I know your time is precious so I will get straight to the point
1.) Official gamepad support.
PLEASE consider doing this ol' DarkGod! There's a plethora of ways you could use the controller to play ToME. Something like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Elite Dangerous and even Tangledeep would work well for ToME. IIRC Elite Dangerous you have all your normal buttons ie. X, B, A, Y, L2, R2 then you can combo inputs; say press & hold say R1 then hit another button ie. R1 + X, R1 + B, R1 + A, ect. doubling your amount of functioning buttons on the gamepad! Its been awhile but I counted and ended up with 50+ keys just using a gamepad doing it that way. No matter which option you choose, it would be a Godsend to have official gamepad support and much appreciated by many.
I desperately want to be able to play ToME via Steamlink as I spend most of my nights relaxing on the sofa with my wife playing Steamlink on my tablet with my xbox controller. I also like to fire games up via Steamlink on the big screen tv while kicking back with my feet up. It pains me that I can't play my favorite game using those methods. I am sure am not alone. I also think having bonafied gamepad support will open up the possibility of putting ToME on Steamdecks and porting the game to mobile/Switch someday if you wanted. Bottom line: Please give us gamepad support ;D
2.) In-game stat tracking/Bestiary/High Scores.
I know we can visit te4.org to view our past characters and all our achievements and things like that but it would be incredible if we had some stat-tracking/high scores in-game to view. A bestiary would be welcomed as well with lore, their in-game picture/artwork and maybe even how many times we've encountered said creatures, time's we killed them and times they killed us. The fact ToME lacks this is probably my biggest gripe. I really enjoy my roguelikes to have good stat tracking for me to view as that in its self is a form of achievements for me. High scores or maybe just Winners in-game would be nice so we don't have to fiddle on the website to find our best toons not that I have a problem with te4.org just would be nice to have a one stop shop sometimes haha And yea, a bestiary just because there is so many cool and interesting monsters in this game.
3.) Necromancer pet builds still suck
Pets are just too squishyI spent the entire month of December playing nothing but Necromancer pure pet builds on Nightmare/Roguelike and never made it past level 30. Well maybe 1-2 times but died soon after. Never could go Lich. The entire experience was frustrating. Sure, Necromancers can be powerful but you have to play them as a spellcaster. For those of us who want a more traditional necromancer experience--it's near impossible. The only successful pet build I've seen weren't really even pet builds but had a few points here and there into skele's or ghouls with most focus on spellcasting. The problem with pet builds is the pets themselves aren't strong enough once you get to late T2/early T3 dungeons. At that point, they don't stay alive and your poor necro will get smacked hard. Necromancer pets could use a bump in HP/+Damage all around.
One idea is have Aura of Undeath bump their resistances even more along with giving them more HP/+Damage? Another idea I had was to make it so skeletons/ghouls can recover HP from 'corpses', eating the flesh of dead enemies that recovers health and maybe gives them a damage boost. Oh and bone giants.. they are pretty much useless because they are too slow and just don't hit hard enough. There's lots of ways to go about this but ultimately, pets just need a buff. Everything else about the necromancer is good, maybe OP for some things but pets? Going with nothing but pets and a shield sucks lol It's really bad.
4.) Summoner class rework.
I am really hoping you're able to rework the Summoner class someday like you did Necromancer. It's a very weird class that is massively underwhelming in nearly all facets. It's also very linear compared to other classes with build variety in that there is pretty much only 1 maybe 2 ways to build a successful summoner. Of course we can go AM and change up the races to shake things up but in terms of skills, its pretty linear. The 'combat techniques' category is SUPER out of place for the build too and should be removed entirely. Feels like its there to screw noobs because no one in their right mind is going to try to be a fighter with a summoner lol (yes, I tried it before) The only way you can do somewhat good with that class is to avoid combat at all cost. It's so weird to see that category in this class and really needs taken out in light of something else that we might actually use.
I was thinking a fun category for the Summoner would be Druid with druidic themed skills.
Summon Forest Champion - Summon Ents to fight.
Way of the Grove - an aura that increases armor and health/health regen for you and your pets similar to Necro's Aura of Undeath.
Animal Guide - Target a summoned creature. That creature no longer needs to be resummoned, remaining in play and receives a big boost to health/damage/resistances/size category similar to Lord of Skulls.
Spirit of the Forest - AoE spell. Target area becomes overgrown with nature. Any foe inside is entangled with vines that slows them, increases cooldowns by % and have a % chance to be silenced/disarmed. When one of your minions is inside they receive health regeneration & increased damage. Randomly summons a creature (protector of the woods) to fight. Summons that die inside get resurrected.
While on the subject of Druids. If you don't want to give summoners a Druid category or just like the idea of having Druids in Eyal, what about a new metaclass for Wilders instead? Would get my vote!
Another category for summoners would have to be something darker, more vile. Something like a 'blighted/corrupt' summoner that makes all your pets evil or that spreads disease, inflicts nasty debuffs and bends nature into horrible things. I haven't come up with anything like the Druid in terms of what it should be called or type of skills am thinking but you get the idea. Give us an 'evil' class category to use should we want to take our summoners down a more sinister way of dominating our foes. You're DarkGod so I have no doubt it would be easy for you to make us an evil summoner category haha <3
5.)to be continued... ran out of time haha
That's all for now. I am out of time but really the main thing I'd like to see is added Gamepad support so I can enjoy this game all the time ;D That's my biggest wish out of all this. Thanks for your time and considerations DarkGod. I really appreciate all your hard work and everything you've done to make ToME my favorite game of all time. Super excited for the future and can't wait to see what you have instore for us next. You're the best! Until next time