For a while, meta progression felt like a clever way to keep games fresh. You’d unlock new gear, perks, or passive bonuses between runs, and that sense of forward motion made failure feel productive.
I have a very low opinion of “sidegrades.” Games used to give you all their options up front.
This overwhelming trend during the past 15, 20 years to trickle-feed the player unlocks does a lot of untold harm. For one, players are rarely ever talking about the same game because everyone is at different points in the progression. The actual game doesn’t start until the final thing is unlocked and this is often a place that most players will never reach.
Can’t tell you how much advice I’ve read that goes something like “use X with Y” where at least one of those is locked behind 50 more hours of progression and my eyes once again roll all the way out of my head. As a developer, don’t you want players to experiment with the things you put in the game?
Can’t tell you how refreshing it is to play a game like NetHack where I can install a fresh copy and not have to worry about managing my save files because everything that’s in the game is… in the game. Also, a quick study can start winning games much sooner because their options aren’t all gated behind arbitrary time sinks.
But even just… skin selection in multiplayer. Games used to give you ALL of them from the start and players could just, you know, pick the one they liked. This whole ‘grind to show off how cool you are’ is a dark pattern to coerce players to spend more time on the game than they want to.
You know what this is, is developers are catering to diamonds and they forgot that some of us are spades.
I very much dislike roguelikes. It always feels patronizing: aww too bad, if you were good enough you actually could have beaten the game, but let’s make it just a little easier. Then it takes so many runs to make an appreciable difference in my abilities or skills that it feels worse than grinding in an RPG (especially because at least with grinding I know I’m going to make progress…I actually might not make any difference with several failed runs).
I also think it’s lazy programming. The game is actually only an hour long or less but you get more time out of it because you need to repeat. Add the fact that roguelikes are almost exclusively procedurally generated and it just feels like a cash grab.
The ONLY roguelike I’ve played any appreciable amount is Hades, and I keep putting it down after a few hours of playtime to pick it up months later. They at least have a lot of interesting dialogue and some element of story but it’s not enough to keep me hooked.
aww, too bad, if you were good enough you could have beaten the game, but let’s make it a little easier
Yeah, that’s pretty awful game design. Most of the ones i’ve played didn’t feel like that, usually you’d unlock new classes or something (I.e. sidegrades) or unlock harder difficulties.
And of course my favorite ones don’t have any meta progression whatsoever, the only progression comes from you learning about the game.
Add the fact that roguelikes are almost exclusively procedurally generate
If they’re not procedurally generated, they’re not roguelikes. It’s a defining feature. It’s also not lazy to define a set of rules that generate good, interesting levels every time you boot it up. I’m basically the only guy who didn’t enjoy Hades, and a large reason why is that their level generation is sorely lacking compared to so many others (though Hades is more lite than like) I’ve played.
Kinda left field, but Teardown is an incredible game. You have leeway to destroy the environment however you want for as long as you want, but the second you touch one of the objectives a timer starts and you have to get the rest of the objectives and leave before time runs out. Essentially, you meticulously plan your route and make shortcuts for yourself using every tool at your disposal in a fully destructible voxel environment. Its so good
Victoria 3, still the undisputed king of world economic simulation. I had a blast with Vic 2, but I just can’t bring myself to support Paradox Interactive in their current form with ridiculous monetisation of DLC…
I sincerely wish these kinds of grinding games would keep the good name of Rogue out of their mouths. No, it's not -lite, it's the exact opposite of Rogue!
I’m gonna make an argument for Viscera Cleanup Detail. You asked for cleanup games that scratch a particular itch. This is a sci-fi setting that puts you in charge of cleaning up after some horrific space disaster. Each map tells its own story through the evidence you’re tasked with incinerating.
If we can put Powerwash Simulator up there, we have to acknowledge the violent, gory, and hilariously janky physics older cousin that is VCD. It’s even got a sense of humor to it, which is another link to Shipbreaker.
If you don’t mind carrying a bin of severed arms, grab VCD.
It’s really fun with friends. Constant yelling at who the tell tipped over the gore bucket, or whose bloody footprints cross the freshly cleaned hallway.
I’m a huge fan of rogue-lites. I don’t think I’ve come across any meta-progression mechanic that has bothered me as much as you say.
Hades was probably the most jarring example for me. Mirror upgrades made the game significantly easier and there was little chance of a beginner rogue-lite player managing to complete a run without these. Then by the time the mirror upgrades were unlocked then it felt like I needed to rapidly turn up the “heat” to keep the game challenging at all. I can see why they’ve made such a drastic difficulty curve because they’re appealing to a wider audience than normal rogue-lite audiences (Binding of Isaac audiences would never tolerate such hand holding). I’m still fine with that.
I’ve got a bigger problem with abilities/items being locked behind impossible difficulty. Some items I will never unlock in Dead Cells, because I will never be able to do 5BC (got to 4BC max). Same with Enter the Gungeon and beating the final final boss and extra bosses. In those cases I wonder why the devs have made aspects of the game that the majority of the population will never get to engage with. I just download a 100% completed save file when I’ve made all the progress I could have. I think we should be given the option to access all unlocks after 100 or 150 hours of gameplay or some such option.
Overall, I’ve got no problem with the inclusion of meta-progression (or not). If they implement it well and make a fun game, that’s all that matters to me.
That’s funny, reading your post I immediately thought of Ball x Pitt, before you even mentioned it.
That being said, I actually loved that game, and obsessively played it for 60 hours. I think it took me 3 or 4 hours to beat the first level, but to me it felt very rewarding. For me it was more about figuring out the right ball evolutions and character selection to beat a level.
That did change for the later levels. After a while it became too easy, and it just felt like grinding to unlock the next thing. The harvesting component was actually a refreshing break between runs, and probably kept me playing longer than I would have otherwise.
Most of the roguelikes that I really enjoy had unlocks that made the game harder, not easier. At best, the unlocks offer new builds, making the game easier in one respect but harder in others, giving you a new angle on things.
But then again, most of the ones I play are puzzle/strategy/deckbuilder type games. Kind of a genre of its own these days. (FTL, Slay the Spire, Cultist Simulator, Balatro, etc)
For me, intend to dislike pure roguelikes because of the lack of meta progression. I tend to get a limited amount of time to play, so I don’t like games that require a time sink to get enjoyment. And as I get older I’m getting less ‘gud’ at games too. This is the reason I avoid almost all multiplayer, most grindy single player (ubisoft) and pretty much all soulslikes.
I like the feedback loop of the game getting easier without me necessarily having to do the heavy lifting of getting better. And it doesn’t have to be straight upgrades. Hades with its weapons is mostly sidegrades, and those are fun too.
Wolves in Wolves clothing is their best imo. mike actually said so at the first show of the final tour in barcelona (I was there). he said “people thing punk in drublic is our best album but its really [wolves]”
bin.pol.social
Aktywne