Talent system optional
issueid=1182 08-15-2012 10:33 PM
Senior Member
Number of reported issues by aerol: 71
Talent system optional
Make it possible to opt out of the talent system via a configuration variable

I am personally not a big fan of the talent system and I feel like having the option of turning it off would result in a more seamless playing experience for anyone who wouldn't mind playing without it. This could be handled the way questioned attributes are handled: have it be on by default but have a configuration variable so that if it is added to adom.cfg, the talent system is turned off. As a result, the talent selection step would be skipped from character generation and level advancement, and on the .flg at the end of the game, a message could be displayed to the effect of "He did not have any special talents".
Issue Details
Issue Number 1182
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Implemented
Priority Unknown
Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 1
Implemented Version ADOM 2.3.5
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 5
Votes against this feature 21
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




08-15-2012 11:28 PM
Ancient Member
New challenge game: Untalented Man :)

08-16-2012 12:37 AM
Senior Member
An alternative approach could be to simply have a new Talent at character creation, "Untalented"... but you can only pick it first. If it's chosen, perhaps you could get some little bonus to the character, but with the side-effect of not being able to get any more talents. Something like, say, giving the player one extra skill increase every second level up, or something. Just something to make it feel like being Untalented isn't a completely useless option for anything other than a challenge game.

And having it specifically marked on the .flg file would give a second little bonus for those who choose it.

12-21-2012 10:02 AM
wzq wzq is offline
Junior Member
There could be a choice on character creation to receive the new talents randomly. So no extra effort in choosing talents but you still receive some bonuses.

12-21-2012 10:58 AM
Ancient Member
I am personally not a big fan of the wilderness. I would like an option to turn it off in the most current version of the game just for me for the doubtless multitude of players who share my view.

(The talent system requires virtually no effort on your part. There are tons of really simple talents in the list - "+1 DV", "+1 to hit" and so on. Even if you just pick one at random you'll get a minor bonus, and even if it's completely useless it will hardly impact your game at all. Even if this feature took no more than 20 minutes to implement it would still be a waste of Thomas' time.)

12-21-2012 11:11 AM
wzq wzq is offline
Junior Member
I actually like the talent system and agree that it is easy to use, so it is not an important issue. But there already is a chance to randomize race, class, sex and attribute questions so I thought it would fit nicely and could be implemented (if it's easily implemented).

12-21-2012 02:07 PM
Senior Member
It's all about choice. Keep in mind that there is already an option to turn off the questioned attributes system.

If this does turn out to be very complicated to code into the game, perhaps a way to randomize talents would be a good alternative as wzq suggested.

12-21-2012 04:07 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by aerol
It's all about choice. Keep in mind that there is already an option to turn off the questioned attributes system.

If this does turn out to be very complicated to code into the game, perhaps a way to randomize talents would be a good alternative as wzq suggested.
There is already a way to randomize talents. Just click random key once talent choise screen appears.

01-08-2013 05:47 AM
Senior Member
I am aware of that and these days I just press "a" whenever the talent selection screen comes up. This is just a request for something optional which would streamline an aspect of the game for a minority of players making their overall gameplay more fluid and pleasant, just like "Questioned_attributes = false" does for those who'd rather skip that step on character creation. Being able to turn talents off would be great. A way to automatically randomize them (thus skipping the selection process) would be the next best thing.

03-02-2013 09:05 PM
Senior Member
Yet another option, which is slightly more complicated and could be a little more complicated to implement, but a lot of people could get behind, would be a way to preselect talents via a configuration variable, thus skipping the selection process but still choosing specific talents. This would be a nice feature not just for people who don't care about talents or taking the time to choose them, but also for the people who like talents but regularly pick the same ones in successive games.

08-20-2016 02:58 AM
Senior Member
It'd be nice to have this at least considered for inclusion in Deluxe :)

08-20-2016 09:17 AM
Junior Member
What Silfir said. If something can be completely ignored in the game, why should it be disabled with extra effort?

08-20-2016 03:13 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by Silfir
I am personally not a big fan of the wilderness. I would like an option to turn it off in the most current version of the game just for me for the doubtless multitude of players who share my view.

(The talent system requires virtually no effort on your part. There are tons of really simple talents in the list - "+1 DV", "+1 to hit" and so on. Even if you just pick one at random you'll get a minor bonus, and even if it's completely useless it will hardly impact your game at all. Even if this feature took no more than 20 minutes to implement it would still be a waste of Thomas' time.)
I can't agree with you.
It drastically increases character reroll time - normally you only need one or two keystrokes to create a new character if you've set things up properly, and those keystrokes are always the same - but with talents you have to select the same talents again and again, and due to differences in talent availability they don't even have the same letters,it takes something like 80-90% of the character creation time.

That's why ability to remove talent selection would be welcome - either via some preselect sequence (i.e. you set several talent sequences and the game randomly selects one that is available among them), or via a smart random class and playstyle-dependent autoselection (i.e. if you are always overloaded - it starts giving you Beast of Burden talents, if you are a caster - bookcasting ones, etc).

03-18-2017 07:01 PM
Senior Member
Hear hear to above comment.

03-20-2017 06:38 PM
Ancient Member
You can't currently forego the talent system in a way that is 100% guaranteed not to influence your character with talent bonuses, & permits you to choose the exact same character creation options from muscle memory without variation (since # of talents is random). This is the only solution. It would also be very trivial to implement. No earthly reason for intelligent people to reject this idea.

03-22-2017 09:53 AM
Junior Member
Man, I just love people who degenerate opposing opinions to the people not being intelligent.

03-22-2017 06:29 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by auricbond
You can't currently forego the talent system in a way that is 100% guaranteed not to influence your character with talent bonuses, & permits you to choose the exact same character creation options from muscle memory without variation (since # of talents is random). This is the only solution. It would also be very trivial to implement. No earthly reason for intelligent people to reject this idea.
  1. If this change was implemented I would probably never take advantage of it.
  2. I don't want another configuration setting that I will never use cluttering up my adom.cfg file.
  3. There are hundreds of RFEs that I am more interested in seeing implemented, and TB's time is extremely limited.

I think these are perfectly valid and sufficient, if selfish, reasons. For me to vote (or post) against my self-interest would require me to empathize with the people who would want this implemented. In this case, the complaint is too petty for me (something like five seconds per character); calling me an idiot doesn't help either. For reference, I did vote yes for the infinite inventory option RFE (4516), even though the listed reasons also applied.

03-22-2017 11:35 PM
Junior Member
Plenty of earthly reasons for people to vote no on this one. {shrugs} ..If the creator decides it's a trivial thing to implement and he wants to do that, I'm sure he's capable of making that decision.

03-23-2017 06:11 AM
Ancient Member
Not sure I find any reasons for 'yes'. If you want reroll into something specific, just use rolling script (there was one published semi-openly).

I would say it would be rather intelligent not to mess with marginal stuff until resurrection campaign promises are fulfilled

03-23-2017 11:30 AM
ixi ixi is offline
Junior Member
All the reason to vote again mentioned above are valid for me. One more reason - Team ADOM and The Creator invested their own time, effort, their heart and soul. They implemented it because they liked the idea. By submitting an RFE to allow toggling it off you're just saying you don't like the idea and trends. Well, you do have a right, but it doesn't show much of respect to TB's effort.

As for the most popular reasons to vote 'yes':
- If you don't want to bother with talent choices - why wouldn't you rather ask to make talent selection decided by fate? It's much more in the spirit of ADOM and will keep talents used. Though isn't that trivial to implement.
- If want fast re-roll - submit an RFE accordingly to start a game from main menu or even upon game lunch with one click or keypress as per adom.cfg / fate. Sounds much more reasonable to me and it would be really useful for those who want just lunch the game and play it right away.
- Like the idea, don't like the implementation? Rather submit and RFE for improving talent system than. Or let the Team to focus on existing ones.

03-23-2017 02:54 PM
Junior Member
I agree with the above posts. There are currently more important things to focus on than something like this. I don't believe it is that hard to just randomly select a talent, and I'd rather the focus go towards the bugs and additional content that needs to be added still.

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