Escort Frustration Lowering Ideas

[ohioastro]

I don't understand why randomness is desirable. Random drops and a fixed list of places to go leaves players at the mercy of a random number generator when they hit the first major challenge at Dreadfall. All this does is to favor having people drop "bad starts" after a few hours, which leads to a lot of repetition and burnout. The second part of TOME is well done and challenging; I'd rather see more people actually get there, as opposed to the typical rogue-like where people spend 99% of their play time in 30% of the game.

Summary: If you want to remove the fixed artifacts you should replace them with *useful* things, not *random* things.

For instance, I'd really like to see a shift to have the bosses of the first 2 racial dungeons, plus the base 4 second tier ones and dreadfall, guaranteed to have a good drop *for the player class*. E.g. if you're a mage, and it's a weapon, it's a staff. (Non-chest armor can be any flavor, as it's only 1 pick for any class.) The point is to give characters a basic toolkit so that they aren't crippled when they try to advance in the game.

Another option would be to give players choices of fixed artifacts, just as they have choices of abilities. These could come from quest-givers rather than being drops from the bosses themselves, adding to the story aspect.

[SageAcrin]

I'm honestly not sure which fixedarts are required, to be perfectly honest.

I've gone without Garkul's Teeth on a Cursed that would have loved it. Granted, I got luck in another area(a great weapon), but all told I'm not sure how well Cursed do right now without a little luck anyways, candidly. It's pretty nice, but not a requirement.

Wintertide is very notable, but Calm Mind Torques have supplanted it-it's now just a nice light, not a requirement for some undead(which is why I didn't mention it when I was talking about undead.).

I recall missing Threads of Fate on my Paradox Mage, and regretting it a bit less than missing an Anorithil. (The Paradox Mage still cleared. Granted, they got nerfed right after, but my build mostly used things that hadn't gotten nerfed, humorously. Spin Fate isn't that good if you're making an armor tank out of your mage, and it was a heavily Gravity oriented build.)

There are a few things that could be issues-if a mage wants a shield for a defensive build(Applies to Anorithils, especially, who have a shield targetted at their build.), there's only two options, but then again I'm not sure I've ever not gotten Telos Top and there is, I believe, a boss that tends to drop it...and I don't think I've ever missed both that and Life Drinker, which is, I believe, also a specific boss drop.

I've heard people call Withered Orbs a requirement, but mostly it's just required to make Dreadmasters not a crapshoot. Maybe they should have a much, much longer cooldown on their summon ability instead, or even a limit on how many Dreads one can summon. Perfect Strikes really does work as well for most classes, if built up, though.

Basically, I'm not entirely sure how many things actually are required for a build. Even funnier, I think the optimal item for some things is just getting a 4k item from the merchant, like if you want an all-round best Shield instead of a niche one. (I'd like to see the Assassin Lord's quest get pushed back to L15-20 range, given its challenge now. Missing that Merchant is worse than missing any artifact, in the long run.)

[Grey]

Predictability leads to bad player behavior, and sets them up for disappointment when they fail quest x or don't get artifact y that they wanted (or making them scum or try to game the system, leading to less fun gameplay). If there are balance problems they should be fixed by other means that don't negatively impact on the player experience.

ohioastro, I'm curious as to what you think is inferior about the first half of the game. Perhaps worth setting up a separate thread to discuss?

[ohioastro]

I was primarily referring to the generic rogue-like problem, shared to a lesser degree in TOME:

There is a severe threshold at Dreadfall and most players don't pass it. As a result, they don't get to see a well-designing part of the game.

But you do raise an interesting point; I do prefer the flow post-Dreadfall.

In the second half you have a coherent quest structure and specific reasons to visit most of the places where you go.
There is a nice mix of design styles, and both opportunities and challenges for different types of characters.
The first part is much more "visit random dungeons until you're strong enough to get past the gatekeeper."

[Grey]

Hmm, valid point, but then DarkGod does want that open feeling at the start of the game. Still, there may be ways to structure it better with notices in towns or something similar...

[PureQuestion]

I think the advantage is that the opening is spent working out which ways you want to be powerful. Certain options (like antimagic) lend to this. I think perhaps more developmental options could help. Perhaps there should be more significance to which dungeons you decide to take.

[ohioastro]

Hmm, valid point, but then DarkGod does want that open feeling at the start of the game. Still, there may be ways to structure it better with notices in towns or something similar...

Questgivers would actually fit well with the existing structure, as almost all of the dungeons already have lore. You could be looking for what happened to (explorer, missing apprentice, etc.) This wouldn't be as linear as the second half, but it would at least tie the towns to the quests. Also, if there was some reward in-town you might have a logical mechanic to channel what that reward was based on the class. It'd also be nice to tie together the entry level dungeons (or gate them so that you only did one set of racial encounters, which I'd actually favor.)

[Parcae2]

I actually really like the current escort quests. They spice up the game, especially the early parts (which can otherwise be a bit boring). They're hard enough and rewarding enough that getting one done feels like a real accomplishment.

The only things I would change are:

1. Providence is, I agree, broken. No reward should be near-mandatory for every character.
2. Rewards vary a bit too widely in utility. I think that the worst one, the warrior, has already been buffed. The thief probably should be too.
3. As it stands, there's a big incentive to leave your starting dungeon immediately and not come back until you have leveled up as much as possible, so as to be as powerful as possible when you meet your escorts. This is the result of the early game being kind of boring and repetitive (too many Tier 1 dungeons, too few options available as yet to deal with any given situation). I'd like to see a fix for this issue be part of a general early-game clean-up. which has been in discussion for a while now and which, IMHO, is probably what the game needs most after bugfixes.

[SageAcrin]

I think the Rogue escorts were recently, though sort of roundabout-ly, buffed.

They can grant Piercing Sight now, which boosts your stealth and invisibility seeing abilities.

Between that and Heightened Senses, there should be a skill anyone likes, just as a general utility and convenience ability if nothing else.

[Soron]

3. As it stands, there's a big incentive to leave your starting dungeon immediately and not come back until you have leveled up as much as possible, so as to be as powerful as possible when you meet your escorts. This is the result of the early game being kind of boring and repetitive (too many Tier 1 dungeons, too few options available as yet to deal with any given situation). I'd like to see a fix for this issue be part of a general early-game clean-up. which has been in discussion for a while now and which, IMHO, is probably what the game needs most after bugfixes.

I'll second this. I feel that a lot of classes don't really get going until level 4 or 8 (there's often a LARGE jump in power there, IMO), but at the same time, the threats that occur that early aren't particularly interesting. So, it ends up being mostly an exercise in surviving until I get whatever class-defining talent comes at level 4 (or sometimes level 8 ). And surviving that early is either boring, or hit-and-miss, depending on the class.

I also agree that there are too many early-game dungeons, which leads to busywork for those of us who can't bring ourselves to pass up a potential artifact. The optional dungeons are, by and large, interesting and worth venturing into. But the early-game dungeons, after the first two or three, are mostly just a formality due to the level cap. But they still have artifacts! And loot! And I find myself compelled to seek out these things!

Both of those make the ID's early game MUCH more interesting for me than the campaign's early game. In the campaign, it's mostly just a formality, since after killing the first boss there are a lot of easy places to go level up, and before the first boss it's yet another run through whatever starter dungeon I'm in. But in the infinite dungeon, there are real, actual threats standing between me and competency, so I feel a genuine sense of accomplishment when I get that class-defining level 4 talent, rather than my normal response of "ah, cool, now the game begins for real".

However, if we start mucking around with the early game, we should be careful not to make it excessively hard for new players (whatever "excessively hard" means). Something that would probably work, though, would be to move away from strict adherence to a 1/4/8 schedule of new talents becoming available. I'd say that particularly class-defining talents, that are second in a tree, should come at level 2 or 3, in order to have a gentler transition in power between level 1 and level 4 (the same applies to level 8 talents, though there are fewer massively important ones there). For instance, Shadowstrike should probably come at level 2 for rogues, since they have a pretty hard early game, and no super-compelling reason to use stealth (an important class feature!) until level 4. Devour Life for doomed and Dark Gifts for cursed/doomed also seem like things that could be moved to level 3, in order to hopefully have them available against the first boss. Possibly Dark Vision (for doomed), too. Shadow Blast for anorithils is another talent that I'd consider moving to level 2 or 3, since it can be annoying to have no AoE until after you've slain that first boss. And there's plenty of other talents to look at, although if this idea ends up being seriously considered, that should probably happen in its own thread.