I think it's enough to make your game easier with race/class choices.
Personally I hate the idea of different difficulty settings.
Maybe a explorer setting where you could experience the game further but no more. No high score entry etc. when you use this. I have always loved the fact that the game is what it is, no cheats, no extra lifes, no "easymode". First time I won was really a big thing, not something you expect when you start playing. It took many years and a lot of learning, which seems to lack from many games today.

EDIT: Actually I don't like the idea of explorer mode when I think about it. It spoils too much.

ok, but what about challenge games where you make it even harder?

also, if someone else makes it easier to learn the game, how does that impact you?

+1 to this.

I think there are plenty of challenges you can implement yourself to make the game harder. TB does have plans to make the game recognize certain challenge victories (eg. Ironman) with special achievements, and I believe ADOM Deluxe will have an explorer mode.

I think some Rogue-likes have a feature where, if you die, you can replay the last few turns before your death or something. Give you a chance to try a few different options and see if you can figure out how to survive. I think this might be a nice optional training tool if it can be implemented sensibly.

Gosos, I like these ideas. But, once again, it is going to be hard to convince most people that this is the way to go. A while back we had a lengthy discussion on matters related to this, and most posters agreed that it was best to limit the choices that players have, difficulty wise. They felt like the average individual who was first starting to play ADOM should not be allowed to decide how difficult the game was, because it might limit the amount of time they spent playing it.

Basically, the veteran players on this board think that they "know what is best" for newbies. They don't think new players should be able to use tools like an easy mode to learn how to play the game, because that is not the way they learned, and they think that their way of learning is the only way anyone else should learn. It's amazing to me how "anti-choice" most veteran players are in a number of ways, actually.

I find that approach very patriarchal, personally.

What I find kind of funny is that, along with what was mentioned as class adding difficulty, being ignorant of much of the game makes it extremely difficult. That almost means that it stays the same difficulty unless you don't choose more and more difficult classes. I think it's fine as it is right now, at the beginning you try to learn, later on you try to play interesting roles that might be a lot more difficult.

Well, to be fair, you don't need to convince veteran players, you need to convince TB. If he likes your idea, it doesn't matter how many people vote for it or against it.

Oh, I am sure Thomas feels very much the same as the veterans. No matter how much I love his game, I vehemently oppose many of Thomas's views on the role of player choice, and I absolutely cannot understand the lack of transparency in the way he presents gameplay mechanics.

I've said this before, but everyone who opposes self determination by players really should read the dedication in the ADOM readme. Thomas believes the freedoms he has been given are a major determinant of who he is.

Heck, maybe He should read his dedication if he agrees with you guys.

People were given free will for a reason. I guess either you (and he) understand that, or you don't.

I don't believe free will exists (or it's insufficiently well-defined for me to say anything about it), so that's kind of a moot point with me. But that's an argument for a different thread.

I don't believe that increased player choice necessarily corresponds to better games though. For new players, choice is bad, if anything, since you don't have enough experience to evaluate whether or not your choices are good. I had this problem when I played an alpha version of the Rogue-like game Cataclysm. There were a huge assortment of options you could pick, and I had zero idea what any of them did, which were important and which weren't--hell, the game was in alpha, so I didn't even know which were implemented. It was a completely useless screen to me, and did nothing but make the game feel more confusing.

I do think that making really good, really difficult games is a bit of a lost art these days though. There are very few games anymore where winning is an achievement rather than an inevitability.

That kind logic of runs afoul of the whole concept of a criminal justice system, doesn't it?

For instance, the next time a police officer pulls you over for speeding, just try telling him: "I couldn't help it, officer, I don't have free will."

Maybe we should take away your free will in situations that you don't have much experience in?

If doing something infringes on others' rights, it's illegal, the cop doesn't care what your excuse is, just like how they expect you to read up on every single law even though that would take forever. lol

Back on topic, another idea for if they made an adventure mode would be to get rid of item destruction and stat drains and then give no highscore entry for it. It would kind of remove a lot of the interest in the game but what's a new person to do if they don't know much about altars(to get artifacts) or farming and most of their good stuff is destroyed from an exploding rune or they get stat drained like nuts and don't know how to train stats up?

KyoShinda, I totally agree with that idea, but most other players don't, hence the whole free will discussion. Most veteran players don't think newbies should be able to choose to play the game in such an adventure mode. They think new players shouldn't be able to choose to play the game in ways that will make it more accessible or enjoyable.

I think it really depends on the amount of time you want to play the game. People who have played it a long time don't mind spending a lot more time playing it. People who aren't used to this amount of trial and error can't stand it very long.

I switch between games about every week, I expect to at least make some good progress in whatever game I'm playing. In adom that can be pretty difficult, but I keep telling myself that this is a different kind of game. If I start failing a lot, I move onto another game for a while. It's kind of like, if there was an easier mode, it would 'compromise' the gameplay, but at the same time might also keep me interested in the game instead of completely ditching it. Although, most other games aren't as in-depth and challenging as this one, which usually brings me back to it, so that might be another argument against the easier mode.

Unfortunately, the officer doesn't have the free will not to give you a ticket ;)

Sure? I'm quite happy to have fewer choices in circumstances when I can't evaluate them, especially when some of those choices can lead to significant harm to me or others. We rely on that type of system all the time. I have no experience skydiving, so I'd imagine that, if I went skydiving, I'd probably want to have a professional skydiver with me to show me exactly what to do so that I don't screw it up and kill myself. I'd greatly prefer that over having the freedom to decide how I want to pack my parachute.

If you want to discuss this seriously, we can make a free will thread in the General Discussion Forum.

For the rest, I like the Dwarf Fortress philosophy: "Losing is fun".

Okay, I'm about to go to bed, but let me know in the morning if you want to make one if you want me to.

Talk to you soon.

I also brought up the option to make the game harder.... maybe make it unlockable. if you get enough points and enough wins you can unlock 'nightmare' mode and 'insane' mode. this can have a risk/reward change. Basically the game is far less forgiving. so you make a mistake you die quicker, but your character can get stronger. Or you can just make it harder for people. This would be on top of the 'ultra endings'. Not sure why the 'veterans' care whether new players want to make it easier so they get into the game. It doesn't affect them or how they play. I also like the idea of making the game more difficult with things other than race/class combo.

I had a lot of fun playing this insanely difficult game. Then when I reached a certain point of experience the games started feeling like routine and not difficult. Each one different, but mostly the same. This is the point where I started challenging myself with restrictive games and it started being more fun again.

I think ADOM is at the right difficulty to keep people playing it and it has virtually unlimited ways to make it more difficult through restrictive challenges or R/Cs without explicitly coding difficulty levels. Only some of the bugs needs to be fixed and weighted monster generation needs to be changed somewhat. Also the few exploits that still exist.

One which I would like to see and currently I have no control over except for Treasure Hunter is a user defined variable for downward chance of item generation.

On the point of an 'easy' mode: As I've mentioned, the game is not that difficult once you've learned the ropes. Learning the ropes via an 'easy' mode is not learning the ropes. You learn the ropes because the current difficulty level gives you no other choice. Its either make the right decisions at the right time or die. Or don't get into those situations. With an 'easy' mode, you won't and you won't learn anything either.

Here we go again. How do you and Jellyslayer know what the best way for new players to learn is? I mean, seriously, different people learn things in different ways. Surely you can think of instances in your own life where you weren't able to understand something until you had the chance to use an approach tailored to you in particular?

And honestly, even if most players learned best through perma-death, I think players should have the autonomy to choose which learning style they prefer most. Look, let's turn this around. What if, in an alternate dimension, ADOM had no perma death at all. And what if, in that dimension, there were a group of veterans who said: "There should be no perma-death feature, because people learn the best without it?" Wouldn't it irk you just a tad, Jellyslayer and Stingray?

You could just do a challenge game where you only pick up every other item, I suppose. There's always restricted inventory options like carbon fiber man as well.