Permanent consequences for failure that aren't death

[Vanguard]

You will learn from your mistakes much faster if you let yourself replay and analyse the actual situation that killed you, analyse it straight away, instead of playing for another 27 hours until you get into only similar situation hoping to learn something from it that time around.

You see, thanks to save scumming I know things you don't, things you can't afford to experiment with, and if we were competing, I would have most certainly won.

Ah yes, your savescum training regimen is what made you the great player you are.  Except you're terrible.  You struggled for days to win in Brogue even after stacking the odds massively in your own favor.  I am a much better roguelike player than you are, so obviously you are wrong.

It's cool how you even after your claims are shown to be inarguably false, you still don't reconsider any of your beliefs.  You aren't interested in evidence.  You can't grasp concepts so simple that they border on tautological.  You don't put effort into understanding foreign ideas.  You don't care that you're talking to people far more experienced and knowledgeable than yourself.  You must not even like roguelikes since you go out of your way to circumvent their central features, so I don't know why you post here.

If you were the slightest bit interested in learning the truth you'd have taken my suggestion and played Battletoads on an emulator with and then without save states.  That's all you'd have to do and then there'd never be any doubt about whether saving affects difficulty.  But instead of taking an hour to see how blatantly wrong you are, you chose to spend several days bending the words "skill" and "difficulty" beyond all recognition.  Why are you even here?  What made you think that the roguelike forums was a good place to complain about how bad permadeath games are?

[Rickton]

What made you think that the roguelike forums was a good place to complain about how bad permadeath games are?

Bringing the light to those who struggle in darkness.

[LazyCat]

Ah yes, your savescum training regimen is what made you the great player you are.  Except you're terrible.  You struggled for days to win in Brogue even after stacking the odds massively in your own favor.  I am a much better roguelike player than you are, so obviously you are wrong.

:roll eyes: I bet you are save scumming just like everyone else.

It's cool how you even after your claims are shown to be inarguably false, you still don't reconsider any of your beliefs.  You aren't interested in evidence.  You can't grasp concepts so simple that they border on tautological.  You don't put effort into understanding foreign ideas.  You don't care that you're talking to people far more experienced and knowledgeable than yourself.  You must not even like roguelikes since you go out of your way to circumvent their central features, so I don't know why you post here.

You are talking about me, for some reason.

You don't care that you're talking to people far more experienced and knowledgeable than yourself.

More likely I was making games before you were even born.

If you were the slightest bit interested in learning the truth you'd have taken my suggestion and played Battletoads on an emulator with and then without save states.  That's all you'd have to do and then there'd never be any doubt about whether saving affects difficulty.  But instead of taking an hour to see how blatantly wrong you are, you chose to spend several days bending the words "skill" and "difficulty" beyond all recognition.  Why are you even here?  What made you think that the roguelike forums was a good place to complain about how bad permadeath games are?

A difficulty that challenges patience has its own name, it's called tedium.

[rust]

:roll eyes: I bet you are save scumming just like everyone else.

Here's something for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_%28psychology%29

[mushroom patch]

:roll eyes: I bet you are save scumming just like everyone else.

Here's something for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_%28psychology%29

Also perhaps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

[Krice]

Checkpoints could work. Something like if you die you'll return to the stairs you came from and the level is re-generated so you have to play it again. When you load the game more than once it should return to the checkpoint.

[Endorya]

Checkpoints could work. Something like if you die you'll return to the stairs you came from and the level is re-generated so you have to play it again. When you load the game more than once it should return to the checkpoint.

Absolutely agreed. /me cuts his finger and signs this with his own blood. That was always my idea with controlled saved points. However, instead checkpoints, I envision it similar to resident evil where the player has a very limited amount of ink bottles he can use to save his progress. If the player uses them all early on, he risks himself being unable to save his progress later on, because finding more of them is always an uncertainty.

[AgingMinotaur]

Legerdemain uses checkpoints, something that fits the game well, as it's trying to throw in some elements of Interactive Fiction by using lots of fixed content. PrincessRL has also been mentioned somewhere in here, I think? Regarding this whole sad flamewar[1], it strikes me as difficult to design a game that works equally well with and without permadeath. Instead of whining about how traditional RLs should include an option to turn off the feature, it would be more productive to think about what would constitute good design of a RL without permadeath.

I've been thinking that some of the upcoming, epic RLs might fit the bill for a kind of game that could work well without permadeath. I'm thinking about something like URR here – not URR specifically, but games based around the idea that a truly huge world is regenerated for every time you restart. A big-scale RL like that could probably be designed around the player controlling a family or other community. Dieing would lose your current hero with all the associated loot and experience, and might advance the game world a few months in time, to the disadvantage of your family, before starting you out with a new character in the same world. Eg. if you were out on a mission to assassinate the king, that opportunity may be lost forever as he consolidates his position before your family has time to regroup. The new character should obviously be scaled to fit the current danger level of the world, but it would still feel painful to lose nice equipment and to fail at a particular mission. In a game like this, there might be a final win/lose condition (eg. if your community is wiped out, or some major goal is achieved). Compare it to a game of Go, where you've got a board with lots of local conflicts that connect to a whole towards the end of the game. You can lose a battle and still go on to win the game.

As always,
Minotauros

[1] The popularization and dilution of the RL term is coming to bite us in the butt, it seems, when posters appear who assume that the community who's been RL-ing for years actually secretly prefers their games without permadeah. Lol. Yeah, we've just been slaves of the order of discourse, and so have been playing with permadeath all this time Seriously, though, just savescum, or not, whatever makes the game better for you.

Edit to footnote: I'm actually not trying to diss any recent members of this forum, sorry if I come off that way. But please respect and adapt to the existing community a little bit Prolonged flame wars about stuff like this only decreases the signal/noise ratio (or increases, whichever way ratios are calculated, you know what I mean, you crunchers of words and numbers).

[Zireael]

Checkpoints could work. Something like if you die you'll return to the stairs you came from and the level is re-generated so you have to play it again. When you load the game more than once it should return to the checkpoint.

Absolutely agreed. /me cuts his finger and signs this with his own blood. That was always my idea with controlled saved points. However, instead checkpoints, I envision it similar to resident evil where the player has a very limited amount of ink bottles he can use to save his progress. If the player uses them all early on, he risks himself being unable to save his progress later on, because finding more of them is always an uncertainty.

These are very good ideas!

[Endorya]

These are very good ideas!

Seriously, that was nice to read. My humble thanks.

[Krice]

it strikes me as difficult to design a game that works equally well with and without permadeath.

True. When you have permadeath it's difficult to think how the game works without it.

I've been thinking that some of the upcoming, epic RLs might fit the bill for a kind of game that could work well without permadeath. I'm thinking about something like URR here – not URR specifically, but games based around the idea that a truly huge world

When I saw URR the first thing that concerned me was how it could have permadeath, because the game world is huge. It's interesting to see what happens to it, but luckily the developer seems to be quite clever one.

[jim]

I've been thinking that some of the upcoming, epic RLs might fit the bill for a kind of game that could work well without permadeath. I'm thinking about something like URR here – not URR specifically, but games based around the idea that a truly huge world is regenerated for every time you restart. A big-scale RL like that could probably be designed around the player controlling a family or other community. Dieing would lose your current hero with all the associated loot and experience, and might advance the game world a few months in time, to the disadvantage of your family, before starting you out with a new character in the same world. Eg. if you were out on a mission to assassinate the king, that opportunity may be lost forever as he consolidates his position before your family has time to regroup. The new character should obviously be scaled to fit the current danger level of the world, but it would still feel painful to lose nice equipment and to fail at a particular mission. In a game like this, there might be a final win/lose condition (eg. if your community is wiped out, or some major goal is achieved). Compare it to a game of Go, where you've got a board with lots of local conflicts that connect to a whole towards the end of the game. You can lose a battle and still go on to win the game.

Yes - this can be very effective and I like the idea. One non-RL that did this very well was State of Decay. You controlled a small group of survivors. If one died, they stayed dead, but the game could go on.

[AgingMinotaur]

Checkpoints could work. Something like if you die you'll return to the stairs you came from and the level is re-generated so you have to play it again. When you load the game more than once it should return to the checkpoint.

Absolutely agreed. /me cuts his finger and signs this with his own blood. That was always my idea with controlled saved points. However, instead checkpoints, I envision it similar to resident evil where the player has a very limited amount of ink bottles he can use to save his progress. If the player uses them all early on, he risks himself being unable to save his progress later on, because finding more of them is always an uncertainty.

These are very good ideas!

If done well, I guess sure. But does it "overcome the problem" of permadeath, though? Isn't it more just postpoing the inevitable? It sounds to me like playing ADOM starting out with a couple of amulets of life preserving, which is still basically playing ADOM.

As always,
Mintauros

[Endorya]

If done well, I guess sure. But does it "overcome the problem" of permadeath, though? Isn't it more just postpoing the inevitable? It sounds to me like playing ADOM starting out with a couple of amulets of life preserving, which is still basically playing ADOM.

As always,
Mintauros

Actually it's different. Both checkpoints and limited saving options presents themselves as a more "aggressive" solution because most of the time it means you, the player, going back to a particular progress moment, unlike ADOM's life preserving amulets which simply avoids the character's death, without affecting the character's progress whatsoever. But this doesn't mean that ADOM's approach would not work. Having disposable items to cheat death could also be another way to go but I prefer having controlled saved points.

[Rickton]

I don't really know how ADOM's amulets work, but if they're something that just resurrects you without losing any progress, yeah, it wouldn't really encourage me to play as carefully as I would with permadeath, or even with a checkpoint that would cause me to lose progress.