When I was playing roguelikes my decisions/dilemmas were like that:

...

As you see, the combat RNG was not an issue here at all Never.

Ah, I see (and thank you for the explanation). ^_^

ADOM - some quests were time based ...

Yeah, I was reading up on ADOM as a result of this thread, and that's one thing that put me off of trying it. I'm not a huge fan of time restrictions in missions. :/

(Shadowgate I'm playing in spite of the timer, and even there--in an otherwise excellent game, I feel--I'm finding the timer annoying.)

I mean, really, when I see games where you move around some dungeon quaffing potions and killing monsters and claiming it's anything like the old roguelikes...

-The old roguelikes other than Rogue itself, of course, which is pretty much exactly that. :P

(But yes; as you've already pointed out, Rogue is perhaps not the best touchstone.)

That being said, note you have not instantly recoginzed "Crawl", one of the best & most popular roguelikes ever

In my defence, you did identify it by a single word, which also happens to both be part of the term for the general gameplay type (dungeon crawling) and the full name of another game that came out very recently. :P

In short, different experiences and social circles result in different associations. Similarly, as a player of adventure games and sometime-frequenter of adventure-centric fora, abbreviations like GK, KQ, and QfG are all familiar to me, but to non-adventure players they may well be pretty opaque. I also seem to be more likely to read "FF" as "Fighting Fantasy" rather than "Final Fantasy".

... some watered down casual "roguelike" that is stretching the genre to the limits like "Diablo" ...

Ooh, wow, that sounds like something to not say in the wrong circles. ;P

(I haven't played Diablo myself, as far as I recall, so while I disagree on the assessment based on my impression of the game--it doesn't look "casual" to me at all--I'm not upset.)

A player who finds NetHack too complex and Rogue too random is on the wrong side of the learning curve and possibly unaware that there is one; and of course a player who considers the threat of dying of bad luck a "bug" rather than a thrilling motivation to manage risk shouldn't play roguelike games.

... That's a little insulting. It might not be that I simply have different taste to you?

Yeah, I was reading up on ADOM as a result of this thread, and that's one thing that put me off of trying it. I'm not a huge fan of time restrictions in missions. :/

Yeah, one don't like timed quests, one permadeatth, one... and that's how we end up with these watered down modern "roguelikes" :D But in the meantime the whole charm of roguelikes disappear as well and it becomes trivialized to "hit a monster, retreat, quaff a potion".

In my defence, you did identify it by a single word, which also happens to both be part of the term for the general gameplay type (dungeon crawling) and the full name of another game that came out very recently.

I'm still not forgiving your blasphemy :D

(I haven't played Diablo myself, as far as I recall, so while I disagree on the assessment based on my impression of the game--it doesn't look "casual" to me at all--I'm not upset.)

Note on Diablo, in Diablo I they had Cain in town who was indentifying items (clearly a leftover from roguelikes genre), while in Diablo II they removed it (which was good, unidentified items make no sense in a hack & slash like Diablo, it has no funtion it has in roguelikes). Also, they removed saves and made free respawning + autosave (which was a genious move, because on one hand they removed yet another leftowers of roguelikes - saving - while making it also both more casual and more permedeatish (you could not save anymore and therefore savescumming was removed). They did key and good changes with the successor.

A player who finds NetHack too complex and Rogue too random is on the wrong side of the learning curve and possibly unaware that there is one; and of course a player who considers the threat of dying of bad luck a "bug" rather than a thrilling motivation to manage risk shouldn't play roguelike games.

... That's a little insulting. It might not be that I simply have different taste to you?

Well, in that particular case I had to agree. I would not word it that way, but the premise is correct. Roguelikes (the old ones) are specific ones and if you can't handle their characteristics you should not play these :) Threat of dying was essential and really, occassional "bad luck" that killed you was of no importance (the critical part here is that roguelikes are short, max 2 days to finish it, so early bad luck is not important, you just start over).

But in the meantime the whole charm of roguelikes disappear as well and it becomes trivialized to "hit a monster, retreat, quaff a potion".

Are "traditional" roguelikes no longer being made at all? If they are still being made, then surely this is simply diversification of the genre, which to my mind is--all other things being equal--a positive thing. If they're not, and there's still an audience for them (as seems to be the case), then someone will likely step in and create new entries.

Note on Diablo...

...

They did key and good changes with the successor.

Ah, that's good to read. I suppose that it makes sense, too: the first game clove perhaps too closely to the root for what it was trying to do, while the second had the benefit of the first as a reference and an example of what did and didn't work.

Roguelikes (the old ones) are specific ones and if you can't handle their characteristics you should not play these ...

To some degree I agree, but I see a difference between claiming that people who don't like a given gameplay element might want to consider avoiding games with that element (there are exceptions, I feel, as with me and Shadowgate), and claiming that someone who doesn't like a gameplay element is unaware of how the game works. The former makes sense; the latter I find both incorrect and insulting.

Further, why not diversify the genre so that players who like some parts but not others have games in the genre to play?

Regarding Nethack's complexity in specific, it might be worth noting that I don't play many Open World/Sandbox games either; once again, having too many options can, for some, be a bit much.

Threat of dying was essential ...

I have no problem with the threat of death, I believe. I've died often enough in games. I still haven't finished Delver. It's the specific manner in which death is dealt out in the games that I've been discussing here (and which you and others have indicated isn't prominent in all roguelikes) that I dislike.

Further, why not diversify the genre so that players who like some parts but not others have games in the genre to play?

How? I'm quite intertested in that. But personally I can't think how it could be done...

I have no problem with the threat of death

It's not threat of death. It's more like death is imminent :)

Note I never finished any rouguelike in my life. That's the sad characteristic of roguelikes, some people are skilled enough to finish these and some are not :( It's frustrating :D I have played these soo much, I can't blame bad luck or something :) It's my skill/focus/whatever.

That's where I find RPGs nicer, eventually you will finish an RPG, it will take longer, you will do it in a poor style, you will not uncover many secrets or finish many side quests. But if you want to, you can finish an RPG even if you are a moron. Some trick with roguelikes wont work (and that's why I have not finished any :D)

Anyway, you don't really play roguelikes "to win", these are designed so you die. And the question is when you die (score). People who finish roguelikes (after many years) are probably very scarce (except Angband which is a grind feast :D).

There's also a principle that I think can be attributed to Michael Brough (it's there in ZAGA-33 and 868-HACK), that dungeon randomization should already be enough to guarantee variety. You can have completely deterministic combat and still have every battle turn out differently, because they all start from different initial conditions. (I think these two games still use randomness to determine enemy movement, but even this could be made deterministic.) Hoplite is like this too, plus no random enemy movement if I recall. So it's all just dungeon randomization + the player's input that determines the result of the game.

(I have a roguelike idea in my "idea folder" where it's *only* the player's input that matters. The player starts in a large, mostly empty room, and the dungeon is progressively generated offscreen using the player's first N movements as input.)

But that's still "random" - I mean yes, strictly it's deterministic, but that's true of all the random number generators in the games being discussed, they're pseudo-random rather than random. Even if it's seeded from player movement, I would still call it random if I can't reasonably predict the outcome from the inputs.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're describing?

Yes, that's still random, of course, although I'd also be throwing out the seed after about 16 turns and the rest would be deterministic. I didn't mean to say it wasn't random at all (but I can see how I implicated that), just that there'd be no external randomness source, as a one-further step of the ZAGA -> Hoplite -> ??? evolution.

But yes, you wouldn't be able to predict from moving NNENNEEEESEEEENN that there would be a lake twenty screens to the south and on the west shore of it a treasure chest with a hat inside. (But anyone who moved that way would find that chest; the 16 turns would just decide which of 4 billion dungeons you're exploring today.)

I have no problem with the threat of death, I believe. I've died often enough in games. I still haven't finished Delver. It's the specific manner in which death is dealt out in the games that I've been discussing here (and which you and others have indicated isn't prominent in all roguelikes) that I dislike.

I think what happens when success/failure rolls are not encapsulated inside any sort of interesting choice mechanic (say, Push Your Luck), is that it leads to situations in which death can't really be traced back to a choice by the player, and such situations are failure-without-learning, which is no fun. Learning-through-failure is a kind of fun, and it's a big part of the fun of roguelikes. "Oh, well now I know a little bit more about how to survive; I'll make better choices next time", and that's motivation to dive right back into it, to utilize what you've learned. But when you fail just because you rolled poorly a bunch of times, there's not that same motivation to start again.

How? I'm quite intertested in that. But personally I can't think how it could be done...

First, to avoid potential misunderstanding, I'd like to clarify what I mean by "diversification": I'm not referring to changing the "traditional" form of the genre, but rather to creating new offshoot forms. Similarly, the goal isn't to create new forms that would likely appeal to fans of the "traditional" form, because they already have something that appeals to them; the goal, instead, is to create forms that appeal to those who are put off bye some elements of the genre, but might otherwise enjoy the genre.

By analogy, consider the genre as an open-source project; diversification is then the creation of forks of that project by those who want to take it in a different direction. The original project is still there, but now there are new branches, making the project useful to a more diverse audience.

That said, there are a few extant branches of the roguelike tree: "roguelites", for example, are perhaps a family of the more extreme branches.

The TV Tropes article on roguelikes describes the genre as having four branches at the moment:

• "Hacklikes" (those that descend from NetHack, and perhaps the most direct descendants of Rogue itself)
• "*bands" (those influenced by Angband)
• "Coffeebreak Roguelikes" (the term that they use for roguelites)
• "Experimental Roguelikes" (which, to be honest, seems like a catch-all for those individual games that haven't spawned a full branch)

Thus the genre already has some diversity.

However, this doesn't really address the specific type of diversification that we're talking about here, since we're talking about combat mechanics in "traditional" roguelikes.

First of all, as this thread has pointed out, I'm not terribly experienced in roguelikes, so I'm perhaps not the best person to provide a suggestion. Nevertheless, I do have an idea, albeit an untested, slightly off-the-top-of-my-head one:

Since the choice of platform will likely affect our choices, but is otherwise not terribly important to our purposes here, I'll select the platform on which I've been playing Pixel Dungeon and Delver: an Android 'phone.

Since the goal is a game that is very much a traditional roguelike, but with combat that someone like me might enjoy, we'll start with a very traditional base: the player explores randomly-generated dungeons, collects loot, and encounters randomly-placed enemies. There's some degree of levelling, but that's not the focus of the discussion right now, so we'll leave that nebulous. The gameplay is turn-based.

So far, so traditional, I feel.

The difference is in the combat: instead of to-hit rolls and random damage, we'll use a skill-based minigame. Since enemies are fairly frequent, we'll choose something quick. The specific choice isn't important for the purposes of this thread, and may be something that calls for experimentation. For now I'm going to crib from a recent thread in this forum, and select an oscillating "accuracy"-style bar: simply put, this is a bar in which a "target" location of some size is located, its position randomised; an indicator drifts back and forth at some speed, and the player is tasked with tapping the screen when the indicator is within the target location.

Combat would then alternate between tapping to hit and tapping to defend, with success at the former resulting in damage dealt, and failure at the latter resulting in damage taken. Since we want this to be quick, an easy, weak enemy (a rat, for example) might have just one health-point and have broad, easy-to-hit target regions; on the other hand, a tough enemy (a dragon, for example) might have a fair few health-points, while an agile enemy (a bat, say) might have small, hard-to-hit target regions.

Further, weapons would affect the minigame: swords might be the "base" weapon, offering no changes; a bow might give you one free attack before you have to start defending; a mace might do additional damage, but reduce the size of the target area (being a slower weapon); a great cleaver might do double damage, but have a faster indicator (being a clumsy weapon); and so on. More powerful weapons, or perhaps character levels, might affect the size of the target regions, or the speed of the indicator.

Thus combat comes to rely on player skill, rather than die-rolls, while (hopefully) remaining challenging. It's a form that might not appeal to those who enjoy "traditional" roguelikes, but again, it's not targeted at that audience.

It's frustrating

This is not a feature that I often look for in a game. :P

Challenging, yes; frustrating, seldom.

But if you want to, you can finish an RPG even if you are a moron.

Perhaps adventure games might be a better comparison: barring those that have ridiculous puzzle-solutions, and ignoring the presence of walkthroughs, hints and so on, failure or success comes down primarily to the player's ability to solve the puzzles presented. Thus such a game (well-made) can be both challenging and fair.

I think what happens when success/failure rolls are not encapsulated inside any sort of interesting choice mechanic (say, Push Your Luck), is that it leads to situations in which death can't really be traced back to a choice by the player, and such situations are failure-without-learning, which is no fun. Learning-through-failure is a kind of fun, and it's a big part of the fun of roguelikes. "Oh, well now I know a little bit more about how to survive; I'll make better choices next time", and that's motivation to dive right back into it, to utilize what you've learned. But when you fail just because you rolled poorly a bunch of times, there's not that same motivation to start again.

Indeed, I think that this is my experience.

That said, it seems clear that there are those who do enjoy such gameplay, and, from some of the responses given in this thread, I think that I now better understand why they do (which was, as I recall, the main point of starting this thread). If I'm correct, then it's an experience akin to intelligent gambling: the odds are known and recognised, there are tactics that can be used to manipulate the odds somewhat, and there is a choice in which gambles are worth taking and which should be avoided. On top of that, such players find a thrill in knowing that they could lose at any moment.

(It might be worth noting here that I don't find much, if any, appeal in gambling either.)