first, second, and third impressions: wow!

[asthmatic_thematic]

Long time ToME2 player, especially *theme*.

Tome4 is a really incredible game, and DarkGod and others who've helped him should be tremendously impressed with themselves. I hate tiles in roguelikes. I always thought there was a bipolar distribution of good games: ascii roguelikes, and at the other extreme, expensive xbox games with incredible graphics. T4 convinced me you can move a bit from roguelike purity and have it add a lot of atmosphere to the game without taking away very much. (The low-res tiles do, a little, but lightning, fireflash, and others more than make up for it.)

The addition of cooldowns, also, gives a great new discretization to the basic limitation of a huge pile of mana or stamina or energy. I would actually slightly lengthen early cooldowns, and make items and skills like steady bows and quicken spells, and other new ideas, very important for advanced characters.

The most important small thing I would add is: wilderness encounters. The terror of stepping out onto the map in T2 was one of the greatest experiences, I think, of that game; especially the quirks of odd localities like dagorlad and watery areas. Roads, too, were critical for safety. [I personally would add food back, as well, since a lot of newness was reestablished when a character died and you had to got back to the beginnings of having to plan ahead, along with the nice feeling of finally getting a spell or item to permanently solve hunger issues; but there seems to be a consensus against food, which is okay. (Perhaps one could make spells like ent's potion or perpetual food items easy early acquisitions?)]

There are a few obvious equipment issues, like the fact that my 50th level archmage was still using the steel helm of hammerhand and frost treads, since I could get mag from other sources and str and con were very important, and no hat or shoe was good enough to make me feel like changing. But so long as the addition of new artifacts isn't too slow, these issues will take care of themselves. I liked the old T2 system of there being a lot of artifacts, especially armors, where you had to consider equipment matchups and were overjoyed if you found something with three immunities since it solved so many other problems. I have heard that equipment matching will not be as important a part of T4; I hope that it stays present in some form, at least.

The biggest developmental theme I would suggest is to work on world breadth and, to some degree, plot more than adding new classes. One exceptional value of T2, and especially the *theme* module, was the existence of manifold extra places I'd heard of from LoTR, scattered all about the map, and when I visited Dale or Gondolin, I felt like I was a tourist--it wasn't even always important to the plot. The addition of towns in both Middle Earth and the Far East fits well with including wilderness encounters: early characters hold their breaths during map travel, hoping they can make the next town, which is both a destination and waypoint--restocking basics (food/potions/scrolls), possible new items to buy, new quests, a few towns with character homes or mathom houses, and just neat architecture. I very much like the "magic is supposedly gone" Angolwen arc, the Blue Wizards and staff of absorption arc, and unlockables. I hope that following on this good start, the world of the Far East can be built up such that it has a fair bit of resonance, like Tolkien's world.

For example: ports on the coast (exotic markets; 10gp? hire a boat to an island of interest!), a necropolis of ancient numenorean kings high in the mountains of the Sun Wall, a dungeon organized around a waterfall (like Rauros, or somewhere in the Far East) where the center of each level is falling water and a stony switchback path takes you down in elevation with each >, a village beseiged by orcs, the history behind a lost tribe of hobbits who mysteriously came with the early numenoreans to Sun Wall and have a High Hay-like hedge to keep their secrets (or maybe, given the unknown hobbit history, they were indigenous to the Far East?), a storyline which has room for vast battles like the incredible T2 scene at the base of Orthanc (perhaps to take out a weaker 3rd blue wizard?), and--especially--loads and loads of obscure things from the Silmarillion and other Tolkeiniana.

I think with the addition of the Far East, the game has been cut a bit free from LotR, and that's a danger but also a great opportunity to steal and adapt and create ideas from every great fantasy genre and storyline. A nearly endless city like Gene Wolfe's Nessus? A nearly endless castle like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast? A god who is unbeatable unless you have killed enough of his believers? A demon guiding the Blue Wizards who has hidden his soul in seven stones? A dungeon like Mieville's The City and the City which is actually two spaces interwoven together, and breaking boundaries can cause big trouble? Dragon riders? An island at the edge of the world? So many possibilities!

How long has this game been in development? It's been available since April maybe? To have made such a rich playable product already is stunning, and the development seems very speedy at this point. And I really hope that the fleshing out continues so that this game, which has such great bones, and already a good story, can become considered one of the all-time great roguelikes!

Thanks a lot, DarkGod, and all who've helped him, and played.

[Taxorgian]

I would suggest giving some of your ideas to the appropriate threads http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=22493 and http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=22187. There are intentionally relatively few (though not zero) artifacts from the First to Third Ages simply because it is set in the early Fourth Age. And the open areas in the West should be relatively safe long after the fall of Sauron and decades of rule by Aragorn; I would say the random encounters should be mostly in the Far East.

[vstat]

I would suggest giving some of your ideas to the appropriate threads http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=22493 and http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=22187. There are intentionally relatively few (though not zero) artifacts from the First to Third Ages simply because it is set in the early Fourth Age. And the open areas in the West should be relatively safe long after the fall of Sauron and decades of rule by Aragorn; I would say the random encounters should be mostly in the Far East.

I've not a huge Tolkein buff (Only read LOTR once). Are there any books dealing with the 4th age? I loved all the uniques from Tome 2, and realize bringing them back probably wouldn't fit the story line. Although I'm curious as to why Tom the Stone Troll is in it. Was he stoned in the hobbit? Did he come back to life somewhere along the line?

[asthmatic_thematic]

One way to include a subset of the 2nd and 3rd age uniques is to imagine that the defeat at the end of the 3rd age was total in the West, but that many fled to the East. This is basically an extension of Tolkien's casual mention that two blue wizards went to the East, and were not heard from again.

Those uniques which were affirmatively killed in the War of the Ring (eg the Nazgul) are gone. Other baddies (whether allied with Sauron but not killed, or somewhat distant like Balrogs), were harried and pursued, but came under the influence and guidance of a newly appeared Dark Captain, and fled with them to the East. The East had always been a place of warring dark and light, but when the Dark Captain led the remainder of evil back, the balance failed, and East was captured with the exception of the lonely holdout, the Sunwall. This gives the Sunwall a bit of poignance and tragedy, much like Minas Tirith in the dark days. But the Sunwall truly stands alone, with everything outside fallen into evil. (This would indeed be a good spot to introduce wilderness encounters; although it would perhaps lose a bit from not being a low-level character stepping out, it could be an impressive introduction to the East, constantly ambushed trying to make it to the safety of Sunwall.)

I would suggest an overarching plot issue now. In the Silmarillion, the Straight Road was Bent. The new goal of the baddies in T4 could be to go one step farther, and Break the Road. This would cleave any connection with the Valar, and let the world sink into the Void, where Morgoth would consume it.

Sauron was merely Morgoth's lieutenant. The War of the Ring was intended to amass the power and time to Break the Road, at Morgoth's request from the Void. In the East, a similar plan is unfolding, led by the Dark Captain and the Blue Wizards. The Far East had its great evils, just like Sauron--the Dark Captain is perhaps another lieutenant of Morgoth, and has corrupted the two Blue Wizards by giving them two Dark Gifts and promising them knowledge, just as he corrupted the Nine, and tried to corrupt the Three.

The character goal now perhaps is to not only prevent the Breaking of the Bent Road, but to Straighten it again: perhaps by again using the Dark Gifts against their Giver, in the same way that Sauron put his power into the Ring, and its loss undid him. The Dark Gifts can be "uncorrupted," so to speak, and turned away from the dark purposes they were intended for, again undoing the Dark Captain. Perhaps the final battle can be a bit like the battle at the foot of Isengard (I can't say enough how impressive that was!): the Straight Road has returned, and the joining allows a big metaphysical brawl. Maybe the Void was accidentally joined along with the world when the Road was made Straight; and all evil amasses to invade. Or perhaps this was all part of the plan of the Vala, so that the Straightening of the Road from within was the trigger to try to reclaim the Void, and by emptying it of evil, make it just--nothing.

That's the kind of storyline I would be imagining. It has the same feel to Tolkien (by design and imitation of course), and it's a potential story of its own without an adventurer @ actually doing all the work. But the @ could basically take it over, just like the @ does in T2, sort of stepping in and messing up the story but getting a first person perspective. This would give a point to the fact that Sunwall is at the far edge and there are no cities. Maybe there should be bad cities (like Minas Morgul) as capitols of regions, and they should have to be destroyed or reclaimed to seize territory or artifacts. All the while, the Dark Gifts are doing their work on high peak or somesuch, and it is only by undercutting evil's control over the outside world (and uniting hidden good Eastern forces and cities analogous to Gondolin?) that when the final battle comes there is any hope at all...If the Sun Paladins are basically Numenoreans, aren't there Dark Numenoreans and such who need to be destroyed to slow down the Breaking of the Road? What happened in the Far East between the first settling there and the Fourth Age? Is there a relationship still between Angolwen and the Blue Wizards? Is there an ancient source in the East of the cryo and pyro and chrono powers?

But of course I'm basically starting to write my own game or module now... I just wanted to give an example of what sort of story could give the East a feel that a lot of history has already happened, and that @ is stepping into something far bigger than himself (even if he arrogates to himself all the action, like most games), the way that Annuminas and Mirkwood stood behind the Third Age's drama.

The nice thing is, the story is already good, and the game has the bones to make of it whatever DarkGod and the modders can cook up. Maybe I'll try getting back into coding after my one year program at Oxford is up.

[asthmatic_thematic]

"A ship departing on the Straight Road, when observed from the shore, would slowly become smaller to sight until it disappeared in a point, and not drop behind the horizon."

That'd be a pretty cool situation! Maybe one has to build or call the White Ship, which took Bilbo to the West, and then go there to ask for help, something to help Straighten the Road...or maybe that's the victory lap--taking the White Ship to the West, like ascending with the Amulet of Yendor...

[Susramanian]

Sounds like you're overflowing with great ideas for Far East lore/quests/plot. Package some of them in the form of NPC dialogs and quests and post them! Darkgod has been including community-generated ideas at an astonishing rate.

[edge2054]

Indeed.

You don't have to code a whole module to contribute and your ideas sound great asthmatic_thematic.

I especially like the idea of reclaiming cities from the darkness and the ancient sources of elemental magic.

Speaking of which, we need a good way to unlock Geomancers and we're talking about it being quest oriented rather then X damage. I've started a thread over here... http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=23001
if any of you lore buffs have some ideas to contribute that'd be great

[asthmatic_thematic]

I guess there are two ways to grow the game--by adding NPC quests and artifacts and such, and by programming in large new features to fit a large arc. They're both incredibly necessary.

Unfortunately, the idea of helping build the White Ship is a bit more the second. Here's how I would imagine it shaking out.

---

- Implement wilderness encounters; make them very difficult

- Add Black Numenoreans and various parts of the army of dark Numenor (this is doable)

- Add n (n=5?) evil cities of dark Numenor on the map as complements to Sunwall (or you could do this with the Prides as centers, although I find the Far East's connection to Numenor more compelling, and you could keep the Prides as they are)

- Link these n evil cities to surrounding "territories"

- As you destroy the leaders of the n cities, the linked territory gets lighter on the map

- The lightness means wilderness encounters are disabled, or are greatly weakened (if you link all the capitols, maybe an Eastern King arises, who gives you something cool, and help from Sunwall?)

- Make a White Forest somewhere

- Either defeat the White Ents (Entwives?) to chop down some White Wood, or do another quest which means you get permission (Entfriend; has similar experience benefits to killing Entwives)

- The White Wood is very heavy: you need help to carry it: you lead a troop of ten shipwrights across the world map to the Sere Havens, a port; if you have conquered the territory, this is fairly safe; if not, you get encounters where you need to protect the shipwrights

- At the Sere Havens, get Bob, Cirdan the Shipwright's brother, to build you a boat of the White Wood, the White Ship

- Sail to the West

- Various Maia on ten levels try to stop you from getting in; after you've gotten far enough, Osse, sergeant of Ulmo, tells them to let you in, and gives you something cool which you can use to uncorrupt the Dark Gifts to Straighten rather than Break the Road (the Water Silmaril/Evening Star should go here probably?)

---

That'd be a pretty mammoth arc, and one would have to be careful to keep the parts pretty random to keep replayability. It could just be something you can do whilst you're destroying monsters. In any event, I wouldn't even really know where to begin.

However, the history of the Sun Paladins basically being the dunedain of the East is one of the things that really appeals to me, along with the split between good and bad Numenoreans from the Alkallabeth. So, I will try to cook up a few bad Numenoreans. I think that lots of this stuff would need to go in before one could even think about the above scenario!

(By the way, a dunedan of the East is a total contradiction in terms! what is East in numenorean? After settling in Sunwall, the numenoreans could rename themselves so there could be a good "Man of the East" (not just nasty Haradrim), as well as fallen ones. I think Derufin might be the common speech for man of the east, but I don't know the numenorean. It might be something rather unpleasant like Rhufedain. Who knows.)

[asthmatic_thematic]

The opposite of dunedain is Roedain or Roëdain, probably. Men of the rising (or east), as Dunedain are men of the setting (or west).

You could also make it Orodain or Oroedain or Oroëdain or Oröedain, which would mean men of the high east, and looks a bit cooler.

Black Oroedain Soldier:
roughly same style as a better-armored armored skeleton warrior, including stunning blow, and maybe sunder arms or somesuch; soldiers (and only soldiers) are moderately stun-resistant and freeze-resistant; highly resistant to acid and lightening (why? because no one else is)

Black Oroedain Corporal:
same as above but a bit better, and with war cry and most importantly *call to battle*

Black Oroedain Sergeant:
same as above but a bit better, and with call to battle, semi-boss telepathy and summon (3) soldiers

Black Oroedain Lieutenant:
same as above but a bit better, with summon (1) sergeant, including semi-boss telepathy *and* the ability to phase door (!)

They always appear either as
- 1 corporal and 4 soldiers
- 1 sergeant, 2 corporals, and 6 soldiers
- 1 lieutenant, 2 sergeants, 4 corporals, and 8 soldiers
or something like that. the ability to grab people next to you using call to battle lets them function as a group attacking patrol. ALSO ideally they can each see what the other sees, or something effectively the same. that is, they function like a real unit. you can't lure one off; they all come together. maybe if the lieutenant phases after you, the others follow by a physical route if they can, because they can see what the lieutenant sees. I don't know if this is possible. But if you run into a patrol, you'd be in a bit of trouble.

By semi-boss telepathy, I mean that it only starts after the character is seen, but it has a limited range (like a phase-door range), not the whole dungeon.

The goal here is to introduce some new challenge and to start the idea of a Dark Captain (if anyone's interested and it's acceptable) who went from the Far East to the West to gather the remnants of the baddies after Sauron's defeat, bringing them back to the East, breaking the balance between dark and light and treeing all the good forces in Sunwall. (And providing an excuse to have some 3rd Age uniques.) These patrols are the things that, under the leadership of the Dark Captain and the third age uniques that escaped sauron's defeat (and all eastern uniques), have holed up the sun paladins, and cause problems during wilderness encounters especially. (That'd be a nice shock to stepping through the portal to the east!) Probably the patrols also function in a couple of the evil cities that need liberation.

[escargot]

This Oroedain squad really looks interesting.

My questions:

1. What happens if you kill the leader of a squad? Would the soldiers then scatter, run off, stay together? I suppose they could get afraid for a couple of rounds and then scatter, or something like that.

2.- What about the summoning you mention, there should be a squad limit, if that limit gets lowered, then the leader could get reinforcements.

3.- And talking about reinforcements, what if a squad's blows a horn/whistle to call every soldier/squad near the spot? This way blinding/denying the leader would be a significant advantage.

[asthmatic_thematic]

I think any answers to these questions would be good. I think it just adds additional behavior to monsters, which I tend to think is *always* a good thing. I know some people don't like the old hounds (air hounds, etc), but their behavior of not stupidly following you down hallways and always being awake was to my mind one of the most interesting parts of roguelikes. (I think the reason behavior addition often doesn't get added is that it's not always easy to program or process, and it disturbs some players' behavior routines, which admittedly can make the game less fun or unbalanced, but I think to some degree is interesting if well done.)

I personally think soldiers should be afraid for a two rounds on the death of their leader, then attack again. Or they could make a calculation based on numbers remaining and player strength as to whether to run or not. Fear really isn't much used right now, and it could be a good way to start it up, especially given the squad-based behavior of the patrols.

I highly agree with blowing a horn. By the way, when wolves howl, eg, right now, is it intended to bring other critters running? I'm not sure it does anything, besides add atmosphere (and make wolves easier to kill). A horn blow with real consequences would be good.

[asthmatic_thematic]

Oroedain Huntsman

Another Oroedain idea. This is taken from Prydain, and the Huntsmen of Annuvin, but is a very general trope. They wear simple leather jackets and leggings, and carry knives or somesuch. They come in groups of, say, ten. But as you kill each one, the power is absorbed by the rest. "The more you strike down, the more the others gain in strength. Even as their number dwindles, their power grows." Ideally they'd start with, say, 180hp or something fairly meager. If there were ten, and you killed one, the others would be 200. Trying to kill the tenth would mean trying to kill a guy with 1800hp, which could be a fair challenge.

This might be implemented with a non-player seen spell which gets cast at a huntsman's death, affecting nearby huntsmen. Or it could be seen by the player, who could be told, "The surviving huntsmen grow in power!" If other huntsmen are out of range for some reason, they might or might not share in the power gain, depending on coding complexity.

Or rather than them being Oroedain, in the same way that Rohan are the cool but lesser neighbors of Gondor, they could be neighbors or servants of the Oroedain, and would partially overlap with the Oroedain in territory and goals (ie killing the sun paladins). The relationship between the Oroedain and the Huntsmen adds flavor and immersion to the Far East, at very little cost.

This would provide a bit of complication in the same way that splitting oozes do, but with a Far Eastern feel.

[Repton]

I would suggest an overarching plot issue now. In the Silmarillion, the Straight Road was Bent.

Actually, the seas were bent. The road to Aman was always straight, it's just that the world is no longer flat.

But your ideas are all still really cool

[asthmatic_thematic]

Rats---so they're going to "Break the Seas"? Hmmm...doesn't have quite the same resonance as breaking a road, although I guess it is similarly nonsensical, at least literally. Sunder the seas? How would they finally sever all connection to the Undying Lands? I guess they actually *could* break the Straight Road--close it, put up a detour sign or orange cones. That actually still sounds good.

If the Straight Road is broken, whatever good or support or positive metaphysical pressure comes from the West would cease, and the Void gets to nosh on the world. So the player's goal could still be to both prevent the breaking of the Straight Road and to unbend the seas, so that people can be reconnected to the Tol Eressea or something. It actually would be an oddly positive goal for a roguelike. Normally it's kill X, and destroy item Y, or carry Z to the surface for personal immortality. Hmmm. Good point about bending the seas, though, and my geometrical confusion.

[darkgod]

I'd rather not go in the direction of the Vala, this is the fourth age, the dominion of men has begun and the vala have never been very fond of humans.
Also the main thread is the istari, if I start throwing around gods this makes the whole plot become much less glorious