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 :rolleyes:

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-


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLNXeatv2k0

... 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.

[Dogbreath]

So I watched some of this guys ADOM videos and honestly, I just don't think he has the resourcefulness necessary to be a decent ADOM player. He doesn't experiment enough to really figure out any of the game mechanics. He eats one corpse (a rat), throws up, never tries to eat another. Never uses monster memory. Never tries on the armor or weapons he gets, doesn't use tactics, has gone by like 4 co-aligned altars but just says "oh, that's strange" without even looking up the religion part of the game manual. He also doesn't talk to the NPCs half of the time (even though he knows the 'c'hat command) but then complains about having "no where else to go"... I think the game should be made as user friendly as possible, and the wipe 'f'ace thing is a legitimate thing that should be hinted at the first time it happens or something, but at some point after playing the game for an hour or two, you'd think he'd stop and take an hour or so to read the manual and at least *try* each command a few times to see what they do. He just keeps bumbling around lost hour after hour instead.

[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 :rolleyes:

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

[Couchfighter]

To be fair, I think that mud wipe from face thing is such a weird and pointless thing to have in the game, considering how many people have probably quit playing because of it.

Oh wow I just felt everyone reading this post's mind as they think 'Hurr, durr, then they aren't smart enough for the rest of the game!'. Scary. Also, be that as it may, it really isn't good game design. I'm all for games being challenging, but obstacles like these are kinda silly. :)

[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...

[Fifth]

Hi everybody! This is my first post to the forum, though I am playing ADoM since 2000 or something like that (with many long breaks). I had painful experience with interface. The vast amount of commands is intimidating! On the other hand this is why I kept playing! I was amazed how many things you can do within this game. It is like floating on the surface knowing that there's an ocean of possibilities beneath. On the other hand you don't need that many to move around and get pretty far. Another thing is I had little to no internet connection back then and couldn't figure out where should I be headed. Now the knowledge is at hand and you can find what does, for example, certain corpse do to you when eaten and, most important, where you should be headed.
Anyway my point being: there are games which are intuitive to learn and you can start without even playing through tutorial and there are games which need research. Either in-game or online. Both are satisfying in their own way.

[ianmckinley4]

I'm a beginner player in ADoM. Just think about it, everybody was a noob at one point.
By playing this game and reading forums like this, I hope I won't be a noob for to long haha.

[Jeremiah]

I remember the mud when it 1st hit me. I had no idea what was going on, and after trying several things, I actually started reading the manual to see if I toggled some command by mistake. That is were I found the command to look at past messages and the wipe face command which allowed me put together what happened. I never got upset over it; I thought it was a cool detail, and it was the details that made the game interesting and fun.

This is the reason I encourage non-spoiler for the 1st go around, as spoiler stripes away all the little surprises, and the big surprises. It may take a much longer time, and a lot of experimenting to beat it non-spoiler for the 1st time but it is so worth it.