Late game still unchallenging

[Kordianus]

In my opinion, wish engines and on demand teleportation are on two competely different sides of the scale. Wish engines were most likely not added to the game intentionally. They were just a side effect by PoEX mechanics. It's completely possible to play the game for an eternity and never even consider using it. While on demand teleportation is clearly something deliberately built into the game.

Jesus christ... seven league boots were halving energy consumption until people complained that it is too OP. Wish was not draining stats... until people complained this is too OP. Corpse eating, herbs was unaffected by stat potential until people complained this is too OP. Casino gold was completely free money until people complained it is too OP. Corruption timer was turned only once at 90 days, until people complained this makes game too easy... Shall I go on and tell you about a time when orbs were containing essence of chaos and corruption until too many complained about it (gamma 13 IIRC some 15 years ago)? These were all features by design that where changed when enough people considered them in some way game breaking.

Oh... and when teleportation was implemented the game was 1/5 th of its current length with about as much tools at players disposal to beat it. There were no powerful armor/weapon suffixes. Scrolls of chaos resistance were really a scarce resource (not like nowadays), because of some weird glitches in generation algorythm spiders could kill you at level 50... etc. So no... back then TP was not OP. It was necessary to survive... Nowadays this is a different game.

[manseman]

Jesus christ... seven league boots were halving energy consumption until people complained that it is too OP. Wish was not draining stats... until people complained this is too OP. Corpse eating, herbs was unaffected by stat potential until people complained this is too OP. Casino gold was completely free money until people complained it is too OP. Corruption timer was turned only once at 90 days, until people complained this makes game too easy... Shall I go on? These were all features by design that where changed when enough people considered them in some way game breaking.

Yeah, ok. Tweaking OP mechanics is of course fine. Changing stuff just to keep the challenge alive for people who have played the game in and out for decades is something else.

[sweetnothing]

As you can see so far not enough people consider teleportation game breaking in some (any?) way. Although nice flame in this thread, TH sucks BTW.

[manseman]

Oh... and when teleportation was implemented the game was 1/5 th of its current length with about as much tools at players disposal to beat it.

Really? The notable changes from when I started playing in 1998 are item pre- and suffixes and the ice queen domain/FGJC, but once you got past the TOEF it was essentially the same. I guess your 1/5 is different from mine.

[_Ln_]

Basically, people are accustomed that in the late game any monster can be killed or easily skipped. With the emphasis on "easily"... and that once you reach certain level finishing the game is just a formality. Therefore you guys here all yell "play speedruns". This is comming exactly from the place that the game is too easy in the end that it needs some artificial challange to make it interesting. In the beginning there is some effort and thinking involved but towards the end not anymore. Just grinding through hords of monsters with the feeling on omnipotence. Once in a while this feeling of omnipotence get you killed but this is just plain carelessness.

Just my 50 cents: this is what a roguelike game should be like; throwing 15 hours for nothing is already relevant for a victory, throwing 15 hours for a death is even more pointless.

Once upon a time I went on a trip with a couple of friends. In the evening after much sightseeing we were relaxing and I decided to run some ADOM on a laptop while we were discussing some stuff. We were up for some time and I managed to get, say, 2 hours of gameplay and then I died to some thing with a decent char. Naturally, I loudly complained and then had to explain how roguelikes work (permadeath, blabla). After saying that yes, I just did nothing for 2 hours (in the end), I was met with quite "are you shitting me?" stares.

Then again, I suppose teleportation can use some combat nerfs (I still want to use it to save time moving through CoC). Something like increased energy cost can be decent (like 5000 EP), so you won't be able to blink around powerful monsters. But cutting its life-saving capabilities is a wrong thing IMHO.

[manseman]

Then again, I suppose teleportation can use some combat nerfs (I still want to use it to save time moving through CoC). Something like increased energy cost can be decent (like 5000 EP), so you won't be able to blink around powerful monsters. But cutting its life-saving capabilities is a wrong thing IMHO.

Agree, or maybe not allowing consecutive controlled teleportation on the same level without some time passing or something like that.

But as many others have said, this and similar nerfs won't at all fix the issue with the end game being too easy (if you consider that an issue).

[Rick]

I am complaining that there is imbalance in the late game vs. early game.

This is true for every class, but that come with experience. If you try to melee a Greater Moloch even with your stronger Level 50 char. very often will end with your death, when you know it, you never engage Moloch again and in the late game likely you have all slaying ammo you need. So become easy. You should erase your memory after every game to make it new everytime..(but that's true for every game).
The late game I think is something that YOU decide, more time you spend before, more powerful you'll be in the end. There are only five places that you MUST visit before the end. Everything else is optional. One can't complain to be overloaded by items and levels if decide to visit every single dungeon in the game.

Anyway I wouldn't like to spend hours to collect weapons, levels and powers, just to find that was all time lost beause enemies adjust their powers exactly to yours. I don't like games where there is no reason to level up, and in this game is REALLY a hard early-game work building your character at the point that he can walk around killing everything his Vanquisher touch...
That is personal taste, in all this kind of games I like the hard work needed to become overpowered, then I like the satisfaction to be overpowered at some point.

[Blasphemous]

I don't remember using teleportation to escape from dangerous monsters in my recent playthroughs.
It's mostly used to skip the annoying rivers or cut a direct path through dungeon when the stair rooms are generated diagonally from each other, separated by a particularly convoluted random dungeon.
I don't see how using teleportation here is such a huge advantage, it's mostly convenience.

I disagree with any nerf to teleportation.
It's true that in the past many players complained about a particular element of the game being too op or too harsh and that was changed but I strongly believe that teleport is not the case.
There are already areas that make teleporting impossible and frankly I feel this is fair.
If anything this feature could be extended to some other areas of special nature but that's it.
There was an increase in costs of casting a teleportation spell which forced players to reduce how often they use it to a bare minimum.
That was a sufficient change in my opinion.

[manseman]

I don't remember using teleportation to escape from dangerous monsters in my recent playthroughs.

I've used it a few times when a Wyrm or Titan has landed a critical hit where my PC was only saved by fate smiling. Without teleportation I would simply have prayed instead, so no difference really.

[Blasphemous]

I have a general idea of when I can face the monsters you mentioned and I will simply ignore them if I can't handle them.
What annoys me about the idea of nerfing teleportation is that many times I have a character that is virtually invincible, not even when facing greater titans, balors, molochs...
I don't want to go around dungeons and slay everything in my path because somebody decided to make continuous, repeated use of teleportation unfeasible.
Needless carnage that offers no challenge, only distraction, can easily be skipped with supercharged wand of tele and that's an amazing feature.
You can customize the gameplay and streamline things. If people can't resist using teleportation every time a monster hits them hard then I don't really know what to say to them.
The game often throws arbitrarily difficult challenges and RNG surprises at the PC.
Teleportation is one of the nice features the player can use to prevent dying in such situations.

I recall _Ln_ and his threat room of quickling kings on the cavernous D:36 in CoC.
He had a powerful char that was on his way to win an ultra victory but it so happened he did not have any means of teleportation at the time.
The quicks shredded him to pieces.

If that is where teleport nerfing takes us then I'm glad for extra space on my HDD to store adom executables without such stupid changes, if they ever get implemented.
I hope they won't.