Roguelike Radio podcast

[getter77]

I would guess to break the seemingly-unbreakable momentum/the return of bitterness from last year's ToME ingame-poll awareness.  ADOM also received lots of spite for "daring" to do a crowdfunding attempt.  Also, probably rabble rousing on the nature of the poll and how it was conducted in general---"Look upon thy works and despair" and whatnot.

[Paul Jeffries]

Noxico itself isn't a terrible game if you are into that sort of shit.

I was really only suggesting it as a joke, but out of interest; how is it if you're not into that sort of shit?  i.e. is there any reason why I - as somebody who does not regularly masturbate to Watership Down - should give it a go other than out of morbid curiosity?

[Krice]

I can't play Noxico now after all this. It will remain in my imagination as the perfect rape simulator.

[guest509]

Paul if you aren't into the subject matter you won't enjoy it. You engage NPCs in conversation trees trying to fuck them, basically. Choose enough flattery type options, then move on to the taking off of clothing, then to the fucking. Or you can force the issue and choose, "Hold the PonyGirl down" or whatever.

If you like dinking about with conversation trees and hidden arousal meters then go for it. Other than that tree are a billion other games to check out.

[NON]

Obviously the roguelike community really needs something which summarizes the year, and the poll fills that role nicely, that's why it is so important to many people. Even if it is so flawed.

I think we can expect the whole poll, controversy, and ideas for improvement to be discussed on Roguelike Radio soon. And this would obviously include Noxico.

Is it so hard to set up a somewhat non-cheatable poll?

There seems to be lots of resources for it onlne:
https://www.google.se/search?q=create+a+poll

[AgingMinotaur]

Well, I personally think the poll would profit from being reimplemented next year. The sheer scope of the community/genre has simply changed a lot throughout the years the poll has run. As some have said, the more interesting games show up further down the list. #3 and #4 in the poll are separated by several thousand votes, making the top three no-brainers, really[1]. (I'm not saying ADOM and ToME aren't great games, but do we really care which of the two managed to round up the most fanbois this year?) A simple solution (apart from implementing at least some halfhearted security measures) might be to exclude previous winners from the poll. Then, ToME would be out of the ointment, ADOM could get it's moment in the sun come December, and we might all actually be excited about the winner again in 2015

But Andrew doesn't seem too concerned, and that is probably wise of him. I mean, we can still use the results to point us in the direction of interesting games, which is the real meaning of the poll, right? And even if the most popular entries get inflated results, I don't think many people are going to cheat on behalf of the kind of games that gets votes by the dozens rather than the thousands.

Anyway, I'm hoping for a breakdown similar to what Jo did with last year's results, listing the top 10 games in various categories.

As always,
Minotauros

[1] Well, I guess Noxico did come as a surprise But even with #2 and #3 being the no-brainers, and #1 something of a Memento Mori (Memento Futuere, rather) for the runner-ups, the point stands that as of late, the struggle to get on top of the list seems to have very little relevance to what's currently moving in the Roguelike scene.

[Z]

Removing the winners from a poll is an option, but I think that it is possible for the same game to actually deserve winning the poll twice. (If the poll was already there in 1999 and ADOM won it, I think it would be okay if it won it again in 2012-2014.)

I think cheating is not the only problem. There is confusion what are we actually rating: progress in 2013, overall quality, player's fun in 2013. I actively play DCSS and I think that its quality is one of the highest, and I had lots of fun with it, but I am not satisfied with its progress (new races are cool, but some of the changes are controversial), so I do not vote for it. (Lack of progress is not necessarily a bad thing anyway, it could be also a sign of perfection.) Regarding progress, there are two separate things, one is how the game itself changed, and the other is meta-game stuff such as marketing/modding (ADOM was a ROTY for me in 2012 because of the crowdfunding campaign, even if the changes were relatively minor; similarly ToME in 2013, I suppose that the changes were relatively minor, but Steam and module contest are notable). And what if a game made major progress in 2012 and a minor one in 2013, but I found about it in 2013 (or maybe I found the poll in 2013, or I think that the game is underrated) -- I want to vote for it (but if there was no development in 2013, the game would simply not appear on the poll). I think that some of the games get high scores because people do not care what the poll is actually about.

Maybe it would be cool to have some categorized poll, but I expect that fans will simply vote for everything, and ToME would win the "most underrated" category.

And don't forget to rate roguelikes on IRLDb

[AgingMinotaur]

And don't forget to rate roguelikes on IRLDb

This, for sure!

As always,
Minotauros

[Enke]

So what did we learn? That the Noxico bot voted faster/longer than the TOME/ADOM bots.

[Quendus]

I expect they're the same bot. I saw a graph on IRC that seemed to show very similar linear growth in vote counts, just with different rates, and apparently converging to a common approximate value. Maybe the bot's owner was trying to imitate a closely faught poll.

[Darren Grey]

Bah, this ep took ages:

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2014/02/episode-85-2013-retrospective.html

Sorry for the delay, but please enjoy

Next up is an interview with the Angband dev team (already recorded). I'm also trying to arrange a "How to Make a Unique 7DRL" episode.

[Z]

Is there enough time to post this 7DRL episode (and an Angband episode before it)?

[Krice]

The whole commercial/mobile roguelike thing is kind of sad. On the other hand if you want to make money from games, why not create a roguelike? Even if it's not really that good idea. Sometimes I think myself if it would be better try the commercial route. You know. Money, and stuff.

[Darren Grey]

Is there enough time to post this 7DRL episode (and an Angband episode before it)?

Possibly not, especially since I'm moving house at the mo, but I'll gosh-darn-well try! If needs be I can delay the Angband release.

[Krice]

One of the reasons I like RLR is that when I listen dumbs talk about roguelikes and not-so-roguelikes it gives me determination to work harder on creating hardcore roguelikes - a determination that sadly dissolves in couple of minutes.