3 ms·

> 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 qu

by 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.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Where Civ6 in that game mode breaks the mold I just described is the game eventually stops having that random risk vs reward element as a major gameplay mechanic. Again StarCraft is effectively deterministic, there isn’t any kind of clicking an ability and wondering what will happen phase. As to being twitch or not, again that’s from a gameplay standpoint. Slow down Starcraft dramatically and it’s still real-time, but eventuality APM stops being a meaningful factor.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > there is no ability to tune the difficulty FWIW, this isn't actually true; you just need to manually apply the gameplay changes that a difficulty setting would normally affect. The two main one's I'd recommend are increasing the number of embark points (in init/world_gen.txt#EMBARK_POINTS) so you can buy more starting resources, and increasing dwarves' speed (in raw/objects/creature_standard.txt#CREATURE:DWARF#APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_<x>_GAITS), which just generally makes everything much easier, including increasing your fort's economic productivity to give you better ability to absorb any disaster that do happen. Your overall point stands though; we proudly call it a learning curve^Wcliff^Woverhang for good reason.

by jere 6y ago

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.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Where Civ6 in that game mode breaks the mold I just described is the game eventually stops having that random risk vs reward element as a major gameplay mechanic. Again StarCraft is effectively deterministic, there isn’t any kind of clicking an ability and wondering what will happen phase. As to being twitch or not, again that’s from a gameplay standpoint. Slow down Starcraft dramatically and it’s still real-time, but eventuality APM stops being a meaningful factor.
a1369209993 6y ago
> there is no ability to tune the difficulty FWIW, this isn't actually true; you just need to manually apply the gameplay changes that a difficulty setting would normally affect. The two main one's I'd recommend are increasing the number of embark points (in init/world_gen.txt#EMBARK_POINTS) so you can buy more starting resources, and increasing dwarves' speed (in raw/objects/creature_standard.txt#CREATURE:DWARF#APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:STANDARD_<x>_GAITS), which just generally makes everything much easier, including increasing your fort's economic productivity to give you better ability to absorb any disaster that do happen. Your overall point stands though; we proudly call it a learning curve^Wcliff^Woverhang for good reason.