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

[Misery]

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.

The reason I keep saying there's no unlock-progression is because the number of unlockables in the game is so amazingly low that I'm not actually sure why any of them are there (and also I keep forgetting they are there at all).  And I'm pretty sure they're mostly enemies.   I mean, seriously, I have no idea why any of them are locked at all.

The only true thing that's locked that actually matters whatsoever is the fact that you cannot get to floor 6 until you've defeated the Warden a couple of times.  That's really it.

[Monkooky]

A brief look in a fairly new file showed about 10 things locked.
So.... yeah basically no unlock progression is a fair assessment.

[Logorouge]

Oh. If we're talking about bonus stats meta-progression, that's an entirely different ball game.

Regardless of my opinion on them, in this particular game they would be pointless. The enemies bullet patterns are pretty much all puzzle-like attacks you have to solve to be able to counter/dodge them. If you don't try to solve the "puzzles", you will die and no amount of extra health/attack/etc will save you from that. A player that gave up entirely on the game after a few runs I guarantee will still give up long before this kind of meta-progression can make any noticeable different.

[Misery]

Oh. If we're talking about bonus stats meta-progression, that's an entirely different ball game.

Regardless of my opinion on them, in this particular game they would be pointless. The enemies bullet patterns are pretty much all puzzle-like attacks you have to solve to be able to counter/dodge them. If you don't try to solve the "puzzles", you will die and no amount of extra health/attack/etc will save you from that. A player that gave up entirely on the game after a few runs I guarantee will still give up long before this kind of meta-progression can make any noticeable different.

Aye, meta-progression of that type still DOES usually require you to at least accomplish a number of things before it'll start doing anything.  If the player is done after like 3 runs, they're not going to see any of it anyway.  It's a "happens slowly over time" sort of thing, after all. 

And you're right for the most part about the nature of the bullet patterns. That's exactly what the more major patterns are designed to do, which is usually the case with bullet hell stuff.   With more "traditional" types of shmup patterns, it's more about simple memorization and reacting, which is very different (and can be a lot more frustrating since if you have trouble REMEMBERING exactly what's going to happen, you're really likely to get hit even if you're technically very good at it)  Though, as certain people have proven in those other couple of topics here, right now it's definitely possible to get enough damage going that those patterns don't matter; hoping we can get that resolved.  This balance stuff is hard.  If we can get it right though (and by "we" I mostly mean the others, I'm not good with the math stuff) then you're right, bits of extra attack or HP wont save you.  They can help, sure, but that's not enough.  Similar to how it is in Enter the Gungeon.  You can get some powerful item/weapon combos going in that game, but unlike Isaac, you *need* quite a bit of skill to back those up regardless of how strong they are.

[Pepisolo]

Regarding meta-progression, one idea I had for something completely different is this: upon beating Warden or Terminus the player unlocks a mech customization screen. Then, you tie in the rest of the unlocks into this customization screen. So if you were to then complete the game with the White Gloss mech, this would allow you to create a mech that looks like the White Gloss, but with a range of different palette swaps available. Beat the game with all the mechs and you unlock all the skins with a variety of palette swaps. Due to the modular stacked way that the mech is drawn, you could also choose different legs -- not much use currently since all the current legs are the same aside from colour changes, but in a magical world where SR had sold bucketloads, Blue could could create legs that are more like tank tracks, or hover thrusters etc. If this were to be taken a lot further, a point buy system could be arranged. So if I'd ever picked up a weapon, or module, this would also then become available in the mech customization screen. Obviously you'd need a point system to stop the player from just grabbing all the best gear in the game.

So, maybe I could choose a golden palette swapped White Gloss frame that starts out with Golden Minigun and the Golden Missile Launcher. I'd have to sacrifice some HP or missile or energy capacity to be able to grab this extra starting gear, but that'd be fine. Or I could create a more random mech, blue Flame Tank frame with the innate humble 10% off stores that starts with the Dead Eye Module, but no energy weapon (to save on point costs).

That's the gist anyway. The engine coding resources in creating something like this would be significant, but it would provide some cool meta progression unlocks. Plus, this would be a bit fresher and more roguelike than the usual beat boss unlock item one. Just an idea I had!