It's been a while now...

[Derakon]

I haven't played Crawl, but my experience with NetHack was a lot of "What? What do I do with this? How do I use this?" Playing unspoiled NetHack is extraordinarily difficult, because the game gives you a colossal number of tools but doesn't tell you how to use any of them. Simple things like Elbereth, figuring out BUC, or ID-by-price are completely impossible for the newbie. Meanwhile, there are gotchas and sudden-death traps all over the place, which are entirely avoidable if you know how to use the tools.

Angband certainly has some elements of that -- monsters who paralyze with their melee attacks, drolems' bizarrely powerful poison breath, etc. But the basic gameplay is far more accessible in my experience.

Of course, this being the Angband forum, what kind of response did you expect? I'm sure that the NetHack forums would feel differently.

[half]

Nethack has a lot of unavoidable ways to die at early game.

They are actually mostly avoidable as otherwise you couldn't explain people winning 29 games in a row:

http://alt.org/nethack/ascstreak.html

I think there really is a problem you are pointing to, but it is more subtle than being unavoidable, it is more that it is opaque how to avoid them and often involves having done something really clever a long time earlier so you have reflection by then or you don't go to that level, or have amulet of lifesaving etc.

[TJS]

I tried Nethack for a few hours once.

Hundreds of items with no idea how to use them, loads of different races/classes without understanding how any of it works. Spend half the time moving a massive boulder around for some reason.

Do you want to drink from the fountain? Oh dear some monster appeared you die.

[Jazerus]

The Gnome deliberately steps into polymorph trap -more-
The Black Dragon breathes disintegration -more-
You die -more-

Or.

The Gnome picks up a wand -more-
The Gnome zaps you with disintegration (or something like that)
You die -more-

Nethack has a lot of unavoidable ways to die at early game. In later game you can to status where killing you is near-impossibility.

OK, I'll accept the gnome with the wand of disintegration as essentially unavoidable. That is, one who spawns with one (it can happen) rather than one who picks one up. The streaks happen because of the vanishing rarity of truly and completely unavoidable deaths, though. Nethack is pretty opaque - sure. As I said, though, if you are knowledgeable and prepared (meaning you've figured out at least some of the opaque stuff and are aware of how to avoid situations that are highly likely to kill you) it is comparable to Angband in terms of how often you are truly screwed over through no fault of your own. I could write out a mock log of being ambushed by a huge pack of gravity hounds in response to your mock log of the gnome, for example.

I tried Nethack for a few hours once.

Hundreds of items with no idea how to use them, loads of different races/classes without understanding how any of it works. Spend half the time moving a massive boulder around for some reason.

Do you want to drink from the fountain? Oh dear some monster appeared you die.

That happens with all roguelikes. Until you know that early fountain-drinking is an awful idea, you'll do it and it will kill you some percentage of the time. Until you know that drolems are awfully dangerous, you'll fight them the same way you would anything else and it will kill you some percentage of the time. Angband is easily the most directly accessible of just about any roguelike I know of nowadays, but cursed items, !s of Death and all of that were in the game not all that long ago! Nethack suffers from stagnation and is starting to show its age by still having a few dumb design decisions embedded in it that even Angband threw out a few years ago.

Of course, this being the Angband forum, what kind of response did you expect? I'm sure that the NetHack forums would feel differently.

I actually wasn't even expecting this much of a response! I love Angband and I love Nethack, too - the old rivalry is kind of silly. I think anyone who enjoys one could enjoy the other, so it was a little disheartening to see someone sounding the too-common refrain that Nethack is an impenetrable, impossible, and unfair game. It really isn't! I just wanted to encourage Tyggs to give it another shot.

[Derakon]

I actually wasn't even expecting this much of a response! I love Angband and I love Nethack, too - the old rivalry is kind of silly. I think anyone who enjoys one could enjoy the other, so it was a little disheartening to see someone sounding the too-common refrain that Nethack is an impenetrable, impossible, and unfair game. It really isn't! I just wanted to encourage Tyggs to give it another shot.

I don't think you're seeing so much a rivalry as people gravitating to the forums for the games they like. Of course people who prefer Angband are going to have a lesser opinion of NetHack (on average); they already have one "main" roguelike eating up their time and weren't willing to invest in getting good at a different one. Hence why threads about NetHack get piled on a bit here. I don't think people here think NetHack is a bad game or anything, just not to their tastes.

[Jazerus]

I don't think you're seeing so much a rivalry as people gravitating to the forums for the games they like. Of course people who prefer Angband are going to have a lesser opinion of NetHack (on average); they already have one "main" roguelike eating up their time and weren't willing to invest in getting good at a different one. Hence why threads about NetHack get piled on a bit here. I don't think people here think NetHack is a bad game or anything, just not to their tastes.

Angband and Nethack used to have a quite active rivalry going on when they were the big two! That's what I was referring to, not anything in the present. I think you're detecting an undercurrent of something that isn't actually present in my posts - I'm not rabidly defending Nethack against all comers or anything, and if someone just isn't interested then that's fine. I just always hate to see someone give up at it quickly when the other games they play (like Angband) indicate that if they got through the initial frustration period they'd like Nethack just fine.

[Derakon]

Okay, okay, I give! Wasn't trying to create an argument where there was none, just trying to correct perceived misperceptions that were themselves misperceived.

...I think I wrote that right.

[TJS]

That happens with all roguelikes. Until you know that early fountain-drinking is an awful idea, you'll do it and it will kill you some percentage of the time. Until you know that drolems are awfully dangerous, you'll fight them the same way you would anything else and it will kill you some percentage of the time.

Yeah maybe, I just felt like things in Nethack were so off the wall I wasn't getting anywhere at all after multiple plays. I had a look at the spoilers to help, but they just confused me even more with completely arbitrary tips like inscribe this and dip this wand in that etc.

At least in Angband when you start playing and die a few times you feel like you are slowly learning how to play the game.