Heard this game is the "bad" kind of random.

[Honorable_D]

As in, random deaths out of nowhere due to an event or opening a simple door only to get smashed in by a horde of enemies you have no hope to defeat?

Is this true? Can you be having a great run but then suddenly get tossed into an unwinnable situation simply due to the RNG? A crapshoot situation where you have to choose one of something over the other with no way to make an informed choice and one leads to death?

[Shotagonist]

When you check a pool, a frog might jump out. If you are male and deaf, it will explode and kill you.

[Ffrog]

If you open a door with a horde of monsters behind, you can usually run away and come back later when your character is stronger. There are many locations to explore.

[persy]

If you are an average steam gamer, then "duuh this game sucks i got pawned no matter how pro i am at shooters rng screws me"
But since you say you played TOME, then by any means no, unavoidable death happens maybe 1 in 1000 runs. It is much more likely to get one-shotted in TOME by some random elites before you can see them while auto-exploring

[lightninglord2.71828183]

Cheap deaths in Roguelikes are almost never unavoidable - the problem is that there was no way of possibly forseeing that this would happen.

[Olkoth]

My last play I kicked a locked door open. Turned out it was trapped... it shot fire everywhere and burned my armor and boots gloves and helmet off i was naked lol. It was awesome... until the barrage of warrior ants ripped me apart.

[Chavinchi]

99% deaths you could have done something differently to avoid. In the early game (say, first 10 levels) there is more randomness, but also less investment in the character so it's not as bad. The most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ deaths are from traps that insta-gib you when strolling through an apparently empty room, but these are rare and only happen with very weak characters who lack the hp or gear to survive the damage.. The trouble with convincing yourself that the game throws random deaths at you without the experience of knowing which deaths truly were random and which you actually had options forr averting is that it becomes your go-to excuse and you end up tarring and feathering the game quite possibly unjustly because of what was really down to your own incompetence.

Deaths are more of the 'I could not have known that the first time' variety rather than 'I could not have done anything' variety.

[TheGeordieGriller]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Honorable_D:

So, what I read on the ToME board was true then, eh? ADOM will just decide to gib you at random? In ToME if you got killed it was almost always your own damn fault.

I really don't want to have a great run ended because the RNG simply decided to smash me into an unwinnable situation...

Nonsense. TOME is just as bad for the Uber Monsters of random appearance that can kill you before you even see them or whack your most protected character in two turns despite you mauling everything else.

The RNG in a Roguelike is meant to be challenging. ADOM's is. Learn the mechanics and you'll avoid many silly things.

[.//slayer]

Nonsense. TOME is just as bad for the Uber Monsters of random appearance that can kill you before you even see them or whack your most protected character in two turns despite you mauling everything else.

This might have been true before, but I already put 200+ hours in the Steam version of ToME and finished the game on normal and nightmare difficulties with 1 death limit and can attest that it's not a fair statement in today's situation. There have never been occasions when I was randomly one-shot from across the screen. Moreover, there have never been situations where I had to blame anything for a death other than my own carelessness and poor tactics. ToME is an extremely fair game, even on higher difficulty levels.

I read that people playing on Insane+ tend to die from critical one-shots, but, according to the words of developer himself, the game has never been balanced around those higher difficulty levels, and besides it still gives you the option of avoiding/mitigating instakill scenarios with a variety of items/skills.

Regardless, autoexplore that has been mentioned in this thread is clearly a poor way to play the game on higher difficulty levels, since you never know where the algorithm will put you next. Better scout ahead (for which the game again provides all the necessary tools).

Sorry for the rant, just so tired of hearing that "ToME has one-shot deaths all over the place!" argument which hasn't been true for ages.

Anyway, how much is ADOM different from ToME? I will buy it regardless, but I've never played ADOM before. Will I like it if I enjoy ToME, Elona and Caves of Qud?

[Clownpuncher]

I was watching some streamers play that new RL Dragon Fin Soup and most of them did not seem to understand how games like this work. They thought the game was like The Binding of Isaac, Lots of deaths and blaming the game. I thought it was funny yet kinda sad that RL's are misunderstod. It takes some reading up and thought to play a RL, not just twitch gameplay..Point is, Most deaths in RL's can be avoided if you understand how it works, If you have to run or pop a random pot or agrro mobs to a hallway then thats what you have to do.

[Samseng Yik]

IF you study Nethack history.
There are 1 players who died at turn 0. Why?
Because when he spawn, another monster spawn directly beside him with a "Wand Of Death".

Does this make people dislike Nethack? NO

[Nurkka]

Can you be having a great run but then suddenly get tossed into an unwinnable situation simply due to the RNG?

Kind of yes, but not really.
1st there are some predefined areas, but most of the gameplay is developed through randomizing. Also hits/ dodges/ damage is based on RNG.
The first door you try to open might be fireball trapped and you die. You can even step on floor that is trapped deadly.
A superior creature to level might be generated, but usually you get warning message about that.
You might be swarmed by some monsters either on dungeon or wilderness.
You might die to hunger because no food is RNGed for you.

For very low level chartacters traps can be sudden death feels like RNG screwed you kind of situations.
But most of the situations should be avoidable with correct set of skills/ items and reservations.

I almost never had feeling that RNG screwed me over for any a bit more advanced characters that I have had. Mostly deaths have been more or even more my own fault.


ADOM is Roguelike game in it's very complete and original meaning.
You can also download ADOM for free: http://www.adom.de/home/downloads.html
I really recomend testing and playing ADOM. It is a really great game.

[lightninglord2.71828183]

I fully agree to you that an advanced character is most likely never killed by bad luck, since they tend to have much more HP, options and contingency plans at their disposal than low-level characters do. While it's possible to tolerate early deaths as an advanced player, most if not all beginners will never have experienced the more elaborate parts of the game, only the cheap deaths (honestly, all it takes for a fresh character to die is bumping into a somewhat strong monster at floor 1 before having any disengaging options). That's still a fault in game design, even if it's one that only affects players with less familiarity to the game/genre.

[mrsaru]

You sense a certain tension...

[TheGeordieGriller]

Początkowo opublikowane przez .//slayer:

Nonsense. TOME is just as bad for the Uber Monsters of random appearance that can kill you before you even see them or whack your most protected character in two turns despite you mauling everything else.

Sorry for the rant, just so tired of hearing that "ToME has one-shot deaths all over the place!" argument which hasn't been true for ages.

Anyway, how much is ADOM different from ToME?

No need to apologise but taken from someone who has played a lot of ADOM and TOME, it's true. They both have their fair share of 1-shot wonder monsters. There was NO mention from me that TOME has one-shot monsters all over the place, it just has as many as ADOM. I was squashing the nonsense that ADOM is full of them also.

ADOM is very different from TOME, a bit more challenging imo basically because the nature of the combat is wholly different and there are some deeper mechanics. You bump a lot more, ammunition is limited, you have hunger, corpses to eat, some real Necromancy because you have corpses!, spells have limited knowledge and can run out, items need to be IDentified... there are weapon skills which are trained by using weapons/shields... and yes, a door can kill you mainly if you're silly or just extremely unlucky.

I also very much enjoy Caves of Qud and would say that ADOM has more to do with CoQ than TOME. In addition I would say that ADOM and DCSS share some similar feelings (started trying DCSS just 3 days ago), especially in the combat arena where there's more focus on bumping.

[Sherool]

At early levels a random trap can insta-kill the most frail character types yes.

However I don't consider the game unreasonably unfair. As you learn what dangers there are you can plan to avoid most of them, and after advancing a few levels you are not likely to just randomly drop dead for no reason. Yes stuff is randomly generated and things will be hard. You can play the game hundreds of times without winning it, but to me that is part of the charm. Playing is always fresh and interesting, actually getting to the end is more of a bonus. However skill is definitively involved, some people can reliuably beat the game with nearly any character, personally I rarely get very far at all :P