My two cents about Permadeath

[LazyCat]

there's no possible way that replaying the same encounter over and over again makes you a better player, if you reload every time until you beat that ogre in melee then you are just becoming lazy and stupid as a player, you are genuinely deluded

You are playing wrong roguelikes. In roguelikes that require skill reloading will not help you, you will advance only when and if you actually get better. Like in every other game that requires skill. You don't beat that final boss in Resident Evil after 20 save reloads because you become lazy and stupid, you beat it only when and if you become better.

[pat]

You are playing wrong roguelikes. In roguelikes that require skill reloading will not help you, you will advance only when and if you actually get better. Like in every other game that requires skill. You don't beat that final boss in Resident Evil after 20 save reloads because you become lazy and stupid, you beat it only when and if you become better.

I have no idea what you're talking about, almost every roguelike involves pressing a direction key until a monster is dead. You can savescum as many times as you like to get that job done without any skill whatsoever.

If you are talking about a realtime game which requires some kind of skill beyond tactical thinking then that's not a roguelike.

[Vanguard]

What exactly is it that becomes easier, can you name it?

Because, among other things, save abuse lets you keep the health, ammo, and other resources your mistakes would have cost you.  Why are you having such a hard with this basic concept?

If you shoot at a man and miss, then shoot again and hit, you used two bullets to kill that man.  If you shoot at a man and miss, then load your save, shoot again, and hit, you only used one of your bullets.  Now you have one more bullet than the guy who didn't use saves.  Over time this can decide whether or not you run out of bullets.  I don't know how to make it any more simple than that.

[LazyCat]

I have no idea what you're talking about, almost every roguelike involves pressing a direction key until a monster is dead. You can savescum as many times as you like to get that job done without any skill whatsoever.

Try Brogue, that tactics will not get you far. Bumping is the most trivial part. To advance you need to learn how to manage your inventory, to conserve and use appropriate items in appropriate times. You need to learn to innovate and improvise, to use environment features to your advantage. You need to learn how to approach different monsters, when and where to retreat and when to avoid combat and sneak by. Until then you will not advance, no matter how much you save-scum.

[LazyCat]

Because, among other things, save abuse lets you keep the health, ammo, and other resources your mistakes would have cost you.  Why are you having such a hard with this basic concept?

You do not keep anything. You fail and try again on the exact same game difficulty. The only difference is you don't rewind as much. You still didn't answer the question: does saving a game alter the game's behaviour?

[pat]

Try Brogue, that tactics will not get you far. Bumping is the most trivial part. To advance you need to learn how to manage your inventory, to conserve and use appropriate items in appropriate times. You need to learn to innovate and improvise, to use environment features to your advantage. You need to learn how to approach different monsters, when and where to retreat and when to avoid combat and sneak by. Until then you will not advance, not matter how much you save-scum.

I was being facetious with my example because you're so dense but all of those things are an extension of simple tactics and are trivial if there is a safety net to catch you if you fail. You just try every possibility until you succeed. Or even try losing strategies until they work with the help of the RNG.

To think that I, a roguetemple senior regular, has not played and mastered Brian's Rogue... this is beyond the pale.

[LazyCat]

I was being facetious with my example because you're so dense but all of those things are an extension of simple tactics and are trivial if there is a safety net to catch you if you fail. You just try every possibility until you succeed. Or even try losing strategies until they work with the help of the RNG.

Going back to play all over until you get in a similar situation does not make it any different. You are again going to try one of those same strategies, the only difference is with permadeath you are wasting more time between the tries. Do you understand?

[mushroom patch]

I don't think that a reasonable person could fail to grasp the difference between the restricted saving and loading behavior of roguelikes -- the game is always saved on exit, including death, and as a result, a given save can be loaded exactly once -- and unrestricted saving and loading of game states (the more common approach in modern games) or the effect these two approaches have on the difficulty of games. I also don't believe a reasonable person could give such an equivocal answer to Vanguard's question about bowling 12 strikes in a row versus 12 strikes nonconsecutively across a number of games. It is extremely easy to formalize the relevant notion of difficulty in terms of basic probability, of which LazyCat seems to have no knowledge as witnessed in other threads.

I don't know what you can do with such a persistent and irrational poster, quite honestly.

[pat]

I don't know what you can do with such a persistent and irrational poster, quite honestly.

I am going to irrationally personally attack him/her forever more, it is for the good of the forums

[mushroom patch]

I don't know what you can do with such a persistent and irrational poster, quite honestly.

I am going to irrationally personally attack him/her forever more, it is for the good of the forums

Okay, I got your back, bro.

[LazyCat]

I don't think that a reasonable person could fail to grasp the difference between the restricted saving and loading behavior of roguelikes -- the game is always saved on exit, including death, and as a result, a given save can be loaded exactly once -- and unrestricted saving and loading of game states (the more common approach in modern games) or the effect these two approaches have on the difficulty of games. I also don't believe a reasonable person could give such an equivocal answer to Vanguard's question about bowling 12 strikes in a row versus 12 strikes nonconsecutively across a number of games. It is extremely easy to formalize the relevant notion of difficulty in terms of basic probability, of which LazyCat seems to have no knowledge as witnessed in other threads.

I don't know what you can do with such a persistent and irrational poster, quite honestly.

Don't blame me for your own inability to understand. Game difficulty is programmed within the game, saving and loading a game state does not change it. You are confusing faster with easier, confusing tedious with difficult. Going back to play all over from the beginning is not difficult, it's just time consuming.

[mushroom patch]

Don't blame me for your own inability to understand. Game difficulty is programmed within the game, saving and loading a game state does not change it. You are confusing faster with easier, confusing tedious with difficult. Going back to play all over from the beginning is not difficult, it's just time consuming.

I don't know what to tell you. You're just wrong.

There's no point in arguing with someone like you, because you don't seem to have a reasoned position, you don't really show any understanding of other people's arguments, and you're wrong in such elementary ways that the discussion doesn't have much chance to cover interesting ground.

[Quendus]

http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;u=51 makes better reading than this thread.

[awake]

Not if you can't be permanently killed.

You people are so pedantic.

You started it...

I actually do think permadeath vs anti-save scumming is a significant distinction and the latter is much more important. If in say Nethack your character could respawn after dying, it would make the game easier and less frustrating but the overall design of the game still works. OTOH, if you can save and reload, even if there are limitations on where/how often you can save, the item identification aspect is rendered totally pointless (for starters).

Even lightweight commercial roguelikes that have minor consequences for dying or allow you to resurrect at a cost don't normally have a "load save state" option because it would pretty much ruin them unless the player decides not to use it out of the goodness of their heart.

OTOH I can see how getting your progress wiped out in an 80 hour game might piss some folks off. My solution is just to not play ADOM because it sounds completely insane on paper, frankly I sympathize with anyone scumming their way through that.

[mushroom patch]

I actually do think permadeath vs anti-save scumming is a significant distinction and the latter is much more important. If in say Nethack your character could respawn after dying, it would make the game easier and less frustrating but the overall design of the game still works. OTOH, if you can save and reload, even if there are limitations on where/how often you can save, the item identification aspect is rendered totally pointless (for starters).

Even lightweight commercial roguelikes that have minor consequences for dying or allow you to resurrect at a cost don't normally have a "load save state" option because it would pretty much ruin them unless the player decides not to use it out of the goodness of their heart.

Exactly. The key mechanic is not permadeath, it's irreversibility, which is much stronger. Every action, both your own and the monsters', has weight because you can't undo their effects by reloading. This opens the door for permanent status effects, item damage and destruction, xp draining, stat draining, dead pets, and a host of other effects that you don't see in conventional RPGs, because if players got them, they'd just reload.