njvack wrote:bel wrote:What's wrong with "never"?
From the Crawl manual:The possibility of unavoidable deaths is a larger topic in computer games. Ideally, a game like this would be really challenging and have both random layout and random course of action, yet still be winnable with perfect play. This goal seems out of reach. Thus, computer games can be soft in the sense that optimal play ensures a win. Apart from puzzles, though, this means that the game is solved from the outset; this is where the lack of a human game-master is obvious. Alternatively, they can be hard in the sense that unavoidable deaths can occur. We feel that the latter choice provides much more fun in the long run.
It's strange, I read the exact same paragraph and thought it supported my position! From my reading, it says that there is no
guarantee of winning with perfect play, because that would make the game a puzzle and crawl does not want to go in that direction. That is totally fine. There is no guarantee of winning with a potion of curing or scroll of teleport either (the adder may poison you again, or the teleport scroll may land you near the same place). Again, the potion of curing/scroll of teleport does not make you invincible.
Here are a few other points near that paragraph which support my position:
Major design goals
challenging and random gameplay, with skill making a real difference
Crawl is designed to be a challenging game, and is also renowned for its randomness. However, this does not mean that wins are an arbitrary matter of luck: the skill of players will have the largest impact. So, yes, there may be situations where you are doomed - no action could have saved your life. But then, from the midgame on, most deaths are not of this type: By this stage, almost all casualties can be traced back to actual mistake...
The manual is saying that the early game is the situation where it's possible no action could have saved your life, but that becomes less likely as you go further into the game. That is a statement of fact (the early game is the hardest). That is not a statement of design philosophy saying that there
should be unavoidable deaths in the early game. The early game would still remain the hardest if you give the player a potion of curing/scroll of teleport.