no use to you, mechanically. Can't get a single thing out of it. It tweaks off the inner twink

Also, if you can gain 100 gold and 100 fortress energy per level by transmogrifying every single item on the level -or- by finding piles of gold and transmogrifying an artifact now and again what is the difference? The difference is that having to transmogrify every item is more tedious work[...]

... and it lets you actually do something with all those items on the level.

You'd still have the same amount of gold and fortress energy with gold piles and trans'd artifacts, but you'd also have a level littered with items/resources you couldn't do anything with, useless things that robbed you of something you might have actually been able to use.

That's what bugs me, mostly. I want to be able to actually do something beneficial -- or just something, period, besides walking past or trashing it -- even if it's relatively minor (I transmog plain wands!) with everything, even if it's something as trivial as selling them for a pittance. There's a part of me that winced ever time I walked past an item, back when we couldn't sell or transmog unused items. I couldn't do anything with it! ~Why does its lost potential taunt me so?~

I'd be happy, thinking on it, if there was some kind of little 'lore counter' or scrying points or something that counted up every time you ID'd an item. You'd be able to exchange them with a few characters in the game for... something. Anything, really. Just something that'd let me be content to leave stuff laying around, knowing that I at least got something substantial for encountering it.

[snoop]

So as long as you're talking about changing transmogrification, would it be too much trouble to move it away from the rod of recall in the (u)se menu? Ever since I noticed them sitting there right next to each other I've been scared of trying to transmog and accidentally recalling out!

[SerPounce]

Why? Simple. Carrying things back to shops is not fun. It is not interesting or exciting. With no respawning, it doesn't involve any risk or threat or trade-off, it's pure boring wasted time on the player's part. It should offer absolutely zero benefit to the player, fullstop; it should never be encouraged, and the player should never feel that they are giving up anything, at all, by choosing not to carry things back to shops.

There were several posts in this vein, and I wanted to address it generally.

This is definitely the current trend in roguelikes: all decisions should be important, "grind" should never reward, etc. I think it's great there there are games out there like stone soup that embrace this philosophy, but I don't think that it's the generally applicable rule that some people think it should be.

1. It undervalues immersion. Technical challenge isn't the only source of fun. If you want a pure technical challenge play chess or go. Surely, *part* of what makes roguelikes more fun that most mainstream games is the challenge, but just has surely that's not the whole purpose.

2. It assumes the baseline difficulty is the easiest possible way of doing things. People often phrase optional grind in the form of "do the grind or make things more difficult" rather than "you can make the game a bit easier by doing some grind." I wholeheartedly agree that the game's difficulty shouldn't be balanced around the person who does the maximum grind, any optional grind should be make the game easier then the intended baseline difficulty.

3. It steepens the learning curve. Having a way for new players to make the game easier by going slow and doing some grind is a good thing. And whether you think it ought to be fun or not, it is fun for many people to grind characters in a new game. Tome 4 has great potential to introduce new people to a wonderful genre of games, going the hardcore/ironman route is pulling the ladder up behind the established playerbase.

Zero grind ironman would be great for a mod, but IMO immersion and accessibility are more important in the base game then game theory principles like "the player should never feel that they are giving up anything, at all, by choosing not to carry things back to shops."

[Grey]

Give people a way to grind and they will presume that is the way to play, and they will think it is a boring game.

ToME4 is anti-grind in every other aspect of the game. It's part of the development philosophy, and certainly something most fans have pushed for.

[Aquillion]

More directly, there's no reason for the item to be there except to rob the player of items they could actually use. This makes a freakishly huge amount -- a very clear majority -- of the items generated in the game be there strictly to limit the player's choices. And not in a sexy way, like monsters or whathaveyou. This could be done much more efficiently by simply radically reducing the drop rate and only producing class-usable equipment.

Basically, why have the items exist at all if they're only going to be there to kitblock you?

One thing I would love to see: Make it so there are more viable equipment options for each class. No more classes that are rigidly stuck with only one weapon type the entire game. Even better, try to avoid forcing the player to make decisions that permanently bind them to one type of equipment for the whole game -- this is a major problem with ToME's talent / stat system, in my opinion.

For comparison, look at Dungeon Crawl. When you find a powerful artifact of a weapon type you don't use, you can choose to switch to that type of weapon without gimping your character. This makes odd equipment actually interesting -- it presents the player with meaningful choices. One of the things I dislike about ToME is that it encourages you to decide your build right at chargen or, at least, by the time you've spent more than a few talent points, and makes it impossible to change after that.

Generally, whenever possible, avoid punishing the player severely for changing equipment types -- there should be some degree of commitment, but the ideal should always be to leave as many things as possible as at least somewhat viable options (without turning your spent talent / stat points into a waste.) The player still only gets to wear one set of equipment at once! Allowing them to switch from heavy armor to leather won't break the game. They're already wasting strength and armor training's access benefit to an extent -- why on earth does the benefit from armor training punish them again by taking away their other benefits?


Suggestions that would help:

Armor training should provide its other benefits regardless of what kind of armor you're wearing -- even in robes. If you buy Armor Training 4 (or 10!) and then wear a robe, you're already wasting the ability to access better armor; why punish them again? They should be encouraged to make an interesting choice between "use this cool robe I found" or "get more AC by equipping heavy armor." Right now, the talent tries to take that choice away -- why?

Similarly, all weapon talents should be merged into a single melee weapon skill. What's the point of forcing players to utterly, irrevocably commit themselves to one weapon type? They already commit to daggers or swords based on whether they put points in strength or balance strength/dex (or strength/cunning for those with lethality) -- why turn this situational choice into a crushing disadvantage that utterly commits you to one type of weapon?

The talents should similarly be gone over and broadened to apply to as many weapons as possible. Perhaps some talents should also operate with the 'wrong' weapon type at reduced efficiency (eg. two-hander / duel-wield talents can be used with a one-handed / single weapon respectively at reduced damage or accuracy, so using the wrong weapon is a disadvantage that you consider when choosing your equipment rather than an absolute rigid requirement.) The idea is that there should be trade-offs for changing weapons in midstream, rather than crippling disadvantages that absolutely make it impossible.

Some weapons should get multiple stat options and stat-damage-bonus calculations, and automatically use the best. This would make them valid for more character types. Eg: Allow staves to be wielded the way they are now, using pure magic prerequisites and damage; or using a mixture of magic and strength prerequisites, with 120% strength to damage. (They should require some magic, because activated staves are useful and should require investment for non-magically-oriented character to use. But it should be low enough to be viable, and someone who finds a really good staff should feel at least somewhat tempted to try it as a weapon -- it'd require some stat commitment, but that's more interesting than 'eh, junk.')

It would, along the same lines, be a good idea to make more attributes from equipment useful to more players. Bonuses to spell power, mind power, and physical power should count for Magic/Will/Strength-based inscriptions, say, if it doesn't already.

Make a pair of reliable unlockable trees that let any class who wants to use mana or stamina as a supplemental combat resource (because there are so many pieces of equipment that modify those.)

Note that all of these things would require some investment or trade-off. But the idea is -- players should be encouraged, as much as possible, to build themselves around their equipment, not to automatically discard equipment that doesn't fit their build. Part of the fun of Dungeon Crawl -- which I think ToME could learn from -- is that you often change your build midway through the game to suit the random things you find. That's good! It keeps the game interesting and ensures that anything you come across has the potential to be useful.

[bricks]

I'd like to see the entire Combat Training tree nixed, it seems like a generic point sink. But that's been shot down before.

Edit: To elaborate on this; Combat Training doubles up on requirements, like Aquillion pointed. You have to invest in strength to equip a piece of heavy armor anyway; why do you need the skill? Weapon Mastery and Knife Mastery (or whatever it is called) also double up on requirements, which just makes the very early game feel extra weak. Combat Accuracy is a joke. All melee/ranged classes have some investment in Strength, Dexterity, or both; the bonus to accuracy is only valuable early in the game (when, I might add, you have a base chance of roughly 1/2 for hitting a snake). You have to increase your base health (and thereby minimize the fraction of health you lose) to... Increase your damage resistance. These aren't alternatives; it's just weird, scattered level scaling.

As far as NPCs go, I've noticed that the Orcs tend to be many, many times better at melee than equivalent level enemies. Compare a Troll and an Orc next time you are in Reknor. Shouldn't the Troll be a little scarier than an Orc? Instead, the Troll might as well be beating his club against the wall for all the good it's doing him. The Orcs, on the other hand, hit fairly hard due to their high levels of Combat Training talents.

Making every melee class invest in this tree to some degree seems really wasteful. I don't quite understand the philosophy behind generic points; they seem to be geared towards general usability than individual class mechanics, meta-class over sub-class. I'd rather invest in something fun and flavorful than just a few +accuracy points or a better damage multiplier.

[Mithril]

I agree that the current item system have too much boring grinding that does not fit with the design philosophy. At least in this thread most seem to agree with this although a significant minority with opposing views exists. Lots of suggestions already given. A few of my own:

1. Make the transmogrification artifact work on the whole level. That is, every identified object on the level is transmogrified. Would reduce having to press exactly the same keystroke sequence for every item that should be transmogrified which is the large majority. Then you can just note when you go over an object if it is useful or not and then transmogrified everything just before leaving for the next level. You could be given a screen showing everything to transmogrified to avoid mistakes.

2. Have an option at the start of the game to disable gold/shops/transmogrification. Instead, you get better item drops. If you are dwarf you are assumed to have maximum gold when calculating race benefits.

3. Reduce the number of shops. Too many now, an optimal game involves numerous running back and forth and comparing the items in different shops.

4. Conduct business through a mobile phone or whatever to call it. This is the mobile internet age. Maybe for somewhat more expensive prices you can buy and sell item from the various shops through this item. Items are teleported back and forth from the shops to you.

[benli]

One of the major concerns about removing selling/transmogrification is that it makes complete game exploration less rewarding. I don't like the idea of balancing only for full exploration or only for speed runs. The balance now is actually pretty good, but the experience could be better. I was thinking one way to reward exploration/speed more (and maybe make changes to selling feel less bad) would be a scoring system that tells you how well you did with exploration, speed, and other goals that players might like. Your results could be compared against others and you could see your ranking in each category. As an example:

Achievements:
Level (x5)
Quests Completed (x5)
etc.

Combat:
Normal Killed (x1)
Elite Killed (x10)
Bosses Killed (x40)
Highest Damage Inflicted (x1)
Highest Damage Recieved (x1)
etc.

Exploration:
Maps found (x20)
Map % explored (x2)
Normal Items found (x1) (walked over)
Ego Items found (x1)
Rare Items found (x10)
Artifacts found (x40)
etc.

Speed:
Defeated the Master (x10 per level below 25)
etc.

Or perhaps a better scoring system would be to give you one point for your percentile rank against others. So top 95% in Artifacts Found gives you 95 points.

[benli]

I also wanted to comment on Aquillion's and Bricks' posts. I generally agree with what they are saying. I've been balancing Cursed a bit which is a class that is very affected by this stuff now that I have added paths for them to be two-handers, dual-wielders and shield users.

Classes were designed for specific layouts. Especially dual-wielding. Its hard to invest in dual-wielding as a cursed because Str and Wil are so much more important than Dex and the design assumption is that only Dex-based classes dual-wield. It makes sense that Dex might scale the power of a dagger, but it doesn't make sense as an item requirement. It creates a high barrier in the mid game for getting a good dagger. I'd rather see the stat requirements for high end equipment be level based (if they exist at all). I wouldn't mind using stats to determine the type of gear you use (Leather Armor: 15 Str, Mail: 20 Str, Plate: 25 Str, Dagger: 15 Dex, Staff: 15 Mag, etc).

Cursed also have difficulty with generic points. The generic points don't feel like too big a problem for me as they are a choice: invest in raw attack power or invest in other features. It can feel sometimes like Cursed is competing with classes that were designed to pump generic points in those talents though.