Roguelikes, Bands, Etc

^ Yeah, that is pretty cool...

As much as I like Transcendence the ID game and need some meta knowledge to operate Terraton factory is freaking annoying...'course, the game is inspired quite a bit by Nethack...

edited 14th May '13 6:20:37 AM by onyhow

Roguelikes do tend to be horribly unfair, yes, but that's part of their charm. I don't mind needing to rely on Randomly Drops, since it just forces you to think on your feet and work with what you have. It's exhilarating.

I'd say, from the ones I play regularly, the Roguelikes sorted from least to most "Roguey" are...

• Tales Of Maj Eyal
• Doom The Roguelike
• Dungeon Crawl
• Ancient Domains Of Mystery
• PRIME
• Nethack

Still no deaths. Dion the Drakish Fighter and Varess the Cornac Arcane Blade are hanging in there. Let's see how long that lasts.

edited 14th May '13 8:12:20 AM by ShirowShirow

Here's the thing: to me, being horribly unfair points more toward the fact that the game doesn't have a good design and balance and is made horribly unfair just to pad the game length...consider that a lot of the unfair ones are from 80s (and even some of the 90s roguelikes, although I think that's more due to design tradition) and game design of that age even on consoles and such are the short and extremely, unfairly hard, well...and yeah, that's one of the main reasons why I have general dislike of older roguelikes...

Newer generation of roguelikes (ones that are less beholden to the Berlin interpretation, more willingness to break tradition, and/or is going past the band/hacklike comparison) and even games like Dark Souls have proven that you can still make games hard but still pretty fair...for example, you don't need to withhold ALL information, like Incursion and TOME who are damn open when it comes to that...

edited 14th May '13 8:22:13 AM by onyhow

Despite everything, every game you play of Nethack is beatable. It's hard, it's frustrating, it feels impossible, and I still haven't managed to beat it yet. But the Payoff is going to be oh-so-satisfying.

And (Almost) every aspect of these games is intentional. The Dev Team Thinks of Everything. It's ultimately an enormous puzzle you need to solve. I love it.

I like that they often withhold information. I like that information is a precious resource. Some of the games I dislike the most (Like a lot of MMO's) are ones where all the information is laid bare, and it becomes less about thinking creatively and more about minmaxing. It's not so much an adventure as it is a math equation. There's no discovery.

Ah well. Different strokes for different folks.

This is another reason I like DCSS

Because there's plenty of stuff to discover, but they do make an effort to give even unspoiled new people a fighting chance.

So you don't have to remember what the differences between corpses are because it tells you, and looking at a monster will give you its resistances and stuff while also approximating how tough they'll be, but there's also important stuff you need to learn, like do not let an Orc Priest get line of sight from a distance away; lure him to a corner, or just run the hell away

Really, I'm just geeking out about DCSS, i really like it

• Tales Of Maj Eyal
• Doom The Roguelike
• Nethack (Vulture version)
• Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
• Dungeons Of Dredmor
• The Binding Of Isaac
• Sword Of The Stars: The Pit
• Transcendence (kinda. Haven't really played a lot of it, mostly since it seems to have been abandoned.)

^ Transcendence is being actively developed, you just have to check the forums...

DCSS is pretty well balanced between the two extremes. Random thought: since I'm used to ADOM, I always feel like the spellcasters are neutered in that game. I mean a wizard in ADOM usually starts off with the ability to reduce a line of angry monsters to ash with one cataclysmic casting of Fire Bolt, while in DCSS I whittle away at rats with a teensy Magic Dart. The joys of unbalanced starting packages... Although the fighters are pretty strong there too, since they tend to one-shot anything they manage to hit. I guess it just makes actually one-shotting a monster in DCSS more satisfying though. I had a lot of fun with a Naga assassin who crept up on mobs as they slept. Think he eventually got cornered by a pack of gnolls. You certainly control more powerful characters in ADOM than in any other Roguelike I can think of, probably even eclipsing DOOM's marines.

Hm? That your personal list? A correction to mine?

Latest Death: Lyria the Valkyrie, vanilla Nethack. She kicked ALL OF THE ASS for a long time and actually spent a significant amount of turns blind. And as luck would have it, she found a way to get telepathy in the next room. She eventually got swarmed by elves though, and was dealt the killing blow by and elf lord. As if I needed another reason to hate elves.

edited 14th May '13 7:05:50 PM by ShirowShirow

Yep, that's my personal list. Of them, Dredmor and Isaac are my faves, I play Maj'Eyal off and on (even donated), just downloaded the latest Doom The Roguelike, and I have all three editions of Nethack Vulture (Vanilla Nethack, Slash'em, and...that other one).

The Pit is hella fun too, but the enemies and their attacks tend to be bullshit-level cheap near the end.

edited 14th May '13 7:12:51 PM by SomeNewGuy

I have Dredmor and Isaac. I should play the former again, but the latter has plenty of slowdown for me. Which is difficult to forgive on a gaming rig as strong as mine.

Yeah, I just recently got Vulture's Eye since the SLASH'EM default tileset was annoying me with its' flickering. It seems to be good luck, since most of my characters have been doing really well. Except that samurai that got paralyzed and killed by a Grid Bug.

One the only things that annoy me with Dungeon Crawl are the 1% chances when luck isn't on your side. Ever went down a pack of starts only to find 3 uniques in your line of site and all 3 stair ways in close position? Yeah happened to me once and there was no way I was going to be able to fight through them all, well with a Mage it was impossible. But as people have said on this thread 99% of deaths on Crawl are you're own fault.

Speaking of fault, Deep Elf Conjurer died to an Orc Warlord with a Crossbow. Moral of this story, just because you can clear Orc Mines 1-3 easily does not mean you can clear Orc 4 without having gone to the Lair first. That's what I get for getting cocky.

@Some New Guy: Yeah, VN probes and Warbots are nasty...

Yeah, I've had that problem. One notable time was when I fell down a shaft into a pit of Kobolds and Big Kobolds, escaped to an up stairs with maybe 10 hitpoints left and ran into Sigmund.

Needless to say I did not survive much longer.

Finally

Amazingly, my latest survivor in Cataclysm has not perished yet. In fact, he's gotten quite lucky. He found a Beetle in the parking lot of a nearby sewage treatment plant, he's found a good supply of food by raiding the refrigerators of local houses, and he's gearing up to get into a police station.

He's taken some hits but he's still alive. And his trusty butchers knife has seen him through quite a bit.

I tend to play Nethack, DCSS and ADOM, though I sometimes do play TOME. I never won yet.

-Gets a paladin killed by Gray Oozes and a Wizard killed by Blink dogs immediately after-

Give it a few years and you might complete the second quest.

Welp, that guy died.

Anyone who plays Cataclysm know why Pain seems to increase and decrease randomly sometimes? I couldn't get mine to go below 18.

Really, the only thing that turns me off from ADOM is the ludicrously tight time limit.

Time limits and Roguelikes should not be combined, IMO. Its the same reason I never played Alpha Man.

Time limits are kind of necessary for Roguelikes as a form of Anti-Grinding. Either that or a limit on how many enemies can ever spawn. It's why so many have a "Food clock".

I guess ADOM is rather brutal in that regard though.

Latest Death: Raven the Assassin. Somehow managed to poison himself despite already having poisons identified in three separate potion categories.

edited 15th May '13 8:32:36 PM by ShirowShirow

TOME doesn't have a time limit, it just has the limitation of "enemies don't respawn. Once you clear a dungeon level, it stays cleared."

It does, however, have one little area where you can access random dungeons. Which is always a gamble...

x4 That depends on how much pain your getting; if it's a whole lot, did you happen to get text saying that mushroom stalks are growing out of your hands? That effect is pretty brutal, but I had a char who managed to live till summer with it.

@Shirow Shirow: Tell that to Elona or Dredmor...

edited 15th May '13 10:28:19 PM by onyhow

Only recent thing that happened to the character was getting into a fight with a wolf-spider. He didn't get the fungus stuff. I didn't even know that could happen.

In that case I guess it's the poison, though it seemed less potent than that when I played.

The fungus effect comes from floating eyeballs; run very far from those.

Also, version 0.5 is out.