Yeah. It's like sometimes I am like a train rolling down the tracks. Sometimes, I crash, and then I have to pick up the engine, back it up, re-rail it on the tracks, and start again.

So what you are saying is that despite living long before videoges existed, the man who was, in many people's reckoning, either the most intelligent or second most intelligent (after Goethe) man who ever lived was a GAMER? (I don't know if Goethe was a gamer but he did have a tomboy fetish.)

I mean, it's not procedurally generated...

Isaac newton the founding father of videogames

@@vitriolicAmaranth I don’t know who told you that Newton was the most intelligent man who ever lived but that is simply not true.

And there is also that recurring theme of "negative outcomes have twice as much effect as positive ones" in GDC/game design videos. This completely contradicts his statement, and this contradiction for me is also backed by anecdotal evidences of games which I mostly remember as "that one which kept wasting my time with unwinnable rolls" and "that one where the roll was awful, and then even the UI killed me".

Let me translate for anyone else stumbling into this now, because this speaker is honestly terrible imho and there is a logic here, but it's not what he's saying. Players remember EXTREMES, whether positive or negative, whenever randomness is a factor. However, players will have a different perception of randomness depending upon the game and their expectation. As an example, in a TCG like Magic The Gathering, players build decks with a general gameplan in mind. When they lose based on poor draws (or win despite poor draws), they remember those games, but when the random generator gives them exactly what they expect and enables them to win, the game is forgettable despite everything working in their favor. This is why you'll often hear players complain about mana screw or other random elements far more than they actually happen. This can actually be a problem in the tcg world for people trying out new decks, as it's all too easy to focus on shortcomings or poor individual games and lose sight of overall performance and what the deck does well. However, that goes both ways. In a roguelike, you don't expect to have a specific plan and carry it out. You go in expecting to fail. Failure is your perceived peak of the bell curve rather than an outlier. This is why successes are memorable while typical failures are more easily brushed aside and forgotten. However, moments where rng actively sabotages an otherwise good run can be just as significant as when a run goes absurdly well. Extreme failures might linger, but the point was that your average death in a roguelike is more forgettable than failure in a game where you did not expect to fail as often. Cultivating that idea that failure is okay is great, since the alternative end of the spectrum is one in which players feel frustrated when they lose but nothing when they win. So, in game design, if you present the game in a manner in which players are expecting failure, they are less likely to spend time being upset or frustrated and more likely to strive for success and continue playing. The bit he says later on about variety being better than randomness is actually about minimizing that negative extreme on the bell curve that can happen in roguelikes, where extremely poor rng leads to bad memorable experiences. The design goal is to have enough variance to make each run different from the last, but without so much randomness that the player feels like no amount of skill could have prevented that negative outcome. The goal is to teach the player and encourage them to try things differently, after all, so a loss they had no control over teaches them nothing.

I have some of both. I remember the first time I killed the valkyrie quest boss in Nethack, and how I had barely made it through by the skin of my teeth. But I also remember the one time I was killed by a Wand of Death in the third floor. (Wand of Death is a super powerful item that enemies have a microscopic chance to spawn at that level.) Another time, I was just instantly killed by a *hidden* bed of poisoned spikes pretty far into a run. (Poison usually deals extra damage, but has a tiny chance of being instadeath.)

I remember getting shafted while doing monk quest in nethack, landing next to Master Kaen, and fainting in real life. I also remember blinking randomly in dungeon crawl stone soup, landing on a zot trap, getting paralyzed, and dying instantly. I also once fell off the stairs on nethack while wielding a cockatrice corpse and died instantly. I also once wielded a cockatrice corpse in nethack without gloves and also died instantly. Nethack sucks.

Wouldn't a roguelike player's time be dominated by decent mid-luck runs? Because unlucky ones are shorter, and lucky ones are steamrolled faster

Very true ! A good example of this is Spelunky ! You die, A LOT, but it's always your fault !

Good point, that's part of why Dark Souls' camera and control oddities are so frustrating.

YES. For roguelikes to feel good and for deaths to not be frustrating, your death must unequivocally be your fault. It can be that you didn't know/understand something as long as dying from it once is enough for you to completely understand how it works. I think this is why a lot of roguelikes are 2D and/or turn-based as for a 3D real-time roguelike to not be super frustrating it'd need to have super-consistent, reliable physics and amazingly tight, intuitive controls. Prey: Mooncrash makes a decent attempt (at a difficult goal). It helps that enemy perception is garbage so you usually get to plan-out what actions you are going to do before you carry them out.

*cries in Darkest Dungeon*

This single comment may have just saved my current game.

Hence the popularity of Path of Exile. Dual unique short swords as endgame mage weapons? Ya, that's a thing.

Shoot him an email =)

@@S.... Wow, you sure accomplished a mighty task by wasting your time being a dick on the internet.

CT I agree. I was really into EtG when I first got it but after 5-10 hours I stopped playing.

EtG is one great DLC away from being a fantastic game. More boss types, more ammo drops, weapons that begin to feel powerful.

I think they did notice that because they are adding a ton of powerful guns and items in the new expansion which is due in April or something, I saw some gifs with giant lasers from the sky and literal bulletstorms.

I could only stick with ETG for a couple of hours. I couldn't find the same hook as I did from Isaac/Dwarf Fortress/Unreal world.. ect. It seems like it is trying to be a bullet hell game or shooter first and everything else second. Regardless of action balance I think the complexity and imbalance of it's procedural levels get in the way.

There are definitely issues with Enter the Gungeon. Namely it is very hard to get the right items to get synergies going. I still quite enjoy the game and still play it several times a week despite beating all the pasts and unlocking one of the secret characters. I am looking forward to seeing what changes are brought to the game with the supply drop update.

You haven't played Binding of Isaac? Usually that's the one that people play first.

I think you forgot the Diablo series...

Patrik Kotiranta Lundberg Most people under 20 haven't played Diablo. I myself am 16 and only played Diablo 3 once.

Welcome to gaming then but that doesn't change the fact that the Diablo series is much bigger worldwide then Isaac will ever become. It is a Blizzard title and that says a lot on its own... Last known statistics that I am aware of showed that original Isaac together with Rebirth sold ~5 million copies. Diablo 3 sold ~3 million copies on its release day and passed 30 million copies around the same time that Isaac reached its 5 million copies. Now, throw at least 6 million copies on top of that for the prequels and you start get the idea of the size differences. D3 is still fairly well known below the age of 20, that is why it sold so well but it is also a title that is well known and often played by gamers above 20.

Patrik Kotiranta Lundberg Sure but even then not many would call Diablo a roguelike (even though it is). Even fewer even know what a roguelike is, probs.

There was a roguelike made for a 7DRL where each time you encountered a new enemy you chose what HP they had, when you found a new item you decided what it is etc. Look it up on roguelikeradio

None of those are rogue likes though dude...wtf...

@@ciscornBIG Dead Cells and BoI are definitely Rogue-likes, Hades is a Rogue-lite.

@@randomshit6539 no, those are all rogue lites. Sorry. Nethack? Roguelike. Angband? Roguelike? Caves of Qud? Roguelike. The Ground Gives Way? Roguelike.

@@ciscornBIG ciscornbig? pedant. hotel? trivago

@@deyahatesyou You're not using that word right because it doesn't apply to me. I am correct in what I am saying and there is no pedantry involved in insisting upon the proper use of terms.

This is great, I'm usually the person recommending TowerClimb to people in comment sections like these. Glad to see someone else name dropping it.

That's very common, unfortunately. Most roguelikes have a very steep learning curve. I recommend "Microgue" - free on Android & cheap on iOS for a literal coffee-break roguelike.

You should try dungeon crawl stone soup, its a full fledged traditional rl but with a focus on being intuitive and accessible without needing a wiki. has graphical tiles and mouse support as well which always helps

hahahahaha

Go back in time and get your 40minutes back. wtf is wrong with you?

EudGenius they whole game isn’t finished, so it’s not really fair to call only one of 2 modes out for that fact

Permanent death is a core part of the genre. No permadeath, no roguelike. You got to git gud.

@@NinthSettler Well, yeah, I agree. I ended up finding an option in Angband that allows saves to not be deleted, so you reload after you die. But yeah nothing comes close to the feeling of never knowing when death is about to come. If I bend it and twist it I can see it being slightly similar to the feeling of modern games like PUBG, you have to accept death even if it's a bummer. But apart from that I think it's still unparalleled in videogames even to this day.

I disagree with you on Slay the Spire. A lot of times resting and facing an elite enemy is better than just upgrading. Or sometimes you go for a riskier deck and healing is more necessary. Like 75% of the time you should upgrade, but there are plenty of reasons not to.

Glottris umm...like

haha :D ! His timing wasn't that bad. You have to understand these are people who feel nervous on stage. they try everything to ease the tension.

he's from riot games, they can't help being cringey

Thank you!

I hate when people use memes in anything educational.

rtyrty12 DO A BARREL ROLL

Probably because lack of advertisements and PR. Never heard about it before. Looks interesting and I hope they have native GNU\Linux port.

it's so ugly and unappealing tho..

yes

So basically, rather than watering down the MUD genre, you would like to kill it.

No one is fucking watering down your precious MUD's. They have been dying for **years.**

@Madolite What part are you confused about? The **Multi-User** or the **Dungeon** aspect about MUDs? Diablo 1 has both, hence it is a MUD by _definition._ _How_ MUD's are presented to the gamer, be it text or graphics, does NOT determine if a game is a MUD or not. _Historically_ they used to be text-based but modern MUDs have been graphical, aka Ultima Online, Everquest, WOW, etc. for a long time now. No one gives a fuck if you call Terraria a MUD. Technically, _every_ game is a RPG -- because you are always playing some role but there is no need to be anal retentive over semantics.

Not if World of Warcraft is a MUD. Then they're still going strong. EDIT: To be clear, I am on Michael's side of this. The term "MUD" doesn't prescribe the presence or absence of graphics, and demanding that they don't have graphics is overtly an effort to reduce the number of MUDs.

Caliban Darklock WOW _peaked_ at 12 million subs. Blizzard _doesn't even report the numbers anymore_ due to the hemorrhaging of subscribers.

I only just discovered nethack, but it's taking me over.. :)

Nethack is CBT the game. Nethack is as bullshit as Dark Souls 1. I much prefer Dark Souls 3, i mean, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

@@NinthSettler I disagree. NetHack rewards careful play.

I think it was Bloodborne that had chalice dungeons which were randomly generated levels

Procedural literally means with a procedure. Noise is random. Bounding noise is less random. Sure, a strictly linear, story-based game is as ordered as you'll get, but that's at the other extreme.

@@baronvonbeandip I’m pretty sure everyone here perfectly understands what he meant. It was stupid simply because no one has ever even made a good game generated by actual randomness. He was comparing proc gen to hand-crafted games, and so it was just kind of a weird thing to say in the moment.

And FTL is rather short and allows/requires different approaches which rather immediate feedback, so the roguelike element is rather part of a strategy game. It gets really crappy when having games like Metrocide, which gives no hints about better tactics and requires hours of replaying the same crap. I take three hours of great gameplay over 20 hours of pointless repetition. We don't live in the 80s anymore.

FTL is a piece of cake in comparison to Rogue, the game that created the genre. That game had no concept of metagaming or system's knowledge.

did you even listen to the talk :D?

а ты защитник лольца? Любишь всякое говно жрать, говноед да? ЛОЛ - игра для даунов и тупой школоты

coherent sentences please

I mean, its obvious that the guy is a foreigner based on his broken English, but it's not that hard to interpret he is saying "Of course, the most watered down and empty talk comes from the Riot Games employee!". I think it says much more about your patience and attention span if you couldn't understand that, than it says about the original comments intelligence when the person obviously doesn't speak English natively.

I didn't insult his intelligence. Find someone else to troll.

Opinions can be useful when you're brainstorming, but I lost interest when he started criticizing Civ in a video about Rogue-likes. That's a pretty big stretch to draw any relevance from it.

Tom Hatfield I kind of draw the line at what's useful where it merely amounts to more than playing games. Any losers can play video games and they do. This whole presentation does not show any more competency than playing games IMO. Playing games is counterproductive. I might as well watch a let's play or something.

JJ K Are you even a game developer? Because I can't understand how one would call the players as counterproductive losers

Dennis Samuel How much money did you make playing games? Would you call poor people winners? Making a game, any kind of game, takes a lot of time. That time better not be wasted on stupid past times. I guess that logic doesn't stand if you're just an employee payed by shareholders.

JJ K By your logic a chef would be wasting his time eating food. Like he said in the video, developers and especially designers play to improve their game vocabulary and understand their players. I don't know bro, but maybe you should find a new job that you really enjoy. You know, they say passion improves productivity and all that.

isnt that just removing difficulty?

No it's making it optional. Players who enjoy permadeath can use it, and if it's optional then all it does is give players who don't enjoy permadeath a chance to play. No disadvantage whatsoever. If the game has a ranking system ranks PD players and NonPD players seperate.

That's like saying Dark Souls would sell more if it's easier. Then it's no longer a roguelike but instead a metroidvania or adventure game.

If you want Brogue without permadeath, you simply are not correct audience for Brogue.

I do know!