ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Besides the lack of randomness, for me the biggest fun-killer in beta 13 is overleveling. It always happens to me when I'm clearing through the second set of four dungeons (Old Forest, Maze, Carn Dum, and the Sandworm Lair). After clearing two of those, the other two stop keeping up with my level. The same thing happens with the four orc prides.

A more severe example of this is when I finally managed to take down the Vor Armory (including the level 100+ Ds!), and then went to Briagh's lair. Major letdown. And then I went through the portal back to Middle Earth to do the new old dungeons, and the monsters there were in the high 30s. I was level 50, so obviously I wasn't looking for experience, but I did want a challenge. The most fun I had on my berserker was taking down those totally unfair multi-hued worms in the Armory. Challenge = fun, no challenge = no fun. Revisiting Middle Earth turned out to be quite boring because of this (and because the dungeons were still explored; I'd make it so the dungeons are totally regenerated at a high level with new vaults and all). Once a character hits 50, every enemy he fights should be at least 50 to keep things fun.

In general terms, what we want is ever-growing challenges thrown at the player. While the player might perceive the occasional decrease in the game's difficulty (after finding Ringil, for example), the actual difficulty of successive dungeons and monsters should always be increasing.

I'm having a difficult time coming up with a solution that I like. The purpose of capping the levels in dungeons is to indirectly cap the level of the character at five above that. If all dungeons simply level to the character, then we need some new way of capping the level of the character so they can't just rack up fifty levels before even leaving Middle Earth.

What if we just said something like "You can't exceed level ten until you kill either the Shade of Angmar or Bill. You can't exceed level 20 until you kill three of the following: Sandworm Queen, Minotaur, Rantha, Old Man Willow. You can't exceed level 30 until you kill the Master." We could also do a simpler version: cap the character's level at 30 until they reach the Far East. Both of these feel very contrived and make little sense, though they would have the effect I'm looking for, I think.

Something else I considered was tying level gain much more closely to boss kills than it is currently, and de-emphasizing non-boss kills. Maybe every monster type has a finite pool of experience you can gain from it. For example, you can only gain one or two levels throughout the game by killing worm masses, but killing any boss gains you an automatic level. This would need a lot of testing and tuning, but it would sort of cap levels. This seems too complicated, but I really like the idea of emphasizing boss kills. A possibly simpler system would be to implement diminishing returns for each monster. You get full experience for your first stone troll kill, 90% for your second one, and so on, decreasing linearly down to zero.

I'm stuck. Somebody suggest something brilliant! You get a bonus if you make it even harder to reach level 50 than it is now (eg, normal player level cap is 40, but the cap increases by one for each Orb of Linaniil you find, which are of course dropped only by bosses, so you really have to dig through the side content if you want to be 50 for the Istari fight.)

If you want to cap experience you could go with an idea I am taking from some MUDs: zone trophies. The more monsters you kill in a specific zone, the less experience you gain in that zone. You could start getting log messages like "These enemies are feeling all too familiar" when your experience drops to say 10% of normal levels. The monster type trophy could also work, but some monster levels have infinte level ranges (lvl 40 king cobras showing up in the East). An increase of monster variety would fix that, though.

Well one thing is that exp chart was made quicker some time ago to make reaching lvl 50 possible, but since then much content, and so experience, was added. So it should probably be adjusted down.

Also maybe, once you kill X monsters in a level the other oens do not provide exp anymore, even after a regen, that'd prevent scumming and put a hard cap on exp

One point to consider too, normal mode should not be too hard either, for the suicidal types there is insane mode

I'm already and still pissed that there's a level cap to begin with. If I kill it, I should get something from it. The fact that so many mobs don't drop anything, and if I'm on my way back down through the dungeon, then I more than likely won't get anything at all from a kill of the mob. The Old Forest in particular is very common for this. With it having almost entirely 'natural' enemies that do not have any drops, on my way back out, I'll finish off a pit of snakes or wolves and I won't get a single xp for the genocide.

You cant have infinite levels, this would make the game terribly unbalanced, and boring.
You also can not let people gain exp from low level things because it rewards non-dangerous, boring scumming

Also, people CRIED that zones had a 9 level range in which they could scale with the player!
They CRIED! And now you tell me the opposite, gods I can not satisfy everybody...

One problem I have is that the racial xp penalties seem irrelevant because even Noldor chars will hit the level limit for zones very easily. Would be nice to balance the xp curve a bit so that it's not so easy to be limited in xp gains.

I have tweaked the exp curve a bit and made the zones have a bit bigger level scaling range, this should help.

Also maybe, once you kill X monsters in a level the other opens do not provide exp anymore, even after a regen, that'd prevent scumming and put a hard cap on exp

What do you think about that ?
Or maybe simply remove level regeneration of monsters ? or make regenerated monsters not give exp ?

I am playing a tweaked game right now that reduces the exp given by most monsters a lot (think like 15% of normal exp) but makes bosses give a huge exp boost (think 500%)

I only made it throught the trollshaws for now, but it's quite fun.
I made it to bill with level 2 and killing him gave me 2.5 levels. This feels rewarding for having killed a big bad nasty.

Also maybe each level in a zone should maybe not add to the max level.
Currently if a zone setups to be base level 10 and is 5 levels deep then the first level is 10, next is 11 and so on.
Maybe this should be like halfed, this would make zones get harder as you progress but not too much, it would make it less probable to unsync with player level (with my experimental reduced exp from normal monsters) and when you get out you feel all powerfully because the boss gave you a level or more

Here's an idea for the early dungeons where you don't have recall yet: make the enemy levels continue to increase (though slowly, like you mentioned in your last post) as you walk back out of the dungeon, and then have a unique camping on the dungeon exit. I've always hated the big letdown that is walking out of a vanquished dungeon; the enemies get easier, there's no exploring to do, and there's no fun fight waiting for you at the end. This would fix some of that.

Maybe make a sort of 'class' of uniques: ruthless treasure hunters. You get to the Trollshaws exit and there's this @ or p waiting near the stairs who says something like, "Aha! I heard that the mighty Bill had fallen. I can't wait to see what he's been keeping in his horde. Be a good fellow and hold still while I kill you, hmm?"

This could even be integrated with the lost merchant assassin lord somehow. Maybe there's this huge guild of assassins and thieves across Maj'Eyal, and you have run-ins with them throughout the game. At high levels you finally find out where the Shadowfoot King's lair is and you get to go chop him up. Killing bosses is fun, but killing bosses that have been plaguing you for most of a video game is way fun.

Hum could work I suppose yes, maybe some zones should be reduced too, the old forest, the maze, ... feel quite long with 7 levels no ?

Seven levels only feels long when you have to walk backwards through it fighting underleveled enemies with nothing to explore and no prize waiting for you at the end. If you simply make the dungeon shorter, then you're shortening the fun part, too. Let's find a way to keep all the fun stuff while snipping out the unfun stuff or making it fun.

True enough.

What about my other ideas about leveling, boss exp, ... ?