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> Roguelike is a self-descriptive classifier -- something like Rogue. The defining characteristic of roguelikes is exploring game mechanics amidst permadeath.

by jere 6y ago

> Roguelike is a self-descriptive classifier -- something like Rogue. The defining characteristic of roguelikes is exploring game mechanics amidst permadeath. The problem is no one agrees on what those defining characteristics are. You've given your opinion, but it's just an opinion. It's highly subjective. I hear people all the time say the same thing "it's self evident!" and then go on to list "turn based/grid based" as the self evident requirements. The author and I disagree on this topic (I wrote the linked article "The Roguelike War Is Over"), but.... I do feel for fans of traditional roguelikes. They had a well understood genre of game for about 30 years that meant specific things: turn based, grid based combat with random levels and real permadeath. Many of these fans just can't get into action games and they have a hard time finding what they're looking for these days.

munk-a 6y ago
The real "problem" here is that we're getting more lines fuzzing right? Instead of just having Rogue, Nethack and Caves of Qud we're getting some games that dip their toes in the water to grab a few features those designers appreciate (i.e. permadeath a mechanic lots of devs have used to make their games less stressful by keeping expected lives rather short - a usage of a mechanic for a purpose far different from original rogue-like's intentions)... I think this is just like music genres - nobody owns a genre and games will come out that do different things with that genre... the market is open and new games just add to the collection of choice - it might be that rogue-lites end up stealing some community support and income from more classic rogue-likes but nothing has destroyed Rogue or any of the other games people have fallen in love with along the way. I have my own classifications for what roguelike would be and Diablo (even in permadeath mode) wouldn't fit into it - it's far too fixed and predictable of a game and quite easy to initially get into - I'd consider a lack of accessibility to basically be a rogue-like requirement.
- jere 6y ago
  > I'd consider a lack of accessibility to basically be a rogue-like requirement. I just have to say that's a strange take. Lots of newer traditional RLs are quite accessible and accessibility was a big goal for my game. There's no real reason to have a game use 95 separate key commands. Then again this classification is no less arbitrary than the low value factor "ASCII display" in the Berlin Interpretation.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    Oh it's definitely arbitrary, the reason why dwarf fortress made the "sorta" list but other strategy games that are technically just as perma-death (i.e. every RTS ever from Starcraft to AoE2) don't... in fact Dwarf Fortress is notably _less_ roguelike than those other games - it's just more "brutal" almost certainly because there is no ability to tune the difficulty and some gameplay requirements are not clearly explained as necessary. In DF the presence of your prior fortress can potentially make your life a lot easier (or more difficult) by tackling overworld threats and providing security (or becoming a hive of scum and villainy)... And there's even a "recover my save" sort of game more in launching an expedition to reclaim your fortress. Everyone who has ever played a dwarf fortress game for longer than four seasons will tell you "Oh yea - I realized you're going to need plump helmet" - compare that to starcraft where often times players will realize they'll eventually need a military of some form in their first game.
    - Retric 6y ago
      The absolute core gameplay mechanics of rogue like games historically was a combination of being strategic rather than twitch, resource management, permanent death, risk with randomized rewards, and progression. A game like Slay the Spire fits that mold much more closely than something like dwarf fortress. Being brutal is just an outgrowth of those basic mechanics. Meaningful risks require meaningful costs. Using an unidentified scroll consumes the scroll. Fighting monsters consumes an unknown amount of resources to receive some benefit. But, if you tone the game down to near safety then without twitch based tests it’s just wandering around freely. Similarly, if you can memorize the layout or the meaning of a scroll for the next life, then that’s not a risk you’re taking.
      - munk-a 6y ago
        So would playing Civ6 on ironman mode (assuming it was enforced and/or you did it by honor) and with a random map and a randomized tech/civics tree count as a rogue-like? When you move that scout you don't know if you're going to encounter a barbarian or a tribal village - do you hold off on building a warrior to escort your settler hoping that you can settle without it being captured? I have a clear picture in my mind of what roguelike is, and that picture is nethack because someone introduced me to nethack and said "This is a roguelike" and I still basically believe them - trying to abstract the specific mechanics that make something a roguelike is hard... Here are some questions: Do you have to just be one person - can a roguelike be a party of adventurers? Does a roguelike need to have an rpg-style leveling system - can strength be gained by item acquisition alone? Does a leveling system make it not a roguelike? Do you need to use pixel graphics for display? Does the PC need to be precisely on coordinate pixel big? Dwarf fortress, for instance, is turn based but the only real difference between turn based and real time is that twitch factor - if you made a version of starcraft where the game paused every five seconds to let you revise as many orders as you wished would that suddenly be really close to a roguelike? My core thing here is that rogue was a collection of game mechanics, and games can be judged to be similar to that in an entirely subjective manner - you can objectively call out different features that differ or are the same, but those features only really matter if the person you're talking about strongly believed (subjectively) that that feature was "core" to the gameplay. A young kid playing rogue today is probably just going to walk away saying that rogue-likes use ascii art and I don't think it's wrong to accept that definition - for that kid.
jonny_eh 6y ago
> Many of these fans just can't get into action games and they have a hard time finding what they're looking for these days Welcome to the "RPG" club. This is just the nature of games. No genre can remain pure, at least not once it becomes popular. Nor should they.
- tpxl 6y ago
  I mean, RPG describes a lot of games. Baldurs gate and Diablo are both RPGs but are pretty far from each other. Even Team Fortress could be classified as a RPG with the most pedantic reading. That's why we have additional classifiers. Diablo is an A(ction)RPG, Baldurs gate is tagged as D&D and Classic on Steam, and TF2 is a multiplayer FPS (without the RPG tag because most people are not pedantic af). As far as Roguelikes go, I subscribe to the belief that they pretty much have to be permadeath, tile based, procedural generation for levels and items. Most games don't fit the bill, but so what, it's good enough as a general guideline. Recently we also got the "Roguelite" term to describe Roguelikes that are not very Roguelike-y :) Bottom line, why are people so up in arms about a tag that doesn't even mean that much?

by jere 6y ago

munk-a 6y ago

The real "problem" here is that we're getting more lines fuzzing right? Instead of just having Rogue, Nethack and Caves of Qud we're getting some games that dip their toes in the water to grab a few features those designers appreciate (i.e. permadeath a mechanic lots of devs have used to make their games less stressful by keeping expected lives rather short - a usage of a mechanic for a purpose far different from original rogue-like's intentions)... I think this is just like music genres - nobody owns a genre and games will come out that do different things with that genre... the market is open and new games just add to the collection of choice - it might be that rogue-lites end up stealing some community support and income from more classic rogue-likes but nothing has destroyed Rogue or any of the other games people have fallen in love with along the way. I have my own classifications for what roguelike would be and Diablo (even in permadeath mode) wouldn't fit into it - it's far too fixed and predictable of a game and quite easy to initially get into - I'd consider a lack of accessibility to basically be a rogue-like requirement.

jere 6y ago
> I'd consider a lack of accessibility to basically be a rogue-like requirement. I just have to say that's a strange take. Lots of newer traditional RLs are quite accessible and accessibility was a big goal for my game. There's no real reason to have a game use 95 separate key commands. Then again this classification is no less arbitrary than the low value factor "ASCII display" in the Berlin Interpretation.
- munk-a 6y ago
  Oh it's definitely arbitrary, the reason why dwarf fortress made the "sorta" list but other strategy games that are technically just as perma-death (i.e. every RTS ever from Starcraft to AoE2) don't... in fact Dwarf Fortress is notably _less_ roguelike than those other games - it's just more "brutal" almost certainly because there is no ability to tune the difficulty and some gameplay requirements are not clearly explained as necessary. In DF the presence of your prior fortress can potentially make your life a lot easier (or more difficult) by tackling overworld threats and providing security (or becoming a hive of scum and villainy)... And there's even a "recover my save" sort of game more in launching an expedition to reclaim your fortress. Everyone who has ever played a dwarf fortress game for longer than four seasons will tell you "Oh yea - I realized you're going to need plump helmet" - compare that to starcraft where often times players will realize they'll eventually need a military of some form in their first game.
  - Retric 6y ago
    The absolute core gameplay mechanics of rogue like games historically was a combination of being strategic rather than twitch, resource management, permanent death, risk with randomized rewards, and progression. A game like Slay the Spire fits that mold much more closely than something like dwarf fortress. Being brutal is just an outgrowth of those basic mechanics. Meaningful risks require meaningful costs. Using an unidentified scroll consumes the scroll. Fighting monsters consumes an unknown amount of resources to receive some benefit. But, if you tone the game down to near safety then without twitch based tests it’s just wandering around freely. Similarly, if you can memorize the layout or the meaning of a scroll for the next life, then that’s not a risk you’re taking.
    - munk-a 6y ago
      So would playing Civ6 on ironman mode (assuming it was enforced and/or you did it by honor) and with a random map and a randomized tech/civics tree count as a rogue-like? When you move that scout you don't know if you're going to encounter a barbarian or a tribal village - do you hold off on building a warrior to escort your settler hoping that you can settle without it being captured? I have a clear picture in my mind of what roguelike is, and that picture is nethack because someone introduced me to nethack and said "This is a roguelike" and I still basically believe them - trying to abstract the specific mechanics that make something a roguelike is hard... Here are some questions: Do you have to just be one person - can a roguelike be a party of adventurers? Does a roguelike need to have an rpg-style leveling system - can strength be gained by item acquisition alone? Does a leveling system make it not a roguelike? Do you need to use pixel graphics for display? Does the PC need to be precisely on coordinate pixel big? Dwarf fortress, for instance, is turn based but the only real difference between turn based and real time is that twitch factor - if you made a version of starcraft where the game paused every five seconds to let you revise as many orders as you wished would that suddenly be really close to a roguelike? My core thing here is that rogue was a collection of game mechanics, and games can be judged to be similar to that in an entirely subjective manner - you can objectively call out different features that differ or are the same, but those features only really matter if the person you're talking about strongly believed (subjectively) that that feature was "core" to the gameplay. A young kid playing rogue today is probably just going to walk away saying that rogue-likes use ascii art and I don't think it's wrong to accept that definition - for that kid.

jonny_eh 6y ago

> Many of these fans just can't get into action games and they have a hard time finding what they're looking for these days Welcome to the "RPG" club. This is just the nature of games. No genre can remain pure, at least not once it becomes popular. Nor should they.

tpxl 6y ago
I mean, RPG describes a lot of games. Baldurs gate and Diablo are both RPGs but are pretty far from each other. Even Team Fortress could be classified as a RPG with the most pedantic reading. That's why we have additional classifiers. Diablo is an A(ction)RPG, Baldurs gate is tagged as D&D and Classic on Steam, and TF2 is a multiplayer FPS (without the RPG tag because most people are not pedantic af). As far as Roguelikes go, I subscribe to the belief that they pretty much have to be permadeath, tile based, procedural generation for levels and items. Most games don't fit the bill, but so what, it's good enough as a general guideline. Recently we also got the "Roguelite" term to describe Roguelikes that are not very Roguelike-y :) Bottom line, why are people so up in arms about a tag that doesn't even mean that much?