what do you think of rouge-like elements in game (mainly just perma-death and procedural generation) ?
I prefer Beige-like elements. Rouge isn’t my color.
For serious though, I’m not really a fan of procedurally generated content or perma-death. I believe I’ve spoken on this before. Despite not being a fan, I recognize they have their place and deserve to exist.
I think proc-gen content, especially if it’s swapped out every time you die, results in an experience where all the content is dispensable. Like, there’s less of a shared experience between people, and on some level you may have only been lucky to win because you got an easier set of levels.
I feel like these types of games are less definitive experiences that I can finish and more just random content of questionable quality.
That and Proc-Gen, as of yet, can’t generate levels better than human creators. We already have troubles with level design. The art is dead among human designers; how could we possibly quantify our level design knowledge into precise sets of instructions for the computer to randomly vary and achieve something up to par when humans who think they know what they’re doing already have a tough time with that?
The upshot of proc-gen is of course that when you vary challenges randomly, it prevents memorization, and requires mastery of the actual skill. At least in theory. It also means that players can’t act with confidence, because they never know if they’ll be thrown a curveball, and that they can’t overcome a curveball that kills them.
Maybe a good design for a future roguelike is extra lives? And not letting you get more than 3 or 5, so if you mess up, you can learn from your mistakes when something curveballs you, but if you suck, then you gotta try again from the top, and the limit prevents you from simply stockpiling lives or grinding them.
Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints 