Prodigies and new AI made me sad

[SageAcrin]

*Looks*

You have an unfocused, non-optimized build that can't make up its mind if it wants to be melee or physical(Not totally unreasonable given Insane, you need an earlier game advantage, but optimally you would have point juggled, I think.). You have 750 HP-on Insane, the difficulty above Nightmare, where I've seen screenshots of people getting cracked for 1500 by random enemies.

You did a bunch of unnecessary stuff(Gem of the Moon? You completed it? Why? You either had a good amulet and went for a dangerous quest anyways, or didn't have a good amulet, at which point it's insanely dangerous. You won the ambush? With a heavily focused damage cannon with no notable Defense or Armor at that point? Why? You were risking tossing a good run with that, losing to it was far safer. You did the Room of Death? Why? You didn't need the gear in it enough to risk tossing a run that good, and you surely did not need the EXP.), most of it dangerous.

And you have an equipment draw that's about five times better than I would have expected.

In other words: You got lucky. Which, considering how hard Insane is, is necessary.

tl;dr: The game didn't get that much easier, you just slammed into enough times to actually clear on Insane for once. As Insane should be. Congratulations!

[Stition]

The limmir quest is just stair cheeze, the ambush was done with the ability that tunnels through walls and won with tree's.
The item draw isn't random, it's from farming 2500 orc babies in the breeding pit. Room of death was done with the mindslayer bug I posted.
There wasn't any danger of even taking damage with the thalore tree taunt (fight for 7 turns, move out of LOS).

My 79 days playtime, while I agree it's excessive, is a tribute to how well DG made this game. It's also provided a perspective to judge that the game has certainly gotten much easier (this was my first mindslayer past kor'pul and I don't think they're one of the better classes). My build was certainly bad, but that's the main point, I'm sad since I know I shouldn't have beaten the game with the mistakes I made. It doesn't feel like a real win, and imposing self limitations to make the game harder removes the fun of figuring out optimal builds/items/tactics to overcome the challenges presented.

[evouga]

!

If it takes 79 days to win, using all kinds of farming and obscure tactics, I would hardly call that "too easy" or "not a real win"...

[SageAcrin]

Maybe the summon Orc Mothers use should be limited to a certain amount(5-10) of uses, and however you managed to staircheese Limmir's quest should be taken care of.

That sounds like the sort of fixes that would help this problem, more than trying to muck with the AI. Not that I don't agree on summons, per se...I believe I saw some discussion that they should use similar code to the teleport code, with a target pass(That is, that enemies should learn where the summoner roughly is when they kill the summon, but not specifically follow them, just go to where they were at that point.). That would be a good idea, honestly.

[grmblfzzz]

@SageAcrin: Limmirs quest was always doable if you were crafty and planned ahead though, by pretty much all classes on Insane even before (If they weren't super crappy in whatever version and could get to that point at least!). I've done it on Bullwark/Sun-Paladin/Warden/Rogue/Alch at least. Although certainly vastly easier now, due to some wierd AI/LOS shenanigans. In general, there's lots of little issue's that should be addressed at some point, but I'm pretty sure that since shortly before 1.0 and since the bug forums have been exploding with a bunch of random bugs/uninformed complaints since the player-base is expanding. Messing with AI/individual monsters/encounters would take a lot of tweaking, but there are fairly simple solutions like just upping the scaling and such on difficulty levels that could be used.

The various tactics and tricks he mentioned are standard fare for Insane, and that's really the whole point that we're trying to make. Having to try to think through/abuse/optimize every aspect in order to win is the very thing that makes incredible difficulties so entertaining.

I'll try to provide some more concrete example of how radical the power creep has become, albeit generally a slow and steady pace until the slurry of changes before 1.0:

I had a Mindslayer on Insane in... beta 36? or so. He got to the Warrior bastion, having more or less all the best gear that was in the game at that point in time. His charged Lightning/Kinetic aura's being by far the most destructive things he could put out, could do a maximum of ~1200 to ~1400 on a crit against creatures that didn't have any appropriate resistances, and they're on a significant cooldown with one snap. All other offensive actions paled in comparison.

On the other hand, his Mindslayer can throw out hits somewhat more powerful than that on a zero turn cooldown with Mindlash, his spiked Aura's will probably be doing something approaching 2k on a crit (effectively completely ignoring any possible resistances with that one prodigy), there is way better random gear for negating certain enemies (Spell hunt remnants too good, as are heroism infusions!), a significant chunk of all abilities have been tweaked, and Thalores are as gods to most previous races. Not to mention not having to bother with much in the ways of resistances or saves due to enemy abilities being incredibly downgraded.


I totally get that ridiculous, mind-breaking difficulty isn't everyone's cup of tea... but that's why there's different difficulty levels. Really what we're just trying to bring to people's attention is that due to often unavoidable (as the pace of advancement and nifty features being added is another thing that makes ToME so badasss) and varied issues, the game is pretty unarguably becoming easier through time. There inevitably has to be some compensation if DarkGod want's to keep Insane living up to it's name and former glory.

In summation: Keep Insane insane please!

[supermini]

In summation: Keep Insane insane please!

Unless I start seeing a whole series of clears on insane by various players, I refuse to believe that it's anything but. This may be refuted, but I'd say you're a part of a very, very small minority of players if you find insane doable.

That's why I suggested the addon idea. If you cleared on insane, you're a part of a minority of 1 people who has done so legitimately on the vault (last I checked).

[HousePet]

Farming orc babies for loot looks Insane to me...

[Stition]

Yea, I'm trying to clear with some other classes with non-thalore races, to see if I may be biased. It's certainly still difficult, but I remember trying to start a dwarf before the early game nerf... way different than how it is now. I'll hopefully have results in a couple days.

[bricks]

Just rename Insane to "exploit mode".

Seriously, though, I'd rather see the core difficulty balanced.

[SageAcrin]

Mindslayer was a terrible class when I started playing, exploitive physical builds that utilize tons of strafing alongside enemies+high movement speed to get tons of hits aside.

That's not an example of power creep-that's an example of a class going from one extremely obscure build to be viable-one that did about as much damage as you listed, potentially, with good equipment luck-to a more balanced build.

There has indeed been a creep, but it's towards making the weaker classes better. In that regard, you're right-to get the same challenge as you would with, say, a Doomed in b36, when I started playing. You would have to pretty much strip your Doomed of both weapons, their armor and probably all jewelry. This was because Doomed was a terrible class that no one got clears with in that period.

In that sense, the difficulty scale has tightened up a bit, but I don't think it was ever intended to have those kind of extreme gaps. They only happened because the game has evolved so much over time, and class construction hadn't caught up.

There's still plenty of gaps between class power-look at how many people clear a Reaver, even now after repeated buffs, as compared to an Archmage. But the upper end has barely shifted.

Corruptor got buffs to diseases, but even now most people consider those a weaker tree. Archmages got one new build, but it's another sidegrade that does nothing to keep their main balancing issue-their squishiness-in check, and in fact several changes(Shielding nerf, changes to Disruption Shield) have made their ability to react to sudden, unexpected damage weaker. The melee classes have gotten some passive and active buffs, but considering that when I came in, there was a constant complaint that melee classes were absolutely worse than mages, that's not that bad of a thing.

What I hear here is that you'd have prefered nerfs to buffs, for class balance. That's fair, but at the same time, it is, quite honestly, really dull. ToME is a game with an incredibly rich system of abilities-having everything try to live up to that richness is much more interesting than simply cutting off all the neat bits and making people choose between vanilla flavors of damage.

Insane has, currently, one clearer in the vaults. I frankly feel that a vanity difficulty that almost no one can clear/have to use exploitive, incredibly slow techniques for is useless, but if a few crazy people want it, my suggestion is to add a difficulty above Insane that forces all enemies to be rares.

http://www.te4.org/games/addons/tome/al ... adfly-hunt

There's an addon for this right now. As far as I'm aware, it still works with 1.00. Have fun.

In the meantime, for the base game? Tiger_Eye and I had a similar discussion, and we both looked over win statistics. The amount of people who win on the base difficulty is around 0.25% on Roguelike, and 1.25% on Adventurer, if I recall this right, as compared to the amount of people that died out. (The ratios go lower if you compare cleared to not cleared. Many people quit games out of boredom or out of a feeling of being unable to clear.)

Dungeon Crawl, generally considered a nice, hard Roguelike, has about a 1% clear rate as of last tournament. (It lacks any form of multiple lives mode, unless you consider Felid to count for anything. Considering it has the lowest concrete durability in the game, and uses lives to make up for runs of bad RNG with evade, I don't.) This shows some bias towards more clears than not, Tournaments won't catch extremely casual players probably. But it seems to indicate that ToME is quite reasonably hard.

ToME also spreads this hard over a much longer period of time, which makes it much more difficult to balance in many ways. Having constant heavy risk, in the same way a shorter Roguelike would, would equate to a near-nil clear rate.

Additionally, it's easy to forget the difficulty spikes. Remember Rares? Remember how they didn't exist? Ah, but it's easy to remember how randomized bosses were nastier before, right. Except that they can still definitely kill you, and all we've lost is the one-in-two-clears appearance of a really ridiculous boss that you had no chance of winning against. Are you really mourning this "challenge" loss?

How about the Prides? Gorbat was an utter joke until the Summoner rebalances. Suddenly, I've been finding characters at real risk of death there. (Incidentally, the Wyrmics there should probably get some Acid skills, just to liven things up. But that's besides the point.) The elemental undead were slaughtering tons of people in the Halfling Ruins until they were confined to Rak'shor-the highest difficulty Pride. Let me tell you, having a guy that can walk up to you and dish out 1k melee damage in a ranged hell is a uniquely horrifying feeling.

Dreadfell got those nice fixed bosses since I started playing. Ever had Aletta decide to glue to you while you're dealing with actual threats? It's a pretty fast way to die, and tricky to avoid.

Certainly, Prodigy skills are on PCs. Prodigy skills are also on bosses, and you tend to not notice them easily because the impacts are passive. Let me tell you, though, Vor's Meteoric Impact is not subtle, and I have had to completely change how I fight Grushnak due to him having the ability to potentially splatter me into a wall. To say nothing of Aluin, who has gotten a hilarious amount of kills since he got his two Prodigies-practically every backup boss has improved notably from this.

Do I think the game has gotten easier since I started playing? A bit, with the weaker classes-not so much with classes like Corruptor or Alchemist, which feel very similar, but with the weaker classes, a bit. Do I think it's necessarily a bad thing? No-not if it's for the right reasons. Getting ganked out of nowhere was never good design, and it's the thing that has been disappearing from ToME, above and beyond other difficulty-which still feels very present to me.

If it breaks a few people's hearts, I'm sad, but considering the flexibility of this system's code, and addons like the one I listed, and the fact that you can simply limit your own play a little more to not constantly use abusive strategies, I don't have much sympathy.

This kinda turned into a rant, I guess. Sorry.

[Omega Blue]

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.

That's a very easy way to get around this. You just don't take any prodigies. Leave your slots unused.

[jotwebe]

That's a very easy way to get around this. You just don't take any prodigies. Leave your slots unused.

The OP did say that he didn't like to use conducts to increase his challenge.

However,

Maybe the summon Orc Mothers use should be limited to a certain amount(5-10) of uses, and however you managed to staircheese Limmir's quest should be taken care of.

This. Post the exploits you needed to win in the bugs forum, hopefully they'll get fixed, and if it's still to easy after that, you'll have a point. Cutting out the cheese will make the game better on all difficulties.