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[GlyphGryph]

Spawned from the discussion in the Cataclysm thread, I figured it probably deserved a nice little place of its own to live.

It started with comments like:

I think this is what sucks about roguelikes in general. Its like some guy a long time ago sucked at making a game balanced (read: rogue and nethack), it caught on, and people have been aping that crap for years now. It seems to me making it overly hard for "hardcore" gamers (as if they are better or more discerning than the other rabble who like to have FUN) is just a excuse to ignore things like balance, progressive difficulty and other things that ramp the challenge up.

to which I replied:

Stop acting so entitled. Not every game in the world is going to cater to you.

Different people have different tastes, and if you don't like the challenge level of a game, you can go play a different game. Some of us HAVE fun with games like this that we can treat like puzzles, where it is possible to do things wrong and make mistakes because you don't bother to think things through. Where you actually need to push your mental abilities to understand all the factors at work and how to turn them to your advantage, and exploit every discovery if you want a chance to make it through. That can be pretty exhilarating and enjoyable! Some of us just enjoy getting the crap beat out of us over and over again. To each their own, you know, if you don't like it, don't play, but don't be a jerk and start accusing those who do of not wanting to have "fun".
/quote]

And now it has its own thread for people to weigh in, I guess. I might rewrite this post when I'm more not dead tired and maybe making more sense, I dunno.

[Levi]

I wouldn't really call that entitled.  A hard game can be fun, but that is not reason to restrict an entire genre to hardcore games, which admittedly roguelikes tend to be geared towards.  I don't see why we can't have both.

[GlyphGryph]

The entitle comes from the whole "I am a more valid target for this game than hardcore gamers who I declare as snooty snobs who don't know how to have fun" bit. There are plenty of genres that are predominantly focused towards one type of gamer, I don't see the problem with that.

[ThtblovesDF]

There is a fine difference between "bad game design hard" and "very complex - hard - that allows you to turn what you learned from your failures against the game-enemys"...

[ductape]

The entitle comes from the whole "I am a more valid target for this game than hardcore gamers who I declare as snooty snobs who don't know how to have fun" bit. There are plenty of genres that are predominantly focused towards one type of gamer, I don't see the problem with that.

I said what? explain where your getting this from. I am entitled? To what? And you say I am a jerk for saying my opinion? Hard because "roguelikes are just hard" is not a good reason, IN MY OPINION. But i guess that makes me a jerk, so be it then.

[GlyphGryph]

Mostly this:

"hardcore" gamers (as if they are better or more discerning than the other rabble who like to have FUN)

sort of set me off. Its condescending.
Yes, the game are catering to a different audience, maybe. One that does not necessarily think themselves better than you or more discerning than you, and certainly not one that thinks games shouldn't be fun.

Maybe it sucks in general, TO YOU. But maybe, in general, these games are not built to cater to you!

Also, I only caught on the reread that you hadn't actually played the game, which made it sound a lot worse since it felt like you were attacking aspects of the game in particular for not living up to your standards.

[ductape]

well, this is pointless. I wont be reading this thread, it seems pretty useless and you should just lock it.

[Bdthemag]

well, this is pointless. I wont be reading this thread, it seems pretty useless and you should just lock it.

Nah, this discussion will probally go on for a few more pages. Possibley more, so I doubt he's going to lock it.

Anyway's a game being hard doesn't mean its "Hardcore" im not hardcore, yet I still play Dwarf Fortress and other hard roguelikes. I personally think that alot of people are to used to what today is considered as "Hard".

[LordBucket]

Rogue-likes and "What is hard?"

I think the question is missing the point. It's not about "difficulty." It's about playstyle. Permadeath is a valid game mechanic, and it is appropriate in certain venues. I don't see anyone suggesting that chess would be "better" or "easier" if your king respawned, requiring that he be captured three times before winning.

That said, it can be a disconcerting mechanic for people who are unaccustomed to it.

A significant part of the experience of a game is the emotional affect it has on us. There is a certain thrill to be had when downing a raid boss, when recovering the amulet of yendor, when mining adamantine. It can feel "good" when we feel like we win. But to some extent we measure the significance of feeling by the amount of change a thing evokes in us. The joy of having a chocolate bar might be less if we have a chocolate bar every day.

As such, there are two different models of that "Feel good" at work here. If you feel "ok...ok...nothing great...ok...WOW THAT'S AWESOME!" that represents a scertain sort of change of emotional state. And it's a valid change, and one that people can enjoy. On the other hand if you feel "ok...ok...DAMN THAT'S AWFUL...ok...ok...WOW THAT'S AWESOME!!!" that represents a different sort of change of emotional state. And it is also a valid change.

Permadeath games offers a wider range of emotional states: both very good, and very bad. No-permadeath games range from ok/bored to very good. It's a smaller range. But, one with teh benefit of never needing to feel very bad.

Both are valid.

Play games that you will enjoy.

overly hard for "hardcore" gamers

Again, this is missing the point. I wouldn't say that Angband with permadeath is necessarily more difficult than a WoW raid boss in which you can ressurect infinitely many times. However, games with permadeath play differently.

For example, one can easily create a backup savefile for most roguelikes, and play that way. Any time you die, restore freom backup and POOF you've just been ressurected. But I challenge you to play a game with permadeath this way, and then play without it. Much changes other than merely the ressurection. The way you play will also very likely be different.

Using Angband as an example, backing up savefiles it becomes practical to avoid carrying teleport and phase door scrolls, you can avoid carrying potions of cure critical wounds, and you can delve much more deeply more quickly. It becomes practical to delve deep hoping for a lucky drop. If you coem up short a mandatory resist, you can keep descening anyway, because there odds aren't all that high that you'll need it. And if you die, just restore.

But you'll notice that by playing with backup savefiles, many of these things that you don't need...are game mechanics that you're not playing with. You can beat Angband without using backups, but doing so it becomes important to use those scrolls and potions. It becomes important to gear your character correctly and completely. It becomes important to be patient and only tackling what you safely can rather than charging blithely ever onward scumming for lucky drops.

It becomes a different game.

Both are valid.

Again, play games that you'll enjoy.

[dbfuru]

I don't know about the rest, but it really gets on my goat when people feel very entitled about video games a person or small group of people are making, in their own time, even for no financial gain.

Like, they don't even make suggestions, rather they say

"I do not like X feature, it should be changed to Y or it won't be fun!" Except often in more colourful language. I wonder where this behaviour comes from.

Edit: I can't even make an example of entitled behaviour, it just really gets me going when I read something thinking that the games creator has to implement what they want, and then get snarky when they don't get their way.

[debvon]

Fun is subjective. What more is there to say?

[Kay12]

A hard game can be fun, but that is not reason to restrict an entire genre to hardcore games, which admittedly roguelikes tend to be geared towards.  I don't see why we can't have both.

I have years of experience playing, analyzing and to some extent, developing games, and I find the question of whether a game is hard or not a rather interesting one. Chess, for example, is an easy game to play because of its simple ruleset, but mastering it is very difficult. I find that the same applies for many Roguelikes - they require a certain commitment, the ability to not lose faith after a setback, but to remember how you've died and to use that information in a future game. While Roguelikes differ from Chess in many ways (random elements and imperfect information), I find that over the course of several games one does become more attuned to the game. One starts to avoid the most common mistakes first, and later on can "sense" and avoid complex death traps.

The primary reason for the Roguelike difficulty (to play, not to win), if you ask me, is the unconventional interface. It'll take an hour or two to master the common keys in most games. Some games are definitely better at this than others - while I used to prefer ASCII/traditional displays, some games like Crawl really have pretty good tile modes that help players. Once the keys are learned, the game starts rolling quite nicely.

Another problem with Roguelike difficulty is that many of them, especially NetHack, limit the information given to new players. They resemble the card game Mao in that respect - you'll have to learn a lot through trial and error. At least many of the things in NetHack make sense, especially if you know your mythology well. However, the way to learn things in NetHack is mostly "ok, I shouldn't do that, cause I seemed to die". You don't even know weapon damage, unless you're familiar with D&D from which NetHack adopted them! Some Roguelikes are, again, better at this. Crawl is quite newbie-friendly, as you'll know monster resistances and have an idea of their power as soon as you see them. You get told what you have to do to keep your god happy, you get warnings before stepping over deep water, food is color-coded for your convenience to deter you from eating poisonous flesh... Crawl's system is better if you ask me. NetHack is NetHack because of its treacherous dungeon, and that's ok - it's a game geared for people who like to learn a lot of stuff through experimentation (or spoilers). Not every game, not even every Roguelike, is (or should be) like that.

Finally, there are easy Roguelikes as well. Not easy in the sense they're easy to beat, necessarily, but easy to play and easy to succeed in, even if not wholly. DoomRL and Crawl are good examples. DoomRL has difficulty levels and even quite new players should be able to hack/blast orcs to pieces quite soon after starting. Winning the game is not easy, but it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be challenging to get the Amulet of Yendor/Orb of Zot/Eye of Larn/McGuffin or to kill Morgoth/Cyberdemon/whomever. And I think Roguelikes are right there - too many games today get beaten and then forgotten. Most Roguelikes are, unlike many other games, still about gloried "victory" and crippling "loss". Many other modern games don't just have these concepts anymore - "victory" is more like finishing a meal than succeeding in an epic challenge, and "loss" is more like trying again until you make it instead of genuinely forcing you to reconsider your strategies.

TL;DR - A Roguelike, like any other game, is optimally enjoyable if it's easy to get started with the actual gameplay but challenging to win.

[Seriyu]

Not really, some people enjoy easy games, some people enjoy hard games. You can't say every game needs to be hard to be enjoyed. A game like nethack has a lot of replay value, due to difficulty and randomly generated stuff, which draws in people that like that sort of thing.

Likewise a guy that enjoys easier games and likes to beat a game once and only once will probably hate it and refuse to play it irregardless.

So basically, what debvon said.

[Kay12]

Well, I don't see the point in games that are very easy to win, but then again, human imagination can give weird value to anything. I had a friend who, as a kid, really liked Commander Keen 4 but sucked at it. Once I told him the cheats to that game, he started enjoying it even more - he put the cheats on and challenged his brother to see which one could beat levels faster with god mode and jump cheat on. I'm not sure whether I consider this silly or an ingenious way to recycle an old game for replayability.

[Duelmaster409]

A game is fun when I have to buy a new monitor because the one I was using suffered extensive physical trauma.

In all seriousness, I think there's a distinctive difference between poor game design and actual difficulty. If the game presents no strategy to win, then of course there's a problem. Roguelikes tend to force you to learn how to play effectively by trial-and-error, giving some people the impression that the game is poorly designed because you keep dieing and can't win. If you don't like losing constantly, then you know the game isn't for you.