Let's Brainstorm how to make post-Dreadfell more fun!

[donkatsu]

One of the things that makes the late game less dynamic than the early game is the relatively slower rate of character progression. Prodigies helped a lot with this, and I think this area could be improved further.

-Late game class quests a la Keepsake with a choice of rewards, such as items with on-carry effects or talent rewards.
-Bonuses for going 5/5/5/5 in a tree?
-A system for spending gold to somehow upgrade existing equipment, including fixedarts.
-Stretch equipment tier distribution so that tier 5 is relatively rare all the way until High Peak. You definitely shouldn't be getting more tier 5 than tier 4 during the Prides.

[Atarlost]

We're here to brainstorm ideas. Post-Dreadfell feeling like a slog is a very common complaint I hear and one that I'd like to address.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion on rather or not the game is too easy, to hard, or just right.

I'd appreciate if those opinions were just stated plainly. If you have something to contribute, please do. But please do me the courtesy of not trying to derail this thread and turn it into an argument about rather or not we're madnessfying normal difficulty because that is most certainly not my intent.

Thanks.

I'd say the orc pride bosses are underwhelming and the patrols may be too nasty. The town style pride entrances are a nasty gotcha for new players and probably get absurd at higher difficulties. The bosses should be high points and they're not, at least not for builds I can play well enough to get to them. The patrols are just a pain and either death traps or walks in the park depending on how many casters vs noncasters appear and how thick the trees are.

At levels where autoexplore is not suicide the worst part is the backup boss runaround. They're not really well advertised. I think I saw an NPC mention one once, but only one and most of the time I never noticed any NPC speech bubbles. That means that apart from the one in Reknor you're pointed at as part of Back and There Again they're only available to wiki users. They're also in completely empty zones unless they're in a starter zone you skipped the first two levels of, and if you did the first level is locked to the level you first did the zone in and therefore pointless and boring. The levels being already explored (except the trollmire guy if you skipped to the end before since he's on level 2 or the crystal if you skipped to the end and got the alternate) means you can't automatically search the level to find them. It would be more interesting if the dungeons that got backup guardians also got regenerated and more newbie friendly if they were re-marked as unexplored on the world map.

[edge2054]

Great ideas guys!

Something grayswandir just mentioned in IRC that I want to note down.

Commander uniques for Orc Patrols. Killing them reduces Orc Patrol spawn rate.

[HousePet]

Slightly aside, but relevant to the general 'make the game more fun' theme.
How about adding a Bounty Board style thing to towns?
This would provide details about the locations of the backup guardians.
It could also be used in the early game to describe the locations and difficulties of the various zones, since going to most of them too early is suicide.

[Jurriaan]

Or maybe a combination with a warning like that about the mad lumberjack - you wander the map and a fleeing NPC warns you about the Trollmire - she barely escaped with her life, don't go there! etc.

[Mankeli]

The town style pride entrances are a nasty gotcha for new players and probably get absurd at higher difficulties.

Just to clarifiy, at least on my madness archmage run, I've found the entrances to be the least threatening part of Prides where as pride leaders, who have on average 1,5 K healing per turn via pride of the orcs (Gorbat) or 290 % global speed via essence of speed (Vor), can be menacing to say the least.

I'm certainly not against adding more variation to the endgame but I think the worst offenders are before or during Dreadfell: Sandworm lair takes for ever and Dreadfell is a whopping 9 levels of the same undead horde. Dreadfell at 5 levels would be much better.

As in actual suggestions, here is a few:

1) Reduce the number of orc patrols. They are downright murder on higher difficulties and can be nasty sometimes even in normal (I've gotten hit for something like 800 points by ONE orc rare) and evading them is pretty tedious.

2) Shortening of some areas is fine by me too, this was already suggested. Eruan, Dark Crypt, Temple of Creation and Ardhungol (or whatever) are prime candidates and I guess each pride could lose one level too, if need be.

3) After shortening the existing dungeons, maybe add some optional zones that can only be entered at certain level range or maybe similarly to the Melinda Crypt? I kind of like the idea behind places like the Melinda Crypt but the implementation of that Crypt is currently very poor: There is very little payoff and the risk of losing the character is much greater there than it is in other places you are likely to visit at that point of the game. But I like the idea of a dangerous place that can only be entered once but with actual rewards. And that mechanic isn't currently overused so there is room for more.

I would like a quest where you could go back to the times before spellblaze. This would be an obvious candidate for a chronomacer class quest. It would be neat, if, paradoxically, your character would somehow have something to do with triggering Spellblaze! Accidentally or not

This quest would be triggered in world map just like the Melinda Quest. Fighting with some of Garkul's generals would be a really tough test but you would be quaranteed to have a very powerful artifact or something. And maybe the people who saw you teleporting to their timeline got additional motivation of using the farportals 'cause they thought you were an orc with some kind of new superweapon? Talking about "oops Zemekkys, I think I screwed up" moments lol.

(I know there is a quest for temporal warden's already but I understood they were revamping it?)

[comrade raoul]

I really like all of donkatsu's ideas, especially the option to spend gold to upgrade existing items. I'd think a simple (and maybe balanced?) implementation would just be to increase the item's tier, without otherwise adding or improving any abilities. That way, if you were attached to, say, a t2 unique weapon or it did interesting things for your build, it would stay usable but wouldn't be better than actual t5 items.

I don't think this would cut down on the slog that much, though. A simple way to do that would just be to make the post-Dreadfell game shorter. In my experience, post-Dreadfell has a lot of great moments--probably enough to carry the rest of the game--and the main problem is that there is too much filler. So, cut the filler. Almost every area could be half as long as it is without losing anything memorable.

[edge2054]

I would like a quest where you could go back to the times before spellblaze. This would be an obvious candidate for a chronomacer class quest. It would be neat, if, paradoxically, your character would somehow have something to do with triggering Spellblaze! Accidentally or not

This quest would be triggered in world map just like the Melinda Quest. Fighting with some of Garkul's generals would be a really tough test but you would be quaranteed to have a very powerful artifact or something. And maybe the people who saw you teleporting to their timeline got additional motivation of using the farportals 'cause they thought you were an orc with some kind of new superweapon? Talking about "oops Zemekkys, I think I screwed up" moments lol.

Seeing the spellblaze sounds like a lot of fun. I'd need to repurpose this a bit for it to fit in with the current lore though. As far as chronomancy is concerned there's no 'before' the spellblaze.

I'll talk to Darkgod about it and see if he has any plans for something in the same vein. If not, I imagine he'd love this idea

[darkgod]

Garkul was not around on the time of the spellblaze but I like the idea:)
Though I doubt you'd have a hand in the triggering of it; i'd rather avoid that can of worms

[supermini]

I would like to add a suggestion for High Peak to be reworked. Right now it's 10 levels of generic dungeon that isn't very interesting.

Before 1.0 was released I had ideas about having thematic levels, tied to various elements. Only the random level buff from that idea made it in (it takes a lot of work to code, and that part was easy), but it could be further explored if that's a direction you want to go in.

Fire themed could be a lake of fire with platforms and walkways, with a lot of lava tiles, temporal one could be a maze-like level with wormholes , lightning one could be random and unpredictable in some way - for instance certain walls might be made of clouds and reshuffle themselves every X turns. Monster types that fit the theme would appear more often than normal. If you reduced the number of levels, you could have the game pick 5 or 6 randomly out of 10-12 making it different every time.

If you don't want to go with an 'element' theme, one other way is to have a cave entrance that's the same as level 1 is now, and then each level themed like one of the orbs you are carrying with you. Orbs are already keys to open the dungeon and to close the portals in the sanctum, so levels themed like orbs isn't a big stretch.

Another idea I had was to add unique bosses (maybe depending on what's the theme of the level if you're going with that), and have them connected to the lore somehow. One could be an archmage apprentice that was lured by Elandar's promise of power, only for him to lose interest in training an apprentice a few weeks later and relegating him to be a glorified door guard. One other would be some strange kind of half-living, half-mechanical temporal golem (inspired by Shrike from Hyperion series, so a lot of spikes would be involved), a result of magical experiments gone awry - or maybe just as planned. One could be a monster inspired by the Shambling Mound from D&D, a brawler plant with fungus and antimagic (to put a ToME twist on it), kept as a weapon to be used against other mages. I also had an idea about a paradox mage that has seen the entire history and future all at once and gone completely insane from the experience. He ends up in High Peak by accident and he can't get out due to the wards that are in place (or whatever is preventing you from using rod of recall, teleporting to Angolwen, etc.) I'd put in some interesting previously unknown bits of lore in the popup that you get after dispatching him (from his diary that you find), but write it as a riddle, or in verse, or both. Truth hidden in ramblings of a madman, that sort of thing.

Regardless of what direction you want to take it in, at least the size needs to be cut in half. I don't think I've ever fully explored it, and after 5 levels I already feel like I've had enough. On high difficulties especially it becomes a slog.

[supermini]

I would also suggest adding some lore on the main villains of the story, perhaps revealed to you as you dispatch the leaders of the prides. Their motivations and personalities, how they influenced the orcs, that sort of thing. If pride leaders don't fit, perhaps have Linaniil tell you about them after a certain point in the story.

[HousePet]

I have some ideas for side quests that supply lore about the end bosses.
And one quest that allows you to go to before the Spellblaze and discover the source of Chronomancy. I think I've done it in such a way as to avoid the lore issues.

[edge2054]

I liked the quest hub stuff you were talking about last night HousePet.

Another thought along those same lines is that the Assassin Lord could give quests if you side with him. One every five levels or so.

I'd like to make travel back and forth from the east and west easier once you have the farportal established. Maybe a secondary portal in the fortress (so you have one for east, one for west).

Also StarKeep wanted to contribute this document.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f0V ... gRLDg/edit

[Delmuir]

I would also suggest adding some lore on the main villains of the story, perhaps revealed to you as you dispatch the leaders of the prides. Their motivations and personalities, how they influenced the orcs, that sort of thing. If pride leaders don't fit, perhaps have Linaniil tell you about them after a certain point in the story.

Along with Housepet's idea of short side-quests that discover the lore, I rather like this idea.

I think the consensus is:

Shorter dungeons (including Dreadfell), more side-quests and some end-game lore. That all sounds outstanding to me.

In addition, I really like the idea of upgrading the tier of an item. Highly endorse this idea!

What I'd like to also include is side-quests with actual rewards… the first half of the game has plenty of those but NONE in the second half. That magnifies the dragging feeling.

Perhaps some of the bonuses could be re-balanced… take one of the general points from the arena and add it to some quest in the second half, etc.

[rexorcorum]

Just to chime in that in my secret ToME To-Do list I have a long section, titled "Far East & General Beautification" . It is of course purely visual, but it adds also to the general variety and diversification I believe. Looks like it will moving up in priority .