Rogue-likes vs ARPGs, from someone with a lot of authority to make the distinction.
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SURPRISE: It's not me.
Spoiler
I have resisted the urge to correct his typos. Not my 'job' anymore, heh.
" https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/4gw2hw/comment/d2lp07w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
My commentary on some of this
What I find interesting here is I actually disagree with Mark1 -- surprise. Power creep makes it very difficult for an ARPG to make the player 'feel under some form of time pressure to act or react to in-game events during normal gameplay' but I do believe that's the ideal...and that the key to that ideal is to embrace the rogue-like structure of very regularly resetting the character but with progressive meta-rewards (meta to the run, intrinsic to the game overall) so that power creep doesn't become an issue.
On the other hand, he's pointing to true rogue-likes that worked with turns rather than real-time, and not the looser definition we use these days for any game that is procedurally generated and works with a 'live. die. repeat' formula, supplemented by a slight boost in strength loop to loop. So maybe part of why ARPGs have yet to fully transition to the rogue-like structure is this lingering demand of player consideration inherent to the turn-based legacy of Rogue itself...which is odd given, as Mark1 points out by way of David Brevik, ARPGs transitioned to real-time extremely well. And I think a lot of us D1 veterans DID play Diablo like a pseudo-rogue-like in the beginning: death really sucked; starting over was fairly common; and, at least in the shareware version, you mostly just made new characters to keep those butcher runs fresh and challenging. The game had no stash (which is nothing if not an early version of the 'inherited power' rogue-like element) but we went and gave it one anyway in the form of mules and saved characters. PoE: Descent and Descent: Champions were GGG's notable attempt at running a rogue-like within their own game, and I thought they were quite successful. I'd love to have heard Mark1's take on it, given his sentiments here. Successful rogue-like or a noble failure? Hm. Needless to say, Mark1 was posting well outside the confines of PoE's usual spheres and the quoted sentiment does not in any way reflect official GGG design philosophy. I still think they'd be able to make a killer rogue-like, but...eh, maybe in a different timeline. A different loop. Or is it rogue-lite? I have a bitch of a time with these terms, and I'm pretty sure I've seen publications refer to the likes of Hades and Slay the Spire as 'rogue-like'. The latest No Man's Sky expedition (ie league) is all about dying to progress through the loops, and Hello Games call that 'rogue-like' as well, so maybe 'rogue-lite' just died on the vine of inconveniently similar terms, with the broader one 'rogue-like' winning the day. If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between. I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period. Last edited by Foreverhappychan#4626 on May 30, 2022, 5:13:31 AM Last bumped on May 31, 2022, 7:09:27 PM
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If you unlock shit that makes you more powerful on subsequent runs its a rogue-lite (Hades, Children of Morta, Rogue Legacy etc) if you unlock additional items but your base start point is the same its a rogue like (Streets of rogue, Binding of Isaac, Gungeon etc)
You can have a discussion about whether unlocking items actually makes you more powerful in subsequent runs and it usually does but there are plenty of examples where an item unlock makes subsequent runs worse not better. This sides splitting hairs though as really nobody makes original roguelikes anymore hence why BoI is a roguelike not a lite. Progress kinda removes the original. Games journalists frequently get these wrong because there are nearly zero actual games journalists they are just using it as a springboard to something else or functionally operating as a blog not an industry specialist. Yes this last paragraph was 100% my personal bias :p I deliberately left slay the spire out of my two lists up there despite it getting mentioned because its honestly almost completely between the two camps, its setup like Isaac but your ability to curate your deck means the negatives very rarely manifest so you are infact getting more powerful on subsequent runs. I personally operate on it doesn't matter which side it gets placed on because there are strong arguments for either whereas most fall into one side or the other. Looping back round you can make a good argument that an arpg is a roguelike however i'd argue that if a substantial level of power comes from an rpg system you can't actually be a roguelike. So just for examples sake if you took diablo 2 and skills only came from weapon drops you had no passives or stats that would be a credible roguelike. Diablo 1 is very close in this regard so i'm not surprised at all to read about its mixed classification so to speak. Last edited by Draegnarrr#2823 on May 30, 2022, 6:05:38 AM
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See that's how I always thought of it and while I agree publications can get it wrong, they're also the Fourth Estate and sort of get to dictate the movements of language IF those movements reflect an existing trend. And like I said, HG on their own latest NMS release:
" Maybe it's the missing hyphen and the diplomatic usage of 'taste of' that makes this true. Have to also keep in mind, the subreddit on which I found the quoted material rather quickly (purely from a google 'arpg vs roguelike') seems staunchly rooted in a strict definition of rogue-like (turn based being an essential component). I do like how Crypt of the Necrodancer threw them for a loop, all puns intended. I cannot abide Wikipedia's attempt to classify some games as 'roguelike-like'. No one's going to add that second 'like' and so, as with games like Stranger of Paradise (which is a Nioh-like which is a Souls-like, making SOPFFO a Soulslike-like, which means fuck all in and of itself), people are just going to drop the second 'like' and confusion (and in SOP's case, CHAOS) ensues. Rogue-lite sounds too close to rogue-like: works on paper, fails spectacularly with the more pervasive verbal form. And since I don't see a truly new word arising (although I love 'procedural death labyrinth', PDL isn't going to catch on either), roguelike is probably it for anything from Slay the Spire to Hades to BoI to Rogue Legacy and so on. This is a problem of lazy mimesis: a chair's a chair, a stool's also a chair, but a footstool isn't unless you sit on it rather than, yknow, rest your feet on it, and even then you'd say 'I'm sitting on a footstool', not 'I'm sitting on a chair' or even 'I'm sitting on a stool'. I'm just glad we don't call them footchairs, but I imagine that is indeed what they're called in some other languages. Here, another juicy take from an industry critic: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-souls-like-label-needs-to-die/ The URL speaks for itself, and I think the same can and should apply to 'roguelike'. The moment you call something 'like' you're putting a lot of expectations on it AND failing to convey what might make it unique (ashes being a team shooter, salt and sanctuary being a 2D platformer, and so on). It's nice to see a journalist point this out, and to acknowledge that journalists are not in some small part to blame for the pointless perpetuation of these buzzwords. But I guess in this era when news sites feel it's essential to tell readers HOW MANY MINUTES THE ARTICLE WILL TAKE TO READ and a post of 1000 words is a 'small novel', people resort to these shortcuts even though they really do throw the baby out with the bathwater more often than not. PS Horrified to see that Dragon's Dogma was ever considered even vaguely 'soulslike' just because it came out around the same time, has a similar play perspective and...that's about it. I never once saw it that way: A little god of war, sure. Monhan, okay. Colossus? A bit. Souls? Uh...no. If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between. I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period. Last edited by Foreverhappychan#4626 on May 30, 2022, 6:51:02 AM
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" I think they are fine and do what they say on the tin, like is what it is, lite is the diet version. Like all industry terms they are fine when applied properly and you are talking to other people who understand them and seem asinine when you don't. The turn based argument is redundant, I get why they are sticklers for it but terms have to evolve with norms. JRPG meant a game would be turn based once but that is no longer the case, same for 4X. The base classifications still function but some of the niceties have to evolve with the times. You see articles every year about how metroidvania is "wrong" usually written by people whose experience is one game that wasn't a meroid or castlevania spin-off but If you tell me a game is a metroidvania I know 100% what type of game to expect. If you tell me its a rogue-lite or like I know what to expect. I get that its overused btw but I think what many consumers don't realise is just how many games are roguelikes. Soulslike is overused by plonkers slapping it on anything, roguelike/lite is overused because there are absolutely shitloads of them its probably the most common type of game for a developer to make below a certain size. Its like saying the term platformer was overused in the snes days lmao. Souls-like? Absolutely not this ones overused to the extreme and was rubbish to begin with but the popularity of dark souls (sorry us happy few that did actually play demon souls first) swamped a whole niche genre and they started to use it as a marketing term for any game that played like almost every game used to play. Nioh-like is even more stupid because the only games that are nioh-like are made by the same developer its almost like they make what they are good at, Strangers of fiction is a reskin of Nioh the same ways Bloodborne is a reskin of dark souls. Honestly the easiest thing is to separate if you think an umbrella term was used for marketing purposes or not, players that know generally can use the terms correctly or will be close enough that it counts. Marketers couldn't find water if they fell out of a boat so will just slap on any term they think is appropriate to move units. I love PDL btw and I think if you had a time machine you could make that a term we all use today, on the topic of weird subreddits arguing about nomenclature I recently found one such talking about how Deus Ex was classed as an "immersive sim" and I found this absolutely bizarre. I thought It would be something like theme park or maybe even X3, Elite etc. Yet here was a list of Morrowind, Deus ex, Thief, Arx Fatalis etc so many major titles i'd never have called immersive sims but apparently were all along. Maybe that just means we are all morons using the wrong terms :p, at least I know what games people are talking about when they use immersive sim now but I personally would never use it. Last edited by Draegnarrr#2823 on May 30, 2022, 6:59:13 AM
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The overall point is a bit out of touch with the modern state of gaming, there is no "vs" involved here. A game isn't just a "roguelike" or "ARPG" these days, they are more complicated than that and incorporate elements from multiple genres. There are plenty of ARPG Roguelikes/lites, do a Steam search and you get many hundreds of hits with games tagged as both.
Genres today are more spectrums with axis. The rogue related genre spectrum is not on the same axis as the ARPG spectrum, they don't compete. A rogue game is a relatively short game designed to be replayed over and over to progress further each time and/or unlock new things with each attempt, with a high amount of randomness to mechanics and very limited choices per run. It exists on the lite and like axis, where likes have no permanent power progression while the lites have some amount of it, even that line can be blurred though, it's not a hard rule. Rogue games can be real time or turn based, they can be action based or have no combat at all. I assume I don't have to define RPG, and the action distinction just means a game focused on action combat, Balder's Gate 2 is not a ARPG because the gameplay emphasis is not combat even thought it does have real time combat. A popular game that is very much a perfect example of an ARPG Roguelite is Vampire Survivors. Games like Diablo and Path of Exile are not really in a singular defined genre, the ARPG genre is vast and incorporates many different styles of RPG games with a real time combat focus. Unofficially "diablolike" is how you would make it clear what type of game you were referring to, officially you would look for isometric ARPG looters. |
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They could make it rogue-like with one easy step. Remove trade. Remove SC.
Of course they'd have to rebalance the game around that. Last edited by Shagsbeard#3964 on May 30, 2022, 10:21:06 AM
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For me the genres got convoluted as an effect of sales. Some 20+ years ago I noticed how studios slapped meaningless stats on for the benefit of also hitting the RPG tag so it could also be sold as such.
But RPG stands for role playing game and that should mean character development, choices in the world and such. Not just some stats. I mean if I play COD I could say I'm roleplaying a soldier. But that's too thin. Does POE offer more though? Other than stats, there is no character development. It's builds over roles. There's not even a world. There's maps with stuff to blow up. I mean I like it, but won't call it RPG. Now Baldur's Gate, that's an RPG. It has plenty of action too, but can't be called an ARPG. So I guess the more A, the less RPG? Ill just keep calling PoE a APM - advanced pacman megablast. :p ps No idea about rogue-likes. Always thought of this as adventures that involve sneaking. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Did you try turning it off and on again?
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One of the key features of Rogue was that the game was designed to beat you. You played as far as you could, but the game eventually got too hard to progress and you had to start over. To beat it, you had to stop engaging the content and simply dash to the end and hope you didn't encounter anything that could stop you. Building up character strength was part of it, but it was never sufficient to beat the game.
Played the hell out of that game. |
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When I say 'vs' I don't mean it in the immature sense that thinks 'versing' is a legitimate verb form of the preposition 'versus' (that literally makes me grind my teeth, since I don't have figurative teeth and if I did I wouldn't grind them); I don't care which is better or which would win. I simply mean it as a point of comparison, using the accepted definition 'as opposed to' -- ARPG design tropes vs (as opposed to) roguelike design tropes.
Also, I just deleted a huge rant because I don't think any of it really matters, other than perhaps that PoE2022 might benefit from thinking more like this modern definition of roguelike with its short form iterative loop and less like the possibly antiquated one that dictates a turn-based stricture, which obviously has little to offer a game so far down the zoom zoom path as PoE now is. If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between. I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period. Last edited by Foreverhappychan#4626 on May 30, 2022, 11:33:01 AM
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Two things are "no go" for me in POE. Roguelike and dailies.
If those will be implemented as core mechanics, i will uninstall game immediately. "Roguelike" - another expression for: We do not have money, time and bugdget for proper ingame content, so we want you to die forever, so you won't notice that we do not have content. "Daily Quests" - another expression for: we do not respect your time and we must report to our shareholders. We do not care that you work till evening on thursday but you have plenty time on friday. No!!! You make your dailies !!! I have hard times with POE as cassual SSF player, but the limit was not exceeded. Also I consider Sentinel league for most fun and rewarding mechanic, since "Glacier map Legion spawning league" and "Ritual earn and shop SuperMarket league". |
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