It's painful to watch new players.

[Esoteric Rogue]

It's painful to watch new players. This is a candidate worst case example. [edit: Haha! Ironically titled "First Look" -- that's great!]

https://youtu.be/svN3gwPjZDk?t=36m17s

Part of the reason I'm posting this is as a note to myself for future reference. Here's a demonstration that when players don't know what's going they often blame the game. Not that this guy was putting down the game. One of his thoughts was that he was invisible, because truly, his character could not be seen; he suggested it was a poor implementation of invisibility. I'm asserting that if he could fully trust the game, he might have dug for the solution -- but at the same time, I doubt very many of us can fully trust a strange program that we have just met.

To the player's credit, for sake of presentation he quickly enough decided he wasn't making progress, and started over. Even if he had started paging through the list of commands, that's not what viewers like to watch. We just have to admit the watching the struggles against the learning curve aren't entertaining in nature.

This example highlights what I fear when I recommend ADOM (and roguelikes in general) to other players. I just wanted to share because I find it interesting to consider aspects of game design, how to introduce new players to these games, etc. Right now I'm thinking if I made an introductory video, I would firstly stress reading every message ... and if you missed one, hit :m to find it.

Hmm, he should have had a status message saying "blind". I might put forth a couple RFE's derived from this play.

[hapro]

Hmm, he should have had a status message saying "blind". I might put forth a couple RFE's derived from this play.

This is immediately what I noticed. There was a message in the message buffer but it was cleared almost instantly. The UI didn't seem to have any indicator at all that he was blind.

[Scooter Fox]

Oh, the infamous mud in the face. Most of the new players will have problems with this. I had problems with this years ago. The entire wipe face command is only for this one particular randomly appearing room effect. It's not a good design. Just remove the faux-blinding effect entirely, change the message to "you are hit in the face by a glob of hot mud! you wipe it off" and apply that Ap+1 immediately. Leaving the one time status effect immediately removable by a special input serves absolutely no purpose except for laughing at the players who didn't read through all of the available commands. And it's not even intuitive, you'd rather search in manual for some description about impaired vision (that looks a whole lot like invisibility indeed) instead of looking through the list of commands.

Also it's not being blind. It's not the same status. You can't cure blindness with wiping your face.

[Blasphemous]

I'd say the +Ap effect should increase the longer the PC remains blind with mud on the face.
Every 5k turns could increase the bonus by 1.

[sweetnothing]

I'd say the +Ap effect should increase the longer the PC remains blind with mud on the face.
Every 5k turns could increase the bonus by 1.

I see you're a pro in mud application ;-)

[anon123]

I'd say the +Ap effect should increase the longer the PC remains blind with mud on the face.
Every 5k turns could increase the bonus by 1.

So that you can get 99 Ap just waiting in an empty room, then drink a PoEx? No way. In fact, I propose changing the mud to a death ray. All of these insane exploits must be fixed

I like the suggestion. It could also be tweaked slightly to continuously train Appearance rather than give a fixed +1 every X turns.

[KOManiacJim]

I haven't played ADOM yet but I have played other rogue-likes so I know what to expect with the nature of the Permadeath. People who are new to roguelikes think that ADOM's difficult nature is to blame and that it should be more forgiving. They think that the developer would cut them some slack and let them have a easy mode but guess what-



... Doesn't Happen! It doesn't happen like that! I for one think that people should try and outsmart the baddies. Be smarter than the Smarties and Tougher than the Toughies, and their victory shall be made Square.

I will buy the game on steam however. And the dude's source code is his. He has every right to conceal what makes the game tick.

[Caleb]

So that you can get 99 Ap just waiting in an empty room, then drink a PoEx? No way. In fact, I propose changing the mud to a death ray. All of these insane exploits must be fixed

Ah, the famous "waste 480k turns being blind and doing nothing to get a stat to 99" exploit. Would totally overuse that one.

[timeywimey]

The entire wipe face command is only for this one particular randomly appearing room effect.

Incorrect.

edit: Acutally correct. Messed it up with the whip thing, which usually happens from "u". My bad. :3

[eobet]

I think the person who made that Youtube video reacted exactly the same as I would have.

Everyone in here who has played this game for ages probably started out in the ASCII version, I'm guessing, where that really critical text message wouldn't have disappeared as fast, and where the disappearance of your character perhaps wouldn't have seemed so out of place, just as the hunting for an obscure keyboard command wouldn't have seemed so out of place in what is soon to be a completely mouse driven interface.

But I don't recall ever seeing a game where going blind leaves the world as it is. I think it's pretty well established that when you go blind, the world goes black.

However, I would like to turn this topic on its head:

It's painful to watch the interface of ADOM for a new player...