ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

ToME4 is currently fairly transparent on certain things, such as having tooltips over most things giving exact numbers, and this makes it quite friendly to new players and old. There are no hidden effects to items or strange unexpected interactions. Ultimately it's a game where you know the rules and the state of play, and the test is how well you weigh up the odds and use your resources to your best advantage. Personally I'd like to see this extended a bit more, and one way to do this is to make enemies more transparent.

The idea is to have a command called "Examine" or "Details" on an enemy when you right-click (or 'l'ook and press enter when the enemy is highlighted). This will pop up a window with much more information about the enemy. In particular:

- Show its icon and name and health and stats as per the existing tooltip
- Current resource amounts
- Other stats like saving throws, stun resistance, attack, defence, armour, hardiness
- Current statuses, with tooltips revealing the actual effects
- Known talents and their levels, with tooltips revealing the precise details. Possibly current cooldowns as well.
- Equipment and runes/infusions

This means you always know what you're up against. It may seem like overkill, but it would be very useful for new players without them having to resort to looking up spoiler files to see what an enemy does. Especially when they may have talents belonging to classes which the player doesn't have access to, or statuses that are otherwise completely undocumented outside of the lua code. This window would also help give useful info on allies, and help assess where certain talents are becoming game-breaking on NPCs.

*obligatory dockable windows mention*

Any thoughts on having this limited to particular difficulties? I like it overall, but I've a heavy fondness of transparency in my roguelikes, so I'm obviously biased

I don't see why it should be limited to certain difficulties. It doesn't need to be accessed if you don't want to. Many experienced players will have a rough idea of the details anyway (apart from for adventurers and such). Let information be free and equal ;)

Especially useful if it would allow to mouse-point at enemy conditions, to see their more precise description. Come incredibly useful in an environment where there are hundreds of possible conditions to affects enemies. Currently, if you highlight an opponent, and his info window pops up, you cannot hover over his conditions, as it moves mouse tooltip from the enemy, and his window disappears

I think enemy talent details would be a bit much, but the rest seems okay. Though since we're throwing more and more information out there, and ToME is all about giving monsters the same advantages as the player...

Choice of attacks based on player resists/saves should be added onto monster tactical AI if this is implemented. ;D

Grey wrote:There are no hidden effects to items

Ring of the dead....

or strange unexpected interactions.

Every time I die it's unexpected, and frequently strange... 'specially if there's some Paradox Mage talent involved.

Also why is colon-P a smiley with no tongue sticking out?

I think that's meant to be its tongue sticking out...

If there are hidden effects then these should be made less hidden. The general low need for spoilers is one thing that makes ToME4 stand out amongst other roguelikes.