Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.nethack (
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On 9/8/05 5:46 PM, Jove wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Sep 2005 06:10:01 GMT, Kevin Wayne
> <killedbyafoo@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Basically, most of the stuff in Nethack is discoverable either
>> through observation and experimentation or through oracularities.
>
> And this is pretty much what the oft neglected, if not
> *completely* neglected, explore mode is for.
>
> Explore mode makes up for the fact that you're not
> supposed to learn by trying things, then restoring
> from an earlier save file.
Fair enough, but that's still not the issue in my mind. As I wrote earlier:
>> I don't disagree with anything you've written. The discussion I'm
>> interested in having, though, is a bit different than the perennial
>> "Can Nethack be won without spoilers?" debate.
> The point you may be missing is that things like damageproof
> armor and weapons are not requirements for ascending. They
> do make the ascending easier.
Well, very few things are actually *requirements* for ascending, as the
people who ascend with incredible conduct combinations show. But even
they are usually trading one trick for another.
> It's the quirky things that *kill* you that are the problem
> in this area. Especially the late game ones.
>
> Green slimes are a great example of this. I ate the first one
> I ever killed, and had no idea of how to fix the result. It was
> heartbreaking.
>
> According to rgrn dogma, when I saw the corpse of a new
> monster what I should have done was started a different game
> in wizard mode, wished for a green slime corpse and eaten it,
> and seen what happened.
Well, for what it's worth, I'd consider that type of strategy cheating.
Not least because on any decent system, wizmode would be inaccessible to
a typical player. Okay, okay, we all play on single-player systems
now, or we *are* the game maintainer. Nonetheless, wizmode isn't for
normal players to "try things out"; it's for debugging the program.
Now explore mode could be used for the scenario you described. But
finding a way to avoid having to deal with the unknown in a real
game--well, you may as well read spoilers, which is what we all end up
doing anyway.
> Then I never would have eaten the green slime in the real game.
> But I never would have learned how to fix the problem without
> spoilers. Going the wizard mode, or even explore mode, route
> to find out would have required trying one absurd thing after
> another, with no confidence that there even *was* a cure for
> sliming, other than praying when not in Gehennom.
Which is why, despite the protests of how the contents of spoilers can
theoretically be discovered by trial and error and observation, in
practice they almost never are.[1]
> On the other hand, once the effects of eating green slime
> are known, they can be treated just as well as cockatrice
> corpses are in that respect: Don't Eat Them.
>
> After all, eating a cockatrice corpse is an insta-death,
> with no reprieve short of an amulet of life saving.
Right, but you can get slimed without eating the green slime, and
petrified without eating the rubber chicken. For some unknown reason,
fire stops the sliming process, and carrying around a lizard corpse
(which magically won't rot) will keep you from being petrified. These
are the types of things that are nonintuitive, you either know the trick
or you don't, and once you do, it's simply a matter of rote to prepare
for them.
> Most of Nethack's problems/situations are best solved by
> knowing them and their solutions perfectly before you start,
> and preparing long in advance.
Another way of putting the same point.
> Some problems/goals and their solution requirements interact
> with others.
>
> Gaining stats and experience levels are like that. Higher Con
> and Wis will give you bigger Hp/Pw gains when you gain an
> experience level.
>
> Higher Cha gives you a better chance of gaining an experience
> level when interacting with foocubi.
>
> And you can keep benefitting from more "experience" even if
> your XP doesn't increase.
>
> I still find this whole interdependent process interesting
> even while totally spoiled about it. Which is good because
> almost the only way of doing it at all efficiently requires
> being totally spoiled.
Which is what people who don't like Nethack call the "artificial
difficulty" of it. You don't know the trick, you die. You do know the
trick, you live.
> I think the focus of Nethack should be more on exploring and
> learning than grinding determination get the perfect AK to Ascend
> or nothing.
I agree very much on this point. I doubt that I would play like Marvin
even if I could. In my own games, I don't price-ID much beyond scrolls
of identify; I don't credit-clone; I try to minimize wishes and
genocides (pulled off wishless-genoless-polyless recently); I don't kill
peacefuls (unless I'm chaotic, which I rarely play). I've ascended in
Orange Dragon Scale Mail before, and without reflection (don't recall if
that was one game or two), because that was the best equipment I found.
I prefer "use what you find" to "use tricks to kit yourself out to the
max."
These are personal preferences. I still see ascension as a goal; I
really don't comprehend players who like screwing around in the dungeon
with no particular end. But once you know how to do it, it's not a goal
at all costs.
> Another part of the problem is that once you know about
> Ascending in Nethack, *that's what you want to do*. Exploring
> the neat stuff all through the game is brutally shunted
> aside in favor of strip-mining every last spoiler to make
> ascension easier. (Like I did to maximize gains from experience.
> ;^)
True until you've done it once or twice. But by then, you're already
spoiled, which I guess is what you were talking about.
> With no spoilers there'd be less obsession with the absolute
> best artifact weapon, armor, tools, damage, etc. (Speed
> ascensions have shown
>
> Getting Grayswandir might be a once in a lifetime achievement.
> There's no problem with that. Played unspoiled, Nethack could
> easily be enjoyed for a lifetime without learning all its
> secrets.
Well, once again, we've veered off into the "Can Nethack be won without
spoilers?" debate. My focus is more on what the content of being spoiled
tells you, and how much that affects the game. Learn a few arcane tips
and tricks, and all of a sudden you're getting past the Castle and
poised to become a regular ascender.
> Another problem is that, perhaps as a result of the public
> player focus on Ascension and score, the difficulty level of
> the game seems adjusted for the Marvins of the world. Which
> leads to more demand for spoiling the game.
Plenty of people, myself included, have argued that the game is actually
too easy, especially in its later stages. That's kind of the point I'm
making; learn the tips and tricks that get you past the early game, and
all of a sudden, you're winning and deciding to challenge yourself with
conducts.
A good counterexample is Crawl. People who like Crawl seem to like it
for two reasons: challenging gameplay throughout the game, and much more
straightforward techniques of gameplay. The difficulty comes from the
monsters, not from not knowing to keep a lizard in your main inventory
when there's a new moon.
Now, for me, Crawl is prohibitively difficult. I can't get more than a
few levels down in it. And I don't like entirely text-based shops and
the absence of some of the playful anachronisms and cultural references
that you find in Nethack. But I do understand the irritation that people
have with the type of challenge that Nethack presents.
> Don't get me wrong. I like Nethack the way it is. (I play
> it enough. ;^) But I'd like to find a way to make its rich
> environment more accessible and satisfying, and less frustrating,
> to people who *aren't* top players.
>
> Some kind of limited goals that permit starting and finishing
> an hour, a few hours, and a day of play. There's definitely
> enough substance in Nethack to make that possible.
Well, the various subordinate goals in Nethack--Sokoban, getting to
Minetown, getting the Luckstone, doing the Quest, raiding the Castle,
etc., tend to provide that for me.
Anyway, interesting discussion!
Kevin
[1]You and others have mentioned Krysius Krusader as a counterexample.
It's often forgotten that he had a strong knowledge of D&D, and so
functioned as a somewhat spoiled player. For the same reason, he missed
some elementary spoily stuff, like the existence of resistances, which
he attributed to somehow always making his "saving throw."
--
Kevin Wayne
"You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
--Miracle Max
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