ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Monsters --
When you stumble upon a Luminous Horror, you instantly know there are two more of them lurking behind the corner. Likewise, Devourers always come in 3's, Drake hatchlings in 4's, etc. You don't have to scout to know that, and it's not *fun*: as a real adventuring hero, you should always have to do a bit of work or take risks to discover what really lurks behind *every* corner. Wouldn't it be better (I really mean *funnier* here ) if all these gregarious critters spawned in groups of (-50%/+100%) x base value instead? Possibly with a slightly Bell-shaped distribution to make extremes a bit less likely? Those Luminouses would now come in groups of 2-6, so there might be just one or... gaah, as many as five lurking behind that one I spotted. Da ya feel lucky, punk?

Damage types --
The reason I like playing Tempestes much more than any other Archmage flavor is that Lightning damage is utterly random, while every other kind of damage type does fixed base damage. Sure, spellpower boosts, crit chance and target resistance all come into play when real damage is applied, but it isn't anything like real randomness, even if it feels like it. Especially once you're near 100% crit chance (or still near 0%, obviously), you can predict the outcome of a non-lightning damage spell (or melee attack) with near-certainty most of the time if you wish: a quick mouseover over your talent bar (to check your talent's current damage) and the targets (to check their health and resists, sometimes their sustains and statuses), and a bit of mental calculus is all that's needed. It's quick to do when you're used to it (and it makes you better at mental calculus ) Again, not very *fun*. Wouldn't it be better if every damage type had some varying degree of randomness applied to it? (For instance, lightning max damage is typically 3x of base, temporal could be 2x, fire 1.5x, physical 1.25x, etc.)

Applying damage --
Currently, any talent that hits multiple enemies, applies the same damage value to all affected targets, because that value is computed only once per talent use - even when it's a lightning spell. (Of course, damage per target can still vary because of resists, etc.) I think a bit of randomness would be good here too. Not necessarily dependent on damage type, it could just be a fixed range. I just hate seeing identical numbers floating over the critters I just incinerated

I'll say it once more: randomness is *fun*. I see anything that makes me yell "Oh, sh..!" or "Yeah, what a lucky bastard I am!" more often as an improvement.

Well I totally disagree. I don't find random damage fun at all. I like random items, random environments, alt dungeons, etc. But the kind of randomness where you die and have no way to react, that's not fun. The kind of randomness where you are left in new situations thinking and making decisions that you haven't made before, that's fun.

Random group sizes for enemies sounds alright though. I wouldn't mind more dungeon variations or random side dungeons either.

EatThisShoe wrote:But the kind of randomness where you die and have no way to react, that's not fun.

Except that same randomness might make you live by inflicting a bit more damage, enough damage to kill Big Baddy - where you'd have otherwise died from Big Baddy's retaliation. Each scenario is as likely to happen as each other. The only "downside" (which to me is actually an "upside") is you can't be sure everything will unfold according to raw numbers. And that would only be natural: real adventurers don't care about numbers or the Law of Certainty

Create more side dungeons then. Come up with valid Ideas that fit thematically and can show up as one of several possible alts for each dungeon. We want to avoid too many new dungeons (though new theme=based class dungeons, one per class, like tranquil meadow would be fine), but there's no reason not to have more alts. That can only add more flexibility. Trollmire could have 6 alts, if we could come up with variations.

For that matter, we could do time of year variations, and have a 'winter' trollmire with frozen water, and sleeping bears, a spring trollmire with rain, more water then typical and more active creatures (breeding season?). A summer version with less water then normal, a fall version with fog that would obscure vision (Though delay in remapping light on a map can get huge, that might not be as feasible).

The more alts we can come up with,. that thematically fit, the more variation can be added to the standard came. By all means, come up with some, post them, even make an addon to put them ingame. If something is good enough, it can be adopted into maingame.

I meant randomness in game mechanics, not randomness in the ToME universe (ToMEverse?) or gaming experience - which is a different matter entirely.

Earwicker wrote:

EatThisShoe wrote:But the kind of randomness where you die and have no way to react, that's not fun.

Except that same randomness might make you live by inflicting a bit more damage, enough damage to kill Big Baddy - where you'd have otherwise died from Big Baddy's retaliation. Each scenario is as likely to happen as each other. The only "downside" (which to me is actually an "upside") is you can't be sure everything will unfold according to raw numbers. And that would only be natural: real adventurers don't care about numbers or the Law of Certainty

The problem is that the game is very lopsided in player wins vs. monster wins. In order to beat ToME you need to win thousands of fights, and lose far fewer, often zero for roguelike players. It only takes one unlucky turn to instagib you, and the probability of that happening increases the more fights you are in. RNG that helps me win fights doesn't matter as much, because I shouldn't be losing in the first place. As someone who plays roguelike if I die to RNG once I'm dead, start over, I don't see how that's fun if it was based on a die roll instead of my choices.

The downside isn't that attacks are uncertain, it's that you end up raising the maximum that an enemy can hit for if you maintain the same average damage, and as a result you increase instagibs regardless of whether I can read the max damage and know that I could be instagibbed. If you lowered the minimum instead you make every attack weaker in a game where you are already expecting to win thousands of fights without dying once.

No, thank you, ToME's got a ton of randomization in it.

Enemy types, enemy resists, enemy gear, what gear you net, various things like potions, various forms of status and specific damage types, critical hits...there's plenty of random elements.

As was mentioned, heavily randomized damage benefits enemies far more than the player-they need to kill you a few times, and you need to kill them thousands, the odds are heavily on their side and having an occasional lucky burst of damage does not counterbalance this.

I wouldn't mind seeing a little more diversity in enemy groups, but then again, it has an odd strategic effect to have it be consistent-and one that can be hilariously misleading to rely on. I can't count the amount of times I've gotten annoyed or paranoid because I only found one Luminous Horror, only to find out that they've somehow managed to string themselves out in such a way that they're easily cut down. (And then sometimes, I've rounded the corner and met the other five. )

I'll say it once more: randomness is *fun*

I agree, honestly, there just needs to be moderation. Sugar's tasty, but you don't need to eat a cup.

SageAcrin wrote:Enemy types, enemy resists, enemy gear, what gear you net, various things like potions, various forms of status and specific damage types, critical hits...there's plenty of random elements.

There's variety, sure, but that's not what I'm talking about (except critical hits, obviously.) When the stage is set for a given fight, enemy types, resists, etc. are fixed variables that don't add randomness to *that* fight.

As was mentioned, heavily randomized damage benefits enemies far more than the player-they need to kill you a few times, and you need to kill them thousands, the odds are heavily on their side and having an occasional lucky burst of damage does not counterbalance this.

Yup, I've heard this argument quite a few times, but (maybe it's just me being really stupid) I still can't see the logic behind it. Instagibs already happen in the current game, and variable damage means some of them wouldn't be instagibs anymore - which means you'd actually live longer in some roguelike runs. But these lucky runs are easily forgotten, while actual deaths are easily remembered. Makes me think that this argument is psychological more than logical.

And by the way, why isn't anyone lobbying to remove Air and Storm from the Archmage spellbook, since monsters can also use them, with lightning damage being *that* monstrously random? But if you think there's nothing wrong with either, I can't really see why adding a little bit of randomness to other damage types should be a major concern.

Randomising the number of monsters in clumps would be interesting.

Randomising the damage dealt by different types would not be.

Firstly, the different damage to different targets in one spell:
It is does this way to stop criticals being rolled more than once per spell. Also, as you mentioned, different creatures have different resistances, so they already take varying amounts of damage.

Secondly, the complex one, randomised damage amounts:
Even if you balance the average amount of damage dealt (which diablo2 failed completely on), unreliable damage is still a penalty. Taking one turn longer to kill something can be fatal, and unreliable damage means that it will happen eventually. This is because there are so many tough battles you need to survive through, that even though it is randomised, it is a certainty that it will happen. You just don't know when.
Also, criticals already randomise the damage a bit. We don't need to duplicate the effect further.

And its only mental algebra, not calculus.

I would be happy to see the variability of lightning spell damage dropped.

Earwicker wrote:

As was mentioned, heavily randomized damage benefits enemies far more than the player-they need to kill you a few times, and you need to kill them thousands, the odds are heavily on their side and having an occasional lucky burst of damage does not counterbalance this.

Yup, I've heard this argument quite a few times, but (maybe it's just me being really stupid) I still can't see the logic behind it. Instagibs already happen in the current game, and variable damage means some of them wouldn't be instagibs anymore - which means you'd actually live longer in some roguelike runs. But these lucky runs are easily forgotten, while actual deaths are easily remembered. Makes me think that this argument is psychological more than logical.

On normal difficulty instagibs are pretty rare. But things which knock off 80% of your life are not. It's a threshold issue, if you increase the damage range you create the opportunity where there was none before, things which could never have instagibbed you now can. If before the worst damage you could take in one turn was 1.2k, with a damage range that could become up to 1.5k, now if you don't want to get instagibbed you must have 300 more HP than before.

And by the way, why isn't anyone lobbying to remove Air and Storm from the Archmage spellbook, since monsters can also use them, with lightning damage being *that* monstrously random? But if you think there's nothing wrong with either, I can't really see why adding a little bit of randomness to other damage types should be a major concern.

I wouldn't have a problem with making lightning less random, I wouldn't remove the tree though, that would be an overreaction. But this is your thread about your idea. In its current state lightning is at least unique in being random, if we were going to take away lightning's uniqueness, I would vote to make lightning non-random rather than making everything else random.

Lightning is random because the elemental force of lightning is chaotic, and difficult to control. It's a theme thing. Keep it as is.

HousePet wrote:Firstly, the different damage to different targets in one spell:
It is does this way to stop criticals being rolled more than once per spell.

You could roll for critical once per talent use and then apply a random factor (not the same factor that's applied to damage types) to each target. I didn't look at that part of the code and have no idea about how easy or hard it would be to implement, but in theory at least, rolling multiple criticals is not a necessity.

Also, as you mentioned, different creatures have different resistances, so they already take varying amounts of damage.

Sure, but that's still predictable damage, and as you all probably figured out by now, I hate absolute predictability

Taking one turn longer to kill something can be fatal, and unreliable damage means that it will happen eventually. This is because there are so many tough battles you need to survive through, that even though it is randomised, it is a certainty that it will happen. You just don't know when.

I still don't get it. "It will happen eventually" in the current form of the game already, unreliable damage only means "it will happen sooner or later than it used to happen". The reason why people move from normal to nightmare then insane is they want a good challenge, so if variable damage does indeed stake the odds against the player, what's wrong with that? Many complain that nightmare and especially insane boost monsters stats unfairly, making some classes (Bulwark is an often cited example, because no matter how much defense you can get, it'll always get trumped by ubiquitous ** accuracy) nearly unplayable. Solution: make nightmare and insane monsters less fearsome, and add variable damage to compensate. The game will remain as challenging as it used to be, except the higher difficulties will be open to more character builds.

Also, criticals already randomise the damage a bit. We don't need to duplicate the effect further.

As I noted earlier, It's much less true early or late. ~100% crit chance is not uncommon on High Peak hikers.

And its only mental algebra, not calculus.

Ah thanks, I'll remember that. As you probably figured out already, English is not my first language.

I would be happy to see the variability of lightning spell damage dropped.

EatThisShoe wrote:On normal difficulty instagibs are pretty rare. But things which knock off 80% of your life are not. It's a threshold issue, if you increase the damage range you create the opportunity where there was none before, things which could never have instagibbed you now can. If before the worst damage you could take in one turn was 1.2k, with a damage range that could become up to 1.5k, now if you don't want to get instagibbed you must have 300 more HP than before.

It's mainly nightmare I had in mind, btw. I don't think variable damage would change much of normal difficulty, if we keep lightning at the far end of the randomness scale. If that's still an issue, add some Bell-shaping on top of randomness to make it less "random". As for the threshold issue, yes, I'm aware of that, but since you're obviously a nightmare player, a bit of extra challenge shouldn't frighten you, should it? Or why not just nerf nightmare and below monsters a bit and add variability? As I said in my previous post, the game would be just as challenging, except it'll be in a sense more "egalitarian", as far as character classes are concerned. What do you think?

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:Create more side dungeons then. Come up with valid Ideas that fit thematically and can show up as one of several possible alts for each dungeon. We want to avoid too many new dungeons (though new theme=based class dungeons, one per class, like tranquil meadow would be fine), but there's no reason not to have more alts. That can only add more flexibility. Trollmire could have 6 alts, if we could come up with variations.

For that matter, we could do time of year variations, and have a 'winter' trollmire with frozen water, and sleeping bears, a spring trollmire with rain, more water then typical and more active creatures (breeding season?). A summer version with less water then normal, a fall version with fog that would obscure vision (Though delay in remapping light on a map can get huge, that might not be as feasible).

The more alts we can come up with,. that thematically fit, the more variation can be added to the standard came. By all means, come up with some, post them, even make an addon to put them ingame. If something is good enough, it can be adopted into maingame.

I like the idea of more universe randomness.

The problem is that too much chance makes it simply a lottery, not a challenge.
Unreliable damage would make it harder, but it would only be more challenging to your patience.