'Which difficulty is the game balanced for?'

[Coldbringer]

Seems like nightmare is the sweet spot. Normal is too easy up until the final battle, and Insane just feels unfair at certain points and requires a lot of luck to win. Madness aptly describes the condition you will develop if you attempt to play it. Nightmare you can still run into some tough situations with rares, uniques and boss monsters but most often it's not overwhelmingly so. You can find a way to win most of the time.

The initial question sounds flawed to me. I don't think a developer tries to balance a game, or the classes around a certain difficulty. There are too many variables, especially in a game like this.

[cksiu]

Single player game is for a single player, just play the game how you like. Balance is a multiplayer concept, learning how to break the game is a part of every single player game ever, of which tome is one.

Tome vault isn't a form of competition, and if it is, you should compare apples to apples (same class and difficulty). Just learn to use the resource to understand how better players play the game and you might enjoy it slightly more.

If you want a challenge, go play rogue or alchemist on madness, if you want an easy game, go play sun paladin on normal. Why can't choosing a class be part of choosing difficulty. Some people prefer as difficult a game as possible, others prefer other things, which is not a bad thing, I am one of these people.

[Velorien]

Why can't choosing a class be part of choosing difficulty.

Because different classes reflect different playstyles, and it's undesirable to lock people out of certain playstyles based on difficulty, or vice versa. You're saying, e.g. "you don't get to play stealth on insane, because the rogue isn't strong enough", or "you don't get to play ranged elemental specialist on normal/nightmare because the archmage is too strong and there's no challenge". To someone who's good enough for insane, I imagine normal is quite boring - enemies have fewer talents, you level up more slowly, and the loot isn't as exciting. If every class was equally well-balanced, they'd have a free choice of playstyle at their preferred difficulty level, instead of having to limit themselves based on how hard they want the game to be.

In regard to the broader discussion, surely the game should be balanced for whatever difficulty the majority of players play at? I mean, it seems intuitive that the purpose of a game is for as many of the people who are playing it to have fun as possible. A balance decision that violates this principle reduces the total amount of enjoyment the game provides, benefiting only the people who have already played it so much they've had time to become insane-conquering pros.

[cksiu]

1. The developers let you play whatever play style is available to each class. Just play on normal. I've played stabby stealth rogue before on normal, it's doable, and it's fun.

2. If you want to play whatever playstyle you want at whatever difficulty you want, the only way that works is if skills are nerfed not only in numbers, but also in diversity of effects. I can't really prove this statement, so it might not be 100% true, but I think that at least it can be said that of these 3 things, you can only choose 2: perfect balance, diversity in talents, quick development time. In this case I think the development team have a good head on their shoulders. In the end I think having perfect balance only hurts the very diversity that you are looking for. And also, point 1.

3. The core game play of ToME as a roguelike RPG is the discovery and innovation of character building. This is different person to person and there are other game elements like collecting all unlocks. But discovery and innovation in my opinion is what ToME does really well. Part of growing in competence as a player is examining how different elements of the game interact with each other, some of these might be common to everyone, such as vision manipulation, or status resistance. Others are class specific, such as dealing enough damage, or using mobility. Sometimes these intersect like scouting for information. Finding out what works IS the core game play, and having everything work takes away from that. For developers to 'fix' this is to remove any fun from the game, there has to be builds which don't work as well to make the ones that do satisfying to find.

4. Archmage isn't as imbalanced as you might think, it still requires a lot of game knowledge to play well. I would say that archmage on insane is still more difficult than any class on normal bar none and it's not even close. in that sense the game is already balanced around normal. If you are a new player and play normal with archmage, you will still learn a lot on your way to your first win. You won't bypass all the other things other people have to learn to get their first normal win. the thing that makes archmage strong is that with a good player, it can achieve so much more than some other classes. And why is that a bad thing?

5. A couple of thoughts on what I think would constitute imbalance:

• a. Making races so strong that diversity in classes is lost. I think this makes sense to most players, and I think the game could do better than now but it's not too bad. I think classes are the fun things to explore but others might disagree.
  b. Having single talents be so powerful that it reduces complexity of the game. Here's how I like my game difficult: To have lots of choices (maybe in terms of builds, maybe in terms of decisions turn by turn). The more game elements which I need to manage, and if these elements which I manage are implemented in a good thematic way and have plenty of dependencies and codependencies, I consider that fun and difficult. So the things I might manage in a typical turn might be, distance, vision, health, mobility, dangerous enemy talents (e.g. fearscape), enemy talent cooldowns, resources for damage and escape, stun, other status effects, enemy potential damage in the next turn, escorts surviving, saves, resistances, resistance (and armour) penetration, positioning so as few enemy units can reach me as possible, etc.
  
  So that is quite a lot, and for each different class, they will have different weights, and different items in the list are related which for other classes might not be. That's how I like it. What I find not fun is if icewall was so powerful that you can safely ignore mobility, health, resources, positioning because icewall by itself can cover all of these if used correctly. So the nerf to icewall a few months ago after revamp of wyrmic was welcome for me, thanks devs. The other thing I found boring was the unstoppable draconic will combination with shalore, it used to cross off so many things on that list above just by using these two together. So that was nerfed a couple of years back and it is welcomed by me. Thanks devs.

Judging by these things, this game is balanced quite well actually, and discussing game balance based on difficulty shows how little you understand this game.

[Zeyphor]

This is not a black and white thing, you know. But I do think there has been a tendency towards powercreep.

Among the oldest classes in the game are rogue, archer and alchemist. No surprise: they are now considered as "underpowered", when they started out as defining classes. Over time new classes where added, and the general tendency was that they became stronger and stronger. They became so strong that you had to turn up the game difficulty if you wanted a challenge, and the harder game difficulty became the new benchmark.

Since you are asking for examples Bpat, I will mention the new sun paladin (especially in combination with the new ogre race) as an abomination on normal difficulty. It feels like you can't die, no matter what you do.
Yes, I do understand what you're saying with "a good class on normal is an idiot proof class". There is some truth to that, and you could say I mention sun paladins here because they became too idiot proof.

But on the other hand, let's face it, classes like oozemances are just objectively overpowered if you consider rogue and archer as the standard.

Personally I can see value in the arguments for viewing Insane as the benchmark difficulty, but at the same time I think it is a really bad idea to dismiss any consequences for normal difficulty as completely irrelevant. Since normal difficulty is where the majority of players are. And yes, I do play insane difficulty too and won it.

Although in the end, the real question that should be discussed is: do we mind powercreep?

I wouldn't mind the power creep if the difficulty below insane wasn't so easy that you could beat it without any class talents; i mean, you shouldn't even be able to get past dreadfell on normal mode without any class talents since it just doesn't sound right, and it makes me think that the game is just too easy if you can beat nightmare rl without any class talents while having 8 life rating

there is so much cheesy stuff you can do on this game, and an anti-magic archmage can do the following things:
they can:
dig in a z-pattern and abuse bad AI to make enemies not chase you into the Z, allowing you to fight them at your own leisure
stairscum
set zones to the lowest possible level even if you first go in there to do something at a much higher level
drown friendly NPCs AND get experience and loot for it
use burrow from a mindstar of sand, then teleport into a wall, or even use burrow from a mindstar of sand, then movement infusion and dig out a Z

and now you start with extra gold on nm+, and at lvl 2 on insane, and lvl 3 on madness
edit: i forgot to also mention that insane and nightmare used to be harder for other reasons too

in fact, I'm gonna just go ahead and propose these changes to ToME, even though it probably isn't related enough to the topic:
using a zone transition gives you a debuff in the (other) category for 100 turns:
Tired: You got tired of traveling long distances or walking down many flights of stairs; you can't use zone transitions until this debuff wears off
AI improvement(s) to let enemies chase you into the end of a dug-out Z
drowned NPCs do not give loot or XP if they die with the suffocating debuff, with the exception of plot items, artifacts and randarts
NPCs in angolwen, derth, elvala, shatur, last hope, iiirk, and the iron council, the sunwall, and the lumberjack village can no longer spawn with artifacts or randarts, or have ranks above elite, with exceptions for NPCs who are always unique or boss rank, who cannot spawn with or drop any randarts or unique items
the grand corruptor gives you an artifact after completing the fall of zigur quest
modify the first level of all zones accessed from the world map in such a way that there WILL be enemies, if any in the level at all, around you as soon as you zone in, AND so that the zone's level is set per level when its set, not for the entire zone; so if a level 1 guy walks into daikara level 1 then leaves; he'll only have set level 1 of daikara to level 7, and the rest of daikara can be set to level 15 if he wants to do that, and after the level 1 guy DOES zone into daikara, he'll have to deal with enemies which he probably won't be able to survive against during the 100 turn debuff that prevents zone transition
you know how out of mindstars of flames, frost, storms, sand, and venom, only mindstars of sand has an on use: effect? thats pretty out of place huh? well mindstars of sand no longer have burrow on use, OR mindstars of sand get swallow on use instead, mindstars of flames get devouring flames, mindstars of frost get ice claw, mindstars of venom get corrosive mist, and mindstars of storms get tornado

and track and the likes of it are very, very strong abilities too; in fact they're so strong that I think that they should be nerfed in the following ways:
instead of seeing an enemy, you just see a thing that indicates that an enemy is there; and it has a 2 tile inaccuracy radius
when you examine a creature that is not in your line of sight and/or cannot be graphically seen(such as a stealthed enemy in LoS), you just see ??? in all fields on its character sheet when examining it, and you don't see any of its talents

this is coming from a guy who beat insane rl as a dwarf solipsist who cleared out high peak without armor training or nightmare unlocked, or ever using track or the likes of it(except maybe to make sure i killed every enemy in a level after i thought i cleared it), or doing any of the cheesy stuff mentioned above aside from drowning friendly NPCs, most of them after I finished the second T1 dungeon, iirc; most players drown all of the rare/unique/randboss ones as soon as possible

while im making a post, i also think its bad game design if a class that sounds like it wants to wear cloth or leather wants to wear plate armor instead(all classes except brawler want to use massive plate armor, including rogue because stealth is trash on even normal), and if an archmage, paradox mage, corruptor, and anorithil want to max out strength so they can get pain enhancement system, a prodigy without which their strength would be just about completely useless outside of letting them change armor in combat, as they could just statscum to equip gear
in fact i wouldn't be surprised if the game was currently balanced around the assumption that every single class except brawler would be wearing massive plate armor with 5 points into armor training, and players using track and all that cheesing stuff that I'd made reference to
I think it shouldn't be balanced that way

on another note, i think that halflings are the standard that all races should be balanced around for AoA; ogre shalore higher and dwarf could use some serious tweaking, and the other AoA races are fine, though ghoul could stand to get gnaw buffed or replaced, and I also think that nightmare rl should be as hard as it was before it got nerfed to +30% creature levels, and also have more rares

[bpat]

Zeyphor that Solipsist win used heavy vaulting so it doesn't count. That isn't a good example of Insane being too easy since you didn't win without vaulting a bunch of items like 2x Mnemonic.

[Zeyphor]

Zeyphor that Solipsist win used heavy vaulting so it doesn't count. That isn't a good example of Insane being too easy since you didn't win without vaulting a bunch of items like 2x Mnemonic.

okay so it doesn't support the point i was trying to make; it was past midnight when I posted anyway, though I'd imagine it could've also been done with a non-urthol randart ring in place of one mnenomic, which means its potentially doable and is the point I was trying to make; i wasnt calling it easy
also all 5 points in forge echoes were pretty much wasted; i barely ever used it
I could actually imagine you telling me that insane is possible to do without that track or that cheesy stuff that I mentioned, though maybe i imagine that because im usually in bed ~45 minutes ago, i should fix that
edit: especially after what I just posted, maybe i should pick this up later in the morning

[darkgod]

*The air is charged with strange energies. Lightning discharges fly around. The DarkGod has noticed the topic!*

I think something that people are forgetting is that while pro players can surely beat normal or nm asleep with their hands tied and no talents; the huge majority of players cant.
To most people normal is already hard!

I mean do you really think a normal player can win an antimagic archmage? Because you could just means one thing, you're *not* a normal player. You're an amazing one and that's fine but most of us (I include myself in that yes I'm a sucky player ) are not, we are just .. well .. normal !

Yes it means they don't play perfectly, they don't abuse obscure abusable things and so on. So what ? Nobody is forced to abuse either.
Now this doesnt mean that I want abuses to stay in; I'd rather fix them, but in a way that is not punishing to normal players

As for the general difficulty of the game, there has been powercreep lately for sure, but 1.6 is slatted to have a much improved AI and more interesting "trash" NPCs. Which is way more interesting than a simple numbers cutting.

Oh and BTW

and now you start with extra gold on nm+, and at lvl 2 on insane, and lvl 3 on madness

are you gonna tell me that this makes all insane and madness far too easy ? Most insane+ players will say that before you had to scumstart a lot. How is that fun?
But if you insist such things are fun; I can very easily make a Masochim mode (so you could play Masochim/Madness ) where all the little nice things are removed (not joking)

To sum it up; mostly I'm saying that the game is hard enough for normal people but if the general consensus is that insane+ is too easy, well I can buff that. But the idea that the game should be 10 times harder on normal will never fly past me, I don't design just for 1% of my players, I've always tried to cater to both normal people and uber-elites as I respect them both equally and will continue to do so

Kisses and love from your local DarkGod!

[Tryble]

This isn't really like, some kind request to make normal incredibly harder or anything. Now that would be madness.

I just wanted to point out that if every class can win on Insane (which is true), then almost by definition every class is overtuned for the challenge that Normal provides. Which is okay.
The archmage thing is just the single most extreme example.

Anyway, since we've had a DG post here, can we close the thread?

I don't see the point of discussing this at all, since complaints about balancing for higher difficulties seem to come exclusively from people without a good understanding of ToME's balance in the first place.

this is probably me

[Zeyphor]

Oh and BTW

and now you start with extra gold on nm+, and at lvl 2 on insane, and lvl 3 on madness

are you gonna tell me that this makes all insane and madness far too easy ? Most insane+ players will say that before you had to scumstart a lot. How is that fun?
But if you insist such things are fun; I can very easily make a Masochim mode (so you could play Masochim/Madness ) where all the little nice things are removed (not joking)

i left out the part where insane and nightmare used to be harder for other reasons too; higher enemy levels and talent levels iirc, my bad
and they do still startscum even on insane... don't they?
also, another opinion, reiterated

Bpat: You neglected the tuning of build. However that is a fair point about Nightmare being trivial, it is essentially the same as Normal. Why is that never suggested as something to be addressed?

[Roc]

I understand that DarkGod hath spoken and I'm posting here too late, but... why is this an either/or situation here?

You balance classes so that they present a challenging-but-achievable experience on Normal for casual players. You balance classes so that they present a challenging-but-achievable experience on Insane for great players. If a class fails to satisfy both statements, you tweak so that it does.

It seems like some of you are creating a dichotomy that doesn't need to exist.

[Patashu]

This isn't really like, some kind request to make normal incredibly harder or anything. Now that would be madness.

I just wanted to point out that if every class can win on Insane (which is true), then almost by definition every class is overtuned for the challenge that Normal provides. Which is okay.
The archmage thing is just the single most extreme example.

Crypt of the NecroDancer has a parallel to this. Every character in that game can beat the game on low% (no shrines, no picking up items other than your starting weapon if you threw it) without taking damage. This doesn't mean the main game is too hard and needs to be made harder. It just means that if you have insane mad skills you can do incredible things, and as far as I'm concerned, that's GREAT.

[Davion Fuxa]

i left out the part where insane and nightmare used to be harder for other reasons too; higher enemy levels and talent levels iirc, my bad
and they do still startscum even on insane... don't they?
also, another opinion, reiterated

I think the better question is whether players playing insane still startscum as much as they did and for what reasons they are startscumming. If starting money alters the need to startscum for 'some' (and not necessarily all) players then it is probably beneficial and within what Darkgod wants his game to be - discouraging towards unfun activities like scumming.

[jenx]

I only play on insane and madness. I think both are just right as they are. Please don't mess them up with major changes.

[Zeyphor]

i left out the part where insane and nightmare used to be harder for other reasons too; higher enemy levels and talent levels iirc, my bad
and they do still startscum even on insane... don't they?
also, another opinion, reiterated

I think the better question is whether players playing insane still startscum as much as they did and for what reasons they are startscumming. If starting money alters the need to startscum for 'some' (and not necessarily all) players then it is probably beneficial and within what Darkgod wants his game to be - discouraging towards unfun activities like scumming.

well by giving players less of an incentive to startscum(drowned friendly npcs not giving loot/xp), that would also discourage players from doing unfun activities like scumming
by also removing the extra starting money, you could also remove incentive to startscum, since players wouldn't be able to afford a movement or heroism infusion as soon as they spawn on nm+

in such a case, i think the game on insane+ would not be harder at the start than it is in dreadfell(for most class/race combos), since trollmire, kor'pul, escape from reknor, and the doomelf starting area never spawn randbosses on insane+, and I'd want a refresher for whether or not kor'pul or trollmire spawn rares before level 5; i know the other two places don't spawn rares at all
if the other starting zones are a problem though, then maybe all of them barring the following exceptions can be changed to not spawn rares or randbosses if you have the quest to do them; it'd specifically exclude:
ruins of kor'pul
rhaloren camp
heart of the gloom
the yeti caves
the deep bellow
one of the yeek starting zones, not sure which

all starting zones except for those would in such a case never spawn a rare or a randboss if you have a quest to do the zone