Great work on Starward Rogue, team! Now you’re all laid off...?

[Logorouge]

Bullet hells are a niche, yes.

This game fundamentally did not improve that in any regard, while others have.

It is actually unlike arcen in that regard.

Yes, there is salt in this post.

If you mean in the sense of not crushing new players mercilessly and being a generally more welcoming game, then I think the aforementioned difficulty levels in addition to the shield and energy systems did a lot in that department.

I have the feeling I have misunderstood your meaning though.

[chemical_art]

Bullet hells are a niche, yes.

This game fundamentally did not improve that in any regard, while others have.

It is actually unlike arcen in that regard.

Yes, there is salt in this post.

Is there something you thought the game was missing?  (any feedback is useful, is why I ask)

Or am I just misreading this?

A sense of progressio aside from player skill.

Sure, procedural effects are nice, but there is no over-arching progression of...anything. In other words, if one is not skilled in the genre, then trying to play it multiple times if you do not have the skill to *completely* finish it (beat the final boss in whatever form) feels like a lack of progression.

We have discussed this before, it was proposed initially then later cut.

[chemical_art]

Bullet hells are a niche, yes.

This game fundamentally did not improve that in any regard, while others have.

It is actually unlike arcen in that regard.

Yes, there is salt in this post.

If you mean in the sense of not crushing new players mercilessly and being a generally more welcoming game, then I think the aforementioned difficulty levels in addition to the shield and energy systems did a lot in that department.

I have the feeling I have misunderstood your meaning though.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say on a mechanical level it is more friendly. Maybe. I have not played since such a thing happened. And that in itself is a HUGE issue. You only get one shot to make that huge impression. If the first impression is rough, what inclination do I have to try it again months later? My backlog is too large already. The whole presentation is flawed.

However, unless the larger scope of "unless you beat whatever the last boss you are forced to face, then the overall story does not" then in a more meaningful level it is not much different from most bullet-hells.

[Misery]

Bullet hells are a niche, yes.

This game fundamentally did not improve that in any regard, while others have.

It is actually unlike arcen in that regard.

Yes, there is salt in this post.

Is there something you thought the game was missing?  (any feedback is useful, is why I ask)

Or am I just misreading this?

A sense of progressio aside from player skill.

Sure, procedural effects are nice, but there is no over-arching progression of...anything. In other words, if one is not skilled in the genre, then trying to play it multiple times if you do not have the skill to *completely* finish it (beat the final boss in whatever form) feels like a lack of progression.

We have discussed this before, it was proposed initially then later cut.

Ohhhhh.... right.   I see what you mean.  Er, I think.  Not having things like unlocks to get as you go along, or stuff like that?  I think people call it "meta-progression" sometimes.

Aye, I do regret there not being stuff like that in this.  There was supposed to be, but... er... you know, I have no bloody clue why it didn't happen.  There was just so much chaos in that earliest part of development.

But it's the one thing truly lacking from this game that just bugs me.   I personally am not too interested in unlocks in games, but definitely understand why others are, and that particular thing has great use in this genre.  Games like Isaac just show it off that much more, too. 


....or I'm remembering the wrong thing, correct me if I am.

[chemical_art]

Ohhhhh.... right.   I see what you mean.  Er, I think.  Not having things like unlocks to get as you go along, or stuff like that?  I think people call it "meta-progression" sometimes.

Aye, I do regret there not being stuff like that in this.  There was supposed to be, but... er... you know, I have no bloody clue why it didn't happen.  There was just so much chaos in that earliest part of development.

But it's the one thing truly lacking from this game that just bugs me.   I personally am not too interested in unlocks in games, but definitely understand why others are, and that particular thing has great use in this genre.  Games like Isaac just show it off that much more, too. 


....or I'm remembering the wrong thing, correct me if I am.

You are not remembering it wrong at it, it is exactly that which is missing.

There is no "progression" in any sense of the modern term of the word. If I fail the first time, is there a reason I should try a second, third, fourth time?

I understand the old school value of trying to beat something hard. But that value is generally regulated in the few games that I naturally understood quickly. For the rest of the games, I NEED that sense of value, so I do not feel like I am just bashing my head against a wall. It just is a factor in the market today that wasn't there even 8 years ago.

One can complain about how games are not what they are used to be. I understand that. But adaptable is a cruel mistress.

Adapt or die.

A sense of progression if one does not win the first time is a fact of the game world. If one does that not make that, does it matter how much work a "hard" mode gets? How much work a "super" boss gets? How many updates occurs after the player has already wrote off the game?

[Logorouge]

A sense of progression if one does not win the first time is a fact of the game world. If one does that not make that, does it matter how much work a "hard" mode gets? How much work a "super" boss gets? How many updates occurs after the player has already wrote off the game?

In the context that only the extra floors unlock has value and unlocking new enemies to be killed by is not much of a reward (and assuming reducing the difficulty to cakewalk level is out of the question), I can definitely see how the current lack of unlocks would suck.

That's an interesting point. It was definitely nice to progress in some way in every run of Isaac.

[Misery]

A sense of progression if one does not win the first time is a fact of the game world. If one does that not make that, does it matter how much work a "hard" mode gets? How much work a "super" boss gets? How many updates occurs after the player has already wrote off the game?

In the context that only the extra floors unlock has value and unlocking new enemies to be killed by is not much of a reward (and assuming reducing the difficulty to cakewalk level is out of the question), I can definitely see how the current lack of unlocks would suck.

That's an interesting point. It was definitely nice to progress in some way in every run of Isaac.

Yep.   And it's something we'd intended on doing from the start.   But.... I dunno, I think it's one of those things where it just got lost in the tangled mess that was early development.  There were just too many other things that had priority.


Though, on a side note, it does occur to me that most of Arcen's games don't seem to do the unlocking thing whatsoever.... I hadn't really spotted this before, but now that I think about it it's kinda obvious.   The first Valley had stuff to unlock, lots of stuff.... but everything else?   Huh.  I dunno, I'd just plain not really noticed that before.  I mean there's achievements and all, but that's not even remotely the same thing.   I think the lack of it though is more felt in this game than in others though, as this genre IS one that usually contains a lot of unlocks.  There's been exceptions to that, such as Nuclear Throne (you can unlock "B skins", but that's.... really about it), but exceptions like that are very rare.

[Chthon]

Ohhhhh.... right.   I see what you mean.  Er, I think.  Not having things like unlocks to get as you go along, or stuff like that?  I think people call it "meta-progression" sometimes.

Aye, I do regret there not being stuff like that in this.  There was supposed to be, but... er... you know, I have no bloody clue why it didn't happen.  There was just so much chaos in that earliest part of development.

But it's the one thing truly lacking from this game that just bugs me.   I personally am not too interested in unlocks in games, but definitely understand why others are, and that particular thing has great use in this genre.  Games like Isaac just show it off that much more, too. 


....or I'm remembering the wrong thing, correct me if I am.

You are not remembering it wrong at it, it is exactly that which is missing.

There is no "progression" in any sense of the modern term of the word. If I fail the first time, is there a reason I should try a second, third, fourth time?

I understand the old school value of trying to beat something hard. But that value is generally regulated in the few games that I naturally understood quickly. For the rest of the games, I NEED that sense of value, so I do not feel like I am just bashing my head against a wall. It just is a factor in the market today that wasn't there even 8 years ago.

One can complain about how games are not what they are used to be. I understand that. But adaptable is a cruel mistress.

Adapt or die.

A sense of progression if one does not win the first time is a fact of the game world. If one does that not make that, does it matter how much work a "hard" mode gets? How much work a "super" boss gets? How many updates occurs after the player has already wrote off the game?

Another reason that players used to play games that were hard to beat them was that when we were all younger, I guarantee that we had fewer options. Maybe Mom and Dad only bought 2 games a year, and that was all you got. You could give up on it, and not have anything to play, or work at it till you got good.

These days, games are much cheaper, discounting the triple A titles, and those of us with money can buy many more. I find myself continuously going back to games which I find fun, but I do remember the days when I played hard games. A proper difficulty curve, or progression, assists with getting newer players in these days by not driving them off to the other games they have.

[Misery]

To be fair, though, a lot of the players that are likely to be attracted to this game are absolutely not going to be expecting "progression" of the sort that gives the player permanent advantages over time, and might in fact be repelled by it (I know I would).   Why?  Because it decreases the challenge.

The game is partly an Isaac-ish game, but those vary wildly in terms of difficulty, and very few have progression that actually helps the player.  Even Isaac doesn't really do this: the game has plenty of unlocks that give you bloody horrid items, or items that are very "meh".  There aren't any unlocks that make the game easier.   There ARE, however, ones that make it definitively harder ("Everything is Terrible!"  for example).

With this game, well.... it has the bullet-hell label right up front, for instance.  That alone says a lot, and will repulse most gamers that are the sorts that look for an easier experience.  Bullet hell games are notorious for being the sorts of games that beat you over the head with your own face while laughing about it.  And then doing it even worse the next time.  The sorts of players that ARENT scared off by that are usually the sort that'd find difficulty-decreasers (such as unlocking permanent bonuses to your ship/character) to be almost insulting.  Among those that the genre caters to, those are almost a cardinal sin in and of themselves.  I, frankly, am also one of those that typically wont touch a game that does this.

The same applies to roguelikes, which is the other half of this game.  Of that genre, Isaac is the ONLY easy one.  Which, actually, is a pretty common complaint among it's fans.  Very common, actually.  Roguelikes don't do a damn thing to lower the challenge at any point; meta-progression, like in bullet hell games, is traditionally non-existent.  There's the occaisional exception, but that's very, very rare.

In the end, SR was destined to be the sort of game that would only fully hold the lasting attention of those that seek a challenge.   Enter the Gungeon is very similar in this regard:  There are two types of players in that game.  The sort that will play it endlessly, and the sort that die at the first boss, a whole bunch of times, and leave.  That's the case with a lot of games like this, and it's what I expected with this game.  My own presence on the team for this one practically guaranteed that this would be the case, too.   Even when I try to make something "easy" it comes out "murderous" instead.  Of course, this is why the game has selectable difficulty options, which is very different than permanent effects that unlock.  Even the hardcore crowd generally wont complain about those, because they can be ignored.

As I said I still rather regret that we don't have unlockables, but that's just from a "players sometimes find it satisfying" point of view.  I *don't* regret that we don't have meta-progression that objectively helps the player with permanent benefits.  I would have railed hard against that one.

[chemical_art]

I would have railed hard against that one.

I rail against everything else you have said. The games you have described sound miserable.

On the one hand you describe that most players don't expect X except for Isaac, yet Isaac is by far the best selling of the genre. So who is the minority, really?

You have to pick an audience. I prefer the one that sells more. No coincidence, it is the audience that I am a part of.

[Misery]

I would have railed hard against that one.

I rail against everything else you have said. The games you have described sound miserable.

On the one hand you describe that most players don't expect X except for Isaac, yet Isaac is by far the best selling of the genre. So who is the minority, really?

You have to pick an audience. I prefer the one that sells more. No coincidence, it is the audience that I am a part of.

The vast majority of the genre, however, is not Isaac. Neither are all of the games that inspired it; they're all hard as nails. And considering how exceedingly frequent the "This game is way too easy, I'm getting kinda bored, where can I get mods?" complaints are for Isaac (seriously, it's REALLY frequent), even plenty of it's players don't actually see it in the way you describe.   Even when looking at mods, the most popular mod is a MONSTROUS increase in difficulty to the base game.  Like I said:  fans coming from the roguelike side of things desire the challenge.

If Isaac's easy gameplay was genuinely the only thing people wanted, the genre would have collapsed by now, due to the extreme number of games within it that are very hard.  Again, Isaac is the ONLY easy one.  Yet games like Nuclear Throne, Gungeon, and various others do just fine (and those two in particular are on the extremely high end of the difficulty scale).

And one other thing to remember:  Isaac's sales were massively boosted by YouTube.  Certain Youtubers grabbed it, and repeatedly showed it off.  Particularly Northernlion and Cobaltstreak, both of which practically made a JOB out of playing Isaac.  The game could not have gotten better publicity, and this was all enhanced by the simple fact that Isaac was the first major one; it had no competition.  It was a very new thing... a randomly generated roguelike that played like the dungeons of the original Zelda!  It even had the first Zelda's interface.  Of COURSE it was going to attract.

Not to mention that Isaac's core appeal is NOT it's low difficulty:  It's the synergy mechanics.  Few games of this type feel so genuinely different from one run to the next.  Without that, the game would not have done well.   It NEEDS that in order to hold the attention of it's audience.   And that's absolutely not something we could have managed in SR here; it wasn't going to happen, and we knew that from the start, but that was also a desirable difference; trying to be Isaac by trying to make it all about synergies again would have been going too far into the clone zone.

Besides:  Even Isaac requires practice.  It's only "easy" in comparison to the boringness that is the AAA market.  Most new players will die OFTEN just against Mom, provided they even reach her.  They're not going to get any true progression until they defeat her, and even then, they'll get stuck at the Heart.   Which has to be beaten *10* times in order to go further.   The sort of player you describe that quits after 3 runs still wont stick with even that game (there are exceptions of course), particularly since only a few runs is not actually enough to give a sense of what the synergy mechanics can do.

As Chris said elsewhere, SR's biggest issue was a near total lack of visibility... consumers cannot buy what they do not know exists.  If the high difficulty really was a genuine problem, we'd have gotten negative reviews and such left and right from even the smaller playerbase.  Gamers tend to actually give negative reviews JUST because a game is too hard.  But again, people going into this genre tend to already know about that; many of them simply wouldn't be there otherwise.


As for the games I describe sounding miserable... *shrug*    Very subjective, and of course it works the other way around.   I look at easy games as being fantastically boring; if it doesn't put up a true fight, how the hell am I supposed to get any satisfaction from beating it? How is my skill supposed to ever improve?  In the sorts of games you're hinting at, there's no challenge to overcome.  For me, very dull.  I get nothing out of swatting aside weak foes that attack by dying in my general direction.   Why others do get something out of it, I'll never understand.

[kasnavada]

Misery, I side with Chemical art here.

My opinion : people that claim to want challenge are also strong-headed, never stop beating the bushes and are generally noisy. Therefore they hog the forums, never stopping to make their opinion known... but in the end... Most players don't even get to the forum and for all I can tell, love the base game with no additions. Because mods download numbers are way way below game sales quantity.

I don't think that the silent majority has your point of view. They want a game that's enjoyable, and easy game can be enjoyable (Mario ? Diablo ?).
About the AAA market, it's boring "to you" but you're the minority actually. Otherwise it would not be the AAA market. It'd be an indy market.

SR's mistakes were no meta progression, too hard, genre completely saturated, no PR (not that the PR for raptor was better), bad reviews (I'll get to that in a moment). Game itself is nice and plays well, with good controls.

About the reviews, have you even read them ? How many, 90% are from Arcen's forum ? Felt that way at start. It looked like someone paid fans to write them. There were few if any "independant" reviews there at start. I think that must hurt the game the most. I mean I go there, I look at reviews, I see "fanboy review, fanboy review, fanboy review..."... Also, the fuss that people on the forum have made by responding to the first negative review ? Come on people. That was an horrible idea. That repulsed me.

[Mánagarmr]

SR's mistakes were no meta progression, too hard, genre completely saturated, no PR (not that the PR for raptor was better), bad reviews (I'll get to that in a moment). Game itself is nice and plays well, with good controls.

What? Meta progression is the bane of roguelikes and "challenge-likes" games. If this game had meta progression it would either a) start out WAY too freaking hard or b) be so laughably easy in the end that you wouldn't want to play it. Instead you know exactly what to expect every time you start a new game, randomness notwithstanding and that is exactly how a game like this should be.

Also I can't really understand the "too hard" bit. On normal this game is fair and reasonable and completely beatable after 5-10 games once one starts to get the hang of pattern learning and movement. This coming from a guy who never plays shmups or bullet hells normally. On hard the game very much is hard, but that's why it's called "Hard".

I just don't get those two complaints. Like, at all. Meta progression especially. It would've ruined this game. Sure it wasn't a market success but as a game it's great, and meta progression would've nipped even that in the bud.

[Misery]

Misery, I side with Chemical art here.

My opinion : people that claim to want challenge are also strong-headed, never stop beating the bushes and are generally noisy. Therefore they hog the forums, never stopping to make their opinion known... but in the end... Most players don't even get to the forum and for all I can tell, love the base game with no additions. Because mods download numbers are way way below game sales quantity.

I don't think that the silent majority has your point of view. They want a game that's enjoyable, and easy game can be enjoyable (Mario ? Diablo ?).
About the AAA market, it's boring "to you" but you're the minority actually. Otherwise it would not be the AAA market. It'd be an indy market.

SR's mistakes were no meta progression, too hard, genre completely saturated, no PR (not that the PR for raptor was better), bad reviews (I'll get to that in a moment). Game itself is nice and plays well, with good controls.

About the reviews, have you even read them ? How many, 90% are from Arcen's forum ? Felt that way at start. It looked like someone paid fans to write them. There were few if any "independant" reviews there at start. I think that must hurt the game the most. I mean I go there, I look at reviews, I see "fanboy review, fanboy review, fanboy review..."... Also, the fuss that people on the forum have made by responding to the first negative review ? Come on people. That was an horrible idea. That repulsed me.

Actually, I mostly ignored reviews from Arcen's community.   No offense to anyone here of course, but while those are nice they're also not as helpful, they're most likely to be biased.  That, and for pretty much everyone that fits into that category, I'd already gotten a whole lot of feedback from them in the game's beta phase.  The reviews would have just reiterated on that. 

That being said though, we seem to have more then the usual amount of community members that absolutely will say they don't like something if that's the case.  The really honest sort.   Though, again, I'd already heard stuff from them on the forums here; none of that would have been new.  Just reiteration.  Though again, any reviews from anyone were still appreciated.

In other words, I was never concerned about the reviews, really.  And one way or another, this is a genre I understand *a lot* about (stepping away from just Isaac here).  I've played... most of the games in this genre.  I've beaten most of them.  And this genre is made of two other genres that, for about a decade, have been my core focus as gaming goes.  I know the part of the audience that I'm speaking of.  All of these things are the reason why I, someone with zero development experience aside from TLF's expansion (where I just designed Obscura patterns and balanced ship stats, and considering what TLF is that's not even remotely a big thing in it) was brought into this project at all.   Outside of balance issues... which I absolutely expected would happen from day 1 (and which is also totally fine)... if there was something genuinely wrong with the game from the point of view that this side of the audience was coming from, I'd have spotted it (and the one thing that DID go wrong, the hitbox size, was indeed changed).  I'm a very negative person and tend to be extremely critical of my own designs (hell, the enemies/bosses that I REALLY don't like in the game are all my own fault); I'm not immune to my own hate, is an unpleasant way to put it.  Though obviously I don't consider high difficulty to be an issue, but then... neither does the subset of players I represent, which is the subset that many decisions within this game were designed to attract.


As for that bit about the response to a review.... I *think* I know which one you're talking about.  I don't remember who else jumped in on that one, but I remember my own reasons for it, and frankly, have snapped at people about OTHER games too for those same reasons; I don't reserve stuff like that just for favorite developers like Arcen.  The issue though was that my connection to the game should have stopped me from doing that; but as it's an oooooold habit, it happened anyway.  Not long after I basically decided "You know what... screw it.  Making ANY response wether positive or negative on a review is just asking for derp", and simply stopped.


Regardless though, meta progression of the type you guys bring up simply was not going to happen here.  Again, EVEN ISAAC DOESNT DO IT.  And even I consider Isaac to be my favorite of this genre; yes, moreso than SR.  Doesn't matter that I worked on SR: Isaac is still my personal fave, probably always will be.   But the point is, even that game, seen as the best of the best, has no stat-based meta progression.

Now, if you very specifically and ONLY mean UNLOCK-based meta progression... THAT is a different story.   Though, as Chris pointed out elsewhere, we simply didn't have enough items in the game to do this.  Isaac does it, a lot, but then Isaac has a deeply absurd number of items in it... and that's NOT counting things like consumables.  But in SR?  We had nowhere near a number that would have allowed us to do that in a satisfactory way.  Which, again, is one thing I rather regret, even though I don't like unlocks myself.

But that other type of meta-progression absolutely was not happening. 

What? Meta progression is the bane of roguelikes and "challenge-likes" games. If this game had meta progression it would either a) start out WAY too freaking hard or b) be so laughably easy in the end that you wouldn't want to play it. Instead you know exactly what to expect every time you start a new game, randomness notwithstanding and that is exactly how a game like this should be.

Exactly.  That "laughably easy in the end" is exactly why that idea is so loathed (and I don't mean by me), and why it was not going to happen in this game.  That's basically my entire point summed up without my rambling, hah.

Also I can't really understand the "too hard" bit. On normal this game is fair and reasonable and completely beatable after 5-10 games once one starts to get the hang of pattern learning and movement. This coming from a guy who never plays shmups or bullet hells normally. On hard the game very much is hard, but that's why it's called "Hard".

Aye, to a degree this is true.  Normal mode is not balanced just by me, definitely not.  That's the mode where Chris checked it over himself, (as did the others, everyone really)  to make sure that it was at a level he thought it should be at.  Many things I made were toned way the heck down for that mode.  Hard mode, on the other hand, is my doing.  But it's not intended that players START on hard unless they're already experts in the genre. It's meant for those that feel they've absolutely mastered normal mode.   Normal mode, to most, seems doable, as you say here.

Though, even that is quite subjective.  I still know people that think Normal is impossible.  Even the earliest bosses.

Which I guess brings up a sticky issue with ALL of this:  There's just no way to take a game like this and get the difficulty so that it's JUST RIGHT for everyone. It cant be done. There's ALWAYS going to be people that it's too hard for, or people that it's too easy for.  This is what the difficulty modes are for (more casual players are meant to pick the lower ones) but a lot of people seem to have issues with the idea of picking the lower ones, so.... they just don't.  I can understand that.   The point is, we tried to make sure there was a wide range of challenge levels available here, but it's always going to be too extreme towards either end for some.   There's ALWAYS going to be frustrated players with a game like this.  Always.  I hate that that has to be the case with this genre, but.... like I said, Isaac isn't immune to that too, and it's on the top of the pile, even to me.

[Monkooky]

So, uh.... I'm pretty sure there is meta progression in Starward Rogue. Unlock based progression, but meta-progression nonetheless.
I'm not entirely sure how it works, and it's certainly not very visible, but if you go to Statistics, you can find a list of which items and enemies are unlocked.

To throw my boot into this moot argument, I find meta-progression dulls the sense of accomplishment you get when your umpteenth try finally succeeds.
Without meta-progression, if I beat this thing that was impossible before, it's because I got more skilled, personally improved.
With meta-progression, if I beat this thing that was impossible before, it's because I leveled up my damage to the point where it's easy or unlocked an op item.