Major project consideration: making the ToEE smarter

Ask yourself what you think is among the weakest aspects of ToEE gameplay. If the many threads here and elsewhere since ToEE's release are any indication, you'll probably say something to the effect of "I wish this game had a better story."

I would submit that the single most egregious part of this weakness is the lack of both long and short term community intelligence within the temple. Perhaps I can best demonstrate this with an example:

In the current campaign I'm running, I determined that from start to finish I would RP as though I had never done any of this stuff before. Therefore, I implemented a sensible (duh) strategy within the temple of using scouts - a sneaking ranger and rogue - to get the lay of the land, identify areas of risk, and pinpoint suitable targets for quick and brutal attacks, assassination style. Not surprisingly, these targets quickly became the various elemental priests.

Accordingly, I was able to carry out a successful and swift killing of Romag on temple level 1 as my first target. As there isn't much in the way of interferance between Romag's quarters and the temple exit, this wasn't too much trouble. But to make a long story short, I have abandoned this strategy because it's no longer fun. When I later returned to Romag's area, his troop commander in the adjacent room was unaware of Romag's demise, which had occurred maybe 2 days earlier. Likewise, other denizens of the temple who should be in the know were strangely unaware of any unusual goings on whatsoever, even if these events later came to include the deaths of major players within the temple, theft of various treasure, and even the demise of every living creature within the first two levels of the temple. The only indication that anyone knew anything was going on was Falrinth saying that he'd "been aware of my approach for some time." (Too bad he didn't share this knowledge with anyone. "Um, hey, uh, Hedrack? Not sure if you're aware of this, but there's a group of ass-kicking adventurer types plowing their way through the upper levels of the temple right now - they just killed Kelno - should be down here in maybe a week or so. Just an FYI, big fella.")

Suffice it to say, this sad reality has turned my campaign into a simple dungeon hack. I'm down to level three, slashing away, going from room to room killing monsters, oblivious to any repercussions I might cause because there aren't any.

Well, with the demise of Troika, the sad truth (to no one's surprise) is that no one is going to fix ToEE's story. No one but us.

My questions to the modding is community are:

1. Does anyone else see a weakness here?

2. Is anyone inclined to fix it?

Livonya has demonstrated that a complex and interactive story is quite possible through scripting with her Traders revenge plotline, so the fact is, this sort of thing could be done. It would take a massive effort though, no doubt, and that effort would have to be cooperative and well-coordinated. I know of two persons (neither of whom I have asked if they actually would want to be involved :blush: ) who would be very capable writers of new dialogue, of which there would need to be a great deal I'm sure - Lord Spike and Edwin. Other competent writers might step forward as well.

Up until now, the main focus of the ToEE modding community has been rules, stats, and items related fixes, as well as the larger engine dissection and toolset/frontend creation efforts of Agetian and dulcaoin. Has the time come for ToEE's most blatant weakness to be fixed as well?

I guess that's what I'm asking all of you. Who knows . . . if we get to the point where we understand and can manipulate ToEE's engine any way we like, maybe a "Queen of the Spiders" or "Against the Giants," courtesy of the Circle of Eight, could be next.

Wishful thinking I know, but what would you rather do, play Dungeon Seige? :shrug:

Let's hear what you all think.

Gaear

 

What does the module say is meant to happen? Lets say u roar and rampage through lvl 1 and get bloody satisfaction at the expense of the Earth temple - how are the others meant to treat you? "My enemy's enemy is my best buddy" or "kill them all, Iuz will know his own"? The scripting and such is easy enough, there are plenty of flags in the game already for when this or that cheif priestly type gets butchered, a consistent story is indeed the main thing we need.

I say we draft Edwin. He was on the Atari forums just a couple days ago. (And Spike Snr as well of course!) :thumbsup:

 

That's certainly a sensible starting point. Lord Spike, what say you? Grab Edwin by the cuff from wherever you creative types hang out and bring him along too.

One thing's for sure Ted, they'd react somehow. What they wouldn't do is be stoically ambivalent, even as you're darkening their very door.