No variety.

[piecewise66]

I've been playing several roguelites recently (This, Hades, Dead cells, Wizard of Legend, etc), they all seem to suffer from the same fatal flaw: A lack of variety.

A roguelike, because of its simple visual and text based style of interface can have TONS of variety. You can generate vastly different levels each time, with a lot of variety in basically all aspects. You can generally start with lots of different characters or classes, play in wholly different ways, and have very different runs each time.

But think about this game. Is each run different? Or is it the same thing every time with very minor differences? Same daisy chained collection of encounter rooms, same handful of enemies, maybe a half dozen different weapons (Since a hammer plays the same no matter if its fire infused or normal), same bosses, exact same character, etc. AND YET they always want you to play dozens or hundreds of runs to unlock things. Hours and Hours of fighting the exact same enemies in the exact same ways.

It becomes incredibly tedious and misses the entire point of rougelikes. And yes, I KNOW ITS EARLY ACCESS. I understand more will be added. And I tell you now IT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH. Every run will still be pretty much the same because you'll still just be grinding through combat rooms of a handful of enemies with a handful of weapons, none of which are really so different as to meaningfully differentiate one run from another.

Its a waste of potential and a waste of time.

[Danyaell]

So you saying all roguelikes/lites you're playing are bad and or repetitive? What suggestions you have to increase variety?

I understand a fire weapon can play like its poison version. But combine that with Blessings and Relics and you now have a lot of synergyes and play styles. :)

[piecewise66]

Originally posted by Danyaell:

So you saying all roguelikes/lites you're playing are bad and or repetitive? What suggestions you have to increase variety?

I understand a fire weapon can play like its poison version. But combine that with Blessings and Relics and you now have a lot of synergyes and play styles. :)

I'm saying that roguelikes (something that has a very specific definition I'll remind you and characterized by level randomization, permanent death, and turn-based movement) and roguelites are not the same. Roguelikes have massive amounts of variety and can get away with repeated runs because of it. Roguelites do not have that degree of variety and thus should not be trying to rely on the same gameplay. Because a Roguelike is all about each run being different and likely ending in death, where as a roguelite generally has very similar runs each time and wants you to actually finish the game.

And no, it really doesn't. I understand I might get, you know, a curse that makes it so I don't take extra damage in the dark, and an artifact that makes me deal 15% more damage in the dark. And that might change my playstyle. Or maybe I'll get a weapon that lights enemies on fire, and a weapon that deals critical damage to burning enemies, and that might change my playstyle. But the changes are VERY small. I'm not gonna be completely revising how I play, I'm just gonna be hitting them with one weapon then the other to combo. Meanwhile a roguelike has more build variety and game changing choices on the character creation screen than this game does in its entire playtime.

I mean in caves of qud I can be anything from a defrosted space marine to a mutated spider person that generates sleep gas and teleports short distances. And thats just character creation. In this you can...have a pistol or a bow. Woo.



In terms of how to increase variety...well you can do one of two things. Either keep the gameplay as it is and remove or lower the incessant grinding, or make it so that each option is pretty radically different from the others. In the first case you can keep samey gameplay but its acceptable because you're making progress, seeing different things, and the frustration of doing the same thing over and over is reduced. In the second case, where every weapon or gameplay option plays very differently, the grind is more acceptable because it makes the repeated expeditions feel meaningfully different, since you have to dramatically change how you play every time. Hades attempts this by giving you a few different weapons to choose from, each with different stats and methods of play. I'd argue they don't go far enough, but its a start.

[vic_viperman]

Enter the gungeon, binding of isaac, spelunky, those all have excellent variety have you tried those? Enter the Gungeon is probably my favorite roguelike game ever.

[piecewise66]

Binding of Isaac is good, yeah. Because it has many different characters and tons of modifiers that can interact and change up each run by a large amount. It gets the variety of rougelikes right and thus the repetition is acceptable. Similar with the other two. You'll note they're all pretty basic isometric shooters with sprite based art at their core, so its easier to add variety since you don't need to 3d model and animate everything.

[vic_viperman]

I don't know man, curse of dead gods look pretty cool to me... I am gonna get it. Keep in mind that it is still early access.

[piecewise66]

Originally posted by vic_viperman:

I don't know man, curse of dead gods look pretty cool to me... I am gonna get it. Keep in mind that it is still early access.

I've played a couple of hours and it gets repetitive quick. I'm not gonna sit here and try and talk you out of it though.

[Neferneith]

I think the repetitivity comes from the very small impact of weapon bonuses / relic / stats on your gameplay. Every bow plays exactly the same. Sword and board is another type, all heavy weapon are similar etc.
Curses are more a changing factor in gameplay than any of the player choices.

[Sampol]

This lack of variety comes from two things - weapons that are not that many and are generally not interesting in mechanics and rewards that are pretty non existent. Add those two things into this game and it will be great. I guess they will add more variety of enemies and rooms as it's an early access game but for me the biggest issue in that there are no interesting rewards - blessings are fine but it's not enough. I thing there could be a cosmetic rewards but only achievable by playing the game. For now this game is a solid and well done concept that needs to be evolved.

[piecewise66]

I think the fact that the weapons do not play significantly differently is a big issue. Take hades for example. You don't have many weapons, but they all have some significant difference to them and how you use them. In this game your gun or your bow are basically identical in how you use them. Weapons really only fall into like one of three groups and whether its a big hammer or a big sword, they all function basically the same.

If you made it so that say...firing the gun didn't require stamina but had to be relatively slowly reloaded after X number of shots, and the bow needed stamina but had no shot limit, that would be a difference. Or maybe make it so bows are universally more powerful than guns, but they have a limited number of arrows and those arrows stick in their targets and can only be regained by killing that target.

You know, something.

[kRazyyoN.【ツ】-toFtS-]

Originally posted by piecewise66:

I've been playing several roguelites recently (This, Hades, Dead cells, Wizard of Legend, etc), they all seem to suffer from the same fatal flaw: A lack of variety.

A roguelike, because of its simple visual and text based style of interface can have TONS of variety. You can generate vastly different levels each time, with a lot of variety in basically all aspects. You can generally start with lots of different characters or classes, play in wholly different ways, and have very different runs each time.

But think about this game. Is each run different? Or is it the same thing every time with very minor differences? Same daisy chained collection of encounter rooms, same handful of enemies, maybe a half dozen different weapons (Since a hammer plays the same no matter if its fire infused or normal), same bosses, exact same character, etc. AND YET they always want you to play dozens or hundreds of runs to unlock things. Hours and Hours of fighting the exact same enemies in the exact same ways.

It becomes incredibly tedious and misses the entire point of rougelikes. And yes, I KNOW ITS EARLY ACCESS. I understand more will be added. And I tell you now IT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH. Every run will still be pretty much the same because you'll still just be grinding through combat rooms of a handful of enemies with a handful of weapons, none of which are really so different as to meaningfully differentiate one run from another.

Its a waste of potential and a waste of time.

just chill and wait for what will be coming... ppl always want everything RIGHT NOW.... EA means EA, so simply wait instead of telling ppl game xy is boring.... that is only YOUR opinion.

[Pickle Bath]

Hey old man OP, go back to Nethack and MUDs you curmudgeon

But honestly you're coming at it the wrong way, with the wrong expectations. The reason the old timey roguelikes needed more variety was because the actual gameplay wasn't that compelling. The interesting part of Curse and the others you mentioned is the actual moment-to-moment decisions and muscle memory you develop, and then applying those to slightly different (but still challenging) situations.

I don't know where you have the idea you need to play "hundreds of hours" to unlock everything in Curse. But like I said, if you're not actually enjoying the GAMEPLAY part of the GAME, then yeah I could see being confused on why twin stick roguelites are so popular. Basically if you're not actually enjoying playing the game, no amount of new enemies and environments will change that, it'll just delay your realization of it.

[Piporono]

Originally posted by Ill-Fitting Sunglasses:

Hey old man OP, go back to Nethack and MUDs you curmudgeon

But honestly you're coming at it the wrong way, with the wrong expectations. The reason the old timey roguelikes needed more variety was because the actual gameplay wasn't that compelling. The interesting part of Curse and the others you mentioned is the actual moment-to-moment decisions and muscle memory you develop, and then applying those to slightly different (but still challenging) situations.

I don't know where you have the idea you need to play "hundreds of hours" to unlock everything in Curse. But like I said, if you're not actually enjoying the GAMEPLAY part of the GAME, then yeah I could see being confused on why twin stick roguelites are so popular. Basically if you're not actually enjoying playing the game, no amount of new enemies and environments will change that, it'll just delay your realization of it.

I mean, what you are saying doesn’t really related to what he said. Did he said that he doesn’t enjoy the GAMEPLAY part of the game, or is it just your assumption? What you said doesn’t really make any sense and only base on your assumption, while, on the other hand, what he said really does make sense and he even gave a bunch of examples for it.

GAMEPLAY is an important part, but it really isn’t an excuse for a game to be repetitive. You can praise the game as much as you want, and surely you are correct about it, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the fact that each run feels very same-ish. GAMEPLAY can only helps for a certain part, but there is a limit of how much it can affects your enjoyment. If the run doesn’t have a lot of variety, then after a while it will become repetitive to play the game.

And no, the GAMEPLAY of BoI, Etg, spelunky, ... are gold even if it’s not complicated. And yet it has a bunch of variety that makes each run feel different enough.

To clarify, I haven’t own this game yet, but I have watched a bunch of people playing the game, and it in fact does feel quite repetitive. Just cross the forums for some research, and after a while I come to the conclusion that it does have the same problem with Hades and Dead Cell. Yeah, the gameplay of this game is very good from what I have seen, and I can say the same thing with both Hades and Dead Cells (which I owns). Hades and Dead Cells have the best combat in any rogue-lite I have ever played, no doubt about that, but after like 20 hours in each game, it’s just get boring to play. Was looking if this game has something to improve the problem, and now I have the answer.

[piecewise66]

Originally posted by kRazyyoN.:

just chill and wait for what will be coming... ppl always want everything RIGHT NOW.... EA means EA, so simply wait instead of telling ppl game xy is boring.... that is only YOUR opinion.

As I said in my post, it doesn't matter if they add a few new enemies or a new weapon type. The issue is not enough content in general, its enough variety in the content. You can have 10,000 different bows but if they all work identically its not really going to matter.

Originally posted by Ill-Fitting Sunglasses:

Hey old man OP, go back to Nethack and MUDs you curmudgeon

But honestly you're coming at it the wrong way, with the wrong expectations. The reason the old timey roguelikes needed more variety was because the actual gameplay wasn't that compelling. The interesting part of Curse and the others you mentioned is the actual moment-to-moment decisions and muscle memory you develop, and then applying those to slightly different (but still challenging) situations.

I don't know where you have the idea you need to play "hundreds of hours" to unlock everything in Curse. But like I said, if you're not actually enjoying the GAMEPLAY part of the GAME, then yeah I could see being confused on why twin stick roguelites are so popular. Basically if you're not actually enjoying playing the game, no amount of new enemies and environments will change that, it'll just delay your realization of it.

The actual moment to moment gameplay is fine, the issue is that it cannot hold up for the amount of time the game intends you to play it. The game expects you to do many runs of the same thing, getting better and making it further until you can do the final exploration. However, the fact that there are a handful of enemies, a handful of weapons, and a each full run can last quite a while means you're effectively playing the same level, with the same weapons, over and over again.

If this game were a standard action adventure game, moving through different hand crafted levels towards a final boss, it would be fine. Because you'd have changing levels, different enemies, etc it would be fine. But it doesn't. It has like 10 enemies total (maybe 4 or so of which you see constantly) and two themes for its levels. Its not enough for me to grind up crystal skulls to unlock things with dozens of runs.

[Pickle Bath]

Originally posted by piecewise66:

The actual moment to moment gameplay is fine, the issue is that it cannot hold up for the amount of time the game intends you to play it. The game expects you to do many runs of the same thing, getting better and making it further until you can do the final exploration. However, the fact that there are a handful of enemies, a handful of weapons, and a each full run can last quite a while means you're effectively playing the same level, with the same weapons, over and over again.

Ah yeah, different strokes for different folks I guess. ~30 hours of my playtime was just with the first temple, before they even had the three special subtype runs per difficulty. Not sure how long the devs intend a person to play, but I'll get at least 100 hours out of this game easily. Just depends on the person, no different from how I got 500 hours out of Vermintide 2, and initially it only had 13 maps and a similar number of enemies as Curse will have in the end.

Also if you're effectively playing the same level with the same weapons over and over then it should be a piece of cake to reach the final exploration, right? :P

[UAreNotMyFather]

90 hour player here. The game doesn't have huge variety, but what it does have is excellent, thoughtful gameplay and plenty of ways to challenge yourself. Have you completed every challenge in both temples? Can you regularly finish a run with zero healing or HP upgrades? Have you beaten the final boss of a temple 10 times to unlock the art? Have you achieved a greed kill counter of nearly 300? Have you finished a run with over 100k gold? For me these things are fun to do. The gameplay itself is so solid that striving to play the game perfectly is its own reward 👍