ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

If I'm reading the devlog correctly, in the upcoming release items with energy will have their energy reset to zero when equipped (boots of spellbinding, hats of earthrunes, various shields, etc). It says to prevent abuse, but I believe this change has far greater negative impact than the supposed benefit. I'll go over how I think it would negatively impact the game, then a few ideas that would prevent potential abuse without the negative side effects.

Note: Me and my friends have only ever played on insane/roguelike (kudos to Darkgod and any contributors for making by far the most difficult and in-depth roguelike btw), so this will be from that viewpoint. Key considerations:

1) Reduced tactical depth. Switching items still takes a turn to switch, and a turn to use, but the benefit is of course still often worth it. At least on insane where you can never get out of one-shot range of certain enemies and are constantly in fear of death, this makes for many interesting and critical tactical choices. Tool-boxing the on use equipment adds a great deal of variety to your options, can shore up class weak-points, and frankly I suspect that without the option to use such the game might actually become close to impossible for certain classes on insane. Part of the reason that tome is so great is the incredible variety of abilities and choices characters can make, and tool-boxed items are a significant part of that.

2) That change will make many items completely obsolete. Frankly if you couldn't use them for toolboxing during an extended encounter, or preemptively use them to buff up, you would simply never use many of the weaker egos. This also reduces the depth of the game as it makes most gear choices fairly obvious and reduces the inventory management of trying to decide which tools you can carry around while not being encumbered, carrying capacity would more or less become irrelevant. Further you wouldn't have to juggle equipment to try to get to critical levels of str or mag in order to equip/use things.

3) Radically change the balance of the game. Specifically it would devestate the classes with mag as a primary or secondary stat (as most of the on use items scale with spellpower). Some of these classes (reavers, most of the pure casters) are already lower tier on insane (due to inability to ever escape 1-shot range for the casters).


I believe there would be a few better ways to handle potential abuse, if the worry is that it could make the game trivial on normal.

Firstly, the only truly abusive items are spellbinding/channeling. Currently it's clearly in your best interest to carry around several of them. They could easily be dealt with separately from the other items. Either doing something with their cooldowns, making them rarer, or perhaps adding some sort of saturation style effect when they are used to prevent rapid chaining.

Secondly (and this should honestly probably be done at some point anyway), making the scaling on the on-use items more spread out among different stats. Currently they are almost all spellpower based, which obviously means that the mag classes benefit disproportionately from them. Spreading out the scaling trait would prevent any given class from making full use of all of them, while keeping the tactical depth (as even the weak 100hp shield or a 3 turn earthrunes can be critical).

I really like activated items, but, in the previous system, they sort of neglect the whole inscriptions mechanic. If these effects are so useful to classes who can't get them naturally, they should be changed into runes/infusions. Not only would they be easier to balance; they could scale with any stat.

I'm not sure how useful manasurge runes are in the late-game, but if they need a buff, they could be extended to have a Metaflow-type effect. Or, there could be two types of manasurge runes; the basic one, and a "manatorrent" rune that has a Metaflow effect but also causes arcane damage to self.

The change was not proposed in order to make the game more balanced in any way. Balance can easily be dealt with later, by tweaking numbers. The issue is that regardless of balance, the current system is broken at the core, encouraging tedious and unintuitive behavior and having certain egos offer an entirely different kind of benefit (benefit while carried, instead of while equipped). The fact that it covers up imbalances is not a good reason to cling to it. If some classes/talents/egos would become obsolete, buff them. If more tactical variety is needed, add more inscriptions, or give classes more talent trees. Note, however, that more options in combat is not always a good thing. If it was, we would simply give every class access to every talent and that would be that.

I'd like to make it clear that whatever happens, changing the cooldowns but keeping the current system, does absolutely nothing to solve the problem.

donkatsu wrote:Right now: If you can carry 20 staffs of channeling, you can use Metaflow 20 times in rapid succession. After the battle is over, all of your staffs will eventually recharge, and you can do it again.

Under your proposal: If you can carry 20 staffs of channeling, you can use Metaflow 20 times in rapid succession. After the battle is over, you recharge all of your staffs one by one, and you can do it again.

The issue is not in how long it takes to recharge an item. It could take 10,000 turns, and the result would be the same.

Many of the items you refer to didn't exist until recent betas, so I think it's silly to say any class would be devastated by their sudden removal. Overall I'd say their introduction has been a purely negative thing, encouraging cheap gameplay tricks with certain classes. Reavers carrying around staffs to switch around with is just completely against that class's feel.

Insane mode at the moment is extremely unpolished - one of the beta elements that really is quite beta. Saying that existing cheap tricks and flaws in the game should be kept around for Insane mode to be viable is not a strong argument.

Inventory management is a bad thing and anything to remove it is good for the game.

As has been said, often less is more when it comes to choices, and at the moment these choices are bad. The activated staves should be there purely for the mages who use the staff as their regular weapon. They are not wands and rods for everyone to use. This abuse of them is very much against ToME4's design.

Having said that, the idea of converting some popular effects to runes makes a lot of sense. Runes have limited slots, so it would fit in better with ToME4's restricted ability sets. And some of the abilities like negation would work a lot better as runes than the current damage runes.

I agree with many of the points grmblfzzz made, regardless of Insane mode or not. I also largely agree with Grey. The people who posted in-between, well, I already forgot what you wrote, but I think it seemed reasonable. Without going into much depth of justification, here's what I would do:

(1) make activated items twice as rare (or more).
(2) remove any clearly abusable items, like the meta-flow items apparently.
(3) have items in inventory recharge at a slower rate, such as 1/10 the normal rate.

Personally, I think escort rewards can be more imbalancing/broken in general for the typical character. There are exceptions, of course. For example, winning the game with a sub-50 reaver would have been nigh impossible had it not been for activating items. One of the reasons I chose to use a reaver was for the boost magic/spellpower gave to some items (and I didn't use any meta-flow items).

My primary point wasn't the balance issue, I just wanted to mention that part (as it will definitely have large balance consequences). I honestly do think the change will reduce the complexity of the game in a negative way. Obviously you don't want infinite choices with every class having every ability, but given the limited selection of usable egos and the disadvantage of having to take a turn switching to a sub-optimal piece of gear I think it makes for more interesting game-play. Infinite choices are bad, but it's a delicate balance because more choices is obviously good up to a point.

For the inventory management, I disagree that it is fundamentally bad. There are bad aspects of dealing with inventory, but the transmogrification chest deals with that elegantly in my opinion. Having to lug items around to sell is horrifically tedious, but deciding what kind of gear you can afford to carry is an interesting choice which actually makes the strength stat meaningful to people not using it as a primary attribute.

Metaflow is clearly the stand-out problem among items, I think it is far and away the most abusive. I always keep all staves of channelling/boots of spellbinding on my mages. That is a problem, certainly, but the question is whether the other items warrant the same kind of treatment. Most of the items are intrinsically unabusable, because of the system in place that they are at a fixed talent level so stay fairly weak. This makes them extremely situational, so that you wouldn't ever want to wear them constantly but can still make use of them.

Some examples (from a late game perspective, obviously early game you take what you can get):

Boots of phasing: An uncontrolled blink is madness and only used as a last resort, but can still potentially be character saving. There is almost no situation where you would rather wear them then spellbinding/speed/invigorating/evasion/etc for general use though.

Shields of displacement: All casted shields are of course great, but the warping effect is dominated by either the time shield or regular shield option available from other shields. Currently it is an interesting choice whether or not it is worth the 7 lbs of inventory space and the turn to use it on an enemy, before swapping to something else.

Many of the artifacts: Currently penitence is great late game, it is very tempting to carry it around for special cases when you are getting destroyed by diseases in an encounter. The robes that give you short duration damage smearing (excellent, but if you had to make the choice for constant wear between them and something like black robes...), or the uncontrolled wormhole necklace. Wintertide/summertide phial, both amazing but for rather rare situations.


These choices I believe all add good depth to the game, and make every piece of gear more exciting to find. Certainly the overall system still needs tweaking as it is in beta, but just pointing out that there are other options. A saturation style effect after using an on-use item, such an effect on gear-swapping, some prevention on using an identical ego in succession, or as tiger_eye said make them recharge slowly after they've been used to prevent chaining between multiples during an encounter. The good thing about the current system is that you don't have to perfectly balance all of the egos, because as long as they are occasionally useful they still make for interesting choices. Perfect balance is extraordinarily difficult and a system similar to the one currently in place provides a good deal of leeway from the design perspective.

I like the variety of choice that activation items offer me. I don't think the overpoweredness of Metaflow items (and I would like to add hats of earthrunes) warrants the nerf to all activation items as proposed.

Perhaps, change the mechanic as follows: Items only recharge when there are enemies in sight. This would prevent resting and recharging items after a battle, while still keeping them available for situational use.

Apart from that, I agree that too many items are based off spellpower, and it would be nice to see their usefulness spread out more over the different classes.

martinuzz wrote:Perhaps, change the mechanic as follows: Items only recharge when there are enemies in sight. This would prevent resting and recharging items after a battle, while still keeping them available for situational use.

Find jelly, spam wait. Or needlessly punish player for not being in combat constantly (that worked really well with Cursed). Anything that player can abuse, will - it's still a roguelike, after all.

I don't feel ToME is equipment-driven. Yes, equipment is important, but there's a deep class/talent system that other roguelikes don't have. If the game needs endless hats of Earthrunes to be playable, there's something wrong. The Rod of Annulment and the Rod of Spydric Poison already border on what I would call broken.

You know, there is a tool slot, and it seems silly that the only available tool is a digger. Hmm...

tiger_eye wrote:You know, there is a tool slot, and it seems silly that the only available tool is a digger. Hmm...

Ah, now this I like. Nix wands and activated effects on non-artifacts, then add in a bunch of rods with activated effects. Change rods so they only charge while equipped (and so they can be equipped in the tool slot). Then, everyone gets access to what's effectually a mutable inscription slot.

tiger_eye wrote:(3) have items in inventory recharge at a slower rate, such as 1/10 the normal rate.

Sorry to keep belaboring this point, but somehow it keeps getting brought up despite my argument against it. Charge rate does NOT matter. I repeat, in no form does slowing down the charge rate of items matter, as long as the charge rate is not zero. If somehow you are surviving for 80 turns to re-use the same activated item within the same encounter, you have effectively demonstrated that you are able to survive indefinitely.

I agree that escorts are more imbalancing/broken, but apparently those are untouchable or something because they've been stated to be "working as intended". Besides, just because problem A is worse doesn't mean we shouldn't fix problem B.

While hotfixing Metaflow and Stone Wall (really the only two game-breaking egos) accomplishes the same objective of preventing abuse, it still leaves an awkward dichotomy between egos. One on hand, you have a set of egos that benefit you while you wear them. On the other hand, you have a set of egos that function in a completely different way: rather than making you stronger by wearing them, they're merely rods to be pulled out and zapped. If the game really needs more rods, just add more rods. But don't try to call a rod a hat, that's just silly.

A couple points to donkatsu: Charge rate currently matters in a few instances, mostly with the metaflow items again. If you have, say, six boots of spellbinding and swap between them, the cooldown comes back up and you can cycle indefinitely. While you could definitely not simply survive indefinitely without them. That is a fringe case that should probably be handled separately, granted, but it does currently happen at least on insane. This is certainly not an ideal solution, I believe tiger_eye just threw it out as a random suggestion. Specifically targeting the ab-usable items to fix, or some saturation style check would still be preferable.

Another drawback of the switch would be it would make the game more tedious in regards to certain items without doing anything about balance. Take burning star, or gauntlets of the beastfinder/armors of delving. These items are amazing for classes that don't have vision/sensing, but rarely worth wearing around. Currently you equip while out of combat, use, reequip good gear. With the change you would do the same thing, you'd just have to tediously use abilities so you could rest several more times while they charged.

Most importantly, the on use items currently *aren't* like rods in several important ways that make them more interesting. For many of them you have to have minimum stats/talents to use, like the shields. This makes building casters more interesting as you have to make the choice of getting 3 pts in armor use and somehow maintaining strength in order to get the benefit. Also, most of the items weigh more than rods, making encumbrance balancing an issue. Lastly and most importantly, you have to spend a turn equipping them to use, which is a huge drawback in the middle of combat. They would be vastly less interesting tactically as simple rods.

EDIT: By the way, I also agree that there are several issues with escorts. They are an interesting part of the game, and trying to guarantee their survival is an important challenge for each character. The problem is the randomness of which escorts you get on a character, as certain rewards are kind of critical (i.e, premonition for casters). Not getting a seer can be devastating to casters! A simple solution would be to do something like guarantee 1 of each type per character, with the remaining escorts as random.

Good point about the detection items. This applies to all non-combat activated items too, although I can't think of any others right now. Burning Star and perhaps Summertide would need to be changed. Even now, Burning Star and Summertide's activated effects could be made into a passive ability and I can't really think of any tactical difference that would make. I mean you could replicate the same effect by taking a step, using Burning Star/Summertide, waiting out the cooldown, taking another step, etc. Beastfinder/delving would also have to be either removed (increasing the relevance of the vision rune, which currently kind of sucks), or just give all characters passive Track at some randomly chosen point in the game. Passive Track, again, would be no different from the current situation except to reduce tedium.

As for the other differences:

• The stat requirement would be meaningful if it weren't for overkitting, which is also kind of broken. Generic point investment is a no-brainer; 3 points is not much at all. Besides, there's nothing preventing us from slapping stat requirements on rods.
• Ah, but the entire reason you favor activated items is because they provide more options in combat. Encumbrance limits options in combat. So which is it? Do you want more or do you want less? Do you want to make more choices during combat, or before it? Or do you mean to say that the freedom offered by activated items is exactly the right amount, and any more or any less is unacceptable?
• Requiring 2 turns instead of 1 is a neat tactical nuance, yes. But there are other ways of adding neat tactical nuances without having a bunch of hats serve a fundamentally different function from the main, and intuitive one: wearing it on your head.

Anyway, I'm of course not seriously suggesting that all current activated items be given rod versions. It is quite telling that there are only like, 3 combat rods in the game and they're all artifacts. My implication was that the game does not need more rods (ie things that you can use without taking up a "slot" of any kind), and that activated items are like rods.

Also, the charge-blanking thing doesn't completely remove the utility of carrying a lot of kit. As long as you have escape options, you can run away, change your equipment, then come back later with (for instance) fully-charged dispelling gloves for an opponent you need them against. So it's not totally eliminating the advantages you get for teching items like that, just making it require more commitment to your loadout for a specific fight.

I would like to request (if it's not in already) that resting when at full health/resources, no negative status ailments, etc wait long enough for all your equipped items to recharge. This would be annoying otherwise. That way, players can switch items on the fly without having a full inventory of metaflow items to draw on in mid-boss-fight.

It might also be interesting to see an artificer class based around removing many of the limitations on charged / activated items. Granted, it's a bit un-ToME4-like, but since its gameplay would be limited to that one class, I think it'd be all right. I kind of like the idea of playing someone who carries around a bunch of magical tools as the solution to everything -- and it's fun to find new "powers" as you adventure instead of just buying them all from a list that you're fully aware of from the start; it's fun to adapt your strategy to the new, random powers that you find, never quite knowing which you'll get each game.

Although I see the reasons for this change, I partially regret that it will reduce the impact of finding items that grant you new powers like that. So I'd like to see, maybe, a class dedicated to that sort of play, as well as maybe an overhaul to inscriptions to make them more interesting. Right now, most classes have a set inscription list they're going for right from the start, which they inevitably end up with -- and the fact that you can't swap them without losing them discourages fun experimentation. So there's no "whee, I found something that lets me shoot meteors!" fun factor. Frequently, with runes or inscriptions, what you get is "oooh, that looks cool... but I already have all my slots filled and need them for my basic strategy. Oh well, into the chest it goes."

Aquillion wrote:Also, the charge-blanking thing doesn't completely remove the utility of carrying a lot of kit. As long as you have escape options, you can run away, change your equipment, then come back later with (for instance) fully-charged dispelling gloves for an opponent you need them against. So it's not totally eliminating the advantages you get for teching items like that, just making it require more commitment to your loadout for a specific fight.

Yes, but it does bring them in line with other egos that you carry as kit. Meet an enemy that likes to go invisible? Put on some rings of see invisible. Meet an enemy that freezes you a lot? Swap out your Crown of Elements for that +40% stun/freeze immunity hat. If you mean the charge time is not an issue because you can run away to recharge, that applies to cooldowns on all talents. That's like saying we might as well make, say, Fearscape have 0 cooldown because you can just run away when it expires and come back after it cools down.