Trainers?

[Peppersauce]

What about bringing some way to get some more Technique or other basic trees into the game? Sort of like what you can do currently in Last Hope for the Combat Training tree.

The trainers could be implemented like the aforementioned example (like, the Leather shop in Derth could give you Technique/Mobility) or maybe random spawning (rare?) NPCs in towns. (tied to the race/class? A Thalore Ranger trainer could train you in the Technique/Field Control tree, a Cornac Berserker either Warcries or Two-Handed Weapons (I know what you're thinking about right now... an Alchemist with Death Dance, wtf? ) )

The trees should either be given locked or the training mechanic in general could need a Category point, not that it would make much of a difference, mind you. Trainers will ask for a (decent?) sum of money and maybe... an artifact or some other item they might be interested in (tied to their class?) prior to the training.

So... what do you think?



And... yes, this is my first post here. Hello everyone!

[Goblinz]

I personally like the idea of trainers and they can add a lot to a game. Some things to mention though. The offered trees should only be generic (that is the point of generic trees). This helps with balance and other stuff like that. The interesting point of discusion is whether or not they should be locked. If it is locked the tree will have to be important enough to buy , so the class build plan will include that. if they start open I can make impromtu decisions to invest. It would allow me to dable or something else. I personally would like to just dabble. An alternative is to cap the talent level. for example only let you invest 2-4 points into each talent.
The biggest problem with trainers is that they promote spoilers. If a trainer is important for a given character a spoiled player would be at an advantage by knowing about the trainer. the easist fix would to be to randomize the trainers though this can be more work.

A final idea is to make trainer only trees. these could be 3 point talents with different requirements that don't provide game changing abilities or new resource bars. The trees don't even 4 talents. just 2 or 3 would be fine (makes it easier to code). I would be cool with coding all of this if there are ideas for trainer talents

oh and welcome

[Szragodesca]

Welcome, Peppersauce, from a fellow newbie. I too like the idea of trainers, as Goblinz said.

I agree with pretty much everything said by Goblinz, especially static trainer locations being a bad thing. What I think might be a good workaround for this is to add vaults to dungeon areas which, instead of treasure, have trainers and shops. (imagine opening the locked door, ready to fight or be completely pwned, and find someone willing to unburden you on floor 3 of a 4-floor dungeon.) This would also allow players to buy/sell in the endless dungeon, if the code scaled the trainers/shops properly. Unless it would involve some major editing of the code, I'd say make the chance to spawn a 'shop vault' or 'trainer vault' separate from the treasure vaults, so you might end up with one, the other, or both. (also, a hybrid like the Angolwen jeweler who sells stuff and has a second dialogue option would be good for some places, and a nice rare find in the endless dungeon)

What kind of "trainer only" talents are you thinking of Goblinz? I'm afraid that without narrowing it down a little, most of my ideas would be too grandiose for that limitation.

[stinkstink]

I'd like to see set trainer locations for talent trees you could potentially build a divergent character around, like Staff Combat and Mindstar Mastery. A staff trainer in Angolwyn and a mindstar shop/trainer in Zigur would be nice, it'd make planning a character around those skills much less of a gamble.

[Peppersauce]

The offered trees should only be generic (that is the point of generic trees). This helps with balance and other stuff like that.

Agreed, plus pretty much all of the talent trees you can acquire ingame as of now (IIRC) are generic ones, so it's a set trend.

The interesting point of discusion is whether or not they should be locked. If it is locked the tree will have to be important enough to buy , so the class build plan will include that. if they start open I can make impromtu decisions to invest. It would allow me to dable or something else. I personally would like to just dabble. An alternative is to cap the talent level. for example only let you invest 2-4 points into each talent.

As much as I'd love to get free talent trees ( ), I have to admit that bonus unlocked trees could very well give a lot of balancing issues. In that case, talent level caps could be the key to solve that. I'm still of the idea that those trees should either be given locked or be unlocked with a needed spare category point to receive the training.

The biggest problem with trainers is that they promote spoilers. If a trainer is important for a given character a spoiled player would be at an advantage by knowing about the trainer. the easist fix would to be to randomize the trainers though this can be more work.

I guess it's not that much work, really, most of the code is there since the arrival of rare monsters/NPCs (if we're going with the random NPC trainers idea instead of the shop trainers one), the only thing to do would be to attach a different dialog to each relevant rare NPC type. (As a side note, are rare NPCs in towns still there? I'm not finding any lately, the Doomed ones were a blast to watch, with Shadows running around and phasing like crazy)

What I think might be a good workaround for this is to add vaults to dungeon areas which, instead of treasure, have trainers and shops. (imagine opening the locked door, ready to fight or be completely pwned, and find someone willing to unburden you on floor 3 of a 4-floor dungeon.) This would also allow players to buy/sell in the endless dungeon, if the code scaled the trainers/shops properly. Unless it would involve some major editing of the code, I'd say make the chance to spawn a 'shop vault' or 'trainer vault' separate from the treasure vaults, so you might end up with one, the other, or both. (also, a hybrid like the Angolwen jeweler who sells stuff and has a second dialogue option would be good for some places, and a nice rare find in the endless dungeon)

I like the idea, but the side-effect would be that, in non-endless dungeon games, there are so little vaults in the dungeons before the Far East that you would have to be really lucky to even find two of those areas before having spent all of your category points. I'm for their inclusion in the endless dungeon, not sure about them in the standard game.

Also... how would you explain having a shop inside Kor'Pul? (putting aside the fact that, if you think about it, escorts are pretty much non-sense too, I mean... how the hell did that pathetic little Seer arrive to the 5th level of Dreadfell with all her life intact without even killing/encountering any of the monsters I had to dispatch to get to that point of the dungeon is beyond me)

I'd like to see set trainer locations for talent trees you could potentially build a divergent character around, like Staff Combat and Mindstar Mastery. A staff trainer in Angolwyn and a mindstar shop/trainer in Zigur would be nice, it'd make planning a character around those skills much less of a gamble.

I see what you mean, I had planned a Staff Combat-focused Arcane Blade but never found an Alchemist escort... maybe some weapon-tied talents (like those you mentioned) are better to be always found... on the other hand, those talents can be learned through the escorts anyway, so you'd have to be pretty unlucky not to find those even if the trainers are random.

A final idea is to make trainer only trees. these could be 3 point talents with different requirements that don't provide game changing abilities or new resource bars. The trees don't even 4 talents. just 2 or 3 would be fine (makes it easier to code). I would be cool with coding all of this if there are ideas for trainer talents

Some passive for, like +2% physical resistance and damage per level? Nah, I've got no ideas...

oh and welcome

Welcome, Peppersauce, from a fellow newbie.

Thanks

[Planetus]

Given the vast number of talent trees available, and the potential for one to totally over-power a class, I'd have to go with the trainer-only trees. Making new talents that won't over-power any class, but still be useful for some would be a lot easier than finding a tree that already exists and would do the same.

Of course, that only adds more trees to the pool...

[bricks]

I guess the question is this - should unusual builds be voluntary or random? The current model suggests a little of both, but more on the "random" side. I'd prefer that they were more voluntary, as you could spend many games just trying to get that Staff Combat-Arcane Blade up and running, and even then you probably won't be as powerful or versatile as a traditional build.

[Szragodesca]

Also... how would you explain having a shop inside Kor'Pul? (putting aside the fact that, if you think about it, escorts are pretty much non-sense too, I mean... how the hell did that pathetic little Seer arrive to the 5th level of Dreadfell with all her life intact without even killing/encountering any of the monsters I had to dispatch to get to that point of the dungeon is beyond me)

You could, maybe, limit the kind of trainer/shop based on the type of dungeon. Kor'Pul, for example, is obviously a dungeon of undeath and evil. Make it a trainer or shop that would appeal to someone who would make their home there, or someone there to train themselves. Perhaps the trainer is a Necromancer, researching the works of Kor'Pul. Perhaps it's a Paladin, slaying the abominations within and willing to train the PC in exchange for some hard-earned coin. A forest might have a Summoner or Ranger, or it might have a Reaver, or an Archmage. Some dungeons would be easier to typecast than others, and some I'd say just flag as unavailable (like the crypt by Last Hope) This kind of generation already exists in the Vault part of dungeon generation, as it puts forest vaults in forests and undead vaults in dungeons and so on. One may need to tweak that code a little, sharpen it up to make the generation more specific to the dungeon than the terrain, but it's not like it would have to be created (and thought up) entirely from scratch.

(Regarding the seer. . . teleport gone seriously awry due to Arcane Disrupting Forces? )

What you say is true. It may be best to split the endless dungeon generation off from the campaign generation, perhaps as two separate but very similar addons (since one references depth and the other location).


As for "Trainer Talents" as it were. . . What about things like "Mercantile" which allows you to train up a talent that lowers the purchase price and increases the sell value of items by X%? That won't have any real noticeable impact on the game's power levels, won't require you add extra talent points that someone may spend on non-trainer talents, etc.

Other ideas may be things like:
Trades

• Smelting: Melts down a piece of equipment into half its weight in [Material] Ingots.
  Forge Weapon: Pops up a Smithing dialog which allows the player to choose the type of weapon they would like to create. When they decide what type, a small popup lets them select material (from those available) to create it from. If insufficient quantity exists, the material (or item altogether) are greyed out.
  Forge Armor: See above, but for armors.
  Forge Accessory: See above, but for jewelry and (maybe) charms/trinkets.

This way, if you're a Bulwark (for example) and you keep finding crappy bucklers but you have that greatsword you're not using, you can melt it down and turn it into a better (possibly higher tier) shield or 1her than you're presently using. (if another talent tree that allows imbuing mundane items with random egos was made, this would be even more useful)

[stinkstink]

ToME 2 had equipment crafting with Alchemists, and it was absurdly broken. Even an ability to turn unwanted gear into random, potentially useful new items would be incredibly powerful.

[Szragodesca]

Sadly, I found ToME in 4.0. I used to play a lot of nethack and adom, Moria, Moraff's Revenge & Moraff's World, and I may have played an earlier version of ToME, but not that I can recall.

How was it broken? We learn from past mistakes, and what interested me was the article about TE4 saying he completely rebuilt the game for his new engine. This means that in at least some ways, it's not the same as ToME 2. . .

I'd think if you got half the resource for smelting an item, and all you could do was make another mundane item of that tier, you're losing resources with every combine. And since this isn't D&D, not all longswords do 1-8 damage, you may or may not end up scrapping your built item to try for a better one. That restricts the abuse pretty well to begin with.

As for enchanting, as I said, I don't know how it was done before. However, if you restricted the tiers enchantable to certain level minimums, you wouldn't have someone randoming a tier 3 enchantment at level 7. I've had one character get to mid 20's, and a few get 17-19, and it seems right around 15 is where gear seems to become dependably tier 2. Around 25 it reached tier 3. Maybe for others these numbers will differ, but it follows a kind of old and common leveling scheme. In a 50-levels capped game, you go 1, 16, 26, 36, 46 as the required level to learn the "tier". That way you may be finding tier 5 equipment at 38 or 40, but you can't start trying to make it until the last 5 levels of the game. Who knows, for a lot of players that may be too restrictive.

If you wanted it to be less overpowered and less easily acquired, make the trainer send the player on a quest like the Alchemist Brotherhood NPCs, only the reward is an increase in their ability to enchant.

I suppose in the end I can only hypothesize until I know what exactly people did to abuse it. *shrug* I don't think the past is a reason to downright refuse looking into it in the future, but I'll keep an eye on the idea and see if I can think of ways to exploit it, and how to counter those.

[marvalis]

Its a bit like mining in ADOM. You only like it once, then it just becomes really tedious. The t2 alchemist probably isn't coming back.

I made two suggestions about crafting before, and looking back they look kinda shoddy.
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?p=124613#p124613
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?p=119712#p119712

A crafting system is probably going to be difficult to implement well, and to keep it interesting. It might be worth exploring.

It could even be a kind of mini-game, like in guild wars 2 (yes, I'm a fan of GW2 so I am very biased)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry3Ddw6G ... ure=relmfu

As in all things roguelike: Randomness can be fun (random recipes discovered randomly). Slot machine rewards might vary.

[Szragodesca]

I remember playing Moria waaaaaaay back when. . . digging through walls hoping to find gems that I could bring back to town.

I mostly recommend crafting because it's a lot of skills one can train with an applicable but not game-breaking effect (if implemented well), and it allows you that extra "Oh yeah, I beat the game with gear I made myself" feeling. Could even add an achievement for wearing a full suit of armor of the same material (helm, boots, gloves, chest, maybe others) that you made, or filling every slot with gear you made. And the system I recommended doesn't let you make anything stronger than what already exists in game since it uses the same random stat generation that dungeon mapping does. The only benefit is that you get to choose what type of weapon or armor you make with what material.

Also, having them as skills you can't acquire without going to a trainer and paying to learn them, it's something you can completely avoid if you don't like doing it.

How would I handle enchanting? Not entirely sure. . . I was thinking of using Ingredients to narrow down not only your available enchantments, but what they are. Say you have Prismatic Wyrm Scales (or whatever drops from them) you may get a decent resist, resist penetration, damage on strike, damage when hit, etc. of a certain element. Or, you might get a lesser bonus to multiple elements, or an even lesser bonus to all (like Resist All). Perhaps with Troll Intestine you can get a life regen item, or a life increasing item, or something that boosts strength. Maybe Green Worms will add blight damage. Vampire blood adds either life regen or life leech. You get the idea. . .

If you use up all of your ingredients trying to get a good enchantment, you simply won't have the ability to get them anymore from that item until you kill the mobs again. I can also see possibly disenchanting an item to receive coalesced [essence] energy, like "Coalesced Blight Energy" which is used to determine what element the item is infused with, and possibly the power of said infusion. Make it like the tiers on your stats, where each tier takes more to reach the next one. Maybe you'd need 10 "Coalesced Arcane Energy" to make a tier-1 Arcane powered enchantment, but 30 for a tier 2, and 70 for a tier 3, and so on. Get 1 coalesced energy per rank for each ego you disenchant, so at higher levels and higher ranks you may get 10 or 15 energy of that type for a disenchantment but you'll be spending 130-210 for a T4 or T5 enchantment, and it may end up being at the bottom end. (those costs may be too high for a vanilla game unless there are dungeons that restock enemies, but I'd recommend it for infinite dungeon mode)

In the end it comes back to "what could you learn from the trainers without messing up the current leveling talent dynamic?" and that's why I'm recommending things like this. I'm a fan of balanced gameplay, so I'm more than happy to bounce ideas off of people until something is considered applicable.

[edge2054]

Other ideas may be things like:
Trades

• Smelting: Melts down a piece of equipment into half its weight in [Material] Ingots.
  Forge Weapon: Pops up a Smithing dialog which allows the player to choose the type of weapon they would like to create. When they decide what type, a small popup lets them select material (from those available) to create it from. If insufficient quantity exists, the material (or item altogether) are greyed out.
  Forge Armor: See above, but for armors.
  Forge Accessory: See above, but for jewelry and (maybe) charms/trinkets.

This could work. Maybe allow technique based egos at the cost of extra ingots. Though I'm not sure how to make the ego you get anything other then random (though you could probably select the number of egos and the power level, greater for example).

[Peppersauce]

Crafting is a nice idea, though one thing puzzles me... some tiers of jewelry are different from their armor/boots/etc. counterparts. I'm talking about copper (T1) and gold (T3). This means that, basing on how "Smelting" is described, it is practically impossible to forge jewerly of those tiers, just a heads up.

[Szragodesca]

So add copper to T1 smelting and Gold to T3, so you can smelt and craft them as well? Not like each tier can only unlock one ore.