More randomness = more replay value
Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2010 8:43 pm
Today I got my first berserker winner. It was great fun, except for a few things. I'll put each in a separate post, as they're quite unrelated.
The first thing is randomness. T4 needs more of it. The reason I'm not playing T4 this very minute after waiting and waiting for beta 13 to come out is that I know too well how the game's going to play out. I know where the bosses are, I know what they're going to do, and, most importantly, I know what they're going to drop. Randomizing the bosses doesn't seem like a great idea, but I wholeheartly believe that randomized loot from bosses (with maybe a very few exceptions) is the way to go. The current system causes these problems:
1) Having lots of fixed artifacts means that it's difficult to implement world artifacts. Take, for example, the problems caused by an early, guaranteed Ringil. This has already been discussed quite a bit.
2) Lack of replay value. I want to want to play ToME again (if that makes any sense), but the sameness of each playthrough is currently making writing this more fun.
3) Players can pick and choose which dungeons they want to explore based on what drops at the end. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this, the ideal situation would be players wanting to do everything they can and go every place they can, 'cause you just never know. I guess what I'm saying here is that I find that having fixed drops leads to ugly metagaming:
p: "The Shade of Angmar's icy evilness is leaking out of the tower of Amon Sul! Please, hero, you must save us!"
@: "Nah. He only drops caster junk."
4) All balancing, boss tuning, and general game design must be done under the assumption that all players will have the fixed artifacts. For example, the existance of an artifact that causes any monster who hits you to get knocked back will inevitably lead to melee bosses all having knockback immunity. This devalues all sorts of cool talents and strategies that involve knockbacks. But if they're not knockback-immune, the existance of this artifact means that any player can trivialize the encounter.
Possible solutions:
1) The simplest solution is to just pile all artifacts into the world artifact pool and have bosses drop a random world artifact. Unfortunately, this comes with problems. You don't want Bill dropping some high level artifact that will either be impossible for the character to wield for another 20 levels or game-breaking if wielded at early levels. You'd have to make the drops somewhat level appropriate, which could be tricky. What if there are no available artifacts of the appropriate level? Does the boss drop nothing?
2) I feel a better solution would be to implement random artifacts (not random selection of world artifacts). Unlink all current artifacts from their respective bosses and add them to the world artifact pool, then make each boss drop a level-appropriate random artifact instead. Exceptions could be made, of course. The Sandworm Queen should always drop her heart, for example, and possibly a random artifact too. The Sandworm lair is dangerous enough to warrant the bonus drop. This would solve all four problems I mentioned above, and doesn't have any of the awkwardness of solution 1.
A final note while I'm on the subject of randomness: make the stat bonus values for ego cloaks variable. It drives me nuts that every cloak of the Lonely Mountain I find, whether in the Trollshaws or the High Peak, gives 2 Strength and 2 Con. Bleh.
The first thing is randomness. T4 needs more of it. The reason I'm not playing T4 this very minute after waiting and waiting for beta 13 to come out is that I know too well how the game's going to play out. I know where the bosses are, I know what they're going to do, and, most importantly, I know what they're going to drop. Randomizing the bosses doesn't seem like a great idea, but I wholeheartly believe that randomized loot from bosses (with maybe a very few exceptions) is the way to go. The current system causes these problems:
1) Having lots of fixed artifacts means that it's difficult to implement world artifacts. Take, for example, the problems caused by an early, guaranteed Ringil. This has already been discussed quite a bit.
2) Lack of replay value. I want to want to play ToME again (if that makes any sense), but the sameness of each playthrough is currently making writing this more fun.
3) Players can pick and choose which dungeons they want to explore based on what drops at the end. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this, the ideal situation would be players wanting to do everything they can and go every place they can, 'cause you just never know. I guess what I'm saying here is that I find that having fixed drops leads to ugly metagaming:
p: "The Shade of Angmar's icy evilness is leaking out of the tower of Amon Sul! Please, hero, you must save us!"
@: "Nah. He only drops caster junk."
4) All balancing, boss tuning, and general game design must be done under the assumption that all players will have the fixed artifacts. For example, the existance of an artifact that causes any monster who hits you to get knocked back will inevitably lead to melee bosses all having knockback immunity. This devalues all sorts of cool talents and strategies that involve knockbacks. But if they're not knockback-immune, the existance of this artifact means that any player can trivialize the encounter.
Possible solutions:
1) The simplest solution is to just pile all artifacts into the world artifact pool and have bosses drop a random world artifact. Unfortunately, this comes with problems. You don't want Bill dropping some high level artifact that will either be impossible for the character to wield for another 20 levels or game-breaking if wielded at early levels. You'd have to make the drops somewhat level appropriate, which could be tricky. What if there are no available artifacts of the appropriate level? Does the boss drop nothing?
2) I feel a better solution would be to implement random artifacts (not random selection of world artifacts). Unlink all current artifacts from their respective bosses and add them to the world artifact pool, then make each boss drop a level-appropriate random artifact instead. Exceptions could be made, of course. The Sandworm Queen should always drop her heart, for example, and possibly a random artifact too. The Sandworm lair is dangerous enough to warrant the bonus drop. This would solve all four problems I mentioned above, and doesn't have any of the awkwardness of solution 1.
A final note while I'm on the subject of randomness: make the stat bonus values for ego cloaks variable. It drives me nuts that every cloak of the Lonely Mountain I find, whether in the Trollshaws or the High Peak, gives 2 Strength and 2 Con. Bleh.
