Any Non-perma death Rlikes?

[deathknight1728]

Lol. I was just saying that losing a character after less than an hour is 'fun' and makes me want to play again. Losing one after a few hours just makes me want to walk away. Especially if we are playing DiabloIII, and I die due to server lag.

Yeah you said it better than how I feel. I played Cardinal Quest with a warrior and its all easy for the first 4 floors and then I died. It was cool though because it took 30-45 minutes. I wouldnt even care if I lost 2 hours. Its just when I lose after I start liking the characters progress and get really far is what causes me to go crazy. 2 and a half to 3 hours into it.

Keep in mind, without the frustrations, Cardinal Quest, Doom the Rlike, and Probably the Pit RL are some of my best roleplaying experiences Ive had, even with the frustration. I feel that I can make my characters more humanistic as if they will succeed. The only thing I dred is that I have never succeeded at a rlike.

[kraflab]

I think this deserves some discussion.

Let's say that I play one game for 6 hours and then die, or I play another game and die after 2 hours three times in a row.  The shorter lives have less meaning, since you didn't play the character as long (and you can get back to your location faster).  This both lessens the blow of death and also limits the immersion I think (in the sense that the character is just one of many you can burn through in one sitting).  In the long game, death feels much sharper but this is perhaps a response to genuinely feeling the loss of that character.  For me, I think feeling the real loss is more important to my experience, in terms of the type of feeling I want to get from roguelikes.  Shorter lives can certainly be enjoyable too, although I think having large variability on the short experience becomes much more important in such cases.  It is also important in both cases that the game maintains a quality experience, i.e. no one wants to play 4 hours of boring dungeons and then get 1-shot killed by a megabeast you didn't know existed.

There are of course other important factors, such as real life time constraints, but I'm curious what the reasons are for everyone's preferences on short or long character lives.

[Nymphaea]

I personally come from a lot of online and console RPGs, anything I played with permadeath was short "coffeebreak" style games. Otherwise, I wanted to keep and build on a character, if it died I would adjust it to fix it's problem. I can't do that with permadeath It's part of why I don't like TOME4 as a roguelike, it feels more like a standard RPG, and was balanced that way. (for it's multiple lives system) Angband is another good example of a long roguelike, I love the game, one of my favourite of roguelikes, but to me it feels more like an RPG/dungeon crawler than a roguelike, because of that length. In my opinion, Angband would benefit from having a save point in town for this reason.

But I guess that all is my bias, to me roguelikes are fun little side games, not full out games I would spend huge amounts of time playing at once.

[Darren Grey]

I much prefer ToME and Dredmor on permadeath mode.  If I play with extra lives I get lazy and have less fun.  The whole tension just disappears from the game.

[Quendus]

I used to play Angband with the cheat death option on. It was good for learning the game, but much less fun. The tension is lost, and there's no motivation to play well - on death, you lose no more than the items on the current dungeon level. So rather than detecting+evading monsters, sneaking around for items, and considering risk/reward ratios, you just grind for levels and items and take deaths as they come. (And try not to get your stats scrambled or your gear disenchanted)

[Legend]

Don't know any like dredmor that do it, but the old ad&d Forgotten Realms: Dungeon Hack is an old first person roguelike which features saving/loading. If I recall correctly anyways. Pretty sure it allowed you to save/load whenever you wanted.

[guest509]

  I remember those games, like Eye of the Beholder and stuff, right? My brother used to love those early computer RPGS. Some of them are on the NES too.

[Legend]

Yup. The Raven loft ones were my favorite. Replaying through Eye of the Beholder two at the moment. That's why I remembered Dungeon Hack. It's like EOB but with a single character and random dungeons, potions, scrolls, loot, etc.