Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
This topic has been locked 
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
0 
Report this post
I onehundred percent agree with your complaint, upgrades like that compromise balance for all the reasons you stated. It's difficulty on a slider that always starts too hard and ends up too easy. I think it's a lazy way to handle balance and it also betrays a sort of insecurity as if the designers don't trust themselves to properly balance their own game.
Meanwhile, if they resist the temptation to make more than a few of the first couple of upgrades extremely useful - then having you dump points over time into the blood and soul-lake is not actually going to affect game-balance past a fairly early point.
And just serve as a vehicle for letting the one run where you are lucky, have the backing of the eldritch circle, and finally complete your mission, become the inevitable fulfillment of a prophecy - foretold with absolute accuracy, in the vaguest language possible, etc.
Rather than just being a run where you were lucky and got the right ring, and blasted everything. That sort of thing can be incredibly unsatisfying.
Purists distinguish further with things like "it must be ascii art" or tile based but i think that's assanine as itd exclude tales of majeyal which is clearly a roguelike. When you get that obtuse you just create stagnation in both discussion and developement in games.
Personally i think that of genres as well, theyre completely arbitrary and best used as a shorthand for common language. I also think the fact that the progress rule has been cemented as "lite" incorrectly so often has led to this awful design being validated rather than cast out. its exactly as you say where youre either too weak or too strong.
Idk man, I think there are different levels of purism. I agree that a roguelike should be "like rogue" and that certain design elements are "holy" and can't be messed with. But I'd consider a game like Noita to be roguelike for example because it's got almost all the elements, like oppressive difficulty, character progression system, hardcore death, randomized enemies/levels, etc. But it's also realtime/platforming so I know a lot of people would disagree. On the other hand I wouldn't consider Rogue Legacy to be a roguelike because of the upgrade system that carries through that contains all the problems you listed earlier.
I think the roguelite label is useful because it's like you say a shorthand for common language, when a game has that sort of design flaw with upgrades that carry over through playthroughs I want to know.
And I'ma just throw a wrench in the wheels and say that technically Tales has some (extremely few) benefits that carry over through playthroughs, but I think it's fine to make exceptions if it's close enough and the transgression isn't too heavy.
the problem is youre using the label incorrectly, lite isnt defined by progression.
Regardless if you think my roguelike labeling isn't stringent enough, the difference between a roguelike and roguelite still resides in the progression system. Rogue-Legacy was the first to popularize the term roguelite and they did so by mentioning their progression system. Pretty much anywhere you look for a definition on "roguelite" you will find reference to the likeness of roguelikes and early mentions of persistent upgrades in the description, they are the two defining features of a roguelite across the board.
Back in the day I guess games like Diablo had sometimes been called roguelites, but that was before Diablo 2 conquered and redefined the arpg label and were recognized as a distinct genre.
I never claimed to be a purist nor is that the purist argument. The word roguelike is a genre term, while im not overly obtuse about it being a square grid or hexagons or how it looks visually the GENRE is defined by rogue's gameplay.
I think genres are arbitrary and if used too much leads to things being pigeon holed and full of convention, but there's no getting around the fact that rogue isnt a platformer, not even close. So if you're going to bring "lite" into the discussion at all you should use it properly, is the point that I have made. "lite" is not roguelike but bad but rather distinguishing roguelike as a game mode, taking the surface level rules of rogue (permadeath, unique trinkets doled out in special treasure rooms or hubs and a focus on dynamic gameplay elements which are multifaceted to introduce chaos to a game so every playthrough is different) that is what roguelite means, the genre in which a roguelite is placed is what doesn't matter. Isaac is a dungeon crawler plays like zelda and has the gamemode rules of rogue, thus its a roguelite.
No you're just using it wrong entirely. Games with progression don't even technically have permadeath as theyre a consistent line of progress, theyre closer to rpgs than rogue anything. In diablo you die and lose some of your gold but your loot and xp is retained and you just go back into the dungeon. We don't call that a rogueanything and it shares far more in common with dungreed than dungreed has with rogue.
even by your definition noita has progression with its unlocks. But this is just nitpicking, again i think this is all arbitrary, so i use the encompassing term roguelike unless im specifically talking about the distinctions between them. My problem is when people use roguelite and don't use it correctly because its been endlessly repeated that it means game with progression, which it doesn't.
As far as I'm concerned, at no point in the game's description / advertisment is it called a traditional roguelike, or "a game like Rogue", so I don't know why do you expect it to follow the same design principles.
You don't have any legs to stand on here. Source of Madness is a realtime platformer similar to Noita. Before you start with the grandstanding you would have to explain why you think it's proper to call Source of Madness a Roguelike but get super butthurt about my tangential mention of my personal opinion about Noita.
I am using it properly, Rogue-Lite is defined in it's relationship to Rogue-Like. Roguelikes are games that score sufficiently high on the Berlin interpretation (this score often being the point of contention). The core difference between a roguelike and roguelite is the permanent progression system. I even explained the history of the term all the way from it's first (as far as I can tell) colloquial use to the point were it is today.
All the things above also applies to roguelikes, so if that's your definition for a roguelite that's not sufficent. There must be something which distinguishes roguelikes and roguelites or the term would be useless.
This explanation is specifically tailored for Isaac and fails to account for other famous Roguelites like ftl for example, it also doesn't account for Noita which you previously claimed to be a roguelite.
Instead of trying to reinvent the term it would be easier to just use the popularized use of the term stemming from Rogue-legacy. It would also help if you had any sort of grounding or reference to strengthen your argument if you still insist on disagreeing.
This doesn't make sense, games can have progression AND permadeath. Any leveling system could be defined as progression, any system with levels that eventually lead to a point of importance can be defined as having progression. Famous example would be Diablo 2's hardcore mode, which brings us to the next point.
We don't call it that anymore, that was the point of mentioning it, I was giving you historical context. And I don't even know wtf Dungreed is but it doesn't look like it existed back in 2001-idk when these discussions on roguelites were relevant, so unless in a discussion between time-travelers idk how Dungreed is relevant.
For further context people used to call Diablo 2's hardcore mode a realtime Angband, which is the roguelike that spawned Tales of May Eyal. This was about 10 years before the Berlin Definition was solidified.
No, your problem seems to be that you complained about the quintessential Roguelite feature in Roguelike games without understanding that it is the defining feature which distinguishes a roguelite from a roguelike. When three people immediately called you out for it you should have just conceded the point and continued the discussion. Now you are stuck holding the untenable position of "Roguelikes are turnbased" and "Source of madness is a roguelike", only one of those can be true.
---------
Why Early Access?
“Our goal with Source of Madness is to create a roguelike that plays with the Lovecraftian idea of “Fear of the Unknown”. We will create events and monsters that are truly procedural in the sense that they terrify and surprise you.
---------
On the other end my application of roguelite is the current default application of the term and I can trace it's historical application and the evolution of the term. Even before I even posted two other people had already pointed out that you used the wrong term.
At first I thought you were just a bit uneducated which is fine, but this is turning out to be ignorance. I even gave you an opportunity to gracefully continue a discussion about the issues with roguelites without admitting your initial mistake. But your like a rabid dog biting the hand that feeds.
Both the short description and the main description of the game along with the tags deliberately classify the game as either roguelite or action roguelike, not a traditional roguelike, which leads me to believe that this one instance is most likely just a typo / oversight.
My entire point is that it's blatantly clear what this game is and that it is not a traditional roguelike, therefore it doesn't have to follow the same design principles as Rogue. Besides, OPs entire take is completely subjective, because there are plenty of people who enjoy the partial progression / unlockables aspect of roguelite games. It's not an inheritely bad system, instead it's a system that he himself doesn't enjoy.
On the first point I agree, it's obviously not a roguelike.
On the second point I disagree, I think we can discuss the merits and faults of the rogue-lite permanent upgrade system of handling difficulty versus other systems. It's not "entirely subjective", some systems can be better or worse at handling one thing or another. Some systems can just be outright inferior compared to other systems.
The roguelite permanent upgrade system in particular creates problems with difficulty and balance for all levels of play.