Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
SnowblindFatal
Jan 7, 2011
So the new ADOM is worse than the original? Why doesn't this surprise me?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

andrew smash
Jun 26, 2006

smooth soul
Biskup

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

I don't think it's worse. Stairhopping was very scummy and a lot of the other 'shortcuts' were outright bugs like piety overflow and dragon doubling.

It's not a particularly hard game even with those things removed.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
I'm probably not going to play new adom either way, but stairhopping was stupid and boring and I'm glad it's gone.

Black August
Sep 28, 2003

I feel the issue is more that he hasn't added nearly as many quality of life and tweaks to the game to make it bearable without the shortcuts. Get rid of bugs, but also address things like the first 25% of the game being a laughably bad slog.

Edwhirl
Jul 27, 2007

Cats are the best.
Yeah I'd probably play ADOM more if it was made less of a slog and cut out most of the grinding.

and shortened it because jesus the main dungeon does not need to be 50+ floors deep. Especially with no form of mark/recall.

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

There are shortcuts to various CoC depths, and now there's an autoexplore to > command. It's another 20 year old game like NetHack, you can't expect them to turn it into Brogue or DCSS.

Zarick
Dec 28, 2004

Does the $50 from buying Darkest Dungeon off of their site actually get you the game? It says Early Access which I'm concerned is just whenever it'll be on Steam.

Luceid
Jan 20, 2005

Buy some freaking medicine.
I used to be all about ADOM but tried playing it again recently and just couldn't be hosed getting anything significant off the ground. Finding an altar, raising piety, carting a boatload of stuff to said altar to see if it's cursed, and the general lack of ID scrolls are things I guess I don't want to waste time dealing with anymore. It's from a different era and I loved it, but I don't think I have the time to go for an ultra ending in this day and age.

Demiurge4
Aug 10, 2011

Zarick posted:

Does the $50 from buying Darkest Dungeon off of their site actually get you the game? It says Early Access which I'm concerned is just whenever it'll be on Steam.

The cheapest backer tier on the kick starter that included the beta was $20. I don't think they'd charge more than that on steam early access so I'd just wait.

Cuntpunch
Oct 3, 2003

A monkey in a long line of kings

Tollymain posted:

what's the current consensus on dungeon of the endless?

Mind you, it's a 'roguelite' in the sense that it has the difficulty, single-life, and randomness of roguelikes, as well as a lot of tactical elements, but isn't exactly perfectly turn-based(or ASCII) or single-character or a handful of other traditional roguelike designations.

I picked it up last year and have been following it's progress and it's really good as it stands, but clearly has a bit more polish before really feeling like it's been balanced and finished. I go through phases every couple of months where I dump a bunch of hours into the latest build and see where it is at before putting it back and waiting for it to mature some more.

brother-joseph posted:

In my opinion, it SEEMS really great at first. The problem the game has is that it very quickly ends up having a lot going on at once all the time, so you find yourself constantly pausing and micromanaging fifteen different things at once. Because of this, you end up covering small amounts of ground fairly slowly which makes the game drag a lot and seem way too long.

If there were less going on and less rooms/characters to manage, it could be a ton of fun.

This is part of the general game design and is a lot like arguing that wandering into a pack of enemies in any other roguelike "makes it too hard."

DotE is resource management that borders on survival-horror games: you've got to juggle your primary resources(science, food, industry) as well as the level resource(dust). You've got to juggle what rooms to keep lit to prevent wave spawning. You can leave a hero to work a major improvement for more resources, but it impedes your defenses. You can leave a hero in a dark room to prevent wave spawning, but it hurts your defenses. In later levels you have lots of possible paths to explore and are left with the decision of going all-in on one branch to find an exit, or trying to spread out equally.

While Dungeon isn't a roguelike properly, it does an amazing job of forcing the sort of turn-to-turn tactical decisions that roguelikes tend to do. There's never a point where you should ever end up micromanaging 'fifteen different things at once' unless you literally don't understand the way the game plays and are just sending your heroes out to open every door in sight at one time.

Cuntpunch fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Sep 10, 2014

brother-joseph
Jan 1, 2009

:lol:MARINES:lol:
edit: I will shut up now. Apparently I need to learn more about Dungeon of the Endless before I start talking poo poo and I've been doing it wrong. Huh.

Anyway it's totally worth giving a shot regardless. The art style and music are kinda neat if a bit overdone these days, and the character/party system is interesting.

edit 2: Here is a good write-up on the game for anyone that wants to learn everything there is to know about the basics. It really is different than anything else I've ever played.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=203411482

brother-joseph fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Sep 10, 2014

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

I feel like I'm missing something in ToME. So far every character I make has gone through the starter dungeon, gotten some decent gear, and started putting together a skillset. Then I explore the other nearby areas and dungeons and I get wrecked as soon as I put my foot through the door. Even with random encounters, I'm barely scratching enemies but they kill me in 5 hits no matter how much healing I have or how many powers I use.

Am I supposed to be grinding the first area or something before heading out?

Slime
Jan 3, 2007

Evil Mastermind posted:

I feel like I'm missing something in ToME. So far every character I make has gone through the starter dungeon, gotten some decent gear, and started putting together a skillset. Then I explore the other nearby areas and dungeons and I get wrecked as soon as I put my foot through the door. Even with random encounters, I'm barely scratching enemies but they kill me in 5 hits no matter how much healing I have or how many powers I use.

Am I supposed to be grinding the first area or something before heading out?

Look at your journal, it should be pointing you towards the dungeons you should be going to. Just because it's near where you start doesn't mean it's an appropriate level for you to go to right after beating the starting dungeon. People generally go from the starter dungeon to Kor'Pul, which is right around the human/halfling starting dungeon.

Slime fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Sep 10, 2014

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Evil Mastermind posted:

I feel like I'm missing something in ToME. So far every character I make has gone through the starter dungeon, gotten some decent gear, and started putting together a skillset. Then I explore the other nearby areas and dungeons and I get wrecked as soon as I put my foot through the door. Even with random encounters, I'm barely scratching enemies but they kill me in 5 hits no matter how much healing I have or how many powers I use.

Am I supposed to be grinding the first area or something before heading out?

Yeah you are free to explore the whole map(beware adventurer parties though), you're gonna want to do a certain set of dungeons first, followed by another set. Your journal will help.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Evil Mastermind posted:

Am I supposed to be grinding the first area or something before heading out?
This is a common problem for new players so don't sweat it. Aside from using your quest log as a guide, it's also a good idea to clean the other starter dungeons for the boss drops and a few extra levels.

Here is a page on the Tome Wiki with a Goon zone order. You don't have to strictly follow it, but it's a good way pointer.

http://te4.org/wiki/Goon_Zone_Order_Progression

Dr. Dos
Aug 5, 2005

YAAAAAAAY!

Edwhirl posted:

Yeah I'd probably play ADOM more if it was made less of a slog and cut out most of the grinding.

and shortened it because jesus the main dungeon does not need to be 50+ floors deep. Especially with no form of mark/recall.

I've honestly never really found it very grindy unless going for an ultra ending. There's grindy things you can do to make things easier like herbs, precrownings, gremlin bombing, but a regular playthrough can pretty much go from one quest to the next.

The only bottleneck to me is the Tower of Eternal Flames (and the Dwarven Mystic gives you a ring of ice if you're neutral now).

With this ultra game I have going now that AoLS is the only roadblock. After that it's basically a clean sweep of temples and whatever ultra related quests are relevant.

But I'm probably just weird because I haven't ever gotten into any traditional roguelike that wasn't adom.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Evil Mastermind posted:

I feel like I'm missing something in ToME. So far every character I make has gone through the starter dungeon, gotten some decent gear, and started putting together a skillset. Then I explore the other nearby areas and dungeons and I get wrecked as soon as I put my foot through the door. Even with random encounters, I'm barely scratching enemies but they kill me in 5 hits no matter how much healing I have or how many powers I use.

Am I supposed to be grinding the first area or something before heading out?

There are a bunch of starter areas and generally you want to do at least half of them before tackling the tier 2 or higher dungeons, which aren't labeled or indicated as such in any way. I usually do them all, because they each have a boss at the end and bosses always drop an artifact (to say nothing of tons of XP) but some people find that tedious.

Also, if you play Shalore, your starting area is a deathtrap and you should leave it immediately and seek out the human/halfing starter area instead.

This is a pretty good guide to follow: http://te4.org/wiki/Goon_Zone_Order_Progression

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Ah, I missed the new quests. Thanks folks.

I did manage to start up an Impenetrable Conga Line of Death on level 2 of Daikara (lesson learned: if the door's jammed, don't open it) consisting of five Snow Giant Cheiftains backed up by a lighting caster.

I left there and stumbled into the Derth area and bulldozed the Trollmire, though. I also unlocked two classes and the Arena by just wandering around so go me I guess.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Yeah, that's par for the course :v:

Tome is awesome but you really need a bit of experience to know how everything works and what you should and shouldn't do. But when you got that down it's great!

Also, that jammed door was probably a vault. Those can sometimes spawn in almost any dungeon and have neat loot but also monsters that are often much tougher than the rest of the zone. So yeah, open at your own risk.

Black August
Sep 28, 2003

Dr. Dos posted:

The only bottleneck to me is the Tower of Eternal Flames (and the Dwarven Mystic gives you a ring of ice if you're neutral now).

With this ultra game I have going now that AoLS is the only roadblock. After that it's basically a clean sweep of temples and whatever ultra related quests are relevant.

This still isn't a fixed problem then, as far as I'm concerned. Only neutral characters? From the Mystic? Why. No reason. It should be a guaranteed item for all three alignments in some manner, same with an Amulet of Life Saving -- make it a difficult quest, but make it guaranteed to drop in some way that doesn't demand grinding for it. That there's even a CHANCE you have to halt the game that much to poo poo around for an item is laughable game design. When you have content in a game, you put it behind locks that require a quest or a sacrifice of some sort. You so not make it a random or semi-random drop.

Cuntpunch
Oct 3, 2003

A monkey in a long line of kings

brother-joseph posted:

edit: I will shut up now. Apparently I need to learn more about Dungeon of the Endless before I start talking poo poo and I've been doing it wrong. Huh.

Anyway it's totally worth giving a shot regardless. The art style and music are kinda neat if a bit overdone these days, and the character/party system is interesting.

edit 2: Here is a good write-up on the game for anyone that wants to learn everything there is to know about the basics. It really is different than anything else I've ever played.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=203411482

It happens a lot because of the weird pseudo-turns the game uses. The gameflow is easy though:

-Open Door(start turn)
-Something is behind door(good/bad/whatever)
-A wave of enemies will spawn from any unseen rooms(unpowered AND without a hero in them)
-Turn Ends when there are no hostiles alive - this will include healing all your heroes.


But if you don't understand the 'Door = turn' it's easy to assume that there's a timer running like in most tower defense games combined with how the hero movement is all real-time, and then start opening doors as fast as possible, which will get overwhelming pretty quickly.

Farquar
Apr 30, 2003

Bjorn you glad I didn't say banana?

Black August posted:

This still isn't a fixed problem then, as far as I'm concerned. Only neutral characters? From the Mystic? Why. No reason. It should be a guaranteed item for all three alignments in some manner, same with an Amulet of Life Saving -- make it a difficult quest, but make it guaranteed to drop in some way that doesn't demand grinding for it. That there's even a CHANCE you have to halt the game that much to poo poo around for an item is laughable game design. When you have content in a game, you put it behind locks that require a quest or a sacrifice of some sort. You so not make it a random or semi-random drop.

For the AoLS, you're talking about getting an ULTRA ending. A completely optional and nearly impossible task. Nothing should be guaranteed about it. Nothing is stopping you from getting one of the other regular victories.

Black August
Sep 28, 2003

Farquar posted:

For the AoLS, you're talking about getting an ULTRA ending. A completely optional and nearly impossible task. Nothing should be guaranteed about it. Nothing is stopping you from getting one of the other regular victories.

It's in the game as a complete set of expanded content. It can be optional as it likes, but the requirements for it should not be random loot drops. That's bad design, period.

Pladdicus
Aug 13, 2010

Black August posted:

It's in the game as a complete set of expanded content. It can be optional as it likes, but the requirements for it should not be random loot drops. That's bad design, period.

I think there's room in a game about weird secrets for a ridiculous obtuse ending with arcane requirements. I think it's cute design. Not the type of ending I'd go for, but a thing I'm glad exists.

madjackmcmad
May 27, 2008

Look, I'm startin' to believe some of the stuff the cult guy's been saying, it's starting to make a lot of sense.

Pladdicus posted:

I think there's room in a game about weird secrets for a ridiculous obtuse ending with arcane requirements. I think it's cute design. Not the type of ending I'd go for, but a thing I'm glad exists.

Yeah, for optional endings aimed at the hardcore, waiting on random drops is perfectly acceptable. Totally different if we're talking about main quest progression.

Pladdicus
Aug 13, 2010

madjackmcmad posted:

Yeah, for optional endings aimed at the hardcore, waiting on random drops is perfectly acceptable. Totally different if we're talking about main quest progression.

I think less for the reasons that it's hardcore and more that it's obtuse, I mean. How does someone even learn this is possible? I assumed spoilered.

madjackmcmad
May 27, 2008

Look, I'm startin' to believe some of the stuff the cult guy's been saying, it's starting to make a lot of sense.

Pladdicus posted:

I think less for the reasons that it's hardcore and more that it's obtuse, I mean. How does someone even learn this is possible? I assumed spoilered.

Yeah, you know that's not a decision I would make, but if the idea is to give players things to talk about and create replayability, having stuff that you can only discover by accident or via spoilers would be one way to do it.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

madjackmcmad posted:

Yeah, you know that's not a decision I would make, but if the idea is to give players things to talk about and create replayability, having stuff that you can only discover by accident or via spoilers would be one way to do it.

I like the idea of a game that has lots of hidden nooks and crannies. It'd keep the players guessing and help make the world feel bigger than it actually is. But I'd personally have trouble justifying expending the energy on them as opposed to the more readily-accessible content. Plus most players would probably just end up reading spoilers anyway. :arghfist::(

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
I'm a big fan of crawl's design philosophy personally, also that it, you know, has one. Spoilery stuff like that is fun once, I'd prefer things that remain fun even if you know precisely how they work and have read the source code.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Sep 10, 2014

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I like the idea of a game that has lots of hidden nooks and crannies. It'd keep the players guessing and help make the world feel bigger than it actually is. But I'd personally have trouble justifying expending the energy on them as opposed to the more readily-accessible content. Plus most players would probably just end up reading spoilers anyway. :arghfist::(
In the case of ADOM I don't think you're realistically able to find out about it without spoilers.

andrew smash
Jun 26, 2006

smooth soul

Farquar posted:

For the AoLS, you're talking about getting an ULTRA ending. A completely optional and nearly impossible task.

Completely optional yes, but it's not 'nearly impossible', an ultra is not that much harder than a regular ending if you know what to do and have the patience to grind out the required drops.

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

Black August posted:

Only neutral characters? From the Mystic? Why. No reason. It should be a guaranteed item for all three alignments in some manner, same with an Amulet of Life Saving -- make it a difficult quest, but make it guaranteed to drop in some way that doesn't demand grinding for it.

It's not that hard to temporarily go neutral (yes this is obtuse but not in any way difficult), and as for ultra endings they're not supposed to be something you can do every game.

Cuntpunch
Oct 3, 2003

A monkey in a long line of kings

Zereth posted:

In the case of ADOM I don't think you're realistically able to find out about it without spoilers.

I haven't played ADOM in many, many years - but yeah, without the Guidebook listing things out I couldn't imagine actually getting very far without ridiculous amounts of frustrating trial-and-error and notekeeping.

ADOM is just full of crufty gotcha poo poo that's meant to catch out people repeatedly, over and over and over.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



The Ultra endings specifically would involve enormous amounts of trial and error and trying random poo poo to figure out purely from in-game stuff. I think it requires you to do some incredibly unintuitive stuff to get all the bits you need, and what few hints there are about how to use them properly are cryptic as gently caress.

tentacles
Nov 26, 2007
Oh hey ADOM talk! Has Biskup finally finished the Darkforge line of quests? Leaving that hanging always bugged me a little.

brother-joseph
Jan 1, 2009

:lol:MARINES:lol:

Cuntpunch posted:

It happens a lot because of the weird pseudo-turns the game uses. The gameflow is easy though:

-Open Door(start turn)
-Something is behind door(good/bad/whatever)
-A wave of enemies will spawn from any unseen rooms(unpowered AND without a hero in them)
-Turn Ends when there are no hostiles alive - this will include healing all your heroes.


But if you don't understand the 'Door = turn' it's easy to assume that there's a timer running like in most tower defense games combined with how the hero movement is all real-time, and then start opening doors as fast as possible, which will get overwhelming pretty quickly.


I played a few more games of Dungeon of the Endless last night. In retrospect, I think I eventually HAD discovered the door timer mechanics before and just shitposted before I'd had my coffee. Either way I had still put down the game for a while until last night and you were right about my shenanigans. This time, I really put effort into:

- Only opening doors in a straight line from the base whenever possible, avoiding having to defend multiple paths
- Using one character to scout new doors and race back to the choke points when bad guys show up (Samus is awesome for this)
- Knowing when it is OK to give up on a floor and just take the exit. Having 3 or even 4 doors open in the crystal room can be a nightmare, so I try to leave before opening the 3rd if possible.

Doing a lot better this time. I still haven't cleared floor 11 but I did unlock 4 or so characters last night and I think I have a good feel for the game now. Honestly it's a pretty neat game, and it really is a unique experience imo.

Have any other tips? How far have you gotten?

Tonfa
Apr 8, 2008

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Also, if you play Shalore, your starting area is a deathtrap and you should leave it immediately and seek out the human/halfing starter area instead.

Eh it got nerfed to death recently. Before it was a fairly interesting dungeon to do straight away but now you can just pretty much facetank the crystals if you want.

Cuntpunch
Oct 3, 2003

A monkey in a long line of kings

brother-joseph posted:

I played a few more games of Dungeon of the Endless last night. In retrospect, I think I eventually HAD discovered the door timer mechanics before and just shitposted before I'd had my coffee. Either way I had still put down the game for a while until last night and you were right about my shenanigans. This time, I really put effort into:

- Only opening doors in a straight line from the base whenever possible, avoiding having to defend multiple paths
- Using one character to scout new doors and race back to the choke points when bad guys show up (Samus is awesome for this)
- Knowing when it is OK to give up on a floor and just take the exit. Having 3 or even 4 doors open in the crystal room can be a nightmare, so I try to leave before opening the 3rd if possible.

Doing a lot better this time. I still haven't cleared floor 11 but I did unlock 4 or so characters last night and I think I have a good feel for the game now. Honestly it's a pretty neat game, and it really is a unique experience imo.

Have any other tips? How far have you gotten?

That sums up about how far I've gotten, there's a lot of randomness to the game that adds up floor-after-floor and can take a while to get critical.

There are a few other (maybe?) not so obvious gotcha tactical decisions that hide in plain sight, especially on the later floors:

-Do you keep going down your current path, or do you try a different path closer to your crystal? The later floors especially can have 30 or more rooms and eventually you won't be able to power them all. There's a very real possibility of opening 20 rooms and not finding the exit, then needing to go down a completely new path.

-Research Management: Always know that you _have_ 3 doors left to open before you spend science on a new project.

-Team composition: Recently I've had the most success with 2 Operators and 2 Fighters. Leave the Operators in good chokepoints working a Major, use 1 fighter to 'light up' a dark room, and use 1 to open the next door. If you still have incoming, just fall back to the best chokepoint possible.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

German Joey
Dec 18, 2004

Zereth posted:

The Ultra endings specifically would involve enormous amounts of trial and error and trying random poo poo to figure out purely from in-game stuff. I think it requires you to do some incredibly unintuitive stuff to get all the bits you need, and what few hints there are about how to use them properly are cryptic as gently caress.

people did figure those out on their own though. that's how the guidebook was written in the first place.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply