Stats That Remove Game-play

[Runescrye]

As a little disclaimer: I do not expect this to actually get implemented, but I still want to write it down to get the design idea out. While this post talk specifically about stun immunity, this can easily apply to most other status ailments.

To put it simply, items that give immunity to disabling status effect are detracting from the game-play value of TOME4.

I'll start with a simple example:
In Angband, it is a common practice (Or used to be, during the time that I played) to never venture below level 15 of the dungeon unless you have free-action. Why? Because at around that level ghouls and carrion crawlers start to appear, monsters that paralyze your character. These monsters had the nasty habit of locking the character in a state of permanent paralyze, as they keep hitting the player and refreshing the paralyze state, killing him.

What effectively happened here, that the entire content of getting paralyzed is in fact gone from the game, because any decent player would prevent the situation from ever happening by first acquiring the immunity. The design of having paralyze and items that grant you immunity to it created a situation that is very hard to balance:

Because the immunity exists in the game, and it is rather likely that the player will have it, to keep monsters that actually paralyze challenging they have to be strong enough to be a challenge even without that ability. Otherwise, they are just free exp/gold. However, that has the side effect of making them game breakingly powerful against any character that did not possess such immunity - leading to the situation above. The same thing happened with poison resist (Where at dungeon level 50, any character without poison resist will be standing at a risk of being one shotted by an offscreen Drulem. The famous "It breathes. You die."), and so on.

I'll extend that example to stun immunity in TOME4 and the various other disabling status ailments. By offering more or less easy access to such immunities, monsters will have to be balanced in such a way that will make not having the immunity suicide. I cannot imagine being stunned for several turns in the late game of TOME4 where a single misstep in the orc pride dungeons can get you killed.

If such an immunity did not exist, it shifts a lot of the strategy depth from the "deciding which equipment piece is best" phase to the actual-fighting-with-monsters phase which I believe to be the preferred situation.
When the "best" option before was to equip stun immunity and play as if it was any normal monster, now the player has to actively find ways to deal with the monster that stuns. Since there is no easy access to stun immunity, the monster can be balanced to have vulnerabilities that would have made it trivial had there been stun immunity in the game.

[edge2054]

Interesting idea.

Another thought with how stun is currently implemented is to simply cap the resistance like we're doing with other stuff.

That way the player still gets to act if he's only say 30% stunned and if he really wants he can use an infusion to get rid of the stun effect.

Other status effects would need to be addressed though.

[Grey]

Well there is a merry land between... With how stuns are at the moment having resistance maxed at 70% isn't so bad, as you still wouldn't be hit with the full stun effect.

At the moment I'd say there is no "must-have" 100% resistance in ToME4. Stun is the closest to it, but it's quite possible to get by with a low amount of resistance and careful play. Confuse isn't too bad because you can still get lucky and perform an action when confused. I'd say this is a non-problem at the moment.

[Hachem_Muche]

I'm not a fan of the various resistance caps, since I think they're going to come back and bite us later. As for achieving a happy stun balance, a relatively simple answer is to add a new "stun resistance piercing" stat to certain monsters that reduces the stun resistance of their target. So, for the carrion crawler situation above, a hypothetical level 50 carrion crawler might reduce stun resistance by 50%, requiring tactical decisions on the player's part, even if it's other attacks remained weak.

[Baker]

Effects like paralyze, stun and confuse are bad design on principle, since they take control of the game away from the player, which is something that should never happen. Especially in a self-proclaimed "tactical" roguelike, the survival of your character should always lie in your hands, not in the hands of a lucky resistance roll or equipment drop. This kind of thing works in Angband because Angband is ALL ABOUT grinding for equipment and continually upgrading your stuff, but since darkgod has been consciously moving ToME away from this model they simply aren't a good idea in this case. They just don't mesh well because they follow two completely different design philosophies.

A big part of ToME's design is that monsters and player characters are effectively the same thing, since they even inherit from the same Actor classes. A monster can theoretically do the same things as the character, which allows all kind of neat things and interactions, but it also causes an issue because of the fundamental premise of an RPG: You, the lone hero (or villain) standing against an infinite horde of faceless (and plain inferior) mooks. If the PC and the monsters were actually equivalent, you wouldn't stand a chance at survival. As such, the capabilities of the PC need to be lopsided in your favor, or it won't be much of a game.

As such, I'd personally take a different approach to what is done now. You're a hero, not some random nobody. You're literally a different class of creature altogether, being the immediate representation of the player in the game world. So make it official! Instead of having the player having merely the "elite" status, make him outright unique and give him a Hero tag that nothing else in the game can have, which confers an immunity to these sorts of effects while leaving them in the game to be used in your favor.

[Grey]

Baker, that would instantly make a large swathe of enemies extremely dull to fight. A tactical game needs challenges! Facing a stunning enemy without resistance? Then get a shield up quick, or use hit and run with ranged attacks. Facing an enemy that confuses? Then hide around a wall to lure him into melee and use a disabling attack yourself. These are what makes a game tactical instead of a boring grindfest.

[Baker]

The problem is that what you describe isn't really a challenge so much as an arbitrary cut-off-point for people with poor equipment. Do you really think it's fun to step around a corner, get insta-paralyzed by an enemy you couldn't see and die without being capable of doing anything about it, all because the RNG didn't decide to give you the correct kind of equipment yet? This is the kind of "gnome with a wand of death" kind of situation I've always hated in Nethack. It doesn't really add anything interesting to the gameplay, it's just frustrating because it makes you rely on luck instead of foresight and strategy -- "fake" difficulty, basically.

Compare it with a different kind of situation, that I would consider an interesting tactical challenge: There is a big, open room with a summoer in it. If you step into the open, you'll be quickly surrounded by summoned monsters. So you use a Smoke Bomb on the summoner, approach it while line of sight is interrupted and kill it this way. Alternately, you attack it once at range, step around a corner and wait until it comes to you in a constricted space. Or, yet again, use a wand of confusion on it, run up while its summing spells fizzle, and pummel it to death. Multiple options that do not rely on you getting lucky with your resistance equipment, but rather on you making creative and tactical use of the terrain and line-of-sight mechanics. Only the "wand of confusion" approach would require you to have a specific and possibly rare kind of item.

Another situation: You're up against three elf mages, all of which can cast AOE fireball spells. In the kind of game you describe, you'd simply rely on having as much fire resistance as possible and that would be that. What I would like to see would be a smart monster AI that considers the three mages allied, and as such unwilling to harm themselves or each other with their spells. So if you simply approached them in an open space or along a straight corridor, they'd blast you. If you instead used a spell of teleportation to jump right into the middle of their group, though, they would be forced to scatter or use weaker spells with no AOE against you, which you could more easily survive. Again, a situation that can be resolved in a fun fashion by making creative use of monster AI instead of "+x% to Fire Resistance."

Personally, I think the kind of spoiler-heavy gameplay you advocate is what has always turned by off of games like Nethack, the whole "have this resistance or be screwed" kind of endgame that revolves completely around assembling a specific ascension kit instead of simply playing well. I can see where you're coming from, but see how well what I describe works in Crawl Stone Soup, for example! That game doesn't even have stun or confuse effects that can be used against you, and it still manages to be challenging, fun and varied, with a legitimately difficult endgame.

In Crawl, you always know that you died because you screwed up and could've done something different and smarter. I think you can imagine how well that applies to collect-a-thon games like Nethack and Angband.

[Edit] Silly word filter.

[edge2054]

To be fair Baker, Tome4 is moving away from the required gear set up you're talking about.

Stun Immunity is no longer a must have though some measure of stun resist is still very important.

There's also been a lot of talk of making zero energy abilities usable while confused (which would allow you to remove confuse with an infusion of the wild and would fix the double retribution while confused bug).

[Grey]

Personally, I think the kind of spoiler-heavy gameplay you advocate is what has always turned by off of games like Nethack, the whole "have this resistance or be screwed" kind of endgame that revolves completely around assembling a specific ascension kit instead of simply playing well.

I think you're arguing against points that aren't being made here, and against features that don't exist either. For a start I personally debated *for* the recent nerfing of stuns in ToME. As the game stands now they're not nearly so crippling. Stun res items are pretty common too, there's no need to go out of your way to get them. It's nowhere near as bad as in Nethack. There are also no wands of death in the game and no instant killer attacks. Deaths in ToME4 come almost entirely through player error.

(Apart from those fecking skeletons equipped with voratun swords, grr - though DarkGod said he may fix that.)

[Baker]

To be fair Baker, Tome4 is moving away from the required gear set up you're talking about.

Yeah, I noticed that, which is why I said that insta-kill effects like stun and paralysis are particularly bad ideas in this case. They'd be a step back towards a situation where you need certain equipment, as you're setting yourself up for a loss otherwise.

I think you're arguing against points that aren't being made here, and against features that don't exist either. For a start I personally debated *for* the recent nerfing of stuns in ToME. As the game stands now they're not nearly so crippling. Stun res items are pretty common too, there's no need to go out of your way to get them. It's nowhere near as bad as in Nethack. There are also no wands of death in the game and no instant killer attacks. Deaths in ToME4 come almost entirely through player error.

Didn't you say that you think that stunning effects and such are necessary to create a challenge in the game? I was just giving some counter-examples, because I consider stunning and such a bad idea on principle. "Nowhere near as bad as Nethack" is already a good start, but I think gameplay could be improved further and made less frustrating by removing stunning against players altogether. Also, you wouldn't have to worry about balancing the power of stunning enemies versus the occurence of equipment and could focus on developing more interesting and challenging features instead.

[Grey]

Didn't you say that you think that stunning effects and such are necessary to create a challenge in the game?

I said removing stunning from enemies that currently stun would make them boring. At present they present a challenge, and a challenge that can be dealt with tactically rather than with mere luck. I like how ToME4 has ways of putting up shields or temporarily raising resistances so that if you think you're about to get hit hard you can do something about it. The stuns in ToME4 just aren't the same as the stuns in Nethack, both in how you can resist against them (as a reduction of effect and a sacing throw) and how you can behave to limit the damage.

I agree that in general paralysis type things are bad and shouldn't be overdone. That doesn't mean there's no place for them if implemented well.

[Baker]

Well, any feature can be fun if done well, I suppose, I just don't really see how stunning can be "done well." The biggest improvement so far seems to have been nerfing it, which only goes on to show that certain things are best improved by getting rid of them entirely.

I'll certainly agree with you that the new approach to active shielding is great, though. It's so much more involving and interesting to make defense an active part of gameplay instead of just another stat to grind for. I'd certainly love to see more of that.

[Grey]

Recent stunlock deaths? Not that I haven't had any myself, but only when I play sloppily.

And confusion I've always managed to overcome, though it can put one in a very precarious position. Still, you have to be fairly unlucky not to get off a Wild or a Regen infusion before the Confusion wears off.

[edge2054]

Personally I'd like to see confusion nerfed just enough to allow zero-energy activates.

From an in game perspective it makes some sense too. If an action is so trivial it requires no energy then it's easy enough to do even if confused.

[teachu2die]

i've had several very promising characters totally blasted by confusion. in a tactical-based game, its not good to leave any element like that entirely up to luck. there needs to be a 100% reliable way to remove the status. (that is to say, i very much agree with edge's proposal).

i think the way stun works currently is pretty decent. treating players and monsters the same is one of ToME's most exciting concepts and that should be preserved.

i agree with hachem regarding the resistance caps - i think the other solutions that people posted were more compelling and logical.