Difficulty

[Canderel]

Difficulty settings... Implement as you wish.

A suggestion:
Maybe a factor that multiplies... monsters are 10% tougher/weaker, hit 10% harder/weaker, run 10% (1%?) faster/slower. This all may be able to do by adding to their stats? (Str, Dex etc.)?

[darkgod]

Whaa, you do not find it hard enough ?

Well eys I guess I could, more hp/damage and higher level of mastery/talents

[Canderel]

I was thinking easier, as I've only once completed 1 tome game 2.2.X.

[darkgod]

Ahah ;>

[forkbomb]

Not to sound like whining but I'm gonna have to second this one. I've rolled up in excess of 50 characters and still haven't even hit level 10.

I don't mind a challenging game but it seems mostly to come down to the luck of not getting mobbed into a corner by a bunch of ankle-biters. Sometimes the initial spawn point is an immediate death trap - no chance to even get into a hallway (and obviously no teleport scrolls). Maybe it's a string of incredibly unlucky hit rolls but it's frustrating when things are going fine and you run into a creature you can't even hit (to say nothing about damage) because you still have a mundane weapon.

If it weren't for the fact that the ToME4 module doesn't seem to have as many nasty traps, it otherwise feels like the Halls of Mandos sometimes.

I think part of the problem is that there are just too many darn poisonous creatures and I still haven't managed to find anything that allows immunity or even partial resistance. I find that even more unsettling than a skeleton archer instakill.

[madmonk]

Not to sound like whining but I'm gonna have to second this one. I've rolled up in excess of 50 characters and still haven't even hit level 10.

Fighting is no longer static. You cannot just stand in a spot and fight without moving. Too many nasty creatures get underfoot (literally)...

You need to move! And often!

And finally, I do sympathise! I too even after all this time die on a very regular basis - a lot has changed since ToME2 or 3 and the new game takes some getting used to, especially since you have to develop new ways of doing things.

Keep on trying - you will get there! I have completed it 3 times, and this from a person who has never managed to complete ToME2!

[darkgod]

Indeed

Also do not forget that the game currently ends at around level 20/25. So getting level 10 is already half way

My current mage is level 6, I did not make stupid mistakes (though I blink in a NASTY spot in the last level of the trollshaws, but luckily one of the first scroll I tried was phase door ! :> )

[darkgod]

Poisons do nature damage and diseases do blight damage, so you can reduce damage take this way.

[forkbomb]

Well, that's all very classy and inspirational, but I stand by the assertion. I don't stand there and fight - haven't since I learned in ToME 2.3.x that standing and fighting is generally bad practice unless you're vastly faster than your enemies (hack and back instead) or greatly outlevel them, or if you are geared better than normal, or are playing alchemists munchkin style. For that matter it's true in most of the better-thought-out *bands.

Going along fine and then suddenly getting helplessly merked is not a pleasant game experience, whether or not the combat system has been vastly overhauled or not. It's one thing to get insta-killed by some bugger in the darkness because you thought you had poison resistance. It's not that I want the days of being able to power-level most race/class combos to clevel 25 in 5 minutes, or that I want to see 90% of my characters make it to 30 without breaking a sweat, but I'm finding even the prospect of rolling and leveling another T4 character to just sound like too much time investment. I don't know when the RNG is going to spawn another snake that'll peck and poison me to death while my proud warrior gloriously whiffs at the tee.

Perhaps part of me is just resisting some changes here. I see some things about the new engine as departing from some conventions of roguelikes and especially Angband variants that at least made conceptual sense, but I'll try to admit that the problem may be that I just don't understand the mechanics of the engine. Personally if anything the combat system is a bit too complicated but I had the same quibble with 2.3.x, especially with regard to the combat stances (but that's beside the point).

[Canderel]

Well... Here's a pretty simple suggestion, which to me would help this gnawing feeling...

If you happen to get a Skeleton Archer on clvel 1... and you manage to kill it... it should give you a level (or like 50% of one)... The thing to me is, I don't mind things being hard, but it seems the just reward isn't quite there. If I managed to kill the OOD monster (maybe archers' depth could just be adjusted a tad?) I want to feel I accomplished something. Yet it often feel as though it was "just another kill" in the eyes of the game, whilst for me it was "wow, for that I deserved more"...

[Nerdanel]

I feel lost with the new combat system... In the old way of doing things you just attack by walking into monsters. It's a completely different game now.

[Gwai]

I haven't gotten to level five yet, but I have to say I don't think the game IS too easy. Admittedly, I've been playing rogue-likes for quite a while, so that may be just me. Still, the game seems fair (except occasional bugs, and they will get solved.) I would have to feel I'd mastered the learning curve and was still dying before I'd say the game was too hard and I am definitely still getting better.
I'd say personally that if you feel the game is too hard try doing things drastically differently. Whether that's a different class, dungeon or some crazy new way of fighting, it may help.

[Nerdanel]

I've played some more, and I must say that I don't like the auto-scaling monsters. They make me feel like I'm treading water instead of making progress. For example, my dwarf berserker easily dispatched a bunch of green worm masses while at level 3, which reminded me of my dwarf berserker before that one who at character level 8 got mobbed by another bunch of green worm masses and somehow died, outmatched, after failing to phase door away from the terrible little ws of doom.

Advancing in ToME 4 is difficult because if you don't allocate every point just right, you will become weaker relative to the monsters. Maybe you will become weaker relative to the monsters anyway and are expected to compensate with superior equipment. I haven't done the math. But anyway, finding superior equipment that your character can use can be very hard in ToME 4.

[Canderel]

Part of a game, is to complete it, somehow someday eventually, to experience a fair % of what the developer created. That is why you'll find a lot of commercial games have great intros, and awesome first couple of levels, and then the gameplay kinda gets slower, less interesting etc. This is because 100% of players will reach the first 30m of the game (in a commercial game), only probably 30% (if your game is good enough) will reach the end. (I save scummed my previous win (T2), to experience the game, and now I've realized that is OK)

Difficulty settings are what helps people experience a whole game, without cheating, but also motivate the developers to give a good experience (not just make it harder) towards the end of the game. It's easy to make a game hard, it's hard to make a game that stays interesting and a challenge.

True fans will set the difficulty harder or try a different class, and replay it a zillion times, and others will just (want to) finish it once, with their favourite class, and then move on to other games.

I am by no means saying have a "munchkin" difficulty, so that stupid play will win the game, obviously you want to encourage the player to start playing better, but a difficulty level should make people who are frustrated by skeleton archers become less frustrated by skeleton archers.

I've spoken too much, but my own talks have made me realize, difficulty (easier) should not just make it harder to die, it must make it easier to kill too (ie. monsters/traps hit less hard, and they either have less HP (easier to disarm), or have lower armor, or both). Obviously the ideal is to have the actual AI become smarter and dumber (less likely to cast that big spell/summoning spell), but that's just stupidly hard to do for not a big trade-off (in comparison to scaling HP, armor and damage).

[darkgod]

I am pondering a difficulty setting yes

Nerdanel: I understand the feeling btu I tried (maybe not enough) to alleviate the problem wit hthe ranks.
Critters will naturally improve slow, so that worm mass will indeed be higher level but wont get as many HP as an elite armoured skeleton warrior.
Anyway not autoscaling monster smeans to have many same-but-higher-level monsters, and this results in the same thing.
Angband had low level worms and high level ones. I have only one kind but it levels

As for equipment, I tried to make it not drop a lot to avoid the "need" for an automatizer/autosqueltch, which is really a huge hack over an badly implemented system.
My general idea is to have very few dungeon/monster loots but give them a better change of being nice and to have bosses (as now) do drop qutie a few egos.
I'll probably add some more random places, maybe make a random zone generator, to have a few more places, like 2 levels deep, with a boss and some ego drops.