My dumbest death yet

[supermini]

Insane roguelike necro, working my way through Dreadfell. I get dispelled by a vampire lord archmage rare and so I phase door into the next room and rest to regain mana and bring my sustains back up. It finds its way into the room, and before I can react, I get time prisoned. While I am in time prison it activates invisibility (from a rune?) and so when I come out of...I'm dead?

Lets check the log:

Code: Select all

ShNe is returned to normal time.
Something leeches life from ShNe!
Veluba the vampire lord's cleansing fire area effect hits ShNe for 28 fire damage.
Something receives 4 healing from ShNe.
ShNe activates Uttercold.
Saving game...

Turns out I had my sustains auto-use when no enemy sighted, to reduce micro on resting. Right as I came out of time prison I auto-used uttercold. Twenty hours of effort (necro plays slowly on insane and I'm out of practice), lost, over auto-use. That's the price of playing roguelike I guess.

[cctobias]

IMO, people have the wrong idea about roguelike perma-death.

I consider it to be more like sparring versus competition. In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and other grappling type stuff (Judo, wrestling, etc), people enjoy the standard regular sparring more than drilling and its more fun than competition. This is because drilling is boring and competition is "conservative" in the sense that one mistake can mean you lose so you have to actually fight somewhat different, in that certain things you may want to do need to be EITHER prioritized in risk vs reward OR you need to be very deliberate in assuring that what might be risky now can be slowly improved until it is no longer risky. A particular submission for example can be risky at first, but as you isolate the joint of interest more and more it becomes less and less risky.

Thus I see roguelike not as "The way it should be played". Rather I think roguelike is something people should play in tournaments and Adventure is what people should play for fun. Now TOME 4 doesn't really have online tournaments like DCSS, but if it did this is what I would say people do. With added caveat that a couple weeks before a tournament you should play roguelike to get your mind into the swing of things.

Sparring (ie. Adventure) allows you to experiment and get a feel for things, it is a more comprehenisve and expansive way of making you better. Competition (roguelike) is to make sure shit works and its nailed down. One is not better than the other.

I don't go into a BJJ tournment without not only practising but also making sure my mentality is in the right spot to not do things that can put me into a bad position. The best way to do this is to spar for a number of months and GET into those bad positions. Then, equipped with that knowledge, you spar like its competition with an eye on making those bad situations crop up as rarely as possible. When you succeed at that goal you then can go into a tournament with a decent sense of confidence.

I would suggest the tension between Adventure and Roguelike follows a very similar path. And even go so far as to say that you will not be as good at Roguelike without "sparring" in Adventure, because you will always play very conservative and you will be unlikely to have pushed the boundaries. Simiarly you can't play Adventure alone and expect to be good at roguelike. The work together and there is a transitional period between them.

[supermini]

I don't play roguelike because "it's meant to be played that way", I do it, well, because it stresses me out. When I don't have a "padding", every time I end up in a dire situation I get a huge rush of adrenaline and my heart starts pounding, and then I have to think myself out of it if I can. That's what has kept me playing ToME.

My shadowblade insane winner wasn't as fun for me. I died once for stupid reasons, and I had blood of life, so had it been roguelike I would have still beaten it. I don't consider it to be less worth it for elitist reasons, it's because I didn't get such a kick out of it while playing it. If I screwed up there was always Eidolon.

While there is something in playing adventure and learning that way - and that's what I suggest to everyone - ever since I first started playing on roguelike, I preferred to learn the hard way. Restart after death, and keep restarting until you beat it. My first roguelike normal win a few years ago now was 37th restart or so. I went back to adventure after moving onto insane because I thought the best way for me to learn is by playing adventure, but I just ended up liking the game less.

But the thing is, random stupid deaths - from accidentally stepping into traps that you forgotten were there or some other random nonsense that happens because the egg timer went off and you had to go take care of that, or the phone rang, or someone was at the door, or it didn't occur to you that a convenience feature to prevent more clicks on rest can backfire - that ends up hurting a lot more.

That's what I was saying, it's the price I have to pay for playing it the way I like - roguelike. I don't mind deaths where it's because I made a mistake. I have, at times, ignored blood of life and let my character die, because I realized I made a tactical mistake and the character did not deserve to survive. It's the stupid ones that get me.

So while you are correct in your analogy - it just doesn't work for me. I only play this in tournament mode, because no other mode is fun. It's about the adrenaline.

[edge2054]

I can relate to that last post. I had a very promising rogue. I blew Blood of Life fighting Amathalon and that was it. I lost interest.

I don't like extra lives. It's just not for me. I'm drawn to the roguelike genre because of the permanent consequences. ToME is a bit long and we're still balancing a lot of the less fair deaths. I certainly don't look down at people that play adventurer or consider their wins to be worth less than mine. But without perma-death the game just isn't as interesting to me.

I can see the analogy though. On my last win I was playing fairly recklessly. I was on normal and I knew I could take some risks because the class I was playing had a lot of outs. Playing less conservatively can show you what you can get away with which can improve your overall strategy once you learn where those boundaries are.

[Micbran]

I play on adventurer. But when I first introduced my brother to the game, I didn't tell him you could revive after you died. Needless to say, when he almost died to whatever boss is in the heart of the gloom he was absolutely freaking out. Personally, I would say that rouguelike is for thrillseekers and people who want a challenge.

[cctobias]

I don't play roguelike because "it's meant to be played that way", I do it, well, because it stresses me out. When I don't have a "padding", every time I end up in a dire situation I get a huge rush of adrenaline and my heart starts pounding, and then I have to think myself out of it if I can. That's what has kept me playing ToME.

My shadowblade insane winner wasn't as fun for me. I died once for stupid reasons, and I had blood of life, so had it been roguelike I would have still beaten it. I don't consider it to be less worth it for elitist reasons, it's because I didn't get such a kick out of it while playing it. If I screwed up there was always Eidolon.

While there is something in playing adventure and learning that way - and that's what I suggest to everyone - ever since I first started playing on roguelike, I preferred to learn the hard way. Restart after death, and keep restarting until you beat it. My first roguelike normal win a few years ago now was 37th restart or so. I went back to adventure after moving onto insane because I thought the best way for me to learn is by playing adventure, but I just ended up liking the game less.

But the thing is, random stupid deaths - from accidentally stepping into traps that you forgotten were there or some other random nonsense that happens because the egg timer went off and you had to go take care of that, or the phone rang, or someone was at the door, or it didn't occur to you that a convenience feature to prevent more clicks on rest can backfire - that ends up hurting a lot more.

That's what I was saying, it's the price I have to pay for playing it the way I like - roguelike. I don't mind deaths where it's because I made a mistake. I have, at times, ignored blood of life and let my character die, because I realized I made a tactical mistake and the character did not deserve to survive. It's the stupid ones that get me.

So while you are correct in your analogy - it just doesn't work for me. I only play this in tournament mode, because no other mode is fun. It's about the adrenaline.

Yeah this is the way some people are in the analogy I was using too. To them they want everything to have the edge of competition. Personally I hate doing tournaments but I do them anyway because it has a certain value and that colors my previous post.

Thrillseeking, edge, realism. Whatever. People have various reason and they even bleed together. But it all lines up pretty close. Both in type of preference and the relative amount of people across the spectrum.

However I would add that even the thrillseekers sometimes acknowledge they need a way to experiment in fight-like (i.e. not drilling which would be like using debug mode) even if it seems a little placid to them. Similarly very few people like to drill, although those exist too, but almost everyone admits its necessary.

If I could when I do BJJ I would exclusively spar and do almost no drilling and very little competition. But I know that is not ideal and its not the way classes are run.

But you might as well do what you like, in the end this is a game and doing the "ideal" is not really something it really matters whether you achieve or not at least only if such a thing is a natural concerns of yours. Its just something to be aware of.

[Effigy]

@OP: Yeah, that sucks. I haven't died from this yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens to me eventually. I do the same thing with my sustains.

As for adventure vs. roguelike, I play them both sometimes. I usually do adventure mode when trying new builds, then play roguelike once I've already won with that build. I do like the thrill of playing roguelike mode, but some builds have high risk of dying during the early game so you end up having to restart a lot if you play roguelike exclusively. This is especially bad if you're playing Insane+ and have to waste of bunch of time start scumming before each run. It's nice to be able to play recklessly on adventure and see what you can truly accomplish with a build.

[edge2054]

I think for a lot of people that migrated over from Roguelikes without extra lives it's just habit. I've been playing on 'roguelike' mode since I was first introduced to Angband 20 years ago. I don't see much point in changing now