Difference Between Difficulty, and Just Plain Bad Luck

[Litestrider]

Well maybe you should find a different genre. Sometimes you find a +11 longsword of rampant destruction on dungeon level 3 and sometimes you don't.

These games (roguelikes) are about adapting to unpredictable situations. If you don't, well, better luck next time.

This has not been my experience at all with roguelikes. Or rather it has, but the keyword there is adapting. You can't adapt to a save or die roll, or a loot drop that you NEED to finish the game. We aren't talking about a +11 longsword of rampant destruction, we're talking about a steak sandwich of not-having-any-deadly-diseases when you're starving.

In fact, most of the best and most enjoyable playthroughs and let's plays of rogulikes and their bretheren occur when a player consistently gets the absolute worst luck possible, and yet through their moxie, cleverness, cunning, and sheer bullheaded stubbornness, they manage to survive, or at least make a good amount of progress and a nice story. Look at Boatmurdered, was there anything that didn't go wrong there?

What do you do when your wooden sword gets burnt up and a gang of orcs bust through a wall in a roguelike? You buckle down, don't make any rash moves, and play the Benny Hill theme as they chase you around the dungeon for hours while you desperately regenerate health/mana so you can go wimp-punch them one more time. If you survive, you have a good story, lots of experience, and a good chance at some better gear drops from their corpses!

What do you do when the madman dice roll decides to take out a key member of your crew, the game decides not to give you any new weapons at all, and then you're thrown up against a four-shielded, heavily armed ship with a boarding party? Well, you pretty much just roll over. Even if you by some miracle manage to jump away, you're still going to have a very angry boarding party rampaging through your ship.

[Maze1125]

I do hate the spider one.
One way of dealing with that would be to change the retreat outcome so rather then losing a crew member instantly you get a dialogue where it says "Your crew was forced to retreat, unfortunately some of the spiders made it onto the ship before you left the station." and then 4-5 mantis reskins are placed randomly on your ship.

[beef42]

Well maybe you should find a different genre. Sometimes you find a +11 longsword of rampant destruction on dungeon level 3 and sometimes you don't.

These games (roguelikes) are about adapting to unpredictable situations. If you don't, well, better luck next time.

This has not been my experience at all with roguelikes. Or rather it has, but the keyword there is adapting. You can't adapt to a save or die roll, or a loot drop that you NEED to finish the game. We aren't talking about a +11 longsword of rampant destruction, we're talking about a steak sandwich of not-having-any-deadly-diseases when you're starving.

In fact, most of the best and most enjoyable playthroughs and let's plays of rogulikes and their bretheren occur when a player consistently gets the absolute worst luck possible, and yet through their moxie, cleverness, cunning, and sheer bullheaded stubbornness, they manage to survive, or at least make a good amount of progress and a nice story. Look at Boatmurdered, was there anything that didn't go wrong there?

What do you do when your wooden sword gets burnt up and a gang of orcs bust through a wall in a roguelike? You buckle down, don't make any rash moves, and play the Benny Hill theme as they chase you around the dungeon for hours while you desperately regenerate health/mana so you can go wimp-punch them one more time. If you survive, you have a good story, lots of experience, and a good chance at some better gear drops from their corpses!

What do you do when the madman dice roll decides to take out a key member of your crew, the game decides not to give you any new weapons at all, and then you're thrown up against a four-shielded, heavily armed ship with a boarding party? Well, you pretty much just roll over. Even if you by some miracle manage to jump away, you're still going to have a very angry boarding party rampaging through your ship.

What do you do when the madman dice roll kills your crew? Why would you let him onto the ship if you can't deal with the consequences. You're obviously a spoiled player so by now you know the worst outcomes of many of the events am I right?

It's the same as not busting into a great lich vault in ADOM or not going after Sigmund in Dungeon Crawl. Nobody is forcing you to make bad decisions, you, the player, let the madman onto the ship. You can't blame the poor RNG for your own questionable decision. (Incidentally some guy posted that the madman event without blue option has a 25% chance of crew death, a 25% chance of hull damage, a 25% chance of nothing, and finally a 25% chance of adding a crew. Given these odds why would you ever let him onto the ship?)

How is FTL not dropping any weapons for you different from any other roguelike not dropping any weapons, or scrolls of identify? The stores _have_ to give something so if you haven't any weapons you've plenty of scrap for defenses or drones or cloaks or crew teleporters or something.

My point is just, I don't think there are any truly impossible outcomes in this game. If there is, the chance of that very small. There are harder games than others, and that's the point. You have to play the cards you're dealt.

[PiIsExactly3]

While not my favorite event, I see the madman as comparable to drinking a potion of mutation in Dungeon Crawl. It will give you one permanent mutation, either harmful or positive. I usually don't drink them but every once in awhile I like to roll the dice.

The only problem I have with randomness in this game is when it creates un-winnable situations. Did you get to the final sector without having any chance to buy new weapons capable of breaking through 4 shields? Congratulations, you just lost the game.

[Litestrider]

What do you do when the madman dice roll kills your crew? Why would you let him onto the ship if you can't deal with the consequences. You're obviously a spoiled player so by now you know the worst outcomes of many of the events am I right?

It's the same as not busting into a great lich vault in ADOM or not going after Sigmund in Dungeon Crawl. Nobody is forcing you to make bad decisions, you, the player, let the madman onto the ship. You can't blame the poor RNG for your own questionable decision. (Incidentally some guy posted that the madman event without blue option has a 25% chance of crew death, a 25% chance of hull damage, a 25% chance of nothing, and finally a 25% chance of adding a crew. Given these odds why would you ever let him onto the ship?)

How is FTL not dropping any weapons for you different from any other roguelike not dropping any weapons, or scrolls of identify? The stores _have_ to give something so if you haven't any weapons you've plenty of scrap for defenses or drones or cloaks or crew teleporters or something.

My point is just, I don't think there are any truly impossible outcomes in this game. If there is, the chance of that very small. There are harder games than others, and that's the point. You have to play the cards you're dealt.

Way to go about insulting me out of the blue there.

The numerous stories along the lines of "The game didn't give me any weapons, now I can't do anything!" on these forums seems to paint a different picture, you don't hear that nearly as much with most roguelikes. And here's the big difference: with a roguelike, you usually have some chance. You can either pick away at the enemy's health one by one, or you can use tactics to whittle him down or avoid him, or if all else fails, you can run away and regroup.

It's that last one that's the sticking point, because it's really not unlikely for FTL to decide you don't deserve any weapons, and then you wind up fighting people with more shields than you have lasers and more defense drones than you have missiles. If you've spent all your scrap you can probably survive and run away, sure. What then? You can't backtrack or wait around for a lucky break, because the rebel fleet is always right there. You can't go forward because if the ever-more-difficult enemies don't get you, the flagship will. It puts you in an utterly hopeless situation and no amount of experience can save you from it, you just have to reload those hours of gameplay away and hope your random roll is luckier next time.

[beef42]

I didn't mean to insult you and I apologize, although I am unsure how I did it. If it's about you being spoiled, I merely meant that you have knowledge of the games events and their outcomes from beforehand, and that you can (and should) use that to your advantage.

You, however, are avoiding my main point. In the very unlikely event that you get absolutely no weapons, then you get something else. At the very least spare scrap should be turned into massive defenses. You can defeat heavily shielded vessels through a boarding action, or with ions, or with missiles.

Most ships start with one of these systems, and if you choose to play with one that doesn't, then you're rolling the dice being fully aware that getting a means of defeating shields is a huge priority. I see it as being similiar to playing a challenging start in other roguelikes (i.e "unviable" combos in Crawl, tourists in Nethack, farmers in ADOM, etc it's a big thing in the genre).

[PiIsExactly3]

Except of course, you aren't revealed to be a farmer at the end of the game. It is a conscious choice you make at the start. I didn't check a box to make sure I don't run into any weapon shops, only recruit engis/zoltans, and see nothing but defensive drones. Instead I hit The Last Stand and realize it's impossible to win.

The other side of that coin isn't that fun either. I had one game where I ended up with three Burst Laser II (2 power, 3 shots) and one 1 power 1 shot 2 damage laser. I blitzed through the game and nothing else on my ship mattered. Boss was wiped in just a few volleys.

[Eyjio]

Not meaning to be rude, but I'd like to address a point just made.

You, however, are avoiding my main point. In the very unlikely event that you get absolutely no weapons, then you get something else. At the very least spare scrap should be turned into massive defenses. You can defeat heavily shielded vessels through a boarding action, or with ions, or with missiles.

Now, I agree with you. There's almost never a chance to be totally stuck, assuming perfect foreknowledge. However, we don't know what the shops will have. I regularly find myself saving up for extra lasers, only to realise by sector 6 that all the game has given me is drones, by which time it's too late to totally change because of the imposed time/area limit. It's possible and indeed, reasonably likely that you can play a gun ship and then get to a stage where one ship has both cloaking and burst mk II. You need both, but it's rare you can afford both. So, what can you do? Well, unless you're lucky and see cloaking again, you can't. You lose the game there and then because the RNG decided it wasn't your day. It's quite frustrating when it happens and, although I see why the design choice was made, it leaves you with no chance of beating the game on that run. If we could return to areas and grind for scrap in sector 7 then yeah, maybe it'd be fixed, though I doubt it - everyone would just face the boss with max everything. So yeah, if you go wrong or don't hit the RNG lottery, you can lose with no chance to win.

I didn't mean this to be critical but you can't deny that this game will regularly screw you. After all, if it didn't we'd win more than we lost, no?

[Flair]

You know, the pure mental unfair randomness is exactly why I love this game. Its impossible to powergame. I'm too competative to not power game, but I hate myself for ruining games at times by doing it.

I dont really see how the spider thing is such a big deal anyway. Your not forced into it. If you dont wanna risk losing your crew, dont go into the spider infested station.

I guess maybe the ability to select crew memebers to go would be an ok comprimise. You could even give them a red shirt.

Also, has anyone actually paid attention to what your meant to be doing? Your a single, small ship, trying to outrun the entire rebel armarda through plenty of hostile territory. Even for the most skilled, most daring crew making every perfect play.... its pretty slip odds. For what its worth, I've clocked up about 20 hours so far and still havent actually managed to take down the flagship. It doesnt bother me though.

If there was any sort of regularity or predictability, I'd end up playing to unlock the ship i decide is best, then gear it up and beat the game and then be like, oh, that was a fun 4-5 hours. Instead, when I finally am successful it wll be one hell of a story.

[madattak9]

Although I think something is wrong with the dice system, I've had 4 crew member adds from the madman and 1 hull damage.