ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, got started on ToME recently and it's got some really good parts, and some really frustrating parts. Here's what felt frustrating to me, what I'd like to see changed in some way or another.

What I loved

All the things you could play! The unlocking! The dozens of things you could try! The awesome music! The concept!

What needs fixing

#1: Physical characters get shafted on stats, they need to spread themselves wider to be effective. Some sort of minor boost to Mental/Magical saves from Constitution would be nice.

#2: Level generation. After the Trollmire, and with the exception of the Maze, almost every dungeon seems to consist of 1-width corridors with the occasional cramped room. This really makes maneuverability completely negated in a lot of situations, and enemies that can shoot over their minions become disproportionately powerful. Doesn't help that almost every enemy seems to have a better sight radius than you, so a lot of boss fights start off by getting hit from out of view for crazy damage.

#3: Confusion/Stun/Paralyzing effects really need to either go or be incredibly nerfed when used on the player. My logic is this... in an RPG where I have a party, one or two members getting Confused/Stunned is an interesting predicament because suddenly I need to improvise and decide between curing them or countering. In ToME it just means that my only character is effectively out of the game for the next five or six rounds and I get to twiddle my thumbs and hope he doesn't die. Wild Infusions sometimes work... assuming they don't get locked down or Confusion doesn't leave my character refusing to do what I tell him.

#4: Better feedback in-game from messages. My Temporal Warden's sustained abilities kept getting disrupted for no apparent reason. Just said "WHOOPS, DISRUPTED" at irregular intervals. Not at all in some locations, constantly in others. Was it the location? Something I was carrying or doing? My stats? An enemy? Nothing said.

#5: More reliable status effects and better information about what they do. One of my TW's big abilities was supposed to be his AoE stun spell which would be really great... if it ever actually worked. Levelled it up, boosted my spellpower, never stuck a single time. Not to mention that about the only way to know what a given status effect does is to get hit by it and know what it does from reading the description then.

#6: In-game feedback on what zones are intended for what levels. Why not represent it on the overworld map? I shouldn't have to resort to a wiki to tell whether a given area will pulp me or not.

#7: Adventuring parties. Just no, just God no. Was it actually supposed to be possible to survive them without using one of the more broken classes? Because fighting the equivalent of three PC's at once, three PC's of roughly my own level or better, just does not spell "fair odds."

#8: Less redundancy in abilities. My TW basically had five different "teleport somewhere nearby or make a portal there"-abilities. Which, again, might've been more useful if not for the level generation but... even so, it felt like there were some skill trees that became super-redundant because of it.

Re:#2, I wonder... how far have you reached? Many of the zones have a number of pretty open areas if your class is suited to open engagements. Corridors are common connectors, yes, but many classes heavily benefit (to the degree of being somewhat reliant on them) from using choke points.

Old forest, daikara, scint. caves, both the thalore levels, th'dwarf joint (both starting and the later path to the east), all the prides, first level of the halfling complex, underwater cave, ritch tunnels, spellblaze scar, briagh's lair, orc pits, slime tunnel... that'd be the list as I can recall of areas with large amounts of quite open area, though I'm probably forgetting a few. Contrast to kor'pul, dreadfell, elven ruins... that sort of generation, which is indeed quite cramped at times. It's pretty evenly spaced out between open and close quarters, I'd say.

Expand on #1 a bit, maybe? Con is an every-class stat, and the non-hybrid melees are as focused as the non-hybrid casters. Wardens, arcane blades, and perhaps Shadowblades, sunpas, and cursed to lesser degrees are exceptions (And wardens and both the blades get talents that help out with the stat burden). That leaves bulwarks, 'zerkers, mindslayers, rogues, marauders, reavers, and brawlers as pretty consistent two/two and a half stat classes, same as most the casters.

#3: Confusion's been nerfed (again) for next version, and outright paralysis is staggeringly rare these days (daze is about the most common thing that comes close to it, and it breaks on damage). With the latter, specific problem talents would probably be a good idea to suggest changes for.

Stun, though, I'm not sure about... it's definitely very strong, yes, but there's lots of ways to deal with it nowadays. Any suggestions for changes to it that don't render the effect completely trivial? T4 is trying to make it so status effects don't suffer quite so badly from the normal RPG malaise of being mostly useless

#4: Don't know if it's been implemented yet, but better feedback on disruption (especially antimagic kit disruption, which was most likely what was causing your stuff to pop out. Equipment powered by arcane disrupting forces, well... disrupt arcane forces, heh.) et al has been suggested a number of times... I imagine if there's not something in the next version, there'll be something implemented during the content freeze period.

#5: Inspect creature is very useful You can mouse over status effects or sustains in the enemy creature's character sheet to see information on them.

Stop is kinda' unreliable, though, and just as you can resist stuns so can plenty of other things. Check for stun resistance and make sure your spellpower can reliably beat their physical save. I tend to mostly skip over it for slow, m'self, but some folks report good use from it. It's also a ranged AoE stun which is pretty incredible in and of itself

#6: There's a little blurb that pops up in the message log when you first enter an area. Would you prefer something along those lines migrated to the world map, as well? That might warrant a specific post by itself, as it's a fairly good idea.

#7: Advn parties are high risk/high reward. They're very doable if you know what you're doing and your character is built up a bit, but early on and before you quite know what you're doing, they're bloody dangerous. A regular suggestion for them is getting some kind of opt-in dialogue before actual encounter. I wouldn't advocate removal, though. Mostly because I love farming the things

#8: Most classes don't have terribly much overlap. Wardens are built to be incredibly mobile, though, so they've got somewhat more access to mobility talents that most. Even with them, though, they've only got one plain teleport ability (dimstep), a rush analog (wake), swap (which is part debuff), and wormhole. Maybe banish, but it's not quite the same thing. Comes out to roughly three active-style teleports and a utility and defense one. There's not really much overlap there, as they tend to be better suited for specific, fairly distinct, situations. Still, suggestions for improvement are always welcome, if you've got any to offer.

2. Scintillating Caves, Heart of the Gloom, Hidden Compound, at least the first level of the Halfling Complex. That's a fair amount of variety even in the first half of the game, and once you get past Dreadfell the dungeons start varying even more. Besides which those one-tile-wide hallways are the best possible thing for character survivability: getting surrounded by even 3 or 4 enemies is dangerous, as Daikara's xorns and Dreadfell's dreadmasters will happily teach you.

4. Perhaps the equipment you were wearing that was "powered by Arcane Disrupting forces" was Disrupting your Arcane magic?

5. Stop applies its status effect with a spellpower vs. physical save check. This is explained in the advanced tutorial, which at this point is badly out of date. Temporal Wardens often do much better stunning enemies with Dual Strike or Scatter Shot, which run off of Accuracy. You can also examine enemies by right-clicking them, and hovering over the status effect's name will tell you what it does.

6. When you first enter an area there should be a message in green in the log ("You feel a thrill of terror...", "You yawn..." etc.)

7. Yes, adventurer parties are often lethally dangerous. That's why you stay away from them on the world map if at all possible. They don't chase you unless they're one tile away, and even then they often lose interest and wander off.

8. Dimensional Step, Wormhole, Temporal Wake, Swap, and...are you thinking of Banish for the last one? Different characters are good at different things, and one of the things that Temporal Wardens are really good at is mobility; they can get out of a tight spot by using two or three in succession where another character would be trapped. Even beyond that, all these abilities have important differences. Wormhole, for example, can be used to wall off a hallway so that melee enemies just can't get close to you for a few turns.

#1: What did you feel was lacking, just spell/mind saves?

#3: IIRC, Confusion and stun agre getting nerfed in b43. Also, they aren't quite as debilitating as you say, I often fight through weak confusion, blindness, and sometimes even stuns. Wild infusions are never placed on cooldown by Stun, and always work through Confusion, like all instant-cast talents.

#4: That's probably from an antimagic item. It will have better messages in b43.

#5: Were you using it only on bosses? Some of them (and normal creatures) are stun immune, so it wouldn't work on them. You can see information on an enemy's status effects by looking at its stats and mousing over the effect.

#6: This kind of exists already. There are messages when you (first?) enter a zone. They range between "heart racing in terror" and "stifling a yawn". It could use some improvement though.

Yeah, confusion will be capped at 50% next release so you'll always have at least a 50/50 chance of doing something.

Stun is losing the healing penalty.

I colorized the disruption feedbacks for next release so they stand out better (they also use the same color the antimagic power source uses so hopefully there will be less confusion about what's causing it). The sustains will also say they've been disrupted (again color coded), not sure if that made it into b42 or not but it will be in b43 anyway.

edge2054 wrote:Stun is losing the healing penalty

Stealth weirdling beast buff, aiee! Poor first time nur visitors. I predict much declaration of "BS!" in the future, with return calls of "Well, stun used to help!"

seriously though someone get rid of that bugger's poison immunity so using insidious poison infusions on it isn't a borderline suicidal crapshoot

I would have removed the 'placing random abilities on 1 cooldown' from stun, as it is rather similar to brainlocked.
That and combined with the 'no cooldown regeneration' on it, its a double whammy if you need your activatables.

My argument for removing the healing penalty is for one it just didn't make sense to me and for two we put in a bunch of healing penalty abilities so players could better deal with things like weirdling beast...

and then stun got changed from a full paralyze and given a better healing penalty

But yeah, removing the poison immunity on weirdling sounds like a good thought to me so people can drop Insidious on him. Of course, you can always grab an insidious weapon if you find a decent one and try that route.

I did kill him with a bulwark in the SVN recently, so he's still doable without the healing modifier on stun, even with a relatively low DPS class.