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Erik Piper wrote:
> bork bork bork Peter Borgmann bork 10:22:41 AM bork 11/24/2004 bork
> bork:
>
> While we're at this (I've thought every now and then of posting some
> thoughts on the "big four" myself)...
>
>>> Nethack/Slash'EM - Too much doesn't makes sense and just annoyes
>>> (besides, I got bored with it).
>>
>> Agreed. If I would have to eliminate all the annoying stuff from
>> Nethack, a game very close to Crawl would be the result. ;-)
>
> If I had to eliminate all the stuff from Nethack that annoys ME, a
> game very close to a "now there's an @ and you can move it" pre-alpha
> demo would result.
))
Ok, I better should have add "if I could" ;-)
> Still, it's obvious there are plenty of masoc... I mean users who
> enjoy it, since it's quite possible got more discussion than rgrm,
> rgradom, and rgrangband combined. Why they enjoy it, however, I do
> not know. Perhaps it was just their first call of port in the
> roguelike world, and they identify the things that are fun about
> roguelikes overall with Nethack in particular, and look no further.
Actually, Nethack was my very first roguelike and I played it for more
than 4 years. I enjoyed the game very much, obviously... What I now find
is wrong with Nethack is the kind of 'artificial' difficulty. Nethack is
pretty hard for beginners, but not because of it's monsters, just
because there are so much hidden and odd rules.
I tend to call chess a reference to a perfect game: it has one of the
easiest rules I can think of, but is still one of of the most complex
games (probably only beaten by Go). And that's the problem with Nethack.
Once you've learned all the silly rules (as in 'reading all the spoilers
around'), the game is much less difficult and tends to become boring.
That's what I like with Crawl: the monsters have to be a never ending
challenge while the rules are as easy and straight forward as possible.
>> Sure, no more maintenance is a sad story, but still - currently the
>> best roguelike around, IMO (of course) and compared to the ones I
>> know...
>
> It's hard for me to say a roguelike is "best," because there are
> several I like quite a bit and usually whichever Roguelike I'm
> playing at a given moment seems "the best" at that moment. Unless
> it's NetHack, of course...
Same goes for me, that's why I even tried to relativate with "IMO",
something I usually don't since IMO is some kind of a 'globale context'
for all my statements.
Or in other words: AOL! ;-)
> On the other hand, until recently, I swore it would be years until I
> picked up Crawl again, it was just THAT frustrating for me.
Strange enough, I don't have any problems with this. Most of the time I
even play random characters which, as you can imagine, highly increases
my death-rate even more. And though most of my chars have a lifespan
shorter than flies, I still enjoy exploring new features/items on the
first few levels. (Currently I stray from this path by playing a
(choosen) HECj which, now at clvl 10, actually seems to have some
potential). But I'm always assuming to die behind the next corner,
everything else I take as a welcome surprise.
>> If I wouldn't have found Crawl, I would still play it, Oangband in
>> particular.
>> [...]
>
> Not much for Vanilla Angband, not much for most variants either, but
> I REALLY REALLY enjoyed ToME (so much that I played it into the
> ground, burnt out on it and picked up Crawl again).
> [...]
ToME was my entry to the Angband family, mainly because of it's optional
persistant levels, a pretty half-hearted implementation of persistant
levels which, in this form, doesn't make much sense in a 'bandish
environment. In the end I was somewhat disapointed by the (so
promising!) concept of the weapon- and sub-mastery skill system. It just
doesn't feel right to me if I concentrate on axemastery for instance,
but still doing significantly better with a chaotic long sword for more
than half of the game (though I already had one of the best axes around,
the 'Great Axe of Durin'.
I've also found ToME the most unbalanced (_not_ as in 'difficulty
against the player') of any 'bands I played after ToME (Oangband by the
way probably is the best balanced of all 'bands). With '98 quests' for
instance you can scum until the doctor comes, having a full developed
character with still half of the game in front. Ok, you can skip most of
the remaining part then, but does it make sense?
Or just compare the good available weapons for polearm- and axemasters:
though it even was unbalanced in favour to polearms, they decided to
declare even more axes (e.g. the Lochaber Axes) into the polearm group.
Discussions in the ToME forum ended with a "if you don't like it, then
don't play axemasters". That silly comment (from the co-developer) was
the final show-stopper for me.
Besides, a game being not maintained anymore is one thing. A game of
which new versions are released about every 6 month, but with known bugs
still remaining along 3 or more versions is just another story...
Rubinstein