2 ms·

>roguelikes which encourage more frequent, "short"(-er) games. I wouldn't say roguelikes encourage shorter games; they encourage long games, and are mechanical

by setr 8y ago

>roguelikes which encourage more frequent, "short"(-er) games. I wouldn't say roguelikes encourage shorter games; they encourage long games, and are mechanically designed around long sessions. The difficulty makes it more ..difficult.. to achieve a longer game, but there's absolutely nothing to encourage killing off your character. Someone new to roguelikes, I think, might be perceive that everything revolves around the initial roll of the dice, and the items you find, but the games are balanced such that you should be capable of surviving regardless of the initial roll (except in really, awful, just plain terrible starts). And you'll still trivially die with even a great start. You're encouraged towards a long session, but unlike most games, roguelikes fight really hard to not let you have it. in a similar fashion as https://i.imgur.com/mHXiz.png https://i.imgur.com/mHXiz.png roguelites on the other hand encourage shorter sessions to some degree, by the usual mechanic of meta-rewards that persist between sessions. With it, it's not just less punishing to die; it actively encourages you to die, because you'll be able to start again with a better character, with better equipment, abilities, whatever. And this will inevitably mean you take more risks with your character (like say, investing more in health, because you have a guaranteed strong weapon), and eventually reach the same point as where you died but stronger than before. They push death onto you, whereas a roguelike offers next to nothing. Just another roll, but you'll get those anyways if you push on..

danielbarla 8y ago
Yeah, good points re: rougelikes and rouge-lites (though [1]). I think there's still an essential element of difference between a rougelike and normal ironman games, which is that rougelikes nevertheless typically expect you to die. While it's true that it's not RNG-based as badly as many believe (since top players can usually achieve wins consistently despite bad rolls), there are usually dead-ends which you have no way of knowing about without prior experience, realistically. Contrast that with a game of XCom on easy + ironman, and there's a chance that a new player may actually win that. Whereas with NetHack, that chance is about as close to zero as it can get. So, while dying might not be outright fun in the literal sense, it might be "Fun", and at the same time you may learn something critical for your next playthrough. In that sense, roguelikes are very much intended to be replayed many dozens of times, which differentiates them from normal ironman games in my view. [1] My main experience is with ToME, which I believe is considered a roguelike rather than a rogue-lite, and I'm pretty sure games don't tend to go into dozens of hours, normally. Assuming you don't die very early, it's probably closer to 5-6 hours, in my experience, which is far shorter than other normal games.
- setr 8y ago
  Imo the charitable/interesting view (for roguelikes) is that most games expect you to progress, and want you to, and will actively help you. Roguelikes on the otherhand don't particularly care, and you as a player have to overcome it despite the game's negligence. Which I think is where most of the difficulty comes from: how little it helps you when you get into a bad spot, and you've got 20 unknown potions. or rather, how little it tries to stop you from getting into such a bad spot. More extreme down that line would be dwarf fortress, particularly adventure mode (fortress mode doesn't help my point: they even have the motto "losing is fun"...) I agree that roguelikes are self-aware, and make it mostly painless to restart, but I think its more a result of roguelikes actively working with the permadeath mechanic, whereas ironman is more of a "game mode"; that is, the game isn't built with iron man in mind. Ironman is a variant of the gameplay. Both I think still are primarily valued for the fear of death, and I don't think either require, expect or encourage death. Its just more that, ironman is worse at the mechanic, primarily because its a rather shallow, incidental feature, rather than at the heart of it. It happens to be easy to tack on ironman mode, on a non-ironman game; you just remove the save slots, and delete it on death. But they're still normal, non-permadeath games at heart.

by setr 8y ago

danielbarla 8y ago

Yeah, good points re: rougelikes and rouge-lites (though [1]). I think there's still an essential element of difference between a rougelike and normal ironman games, which is that rougelikes nevertheless typically expect you to die. While it's true that it's not RNG-based as badly as many believe (since top players can usually achieve wins consistently despite bad rolls), there are usually dead-ends which you have no way of knowing about without prior experience, realistically. Contrast that with a game of XCom on easy + ironman, and there's a chance that a new player may actually win that. Whereas with NetHack, that chance is about as close to zero as it can get. So, while dying might not be outright fun in the literal sense, it might be "Fun", and at the same time you may learn something critical for your next playthrough. In that sense, roguelikes are very much intended to be replayed many dozens of times, which differentiates them from normal ironman games in my view. [1] My main experience is with ToME, which I believe is considered a roguelike rather than a rogue-lite, and I'm pretty sure games don't tend to go into dozens of hours, normally. Assuming you don't die very early, it's probably closer to 5-6 hours, in my experience, which is far shorter than other normal games.

setr 8y ago
Imo the charitable/interesting view (for roguelikes) is that most games expect you to progress, and want you to, and will actively help you. Roguelikes on the otherhand don't particularly care, and you as a player have to overcome it despite the game's negligence. Which I think is where most of the difficulty comes from: how little it helps you when you get into a bad spot, and you've got 20 unknown potions. or rather, how little it tries to stop you from getting into such a bad spot. More extreme down that line would be dwarf fortress, particularly adventure mode (fortress mode doesn't help my point: they even have the motto "losing is fun"...) I agree that roguelikes are self-aware, and make it mostly painless to restart, but I think its more a result of roguelikes actively working with the permadeath mechanic, whereas ironman is more of a "game mode"; that is, the game isn't built with iron man in mind. Ironman is a variant of the gameplay. Both I think still are primarily valued for the fear of death, and I don't think either require, expect or encourage death. Its just more that, ironman is worse at the mechanic, primarily because its a rather shallow, incidental feature, rather than at the heart of it. It happens to be easy to tack on ironman mode, on a non-ironman game; you just remove the save slots, and delete it on death. But they're still normal, non-permadeath games at heart.