ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Just some random suggestions I'd like to put on paper, since I've had the ideas lately.

First off, I'd kinda like to see the older layouts randomly appear as alternates; That way, the various Prides have alts too. I've heard a lot of comments recently about the latter half of the game being boring, and this is a simple way to help expand on that.

For the other Prides besides Rak'shor(which recently got a quite nice redesign)...

Gorbat: Gorbat is always positioned in the middle of a mountain. Doing what Rak'shor does, and having the first floor be a normal Pride floor, makes sense. The latter two floors however? I'd suggest, if possible, a series of connected, large, round caves, linked by small hallways or doors. Like Heart of the Gloom, but instead of a center area and radiating circles, just randomly placed/sized circles.

This layout benefits the enemies somewhat, but that's okay; Gorbat's relatively weak, and it doesn't benefit the Summoners(probably the most dangerous thing in there right now) all that much anyways.

Grushnak: A good alternate layout idea for this could be making the layout more hallway/room centric. Basically, like a more cramped version of the normal roomer used in places like Kor'pul etc.; Lots of small, twisty hallways and small rooms that reward the melee oriented enemies.

The barracks alternate would be a small hallway down the middle, to the locked door, with two doors on either side of the hallway; Each little room would have an elite, a bunch of support, and a switch in it. Hit all four to progress.

Vor: Same as the normal pride layout at a glance; One big empty area in the center and two doors on each side, with the usual enemies.

The twist? The center is taken up by a large tower with various rooms, and multiple corridors inward, and the switch (heavily guarded) in a chamber in the center. There are no smaller buildings; Just one large tower in the center of each map.

So yeah, just some thoughts I wanted to get out of my head.

This plus working out the game speed kinks in the latter half of the game (as someone observed in a different post, in/past Dreadfel the game really begins to slow down, possibly due to the larger amount of enemies and processing required to handle them?) would really make the second half of the game a lot more bearable. I'm not sure Vor's change goes far enough - I'd just have it be the one normal entry zone and then a two-story tower - but I definitely like all of these as changes/alternates. Except we don't need a Rak'Shor alt. The new version's superior.

Is the game speed trouble universal? I know it was very cumbersome for me, but assumed that for more powerful machines than my decent laptop it would not be a problem.

It's at least a relatively common issue, though my laptop was oldish. The discrepancy between the early and lategame's pretty notable, at least for me.

But this is probably a bit OT. Sorry, Sage.