Prodigies and new AI made me sad

[Stition]

I've been playing tome for a while, exclusively on insane difficulty, since beta 32 or earlier, and have found the game very entertaining and extremely difficult.

However, I feel the prodigies and the new AI have made the game trivial. I just managed to beat it for the first time, but feel cheated since the mind damage prodigy allowed me to hit for 3-4k each action, and only rarely were there situations that required creative solutions.

Before, fighting the 20-30k hp bosses who could instantly kill you was epic. Now, I could just summon the thalore tree's and kill them before they targeted me.
Confusion used to be horrible, and dreads, dreadmasters, and banshee's were terrifying. Now they just mill about.

Starting a non-caster on insane also used to be a feat by itself, but since the nerf to insane you can basically auto-explore.

I've found many bugs with shadowblades that made my character pretty much invincible, but couldn't bring myself to win that way. A couple of the prodigies and the new AI have also given me that feeling, robbing the satisfaction that comes with overcoming difficult challenges in the game.

Please bring back the fear the old AI caused when you heard a ghoul open a door, knowing there was a room full of scary creatures behind him that you couldn't one shot. Please take the overpowered prodigies away from insane (converting all damage to one type allows massive +dmg and pen stacking making everything trivial).

[SageAcrin]

It's too bad you don't have this character on the vault, so we can all see how much they smashed the overly easy game.

They'd be the only Insane winner that hadn't blatantly and clearly cheated, if so!



In all seriousness, Mental Tyranny shouldn't have that impact at all, on Insane, or even Nightmare, I'd imagine. Enemies get save checks against Mind damage that halve its power, and whereas it's mostly a straight benefit on a normal game, for the target audience(Doomed, Solipsist), it's not unmitigated. I would imagine the higher levels to have seriously impacted this.

And while I'm not saying you're wrong about it being great on Insane, I don't know that you didn't, say, play on Explorer and slam into the game for several hundred lives to clear. Insane's achievements are granted on Roguelike, though.

As to the "earlygame stroll" effect, my guess is that this isn't due to AI, which does not feel that changed to me personally(Though I've heard some suggestions about improving its interaction with summoning), but probably more due to the fact that Nightmare and Insane recently had the additive bonus they had reduced from +10 to +5, but the multiplicative bonus boosted to compensate. Levels get higher later but don't start as extreme, so that physical fighters have a reasonable shot.

Confusion also got recently nerfed, but that works both ways. You can't get confused more than 50% of your actions, but neither can enemies.

And removing Prodigies is silly. Given the aforementioned lack of any Insane clears at all, and given the fact that you can just not assign the points or refuse to use ones you consider overpowered, removing a major advantage from Insane because you dislike its impact seems surreal.

[Grey]

If anything is overpowered to the point of making the late game trivial then it needs fixed. Please post any specific bugs, exploits or far too overpowered effects and they will get seen to.

[SageAcrin]

I believe he actually has already posted the Shadowblade bugs.

Basically you can sorta cheatmode stats up with Ambuscade by leveling skills while using it, if I recall correctly.

It's very easy to avoid, as someone that's been running a Shadowblade and doesn't want to do it. Does still need to be fixed, of course.

[Stition]

Yea, I just updated, the character should be in the vault now, Insane a thalore mindslayer. There's a lot of gear swapping depending on what creatures are being fought, but with tree's and 130 mind pen and mind damage with that talent, and a bunch of crit damage, most non-rare creatures just get 1 shot, and I know it should not be that way. If it was a bug, I'd be fine and play another class, just bothers me with that prodigy.

Shocking to see how long I've played tome, I wonder how much more time was spent when my account wasn't logged on....

I'll post a couple mindslayer bugs I found that are pretty overpowered as well.
The kinetic aura damage from conduit that applies to mindlash has infinite range and can go through walls, makes clearing vault trivial. I remember finding some more, but got distracted with those prodigies.

[grmblfzzz]

Hmm, looking on the vault, your guy appears to be the only legit Insane/roguelike winner. The others are either sub-50 (not possible to reach end without cheating sub 50 pretty sure), or have flagrantly buffed up stats. Congratulations!

I'd like to weigh in on the general issue of things trivializing/severely nerfing difficulty, as while there are many features that make ToME badass and king of the roguelikes... for me by far the most important one was that Roguelike/Insane destroyed all others in how difficult it was. So, I'll expound on a few of the things you've mentioned plus some others, then add a few potential solutions:

1: Ever increasing character power

This takes several forms, most notably prodigies. Firstly, the biggest problem I see is that prodigies being added at all increase the players power significantly with no countervailing force adding difficulty. I'm all for the concept, as it adds customization and is interesting, but unless they are unusable they just magnify character power compared to the static enemies. If used properly, characters are easily doing multiples of the damage output they were prior to the addition of prodigies.

Secondly, several of the prodigies are flagrantly broken, while most are pretty worthless. This is understandable, as they were only added shortly before the realease, but a few stick out as problematic. The gist is that it's rather hard to balance things that provide powerful passive bonuses verses on-use abilities. The passive ones tend to destroy them if stacked properly:

The ones that give you dmg conversion/penetration. Notably the Mental Tyranny (the mind one), and I believe the qwlgth(sp?) one, and I think there's a third, don't have the game in front of me. They let you stack crazy amounts of bonus damage and penetration.

Flexible combat, as it just adds gobs of passive damage. (already mentioned this in another post)

Less of a problem, but Gravity trap... is an awesome concept, and fun, but does a preposterous amount of damage compared to other traps, and lasts long enough to permanently stunlock piles of enemies to it. Also, is probably a bug, but since the summons can't go through walls change, it's one of the few things that can and it trivializes most vaults (just open it to remove in-vault, move around to a wall, kill everything out of LOS). Oh, and it will actually still pull people but not damage them when in-vault, so can stack them up pre-emptively.

This increasing trend of character power can also pops up with new items, in that new artifacts are sweet and increase variety, but they overall tend to increase character power without helping the enemies. Compounded by the very common rand-bosses flooding you with rand-arts. Similarly, the bonus points you now get at 50/improved racials/etc.


2: Decreasing monster difficulty/dangerousness

This takes a couple forms. For whatever combination of new AI/LOS changes, enemies tend to just wander around harmlessly even after becoming aware of you way more. Most flagrant with the Dreadmasters/Banshee's/Xorns of the world, or the Limmir quest. Overall it just makes them a lot less frightening. Also, might be a bug, or some change in the intermediate beta's when I took a break... but Dreadmasters don't even seem to summon dreads anymore...

Secondly, changes to how certain abilities work (e.g. daze/confusion), benefit the player radically more than enemies at least on insane difficulty. It used to be nerve-wracking to poke into dreadfell without confusion immunity, or face the berserkers in the warrior bastion who would 1 shot you with a rush.

3: Insane enemy scaling

The first half of the game on the new Insane is... insanely trivial compared to how it was before, while the latter part when enemies start finally out-scaling their previous levels is a fairly insignificant difficulty boost (Considering point 2, and that it doesn't even come close to how greatly prodigies increase player power). As Stition said, you can pretty much just auto-explore around the countryside now on early insane, basically removing all of the skill/sense of accomplishment for getting someone to the mid-game.

Solutions?!?

Unquestionably a few of the prodigies need to be nerfed. I'd recommend trying to make more of them on-use abilities, much easier to balance.

The monster difficulty would be harder to address, and would probably have to involve some AI changes and/or giving them new/more abilities on a per monster level.

Overall, the easiest fix would seem to be either upping the higher difficulty levels scaling, or just adding some difficulty level that was beyond Insane to compensate. As I said, one of the things that I love the most about ToME is that it out-shined all other roguelikes in regards to difficulty (and really, who plays roguelikes except masochists who enjoy dying?!).

[supermini]

I wasn't a big fan of the old 'get confusion immunity before dreadfell or be dead' thing. Is that what you consider real difficulty?

As for the other points, yes, with the addition of prodigies and level 50 bonuses, late game has become easier than it was. Certain prodigies will have to be hit with a nerf bat (irresistible sun and flexible combat already got it). Even with that, I wouldn't consider insane or even nightmare to be anywhere near the ballpark of easy.

If you think something is too powerful, post your experience on the forums. In my experience, DG listens to player feedback a lot.

[lukep]

One thing to note about your character: your items are massively better than any non-insane character I've seen, probably due to the enemies/zones being a higher level.

For example, your fortifying voratun mail of eyal gives +200 HP, while the 3-4 pieces of voratun armour that I've found with that same ego combination have been under 150.

[PureQuestion]

Actually, grmblfzzz, the sub 50 winners appear to have been mostly Arena winners.

Also, while overall, prodigies are an increase in player power, it should be noted that a number of later game bosses got prodigies as well, giving them a fairly good buff, too.

While it's probably true that new artifacts/prodigies/extra misc bonuses have probably made the player stronger overall, ehhhh

I mean, you could make Insane harder, or... god forbid, add an even higher difficulty level.

[grmblfzzz]

@PureQuestion: Ah, didn't see that they were Arena wins. That makes much more sense!

I havn't really noticed later enemies getting prodigies... while I'll take your word for it that they do, they clearly can't/don't abuse them properly by stacking certain item bonuses/etc! Combined with the other factors, I don't really see it being arguable that there is definitely a net decrease in difficulty.

As you say though, there's conveniently a fairly easy solution of just buffing Insane or adding another difficulty. Doing either of those would both please the serious masochistic/dyhard players who thrive on higher difficulties, while making overall balance less of an issue (since you could just increase it further for yourself), and making it easier for players to break in to the game on lower difficulties.

@supermini: I wasn't really saying that I long for old mind-shatteringly-horrifying dreads, but was throwing out some examples of how, in general, changes to abilities like confusion/daze tend to lower the overall difficulty quite a bit. It also decreases the need to try to juggle around resistances/saves that aren't needed as much, which further boosts the power of your character if he can ignore them.

It's mostly that, though this is overall less of a problem than increasing player power, it's a double-whammy. Player power increasing while simultaneously enemy power decreasing.

@lukep: I'd always assumed that the power of rand-arts/regular gear capped out at the same levels regardless of difficulty? I could be wrong about that though, and you might get them earlier or something. Still, if you'll note that he had 6 of the static artifacts equiped, 3 of which are fairly newish, and 2 of the rand-arts of the type generated from purple dudes. I'm all for variety, but the general item glut/power increase is still an issue.

[PureQuestion]

A lot of bonuses on randomly generated items are based on the level of the zone, which... might be increased by the difficulty multipliers?

Anyway all the enemies that have prodigies are fixed - all the Orc Pride leaders - Vor, Grushnak, Rak'Shor, and Gorbat - have prodigies, as do Amatathon, the final bosses, Aeryn, and some others.


A lot of these lowered difficulty effects resulted from a desire to reduce "unfair" deaths; things like Dread and Banshees were nerfed for their ability to essentially instakill the player with a nearly unavoidable attack. I guess you could argue this should be made up for elsewhere, but... how?

[grmblfzzz]

I can see the argument that certain effect levels might be considered "unfair". Particularly on lower difficulties, I can see people just getting frustrated by insta-gibs. Personally though, and I suspect in general for the type of player who gravitates towards the extreme difficulties, those things actually increase the fun/suspense. You have to remember which enemies have crazy abilities, and stack certain resists/saves in certain areas, change runes/infusions, or just play way more careful around them. I mean, I assume I wasn't the only person saddened by the change to the old burning-shock even! It made freeing slaves such a grand adventure!

It occurs to me that there would probably be a relatively easy change to this as well, if DarkGod were so inclined to believe it worthy. You could simply make certain effects/abilities scale or act differently on higher difficulties/with some toggle. e.g. on insane the confusion percent would be moved up from it's current weak-sauce amount.

As for enemy prodigies, intriguing. I'll look more closely at those bosses next time I see them, about to plunge into the bastions on my current guy. The way the whole power creep is effecting things though is on the players offensive side, so I doubt that their use has too much issue. For example, Atamathon/Final bosses will already 1 shot the shit out of you if you don't have all your shields/defensive-cooldowns/etc going, and not by a good margin if you don't. Buffing their offense a little or even a decent amount won't change much.

On the other hand... characters are doing multiple times the damage nowadays, and those bosses defensive capabilities havn't been significantly buffed, nor are any of the defensive prodigies super good even if they had them. So you still just gib them much faster when you fight them (particularly considering new effects like from the Spell Hunt Remnants).

[supermini]

From my experience with the old insane, getting a melee char out of the starting zone required (apart from considerable skill) a perfect storm of luck and getting east was pretty much when everyone hit the wall. I've heard people who played insane way more than I did argue for exactly the opposite point of the one you're making right now - that insane was horribly broken, and that we need a difficulty level that's between normal (which was considered too easy by expert players) and insane which was pointless.

If you long for the old insane, I'm sure that making an addon which rescales all the values back on insane difficulty - or even disables prodigies for the player - shouldn't be hard to make.

[grmblfzzz]

@supermini: Well, what this whole discussion boils down to is this question; What is DarkGod's vision/ideal of how difficult his highest difficulty on ToME should be? If the answer is insanely difficult then due to all the discussed factors, that is starting to no longer really be the case. If he thought Insane was way too hard, then I suppose it is as it should be. I believe Stition and I are just arguing for the fact that there is definitely some player-base who put great import in that aspect.

Further, I don't see any disadvantage to either pumping up Insane or adding a difficulty level beyond that. Adding a higher one in particular can't really offend anyone, and anyone who didn't want the challenge just wouldn't play it, yet those who do would be all over it. If there was a "Probably Impossible" difficulty, whatever fraction of the players are like us would be ecstatic!

Digression: I want to address the other couple things you brought up, but I feel they're slightly beside the main point above.

In regards to making addons or whatnot to increase the difficulty... indeed, it would be pretty easy. Or, for that matter, you could simply not spend your prodigies or self-nerf your character in a variety of ways. At least for me though, that takes out a lot of the fun of any game. I like roguelikes largely because they're generally the hardest single player genre of games, but a lot of that enjoyment comes from trying to be most efficient/do the best within the existing framework of the game. So arbitrary self-nerfs just take something out of it.

Secondly, I completely agree with you that in many of the beta's melee's were ridiculously difficult to start, and I'm actually pretty confident that at various stages it was the next best thing to impossible with certain classes. Is that necessarily a bad thing though? Consider: Perfectly balancing ~20ish classes + all the race/class combinations is the next best thing to a flat out pipe dream. I'm not aware of any game ever made that had decent character variety but didn't have tiers of some sort. So, if there's significant variance in race/class combo's (and once again, there always is and likely will be)... you have to choose between making the craziest difficulty feasible for the weakest class, in which case it will be a push over for the stronger, or making it challenging for the stronger but borderline undo-able for the weaker.

[HousePet]

New features always shake up the balance of difficulty. It takes time to rebalance things again.

Also, the Master and the Grand Corruptor also got a prodigy.

I believe the ood items from chests has made it much easier to win the game. Bad early game loot is the biggest killer for me.