Early Game Bosses are Lacking. Game Dumbed Down.

[maxthebest]

Game dumbed Down - Cakewalk even with a Lvl 1 Challenge: This game had such promise, yet it failed to deliver the promised difficulty. The game is getting easier and easier to catter to the noob crowd. Crybabys want everything handed to them on a silver platter. And the developer makes the mistake to listen to them and nerf the game, WTF? why?.

Norgos Lair Forest Boss:
my lv1 character spammed ranged autoattack, bear was standing afk looking me deal dmg. Really? putting a gap closer to the bear was too hard for you?. It deals 0 dmg, the only way someone to die, is to get bored and press the [X close application button at top right of the screen]. So op boss. A melee creature with 0 mobility that stands there to die in ranged attacks.

Crystal Caverns Boss:
my lv1 character took no dmg, in entire fight, just rotate around him, his slowpoke projectile will never hit you. Boss that cant autoattack and cant move is too op. Please nerf more so it suicides before it appears in vision. Noobs maybe find a way to die to him, i dont know how? pressing X button maybe?

Heart of the Gloom Boss: The Withering Thing:
Trash said "u need to be lvl 1.000.000 to beat that thing", well, i did it on lvl 1 with 0 talents, 0 stats used. Easiest fight ever. In the previous fights you had to use the "Move" command. In this fight just spam "Autoattack" command to win. Excuse me, how can a boss deal less dmg than a simple mob? O noez it has "caster template", meaning this boss does no melee dmg, and has no spells, lol lol lol. Op Op Op.
Oh yeah it has summon shadow spell that supposedly 1shots you but my lvl 1 trap that does 1 dmg was too scary for them, the 4 shadows just standed afk looking at my trap afraid that the trap might look at them back funny. Really that easy, just go in that 1 tile width path, put the boss in front of you and the trap in your azz. The shadows stand still looking at the trap in your azz and dont bother to teleport, so op. and boss stands there doing less dmg than a mob, op op op. Just click autoattack and win. The fact that the boss was 7 lvls higher than me didnt even matter.

Rhaloren Camp Boss:
Is this a joke? Tell me. Omg look at my sexy tooltip spells, stating they do 60% of your max hp each. Too bad he never uses it, YES, in 10 turns of fight, 0 spells were used.
This boss is even easier than Norgos the guardian boss, kitable as hell, predictable as hell, melee mob with no dmg and 13 ACCURACY. YES LADIES AND GETTLEMEN, YOU HEARD RIGHT, the oppest boss ever, than has less chance to hit than a lv1 rat found in the beginning dungeon. OP OP OP. So how much damage did he do in this fight? assuming you are AFK and autoattack him without bothering to kite him, he does 0 dmg. 0 DMG!!! i repeat, in case you didnt hear, 0 DMG !!!. OP OP OP. Armor was nerfed because...??? because it was considered too good [30% dmg mitigration], Defense wasnt nerfed because...??? because hell knows why. 0 dmg from a boss? really? Yes 0 dmg before it dies. Nice gameplay, facecheck and autoattack a boss to death. The low dark vision of the dungeon makes the boss unable to cast a single spell ever, is kitable as hell. door, walls, all help to exploit his bad ai.

Conlusion:
I am sick of gimmick bosses that provide no challenge always dealing 0.0 dmg once countered. It's boring as hell, winning bosses with the same strategy always. All you have to do is autoattack to win. Other roguelikes force you to use healing potions or wands. I USED 0 INSCRIPTIONS HERE !!! Notice the diffence?.

When you can beat the entire game, without spending a single level up, you know something is off with its game balance. Uninstall maybe? winning is so easy it leads to skill attrophy. Yes, the dumbed down content weakens my playing skillz. Please buff... NOW!!!

Why is this game called roguelike? when there is exactly 0.0% chance of death? might as well remove the permadeath element. Where is the luck element? Where is the risk? Where is the Gambling? Nowhere, this game was dumbed down for the casuals. Even if i play perfectly, i have 0% chance to die. Other games force you to "play lottery" for daring to risk your character for a reward. This game does no such thing.

Even dark souls is better than this, at least it requires to learn a boss to defeat it, here? a) open tooltip menu b) ok, nothing serious c) proceed to wtf-pwn autoattack it to death. All bosses need major buffs, to obtain a specific niche, instead being "free loot". Might as well skip the dungeon and rush to the boss. Free win.

Ps. You will say: The game gets harder later...
I dont care. I played the early game and i found it lacking/
so what i am forced to wait 3-5 hours for the game to pick up ?

[grobblewobble]

I think the problem is not so much that new players ask for nerfs, but the problem is more that experienced players insist playing on Insane, start to consider it as the default and then ask for nerfs, disdaining the notion that game balance for normal difficulty matters.

[HousePet]

So you did the Withering Thing with no talents and the shadows were scared of your trap?
And you are saying that beating some starter bosses is equivalent to beating the game.
A big silly rant post that makes no actual suggestions.
Yep, something around here is dumbed down.

Edit: LOL, found another thread by you from 4 years ago ranting that everything was too hard.

[Patashu]

Hi maxthebest, if you think the early game is too easy then good! You've graduated from 'Roguelikes 101', so to speak. You have some options:

1) Play a race/class combo that is weaker or that you are less familiar with.

2) Skip it! No one is stopping you from skipping to tier 2 dungeons ASAP. (If you don't like self-imposed challenges and would rather have the game to force you to move on, get all of minmay's 'Quicktome' addons and turn them on together: http://te4.org/user/53875/addons )

3) Play on a higher difficulty. Insane makes the early game very challenging. Madness makes it impossible without incredible cheese.

And don't forget, this is only the beginning of ToME. It will be challenging to make it all the way to the final boss fight and beat the game, so good luck!

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Game dumbed Down - Cakewalk even with a Lvl 1 Challenge: This game had such promise, yet it failed to deliver the promised difficulty. The game is getting easier and easier to catter to the noob crowd. Crybabys want everything handed to them on a silver platter. And the developer makes the mistake to listen to them and nerf the game, WTF? why?.

Norgos Lair Forest Boss:
my lv1 character spammed ranged autoattack, bear was standing afk looking me deal dmg. Really? putting a gap closer to the bear was too hard for you?. It deals 0 dmg, the only way someone to die, is to get bored and press the [X close application button at top right of the screen]. So op boss. A melee creature with 0 mobility that stands there to die in ranged attacks.

Sounds like you had debug mode on, if creatures weren't moving. The invulnerable flag from 'god mode' would more or less prevent enemy ai from attacking you. Turn off any debug features you have on?

Crystal Caverns Boss:
my lv1 character took no dmg, in entire fight, just rotate around him, his slowpoke projectile will never hit you. Boss that cant autoattack and cant move is too op. Please nerf more so it suicides before it appears in vision. Noobs maybe find a way to die to him, i dont know how? pressing X button maybe?

Uh. That boss has multiple instant-speed spells. Sounds more like something is going wrong. failing anything else, you should be hit with things like soul rot or flame.

Heart of the Gloom Boss: The Withering Thing:
Trash said "u need to be lvl 1.000.000 to beat that thing", well, i did it on lvl 1 with 0 talents, 0 stats used. Easiest fight ever. In the previous fights you had to use the "Move" command. In this fight just spam "Autoattack" command to win. Excuse me, how can a boss deal less dmg than a simple mob? O noez it has "caster template", meaning this boss does no melee dmg, and has no spells, lol lol lol. Op Op Op.
Oh yeah it has summon shadow spell that supposedly 1shots you but my lvl 1 trap that does 1 dmg was too scary for them, the 4 shadows just standed afk looking at my trap afraid that the trap might look at them back funny. Really that easy, just go in that 1 tile width path, put the boss in front of you and the trap in your azz. The shadows stand still looking at the trap in your azz and dont bother to teleport, so op. and boss stands there doing less dmg than a mob, op op op. Just click autoattack and win. The fact that the boss was 7 lvls higher than me didnt even matter.

Again, this feels like somethings wrong, like you had some addon active, or a corrupted install. Boss has plenty of talents beyond 'call shadows'. If trap is allowing ai abuse over shadows, this is probably something to be looked at, though since they can phase to the other side of you, I'm not sure how exactly you would exploit this?

Rhaloren Camp Boss:
Is this a joke? Tell me. Omg look at my sexy tooltip spells, stating they do 60% of your max hp each. Too bad he never uses it, YES, in 10 turns of fight, 0 spells were used.
This boss is even easier than Norgos the guardian boss, kitable as hell, predictable as hell, melee mob with no dmg and 13 ACCURACY. YES LADIES AND GETTLEMEN, YOU HEARD RIGHT, the oppest boss ever, than has less chance to hit than a lv1 rat found in the beginning dungeon. OP OP OP. So how much damage did he do in this fight? assuming you are AFK and autoattack him without bothering to kite him, he does 0 dmg. 0 DMG!!! i repeat, in case you didnt hear, 0 DMG !!!. OP OP OP. Armor was nerfed because...??? because it was considered too good [30% dmg mitigration], Defense wasnt nerfed because...??? because hell knows why. 0 dmg from a boss? really? Yes 0 dmg before it dies. Nice gameplay, facecheck and autoattack a boss to death. The low dark vision of the dungeon makes the boss unable to cast a single spell ever, is kitable as hell. door, walls, all help to exploit his bad ai.

uhmmm. Unless every attack on a boss was done from around a corner, which isn't possible anymore, since if you can see them, they can see you now, then it should have plenty of spells to smash you in the face with. Either you're making this up, or there's something wrong.

Conlusion:
I am sick of gimmick bosses that provide no challenge always dealing 0.0 dmg once countered. It's boring as hell, winning bosses with the same strategy always. All you have to do is autoattack to win. Other roguelikes force you to use healing potions or wands. I USED 0 INSCRIPTIONS HERE !!! Notice the diffence?.

When you can beat the entire game, without spending a single level up, you know something is off with its game balance. Uninstall maybe? winning is so easy it leads to skill attrophy. Yes, the dumbed down content weakens my playing skillz. Please buff... NOW!!!

Uh. Yeah, hyperbole isn't helping your case here. Go ahead, try. Win the game without investing a single talent or stat point, all game. I'll even let you have cat points for bonus inscription slots. Yeah, this isn't happening. Even on easier, this isn't happening. If you can seriously pull this off in the vanilla game, we'll make an achievement for it and name it after you.

Why is this game called roguelike? when there is exactly 0.0% chance of death? might as well remove the permadeath element. Where is the luck element? Where is the risk? Where is the Gambling? Nowhere, this game was dumbed down for the casuals. Even if i play perfectly, i have 0% chance to die. Other games force you to "play lottery" for daring to risk your character for a reward. This game does no such thing.

I'm not sure how your overly exaggerated statements of 'every boss is pathetic, nothing does any damage, just bump it' helps anything here. Even the tanky melee classes can't just do this for nothing. I can't imagine what character builds you're runing that can even come close to what you're describing. Link some of your characters?

Even dark souls is better than this, at least it requires to learn a boss to defeat it, here? a) open tooltip menu b) ok, nothing serious c) proceed to wtf-pwn autoattack it to death. All bosses need major buffs, to obtain a specific niche, instead being "free loot". Might as well skip the dungeon and rush to the boss. Free win.

Oh yes, compare dark souls to a roguelike, a game explicitly catered to casuals. No permanent death, infinite farming versus trash mobs, hilariously overpowered weapons and armor lying around everywhere, and everything in the game can be ignored as soon as you pick up a shield. Oh, and no one actually plays the game without hacking and modding their character anyway. Yes. Clearly, we want to be more like your trash AAA title for casuals, not a unique and enjoyable game experience.

Ps. You will say: The game gets harder later...
I dont care. I played the early game and i found it lacking/
so what i am forced to wait 3-5 hours for the game to pick up ?

So was there a point in bringing this up? You've used this post as an excuse to trash the things in this game with overly exaggerated statements, rather then reasoned discourse over how some things might need a buff, or some player talents or stats might need a nerf. Your best point was exhibiting that there might be an ai flaw with traps, which we'll be happy to look at, of course. And if it takes 3 hours for you to move into things past starter dungeons, it's probably time for you to speed up your gameplay. All 6 tier 1's (which by no means are you required to do, can frequently get by on 2 or 3) can be completed in sub hour, even on an old shitty windows xp computer with a garbage processor. (And I speak from experience) If you're judging the entire game by the first 10 minutes of play, then congratulations, you lack any basis for your arguments. But please, link some of yoru character dumps. Lets see what's so overpowered we need to nerf it.

For that matter, if something's that broken, we'll take a savefile. Be interesting to see what bizarre interaction could create this kind of discrepancy in difficulty. Toss one of those up and link us to it?

[seewen]

Play Insane+, you won't ask for nerfs anymore...

[maxthebest]

I think the problem is not so much that new players ask for nerfs, but the problem is more that experienced players insist playing on Insane, start to consider it as the default and then ask for nerfs

Edit: LOL, found another thread by you from 4 years ago ranting that everything was too hard.

I come to the game expecting to have at least the same kind of difficulty as dark souls. I Remembered all the "1-shots" they did in the past. And now i get "Inf-shots" instead? meaning bosses do 0 dmg and die before they even have any chance of killing me. Wtf.

Sounds like you had debug mode on. Again, this feels like somethings wrong, like you had some addon active, or a corrupted install

I played with fresh install, no addons, nothing, latest version.

Uh. Yeah, hyperbole isn't helping your case here. Go ahead, try. Win the game without investing a single talent or stat point, all game

You are right in that. You cant. All am i saying is that the starting bosses are not following the same balance of rules as the rest of the game. The elite mobs which are randomly generated in those dungeons are more difficult than those bosses but instead the elites drop 0 gold, 0 xp and 0 items for the risk you take to fight them.

some things might need a buff, or some player talents or stats might need a nerf

Actually you are wrong, here, i said, i used 0 stats, 0 talents, running naked [no armor], with a lv 1 character and WTFPWNED every boss in the early game.

A big silly rant post that makes no actual suggestions.

The suggestion is simple, make boss do 1 hp dmg, instead 0 hp dmg. Is that so hard to understand ???

1) Norgos Lair Forest Boss. Has no way to inflict damage. No gap closer. I can go with 1 hp, 0 to all stats, 0 spells clicked and easily kill it.

2) Crystal Caverns Boss. Same thing, can win with 1 hp, the only difficulty is moving diagonial once you see a projectile generated. Other than that its a 300 hp Meatwall with no way to attack.

3) Heart of the Gloom Boss: The Withering Thing: looked at the tooltip. Tooltip states that the shadows have enough dmg to 1shot you. Too bad, they are afraid of 1 crappy little trap and stand there staring. making it another autoattack fight.

4) Rhaloren Camp Boss: it didnt bother using a single skill or spell. Tell me now how it is my fault that i ended up with 100% hp.

Rhaloren Camp Boss: uhmmm. Unless every attack on a boss was done from around a corner, which isn't possible anymore

Of course it is possible. Hello!!! traps.


I dont know why you are bashing me for stating the obvious. Go ahead copy the wow-crowd formula.

Tales of Maj’Eyal Upcoming Patch 1.4.9 : T-Engine 5: return of the wow crowd.
1) Inserted boobs everywhere [3d cartoon anime graphics everywhere].
2) Bosses now have 700 milion hp, 0 dmg and stand afk. You are given an "Idle timer" counting for 30 min. At the end of those 30 min, if your entire raid spammed the "idle button" well, and looked at it well, and heeded the button warnings like "do not miss that shiny pixel at the end of the border of the iddle button" because that would be a dps loss = wipe, you are rewarded with a random drop which is not for your class. Please replay the same encounter, every day for 30 min for 30 years until your damn item drops. Just so you are raid viable for the next boss. Else we guild kick you. And you know what that means. No bosses for you. No items for you. Nothing. Now stay alone and die miserable.

[ohioastro]

This game is enjoyable precisely because it's an actual strategy game, one where you aren't "one-shotted" arbitrarily at normal difficulty. It's actually quite difficult to win, as objectively measured by the small percentage of winners in the vault.

It's awful game design to make the starter bosses impossible, as it makes it difficult for new players to figure out the system. There are severe tactics checks in the first tier of real dungeons (the snow giants et al. are quite tough until you figure the game out), in darkfall, and in the orc prides. There are places where you will get really creamed if you aren't very good (melinda, for instance).

Given that there are multiple difficulty levels, multiple classes, and multiple approaches to lives (everything from one to unlimited), complaining that the game isn't hard enough for other people is not terribly convincing.

[Radon26]

max the best, your game is not normal. whatever happened, none else see this, so your complain has no validity.

anyone you ask, can confirm, that the bosses are in fact fairly deadly if allowed.

-The shadow from the ruins of kor'pul, freezes you from out of sight, and then blasts you with mana thrust and flame.
-prox, hits like a truck, and is probably slightly faster than you.
-Crystal from the cavern, shoots a spell EVERY SINGLE TURN, and if the fight goes on for too long, he phase doors away, making the hunt rather annoying.
-The rhaloren, not extremely difficult if you know how to deal with him, but certainly strong.
-Withering thing, will fight you in a tight corrindor, blindsiding you, and than have one of the shadows cut off the escape rout, and mow you down with, not exceptional, but certainly hurting melee.
-Norgos... well, his alternative can hurt a bit. A random rare snake can make the fight absolutely ridiculous for a ranger.

your experience is an exception, not a rule, so stop whining, and put it in bug section instead.
maybe attach a log or somthing.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

we've already asked for either saves or character dumps, logfiles, whatever. What you are claiming to happen cannot happen under normal circumstances, and without these we cannot diagnose what is wrong.

You are right in that. You cant. All am i saying is that the starting bosses are not following the same balance of rules as the rest of the game. The elite mobs which are randomly generated in those dungeons are more difficult than those bosses but instead the elites drop 0 gold, 0 xp and 0 items for the risk you take to fight them.

Every rare or randboss generated will always drop loot, every single time. Again, if this is happening, you are experiencing extremely odd bugs, and we need the aforementioned log, savefile, or character dumps (the former 2 in this case) to examine what's going wrong. Logfile would be particularly helpful for this.

[Zicher]

Don't feed the trolls.

[HousePet]

Actually you are wrong, here, i said, i used 0 stats, 0 talents, running naked [no armor], with a lv 1 character and WTFPWNED every boss in the early game.

Traps are a talent. Did you use talents or not?

I dont know why you are bashing me for stating the obvious.

Ridiculing people who make a fool of themselves on the Internet is standard procedure. Especially when they make unsubstantiated claims that everyone knows are bullshit.

[Coldbringer]

You come off as so hostile and insulting OP. Try to just state facts and back it up with a video of your gameplay.

I wouldn't mind the early game being tuned up a bit. But I've had a few of those early bosses give me a scare or evil kill me on occasion.

Did you mention what difficulty you were playing on? Unlock Insane, try that, and then come back here and tell us all how it went. Or even better take a video, post it on youtube, link for us all to see. Instead of pointless arguing and baiting, show us.

[maxthebest]

The shadow from the ruins of kor'pul, freezes you from out of sight, and then blasts you with mana thrust and flame.

i didnt mention that specific boss. because i knew that specific boss has the required level of difficulty.

Starting bosses: Tier 0 difficulty: even a lv1 rat with 1 hp and 0 atk can beat them.
Ruins of kor'pul: Tier 2 diffuclty: Difficulty spike without the game preparing you beforehand.
Bug: Thus the early game bosses give a false sense of security.

Crystal from the cavern, shoots a spell EVERY SINGLE TURN

Then goes out of mana after 5 turns [the time you need to reach him in melee range], and performs 1 spell every 10 years.

A random rare snake can make the fight absolutely ridiculous for a ranger.

You could skip it, i think it drops 0 xp and 1 copper [at most], you are better off selling oxygen to beggars to become rich.

Traps are a talent. Did you use talents or not?

I got them from free, when i started at lv 1 as rogue.

I wouldn't mind the early game being tuned up a bit. But I've had a few of those early bosses give me a scare or evil kill me on occasion.

Making the bosses more serious, would make the player experience more streamlined, and uniform. Why is there no tier 1 difficulty bosses? why do tier 0 bosses exist? i mean a boss should require more than 1 button.

Did you mention what difficulty you were playing on?

I play on normal.

You come off as so hostile and insulting OP

i actually sound arrogant, why? simple, you make content that can be cheezed to provide no threat. Not my fault for not having an actual uniform difficulty curve.

[Radon26]

ALL of the bosess i mentioned, are tier 1.

tier 2, are: daikara, old forest, sandworm lair, and the maze.
then there are the optional few, and then the dreadfell.
there are no tier 0, unless you were to count towns.

Also, you are still trying to push your own experience as a universal truth, when EVERYONE else, is telling you that its just you having a weird bug.
So either you are lying, or or stright up an idiot.

I play on normal.

you said that as if you were still doing it form time to time. didn't you say before that you quit?

I played the early game and i found it lacking/
so what i am forced to wait 3-5 hours for the game to pick up ?

Alight, not explicitly stating, but still rather sounding like you've quit for good.

simple, you make content that can be cheezed to provide no threat. Not my fault for not having an actual uniform difficulty curve.

if you mean "abusing the advantages you have", that's called strategy i believe.
if you mean intentionally breaking the code(like i believe you might have, if not flat out lied) then that's entirely on the player side.

with that said, pls someone lock down this thread.