Unpopular opinion: Roguelikes/lites artificially extend a game's length

Recently we've seen a ressurgence of the rogue genre where you'll explore randomly generated levels and loose all (roguelike) or most (roguelite) progress upon death. To give some examples of the genre we have games such as Dead Cells, Hades, Enter the Gungeon, binding of Isaac, Spelunky, Don't Starve, Cript of the Necrodancer, Darkest Dungeon, etc.

Usually the genre was restricted to indies aimed at a specific niche but now more recently, with Returnal, I start to fear more and more AAA games will adopt its ideas as focus... I say I fear it because, and its my personal opinion based on some of the rogues mentioned above, I dont think its a good design decision at all... its just not very fun to lose all/most of your progress and have to restart the game from scratch over and over again...

Dont get me wrong, there can be an acceptable balance of progress lost like what we see in the souls games but even souls have checkpoints after beating hard challenges such as bosses. Having to repeat the same boss fights over and over again in order to reach the end is just not much fun imo.

Rogues dont require that much effort into making them since they wont focus resources into new unique levels but rather sections of levels that can be randomly stacked together. Randomly generated levels always felt off imo since their architecture rarely makes sense. Just huge empty boxes stacked together by corridors. Not much thought put into them at all.

Usually I'm not an advocate for implementing easy modes in every game but I think some rogues like dead cells for ex would actually benefit with some checkpoints after each boss. I was enjoying the game at the start because its gameplay is actually fun but I ended up giving up on it because it became repetitive fast starting from scartch over and over again.

I understand its only my opinion but I'm curious to see more opinions about the current state of gaming and its focus more and more on rogues because, as I can presume, is a genre that doesnt take much resources to develop and yet extend its lenght alone by design.

I just think the label is more appealing than the actuality of it.

sounds like a butt hurt xbox guy who can't buy returnal

I've never played a roguelike before but Returnal seems fun at least.

As long as the game is fun, it doesn't really matter what gameplay tricks it pulls.

What I do hate is companies making certain gameplay elements or the game take longer than it has to in order for them to sell you more microtransactions. Introducing 'grind' so you'd be more likely to skip sections by paying up.

Hum, look first at my signature below before assuming something like that please

Fallout of Returnal being players and critics early game of the year contender causing some butthurt new users. The Mediocre or something game also got a 9/10 here, if anyone remembers that game.

Thats the thing. Their gameplay can be fun. Dead cells gameplay is mighty fun. Its just that I thing these games would actually benefit more without features such as permadeath.

Returnal was my first game in the genre. I like it but I get what you're saying and your points are valid. At least in Returnal, when you die you get more of the story many times and also the gameplay is fantastic. It desperately needs some type of save feature though. To many runs lost to things due stuff other than gameplay (auto update, rest mode crash, loss of power). And then the grind begins again smh

If you like rouge-likes you should play: FTL, Hades, Rogue Legacy, Enter the Gungeon

Dude, see signature below. I'm mainly a PS supporter. I just dont like roguelikes/lites features. Not liking one genre does not translate into not liking a full platform. Quit the fanboyism, please. I would love to play returnal someday down the line because its gameplay looks fun as hell but the permadeath puts me off

@vatususreturns: cool. Luckily there is many other genres to play. See no problem with devs excercising their creative freedom to create whatever they want for a particular genre fanbase they target.

Rogue-likes too are so varied in execution, and some have a more casual progression system and some are really challenging and offer little more than increased chance of better random drops with each playthrough, others offer no advantage and just do another procedural generated run, some offer progression milestones to shortcut forward, it's kind of a crapshoot finding one that works for you.

Probably the most enjoyable to me was Everspace as it had a very casual progression system. Whereas Enter the Gungeon is at my threshold of tolerance, though I have fun playing it, I suck too much to really make any real progress.

There's a lot of stuff that "artificially" extends a game's length. There's no lack of filler content.

Not really. Rogues wouldnt have that much "length" as a selling point if not for permadeath. They would end in a couple of hours. I'm all for added replayability in subsequent runs but not for such things as lost progress upon death.

Roguelike done good is very satisfying. The sense of progress, even when you die, makes you eager to come back for more and try out your new-found shit.

I get bored with some more than others. The Binding of Isaac is the best one I've played by far. I still play the damn thing. Also really like Dead Cells. Hades was awesome too, but I got bored with it quicker than the others.

Then there's a bunch of ok ones like Enter the Gungeon, Spelunky, Risk of Rain 2, Rogue Legacy. Then there's a shitload of bad ones.

Like with all genres, some games are awesome, some aren't. Burned out on a formula? Try other shit.

I'm fairly new to the roguelike genre. Played Slay the Spire a few years ago which is an amazing card game and highly recommend. It's pretty chill for the most part. I wasn't sure if I would enjoy the fast gameplay, but got Hades because of all the acclaim. It's INCREDIBLE. It can be difficult, the dying over and over will happen, but few games are this much fun. Which leads me to Returnal...it's awesome. Love it.

I love this genre now. Will play Dead Cells soon.

Yes, thank you! My thoughts precisely!

I really dislike games where you repeatedly die by design and have to replay huge chunks.

Hey bro, he's got 6,300 trophies in his sig, bro. Not very brolike, bro. that's okay, bro. I know your parents are pretty strict, bro. Hey, bro, what's your gamertag, bro? We should pwn some noobs in COD, bro!

I mean... yea. That's what they are suppose to do by design?

We can argue if we like it or not. But that's completely purposeful and part of the appeal where it's not really about the end goal but the middle part, the burger between the buns and how much taste you can extract from it.

Personally speaking? Hate em'. Even games I like such as "Until You Fall", rather just get a more linear deliberate game.

But can def see the appeal for a certain mindset.

@vatususreturns: Fair take, they aren't for everyone. It has a lot of built in repetition. I actually love hades and binding of issac tho, those 2 rougelites were the ones i play the most.

IMO the "souls-like" games are more annoying and repetitive. I've tried all of them, and it really is just memorization and repetition. Atleast with rougelites its mixed up for each run.

Unlike souls games where your constantly dying, so you can remember enemy patterns and backtracking to recover souls, so annoying.

I see where you're coming from, but I think as long as they game doesn't become too grindy--that is, repeating the same thing over and over to the point it becomes more work than play--I don't think it's an issue.

In fact I think developers of roguelite/roguelike/soulsborne games have been fairly creative in solving that challenge. Whether it's respawning as a different character when you die, penalizing you but also rewarding you, changing the environment, and so on, it's been a pretty good trend to watch grow.

I personally don't enjoy them, but I can see the appeal.

You can still be on the fence with ps5 and sony even if you have a lot of ps4 trophies he doesn't have any ps5 trophies does he even have a ps5 or just complaining for no reason about a game that a lot of people love right now?

I'm in on this game and im all about games I got trophies too man maybe not 6000 but I mean i got 100% on ff12 on ps4 does he have that one an been gaming since Atari 2600. This guy comes in here in 2021 and has a sign with 6000 games on it is he even the guy with the sig or just a fake we don't know this guy came outa nowhere.

Rogue Likes are made by devs who lack creativity. "I'm too lazy to make different scripts, map designs, and stories. So I'll just insert a procedurally generated game"

Def agree with this.

I wouldn’t say that these types of games artificially pad the game out. I’m sure some do but that could be said for any type of game. Same thing about them being a low effort game to make. You still need to put in effort to make a quality game. Story, gameplay, graphics, sound/music, balance, testing, etc. I also wouldn’t worry about about everyone suddenly going with this type of game for their own games.

Only true if you're playing strictly offline and don't engage in any PVP.

This is quite the bad take imo. The genre reproduces aspects of arcade games while still keeping some modern progression most casual gamers enjoy. It's a very creative genre on its own that must be executed correctly in order to be good.

The game I loved the most when i was a kid was "azure dreams“， it was a rogue like in which everytime you would leave the tower (where the levels where) you would loose all of your experience. If you were killed, you would loose all your experience and also items. You could not save the game either within the tower. But your familiar (kind of a pokemon) would always keep their levels and you would never loose them, even if your were killed. So it never really felt like an absolute deafeat.

It was quite repetive and i would not play them as a grown up, but I did love them at the time.

I really like roguelike mechanics if well implemented. Damn, i have like 300 hours on Rogue Legacy alone!

Seconded. Plus it's just plain..

:P

Roguelites are primarily mechanics driven games. Put all your focus on prodedural generation and strong mechanics and let those carry your game. It lets a dev focus and capitalize on their strengths. Which can be a good thing.

Granted, I have a lot of issues with Roguelites. I love the idea behind them, roguelikes did need branching out, as the gameplay pretty much peaked with 1994's ADOM. But there are a lot of currently bad ideas that are making them less and less fun to play. So much so, I actually vastly prefer the older roguelikes over the new Roguelite stuff.

Think they are bloody awesome, or some of them are anyway! Hades was probably the best game that released in 2020, and before that slay the spire, monster train etc were also great! That being said, there definitely are a lot of stinkers among them!

Bro, you are really not Bro, Bro! Lame, bro, your parents are gonna be really pissed and limit your COD time, bro!