Configurable warning popups for rares with specific talents

[b0rsuk]

Hi, I just lost a ridiculously powerful character to one of orb pedestal theguardians. It had around 15 active beneficial powers, including Fearscape, Wildfire, Bone Shield and Evasion.

The really bad one here was the Fearscape. I This talent removes all possible escape tools once it's cast. It's like a lightning out of the blue sky, no warning. I forgot that a talent like this exist, and when it's activated it's too late.

It would be really helpful if ToME had a way to configure warning popups for specific talents and talent combinations on rares and uniques. As soon as a rare with matching talents enters your sight, a pop-up window listing matches shows up. It could be as simple as a comma-separated list of talent names to check for - in fact, I think it SHOULD be that simple, because it allows players to easily share brutally unfair talent combinations. Paste in chat. Bonus points for making this configuration global, so that player doesn't have to re-do it with each new character.

Examples:

- Fearscape (this should be on by default!!!)
- Wildfire
- Evasion and Bone Shield (great synergy - bone shield regenerates over time, Evasion means the usual tactic of fast attacks has little effect)
- Wildfire and Fearscape (basically irresistible damage over time with no way to escape or cure)

Rares are the main source of this game's difficulty. Rares are, ironically, common. It gets very tiresome to check the list of talents for every single rare. But if you don't do that, a single miss-step can kill you. I guarantee that if you implement this feature, it will be massively popular.

[Zonk]

A pop-up window option just for rares feels very ...odd.
I did bring up how rares can have 'ridicolous'talents for their level, but I think a proper fix is to make them respect talent trees, check here http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=38358

[Kaja Rainbow]

A pop-up window option just for rares feels very ...odd.
I did bring up how rares can have 'ridicolous'talents for their level, but I think a proper fix is to make them respect talent trees, check here http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=38358

That isn't relevant to this situation--it was an endgame mob.

[cttw]

Killing the monster ends fearscape.

[supermini]

This seems like something that would be better as an add-on.

[CaptainTrips]

This seems like something that would be better as an add-on.

+1

Despite the guarantee of massive popularity, this seems pretty niche to me.

[b0rsuk]

This seems like something that would be better as an add-on.

Please explain why it would be better as an add-on rather than a core part of the game. It reminds me of the patch I submitted for Vavoom, a DooM-engine source port. I fixed the bugs in original Hexen monster AI, which made them extremely irritating (they kept trying to shoot through walls even when player was not in view, it made hideous noise without making them more difficult). The patch was accepted, but as an option, and disabled by default. I stopped contributing.

+1

Despite the guarantee of massive popularity, this seems pretty niche to me.

Niches is what kills high level characters. High level characters don't die to swarms of regular enemies, and usually even to bosses because bosses stay the same and you plan for them. So yeah, if you have no ambition to complete the game, this is just a niche.

Fearscape alone cuts away all escape tools, which are your fallback mechanism to stay alive. Do you think that's not important ? ToME4 is the longest roguelike I know. Some Angbands might be longer.

Killing the monster ends fearscape.

What do you think I was doing ? I was bashing the monster with Legacy of the Naloren, the best 2-handed weapon in the game, period. With 55% chance of two attacks per round and 135% global speed, and various disabling attacks. The monster didn't care:
- Evasion makes around 50% attacks not hit at all, no matter your accuracy
- those which actually hit get entirely absorbed by Bone Shield.

The monster lost around 25% life in that fight. And the character hit Grand Corruptor for 3500+ damage. Sometimes monsters are just impossible to kill.

[marvalis]

This problem is inherent to fear-scape, which will always be hard to balance on randoms.
It is better to tackle this specific problem (e.g. limit the possibilities for generating fear-scape talent)

[supermini]

You responded rather hostile to the suggestion that it was niche...Well, it is. Most rares can be assessed from eyeballing them (phys/mag/mental power, active sustains), uniques/randbosses need to be inspected.
It's a different presentation of information that is already available.

I wouldn't be opposed to it being in the main game, but the chance of it getting coded is much higher if you look for someone willing to do it as an add-on, or if you did it yourself. It also makes it easier for DG to just implement it in the main game if it turns out to be a good idea (which already happened with some of them).

Otherwise, you'd have to convince him to code and implement it for you, and that's up to him.