Difficulty

[Baker]

Comparing ToME to crawl is IMO very funny because last time I played it (long time ago I admit) it felt much much worse than T4. I had to dive to find food, I could meet monsters that would simply oneshoot me on a very frequent basis..

Can't say I share your experiences with that... In recent versions, I don't usually die before reaching level 12-15 at all and food is really only an issue in the beginning of the game, because you usually mostly survive by hacking up enemy corpses anyway.

It's strange that you'd say that, really, because as far as I know Crawl has a reputation for being unusually fair in this kind of thing. When you die, it really is because you made a bad decision (standing and fighting when the shit hits the fan instead of teleporting etc.) most of the time. Out-of-depth monsters don't really exist, and when you get killed it's mostly because of attrition instead of because you got one-shotted or hit with a bad status effect. Even poison and illness aren't too bad, because healing potions heal basically everything except stat damage and mutation.

Certain branch dungeons and the endgame can be much harder, but in the main dungeon you shouldn't really be getting one-shotted like that at all. Maybe you should try a more recent version? The game has changed a lot since it became Crawl Stone Soup. Also, the Auto-Exploring and Pathfinding features are amazing, playing a roguelike without them feels really tedious in comparison.

If I added a food counter you'd play the same way but I hate food counters, they always feel silly, either too fast or too slow.

It wouldn't work for ToME anyway. The food counter in Crawl is supposed to stop you from just sitting in a safe area and slowly grinding for XP and gear, not for realism. Crawl is all about limited resources (items and monsters don't really respawn, you can't sell stuff for more gold, food is rare, etc.) In ToME it would just be annoying to have to eat something every four steps on the overworld.

[Shoob]

If I added a food counter you'd play the same way but I hate food counters, they always feel silly, either too fast or too slow.

It wouldn't work for ToME anyway. The food counter in Crawl is supposed to stop you from just sitting in a safe area and slowly grinding for XP and gear, not for realism. Crawl is all about limited resources (items and monsters don't really respawn, you can't sell stuff for more gold, food is rare, etc.) In ToME it would just be annoying to have to eat something every four steps on the overworld.

It *could* work, what would need to be done is an auto eat feature (in the wilderness) though if it wants to be neither too fast nor slow.

This would automagically remove rations from player every couple of turns in the wilderness, making the player have to plan if they want something in the distance.

The problem then becomes weight and satiation instead, meaning, how much would a ration (encumbrance), and how much would it satiate the player. These both would be dependent on how many meals you want the player to eat a day and whatnot I suppose that you could say that there is some foraging going on in the wilderness too and adjust accordingly.

That said, it could be done somewhat realistically, but is this feature feasible for a beta release, probably not, unless the game is almost done.

[Baker]

What I meant was that it doesn't really fit into what ToME is trying to be, not that it couldn't be done technically. Your idea could work, of course, but it seems kind of pointless to me. What would that add, other than wasting an inventory slot on an item you can buy in bulk anyway?

The thing with Crawl is that everything is centered around the limited resources you have to work with. You can't sell things for more gold, so no grinding for money. Shops don't restock, so no scumming for good items. Food is limited and eating enemy corpses is risky because they can carry disease. Everything is designed to force you to move forward so you don't run out of resources and die. ToME, on the other hand, is still a lot like Angband in its design philosophy, so having a food counter would really just be an inconvenience, not something that really adds to the fun.

I think a module centered around surviving and foraging in a wilderness could be really fun, though. Sounds like something worth thinking about.

[darkgod]

Indeed, it's more what Bone to be Wild was, you had a limited ressource and when you are out you are out.

Mhh I should maybe reimplement Bone to be Wild in TE4

[Vanguard]

Yeah it would "work" as in it could be added to the game, but it wouldn't improve anything.

In Rogue food is there to keep pushing the player forward so they can't farm a level forever. In ToME you can always get more cash and go back to town so there's no point to it. It's inconvenient, but never challenging or dangerous.

[Antagonist]

Hmm, I read through this thread and this is my observations:

90% of the issue with leveled creatures is simply that ToME isn't balanced... yet. Its a beta, its getting there, need to figure out what works, what doesn't, what needs to be nerfed, what empowered. And DG is doing a good job trying to fix things, like with the new changes to warriors. As betas come, things will improve. Its a tweaking issue, not a design one.

That said, one major change that I think can be made is the variety in monsters. Noone likes to be killed by a worm mass you wiped the floor with 20 levels ago. Now if it was a giant worm mass... Basically what I'm suggesting is that as creatures level up they gain names. This is purely cosmetic, a lvl 20 giant worm mass is simply a leveled lvl 1 worm mass, same critter, just changed name. This was mentioned before.

This would need a new tag of some sort, like... lvl 0-5, add "" to name, lvl 6-10 add "large " to name, lvl 11-15 add "giant " etc. Maybe even also possibility to vary colors with levels.

The change is simple, but it will stop people from feeling annoyed at the super low level critters.

My other suggestion is that creatures should level slower than the player. To take the anaconda and giant snake example, a lvl 20 anaconda should be more powerful than a lvl 20 giant snake, hp and stat-wise. Propably also worth more xp. You should maybe get more higher rank giant snakes than anacondas tho. Reason for this is that after 20 levels of giant snakes they become mundane, canon fodder, and more intersting monsters should take over as the challenges.

As far as ammo goes, I liked the way Elona does it. Basically you get an arrow item you equip, with infinite ammo. You need both an arrow and a bow to shoot, but the magical effect and strength of your shots are determined by both. You just don't run out. Not sure if this'll work with ToME tho.

[Baker]

That said, one major change that I think can be made is the variety in monsters. Noone likes to be killed by a worm mass you wiped the floor with 20 levels ago. Now if it was a giant worm mass... Basically what I'm suggesting is that as creatures level up they gain names. This is purely cosmetic, a lvl 20 giant worm mass is simply a leveled lvl 1 worm mass, same critter, just changed name. This was mentioned before.

I made a suggestion regarding that in an earlier post, but nobody commented on it. Basically, I suggested that there could be a set of random abilities and spells (consisting of such things as poisonous bites, acidic spit, elemental immunities etc.) that would themselves possibly be leveled and assigned to creatures based on a number of flags (like "has a bite" or "has arms" and such) and a point system, with higher levels bringing more points that can either be assigned to extra stats or extra abilities. So instead of having a Gargantuan Worm that is really just a regular worm with more HP, you could have a Poisonous Icy Worm of Rage that can poison, is cold-resistant and has a chance of Berserking (getting +X to strength) when reduced below 25% health.

This would be somewhat more difficult so set up, of course, but only once, because each ability and prefix could conceivably be applied to any other monster as well as long as it has the correct flags. I think this would be much more interesting than simply having stronger creatures level and it would force players to actually vary their tactics, instead of just choosing the strongest attack available and blasting everything they know isn't immune.

[darkgod]

Yeah I'll probably do something like that, I just need to make the ego system better before

[Gwai]

That will be a really nice change. I feel better already just knowing you'll do it eventually, dg .