A Newbie's POV -- Too Much Grind

[booooooze]

[gjaustin]

I got 100% on the Alpha, and it definitely helped me get started in the Beta.

Playing the Alpha also got me into nethack, but that's a different story. It ends with me casting Finger of Death on myself twice in one game

[The Avatar]

I played the alpha a bit. I didn't 100% it, but I did play through most of it.

[booooooze]

YASD in nethack is why I'm vehemently anti- any sort of DD confirmations on stupid deaths. I know it's different; but I still think there should be a penalty for (for example) not realizing that Evolvia has changed to counter fireballs. Or any number of other ways I've died stupidly.

[The Avatar]

I hate when Evolvia does that...

Still, most of the frustration is when you misclick on an expensive and long Vicious run that took 5 tries to scum for. Or on the second to last floor of Vicious Gaan-Telet. You just lost like 20 minutes because your finger slipped.

[fall_ark]

[The Avatar]

Agreed. I'm not going to want to replay 30 minutes of grinding now, am I?

Here's, IMO, how the progression for new players should work: They should get the basic classes, and quickly proceed to the hard dungeons. The difficulty should make them go back and learn tactics with their classes in Den of Danger, so they can proceed, now that they're fairly experienced players.

[rgeneson]

First off thank you to everyone for all the responses, the community here is very helpful and inclusive which I find is sadly rare. In terms of grind I was definitely referring to learning how to play each character effectively and I completely understand not wanting to just lay it out (it's not much of a puzzle if each step includes solution instructions.) To me it just feels like I spend so much time slowly getting nowhere until I finally get it through my thick head that I shouldn't do that stupid thing I've been doing

I guess for less-than-awesome players like myself it would be nice if there were, say, lots of copies of the early easier quests for me to run through and small, perhaps useless, rewards I got for doing so. That way I wouldn't FEEL the learning curve so much while I was trudging through it. It could add some to the re-playability as well as the more experienced players could blaze through one of the multiple paths to the next set of classes quickly on their initial run-through and then take a new path the next time.

Of course I might not be a great example of the average player, even the 'training' material is a bit too much for my poor brain -- I can't even get past the second of the halfling challenges

[Lujo]

If you mean the Grimm's Grotto Halfling challenges - that doesn't say anything about your skill. Those are silly difficult! Grimm's Grotto has awfull monsters stats, and halflings contribute nothing to spellcasting. Those are really evil challenges.

[fall_ark]