ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello

The time is drawing near, a few more betas probably!

So, try to think what is *the* thing you'd love to see before beta is finished.

Since it seems that the Tolkien setting is going to be abandoned eventually it would be good to do sooner rather than later. Do it before the final release in order to avoid any possible legal problems and so as not to confuse new players.

Random world map + initially unexplored world (as currently for dungeons) is likely the best option for replayability. Even the best world map gets boring after a while. The world history can remain the same even if the world map changes between games.

The new setting comes next beta.
Exporable worldmap, but fixed. I do not want a random WM for ToME but I'll galdly explore that in other modules/campaigns

darkgod wrote:The new setting comes next beta.
Exporable worldmap, but fixed. I do not want a random WM for ToME but I'll galdly explore that in other modules/campaigns

How about allowing some randomness? Such that the location of the cities vary slightly and the locations of dungeons vary more. Or just the locations of the dungeons vary. Exploring the same map is fun one time, maybe even two or three times, after that you know the locations so it gets stale.

Not sure the randomness of the map is the main point. In T2, the map was fixed, but you had a large set of dungeons that you could visit and you could change at every game depending on you character. Only the last one and a couple of others were mandatory. And depending on your character you could choose which dungeons you will visit until you are strong enough for the final fight.

Tome 4 is a great game, but at the difference of T2, you have an imposed set of dungeons that you must visit to unlock the rest of the game. And in all of these dungeons, you have a predefined boss that drops a given artifact, etc...

This can make the visit of the different dungeons somehow repetitive, even with different characters. To improve gameplay and replayability, the important points are

- more items and especially (random) artifacts. Randarts should be found in the dungeons and a given boss should drop either its "garanteed" artifact or a similar randart item (for instance a randart shield in the old forest).
- more "uniques" (rand bosses) in the dungeons
- more random events (ambush) in the wilderness
- more vaults in the dungeons. Of course, they should remain be skippable
- why not some quests similar to the "princess" or FF? If you kill a given set of overlevelled monsters, the first one could give you a good item and the second a talent point. Also skippable of course
- more optional dungeons (like the ancient elven ruins) or random infinite dungeons

Otherwise, the set of classes is large enough for a release, the UI is excellent and the game is really good. The only problem IMHO is to improve the replayability.

I'd like to see towns fleshed out more. Someone suggested spreading the charging and training facilities in Last Hope (sic Minas Tirith) to other buildings. Some NPCs would also be nice, though it would raise issues with PCs deciding to Manathrust them.

Certainly more randomness overall would be great.

In next beta:
- bosses only have 25% chance to drop "their" artifact, otherwise it's a randomly selected art (or a randart)
- new uniques have been added; I welcome more suggestions
- there are 2 new zones
- few more vaults
- a new game mode : the Infinite Dungeon

I do agree more skippable or/and random content would be good. As it is, one can theoretically skip many dungeons, but if you skip more than one or two, you are likely to get massacred in Tol Falas (unless you're like Shoob ). T4 can become work the way T2 didn't as much for me, because there isn't enough variety except in character build, which by the way is freaking awesome.

[cross-posted with darkgod who has somewhat addressed these concerns. However, I do think that more might be done in this regard, probably particularly if we all suggest the cool ideas we have.

Yeah
I do not have enough zones ideas! Go for it !

More classes needed (implement the RuneMaster , for instance)

More zones and randomisation - currently it is a very linear storyline. One of the things about T2 was its huge number of options (yes, I know it developed over time...) which meant there was more than one way of doing things.

More extended side quests (like the cursed & tempest unlock)

A truly random dungeon... so levels that are randomly generated on entry every time.

I never could count (I just noticed the one thing in the title!)

On the other hand one of the thing about T2 was that most of them were similar

darkgod wrote:On the other hand one of the thing about T2 was that most of them were similar

Quite so!

I'd like to see Sun Paladins given some love.

At least finish Second Chance

while there are tons of little things that should be done, like adding more random content, more artifacts, more classes/races, fine tuning wands/rods, etc, balancing stuns, fixing equilibrium...
...the BIGGEST thing i think is speed. the game is still way too slow, loading dungeons takes way too long, and i experience lots of little lags and the like. more than anything this stuff will deter the casual gamer, and will particularly bug fans of roguelikes at large, who aren't used to any kind of slowdown...

All the obvious choice selections being duly represented by the above posters, as well as in the last topic we had on this subject: I'll go ahead and be the one to put forth something a bit different and a Comedy Option.

1. Website OVERHAUL. As it stands now, the ToME 4 site is incredibly stale/bland/etc. Needs game art, some dramatic flair, sleek shine reminiscent of the ingame UI, etc---the kinds of things that people coming across it would be likely to have some curiosity peaked and then click through a few times to give the game a whirl. Forum is fine and all, but the non-Blog portion of the site needs razzle dazzle.

Comedy: For the "get attention from nowhere" camp, perhaps a version natively compatible with Haiku? http://haiku-os.org/ I'm not even entirely sure if the needed Lua and OpenGL supports are there yet, but as I recently discovered it I somehow reckon it might have some potential as it seems to be rapidly gaining features versus the distant past attempts at a roughly similar OS---to say nothing of having a game like this on there alongside the likes of a slim few like Wesnoth and libtcod. Go go Ground Floor Presence~