ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

A quick idea:

Right now, luck isn't tied to loot because it's too easy to game the system. You put on your luck gear, go into a level, force the loot to generate, and then take off your luck gear and put on something else.

What if we tied it to experience gain as follows?

• Every npc has a "player luck" value that is updated whenever it takes damage. The lowest value is kept.
• The player has a "loot luck" score that starts out at their luck. This is what's used to generate loot.
• Whenever the player gains experience from killing an npc, the player's current "loot luck" is averaged with the npc's "player luck", with the latter having a weight equal to the percentage of a level gained.

The strongest way to game this system that I see is to make sure you only damage bosses while wearing your luckiest gear, and wearing normal gear when you fight normal enemies. I think that's acceptable, though.

Luck used to effect drops in ToME 2. I think that was removed for what DG considered a very good reason.

well, imagine how lucky we are to kill a plant or bear or worm and get magical swords and armor they each happen to be carrying around? rather than tying to luck, i'd rather see drops that make sense like in many other games. but that also means a human should drop a full set of gear, maybe reduced quality from battle, needing repair work, but you'd get what enemies ought to have and not what things ought not to have. And additionally, if someone is going to drop something good, they ought to be using it in battle. I could see luck affecting chests and some other things and maybe on enemies after this issue is done.

Atarlost wrote:Luck used to effect drops in ToME 2. I think that was removed for what DG considered a very good reason.

I'd hate to think it was done for a bad one.

Having loot generated at kill instead of at level generation would also bring back the ability to game the system with chronomancy trickery, this was changed quite a while ago. I think it makes more sense as it is, at the same time I do like making luck more meaningful. Also worth considering that an enemy with better loot can also use said loot to kick your ass harder!

Under the proposed system loot would still be generated when you enter the level. I never mentioned switching to on kill.
NPC equipment that they actually use should probably be unaffected by luck one way or another.

That would encourage gear swapping for level transitions.

No, that would have no effect at all.

I'm sure the system has flaws, which is why I wanted feedback on it. That's certainly not one of them, however.

This wouldn't really work for me.
I see no benefit in wearing substandard gear in an attempt to get better gear, if I'm just going to be using the substandard gear when I'm facing the bosses anyway.
Or in other words.
Why am I wearing this +luck equipment to get better loot from bosses, when I'm not going to be using this better loot when I really need it?

An exception would exist if there were rare artifacts that gave +luck and were decent items by themselves. But in that case, there is no longer a meaningful choice between +luck items and +everything else, as you can get both.

grayswandir wrote:No, that would have no effect at all.

I'm sure the system has flaws, which is why I wanted feedback on it. That's certainly not one of them, however.

If loot is generated on level generation to avoid boss drop scumming with time manipulation then that's the only time luck could effect loot generation.

Atarlost wrote:If loot is generated on level generation to avoid boss drop scumming with time manipulation then that's the only time luck could effect loot generation.

Yes, but it doesn't use your luck score directly, it uses a rolling average of your luck score that's updated when you kill stuff. So you can't game the system by switching right before you generate a level. Instead, you game it by switching gear before you hurt (high xp) things, which is considerably harder to do.

HousePet wrote:Why am I wearing this +luck equipment to get better loot from bosses, when I'm not going to be using this better loot when I really need it?

I'm not proposing swapping gear right before bosses as a valid strategy. That was just the strongest way to break it I could think of, and I wanted to point it out. I want it less for the gear swapping aspect and more for the ability to create a wider variety of characters. Like, it would certainly make lucky day a lot more interesting.

Such a change to the loot generation should be able to stand on its own, and not require making a prodigy more interesting as justification.

Why not just make Lucky Day boost item generation level by 10%? It can't be abused and would be much simpler to code.

grayswandir wrote:

Atarlost wrote:If loot is generated on level generation to avoid boss drop scumming with time manipulation then that's the only time luck could effect loot generation.

Yes, but it doesn't use your luck score directly, it uses a rolling average of your luck score that's updated when you kill stuff. So you can't game the system by switching right before you generate a level. Instead, you game it by switching gear before you hurt (high xp) things, which is considerably harder to do.

You can't do that because to do that you have to generate loot at the time of death, not at level gen. That opens up timeline scumming.

Atarlost wrote:

grayswandir wrote:

Atarlost wrote:If loot is generated on level generation to avoid boss drop scumming with time manipulation then that's the only time luck could effect loot generation.

Yes, but it doesn't use your luck score directly, it uses a rolling average of your luck score that's updated when you kill stuff. So you can't game the system by switching right before you generate a level. Instead, you game it by switching gear before you hurt (high xp) things, which is considerably harder to do.

You can't do that because to do that you have to generate loot at the time of death, not at level gen. That opens up timeline scumming.

No, I was confused too, but I think he's saying that the scoring system that determines loot level gets updated with each kill, depending on your luck when you make the kill. But then the loot itself is still distributed as usual when levels are generated, modified by your current "loot luck" score.

I liked that +10% loot level idea though for Lucky Day, simple and direct!

snoop wrote:No, I was confused too, but I think he's saying that the scoring system that determines loot level gets updated with each kill, depending on your luck when you make the kill. But then the loot itself is still distributed as usual when levels are generated, modified by your current "loot luck" score.

Exactly. How your luck score is calculated and time of loot generation are completely separate. My suggestion only influences the former.

snoop wrote:I liked that +10% loot level idea though for Lucky Day, simple and direct!

I dunno, I still like the idea of allowing gear to influence loot generation as well. And I dislike dismissing any idea for the sole reason of "it's complicated". Especially since this would only be around 20 lines of code, at a guess. (Which is a pretty good measure of "complexity". )