Remove the Leeching ego entirely.
Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 4:33 am
Yes, yes, it can theoretically be useful if you equip a huge amount of it, but honestly, I think it's fair to say that the leeching ego is a massive pile of fail. Its negatives generally make any item that has it crap for almost everyone, and it seems waaaay too common for something almost nobody ever wants. Individual leeching items provide almost no benefit, and finding a whole suit of it that's worthwhile is nearly impossible. Even if you do, the massive penalties are rarely worth the benefit. The fact that it's available for everything -- making it appear constantly even though it's a crap ego that, 99% of the time, nobody wants -- only adds insult to injury.
If it could be fixed in a way that got rid of its absurd negative healing effect, it might be usable, but honestly, even then, it just feels poorly-conceived. What it wants to do is not something that really fits well into ToME's balance, so it's currently slapped with an absurd penalty that says "DO NOT USE THIS" in angry red letters. If it needs something like that, I think the more appropriate conclusion to draw is that it doesn't belong in the game at all.
Choosing equipment is meant to be fun. It's one of the major decisions that makes up ToME's gameplay. Equipment that the vast majority of characters have absolutely no use for and no chance of ever putting to any sort of use has no place in the game. I mean, yes, every game involves some equipment you won't use -- wrong weapon, wrong armor, whatever -- but the leeching ego just feels like a perfect storm of obscenely common and glaringly worthless.
If I never saw another negative healing item ever again I'd be happy, but the leeching ego in particular is what almost everyone is thinking about when they talk about it, because unless you wear a complete suit of it it provides absolutely no benefits worth its horribly irritating negatives. It's just extremely poorly-conceived -- if the general leeching concept is something worth saving, it should be salvaged in another way, not as something like this.
More than that, I just hate, hate, hate the leeching ego, on a gut level that goes beyond any logic. I'm sick of seeing so many items that have it; I'm tired of getting excited when I see an early-game blue item only to realize it's yet another crap leeching thing. My visceral hatred for it, I'll admit, goes way beyond anything its gameplay impact could justify, but I think it's worth mentioning -- in general, egos should be designed around making items cool and fun, and the leeching ego is, at least to me, in the subjective way that 'cool' and 'fun' are always subjective, the exact opposite of that.
I could suggest various ways of fixing it -- of making its penalty less painful and such -- but ultimately, I don't want it fixed. I want it to die die DIE and never be spoken of again.
If it could be fixed in a way that got rid of its absurd negative healing effect, it might be usable, but honestly, even then, it just feels poorly-conceived. What it wants to do is not something that really fits well into ToME's balance, so it's currently slapped with an absurd penalty that says "DO NOT USE THIS" in angry red letters. If it needs something like that, I think the more appropriate conclusion to draw is that it doesn't belong in the game at all.
Choosing equipment is meant to be fun. It's one of the major decisions that makes up ToME's gameplay. Equipment that the vast majority of characters have absolutely no use for and no chance of ever putting to any sort of use has no place in the game. I mean, yes, every game involves some equipment you won't use -- wrong weapon, wrong armor, whatever -- but the leeching ego just feels like a perfect storm of obscenely common and glaringly worthless.
If I never saw another negative healing item ever again I'd be happy, but the leeching ego in particular is what almost everyone is thinking about when they talk about it, because unless you wear a complete suit of it it provides absolutely no benefits worth its horribly irritating negatives. It's just extremely poorly-conceived -- if the general leeching concept is something worth saving, it should be salvaged in another way, not as something like this.
More than that, I just hate, hate, hate the leeching ego, on a gut level that goes beyond any logic. I'm sick of seeing so many items that have it; I'm tired of getting excited when I see an early-game blue item only to realize it's yet another crap leeching thing. My visceral hatred for it, I'll admit, goes way beyond anything its gameplay impact could justify, but I think it's worth mentioning -- in general, egos should be designed around making items cool and fun, and the leeching ego is, at least to me, in the subjective way that 'cool' and 'fun' are always subjective, the exact opposite of that.
I could suggest various ways of fixing it -- of making its penalty less painful and such -- but ultimately, I don't want it fixed. I want it to die die DIE and never be spoken of again.
Plus, once you got Seethe to give yourself a little booster, you just took out the weakest in the group first and then you were well on your way... 