ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Instead of re-typing, Im going to copy/paste from the IRC-chat:

12:08 Papagelos Just trying out Anorthil for the first time. And whilst enjoyable in general, this class is really not well-thought in design, as far as resources go.

12:08 Papagelos I have to shoot searing light at the ground and spam twilight surge aoe with no mobs around every 7 turns, just to keep my resources up..

12:08 Deathproof Papagelos: You have a point there.

12:08 Papagelos pointless and not fun game experience. Actually, probably the most silly resource-design Ive ever seen.

12:09 Papagelos Resources should not detorierate, or they should get filled by other actions than pointless aoe every 7 turns

12:09 Deathproof May be if resources were not depleting...

12:09 Papagelos They should not deplete. Not when filling them up again is this easy.

12:10 Papagelos ..or they should be gained like hate or another different mechanic

12:10 Papagelos but gain resources by beeing forced to shooting spells at empty air..... bad design

I must say your comments don't come across particularly well. Some suggestions of changes you might like to see would be better, rather than just fairly rude criticism. Pasting IRC comments instead of putting your thoughts together in constructed prose is an especially poor way of expressing your ideas. Also you should use a more relevant thread topic.

This isn't criticism against you personally, but if you want your ideas taken seriously you have to express them better. Your post as stands has a risk of offending rather than helping anyone.

I personally find Anorithils fun to play. I'll admit the resource system doesn't work great outside battle, but it does add an extra element of strategy and tension in pitched fights.

I do not think more input on the topic than what my chat-paste gave is needed, nor do I think I need to formulate my posts in a touchy-feely way as to not hurt someones feelings. But let's change the format of the post from chat to non-chat, then:

After trying out Anorithil for an hour or so, I have come to the following conclusion:
Anorithil resources should not deplete. Not when filling them up again is as easy as spamming buttons out of combat.
If they MUST deplete for some reason, they should fill up by the same mechanics as hate - per mob kill - or as mana regen, or by some other mechanic that does not rely on spamming offensive spells every x turns. Even when no mobs are around to target! All that does is disturb the rythm of the gameplay and brings no additional strategical dimension to the gameplay nor any enjoyment. Only thing it does is forcing players to "grind" casting spells into thin air so thir resourcebar is full for the next encounter."

I think PE and NE not depleting while resting would reduce the tedium a lot. Beyond that though SP and Anorithil gain resources by casting. If you feel you need to start every fight with both bars filled then that's your own play choice.

But... them depleting over time naturally certainly doesn't add anything to the game other than an annoyance.

Papagelos wrote:I do not think more input on the topic is needed, nor do I think I need to formulate my posts in a touchy-feely way as to not hurt someones feelings.

"I know I am right and I dont care for others, because I am right."
Yes that is how it read.
If you really think that way I am truly sorry for I mistook you for somebody nice.

Papagelos wrote:Only thing it does is forcing players to "grind" casting spells into thin air so thir resourcebar is full for the next encounter."

While I agree I think it's funny that it is you, who awlays want more grindy "features" from wow, asking for this.

Papagelos wrote:I do not think more input on the topic than what my chat-paste gave is needed, nor do I think I need to formulate my posts in a touchy-feely way as to not hurt someones feelings.

You are on a message board. Presumably, your objective lies somewhere between "interact socially", "develop status", and "influence people". Showing a degree of consideration for others will assist with all of these things. Personally, I do not find that your idea is self-evident - I've been playing an Anorithil recently, and I find the resource mechanic interesting and not unpleasant. It is also *different* from other resource pools, which is nice, and the way it works does have some influence on playstyle. Among other things, it requires you to juggle cooldowns in a way that you might otherwise not need to. I personally would be somewhat saddened if the Anorithil lost this aspect, as I like the flavor of it.

In cases where the idea is not self-evident (like this one) persuasive ability (including not being obnoxious) is a valuable thing, and even where it is self-evident, showing some degree of respect for others can be helpful for the long term - when you might wish to convince them of something that is not.

On the broader topic though, I'll note that the Anorithil resource bars (while interesting) are very nearly unlimited at this point anyway (as long as you balance your powers reasonably well between gain and loss). Admittedly, this may be an artifact of the game I've been playing and the choices I've made with them. I think, though, that if we are going to make them that much more available (by removing the slow decay) it would be worthwhile to do a few things to make them more limited again. Alternately, Anorithil are a bit short on generic skills anyway. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to include another generic tree, with a skill to eliminate light energy decay (and then give some light energy regen) and another to do the same for darkness.

Tone can be difficult to establish in online forums; we lose the visual cues that we're used to in conversation. And it wouldn't surprise me if we have (many) non-native English speakers here.

On the basic topic: I do think that Twilight itself could clearly be made a passive ability without loss. Right now there is a "no damage" version that subtracts light and adds dark; plus an "damage" version that adds both. Make the "no damage" version passive, have it add both, and simply make the per turn yield the same as now. Make the "damage" version either act just like now or have it subtract light and add shadow. This will ensure that the player will start encounters full without needless micro, while at the same time preserving some need for tactics in the middle of longer fights.

Interesting idea ohio but does the wheel really need to be reinvented here?

I still think the only issue really is decay. I'm not sure if it really serves much function in combat but out of combat it adds needless tedium.

Not having played anorthils I'd say my comments probably not all that great. But remove the gaining effect of spells that doesn't affect anyone. Then deplete energy only to 30%. Which maybe could be increased by some passive to 60% or whatever.

Disclaimer: I never played an Anothiril, and only a single Sun Paladin.

First, I would agree that removing the decay would remove the tediousness of recasting useless spells just to fill the resources prior to battle.

Second, now that resources can have negative minimum, why not merge both Negative and Positive energies? Negative would simply be when the resource is in the negative numbers (obviously) and Positive energy would be when it is in the positive numbers. Then Twilight would simply flip the resource from positive to negative or vice versa. That could lead to some interesting game play were the Anothiril would alternate between weaker light spells (fill the gauge and use some of it) and stronger darkness spells (cannot be refilled).

Twilight as an active power is tremendously pertinent in the feel of the class - it's a turn that you have to burn in combat on a semiregular basis. It would be a significant loss. Alternately, if you wanted to go the "this skill reduces your light/darkness decay" route, then having the decay reduction tagged to level 4 or 5 in twilight would give at least some people a fairly solid reason to invest heavily in it (something that they for the most part don't currently have)

I'm actually seeing a somewhat different effect in my Anorithil play. Sure, if you're totally obsessive about keeping your pools maxxed, it mostly just adds tedium (max pools, wait until refreshes are mostly refreshed, move, stop again no too long afterwards to do it again, etc, etc, etc.) I can see why someone wouldn't want to play like that. Playing as someone who's a little more laid back about that sort of things, though, it actually adds a degree of interest. I walk into combat and suddenly notice that I'm out of Darkness - I have to change up my patterns a tch. Alternately, I have enough darkness to fire off a beam, but then I'm out of light, which means that I need to fire off something that gives me enough light and then fire off a twilight before I can use my darkness powers again.

I'd also say that the Anorithil way of handling pools is kind of cool and different - and I *like* cool and different ways of handling pools. Honestly, I might suggest even cranking the degrade up. Crank the degrade up to the point where it's just not practical to try to keep yourself juiced all the time, get rid of the bit where running out of resource turns off your sustains, and go from there - with a basic concept that light and darkness are things that you build and use during individual fights. If you're just coming off some other fight, then you might have some, but otherwise you start with nothing, and to nothing you return. Obviously that's going to make things a bit harder for them, but if it's too much trouble you can always crank up some power or other of theirs. It would also be an interesting limiting factor on wormhole - you need to actually develop some darkness energy in order to make the jump. Alternately, you could turn wormhole into a single power sustain - rather than have a "wormhole teleport" power, just teleport back when the sustain is broken. Sustains would not require power to activate, but wouldn't give you any back when they deactivate either.

After playing and winning an Anorthil I thought I would offer a bit of input. Regarding the draining of energy, I can't say I care a whole lot, it is a bit of tedious micro but it isn't that bad. I was lazy a bit early on, but later I tried to keep maxed negative energy for the use of darkest light (invisibility).

Right now there are two powerful abilities that make the whole positive / negative energy pool idea very interesting: the invisibility spell (deepest darkness? darkest light?) and the moonlight aura.

Invisibility requires you to keep your positive energy as low as possible and your negative energy as high as possible so you can keep it on - and I found this ability (or invisibility runes) necessary for early encounters against Orc patrols out east. I think playing an Anorthil would be very hard without this ability.

Moonlight aura (combined with corona especially) uses an extreme amount of energy. When both are maxed it is not uncommon to be using 10 positive energy and 20 negative energy per turn, so just keeping them active requires using other spells every few turns. Right now as long as you have positive energy it is very easy to get 100+ negative energy via twilight - so the use of these two spells actually means that you need to focus more on positive energy.

I didn't put points into either of these abilities into later in the game, but once I started using them the whole energy mechanic became much more fun and interesting. A change I would like to see would be more abilities that have a major impact on how you use your energy. For example - instead of sunfire burst (the level 4 ability with 3 radius, forget the name) add an ability that pulses positive energy which heals you and damages enemies, and disables the use of twilight. This would be an extremely powerful ability akin to continuous regeneration, but would practically disable the main source of damage, which is negative energy abilities.

Just adding my two cents.