Game progression and roguelites

So I realised there are three different kinds of roguelites:

1. Games like Balatro or Slay the Spire that start easy and unlock the next difficulty tier every time you beat a run (on the hardest difficulty you've unlocked).
2. Games like Rogue Legacy that start hard and let you upgrade your character to make the game easier.
3. Games like Don't Starve that have a static difficulty and only let you unlock different characters/builds that provide different game mechanics.

I also realised I don't really like the first and the second category. The first category feels like a linear game, like for example Half-Life, but when you beat a section of the game instead of getting a new section, the game just puts you back to the beginning, takes away all of your weapons, tells you the enemies now do 50% more damage and shuffles the layout of the level around a bit.

The second category feels like an open-world game, like Elden Ring for example, where most of the world is too high level to go to when you just start. So you have to clear the low-level areas first, then return to the nearest safe place to sell your loot, upgrade or buy better equipment and level up your character. However, there is only one safe place in the entire world and while you can return there whenever you want, there is no fast travel back to where you came from. You will have to walk back to where you came from after every single time you upgrade your character.

The third category is similar to the second, but you aren't forced to return to the safe place because you wandered into an area you're too low level for. You can just get stronger by staying out in the world. You only get sent back if you make a fatal mistake, at which point the game tells you that it has a new way to experience the game if you're interested.

Now the first and second category often let you unlock different characters/classes/builds as well, but in my experience these are less diverse than those from the third category.

EDIT: I realised this turned out to be more of a rant, but what are your thoughts about the different kinds of roguelite progressions? How they are better or worse than other types of games? Or share anything about your preferences about progression in games in general.
 
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Balatro is more about the journey than the destination, its about crazy Joker combos that give you stupid amounts of winnings


I just watch people play it.

I don't really play the game type myself but then I don't really play games much anymore... looks at where he is... oh crap... hides.
 
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Zloth

Community Contributor
EDIT: I realised this turned out to be more of a rant, but what are your thoughts about the different kinds of roguelite progressions? How they are better or worse than other types of games? Or share anything about your preferences about progression in games in general.
I largely stay away from the dead-means-start-over style of games. When I played Nethack, which is a direct descendent of Rogue, I would back up my saves so I wouldn't have to start over again. (I thought that was the "hack" part of the game, and you were supposed to figure out that you need to do that!)

But that second point you mention is something I see way too much in many RPGs. When you start out, the game is pretty difficult, and death comes often. Then your character(s) gets more powerful, you figure out better strategies, and you find better gear. The enemies get stronger, too, but they don't keep pace - at least in many of the games I've played.

It's certainly not all games (I didn't see this in Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2, or FF7 R1) but it sure shows up a lot. Mass Effect had it bad.
 
Balatro is more about the journey than the destination, its about crazy Joker combos that give you stupid amounts of winnings

Balatro very cleverly included an endless mode where you can try to get a high score instead of trying to complete all of the difficulty levels. It gives you something to do once you've either completed all difficulty levels or you've gotten stuck.

I largely stay away from the dead-means-start-over style of games. When I played Nethack, which is a direct descendent of Rogue, I would back up my saves so I wouldn't have to start over again. (I thought that was the "hack" part of the game, and you were supposed to figure out that you need to do that!)

But that second point you mention is something I see way too much in many RPGs. When you start out, the game is pretty difficult, and death comes often. Then your character(s) gets more powerful, you figure out better strategies, and you find better gear. The enemies get stronger, too, but they don't keep pace - at least in many of the games I've played.

It's certainly not all games (I didn't see this in Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2, or FF7 R1) but it sure shows up a lot. Mass Effect had it bad.

It helps when an open-world game allows you to change the difficulty whenever you want, though in a lot of games increasing the difficulty often just makes enemies damage sponges. I think this is also much more a problem in real-time games than in turn-based games, I think in large part because real-time games are often easier to cheese. Increasing the difficulty then just makes players cheese more, but that's often not fun to do long-term.
 
well, in a way, you did. Just because it might reset when game is off, doesn't mean you didn't set record for day.

I looked at it at as most arcade games didn't have ends, lots just ran until screen 256 and then died. Some went for ever in theory - look at tetris.

So beating game is a personal thing, actually getting to end is another.

I never finished Galaga but we did clock the score once.
 

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