Summoners "working as intended"?

[obsoletion]

I am new to ToME, but fell in love with it immediately upon playing it.

The main draw of the game to me is a thrill of extreme challenge and the satisfaction of overcoming it.

Now, I've found one issue that completely shatters my ability to enjoy the challenge. That is the summoner's ability to repeatedly summon minions from around a corner, take control of them, and suicide into a room in a dungeon until I've eventually widdled all the enemies down to death.

My question is: Is this the intended functionality of the ability?

I would be happy if the monsters would start looking for me after they get attacked by my minions, and the use of the ability would give me a couple rounds to do some damage before the real fight begins.

I brought this issue up in chat today to see if anyone could provide me with additional info on whether or not this intentional, but I was mostly met with responses telling me to "ignore it or find another game" or to play a melee class. To me, neither of these are reasonable solutions. It is impossible to ignore an issue that will trivialize any encounter should you ever need it. I'm not going to let my character die when I have the option to use this technique to save myself (especially because it seems to be the intention of this ability, not an exploit).

[lukep]

I'm not sure how it interacts with the new target passing/wandering systems, but it sounds like it's at least somewhat of a bug.

I think what should happen is the enemy going to your summon, then wandering randomly from that location after it dies.

[HousePet]

There were recent changes to AI and los stuff, so there might be a few obscure faults in it.

Or perhaps monsters look more at higher levels?

[Frumple]

What you're describing has been part of the game since forever, yeah. Summoners have been able to cheese the game into triviality if they're willing to spend forever and a day to do it ever since they gained the ability to take control of their critters and/or summon around corners. You can do the same thing with solipsists or (right from the start) alchemists. It's arguably an AI issue, but it's certainly not a bug and it's working as designed, if not necessarily as desired.

There's a thread or two laying around started by the devs for suggestions regarding AI improvement, and, so far as I've heard from the folks messing around with AI the most, there's plans down the pipe to make the AI even more vicious than it currently is. So, you'll likely see a behavior change in regards to golem(/summon/thought-forged) bombing (which is what I usually refer to controlling your minions around a corner and then letting them loose) at some point in the future.

For the time being, "Don't abuse it" is about the only option you have* if you want the avoid the behavior, though. Scout's honor

*E: Unless you're willing to break out the coding and steal a march on the devs with an addon changing the behavior, anyway.

[obsoletion]

Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah I really just want acknowledgement that it is an issue, and that it will be addressed someday.

I think what should happen is the enemy going to your summon, then wandering randomly from that location after it dies.

I agree with this solution. To make it even easier to implement, just causing monsters to wander randomly after they are engaged to "look for the player" would be a great improvement as it wouldn't allow you to continuously cheese them to death anymore. They may wander to another area, or they may wander into you. Either way, they wouldn't just sit there as you slowly kill them.

I'll need to find those threads where this is being discussed already and see if I can get involved

[bricks]

widdled

I'm guessing you mean whittled, although widdling does sound fun. :P

[Mewtarthio]

It seems to be that the simplest solution would be to just pass target:resolveSource() to the AI as a new target whenever the current target is dead and there are no other targets in sight. If I understand it correctly, that would be much the same as if you'd engaged the AI and then teleported away, yes?

[aiqtidar]

It is terrible AI no doubt, but the way I see it, it just makes up for the even worse AI on the guys who give you the escort quests. After losing about 3 of them when they wandered idiotically into crowds of enemies (with that rage-inducing "No! We must hurry!" response when you tell them to stop), I suddenly don't feel so bad about using my golem to cheese my way through any difficult enemies I come across for the remainder of the day.

[snoop]

I might add that the early game is, honestly, mostly pretty easy once you get the hang of it and if you play carefully, regardless of class. I don't know how far you've gotten but there will be plenty of spots where you will have difficulty using this strategy (Sand Caves come to mind, as the earliest possibility).

"Don't get cocky, kid!"

[obsoletion]

widdled

I'm guessing you mean whittled, although widdling does sound fun.

Haha, yes whittled! I was wondering why widdled was showing up as wrong on spell check... wow, that is embarrassing

[obsoletion]

Thanks again for the responses everyone.

Yeah, I haven't been through the entire game yet, so I can't say that I have been effective in using this strategy everywhere yet.

As for the coding of the change, I haven't seen the game's code, nor have I had much experience with AI programming, but I'm glad to hear that it sounds as though it shouldn't be a highly difficult modification.

[SageAcrin]

I might add that the early game is, honestly, mostly pretty easy once you get the hang of it and if you play carefully, regardless of class. I don't know how far you've gotten but there will be plenty of spots where you will have difficulty using this strategy (Sand Caves come to mind, as the earliest possibility).

"Don't get cocky, kid!"

Seconding this. The game generates many, many dangerous situations where you are out of control as a Summoner, and a Summoner that's out of control is in a much, much more lethal situation than many classes are.

Not to say that the AI should really allow you to do that, mind. And it is an (overly) powerful strategy. But it doesn't end the game instantly.