ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Zone-wide effects is a rather interesting mechanic but. Being present only in the high peak they aren't important. End game characters don't really care about +10% to some damage or -20 to some save while earlier in the game zone-wide effects could be much more interesting

And potentially screw you over when you play a class with a weak early game that gets a zone wide effect.

when i looked at the topic i was thinking about something like an underwater lvl, sand worm lair's sand collapse, or fearscape's fire...
some more things like that would be fun, but no... you meant modifiers.

why not have a jungle of 100 hp tall grass, that keep trying to grab you with low chance..., that also blocks vision, and some monsters that can leap and somehow see you.

I'm all for screwing over some builds with zone wide effects.
It would give a reason for not doing every dungeon.

I think we also need more of the small AOE effects you can find in most dungeons (such as the regen fountain, or the aura of undeath), or a few more interesting ones
But I do agree that Zone-wide effects haven't been fully explored into.

Maybe some rooms could be designed with more interesting contents as well.
The random placement of those small floor effects frequently makes them have no significant effect.

I am not excited about +10% some damage type or -20 some save randomly at any point of the game.

Zone-wide effects should be more interesting than that...

Matanui3 wrote:I am not excited about +10% some damage type or -20 some save randomly at any point of the game.

Zone-wide effects should be more interesting than that...

Agreed. Zone wide 'effects' like the Bandit Fortress or Lich Lair megavaults are very exciting to see, that's what I'd like to see more of. And substantially more minivaults. One neat one in the Conclave Vault was a box room surrounded by 4 vats with a few items in there, on picking up the item the vats spawned 4 ogres. More stuff like that would be fun.
I'm always very disappointed when I go through a level and there's not a single vault, minivault or interesting event.

At the same time, nothing makes me sad like encountering the castle vault. A lot of the better content is the mid-sized ones.

Vaults would really be a great place to have those kind of effects. As would purely optional dungeon spaces (or the Portal).

I'm with Housepet that the vast majority of the small zone effects have so rare an effect that they could vanish entirely without me blinking.