A Word on Spoilers

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Flambard
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A Word on Spoilers

Post by Flambard » Sat 25.04.2009, 20:37

Heh, it seems weird we have no topic on this :)

I'll start with a nice quote from http://www.juti.nl/hugo/Angband/Spoiler/
Spoilers? What are spoilers?

Part of the fun of playing Angband is NOT knowing in advance what an item, a monster or a spell will do. But of course, fun is very much a personal experience. Some players prefer not to be surprised by possible malevolent side-effects of unknown objects. For those players, spoilers can be a solution. But beware - you get only one chance to play the game without full knowledge, but you'll have many chances to play the game with full knowledge. Always remember this before consulting a spoiler!
That kinda relates to my personal opinion too, however I can understand a difference between spoilers to a tv show and ones that could save your character's life :)
So instead of arguing this, let's ask ourselves what are spoilers in mangband context?

Well, .spo files obviosly, and everything that came from them. Each new monster should a be an unknown danger, each new object - a mystery.

More tricky part: tickets from bug database. Ideally - each new version should be packed with surprises for you. And thus, participating in the beta test is spoilery too - as it invloves learning most features in advance, but probably in a bad, broken way. (Like watching bloopers before the episode). Not that I'm discouraging you guys from beta-testing, we can't do without them really. Just trying to define what spoilers are.

I don't know where am I going with this, maybe someone has something to say on the subject?

serina
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by serina » Sun 26.04.2009, 01:37

To spoil something = to ruin the experience in my eyes.

The drolem, Gorlim (among others) does that to Angband already. Spoils. The so called spoiler files might help you foresee the true danger of enemies, but by reading these don't make you able to automatically win the game (there are many many examples to this :)).

Spoiling MAngband is (might be more also):
- Being handed alot of great gear for free, so you don't have to struggle to learn how to level up (freeway till it get's hard, and then the player quits because the game is unreasonably hard after such an easy start).
- Being grouped with someone many "stages" ahead of yourself (someone in your party finished stat-gain while you've only seen 1-2 potions yourself so far).
- Being killed by a trap on 50-100 feet.
- Stairing into a "death mold" being 1-rounded without time for 1 action.
- Recalling into a Q that summons time hounds on the first turn.
- Playing Ironman MAngband (because it's just so darn hard, hehe. But it's funny too :) so might not be spoiling it afterall).


Morgoth holds all the cards in this game. Either a bad choice or bad luck can kill anyone. To even out the odds by knowing some of the "lame" monsters isn't a "spoiler" in the sense that it ruins your gaming experience. It levels the play-field some. There's nothing worse than becomming lvl 30-40 for 3-4 years of time before you can move beyond 2k feet "safely".

Some monsters will surprise you with effects or abilities even if you know most/all of them by heart. There's an endless set of combinations and variables to keep it fun each game. However I find lvl 1 till I get regen quite boring at times. Maybe 1 character in 10 something funny happens during this time, but that's not very often. Around 1k it starts getting exciting :)

Those are just my 2 coppers thrown in a late Saturday because I couldn't sleep. Might post more on this later.

ZAL

schroeder
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by schroeder » Sun 26.04.2009, 09:40

i agree 100% with serena on this one. Things which would normally be considered spoilers are not so in roguelikes simply because, unlike in normal games, dieing once is lick a kick in the balls.

Here is where I draw the proverbial line...
Things which help you know what your up against are great, along with things that help you know how to optimize yourself. However, i think that things which hinder your wisdom of what your up against, and your wisdom of what your up against spoil the game. What I mean by the 2nd part is... when you are given a staff of banishment with unlimited charges, you know that you are up against practically nothing. However, you do not gain any wisdom about how to really deal with them. For the self-optimization part, I think the best you can do for that is just asking questions "hay which is better"? Something that is probably a spoiler in mangband for self-optimization, is the lack of options later in the game for characters, specifically for resists. Quite often, it is power dragon scale mail or GTFO.
Side note: Hell yeah, warrior. Nice job working on more ego items :)
Side side note: If other devs were workin on them, sorry for not thanking you, but warrior was the only one who told me he was working on them :P
Anything worth being done, is worth being overdone.
My Mangband videos; http://www.youtube.com/user/Schroederband

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Flambard
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by Flambard » Thu 30.04.2009, 19:26

Haha, not what I had in mind actually, but you guys bring up most interesting topics!

Well, first off, I don't think we should call any kind of ruining experience a spoiler. I meant in a more traditional sense, i.e. - ruining experience by providing information in advance, and not in proper order. Hmm, or at least, 'providing information' bit, but I'll get to proper order too a bit later. Thus, we can't in my opinion call Gorlim a spoiler :) Nor can call spoilers those things:
- Recalling into a Q that summons time hounds on the first turn.
- Being killed by a trap on 50-100 feet.
- Stairing into a "death mold" being 1-rounded without time for 1 action.
Hehe, and I hope you're kidding about Ironman, IMHO it provides great 'true' experience in this cheezy and corrupt world of today ;)

Anyway, powerleveling and gifts DO spoil (in a traditional way) for sure. It's like watching the last 30 minutes of King Kong first, and then being bored by 2.30 hours of character development which came before. This overlaps with cheeze a bit, but the point here is very true - being introduced to the stages of the game in incorrect order could easily spoil the fun.

What I had in mind tho, is that IF supposedly some person says "no spoilers please" we in that case know exactly what to do and not to. To this person, I mean. Like should we send him damage calculation tables in that case? :)

Schroeder, don't feel bad for reading spoilers, they are there for a reason - to be read. Thus forgive me if I say that, but unlike 'normal games', roguelikes are exactly the genre when the spoiler term applies. Because learning the environment is core part of the gameplay process. In Larn (if I'm not mistaken, I'm actually quite clueless), id-ing a magic scroll is a mini-game of it's own. I agree on staff of banishment tho, gifts category.

PowerWyrm
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by PowerWyrm » Thu 30.04.2009, 21:33

There are no spoilers in Angband. It's an open source game... Anything you want to know is in the source code :)

MAngband is even worse... In Angband, when your character dies, it's gone for good and the next reroll brings a totally different game. In MAngband, considering that you have a static server instance, the next character you roll will stumble on a scroll labeled "foo", which you know from a previous character that it's a scroll of summon monster. Would you discard it because you know what it is, or read it at once... because you always read unidentified scrolls in Angband?

Agor
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by Agor » Fri 01.05.2009, 12:19

PowerWyrm wrote:the next character you roll will stumble on a scroll labeled "foo", which you know from a previous character that it's a scroll of summon monster.
But how hard would it be to re-roll these "unidentified" names for players? So that they're not world-tied, but character-tied.

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Flambard
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by Flambard » Fri 01.05.2009, 19:44

PowerWyrm wrote:There are no spoilers in Angband. It's an open source game... Anything you want to know is in the source code :)
And every book is open-source too. You can even start reading from the last chapter. And learn who the killer is before the events unfold.

As for flavour types, you're totally right, it's worse then Angband, but I think it's fine. Afterall, it's the same instance you go to, you learned about that scroll fair and square. Perhaps you even summoned some monsters :) However, if you just joined the game and are handed a list of all flavors from current instance -- you've been spoilered for sure :)

schroeder
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by schroeder » Sat 02.05.2009, 02:48

Flambard wrote: And every book is open-source too. You can even start reading from the last chapter. And learn who the killer is before the events unfold.
But if the book has no story, and its not really enjoyable unless you actually know what the fu*ck is going on, and the only painless way to figure that out is by fliping to the back of the book, I think its clear flipping to the back doesn't spoil the 'book'.
Anything worth being done, is worth being overdone.
My Mangband videos; http://www.youtube.com/user/Schroederband

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Flambard
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by Flambard » Sun 03.05.2009, 19:01

Are you saying that spoilers, as a category, don't exist at all in this world? That it is impossible to spoil something? Here I'd have to disagree strongly. If you're saying we should consider spoilers for static media (tv shows, books, whatever) and spoilers for MAngband as different things - I agree, that's the reason for this topic, to figure out what they are. However, I have to insist the general principle for term spoilers should still apply. Here's a quote from everhelpfull wikipedia:
Spoiler is Genex slang for any element of any summary or description of any piece of fiction that reveals any plot element which will give away the outcome of a dramatic episode within the work of fiction, or the conclusion of the entire work. Because enjoyment of fiction sometimes depends upon the dramatic tension and suspense which arising within it, the external revelation of such plot elements can "spoil" the enjoyment that some consumers of the narrative would otherwise have experienced.
(Apparently, Genex stands for "generation X" incase you're wondering what the hell is it. I was :)

If you're saying that MAngband is unplaybale without spoilers... well, here's where I chime in. The argument itself (are spoilers good for you?) is very tired. I know for certain, there are people who love spoilers, and people who don't. They always argue about 'best way to enjoy' things, but how could there be a best way? It's very personal. I, for example, would rather die and loose my character, then read a monster spoiler. You're obviously the other way around. Am I right? Are you right? I believe, we both are, as it's a matter of personal preference.

When Episode I of Star Wars was about to be released and people were camping out at the theaters, there was a convention of wearing colored badges. Green badges meant the person is completly unspoiled and wants to know nothing about the movie. Yellow meant the person is aware of promo materials, posters, teaser trailers and such. Red meant the person allready read the script, saw all the leaked footage, etc. The distinction was made specificly to regulate the information flow and not to upset anybody about it. I'm telling you about this, as it's in my opinion a perfect example of how spoilers can be handled in a great way, and not even on Internet! And also to stress, that spoilers DO exists and ARE a real issue (atleast among geeks, hehe).

Also, something to think about. The documentation for Moria (which carried on to Angband) was very vague on purpose. There were no artifact lists with all the stats, there were "Artifact rumors". Decriptions for Races and Classes were also very foggy. It never stated "+6 DEX", more like "It seems Hobbits are more dexterious compared to other races, but probably not". It was part of the game to learn all that. Again, not that I insist you enjoy it this way. Just that's a viable option to do and some people would love to.

On some tv show forum, posting a spoiler might result in a ban (Again, please don't worry, I'm just throwing in some examples). There are [spoiler] tags too. Here, we have absolutly no etiquette for this kind of thing. So, I was thinking, with your (plural your, like 'all you guys') help, we could develop it.

schroeder
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by schroeder » Sun 03.05.2009, 23:25

I think I've figured out what I was thinking with spoilers. I think that, closer to the end of the game, things get much more intense. You have wisdom about the game, but their will be new, more dangerous things coming that could completely ruin you. That is the point, imo, where 'spoilers' are no longer spoilers. However, earlier in the game you can go without spoilers, and even possibly should. It gets just annoying if you try to read all the spoilers at this point. And you also don't gain that wisdom.

Even near the endgame though, spoiler files can still spoil the game a little, simply because they are boring. People are awesome to talk to instead of spoilers. They almost make spoilers non-spoilers!

So I do agree with you about the spoiler file thing...at least until their is really no other way to get better (general game information is not enough to optimize yourself...like with the way +to speed works with energy...)
Anything worth being done, is worth being overdone.
My Mangband videos; http://www.youtube.com/user/Schroederband

CloneDeath
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by CloneDeath » Mon 06.07.2009, 20:07

In regards to unidentified scrolls and potions and such:

I like to think of "what the character experiences" as apposed to "what the player experiences".

Flavour text of what I am trying to explain (feel free to skip to the summary):
I (in emulation of myself) like to immagine that in the town there are "rumers" of certain scrolls doing certain things, so they keep that in mind, and ignorantly testing out every unidentified scroll they come upon. For the player, they are new to the game, and just try out scrolls to get the experience. Now, to the character, I like to pretend that all my Characters are related, with my first characters being ancient ancestors or rumored heroes or something, and each visit to town brought back more info on what was in the dungeon. This in turn, led his children know that either blue or green colored potions (or something like that) are in general healing potions (I think...). This experience for the character reflects the player's knowledge. And hearing "The white mushrooms make you hallucinate" is like hearing "Acid makes you trip balls" off on the street (some things in life you don't need to/want to experience in order to learn what they do).

Summary (What it all means):
As long as there is no "Spoiler list of items" then whatever you gather isn't a spoiler as much as it is an experience. By spoiler list I mean a list that says "Potion that is blue foggy does foo. Scroll titled "Blah blah blah" does bar." then there is no problem.

More flavour text(skippy!):
Your character likes to write these down, obviously (as seen in the items, when you try something out, it expands to "Potion of blindness".) I like to think of this as his personal notes on the dungeon, so if a player comes up with the idea to write these down out of his own experience, then we shouldn't stop him, and we should look at it as "The character passed down his notebook across generations or something"

Summary:
Unless it is a table that a player heavily leans on and keeps referring to constantly, I wouldn't consider it a spoiler.

timtek
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Re: A Word on Spoilers

Post by timtek » Fri 10.07.2009, 04:57

I don't mind spoilers, I try and do as much as possible without them but I find that when I do use spoilers it's more for game mechanics than item lists etc. If noone had spoiled me on bpr for example, I probably wouldn't have understood it at all. I tend to try and decide if the the info I'm seeking is something my char would actually think about. If it's not I spoil. What I've always liked about roguelikes is how complicated they are, but if you don't know the rules to a game, you'll probably end up thinking it's not fair. In the end as has been mentioned before, it's a personal choice. If you don't like spoilers, don't make one and don't promote the ones that are already out there. If you do like em, try and be respectful of the people who don't, in others words only give info privately and when asked.

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