Why Brogue Has No Character Classes or Experience Points

[ricefrog]

So I'm a huge fan of Brogue's design, and the comments that Unexplored was inspired by Brogue was part of the reason it caught my eye. I want to be clear with my bias up front, because it really colors how I think about this stuff!

Brogue's designer, pender, has deliberately avoided introducing character classes. And he has removed the experience from killing monsters and leveling.

He gets into some of his reasons in several places where you can hear from him, instead of from me! Since there is ongoing discussion about whether Unexplored should have character classes and experience levels, and the community seems to welcome these ideas, I thought it would be worth linking the designer of Brogue making the opposite argument.

Very recently he gave this talk, which I think does a good job of explaining why the game is better without character classes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdCQ56UxVVE

The whole talk is great, but the part about character classes begins at 6:00.

And here is a podcast interview from back when the game used to have experience and levels, where he talks about why he wants to remove them from the game, which he did do since this interview: http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2011/10/interview-brian-walker-aka-pender.html

Again the whole interview is worth it, but the reasons for removing experience and levels from the game starts around 13:00 goes until about 16:30.


I will try the new update to Unexplored where I can see how experience and classes feels, but my bias going in is that it's not the best way.

An alternative roadmap, which would take inspiration from Brogue, might do this: Instead of classes, introduce vaults where the player can choose one item from several. This gives a little flexibility in "improvising" classes as he discusses in the talk. Then instead of experience, make enchantment scrolls which permanently upgrade the items be a core part of the game, and the reason you *want* to explore the whole depth.

Anyway, there are lots of ways to make a fun game and of course pender's is not the only one. I just thought it might be interesting to link some of his discussion about why he avoided these features.

[Alex]

Personally I think classes and levels are great. I love rpgs, and I love it when they contain some sign of progression. Although if the game is not suited for this then I would still enjoy vaults.

But I love this game and I was lucky enough to recieve it for free.

I think we should take a vote. Keep classes in or remove them?

[jd]

Thanks for sharing. I'll definitely have a look

[elias.heyndrickx]

I enjoyed the video and I think it points some well made tips and how to make a game. One problem is a dominant strategy as explained in a video. This dominant stategy gives rise to other symptoms:

decision stress, since the level mechanic got introduced in the game I feel more stressed out in general. Going from one duengeon floor to the next does not feel smooth anymore, I often get "bothererd" by screens popping up demanding that I make a choice before I can continue the game. While these choices don't seem to have much impact initially they really start to weigh you down in the end game.

"If only I invested more in archery", "I wish I saved up for more stength", "AM I making the right choices here?" So many questions are asked and I get more nervous with every floor that passes. In the previous version you just needed to make due with whatever you happenend to find throughout the dungeon.

The same question could be said from shops, I think it would be great if the dev just made premade generated floors with merchants. Like a dwarven kingdom, this would give ME the choice if/when I wanted to visit these establishments. I feel regretfull/upset/frustrated now if I did not manage to save up enough gold in time to buy that sigil.

In short: Personally I don't like the EXP system and I think (and hope) that shops need some reworking in the future. As for classes I support them but in a much more loose way as I described in other posts of mine. They should not be strict but merely a term for a commonly used set of characteristics that one describers as a certain class.

[jd]

It is a great talk. Brogue always has been a strong influence on this game. The design goals are very similar, although the realtime gameplay changes many things.

So I agree with Elias that the XP screens are tedious. I have a tendency to just click them away myself, and yes I want the vendors to be more in game and not menu based. I wanted to test their effects before going through the trouble of putting them in the game.

In many ways, tying the skills to items as Brogue does is a neat solution to many of the problems. A rogue can start the game with a ring of vision +2, and enchant the ring to improve his skills, instead of having a skill to do the same thing.

So I do think they are going to go again at one point. However, I do like to salvage a couple of things from this experiment. Or at least some of the design decisions behind it.

Most importantly, I think the different playing styles classes offer from the start help diversify the early game, and give the player some control over the approach s/he wants to take. I never much liked Brogue's randomize progression with the vaults, as that always felt a little arbitrary to me.

To avoid dominant strategies the diversity of the situational challenges the game can produce, should safe guard against that. And I intend to make that space larger when I start working on more terrains and environments.

I noticed that strength is very dominant, as somebody else mentioned in on of the forums, basically you progress from a rogue to a fighter. And many mechanics are less important. I am part to blame for this, as stealth and magic are less developed in the current version of the game. I am hoping the new sigil system will help somewhat. But that probably requires me to improve all non-melee combat magic and nerf melee combat magics somewhat.

Also I think the melee skills (melee, swordmanship, and archery) are somewhat over powered. I have some plans to change them to affect weapon speed and/or chance of critical damage only.

That being said, I deliberately designed Unexplored as a melee based game. There are many realtime roguelites out there that are shooter based, so I do see the melee combat as a unique selling point for the game. So now you know why arrows are rare (and why bows are going to get a cooldown). So I'd rather have stealth and back stabbing. Or some close range magic attacks. I might have lost sight of this a little with the recent updates. But I will refocus the game on that. So that's also one reason I tried to stay away from the fire-ball hurling builds.

Anyways, long post. Interesting discussion. So keep it going, guys!

[elias.heyndrickx]

Originally posted by jd:

Most importantly, I think the different playing styles classes offer from the start help diversify the early game, and give the player some control over the approach s/he wants to take. I never much liked Brogue's randomize progression with the vaults, as that always felt a little arbitrary to me.

That being said, I deliberately designed Unexplored as a melee based game. There are many realtime roguelites out there that are shooter based, so I do see the melee combat as a unique selling point for the game. So now you know why arrows are rare (and why bows are going to get a cooldown). So I'd rather have stealth and back stabbing. Or some close range magic attacks. I might have lost sight of this a little with the recent updates. But I will refocus the game on that. So that's also one reason I tried to stay away from the fire-ball hurling builds.

Ranged options do feel more limited then melee option, so it strikes me as quite odd to include a ranger class since you have so much trouble finding arrows. For mages this seems to be less of an issue but the recharge might be troublesome none the less.

Don't misunderstand me, I like the melee combat but how will you solve this "issue"? A ranger class while the main focus is on melee?

Originally posted by jd:

To avoid dominant strategies the diversity of the situational challenges the game can produce, should safe guard against that. And I intend to make that space larger when I start working on more terrains and environments.

Looking forward to it!

Originally posted by jd:

I noticed that strength is very dominant, as somebody else mentioned in on of the forums, basically you progress from a rogue to a fighter. And many mechanics are less important. I am part to blame for this, as stealth and magic are less developed in the current version of the game. I am hoping the new sigil system will help somewhat. But that probably requires me to improve all non-melee combat magic and nerf melee combat magics somewhat.

Yup, strength plays too big of a roll in a successfull run or not because of the neglect of other options like stealth, magic, anything really. I think there is a too big focus on fight to progress, this fighting is a part of the game but feels to invasive and feels more like a grind. ALternative ways to progress would be very intresting.

[jd]

I think the alternatives to fighting could be stealth, when those mechanics are fleshed out more. And better use of the environment. Magic and a ranger could be good classes for that. I still see a position for archers in the game. It's just that they cannot rely on bows and ranged combat only.