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Rougelite progression curves

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Whenever I see "Roguelite" I get mixed feelings because on the one hand the model has a unique way of handling a lot of the issues with difficulty. You always get to the part where you are challenged and have to engage deeply with the gameplay systems, yet then there is a pressure valve because when you reac the fail point you start over to come back stronger. This is kind of similar to working out, just with your familiarity with the game. Soulslike has a lot in common with roguelite and their popularity has a lot of obvious reasons behind it.

However, the main thing that gets me down when I specifically see "roguelite" in the game description is that my experience with them is nearly universal when it comes to the way the game uses my time. The first 10 hours are really fun opening up tons of mechanics, the next 10 my skill development is more the thing responsible to get more progress, but then it seems I have only experienced half the game and to get to any sort of resolution of all the things it has gotten me to care about, it will be a 100-200 hour grind of just repeating the elements I have familiarized with.

Thing is, a lot of the fun of that first 20 hours was the experience of unlocking and skill development. Simply repeating what I have already seen and become familiar with 5000 times is not interesting at all and also a huge time suck. So inevitably I drop the game at that point and feel a general annoyance that I will never see a resolution of anything in the game since it was designed to only show me half of itself before flipping to annoying grind mode.

I guess I'm the sort who will play a Diablo game with each class, maybe replay my favs again to try a different build, then I'm done. I am not the sort who tries endless build variations and chasing 0.2% improvements for thousands of hours. But at least Diablo has a campaign you can just finish, classes whose campaigns you can just do. Roguelites most often merge the campaign into the long grind and that is no good to me.
 
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This is why I call them rogueshit. They put this element in to avoid having to design a game.

If only they designed a game...

Hades2_Accolades_95.jpg
 
Put that shit in my game and I will avoided like a plague. I hate crap design as much as I hate gacha games, they exist to waste your and nothing else.
 
Most often to me it feels like someone's designed a game with a runtime of 1-3 hours and tweaked health and damage values to extend that to 30-50 hours and just rely on people getting dopamine hits of leveling up to eventually turn the game back into that 1-3 hour experience. To be a good roguelike in my estimation, you should be able to reach then with the right combination of skill and luck as well as having runs that are hopeless, that let you scrape by, or turn you into an absolute god. Games like Spelunky and Binding of Isaac should be categorized differently than games like Rogue Legacy or Hades.
 
OP if you think of them as old school arcade games with meatier content, most of them will make more sense.

Like imagine Final Fight but instead of just simply starting over after a loss, you receive a slight upgrade on the next run, like Hagger's slam move doing a bit more damage or maybe him having a new style of lariat unlocked.

I will agree however that some of them run a bit too long in length, thus losing the quick 'go again!' nature and point of their subgenre.
 
This is why I call them rogueshit. They put this element in to avoid having to design a game.
Are you seriously saying Risk of Rain 1 and 2, Hades, Returnal, Binding of Isaac, Deathloop and Prey Mooncrash didn't have design!? Deathloop you could literally figure out the patterns and finish the game without the mystery aspect at all.
 
Truthfully, the only ones I can play are Hades 1,2. I love the story/gameplay and upgrades you get.

Your character actually gets stronger in Hades by getting upgrades after most failures so each run is easier. You also learn a little more each turn.

There is a fun game to be had when it all lines up right.

Other games have issues pacing the meta upgrades. If they are too slow the game is boring. If they are too quick the game isn't even a roguelite. Roguelites also need to have an element of challenge at their basic level.

It's hard to do them perfect. In Hades you get new cool new story content after X number of endings and they baked the repetition of it into the story and it is handled just about perfectly.
 
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Fun fact: when we were little kids, my best friend made his first warcraft name "roguenotrouge". I suppose I never really knew how bad this problem would be til years later.
 
I honestly love good well designed roguelite games. Some of my favorite games ever have huge roguelite influences.

I'm not on board the roguelite hate train, quite the opposite actually! 😁
 
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I only play this games for "free" ... they bore me too fast to spend any money on them ... even hades after "beating" the last boss once I was "im good" and never touched again.

Im playing Dead cells now and 2 hours in and Im already bored...
 
If they remain fun for the 15-25 hours it takes to beat the main story in most of them that's good enough for me.

I don't care for the 100 hours grind for the "true ending" or shit like that.

Still, they are usually cheap and if I'm getting 20ish hours of fun for $30 that's great.
 
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