Difficulty

[Omnivorous]

Well this seems to be all about personal preference.

In my opinion, I love the ultra-realistic games. Realistic as in the sense that the game pretends like it isn't a game. It just presents a world to you, and if you die in it.. TOO BAD!

It's the same as in real-life..all deaths are not "fair".

The only non-roguelike I can compare to roguelikes is for example The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, where you lots of times could encounter monsters/groups of bandits that were way too hard for you. Then you can: 1) Rush in over and over anyway, and complain that the game is too difficult since you keep dying. 2) Realize that this is an encounter you are not ready for yet and run away.

Some here seems to think that when you have completely "mastered" a roguelike, this should equal winning everytime/not possibly dying.. But in reality, it gives you big advantages as for building a powerful character that is strong enough to be ABLE to win, and knowledge that should give you a big advantage when it comes to knowing when to turn around and run away..

"Mastering a RL should be = 100% win chance" is perhaps the stupidest statement I've ever seen on a RL-forum. RLs are all about presenting a "brand new" world with everyplay, so in essence, even if you have won in this RL before and "mastered" it, perhaps the RL generated a world you couldn't master this time.

The way I see it: Deaths are the player's faulth, not the world. The world is an unbiased entity that consists of many factors that are predictable and can be controlled, but also some "random" events. This is what the player have to deal with. This is the challenge. Your fate is in YOUR hands.

[Dalton]

As far as "realism" goes I never understood why in typical dungeon crawls, if you leave the dungeon you get "you left the dungeon alive. Game over."

Realistically if I was an adventurer and I ran into these dungeons, proceeded to get the crap kicked out of me, ran out of food and arrows and broke my sword, I'd go back to town to restock then go right back in. In that sense, Angband (and Incursion, which also features a town level shop) are more logical and realistic.

As far as this...

Deaths are the player's faulth, not the world. The world is an unbiased entity that consists of many factors that are predictable and can be controlled, but also some "random" events. This is what the player have to deal with. This is the challenge. Your fate is in YOUR hands.

I do wish that were true, but in practically every roguelike ever made (even, to a lesser extent, Angband, which has aggressive monsters at the town level) at least a few times I've popped out of character creation, taken a few steps, and "It hits you. It hits you. You die..."

The only non-roguelike I can compare to roguelikes is for example The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, where you lots of times could encounter monsters/groups of bandits that were way too hard for you. Then you can: 1) Rush in over and over anyway, and complain that the game is too difficult since you keep dying. 2) Realize that this is an encounter you are not ready for yet and run away.

I like THIS. If you can't handle the fight, get away and prepare for it properly. That's why I like Angband. In the case of Crawl, if you meet Sigmund early on in the dungeon you're dead. Period. He's faster than you, so you can't just turn and run, and persistent games don't offer the option of fleeing to town and trying a different dungeon level.

Fact is that your fate is more in the hands of the dungeon than anything else in most games: you rely on the game generating enough food/edible corpses, or in Nethack's case an altar so you can make sacrifices for piety and pray for food. And you rely on the game giving you long enough early in the game to achieve your first few powers and magical items before it starts throwing bosses and dragons at you.

[Omnivorous]

Well what I honestly believe for these well-balanced, popular roguelikes (Crawl, Adom etc.) is that if you died because the game generated something too strong for you, for example Sigmund, and you died with a unidentified scroll in inventory...well that might've been a teleport scroll! Also, why does people specifically complain about Sigmund? I consider myself a 'noob' in Crawl, but I rarely die from him. If I do, my character was level 2 or 3 and I don't really give a damn about that extremely unlucky death.

If roguelikes had save/load function like most other games, noone would be complaining about difficulty. Because even after dying 3 times in the same situation, the fourth time you'll discover something you DIDN'T try yet, and survive/slay your enemy. And this is what I'm getting at. I find it very rare for a decent character to die, and me thinking after: "WHAT?! That was impossible!!" I mean.. perhaps it WAS impossible, because I was stupid enough to walk straight across an open big area, after having used up all my healing-potions earlier on, in an encounter I over-estimated.. And perhaps I forgot about evoking that staff of paralyzis.. I mean, there's almoast -always- a way out. It's just that you only get -one- shot at estimating what it is, then being successful.

I find most my games I do hundreds of correct decitions, then one mistake.. Which ofcourse means it IS difficult to win.

Roguelikes are -DIFFICULT-! If you encounter a roguelike that isn't, it's probably a boring game. I believe this topic didn't start about a debate whether RLs are difficult or not, but someone asking if some games were just -impossible-. I have never won a roguelike But I know they aren't impossible.. and I know that for each 10th play atleast, I've gained more game-experience, and my new characters tend to do slightly (if not remarkably) better. The better you get, the better your characters get, and the more the experience of dying costs..

To say something about how hard ADOM is.. Thomas Biskup said in his interview here at ToR that he never got past level 20 in ADOM himself..! XD
However, it is not impossible! =)

[corremn]

Once you play 1 million games of crawl you will never die to Sigmund. Nearly every death I have in Crawl nowadays could of been avoided.  (with hindsight of couse)

Realistically if I was an adventurer and I ran into these dungeons, proceeded to get the crap kicked out of me, ran out of food and arrows and broke my sword, I'd go back to town to restock then go right back in.

Realistically I would run home to my mother...