Level Up Your Game: The Untapped Potential of Roguelikes

In this 2015 GDC session, Riot Games' Tom Cadwell explains how design elements from roguelike games can help game designers working in multiple genres.
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[@looksintolasers]

Thinking of Roguelikes and the mastery loop reminded me of something I just read. It was about Isaac Newton learning math as a teenager... basically he took an advanced textbook and started from the beginning. When he got confused he stopped, then went back to the beginning to start over again. Got a little farther in the book each time, and eventually he finished without help from a single teacher. Sound familiar? :)

[@Randor11]

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.

[@vitriolicAmaranth]

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.)

[@revimfadli4666]

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

[@kadirlofca]

Isaac newton the founding father of videogames

[@borjadetorres7747]

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

[@ingeniousclown]

17:35 I haven't watched the whole video here, but there's a VERY important part of the negatives that he fails to mention. When it comes to negatives such as things being really hard or dying and losing progress, a good game will make it clear that it is absolutely 100% your fault that you didn't dodge well enough. Negatives that will be fixated on include stuff that makes no sense or harms you in a completely unavoidable way, which circumvents the whole "mastery" feedback loop that he mentioned earlier.

[@Blackthornprod]

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

[@henryh7140]

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

[@zig131]

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.

[@simgarfu]

*cries in Darkest Dungeon*

[@fozzythealbino]

This single comment may have just saved my current game.

[@Jaspertine]

He keeps coming back to this idea that you remember successes and forget failures. Maybe I'm just a particularly negative person, but I have a lot of very distinct memories of times that Roguelikes screwed me over.

[@Lishtenbird]

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".

[@DaBoweh]

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.

[@autofire55555]

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.)

[@NinthSettler]

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.

[@revimfadli4666]

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

[@asboll]

One of the least utilized mechanics that can add to this random drop creative experience is to give the items ways to "levelup" or develop in certain directions through how you use it. This helps when you get a bad drop and rewards you for going with that alternate route.

[@TonyTheTGR]

17:30 - It's often because when you end up with a "losing roll," the game wastes no time in dismantling the player, allowing for a near immediate "reroll" of a new game, whereas when the player is doing WELL, those instances of the game are signficantly LONGER sessions of the game, which tends to stick with them more.

[@TazarTheYootest]

Awesome talk! Those memes hurt though

[@JenSavage]

He talks a lot about champion mastery and about creativity with itemization, but I feel like there is an entirely different sort of item mastery that exists in certain games. Particularly with items for which there are multiple uses, I get a lot of satisfaction from coming up with new strategies that involve the use of that item.

[@Nevir202]

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

[@pixelpastiche]

The elements in roguelikes are even just now barely being gone into but this talk was on point. Just like 'RPG' spawned 'RPG Elements', Roguelike has spawned 'Roguelike Elements'

[@tciddados]

Never knew until this talk that the Amulet of Yendor in Nethack was also from Rogue.

[@ComboSmooth]

he brings about one of the problems i've been having with enter the gungeon. I've platinum-ed both Isaac games and i still play them here and there, but when it comes to gungeon i've felt that something was off. I enjoyed it intensely at first but my excitement to keep playing died relatively quickly. I've felt that something was wrong with the pacing of the game. Part of that is there's never a state where i feel powerful. I feel like all guns are about the same strength. I also feel that the game gimps you a little too hard when it comes to keys and ammo, which does incentivize you to use different guns but it also forces you to limp along in most cases. It also kind of forces you to clear every room in the slim slim hopes of finding ammo or a key. It really slows down the game and makes the pace feel like a slow drudge. Which doesnt mesh organically with the bullet hell intensity of the individual rooms. I guess what it comes down to is, the reward system in the game isnt rewarding enough.... on a side note, binding of isaac should steal the ideas of portals in some rooms...guess i should say that a lot of these problems might be easily fixed. they can buff certain guns or just put in new powerful guns. they can increase the number of key or they can increase ammo drops while maybe decreasing amount of chest rooms per floor.

[@isaaclee3490]

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

[@Jiyko]

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

[@TheTrueReiniat]

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.

[@pogo575]

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.

[@mygaffer]

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.

[@EscapeCondition]

That potential is sure as hell being tapped nowadays

[@mathewhosier9739]

The main reason i prefer roguelites over roguelikes is because in a roguelite you are always progressing and there is no waste of time, in roguelikes you can spend so much time on a run then die and have nothing to show for it, roguelikes just feel like they are constantly wasting my time

[@ravenswoodgames]

for good "Zero to Hero" moment examples I would suggest anyone play "out of this world" from the mid/1990's. Brutal game.

[@Roguedeus]

Very well spoken, and well organized. Will be watching this many more times to understand everything possible.

[@cheekymeeper]

You can tell this dude knows what he's talking about, and frustratingly you can also tell that this talk only barely taps into his thoughts on this subject. I'd love to have a sit down and talk to him about the "Whys" and "Hows" of some of his talk.

[@MrKraignos]

Shoot him an email =)

[@dingdong1989]

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

[@mygaffer]

I never played rogue or rogue-like games growing up, even though I was gaming back then. I have recently played some action rogue-lites, things like Spelunky, Nuclear Throne, Rogue Legacy, Enter the Gungeon, FTL, Super House of Dead Ninjas and others. I've quickly grown to love these games. I play games for their systems more than anything else, I enjoy doing math and figuring out how specific systems work and how to best utilize those for success. I enjoy mastering a system and doing a double or triple loop in a game like Nuclear Throne. I definitely feel like there are a lot of lessons that rogue-likes and rogue-lites can bring to bear in other genres of gaming. I think we've seen a little bit of this with the "X with RPG elements" trend.

[@williancruz9657]

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

[@KrullMaestaren]

I think you forgot the Diablo series...

[@williancruz9657]

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

[@KrullMaestaren]

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.

[@williancruz9657]

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.

[@kjaamor2057]

I really enjoyed this talk. If not influential then certainly predictive. It feels like there is a rather high percentage of the comments section that missed the part about using this to influence other genres.

[@VladyVeselinov]

This talk is good. I bet that even with the salt in the comment section people still walked away with useful knowledge. It's a GDC talk, there's no need to be so mean to someone who's sharing interesting ideas.

[@Windybeardgames]

Great vid, I have loved rogue likes since the first one i played "Dragon Crystal" on the Sega Game Gear. Loved that game so much.

[@plisskenarmitage2075]

I don't think I've ever been excited for a Lifetime special until now.

[@baronvonbeandip]

17:51 In the practice of a thing, you never remember the reps it took to get to a satisfactory level. You remember the achievement.

[@Daz30]

Any chance of making auto-captions enabled on this video?

[@Azeralas]

Linley Henzell's Dungeon Crawl, Ancient Domains of Mystery, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

[@jRsqILVOY]

Which roguelikes do best represent the values mentioned here?

[@charliericker274]

Dead Cells takes a lot of this advice to heart it seems.

[@johnsanko4136]

In the first five minutes he mentions Rogue, Angband, and Hack. Dude is literally talking my youth. All I need is a Larn mention and we're brothers.

[@randomshit6539]

For anyone seeing this: Since this came out, a lot of great rogue-likes were released. Most of the (in my opinion) top 3: Binding of Isaac with the latest (and presumably last) DLC Repentance, Dead Cells and Hades. Also Slay the Spire.

[@ciscornBIG]

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

[@randomshit6539]

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

[@ciscornBIG]

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

[@deyahatesyou]

@@ciscornBIG ciscornbig? pedant. hotel? trivago

[@ciscornBIG]

@@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.

[@thehint1954]

I still play angband now!

[@NodRodge]

Surprised they didnt mention Risk of Rain while talking about roguelikes with Multiplayer at the end. Awesome video btw.. thanks for the upload

[@williamanderson7271]

I loved playing it on the Atari ST

[@ArabicNameGuy]

47:21 "Venice can't expand" this is why Europa Universalis remains superior

[@greyreynyn]

43:06 ... what was your criticism? you just explained what was good about aram..

[@voltcorp]

Very good talk, but could easily have been 20min long. I feel like the description of the roguelike patterns was the only "information heavy" section of it.

[@voltcorp]

hahahahaha

[@silicalnz]

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

[@rollbotswell123]

I never thought about "Mastery"

[@Sleepiful]

Did the soil microbiology talk ever happen? I can't find it anywhere lol

[@Simon-ow6td]

I feel that most roguelikes are too scary in the beginning. As a new player, I often get scared off, feeling paralysed by a sense that I don't understand what consequences my choices have or even understanding what I am doing wrong when I make the wrong choices. If you feel required to constantly read of site wikias for your first 20+ hours just to attempt to learn the game, then I think the game has gone too far. But maybe that is just me.

[@quantumpotato]

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.

[@nobodywantsthisfeature]

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

[@LabrnMystic]

I realize it's a verbal Tic, and I appreciate the information passed on in this lecture; for anyone who is going to talk, please use something besides "you know" as your verbal tic. I'll even take a bunch of 'UMs' and 'like' over it. I haven't played some of the Champions he mentioned in League of Legends, and I haven't played too much civilization, so to keep hearing you know when I don't know is very annoying. That said, play FTL if you enjoy roguelikes. I have yet to find a Sci-Fi roguelike to replace it. It is the second most played game in my library. I believe over a hundred hours

[@greyreynyn]

26:06 Players only feel good if they make the right decision lol, I feel fucking stupid when I take the cursed chest and die 30 seconds later.

[@michaelrishot1839]

They need to evolve a rogue game into one with infinite potential that allows players after permadeath to be able to use something from the last run in the dungeon to be able to slightly hack the code, even add new lines throughout gameplay for the characters themselves and even the enemies in such a way that it starts off with one level of difficulty and upon death players have the potential to either make it easier or more difficult, even both simultaneously giving players leeway to not only be slightly op, but to make the enemies, and even certain traps or obstacles more difficult. just a thought.

[@quantumpotato]

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

[@true_xander]

Just opened my Steam to check my FTL hours and stumbled upon 134.3 - while I expected ~20. Surprising fact!

[@0hate9]

In the Binding of Isaac example he shows, there is actually a "best answer", which would be to take the item on the right (damage upgrade) and then the item on the left (sets your max health to 1 and gives you 8 extra lives), because in that instance, you can get both upgrades at a reduced cost to your health.

[@squib308]

only 30-40% of the crowd has played a Roguelike?! I'm blown away

[@stucktj]

before this day I didn't know that there was a creepy boyfriend meme. I feel like I missed out on life.

[@xiiitalons]

I'm just going to put this here at the 0:01 mark, before I continue watching this to motivate myself while I draw some more 2d assets for my own "perpetual roguelike", just because it's a roguelike doesn't mean that the player needs to start from scratch every single time. Sometimes making it an option to pick up part of the way into where they left off, or at least keep their equipment and sandbox materials to an extent will actually allow the game to go a lot further than making the player feel like their little sibling stepped on the reset button on a Sega Genesis in the middle of a long Gadget Twins run! Hahaha

[@faterlandas]

DWARF FORTRESS was not mentioned??? It's like talk about the rest and do not say what number one is :D DF is absolute king of roguelike games

[@lotrbuilders5041]

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

[@greyreynyn]

14:50 half the time progress is just striking it lucky with RNG

[@zig131]

30:00 Personally I am against game mechanics that trade your short-term survivial for long-term power as the CORRECT decision is always to take the late-game power. It ends up being a punishment for new, un-confident players as they will naturally feel safer to avoid these options only for getting to late game being nigh impossible without them. I haven't played Binding of Issac but it's an issue with Slay the Spire. At campsites you get a choice between healing a small amount or upgrading a card. Upgrading cards is a significant power boost but when you're low-on health the temptation is to heal so you can keep on fighting but that's always the wrong choice.

[@tsummerhays]

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.

[@QcChopper]

"Be cautious of mixing in and out of session progress" I totally agree, that's why I hate Rogue Legacy, it could have been a pretty awesome Roguelite but they had to make it a grindfest RPG-like. Permanent out-of-session levelling-up is as anti-roguelike a mechanic as can be IMO, and this single-handedly killed my interest for this game. I have never played it again after beating it once, and I have absolutely no interest of ever doing so, which is sad because it easily could have exceptional replay value if the game rewarded skill rather than mindless stat grinding.

[@Glottris]

"you know"

[@jesuslovespee]

Glottris umm...like

[@igortakesabride1139]

Telengard!

[@Aboveup]

Somehow this deepends my appreciation for Towerclimb, one of the harder least typical "roguelike" style roguelikes.

[@fwostyshrakes1870]

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.

[@BenMakesGames]

really good speaker; super informational.

[@FeelingShred]

I never knew about Rogue, started playing it, hoooly crap, I'm addicted... Deleting saves is bullshit though... Is there any modified version(s) that gets rid of the deleting saves part? (shout out to ADG channel's "Shovelware Diggers" for letting me know about all of this)

[@NinthSettler]

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

[@FeelingShred]

@@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.

[@stumbling]

Stop with the memes! Humour in a talk is fantastic… *if it's relevant*. Random memes are garbage.

[@methodtomadnessstudios2632]

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.

[@midorixiv]

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

[@josh2kdev86]

Thank you!

[@FusionDeveloper]

I hate when people use memes in anything educational.

[@xblowsmokex]

rtyrty12 DO A BARREL ROLL

[@ipodblade]

i cant wait to one day give my talk at gdc. I havent even made my game yet but talks like these really open my mind up

[@iLiokardo]

mastery yada yada. cool.

[@RUdigitized]

The crack in my screen makes it look like he has an eye patch

[@0xffox]

I guess this guy contractually obligated to ... you know ... not mentioning DOTA.

[@slendi9623]

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[@keiyangoshin3650]

How did Hades do on this category as per this talk? I’m biased so I’d say it’s perfect. 🤣😋

[@thesvenni]

Speaking of rogue-like's.. The most underrated one is definitely Utopia 9, it has absolutely everything, a great nemesis system, 3d graphics and awesome weapons :)

[@RmFrZQ]

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

[@heraschade7981]

it's so ugly and unappealing tho..

[@comical9587]

Y'know.

[@missfortunex8059]

may I translate it into Chinese？

[@MikeCampo]

yes

[@Misa_Susaki]

NetHack is daddy

[@derekfrost8991]

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

[@NinthSettler]

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.

[@Misa_Susaki]

@@NinthSettler I disagree. NetHack rewards careful play.

[@emberizumirose9343]

Breath of the Wild has all those Roguelike patterns, but nobody would call it a roguelike because it lacks the procedual quasi-randomness and you have game saves, no real perma death forcing you to redo from start.

[@ss-oq9pc]

I think he needed to pee during the Q&A at the end. lol. Good session though.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

Surprised they missed _"Diablo 1"_ -- one of the earliest graphical MUDS that was clearly Rogue inspired.

[@cdarklock]

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

[@MichaelPohoreski]

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

[@MichaelPohoreski]

@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.

[@cdarklock]

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.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

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

[@GuiltyBystander8]

Where are Rip and MYK?

[@MrSongbird]

you know

[@koalabrownie]

Not all players ignore the negatives of these games. Having played a number of these rogue likes, have to say I'm sick of procedural generation. Sick of spending 80% of my time fighting against the same beginning enemies in the same beginning areas and progressing into new areas only to get immediately killed because the enemies are so lethal and the player's health so unforgiving that the only way to learn is to die and reach the area again and again in some slow grind in not only skill but familiarity with the game. In Nuclear Throne for example, after the Big Dog Boss you progress into a darkened level where crystals snipe you from offscreen with laser beams. First time I got there, before I even knew what the hell was going on my guy was dead. And after hundreds of runs, the overall game experience is like gray sludge. Nothing memorable about any one run. Some people who defend these sorts of games say that the reason they're cool is because you could theoretically finish it first time. To which say, yeah, bullshit. Tired of these games. When I play indie game, I'll prefer ones where the devs actually put in some work and crafted some MEMORABLE levels.

[@tomatoslav]

During the QA, why is he interrupting the askers before they can finish? Rude.

[@antipolitics]

Why does everyone have to tell a god damn story when they ask a question?

[@theaddictofgaming9174]

I've always thought Dark Souls would be amazing as a rouguelike. The only issue is losing the metroidvania elements.

[@quantumpotato]

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

[@hitmanbarnes6335]

You know..................... no i don't i cant read you mind.

[@MuradBeybalaev]

Mario. Mario in a talk about roguelikes. *What?!* Just for the record, it's not required by law to mention Mario in every GDC talk. Was he forced into making this segment by Riot's PR department or something? I'm quite lost.

[@gsestream]

are you bound by law

[@lol3xtrach3353]

Well this unironically aged well

[@greyreynyn]

29:12 idk.. maybe it just means gambling isnt for me but it doesn't seem so rewarding to take your OP gear but run out of fuel and die or make it to the boss but die because you don't have the right gear

[@keerokamiya9126]

36:00 Uh Dark souls is nothing like God of War, at least not the old god of war games.

[@mansuralmutawa-9824]

10:41 "learmening"

[@komodoentertainment2938]

hard to follow, i still don't know what the final point was...sort of "try to utilize what your doing as best as you can" or "don't limit yourself to limiting stuff" I just don't see a point to this entire hour of rambling about opinions there was so little fact and example. I took nothing away from this =/

[@CvnDqnrU]

neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrds!!!

[@defnlife1683]

Damn, This is why Diablo 3 sucks and Dungeon Crawl, Nethack & Angband are so much fun. I love Darkest Dungeon with permadeath. He’s right, you learn a lot from roguelikes. What we learn with each playthrough goes beyond what we learn in guides.

[@allseeingsage214]

Roguelikes are now over-tapped imo...

[@sneakyturtle6143]

Excellence talk sir, but to be honest league balance is very broken.

[@idklol4197]

so this is the video that ruined indie games

[@gtetrakai]

Over an hour talk and the fundamental concept wasn't even discussed. All of those modern examples of the genre he talked about were rogueLITE games and not rogueLIKE. There is a difference and it's sad that they chose someone with zero experience with developing for either of those genres to talk about them.

[@dieberliner1576]

Honestly, most of this philosophy is based on artificial difficulty that derives excitement through the "adrenaline rush" of button-mashing rather than eliciting any kind of emotional response.

[@gtetrakai]

Current Me: hey, this popped on my recommended feed, but I already disliked it in the past and can’t remember why. Let’s give it a shot and see why. 30min in: oh, that’s why....moving on and leaving it disliked.

[@Schmidtelpunkt]

There is a golden rule when it comes to rogue-likes, which can when applied early can increase the quality of every game, independent of genre and budget: You consider designing a rogue-like game? Don't.

[@vladimir_ckau]

Most "water-ish" and empty talk is sure things come from Riot Games dude, lol.

[@eugenstimac113]

did you even listen to the talk :D?

[@sergeys7771]

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

[@RuneKatashima]

coherent sentences please

[@SJNaka101]

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.

[@RuneKatashima]

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

[@MegaGameCore]

This talk is pretty bad imo. His messages are not clear enough, he speaks pretty monotone, his memes are unfitting and he is asuming everyone there has played the games he is talking about

[@ridlr9299]

Great talk overall but it was really stupid when you said, “Procedural makes it less random.”

[@baronvonbeandip]

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.

[@ridlr9299]

@@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.

[@photoallergic]

I hate roguelikes. At least the indie-roguelikes of today. I get it, you only have enough manpower for a usable game engine and not enough content for 20+ hours, but even the successful rogue-likes like FTL are frustrating because of plain impossible rolls. Never had that kind of frustration with nethack.

[@Schmidtelpunkt]

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.

[@crimsun7186]

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.

[@kirby6611]

It’s hard to take him seriously knowing he is a Riot designer

[@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii]

I don't understand half of the babble. It sounds more like a video game player opinions than anything useful for development.

[@thatfield977]

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.

[@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii]

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.

[@idsamuel]

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

[@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii]

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.

[@idsamuel]

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.

[@northy179]

Some interesting points but why so opinionated? This talk was a wasted opportunity.

[@olivierlapointe6414]

Do you 'know' how annoying it is to hear someone say 'you know' every 12-15 seconds ? Well, its really annoying and it breaks the flow of whatever, you know, are saying. Because you know isnt a magic expression to fill blanks or lack of knowledge of what to say. So know you know that you shouldnt say you know at whatever next talk, you know, may happen.~~~WHAT~~~! (This is actually valid for everything else; dont repeat anything) "hums" are just the next worse thing. If i had Thanos magic stony glove, you know, the one that erases 1 out of 2 persons in the entire univers by just snapping 2 fingers, i would use on this speech to remove all the you know, which may ammount to half of everything... Shame for this talk :S

[@bobfunk5055]

I do know!

[@DaBoweh]

I've been going back through a bunch of these GDC talks and this has got to be the worst that they've ever put up, my god. The speaker babbles and mumbles incoherently, encourages developers to play more games across genres to educate them on the design before admitting he's never played the most prominent and wildly successful title in recent years in the genre his talk is about, spends way too much time on anecdotes to other games he clearly hasn't spent as much time with as he claims (he refers to Dark Souls as single player at one point), and overall doesn't seem to say anything the audience should not already know. The talk should have been about the singular lesson he dwells on far too long, which is that a hardcore presentation in which a game sets the player up for failure makes them less frustrated when failure occurs. Then, those roguelikes and Souls-likes can be your examples and not Civ for some reason, and you can finish the talk in half the time without all that extra rambling about nothing. Call it 'The Untapped Potential of a Hardcore Shell'. You can even work in LoL if Riot wanted you too that badly, and talk about how a reputation for a steep learning curve in an online environment can foster a similar effect, but how that has to be delicately balanced to avoid outward hostility to new players and possible solutions, something you'd think Riot would be trying to figure out on a daily basis. Then he might actually have something of value to say.

[@AishaDracoGryph]

The untapped potential in Rouge likes is optional permadeath. There is absolutely no valid reason to refuse to make permadeath optional. Rouge likes would sell so much more copies if they only had an option to play without permadeath.

[@heraschade7981]

isnt that just removing difficulty?

[@AishaDracoGryph]

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.

[@RuneKatashima]

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.

[@machinedgod]

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