Difficulty vs Playability

[Mngwa]

I played an old-school ADOM game a long time ago and loved every minute of it. So I was of course glad that new Java game is going to come. I have tried it for a few times recently only to discover it is almost impossible to play. When you equip cursed item, you are not able to remove it. When you eat too much food and then you go to wilderness, you illogically lose many stat points permanently. And the most worst thing - you are not able to load savegame after dying. I understand that game is being developed, but I get the feeling that this is just not the case and JADE is meant to be only for hardcore players. I really liked old ADOM, and I am sure with one thing: It was because it was not so insanely hard and with possibility to load your position after dying. You could explore whole game without spending 10 years with playing it and starting again and again and .... Maybe someone likes to lose x days with grinding only to get killed by some goblin afterwards, or lose twenty points of crucial stat because of I-dont-know-what, but not me. Pretty life-time wasting, I would say.

[gut]

> And the most worst thing - you are not able to load savegame after dying

You can add that as a 'request for enhancement', but many players like the 'no loading a save' feature.
ADOM is designed to work the same way, you can't (at least 'shouldn't') load a save file after your PC
dies, but you COULD make a backup of that save, and reload it manually after a death. That is called
'savescumming', but it is not frowned upon as badly as it sounds. All it basically means is that if your
PC goes on to win after reloading it, you shouldn't post a victory post about it.

EDIT: and I'm pretty sure JADE has made some progress since the last time you played it, but it
isn't near finished. It has only been a short time since its very first release. We must all be patient.

[Mngwa]

Yes, I was talking about savescumming. It is just that I don't see the point to play such a game without loading or "savescumming" possibility.

[Laukku]

NetHack has the Explore mode, which when activated prevents dying, and grants other abilities as well. But the character then will never get on the high score list. It's designed to allow newbies to experiment with the game and learn the basics, and seems like a good compromise for save-scumming for me. Maybe a similar feature could be added to JADE.

[ironcash]

maybe at some point there could be difficulty setting implemented when generating a character

beginner - you can save your file and when you die reload if from the last save spot
classic - saving and dying works the same as classical adom
advanced - I don't even want to fathom what this would be (or use any other sort of empirical measurement to evaluate it for that matter)

with maybe each mode having its own highscore

I know I depended heavily on save scumming when I first started playing adom and it took me for ever to get a victory with scumming

[nateskeez]

Perhaps I'm a masochist without realizing it, but I like the fact that death is final in ADOM/JADE. Sure, it's frustrating. I've cursed at the screen plenty of times, but I think it just makes completing ADOM/JADE that much more of an achievement. It doesn't feel the same as finishing, say New Vegas (which I also love). That type of game can ultimately be finished by anyone, because your character can never truly die. It's not nearly as much of an accomplishment. Don't get me wrong, it's not a complaint against those kinds of games. I can appreciate them for that, just as I appreciate ADOM/JADE for how they handle it.

Jade is indeed difficult right now, because it's still in the early stages. There's a lot of balancing out to be done, for sure. In time...

[MITZE]

I prefer the current setup for the same reason as nateskeez. What happened to the days where beating a game was an accomplishment?

Besides, roguelikes aren't meant to be terribly fair.

[Aielyn]

maybe at some point there could be difficulty setting implemented when generating a character

beginner - you can save your file and when you die reload if from the last save spot
classic - saving and dying works the same as classical adom
advanced - I don't even want to fathom what this would be (or use any other sort of empirical measurement to evaluate it for that matter)

with maybe each mode having its own highscore

I know I depended heavily on save scumming when I first started playing adom and it took me for ever to get a victory with scumming

Simple idea:

Easy - Character has flag set that increases luck significantly, all starting stats get increased by 3 prior to start of game, corruption and hunger rates halved, and many artifacts, quests, dungeon features, and locations are simply deactivated. Savescumming allowed and ignored.
Normal - Typical JADE, similar in difficulty to ADoM. Savescumming recorded against final "victory", etc, score (each savescum increments a counter that reduces final score and gets noted in hall of fame description).
Hard - Character has flag set that decreases luck somewhat, all starting stats get decreased by 2 prior to start of game, corruption and hunger rates doubled, and experience required to level up increased by 20 percent. Savescumming disabled entirely.
Challenge Modes - these modes place restrictions on the PC akin to those in challenge games for ADoM, but formalised. For instance, Carbon Fibre Man, placing a restriction on weight that can be carried. Savescumming rules vary by challenge, but if allowed, will count against the player.

So basically, savescumming becomes something that is made less available for the harder modes, but for beginners, the easy mode lets them make free use of it. Obviously, game mode can't be changed mid-game.

EDIT: Side note - The percent symbol doesn't resolve correctly on the forums. That really needs to be addressed.

[Laukku]

I thought that the various classes and races played the role of difficulty settings? They are unbalanced in ADOM for a reason. Merchants and farmers, for example, are challenge classes.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Easy - Character has flag set that increases luck significantly, all starting stats get increased by 3 prior to start of game, corruption and hunger rates halved, and many artifacts, quests, dungeon features, and locations are simply deactivated. Savescumming allowed and ignored.
Normal - Typical JADE, similar in difficulty to ADoM. Savescumming recorded against final "victory", etc, score (each savescum increments a counter that reduces final score and gets noted in hall of fame description).
Hard - Character has flag set that decreases luck somewhat, all starting stats get decreased by 2 prior to start of game, corruption and hunger rates doubled, and experience required to level up increased by 20 percent. Savescumming disabled entirely.
Challenge Modes - these modes place restrictions on the PC akin to those in challenge games for ADoM, but formalised. For instance, Carbon Fibre Man, placing a restriction on weight that can be carried. Savescumming rules vary by challenge, but if allowed, will count against the player.

I'd like a normal mode with savescumming disabled. I like permadeath because it increases immersion and identification with the PC, but I see no reason why my stats should be reduced or my luck should be decreased if I'm not playing a challenge game.