Disallow multiple stacks of the same ego on randarts

[SageAcrin]

With the new ego tweaks, it's possible-theoretically-to get some really absurd effects very rarely(15% all resist cap bonus, +10% allres, large amounts of critical hit modifier/damage modifier, etc.) by the same ego stacking twice on a single randomized artifact.

This is very rare(And an effect that was still there before the tweaks; Stacks of multiple Enraging, for instance, for combat speed), so I wasn't worried about it when coding the ego tweaks, but it does occur to me that a 1-in-10000 shot of god mode is probably bad design, and this should probably be fixed. I'm not even sure it was intended to start.

[Zeyphor]

I once had Urthol generate an elven-silk cloak with double battlemasters on it
it had .8 to technique/combat training on it and - over 1 mana per turn

this is even more outrageous given that battlemasters can only spawn on randarts

[Delmuir]

I'm not sure what the problem here is.

One in ten-thousand? So what… every few months a player might get one item that super kicks ass and have an easier game experience?

That's not bad design. That's good design. That encourages players with the realistic hope that they might find an amazing item. It's what keeps people playing slot machines.

More so, it's fun.

I've never found such an overpowered item (and been able to use it on my character) and think the variance on drops is way, way too small anyway. I've already memorized what artifacts I'll get in my first ten levels or so.

[cttw]

Please don't remove this. Once early on I found a robe of +104% crit damage, but which left me very unprotected. I should have switched to a more defensive outfit, but the greed for high damage numbers ended up dooming my doomed's aspirations by getting slaughtered by an orc patrol.

[SageAcrin]

Well, my thought line here is "People don't like the concept of very rare/very broken". And it's just based off random comments I've heard.

If people do, you should definitely speak up.

[The Revanchist]

I speak for myself here, but I LOVE the concept of "very rare and broken". Both in terms of equipment, and skillset. The player that finds a super-duper belt of Godmode+ is going to remember that (and probably how the relied too much on it and died ) and love the game for it.

Similarly, the player who finds (and if they're really lucky, defeats) a randboss with a ridiculous skillset, who may well be powered by pure rage-quitting is going to remember that and love the game for the absolute randomness ToME allows. I think it's amazing.

[Zonk]

I agree with SageAcrin, and I'd rather have less/no 'very rare and very broken' AND 'very rare and very useless' items.
Basically, less variance at the extremes, and make most randarts vaguely worth using for characters of the proper type.


There is such a thing as too much randomness/extreme items, like when a lot of releases ago most bow randarts seemed to have something like > 50% physical damage bonus.

That's not bad design. That's good design. That encourages players with the realistic hope that they might find an amazing item. It's what keeps people playing slot machines.

I'm not sure slot machines are something most would consider 'good'design...

Similarly, the player who finds (and if they're really lucky, defeats) a randboss with a ridiculous skillset, who may well be powered by pure rage-quitting is going to remember that and love the game for the absolute randomness ToME allows. I think it's amazing.

Also, from the opinions I read elsewhere on the game, not everyone loves ridicolously powerful randbosses. You even mention 'rage-quitting' specifically.

[Ivels]

Finding gloves with 30% crit chance is lucky. But so is finding gloves with 15% crit chance and a good ego, followed by a belt with 15% crit chance and another good ego. Players can still get their godmode by just being stupidly lucky with equipment, regardless if their luck is contained in one item or several.

Also ToME and other games of its kind are slot machines (in addition to being many other things). The game constantly throws piles of stuff at the player and the player picks and chooses the most useful ones, not unlike a caveman looking for sharp bits of flint to make a spear with so he can kill a buffalo. And if by some twist of fate he ends up finding a semi-automatic, who are we to question the design of his universe or the sanity of this metaphor? The caveman himself would certainly not harbor any such doubts, he'd be sleeping on a mountain of freshly gunned buffalo corpses, his primitive fur overalls stained with delicious murder juices, although he'd probably be all "OOK WOTS A GUN?" instead and shoot himself like a stupid simian.

[RandomKesaranPasaran]

To be quite honest I don't really see much of a point in the proposed change, it doesn't really make equipment on the whole less slot machine, just maybe reduces the highest amount of payout which in the end doesn't amount to an awful lot.

[Doctornull]

I personally see ToME as a far less random roguelike, in so far as the player has a LOT more control over how the character grows than you'd normally see.

In some ways, ToME is about the player out-smarting the random environment with planning.

Throwing random insta-win items at the player negates that, so I'd be in favor of removing such items.

[Hachem_Muche]

I haven't seen any "god-mode" randarts (or greater egos, for that matter) created since the system was changed. But if there are specific combinations that need to be prevented (resistance cap, perhaps), the ego-generation code could be updated accordingly.

Egos could stack before the generation code was updated, but similar bonuses usually just overwrote each other, resulting in a weak item. Now, (most of) the same stats can stack, but with diminishing returns, so that when egos are stacked, the resulting item is more focused, but also weaker overall.

ToME is complex enough that you need many different stats/abilities to succeed, and you can't win by just concentrating on one or two of them. A stacked ego item generally is deficient in areas it's not focused on, and that means the player must work (a bit harder) to shore up those shortfalls elsewhere. It you happen to find an item that focuses on exactly what your class needs, that's great luck, but no class is so simple that you can just stack one thing and win.

[SageAcrin]

Wait, if there's actually diminishing returns in the formula, then it's probably not actually a problem. I've been assuming there wasn't.

I've never noticed that for certain, because there's randomization in the item generation, and I have a hard time parsing artifact generation code.

[PureQuestion]

My opinion on this is that I get rather depressed when looking at the super high skill player's winner pages (especially for Insane/Madness) reveals that every single slot is a randart with the possible exception of certain fixedarts that I've made far too good in their own right.

But I'm perhaps slightly biased.

[SageAcrin]

I haven't really noticed this, and I've been paying a lot of attention.

Randarts and fixedarts seem to make up about 85-90% of the gear on an average character(the remainder being egos), but the amounts of each they use seem to vary wildly on the player.

I've seen people that literally fielded no randarts, and characters who were entirely garbed in them.

If I had to say based on my own experience, though, there's still a bias overall towards fixedarts. Which makes sense; They're more common for sure, and randarts still are occasionally fairly poor/unsynergistic with the class you're running.

[Tharsonius]

i think tome has a great item system for a game of its size. many interesting/fun uniques/fixedarts and the possibility to find really strong randarts.

its getting pretty close to games like path of exile (which i recommend for inspiration on unique items - their concept is like: never allow a unique to be the one and only best item for a slot, but make it special so it allows different build approaches which arent possible without the item - but the best possible item would always be a randart/rare)

of course randarts can be godly and on very high difficulties there's higher chances of getting very good ones because of higher enemy lvl as far as i understand, but on average u will find 0-1 of those items in a run and i dont think theyre godmode items (maybe +15allres cap would be but i havent seen that ever?) - the possibility of finding those, or seeing players link their greatest items is quite some motivation and adds flavour to the game (for players like me)


other egos ive seen pretty unbalanced:

wizard hat + mind/dark damage/resist/psi stacked 3 times - double ego doesnt seem to be very rare because i think many wizard hat egos are blocked for randarts (for example aegis, the one with 100 mana etc) which results in less variety(and wizard hats being primarily useful for antimagic classes like doomed/solipsist).

gloves of warmaking (i think they could be nerfed by making the crit multiplier not stack, only the crit chance)

so my opinion is ego specific balancing would be better than generally disallowing double egos, it would destroy a lot of possible randarts which arent unbalanced but would take alot of variety from the randarts.