TOME 1.0! - and other Roguelikes.

[LordSloth]

Short Version: I ramble on what is much better said by that "thoughts on game design" blog post. On the other hand, if your means of experiencing the game is coming up with your own narrative as many people do in Dwarf Fortress, permadeath can definitely harm the player experience despite being a roguelike....

If you loosely define permadeath, it is one of the oldest game concepts and one of the most important. Do you get to take a hand back in poker? Undo a move in chess? If you're playing a tabletop game of warhammer 40k, or risk 2210 will the other players let you go back five turns? Forget about losing hours of progress and a slow early game, some of these games require a significant investment of time before you even start playing them. This is not to say this is the one true game model, and we're stretching a bit with various elements of strategy, reversible setbacks, entirely different types of play. The idea of a competive FPS with permadeath is quite ridiculous, but when it comes to an RTS or TBS like Starcraft/Dominions, out is out.

If you join a mega modded game of Dominions (60 players, all eras), your odds of winning are absolutely horrible, time investment is high, and you can make irreversible (pretender) mistakes before the game even begins. Of course, Dominions 3 is a cult classic and not a game that can pretend to be as accessible and mainstream as Galactic Civilizations, let alone your XCOM or Sid Meier's Civilization.

Tangent for Keith: You might find yourself interested in Rogue Legacy. It has some conceptual similarities to Spelunky and A Valley Without Wind, although it isn't actually out yet to be judged on it's own merits.  As far as I can gather, your expected permadeath lifespan is around three minutes or less, but your ancestors have inherited some of your gold, basecamp upgrades, weaponry, and also various traits such as nearsightedness, flatulence, Alzheimer's, giantism, dwarfism.

Back onto the current topic du jour, permadeath. I'm -not- a universal fan of permadeath, but I generally like it. In particular, I'm getting trashed in the crawl early game right now, despite formerly excelling at it. Permadeath brings a particular value to the loosely defined "Dungeon Crawler" genre that a save system simply cannot. Permadeath is a genre equivalent to coin-op platformers with their limited lives and continues. Outside of coin-ops, the gold standard of platformers is the checkpoint system, and a few indie PC platformers will let you save wherever.  Unfortunately for roguelikes, a continue system either makes the game too easy, excuses some bad design (I think DCSS unique monsters are mostly superior to TOMEs), or traps the player in the "You've already lost but just don't know it yet." situation Keith tries so hard to avoid in AI War design.

With a traditional roguelike, there is a critical lack of the middle ground equivalent of checkpointing... and no real tested method to replace it. TOME does let you bring a character back to life, Shiren lets you bring some persistence to the game with unlocks and NPCs and yet it will still kill you dead, while games like Crawl and Nethack just kill you dead and punish you on your next run with ghosts and bones. Permadeath is the best available albeit imperfect method of making your turn to turn decisions actually matter, rather than just be grinding/clicking/reloading to pass time until you unlock your next skill point or plot choice that actually matters.

On the other hand, more typiclal RPGs work just fine with many variations on a save system. They can even provide interesting and challenging fights although most choose not to. Avernum/Exile and Ultima VI spring to mind as examples of challenging fights. Japanese-style RPGs provide an interesting case study in the dangers of grinding. Grinding is a great pressure valve; unlike your Contra, you know you can beat this game no matter how bad you are as long as you keep trying. Unfortunately, the competing pressures to have secrets, rare drops, sell strategy guides, to be a completionist can ruin the challenge of a game. In some discussions on roguelikes I've seen recently, I've heard people raise the question of what use is creating content the player might not see, when it should all be interesting and compelling. That's the kind of trap that burned me out on the final fantasy series after the internet (gamefaqs) came around and I became compelled to find everything as part of some grand character flaw. Finding or stealing this rare content gives you a fleeting feeling of satisfaction, but combined with the spare gold and experience you pick up along the way you get less compelling, less skin of your teeth battles. For expedience's sake I'm going to skip over the Diablos, the Skyrims, the Mass Effects, the Witchers, the Fallouts, the Gothics.

I apologize if I haven't managed to keep a single thought/hypothesis from start to finish, I've been typing this up of and on in stolen minutes. I'm don't think I even have a central hypothesis I'm trying to prove, though the central point seems to be the comparison to coin-op/checkpoints/save anywhere platformers. Permadeath enables a certain amount of competition against the computer, actual challenge that (as an ideal at least) makes minute to minute decisions relevant rather than being busywork between cutscenes.

[zespri]

If you loosely define permadeath, it is one of the oldest game concepts and one of the most important. Do you get to take a hand back in poker? Undo a move in chess? If you're playing a tabletop game of warhammer 40k, or risk 2210 will the other players let you go back five turns? Forget about losing hours of progress and a slow early game, some of these games require a significant investment of time before you even start playing them. This is not to say this is the one true game model, and we're stretching a bit with various elements of strategy, reversible setbacks, entirely different types of play. The idea of a competive FPS with permadeath is quite ridiculous, but when it comes to an RTS or TBS like Starcraft/Dominions, out is out.

Those are multiplayer  - no point comparing to them.

[LordSloth]

The original post I was responding to referred to games in general, and I was being a bit asinine or incoherent due to lack of sleep. Rather than try to rescue any sense of out it I'll move on to something a bit simpler.

 The 'other player' in a roguelike is your dungeon and monsters and that devilish RNG. There is a sense of competition with a hostile game-world that is lacking if you remove permadeath from a roguelike and don't replace it with something. The majority (but certainly not all) singleplayer games (of very loosely rpg/rogueish persuasion) 'want' you to win, and don't appeal to the masochist inside. Of course, if someone switches to discussing shooters or I compare to RTSs, it breaks down a bit.

One point I do want to salvage is the comparison to platformers... Platformers might come in a limited life/continue system (coin-op), a farmable life no continue (mario), checkpointing, or save anywhere. The continue/game over system isn't the most popular one although it has it's adherents... save anywhere is equally rare in any mainstream title. However, there is middle ground between those extremes. The roguelike genre lacks any proven (in terms of popularity and the niche) mechanisms to fall between those two points. Although hybrids such as Spelunky have perfectly reasonable alternatives (shortcuts in this case), the experience and leveling mechanics or customization or importance of unpredictable item availability common to roguelikes makes shortcuts and the like troublesome to implement for what are usually hobby projects sprawled large, with a LOT of legacy features. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup was built on top of Linley's Dungeon Crawl, ADOM began almost two decades ago... The projects with the most baggage also are some of the richest because of the years that have went into them.

RPGs, on the other hand, don't commonly have major shortcuts, but do have a save and restore system that I don't have any objection to, and a few consistently provide challenge and unlike a RL, I actually appreciate the ability to change the difficulty midgame.

I think the best case for roguelike permadeath isn't the lengthier RLs like Crawl, but DoomRL, which can end up feeling quite consistently tense. They do a few introduce a few interesting things such as the various achievements and challenge modes that change things up quite a bit. Events such as the 7DRL challenge do provide a ground for innovation (DoomRL started as a 7DRL if I remember correctly, and I might not).

When it comes down to permadeath versus save scumming, I feel permadeath is the lesser evil of the two with regards to roguelikes. I do feel there is room for much more granularity in those options, despite generally liking the thrill/adrenaline/panic that I can get from permadeath... but keeping that thrill of uncertain victory is tricky, when you aren't running up against physical, motor control skills or human opponents.

[keith.lamothe]

I've heard of Rogue Legacy, yes, the idea seemed interesting and I may pick it up on sale at some point, but iirc the actual gameplay is reflex based rather than turn-based or whatever so I didn't really jump at it.  I prefer to lose because I mis-thought, not because I mis-clicked.  The latter form of challenge is sometimes fine for me too, though.