Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Development => Design => Topic started by: Ex on December 26, 2014, 11:31:36 PM
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I've been thinking lately that (as much as I hate to admit it) maybe Krice is onto something when he says that Crawl has something wrong with its gameplay.
I used to be a huge Crawl fan, until I started making it into the late game consistently. The beginning of Crawl is amazing, but the midgame and endgame just become a kind of FPS with swords. It's kill your way to victory. Better equipment, better character, still just killing things until you win. It's boring. It's like playing an FPS. Many other roguelikes have this same problem: the entire game revolves purely around killing your way to victory while progressing purely forward in a linear way.
I guess I want something else, but I'm not quite sure what it is. The only game I can think that I know has it is (of course) Nethack.
Nethack does the whole "kill your way to victory" thing, too, but there's something more ontop of that. It's nonlinear. It has sidequests that are wholly optional. It has things like sokoban, mine town, and shops with complex interaction. It encourages you to backtrack, and to visit places that have little or nothing to do with actually winning the game (aside from collecting an ascension kit).
The fun from playing Nethack often has nothing to do with actually progressing towards winning the game. It has everything to do with kicking that sink, throwing a gem to that unicorn, fighting the police after stealing something, wishing for an overpowered item, solving sokoban, quaffing from that fountain, locking yourself in a room to escape from a horde of monsters, carving elbereth into the floor with a wand of lightning, visiting the oracle, etc. etc.
I like Dwarf Fortress' idea that losing should be fun. In Nethack, just playing around is fun. In Crawl, you're either progressing and killing your way linearly to victory, or you're doing nothing. Like many roguelikes, Crawl seems like an FPS with a sword, and also like many roguelikes its waaay too linear.
Maybe losing and just playing around should be fun? 99% of the time we spend in permadeath roguelikes involves losing and not progressing. Maybe we should make losing and not progressing fun?
What do you think? Ideas? Suggestions?
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While your general analysis makes sense, I don't this can be described as something literally "wrong" with DCSS. Many many players enjoy this kind of game, just as many enjoy FPSes. It satisfies a different taste, and from a developer point of view it's the difference between very tight design focused on clear mechanics with semi-predictable progression and fun-but-if-you-want-to-do-well-you-need-a-zillion-spoilers.
I guess you could say Crawl is more about the long-term meta experience rather than the short-term experience. As you mention, though, this can be a problem in roguelikes because you may die often, but that's why it's important to make sure the early game is interesting and fun.
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I don't think Krice makes a point about DCSS specific enough to be right or wrong, but anyway...
As to the points you raise here, I don't there's any evidence that there's a substantial audience for a roguelike game that isn't primarily about hack and slash or some minor variation on it (e.g. sneak and stab). Dwarf fortress, as people are fond of saying, is not a roguelike (in fortress mode). I'm not sure I see your argument about linearity wrt to DCSS, but if you think crawl is too linear and combat oriented, I suspect there are reasonable ways to address that without making fundamental changes to the game. You might try your hand at a variant if you have specific ideas about how to address the issues you mention.
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Maybe losing and just playing around should be fun? 99% of the time we spend in permadeath roguelikes involves losing and not progressing. Maybe we should make losing and not progressing fun?
In Roguelikes losing and progressing are not mutually exclusive - dying can be an important step towards winning if it teaches you something that you can use to do better in your next run. I think part of what you might be identifying as 'fun' here is that Nethack is a more complicated game with more systems to learn, so there's more chance of a death contributing to your knowledge of the game and consequently dying feels like less of a waste of time (and so is less frustrating) than in a more straightforward game when you die for pretty much the same reason you died the last 10 times.
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I don't think Krice makes a point about DCSS specific enough to be right or wrong, but anyway...
There is nothing wrong with Crawl if you like hack and slash. Nethack is kind of odd case, because it is hack and slash, but then it's from 80's, all games were like that then. But it's got more depth than just combat, while games like Crawl and ADOM are completely focused on combat, stat grinding and equipment. For me role-playing games have always been something more than just fighting. I also hate what happened to mainstream RPGs, they actually became FPS games with fantasy stuff and often completely linear gameplay.
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It sounds like you're just getting bored; just doing the same thing too long. Two suggestions would be to either play something that's shorter, or something that changes more as you go through.
One of the common things that we run into with monsters is that they can't just be reskinned with a +2 to everything; they have to present a new tactical challenge to the player. For example, Brogue introduces salamanders however many levels down; while not statistically that different from other monsters, they light everything around them on fire (including you and the environment, which spreads).
In a really long roguelike, it's quite challenging to have the player continually need to adapt in ways other than "make sure you have max fire resistance by L30, a Scroll of Laundering by L42."
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It's more than boredom. I want more roleplaying and cool stuff to do than just hack and slash. I want more depth than just combat, a lot more. I want depth, complexity, and things to do that have nothing to do with combat. I don't want a game focused on combat, stat grinding, and equipment, but one focused on cool stuff you can do, roleplaying, depth. I want a roguelike that isn't about hack and slash, where hack and slash is only a combat system that is a small part of a much larger game. I want a game that focuses on kicking that sink, throwing a gem to that unicorn, fighting the police after stealing something, wishing for an overpowered item, solving sokoban, quaffing from that fountain, locking yourself in a room to escape from a horde of monsters, carving elbereth into the floor with a wand of lightning, visiting the oracle, etc. etc.
Once upon a time, the combat system was a much smaller part of the game than it is today. If you look at Nethack (or even Omega), combat is a much smaller part of the game compared to modern roguelikes where the entire game revolves around hack and slash combat.
Role playing games used to be closer to role playing games than to first person shooters. Dungeons and Dragons (especially back in 2nd ed) has a LOT more to it than fighting, and so does virtually every other pen and pencil roleplaying game. Yet, that kind of complexity seems to have been abandoned in modern roguelikes. Even the complexity of a game like Morrowind or Fallout 3 just isn't seen in roguelikes anymore. And it used to be, if you look at games like Nethack.
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Once upon a time, the combat system was a much smaller part of the game than it is today. If you look at Nethack (or even Omega), combat is a much smaller part of the game compared to modern roguelikes where the entire game revolves/around hack and slash combat.
Often, when I play games, I feel like combat is the tedious thing you do between the interesting bits. Case in point is Anachronox (not a roguelike), where there's this awkward Japanese game inspired combat system. It's prolonged and painful, and gets more prolonged and painful the longer the game goes on. The worst part was that I saw a Matt Chat with the game designer, and if I recall correctly, the one thing he would have changed was to make the combat even more involved. WTF!
The sad fact is that it takes a lot of time and effort to make a game. It's a lot easier to cram in and pad out your game with lots of tedious combat, than it is to make a game full of content or gameplay that's interesting and worth playing instead. If people are throwing tomatoes at you, you get tired of tomatoes. If people are throwing handfuls of shit at you, you look forward to the odd tomato being thrown. Does this mean that tomatoes can only truly be appreciated if the option is shit? Or does it mean that the whole experience is lazily constructed to begin with?
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There are no games like nethack. There is only nethack.
It's just not true that roguelikes have been significantly less hack and slashy. People talk about nethack as an exemplar of the genre, but in fact it's an outlier in terms of the complexity of its items and non-combat mechanics. There's been plenty of time to make a much more involved game in this vein, but no one's been interested enough to do it. This is telling, I think.
The arc of development seems to vindicate the combat oriented model. This, by the way, is what computers are good at: Automating the bookkeeping and computation involved in creating game content and resolving combat. Running from the Keystone Kops is not roleplaying, it's just a preprogrammed game mechanic. On the other hand, actual roleplaying has never been more available -- even a lone nerd in rural Idaho can find a couple of interweb buddies to play with over skype/google hangouts/whatever. You don't have to play a stripped down D&D simulator if you don't want to. And indeed, it would be interesting to create a roguelike-ish system for actual roleplaying with a DM controlling things at a higher level, players interacting in the usual verbal way, and the bookkeeping, map/board type stuff and calculations done by a server. But you'll never get much more out of the idea of doing "roleplaying" in a completely automated computer system than you see in games that are already out there. It's just not what computers do well.
Also, I'd like to push back at the idea that being more like a first person shooter is bad. Many of the best video games ever made have been first person shooters. At their best roguelikes can produce the kind of excitement of combat you see first person shooters, although in a more cerebral, less visceral kind of way. That is the strength of the genre, not puzzly minigames and wishing for Pinky Pie's party cannon.
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And indeed, it would be interesting to create a roguelike-ish system for actual roleplaying with a DM controlling things at a higher level, players interacting in the usual verbal way, and the bookkeeping, map/board type stuff and calculations done by a server. But you'll never get much more out of the idea of doing "roleplaying" in a completely automated computer system than you see in games that are already out there. It's just not what computers do well.
Anyone care to outline what they imagine this game would look like / the game play experience would be?
Also, I'd like to push back at the idea that being more like a first person shooter is bad. Many of the best video games ever made have been first person shooters. At their best roguelikes can produce the kind of excitement of combat you see first person shooters, although in a more cerebral, less visceral kind of way. That is the strength of the genre, not puzzly minigames and wishing for Pinky Pie's party cannon.
You are basically constructing a straw man argument, by taking the discontent with combat and making a jump to first person shooters, and going from there. Then you throw in some hyperbole and suggest combat is the core, and compare it against two more straw men you pull out of somewhere.
Less hyperbole and straw men please.
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I wasn't responding to you. The other guy explicitly put forth the comparison with first person shooters in what I took to be a negative light. He also suggests that wishing for overpowered items, sokoban, and playing with unicorns are what made nethack and by extension roguelikes great historically. My point, which I think is self-evident, is that those things, and more broadly things like them, are unique quirks of nethack (which aren't universally loved) that were never present in the other surviving strains of the roguelike tradition. The hack and slash orientation of roguelikes has always been the norm.
You ask what a game like I describe would look like. It would be a multiplayer, turn-based, tile-based game that acts as a companion to a game played verbally online via a video or audio chat program. It would know the rules of combat and movement, display an interactive, tile-based map to all players, similar to what you would see if you play with a physical board, it would be able to automatically create boilerplate maps, generate treasure and monsters in a way optionally guided by the DM, and it would have commands available to the DM to override outcomes of the system's rule application, script or manually control monster and item behavior, and whatever other deviations from default rule resolution to facilitate the DM's preferred style of play. It wouldn't even have to be that fancy, since people could share scripts, art, etc. I don't know that people would be interested to play something like that, since I haven't played D&D since I was 12, but there it is.
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There are no games like nethack. There is only nethack.
Yeah, I think it's pretty telling that all the examples used have been from Nethack.
I've never played Elona/Elona+, but I think that it offers stuff besides combat and dungeons to do. I've also never gotten very far in ADOM but someone told me once you can just go off and be a farmer in it if you want to.
Now, if you're willing to go outside the boundaries of "traditional" roguelikes, you've got "survival roguelikes" (like Cataclysm) that feature plenty of other stuff besides dungeon-delving and combat.
Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode also has plans to let you do lots of things, though who knows when they'll actually be doable or fun. Ultima Ratio Regum seems like it'll have lots to do besides hack n' slash, but since as cool as it looks it doesn't really have much/any game play in yet, I can't say for sure.
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I reckon the big three aspects of roguelikes are progression, discovery and tactics.
Nethack is big on discovery - there always seems to be some new way to do things or combine things, or some new 'offical' area to explore.
Havent played crawl, but how is it tactically? Perhaps it is mostly just progression from your description?
My own game (www.dungeonbash.com) prioritizes tactics, although as a work in progress, there is still lots to implement in that area. It is less concerned with discovery as it is 100% procedural - there are no specific areas to discover, only learning the capabilities of the creatures and items, although there are a lot of creatures and items.
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I reckon the big three aspects of roguelikes are progression, discovery and tactics.
Of all the ways of categorizing roguelikes, this may be the most interesting I've seen. I'll have to think about these aspects and various other games.
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I reckon the big three aspects of roguelikes are progression, discovery and tactics.
Of all the ways of categorizing roguelikes, this may be the most interesting I've seen. I'll have to think about these aspects and various other games.
I can't see *anything* other than progression: discovery is your progression of knowledge about the game world and tactics is the progression to your approach in combat.
Actually, for games, it's *all* about progression, otherwise it's grinding:
In super mario it's about game world progression (new environments), tactics (different monsters) and player run n jump skill.
In roguelikes, the way stefoid framed it, it's about character progression (new powers etc), game world progression (discovery of new places, things, creatures) and tactics (progression of how you deal with enemies, combat-based or not)
It looks like Elig complained that in Crawl mid/late-game there is a halt in tactics progression. And the praise for nethack is that there so many special things programmed so that world and tactics progression keep till the end.
It's obviously more difficult to develop a long game that exhibits continuous progression and doesn't result in grinding. Nethack and crawl and other major roguelikes had YEARS of development to add and refine content. Yes, combat may not be one's thing, but then again, required wiki reading may not be one's thing either. So, nothing's fundamentally wrong with either, in a permadeath scenario.
So, IMO, progression is essential. Dying should give progress on some of your game knowledge, obviously. The difficult task is, can the game offer you a sense of progression till you reach where you were when you last died? And I'm not talking by just creating differently shaped dungeons. Otherwise permadeath requires you to grind till you get where you were, so that you begin discovering and progressing again.
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I reckon the big three aspects of roguelikes are progression, discovery and tactics.
Of all the ways of categorizing roguelikes, this may be the most interesting I've seen. I'll have to think about these aspects and various other games.
I can't see *anything* other than progression: discovery is your progression of knowledge about the game world and tactics is the progression to your approach in combat.
Actually, for games, it's *all* about progression, otherwise it's grinding:
In super mario it's about game world progression (new environments), tactics (different monsters) and player run n jump skill.
In roguelikes, the way stefoid framed it, it's about character progression (new powers etc), game world progression (discovery of new places, things, creatures) and tactics (progression of how you deal with enemies, combat-based or not)
It looks like Elig complained that in Crawl mid/late-game there is a halt in tactics progression. And the praise for nethack is that there so many special things programmed so that world and tactics progression keep till the end.
It's obviously more difficult to develop a long game that exhibits continuous progression and doesn't result in grinding. Nethack and crawl and other major roguelikes had YEARS of development to add and refine content. Yes, combat may not be one's thing, but then again, required wiki reading may not be one's thing either. So, nothing's fundamentally wrong with either, in a permadeath scenario.
So, IMO, progression is essential. Dying should give progress on some of your game knowledge, obviously. The difficult task is, can the game offer you a sense of progression till you reach where you were when you last died? And I'm not talking by just creating differently shaped dungeons. Otherwise permadeath requires you to grind till you get where you were, so that you begin discovering and progressing again.
Hi!
I think your painting progression with too wide a brush. While discovery is technically a progression of knowledge, its qualitatively different to progression of your character's capabilities. It feels different. I can set goals to progress my characters capabilities using well known means, and still get satisfaction from achieving those goals, whereas discovery is the thrill of the new - the trepidation or excitement you feel when encountering something new and unknown. Its a bit like a sugar hit in that sense - its great and then its gone and you have to find some more sugar. I guess the real trick to providing discovery in a game is how to do it without just adding more content. Nethack has a lot of content, but it also has a bunch of semi-procedural interactions between items and creatures that are there to discover. "I can polymorph a pile of stuff!"
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The beginning of Crawl is amazing, but the midgame and endgame just become a kind of FPS with swords. It's kill your way to victory. Better equipment, better character, still just killing things until you win. It's boring. It's like playing an FPS. Many other roguelikes have this same problem: the entire game revolves purely around killing your way to victory while progressing purely forward in a linear way.
The problem with crawl isn't that it's only about fighting, it's that it's only about fighting and 90% of the fights are solved by mashing tab until you win.
Sil is almost entirely about combat, but it manages to be consistently engaging because positioning and movement are so important and most enemy groups can kill you if you mess up.
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Combat isn't inherently any more shallow or repetitive than any other type of gameplay, is what I'm saying
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@Vanguard, agreed except that you seem to be mistaken on one point: Crawl is the best roguelike available today (although with the release of mushroom patch simulator, that may change).
Perhaps if sil had a robust public server/online playing community, it would be a contender.
Also worth noting that crawl speedrunning tends to make heavy use of noncombat mechanics, so while it's true you can just bash/blast your way to victory once you have some experience with the game, it's not true that you can exhaust the possibilities of the game through hack and slash.
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Crawl is the best roguelike available today
It's mediocre at best
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I agree, it's an unfortunate state of affairs that by some measures the best roguelike available is found lacking, but that's life. We can only wait for the release of mushroom patch simulator (MPS).
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I don't believe MPS exists. Nothing proves it.
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You're right! I think mushroom patch should start a blog in which he devotes years to writing about how much he's not accomplishing.
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You're right! I think mushroom patch should start a blog in which he devotes years to writing about how much he's not accomplishing.
+1 Great idea. It would be so unique and original, it.. wait..
Ah well, I see there's some other guy that's been doing that for years and years.
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Not to derail an otherwise fascinating thread, but when people come with their slings and arrows, assailing me and my work I just think of others who have been persecuted for bringing a message the establishment didn't want to hear. I draw my inspiration from the determination of a man like Galileo, who even under duress and torture by the Inquisition insisted eppur si muove. After all compared to the motion of Earth around the Sun, news of mushroom patch simulator (MPS) is surely even more difficult to accept. If I may quote Nietzsche: "This prodigious event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant star..."
I won't let the dogma of people who refuse to see a better way slow me down. Indeed, if I did we might never see a release. It doesn't matter what anyone else believes, what matters is what I believe, since I know the truth I bear witness to here.
I like the blog idea though.
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But it's not a real game, because there is no playable version of it. And because I as random internet forum user say so, it doesn't exist.
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That's what I'm saying. Since you're not me, you're random, which is to say someone whose opinion of my work is, first of all, uninformed and anyway highly suspect, since any idiot can post on the internet and many do. Now on the other hand, if I had said my game doesn't exist, that might mean something -- that's not just some random idiot spouting off. That's me! But I'm not saying that. Quite the opposite, in fact.
So while it would be one thing if you weren't just some random poster on the internet saying mushroom patch simulator (MPS) doesn't exist, the fact is you are and therefore I will continue to talk constantly about my game, make favorable comparisons between my game and everything else in creation, and carry on in the manner that a Renaissance master might have done if he were in the process of creating the defining work of his time.
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You're right! I think mushroom patch should start a blog in which he devotes years to writing about how much he's not accomplishing.
+1 Great idea. It would be so unique and original, it.. wait..
Ah well, I see there's some other guy that's been doing that for years and years.
Passive aggressive attacks on other forum members doesn't make for a healthy forum.
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You're right! I think mushroom patch should start a blog in which he devotes years to writing about how much he's not accomplishing.
+1 Great idea. It would be so unique and original, it.. wait..
Ah well, I see there's some other guy that's been doing that for years and years.
Passive aggressive attacks on other forum members doesn't make for a healthy forum.
I was not being passive aggressive, nor was I attacking anyone, I was attempting to be humorous. Evidently I failed. If any of the parties actually involved in the statements take offense, I am sorry for the lame attempt at humor and any unintentional perceived attack.
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It's okay, man. I recognize that as a pioneer, I'm bound to be the target of derision and scorn. Sort of like a modern day Ada Lovelace.
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It's okay, man.
It sure is.
http://kaduria.blogspot.fi/2015/01/mushroom-patch-simulator.html
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Interesting blog post, Krice.
I find it incredibly gratifying that even before my first release, variants of my game are already in the works. I imagine masters at the great workshops of the high Renaissance had a similar feeling as they lovingly guided the hands of their numerous apprentices in the creation of works that stand to this day as a testament of their genius... and the human spirit.
When do you plan to release your "mushroom patch simulator"?
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Yeah, I think it's pretty telling that all the examples used have been from Nethack.
It's the go-to example, but even Angband isn't nearly as kill-happy as some more modern games.
Traps, secret doors, item identification, hunger, I believe even varied lighting levels? have been with us since Rogue. Monsters are the real threat in a dungeon crawler, but even then, one might sneak around them, trap them, frighten them away, befriend them, whatever.
Level-by-level FPS-style extermination has been done -- by DoomRL -- and it's not the typical roguelike experience.
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Level-by-level FPS-style extermination has been done -- by DoomRL -- and it's not the typical roguelike experience.
That's only required in certain challenges. In the basic game play it is only required for levels like the Arena - and then only if you want to win the reward there, and for some gateway levels, In some challenges, killing everything will cause you to lose. There are also non-combat challenges along the way during play, of course they are optional, but I'm speaking of the levers and the assemblies. As for traps, how about levels full of exploding barrels?
So, even the epitome of extermination style, untypical roguelike, is not solely a hack-n-slash. It is primarily played that way in the standard game I believe, but that is by player choice and desire.
If you want to go beyond hack and slash in any game, first you need players who *want* to do something else.
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If you want to go beyond hack and slash in any game, first you need players who *want* to do something else.
I agree with this, and it shows that there are people out there looking for it, as Elig created this thread :)
The thought of non-combat based roguelikes has been in my thoughts for a while now. Particularly non-violence in roguelikes. It seems odd, but hey, it might be possible :) But then as someone stated, a lot of people think Dwarf Fortress is not a roguelike, and that is certainly going away from combat (oriented).
But, as Elig had initially stated, this thread is about enhanced role playing in roguelikes, not necessarily doing away with combat entirely. Nethack indeed is a unique example! And a true emulation of DnD 2nd Ed would be fantastic as well! What better genre is there in order for someone to really *become* their character. When that so loved character could die at any moment. When that character experiences new events and happenings all the time. When the players are not limited to just what they see, but also now what they imagine! :)
It's not just about throwing gems at unicorns, it's about *being able* to throw gems at unicorns. The game must have unicorns, gems, and throwing mechanics. They also must have these three things come together specifically for that task. And there are two ways to accomplish this. Either, "The Dev Teams Thinks of Everything" motto as in Nethack, or a generalized mechanics system that allows for these very specific reactions on a broad scale, but perhaps not as... unique. Regardless, unless mechanics change over time, the players will eventually find out these interesting events, and it will no longer be new to them. As the creator, it is your task to at least make sure the player has fun while learning these specifics.
With the incredible amount of roguelikes that are being created, and the relative ease as which any one of us could put one together in say... 7 days, allows for us to experiment with different styles, types, and to take a few risks. I am hoping to be able to enter into the 2015 7DRL Challenge, and have been contemplating a non-combat system for it. Hopefully I am able to compete. :P It would be a small experiment for us all.
Elig, and anyone else, if you wished to email me with any ideas on enhancing role-playing in roguelikes (or any games for that matter), I would greatly appreciate it. Or just post your own thoughts here for everyone to see :) Expanding our horizons, but remembering both tradition and engagement, should be a goal for us all.
Thank you to all that have posted :)
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(Yes, I` know, post-rage quit reappearances are rather pathetic - but there`s nowhere else to go and RLs took over my gaming life, so there. Go on, curse me.)
I wholeheartedly support the desire expressed in OP`s topic and agree with most of suggestions of how to achieve it suggested here, but also think the whole "FPS is bad" angle is kind of misguided. And especially when we paint Crawl as the main villain here.
I don`t think there`s anything wrong with a strictly combat-oriented dungeon dive kind of gameplay - when correctly executed it`s anything but boring, in fact it can be exhilarating. Maybe if there were only such RLs around I`d agree but the way I see it there`s a lot of varied styles around - survival-likes, ADOM-likes, hard-to-classify projects and those "games with roguelike elements". Granted, combat looms large in most of them, but again, it`s not exactly a bad thing. It can coexist with other stuff fine, just like in Nethack.
Going back to Crawl, I think folks here really been tad too harsh on that venerable combatant - maybe I`m not exactly qualified to defend it since I`m still a RL noob and all that - but is it really "linear", "mediocre", "an FPS with swords"? Come on ;) Perhaps some sort of burn out factors in here and it`s also kinda easy to nitpick on a game that`s been around for nearly two decades. Maybe in 10 years I`ll look down on it too, hopefully not though, since at the moment it`s my best-game-ever.
Linear? You need to use stairs very often to survive, then there`s Lair, Mines, etc. Turns into an FPS mid-game? Kind of, maybe, but confidence creep is a killer and every time I find myself steamrolling poor monsters later on, something beautiful happens, and all of a sudden my zombie/demon swarm is gone and I`m surrounded by bunch of nasty frogs feeling stupid (but happy :) - for example. Mashing tab to win? Nope, movement and positioning are rather important too - okay, its AI is not on the Sil level, but it definitely isn`t "keep-bumping" kinda game either.
And there`s myriad things that Crawl gets just right - like level generation, item spawns, no initial easing-in 2 level bore-fest, endless combos of races/gods/stats/roles - all making sense and clicking together in random harmony.
Hopefully sooner or later a game will appear that blends Nethack`s variety with Crawls combat prowess (okay, with sprinkling of Sil) - or perhaps finds a way to minimize combat`s dominance in a fun and meaningful way - and I`m really looking forward to it too. But there`s nothing wrong with combat itself as a main play style though.
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I find myself coming back to my original reaction here which is: 1.) No one advocating for a move away from "hack and slash" has very concrete ideas about how to make that workable, 2.) there's no evidence of interest in roguelikes that are not heavily combat oriented, and 3.) allusions to nethack manage to somehow be vague and narrow at the same time.
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I find myself coming back to my original reaction here which is: 1.) No one advocating for a move away from "hack and slash" has very concrete ideas about how to make that workable, 2.) there's no evidence of interest in roguelikes that are not heavily combat oriented, and 3.) allusions to nethack manage to somehow be vague and narrow at the same time.
1 yes I am waiting for this as well. Unfortunately, endless pointless forum discussions about vague things that one thinks would make one happy, is a lot more satisfying and accomplishable than doing whatever has to be done.
2 is as far as I can tell anecdotal and subjective. There is after all no evidence that there is no evidence of interest in roguelikes that are not heavily combat oriented.
For me the show pony that comes to mind and illustrates the desire for alternatives to games defined by combat, is Deus Ex or Thief. All the crying and wailing of joy that was made a big thing of, when people had several ways to avoid combat. Or other paths to take. That said, the value of those alternative ways was built on a large albatross being the fact that these games were pretty much a progression of combat to wade through from start to end, and the avoidance of combat cannot exist without a reliance on combat.
3 could be said to be an allegory for the meaning of the classifier roguelike.
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I've been working off and on over the past couple years towards an 'objective oriented' style of RL where combat is just one way to achieve the objective(s). It is not a combat-free alternative though, I can't imagine what combat-free would look like outside of puzzle games or card games (and similar) and how is that even in the same ballpark as a traditional RL?
There are a number of barriers to overcome even to achieve a combat optional RL. First the game economy and character progression has to be decoupled from combat. Second, you pretty much need to make combat viable but at the same time not always be the optimal path. Third you need to make non-combat options as interesting to players as combat options. Fourth there needs to be risk vs reward decisions in the non-combat paths, otherwise where is the challenge?
The above probably isn't an exhaustive list.
I do think its a worthwhile pursuit. Personally I'd love to see the RP put back in computer RPG for once and for once play a character that wasn't a mass-murdering mugger. Back in the early days of computer games it was excusable due to various limitations, I'm not sure those excuses hold up today.
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I've been working off and on over the past couple years towards an 'objective oriented' style of RL where combat is just one way to achieve the objective(s). It is not a combat-free alternative though, I can't imagine what combat-free would look like outside of puzzle games or card games (and similar) and how is that even in the same ballpark as a traditional RL?
There are a number of barriers to overcome even to achieve a combat optional RL. First the game economy and character progression has to be decoupled from combat. Second, you pretty much need to make combat viable but at the same time not always be the optimal path. Third you need to make non-combat options as interesting to players as combat options. Fourth there needs to be risk vs reward decisions in the non-combat paths, otherwise where is the challenge?
This lays out some of the issues, and as you say, by no means all of them, nicely. It's worth pointing out that Sil manages to achieve the first to a certain degree (in a somewhat obvious way, but in a way that deserves some of the praise it gets, in view of the fact that it works and the game has attracted a reasonable audience). Someone with an inclination toward angband variant maintenance might make a name for themselves by going all the way and removing the need to beat the hell out of Morgoth (or whatever new bosses) to steal the mcguffin and escape with it, thereby completing the journey to the hack side of the genre. In other words, there are games in the genre already tantalizingly close to carrying out the steps you mention, so it may be interesting to find out what happens then. Does that satisfy the desire to get away from hack and slash? My guess is no.
I do think its a worthwhile pursuit. Personally I'd love to see the RP put back in computer RPG for once and for once play a character that wasn't a mass-murdering mugger. Back in the early days of computer games it was excusable due to various limitations, I'm not sure those excuses hold up today.
Again, I must differ. Computers do murderhobo simulation well and should continue to do so. The desire for roleplaying is misguided and those who want it so badly they think it would be worth the thousands of hours of development you'd need to approach it would do better taking one or more of the following courses of action: A.) Get some friends and play an actual roleplaying game, B.) go to the local Renaissance fair, C.) join a historical reenactment society, or D.) get some culture with Shakespeare in the park. I just can't understand why someone would be so interested in shoehorning a type of interaction that is so available and in so much more satisfying forms in real life into a video game.
I find myself coming back to my original reaction here which is: 1.) No one advocating for a move away from "hack and slash" has very concrete ideas about how to make that workable, 2.) there's no evidence of interest in roguelikes that are not heavily combat oriented, and 3.) allusions to nethack manage to somehow be vague and narrow at the same time.
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2 is as far as I can tell anecdotal and subjective. There is after all no evidence that there is no evidence of interest in roguelikes that are not heavily combat oriented.
For me the show pony that comes to mind and illustrates the desire for alternatives to games defined by combat, is Deus Ex or Thief. All the crying and wailing of joy that was made a big thing of, when people had several ways to avoid combat. Or other paths to take. That said, the value of those alternative ways was built on a large albatross being the fact that these games were pretty much a progression of combat to wade through from start to end, and the avoidance of combat cannot exist without a reliance on combat.
This is a question of your standard of evidence. After all, there is no shortage of attempts at games, mostly so-called 7DRLs, that purport to be roguelikes and try to make things less combat oriented. As far as I can tell, none that fit the bill seem to have gained a nontrivial audience (say, on par with a top five angband variant) or spawned successor projects that have either. Maybe this says more about 7DRLs than anything else, you might argue. But it's also true that, as I mention above, Sil has been praised for its progress in the areas outlined by Omnivore. Yet Sil, as I understand it, cannot be won purely by slinking around avoiding combat and no variant has come along to challenge that situation, again calling the demand for less hack and slash roguelikes into question. The fact of the matter is that there's been plenty of opportunity for such a game to emerge and nothing seems to have happened. This is a reflection of demand.
re: no avoidance of combat without combat, this seems to be the real issue. If there is no combat, it's not a roguelike anymore. If there is combat, the conventions of the genre lean heavily toward engaging and winning at it, not avoiding it. One radical approach would be to make it impossible to win in combat in the long run so that alternatives would be unavoidable, but the stable of models for this kind of thing is pretty thin. Stealth and pacification (e.g. crawl's Elyvilon) seem to be the only reasonably developed alternatives and from what I've seen only the stealth option seems very compelling.
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The desire for roleplaying is misguided and those who want it so badly they think it would be worth the thousands of hours of development you'd need to approach it would do better taking one or more of the following courses of action: A.) Get some friends and play an actual roleplaying game, B.) go to the local Renaissance fair, C.) join a historical reenactment society, or D.) get some culture with Shakespeare in the park. I just can't understand why someone would be so interested in shoehorning a type of interaction that is so available and in so much more satisfying forms in real life into a video game.
Some of us are disabled. Others anti-social. Still others are retired or on fixed incomes and can't afford the more expensive options. Some, like myself, are all three. For us, the pursuit is worthwhile. Realize though that I'm speaking of something remotely similar to the experience of immersion and character identification you can get with a decent book. Role play of the imagination so to speak. Lesser, of course, because computer generation is far from being sophisticated enough to approach the actual thing. Not necessarily so much lesser that it is not worth attempting. Especially when I've read everything available that is remotely interesting to me.
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The desire for roleplaying is misguided and those who want it so badly they think it would be worth the thousands of hours of development you'd need to approach it would do better taking one or more of the following courses of action: A.) Get some friends and play an actual roleplaying game, B.) go to the local Renaissance fair, C.) join a historical reenactment society, or D.) get some culture with Shakespeare in the park. I just can't understand why someone would be so interested in shoehorning a type of interaction that is so available and in so much more satisfying forms in real life into a video game.
Some of us are disabled. Others anti-social. Still others are retired or on fixed incomes and can't afford the more expensive options. Some, like myself, are all three. For us, the pursuit is worthwhile. Realize though that I'm speaking of something remotely similar to the experience of immersion and character identification you can get with a decent book. Role play of the imagination so to speak. Lesser, of course, because computer generation is far from being sophisticated enough to approach the actual thing. Not necessarily so much lesser that it is not worth attempting. Especially when I've read everything available that is remotely interesting to me.
I'm either extremely impressed or extremely unimpressed if you've read everything that's remotely interesting to you. I don't think I could accomplish such a thing if I lived 200 years.
But fair enough, I didn't reckon with the situation you describe.
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7DRLs, that purport to be roguelikes and try to make things less combat oriented. As far as I can tell, none that fit the bill seem to have gained a nontrivial audience
It's more because they are 7DRLs. If you don't have combat you need other stuff which most traditional roguelikes don't have, because they are so focused on combat. Creating good gameplay mechanics for that "other stuff" can be difficult if you are limiting your thinking, but everything is possible. There was this swedish guy who thought it's a good gameplay mechanic to build blocks and remove them. And that's the whole game. It became a huge success.
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Good comment, Krice. I'll just stop limiting my thinking and remember that everything is possible. Good point about the Swedish guy. He showed us how to make roguelike games with roleplaying elements. Also that we have to stop limiting our thinking and remember that everything is possible.
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I suspect that radical change is required. Moving away from combat by just adding alternatives is going to be difficult.
The goal in playing a roguelike is to come up with tactics and strategies that you can use to solve any randomly generated problems you may encounter. You shouldn't think of hack and slash combat as a means to the goal of winning. Solving the problem of combat is the goal. Character progression, world exploration, and achieving objectives are only there to make combat meaningful and keep it interesting.
To make a non-combat roguelike, you will need to find a different problem which can be randomly generated and which players can solve by discovering tactics and strategies. Make a game about that problem, and get rid of hack and slash.
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2 is as far as I can tell anecdotal and subjective. There is after all no evidence that there is no evidence of interest in roguelikes that are not heavily combat oriented. .... and the avoidance of combat cannot exist without a reliance on combat.
This is a question of your standard of evidence. After all, there is no shortage of attempts at games, mostly so-called 7DRLs, that purport ..
I'll interject at this point and note that "attempts at games" is apples and oranges to "actual games". As you suggest later, a 7DRL can only provide a casual and shallow gameplay experience at best, due to the limited time available. If they do demonstrate alternatives, it proves nothing other than the existence of a fun casual gameplay well designed.
.. to be roguelikes and try to make things less combat oriented. As far as I can tell, none that fit the bill seem to have gained a nontrivial audience (say, on par with a top five angband variant) or spawned successor projects that have either. Maybe this says more about 7DRLs than anything else, you might argue. But it's also true that, as I mention above, Sil has been praised for its progress in the areas outlined by Omnivore. Yet Sil, as I understand it, cannot be won purely by slinking around avoiding combat and no variant has come along to challenge that situation, again calling the demand for less hack and slash roguelikes into question. The fact of the matter is that there's been plenty of opportunity for such a game to emerge and nothing seems to have happened. This is a reflection of demand.
No, your last sentence is arbitrary and not supported by your preceding argument. I argue that it is a reflection on availability.
You can look at all the existing RPGs and roguelikes out there and even wider out into FPS and see that for all the worthwhile ones like Oblivion, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, etc etc combat is the crux. It gives the meaning, the focus and is generally a shallow and achievable core mechanic. And it is doable because it has been seen to be done. Someone can just clone it and do minor iteration on it, and it is conceivable in their mind how to create it from scratch. Conversely, there are no equivalent non-combat reliant games to clone and iterate. Making a game from scratch is a tremendous investment of time and energy, but coming up with a new genre that is a superset rather than a subset of the combat-reliant standard, I argue is inconceivable to most. If someone made it, and it was done well, it would be a breath of fresh air and in demand.
In order to support an argument of lack of demand, supply of quality goods needs to be disdained by the target market.
re: no avoidance of combat without combat, this seems to be the real issue. If there is no combat, it's not a roguelike anymore. If there is combat, the conventions of the genre lean heavily toward engaging and winning at it, not avoiding it. One radical approach would be to make it impossible to win in combat in the long run so that alternatives would be unavoidable, but the stable of models for this kind of thing is pretty thin. Stealth and pacification (e.g. crawl's Elyvilon) seem to be the only reasonably developed alternatives and from what I've seen only the stealth option seems very compelling.
I agree. Combat is essential to a roguelike. Even if one doesn't need to engage in combat, for the standard game world, it's presence lends a feeling of believability. Stealth and pacification are merely decoration on the combat cake however. Combat as an option gives value to other non-combat related choices that may rely on the inputs and outputs of others doing combat.
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Good comment, Krice. I'll just stop limiting my thinking and remember that everything is possible. Good point about the Swedish guy. He showed us how to make roguelike games with roleplaying elements. Also that we have to stop limiting our thinking and remember that everything is possible.
Krice, if you named the Swedish guy and provided concrete details of how it was relevant and what he actually did, then it wouldn't be a somewhat random and unhelpfully vague statement which didn't really add anything.
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Good comment, Krice. I'll just stop limiting my thinking and remember that everything is possible. Good point about the Swedish guy. He showed us how to make roguelike games with roleplaying elements. Also that we have to stop limiting our thinking and remember that everything is possible.
Krice, if you named the Swedish guy and provided concrete details of how it was relevant and what he actually did, then it wouldn't be a somewhat random and unhelpfully vague statement which didn't really add anything.
He's obviously talking about the guy who wrote minecraft. Knowing that doesn't make his comment useful, of course.
2 is as far as I can tell anecdotal and subjective. There is after all no evidence that there is no evidence of interest in roguelikes that are not heavily combat oriented. .... and the avoidance of combat cannot exist without a reliance on combat.
This is a question of your standard of evidence. After all, there is no shortage of attempts at games, mostly so-called 7DRLs, that purport ..
I'll interject at this point and note that "attempts at games" is apples and oranges to "actual games". As you suggest later, a 7DRL can only provide a casual and shallow gameplay experience at best, due to the limited time available. If they do demonstrate alternatives, it proves nothing other than the existence of a fun casual gameplay well designed.
.. to be roguelikes and try to make things less combat oriented. As far as I can tell, none that fit the bill seem to have gained a nontrivial audience (say, on par with a top five angband variant) or spawned successor projects that have either. Maybe this says more about 7DRLs than anything else, you might argue. But it's also true that, as I mention above, Sil has been praised for its progress in the areas outlined by Omnivore. Yet Sil, as I understand it, cannot be won purely by slinking around avoiding combat and no variant has come along to challenge that situation, again calling the demand for less hack and slash roguelikes into question. The fact of the matter is that there's been plenty of opportunity for such a game to emerge and nothing seems to have happened. This is a reflection of demand.
No, your last sentence is arbitrary and not supported by your preceding argument. I argue that it is a reflection on availability.
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In order to support an argument of lack of demand, supply of quality goods needs to be disdained by the target market.
My point is that availability is there, but left untapped. You have games which could, with incremental changes, fit the noncombat LoveInRL concept, but no one sees fit to pursue that possibility. You don't need to see a completed project fail to attract interest to see a lack of demand. That, for example, Sil with some tweaking could be given a totally noncombat stealth option, yet nothing happens in that direction tells the story. Anyone really interested in producing these options could go and make that happen. Of course, that's not me. It's not anyone. But it's a hobbyist market. If there's interest enough, these things should emerge.
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Good comment, Krice. I'll just stop limiting my thinking and remember that everything is possible.
Well, it looks like you have a limit in your imagination. But not to worry! We game developers make sure there are other ways to do things, even in such a narrow scene as roguelikes.
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I would put forward The Inquisitor (http://itch.io/jam/procjam/rate/14026) from the recent procjam as a successful (if limited) attempt at a non-combat roguelike. I don't see any reasons why the systems it uses could not be added to a larger roguelike (either in concert with combat mechanics or not) to make NPC interactions a bit more interesting.
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You can look at all the existing RPGs and roguelikes out there and even wider out into FPS and see that for all the worthwhile ones like Oblivion, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, etc etc combat is the crux. It gives the meaning, the focus and is generally a shallow and achievable core mechanic. And it is doable because it has been seen to be done. Someone can just clone it and do minor iteration on it, and it is conceivable in their mind how to create it from scratch. Conversely, there are no equivalent non-combat reliant games to clone and iterate. Making a game from scratch is a tremendous investment of time and energy, but coming up with a new genre that is a superset rather than a subset of the combat-reliant standard, I argue is inconceivable to most. If someone made it, and it was done well, it would be a breath of fresh air and in demand.
I agree. Combat in video games, in general, is pretty much the status quo. But, of course, this does not mean that it is unmeaningful or not fun. As stated above, there are many games, SO many games, that are combat based. Roguelikes are video games, and fall into the same types of combat schemes as any other video game genre.
I likewise agree with the fact that making a non-combat game, and a well made one at that, would be hard to do. (Simulations and Sports games don't count here, as I assume we are talking about games where you play the role of a single character.) It is exactly right that there are no good 'clones' to work from in this department. Ever thought of what a non-combat game would look like? It would probably still contain a 'combat' system, just without the bloodshed.
Games in general are something to do, that is: fun, interactive, and hopefully involving some skill (plus or minus depending). Try to name something besides combat that fills those three requirements and can easily be relegated to a computer. And what you might see as fun, certainly some others do not. Apparently, something that nearly all humans can agree on, that has everything you ever wanted, but you could not ever really do in reality, is COMBAT.
Of course, if there was a non-combat video game, particularly something RPGish, that was indeed well done, I would be VERY interested in playing it. In the least to just learn the darn mechanics and clone it! :P To outright say that a roguelike MUST have combat is just not right, but it would indeed be very hard to accomplish.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to implement a non-combat roguelike? Perhaps choosing correct rebuttals at an opponent's verbal sword? I am sure one of you has more creativity in this area than me :) Don't let anyone try to tear down your ideas. The only way to see if they would work or not is to just make the game yourself, present it to the community, and see what happens. I, at least, would be willing to give it a try :)
And overall, let us be supportive of others. I know some of you might not like this statement, but in all seriousness, we are in the same boat here, and we might as well support one another in our endeavours. It can only strengthen us as a whole. Thank you all :)
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Perhaps choosing correct rebuttals at an opponent's verbal sword?
That game already exists and has many clones, it's called an internet forum. Not entirely sure what you'd gain by making it into a RL. :)
On a more serious note, while I can see a path to achieving a combat-optional RPG-RL, I don't see how you could get rid of combat entirely without completely abandoning the 'triumph over adversity' goal that seems an inherent part of both RPGs and RLs. You would need to create a setting where adversity can somehow exist without combat ever being an option, tough problem I think. Even the verbal combat you describe is still combat, are you actually looking for non-violence rather than non-combat?
I would put forward The Inquisitor (http://itch.io/jam/procjam/rate/14026) from the recent procjam as a successful (if limited) attempt at a non-combat roguelike. I don't see any reasons why the systems it uses could not be added to a larger roguelike (either in concert with combat mechanics or not) to make NPC interactions a bit more interesting.
Interesting. Not sure its a scalable idea in and of itself, but as you suggest, adding the mechanics to a larger scoped project seems promising. Unfortunately I can find neither source nor dev blog so I'm a bit in the dark as to what those mechanics are.
Off topic: its this kinda thing (The Inquistor) that upsets me a bit. Let's face it, you're not going to make serious money off a niche of a niche unless it goes viral. If you neither share the code nor blog the development process, its worthless other than an "it is possible" statement. I guess the idea of giving back to the community is lost on some.
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Seems there are two ways of interpreting the "beyond hack & slash" postulate - one is getting rid of combat altogether, another would be making it more interesting and/or not the main gameplay style.
The first angle is of course possible, but then it seems to lead to the old "but is it a roguelike" conundrum - which doesn`t really matter, as long as the project is interesting enough, it just could generate some interesting oddities. What would perma "death" mean in such a setup? Would it be a perma "failure" or something?
Such games I imagine (as said above already) would tend to be more of a puzzle or adventure sort (or a board game, like the Inquisitor ;). Anamnesis (http://blog.anamnesis.co/) could perhaps be an example...oh no, wait, there is "combat" after all. Which might illustrate the point about how difficult it is to get away from it, since this game is really different.
Others are Desktop Dungeon-likes - I like to think of them as puzzle games more than typical RLs...though of course combat features there too, hmmm...this whole "no fighting lads!" thing really is tricky.
One angle I could think about is what happens in aforementioned classics: Thief & Deus Ex. In first (played on proper, hardest level) killing an opponent is considered a failure. So, yes, it`s about avoiding combat but that`s a moot point since you just do not fight in this game, the whole mechanic with all its trappings is eliminated (okay, you get to knock people out but is it really combat?). It`s similar in Deus Ex, though to lesser extent since you theoretically can build yourself into a fighting machine (but even then combat is rather weak). Therefore the meat of the game is environmental manipulation - an awesome thing, but could be translated to RL format? I think so.
Maybe a game where it`s you versus the dungeon (but without its usual denizens) could work. Avoiding traps, solving problems to access areas, general navigation and orienteering, stuff like that.
As for "making hack`n slash" more interesting angle (and my personal favourite), there could be quite a few ways, already discussed in other threads on this forum - like improving on monster AI or utilizing the environment interactions to much bigger extent than it is now. Brogue, Norrendin and perhaps others already do it quite well but there`s so much more possible...
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Interesting. Not sure its a scalable idea in and of itself, but as you suggest, adding the mechanics to a larger scoped project seems promising. Unfortunately I can find neither source nor dev blog so I'm a bit in the dark as to what those mechanics are.
Off topic: its this kinda thing (The Inquistor) that upsets me a bit. Let's face it, you're not going to make serious money off a niche of a niche unless it goes viral. If you neither share the code nor blog the development process, its worthless other than an "it is possible" statement. I guess the idea of giving back to the community is lost on some.
As I understand it, the game generates a murder victim, witnesses, murderer and motive and then simulates the various stages of the crime (i.e. acquiring the murder weapon, finding the victim, the murder, disposing of the evidence, somebody discovering the body) and records who saw what when. He talked a bit about it on Twitter during procjam but I don't think he actually has a blog anywhere. I would imagine that since it was made for a jam the source code is probably not really fit for public consumption (my own jam code certainly never is!).
Likewise off-topic: I'm not sure I really agree that making things like The Inquisitor is worthless unless you 'give back to the community' in the way you suggest. Sure, it's nice when people share their techniques but ultimately unless you want to create exactly the same game again you're going to need to come up with your own way of implementing it anyway. Simply proving that something new and interesting is achievable is a pretty big contribution to the community by itself, in my eyes.
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the worthwhile ones like Oblivion
Let's get something straight: Oblivion is one of the least worthwhile games ever made
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I suspect that radical change is required. Moving away from combat by just adding alternatives is going to be difficult.
The goal in playing a roguelike is to come up with tactics and strategies that you can use to solve any randomly generated problems you may encounter. You shouldn't think of hack and slash combat as a means to the goal of winning. Solving the problem of combat is the goal. Character progression, world exploration, and achieving objectives are only there to make combat meaningful and keep it interesting.
To make a non-combat roguelike, you will need to find a different problem which can be randomly generated and which players can solve by discovering tactics and strategies. Make a game about that problem, and get rid of hack and slash.
Yep - but I wonder if by achieving this, you still have a roguelike? Only in the most abstract sense.
Im seeing 'office space' the roguelike, where you start out as a lowly mail boy, and must rise through the ranks and levels in the multi-national office tower to become CEO.