Ooh, I love a good semantic argument about the definition of “rogue-likes”. Now I can roll out my “three Ps of rogue-likes” schpiel. Modern rogue-likes tend to be characterized by Permadeath to instill a sense of risk, metaProgression to offset the frustration of permadeath, and Procedural generation to encourage exploration.
Massive Chalice is first and foremost a tactical combat game, but it certainly has elements of rogue-likes. But since it’s a tactics game abotu teams of characters, I’d say the permadeath owes more to XCOM ironman than rogue-likes. Also, the procedural generation isn’t about exploration at all, which is the function it serves in rogue-likes. I wouldn’t personally call Massive Chalice a rogue-like, since I think it would be misleading. It also dilutes the usefulness of the term “rogue-like”. But it certainly has some elements in common.
BTW, bumping this thread was a jerk move. I thought maybe Massive Chalice had gotten new DLC or something…
Fair enough. I’m equally pretty sure that I played it with permadeath, but don’t recall if it was the default or an option on starting a game or what. But yeah, if you played it with reloads, then that’s a non-roguelike mode – the “I’ve only got one shot at this” feeling is fundamental.
Nothing to do with difficulty per se. There are very easy roguelikes (Dungeons of Dredmor, most of the Mystery Dungeon series) and extremely difficult non-roguelikes. But as a marketing term for “a game that relies on procedural content and permadeath rather than hand-crafted content and reloading saves”, sure. And that’s kind of a mouthful, so it’s nice to have a shorthand for it!
On each of these three, I beg to quibble!
Permadeath: Agree with the concept, but the label ‘permadeath’ undersells it. It’s the broader idea that time flows forward, and that whatever happened, happened. All consequences, of which death is just one, are permanent.
Procedural Generation: Yes, essential, but I don’t buy the idea that the purpose is exploration (at least in the geographic sense). It’s not about seeing what’s over the next hill or around the next corner for its own sake. Rather, it’s all about the mechanics – presenting a novel arrangement of familiar pieces (monsters, items, spells, terrain features, etc.) for the player to respond to, and hopefully have some interesting decisions to make. And that functions similarly in Massive Chalice as in any classical roguelike: you’ve got a unique collection of resources at your disposal to fight a unique arrangement of monsters.
Metaprogression: Yes it’s now common, and you’re right that it serves to offset frustration, but I’d be very leery of characterizing the genre by it. It’s by no means universal even among modern commercial roguelikes, and it’s almost completely alien to traditional roguelikes.
Well, it’s a useful label because it’s almost always related to the player getting killed. The concept is that you don’t reload upon failure, which is the traditional model of videogame progression. Keep trying until you succeed (i.e. don’t die). The common element among rogue-likes is to build failure into the design. You describe this as expressing the broader idea that “time flows and whatever happens, happens” but the difference between how rogue-likes do it and how other videogames – where things that happen also happen :) – do it is a mechanical design choice to make the failstate a part of the gameplay. In other words, I think you’re articulating a theme, but I’m talking about a specific mechanical design choice common among rogue-likes.
Plus, what you’re saying doesn’t begin with the letter “P”, so you’d mess up my whole “Three P’s of Rogue-Likes” title slide if I ever put this together as a Powerpoint presentation.
Well, aren’t those mechanics inextricably tied to the level design? Monsters, items, treasure, traps, and terrain features are all part of the procedural generation, right? So when you open that door to that room where you’ve never been, it will be something different every time. Every room is someplace new, and because it was uniquely generated for you, it feels like exploration. It sounds like you don’t like the word exploration because you think geography is limiting. Yet the literal basis for rogue-likes is geography!
But, yeah, combinatorial toyboxes like you’re talking about are an integral part of any game with replay value. It’s just that rogue-likes express it largely with level design, whether you characterize it as exploration or variety or novel arrangement of familiar pieces.
But we’re not talking about traditional rogue-likes, which is why I specified modern rogue-likes! And it seems to me metaprogression is pretty much universal among modern rogue-likes. Which ones don’t have it?
I still think it undersells the consequences that can happen short of death, and the need to accept and live with choices and results that you might regret. Picking one upgrade over another, angering shopkeepers, using up a consumable that you wish you had back, etc.
But I concede that even if I had a pithy replacement term at the ready, it wouldn’t have a hope of supplanting “permadeath” in the common lexicon, so I’ll let that windmill stand.
I agree with basically everything you’re saying about procedural generation here, and with conceptualizing “exploration” as exploring a mechanical possibility space rather than a physical space. But then I can’t square it with your earlier comment about Massive Chalice not using procedural generation for exploration.
Each battle is a procedural arrangement of terrain, monsters, features, etc., and the characters and equipment you have to fight them with are heavily influenced by random chance acting on your own previous choices. So it’s a new complex mechanical puzzle to explore. I don’t see a major distinction between that and entering a new room in a classical roguelike, or being presented with a new unique grid of cards in Solitairica, a new enemy with a fresh shuffle of your deck in Dream Quest, or a familiar hand-crafted map distinguished by a new arrangement of enemies on it in Into the Breach.
In all cases, what’s important is the arrangement of mechanical elements in a way to pose interesting questions to the player, not whether there’s a meaningful sense of “exploring” a place.
Spelunky has only the barest hint of it (cosmetic characters, and shortcuts that are useful for practicing new areas but ignored when you’re playing for real). I could be overlooking something and am not going to fire all of these up to confirm, but I don’t recall a significant metaprogression aspect in Hoplite, Depths of Tolagal, Enyo, NEO Scavenger, 868-HACK, Bionic Dues, or Unexplored. You’re right that they’re very common and worth discussing, but I can’t see them as necessary components, especially since they’re such a departure from the long history of classical roguelikes, and thus a distraction from a unified conception of the classical and modern branches.
For me, it’s enough to say that the essential nature of roguelikes is in procedural generation and permanent consequences, principles that are pretty mechanics-agnostic and don’t dictate any particular genre. Classical roguelikes apply those to a single-character dungeon-crawling RPG foundation, while developers now are applying them to a limitless range of host genres.
It doesn’t seem like Massive Chalice does Ironman by default… so it’s essentially equivalent to X-COM’s structure. One can’t really say that’s inspired by roguelikes, right?
So again, I described their game as they described their game, literally in their Kickstarter campaign and their later material for the game. They said they drew from rogue-like games that they loved which meant the content in their game was modular and randomized. It’s not a adjective I just applied at whim, and I just said it to let other people know that I enjoyed this game despite avoiding rogue-like games in the past, so if anyone was on the fence because of that they should consider taking @BloodyBattleBrain up on his offer. It’s a great game.
This was never meant to turn into some heated discussion, but @LeeAbe took strong issue with the wordage in my recommendation.
I’d say it’s a case of convergent evolution rather than inspiration, especially as the old games didn’t officially support or design around ironman mode. But I think that Massive Chalice did take a lot of inspiration from various roguelikes and apply it to the X-Com template, by doing things like reducing the campaign playtime, reducing reliance on set-piece missions, more emphasis on random events, limiting characters’ lifespan, etc., as well as of course explicitly designing for ironman mode.
Also, the discussion on metaprogression in the Below thread is germane to this discussion.
I’d agree with the general sentiment there, against systems where the player gets steadily stronger by accumulating resources that persist through deaths, before they can eventually win. That just turns into dull grinding, and it was my chief gripe with Rogue Legacy, though there have been plenty of other less egregious offenders. On the other hand, I’m all in favor of metaprogression systems that are about unlocking variety and complexity rather than raw power, like Into the Breach.
“It’s a roguelike! Tee hee! It has five concurrent stremars!”
“Shut yer fuckin hole. Rogue was a ‘roguelike’. Just because your latest wonder has randomized procedural content and semi-permadeath doesn’t mean it’s fuckin Crawl Stone Soup.”
I see we’re all talking about the same thing in multiple threads. And the conclusion we’ve reached is that Rogue Legacy was ultimately kind of bad in some ways.
Running with this weird take let me add Massive Chalice is a timelike roguelike rather than a spacelike roguelike if it’s roguelike anything… but it’s probably misleading to call it such.
One thing I remember disliking was that enemy pods triggered on movement and so we’re open to cheesing, and forced a move slowly and over watch approach.
I thought that was kind of cool, if I sent someone out that was stealth’d I’d know where the enemy was, so I was rewarded for creating and maintaining blood lines that included that ability because in a battle finding out where the enemy was could be accomplished by using one of your guys as recon. Much as I do the entire campaign in Xom2 with reapers (who are on every away mission I send unless they’re injured or tired).
Also, once triggered, I thought it was rather more clever than xcom in the design of what those enemies did, which rather more often than I planned for included flanking around on me.
I did the stealth thing too. I wasn’t going to go one space at a time and triple the games length just to make battles easier. I suppose that was an option.
Firing up an oldie but goodie for another run and see if I can keep the bloodlines going for 300 years!
I’m starting the story is 50 years in giving me sufficient time to get the main lines going.
The luck of the draw for classes at the start of the campaign was hunters, so that was the first keep for House Aventyr:
The second keep was built for House Arvid, who are currently a sub-class of alchemists called brewtalists (regardless the name, these are our bomb throwers):
The third keep to be stood up was for House Isletto, who currently are a sub-class of caberjack called blastercappers, these are our melee specialists:
And lastly here’s the map of the realm as it currently stands. We’ve got 3 keeps with bloodlines going and a 4th in the making w/ a sagewright (research house) built on a riskier outer region because of research bonus I couldn’t resist. It’s already taken one cadence hit!
So far the focus has been on getting keeps up, with that done research can focus on weapons, armor (better equipment to make heroes more effective against the cadence in battle) and researching the crucible (basically a building that passes on personality traits of the assigned hero and speeds up XP for all heroes.
That’s about it for the moment, should be fun. Having fun already in fact. ;)
I’ve been looking forward to a replay of Massive Chalice, mainly because Wildermyth had me thinking about it a lot. But I’m still going strong with Wildermyth, so my Massive Chalice revisit has been on the back burner.
And, lucky for me, now I’m in no hurry because someone who’s AARs I like is playing it and hopefully embarking on a long and satisfying AAR. Looking forward to hearing more about the Aventyr, Arvid, and Isletto families!
