Game News Tales of Maj'Eyal v1.0.0 Released

[Stabwound]

Really, this game is a CRPG shoehorned into a roguelike game. The way it follows a linear storyline makes it pretty fucking boring to play with permadeath, especially with some of the design decisions. It may have been tweaked by now, but the biggest annoyance to me when I played was the random "boss" monsters that could spawn with absurd combinations of abilities and steamroll you in 1 hit. Shit like that.

Really, I am a huge fan of roguelikes, but this game doesn't seem like its designed to be played with the "permadeath" modes.

I see they now added an "item vault" where you can transfer items from character to character, which is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard of for a "roguelike" game. It's a single player game, sure, but there's still a competitive aspect and you have to admit that being able to pass items from character to character is stupid.

Also, I'm very butthurt about the donator-only bonuses and character classes, especially since you can't even use them unless you have an active internet connection while playing.

 

[Mackerel]

Achievements, "Lore", Dragon Age mechanics, online components, and a donation unlocked "Exploration mode" which gives infinite lives to "see the story unfold faster" are just a few of the attributes that almost make me believe it's a parody.

 

[Scruffy]

how do you pronounce this?

 

[Jasede]

Tales of Dingledang

 

[Hirato]

I see they now added an "item vault" where you can transfer items from character to character, which is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard of for a "roguelike" game. It's a single player game, sure, but there's still a competitive aspect and you have to admit that being able to pass items from character to character is stupid.

In before Bones levels.

It may have been tweaked by now, but the biggest annoyance to me when I played was the random "boss" monsters that could spawn with absurd combinations of abilities and steamroll you in 1 hit. Shit like that.

The game hasn't really changed as far as the permadeath aspect of it goes, once you start hitting your stride, you begin to encounter monsters that just obliterate you before you even know what happened, and by the time you reached the Far East, it's reached the ridiculous.
I have complained directly to DarkGod numerous times in the past too.

And as I said in another post, apparently you're meant to regularly invest in Constitution, and play cautiously by mapping out the level ahead with abilities like Arcane Eye, or that survival one that reveals the area in 9+ radius around you.

Not sure why you believe this is a good thing. According to what you said, all roguelikes have boring sections. Classic roguelikes make you go thorugh the boring section only on your way to a win while Tome4 makes you go through the boring section every... single... fucking... time.

Think of it more as a lull to get acquainted with the oddities and weaknesses of your character.
Especially if it's a unique combination you've not yet played before.
And even more so if it has one of those weird resources which doesn't naturally regenerate, or even decay, or even requires you to manually manage it in some other way.

Take the archmage's origin for example, half the idea there is to get you comfortable with jumping around with phase door to avoid your enemies and get a moment's respire.

 

[oscar]

This is my first rougelike and it's pretty fun. This with a fully procedurally generated random world would be the bee's knees.

 

[Stabwound]

Yeah, I know slow and methodical play with Arcane Eye and similar skills is one way to minimize risk, but holy shit does that get old fast. It reminds me of constantly searching in Nethack to avoid traps; a great tactic if the extreme monotony doesn't drive you insane.

I was thinking of taking it for a spin with this new official 1.0.0 release, but if the random deathfuck monsters are still in I don't think I'll bother. And I doesn't feel right to me playing in non-roguelike mode.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Neither Crawl, nor Tome are boring to me. I perceive them as different but equally good games.

Most "classic" rogue-likes, or even "modern" shit like DF, however I perceive as boring/inferior.

What's wrong with to each their own ?

There is a lot of awesome stuff in this game, but doing the same easy dungeons gets old eventually when you play on permadeath. Check back in around character number twenty.

Basically, it works like this.

Five hours of easy grinding. Then you get one shotted by a randomly generated unique.

Five more hours of easy grinding, then thirty minutes of fun, tense dungeons, then you take a cheap death to a gimmicky monster.

Five more hours of easy grinding....

Apparently they reduced the number of levels on some of the easy dungeons, so it might be only three hours of easy grinding nowadays.

 

[Hirato]

Apparently they reduced the number of levels on some of the easy dungeons, so it might be only three hours of easy grinding nowadays.

They haven't, they're all still there.
But if your level is high enough, you enter the dungeon at the final area, as opposed to the first, which will likely be the case for about 3 of the 4 optional beginner dungeons.

 

[GG Rex]

The biggest difference to most roguelikes is opposite distribution of difficulty. It's easy at start, gets harder in the middle and can get very hard closer to end if you haven't really made a powerhouse build. In Nethack, for instance, you p. much become immortal past midgame unless you do something really stupid (like drown). Same with Crawl, where most characters are discarded at the earliest levels.

Not sure why you believe this is a good thing. According to what you said, all roguelikes have boring sections. Classic roguelikes make you go through the boring section only on your way to a win.

Not sure what you meant here. Surely, nothing justifies "boring sections", whether at start or middle or end?

Tome4 makes you go through the boring section every... single... fucking... time.

Eh, the point of starting areas the way I see it is to get used to your class/race (there are 31 classes + races, so chances are you'll be trying something new every now and then).

If it's easy for you, your time in starting areas should take no more than 1 hour at *most* (if you decide to grind every single starting area for all monsters, which is completely pointless with XP scaling the way it does), probably something close to 15-20 minutes if you only go through 2-3 as intended with an easy starter class. And even the most basic of the starting areas like Trollmire and Kor'pul can still have dangerous monsters that punish dumb play (skellie archers, snakes), and bosses than can kill you if you're not careful (good luck making it through Kor'pul on your first try).

 

[GG Rex]

Neither Crawl, nor Tome are boring to me. I perceive them as different but equally good games.

Most "classic" rogue-likes, or even "modern" shit like DF, however I perceive as boring/inferior.

What's wrong with to each their own ?

There is a lot of awesome stuff in this game, but doing the same easy dungeons gets old eventually when you play on permadeath. Check back in around character number twenty.

Basically, it works like this.

Five hours of easy grinding. Then you get one shotted by a randomly generated unique.

Grinding is pointless, and XP reward scales down drastically so you should try new harder areas as soon as you can. You will hit 50 cap long before end even with "blitzkrieg play", so what's the point?

 

[Angelo85]

Half the day wasted, game is awesome! :D
I actually can't believe this is a free game, I would have gladly paid money for it (will in fact donate later today).

Second area of my first game - a grave. "Do you want to defile this grave?" Sounds like a good idea!
Damn, looks like I just woke up a level 23 vampire with my level 4 character... 3 turns later it's time to roll a new Character
The next time I encountered some graves I thought twice before opening one. The loot whore on my left shoulder urged me to open it, the carebear on my right shoulder yelled at the to get as far away from it as possible :D

Exploring another outdoor dungeon, suddenly a temple in the middle of a lake is spotted. If you run out of air, you die.
So I swim around the compound, making it to a little island near by. I spotted some stairs in the middle of the compound and figure I will barely be able to make it within the zone of "no return" (half the air supply).
I try my luck and actually make it to the entrance/stairs with about 55/100 air. Entering the temple I get a surprise - the temple is flooded as well!
So I get the hell out of there only to notice that I'm now at 45/100 air - past the point of no return. Now earlier I picked up the ability to teleport to a random location within a given range. I swim as close to the saving island as possible and press the teleport button while crossing my fingers.

And surprisingly I make it! My character on the brink of exhaustion desperately gasping for air lying in the sand and me sweating like a pig on the edge of my chair. Then the endorphins kick in.
Almost drowning was the best gaming experience I had in weeks, perhaps even months.

I love perma death, keeps you on your toes all the time and the gaming experience always stays intense. In every other generic RPG you would have just thought "oh look a thingie on the water... neat", went in there, explored as far as possible, died and reloaded. Same with the vampire. Open the grave, die, reload. Go to the next grave, get some loot. Go to the next - oh another vampire! Die, reload.

No level scaling, environmental hazards, interesting and unique classes. I'm loving it.


Speaking of environmental hazards there was another interesting dungeon, completely filled with sand. There's also huge sand worms digging in the sand and in order to progress, you have to follow these sand worms digging their tunnels.
The tunnels will collapse after a while and if you get caught up fighting in one of the tunnels you are in danger of being buried alive. So many awesome ideas in this game.

 

[Jasede]

While these are definitely worthy experiences I need to point out that if you like that sort of thing, almost any rogue-like will deliver. They're all about these tense life-or-death decisions. Fun genre!

The sandworms sound like a great idea though.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Grinding is pointless, and XP reward scales down drastically so you should try new harder areas as soon as you can. You will hit 50 cap long before end even with "blitzkrieg play", so what's the point?

Last time I played TOME, it was extremely rewarding to spend a lot of time clearing the bosses all of the easy optional dungeons (grinding), so that you would be better prepared for the harder dungeons to come. You could even find the coveted blood of life on the boss of a trivial newbie dungeon, so clearing them was highly recommended. But it meant spending a lot of time on trivial content.

I haven't played in six months though, so some things may have changed.

 

[Hirato]

Exploring another outdoor dungeon, suddenly a temple in the middle of a lake is spotted. If you run out of air, you die.
So I swim around the compound, making it to a little island near by. I spotted some stairs in the middle of the compound and figure I will barely be able to make it within the zone of "no return" (half the air supply).
I try my luck and actually make it to the entrance/stairs with about 55/100 air. Entering the temple I get a surprise - the temple is flooded as well!
So I get the hell out of there only to notice that I'm now at 45/100 air - past the point of no return. Now earlier I picked up the ability to teleport to a random location within a given range. I swim as close to the saving island as possible and press the teleport button while crossing my fingers.

And surprisingly I make it! My character on the brink of exhaustion desperately gasping for air lying in the sand and me sweating like a pig on the edge of my chair. Then the endorphins kick in.
Almost drowning was the best gaming experience I had in weeks, perhaps even months.

Spoiler

The underwater levels are littered with "bubbles" which replenish your breath really quickly, now go back there and clear it!
If you don't have water breathing kit yet, waiting for it isn't worth it.

 

[Castanova]

If it's easy for you, your time in starting areas should take no more than 1 hour at *most* (if you decide to grind every single starting area for all monsters, which is completely pointless with XP scaling the way it does), probably something close to 15-20 minutes if you only go through 2-3 as intended with an easy starter class. And even the most basic of the starting areas like Trollmire and Kor'pul can still have dangerous monsters that punish dumb play (skellie archers, snakes), and bosses than can kill you if you're not careful (good luck making it through Kor'pul on your first try).

I am in mortal danger with most Crawl/Nethack characters within minutes of starting the game. An HOUR before the roguelike starts getting interesting? Are you kidding me? There are people who can beat THE ENTIRE CRAWL in less than an hour. I'm not very good at the game and I've beaten the entire Crawl in less than 4 hours. As Stabwound pointed out, this game is only masquerading as a roguelike.

Half the day wasted, game is awesome!

Based on your comments, it sounds like you don't have much experience with roguelikes? If so, I suggest trying Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup once you've exhausted your enjoyment of Tome4.

 

[Fens]

entertaining game... until you finally get to a comfy level and setup with your character and then get one-shotted... and then repeat that... and again... and then you get the nag screen saying "this is a free game and it will always be one, but donate money pls so i don't starve" and then you read how you get unlimited respawns when you donate... and it gets a little... eh...

i don't mind paying money for good games... but don't pretend it's free, when it really isn't

 

[darkling]

LOL Am I seriously reading people whining about one shot deaths in a roguelike? Welcome to every single roguelike ever in the history of roguelikes. You guys are supposed to be ultra-tough hardcore RPGCodex badasses, laughing your way through ironman modes so what is this?!

Also, I'm very impressed with this release. I still prefer Stone Soup but this sure has come a long way from the cruddy angband variant I tried once a decade ago and ignored like every other cruddy angband variant!

 

[Fens]

it wouldn't be as bad, if the map changed from game to game (you know... like in a roguelike)... but it's still the same crap you have to wade through just to get one-shotted

pretty much this:

Really, this game is a CRPG shoehorned into a roguelike game.

 

[Shannow]

Being one shotted (and one shotting yourself) is shit in any game. Ddn't like TOME when I tried it. Can't remember why. Carry on.

 

[darkling]

it wouldn't be as bad, if the map changed from game to game (you know... like in a roguelike)... but it's still the same crap you have to wade through just to get one-shotted

pretty much this:

Really, this game is a CRPG shoehorned into a roguelike game.

So is ADoM not like a roguelike as well because the overland is the same and generally the progression is similar every time?

 

[Fens]

dunno... been a while, but i don't remember adom feeling so repetitive on subsequent tries

 

[GG Rex]

If it's easy for you, your time in starting areas should take no more than 1 hour at *most* (if you decide to grind every single starting area for all monsters, which is completely pointless with XP scaling the way it does), probably something close to 15-20 minutes if you only go through 2-3 as intended with an easy starter class. And even the most basic of the starting areas like Trollmire and Kor'pul can still have dangerous monsters that punish dumb play (skellie archers, snakes), and bosses than can kill you if you're not careful (good luck making it through Kor'pul on your first try).

I am in mortal danger with most Crawl/Nethack characters within minutes of starting the game. An HOUR before the roguelike starts getting interesting? Are you kidding me?

Both Crawl and Nethack are a walk in the park early if you pick an easy starting class (everyone but Wizard in Nethack, someone like who can Berserk in Crawl): same with TOME4, if you go with cookie-cutter build, it's easy, if you don't, it might not be as it will depend on your knowledge of the game. In fact it's almost impossible to die or fail in Nethack once you "know" the game, so not sure why you put it in the same sentence as Crawl or TOME4.

There are people who can beat THE ENTIRE CRAWL in less than an hour. I'm not very good at the game and I've beaten the entire Crawl in less than 4 hours.

How is "length" (more like decision to speed-run) relevant to roguelike's quality or a roguelikes being a roguelike. Case in point: ADOM.

It seems a pertinent argument is "I'm an expert at roguelikes, so I don't think this is a real roguelike", and then refer to Crawl as the ideal roguelike. Can you do us a favour then, and don't ever claim ADOM or Nethack and probably 99% other games we call "roguelikes" are in any way roguelikes either because they are much further removed from the "competitive" and polished standard of Crawl than TOME4. Not even to say that this standard is worth anything, since I personally find Nethack/ADOM to be more enjoyable precisely for their "unbalanced" and non-competitive aspects that give them charm.[/quote]

 

[Stabwound]

I'm going to give the game another shot. No, the game is definitely a roguelike, but the way its designed feels like it shouldn't be, or at the very least isn't designed with 1-life permadeath mode in mind. The fact that it offers non-roguelike death options should be a red flag from the get go. I don't know if its always been this way or if its just because of the recent surge in popularity due to the "OFFICIAL RELEAZE!!!" coming out, but checking the character vault, a VASTLY higher number of people are playing "Adventure" mode (which has a multiple life system) over "Normal" mode (which is the standard 'you die, you're dead'). It looks as though there's been 200 people playing Adventure mode over the last hour, while there's been about 60 playing permadeath mode.

If I recall correctly, many moons ago the 1-death standard roguelike mode was referred to as "hardcore" mode in-game.

The guy is clearly set on monetizing and making this game more popular, so a cynical person might assume he'll start to design it even further around the idea that "1-life" mode is something for the hardcore boyz and not the average player if more people are playing that mode. The game and website logs literally everything every player does if played in online mode.

Also, removing genre staples like consumable items (scrolls, wands, potions, need for food) removes a large part of roguelike strategy as well. Like it or not, it's an important part of the genre.

No, fuck it, the game is a CRPG with an ironman/roguelike mode.

And also fuck it, I just noticed that the new donator-only class is referred to as DLC. That should give you a clear idea of where he's going with this.

 

[Internet]

Exploring another outdoor dungeon, suddenly a temple in the middle of a lake is spotted. If you run out of air, you die.
So I swim around the compound, making it to a little island near by. I spotted some stairs in the middle of the compound and figure I will barely be able to make it within the zone of "no return" (half the air supply).
I try my luck and actually make it to the entrance/stairs with about 55/100 air. Entering the temple I get a surprise - the temple is flooded as well!
So I get the hell out of there only to notice that I'm now at 45/100 air - past the point of no return. Now earlier I picked up the ability to teleport to a random location within a given range. I swim as close to the saving island as possible and press the teleport button while crossing my fingers.

And surprisingly I make it! My character on the brink of exhaustion desperately gasping for air lying in the sand and me sweating like a pig on the edge of my chair. Then the endorphins kick in.
Almost drowning was the best gaming experience I had in weeks, perhaps even months.

Spoiler

The underwater levels are littered with "bubbles" which replenish your breath really quickly, now go back there and clear it!
If you don't have water breathing kit yet, waiting for it isn't worth it.

I think there also some items with water-breathing ability (I haven't tried the game in months).