What's your stance on metaprogression, Ganker? Pic related.
Metaprogression I like:
> TBOI, EtG, RoR:
a metric fuckton of content gated behind increasingly difficult challenges. Tons of synergies that grow exponentially as you unlock more stuff. These games can still be beaten with the starting pool of items with relative ease by an experienced but mediocre player.
> FTL/ITB, ToME4:
you're only unlocking starting loadouts/classes, but everything else is available from the beginning so the difficulty curve is static in that regard.
Metaprogression I don't like:
> Monster Hunter, Mercenary Kings:
it serves both as padding and as a way to artificially set the pace for the progression itself. Unlocking the next item feels more like a chore than an achievement because it's fundamentally the same thing as choosing a perk from a tree: you're investing metacurrency (monster materials) in order to get a specific upgrade, and your power scales linearly with the number of upgrades.
> Rogue Legacy, Hades, Dead Cells:
similar to MH, you get stronger in-between runs by spending metacurrency, making the early game increasingly easier and thus progressing artificially. It is considerably harder to beat these games without ever taking any upgrades.
>self. Unlocking the next item feels more like a chore than an achievement because it's fundamentally the same thing as choosing a perk from a tree:
This would be a non-retarded comparison if you didn't have to kill monsters to get their armors, also known as getting good.
More like you have to beat the same monster X times because the chance to drop a ruby is 3% on carve or whatever bs they come up with to make you waste time. I see it as a job, I don't need to prove 7 times in a row that I can beat that monster.
If you have trouble getting materials in nuMonHan where you get 10 million slots for drops, and super high drop rates, then I don't know what to tell you.
I hate metaprogression when the game is designed to filter you until you've lost enough to be able to beat it.
I like metaprogression when the game is designed to have multiple difficulties, adventures, scenarios, stages, and characters to play with.
>Dead Cells, Hades: It is considerably harder to beat these games without ever taking any upgrades.
Its actually pathetically easy to beat dead cells without using metaprogression and deaths. When you replay dead cells after doing all of 5bc and some more, its very reasonably easy to make a fresh file and progress all the way to 5bc, while getting all four final bosses, without dying a single time and only investing the cells you get in between each of the 6 succesful runs. If youre seasoned at hades, it shouldnt be too hard to make a fresh save and make it all the way to the final boss without the perma upgrades.
I cant speak for the other games, but youre complaining about a non-issue when it comes to these two. you only claim its the game relies on metaprogression because you never tried playing these games without said metaprogression
That's fair, I'm not very experienced at either of those games. Only really finished Hades of the two. But the point stands that regardless of player skill, an endgame character has a mechanical advantage over a fresh one. This simply does not happen when you look at, say, traditional roguelikes. Therefore my argument isn't "I'm bad at Hades and Dead Cells", but rather, "Hades and Dead Cells have a dynamic difficulty curve"
Not saying it didn't get better, but it's still a bit too much grind for my tastes. Especially when it comes to talisman and skill-related gambling, which is literally just a big time and resource sink.
>metaprogression
Good roguelike doesn't need it.
/thread
>good progression: cool thing you can do gets even cooler, more fun to use, and more useful
>bad progression: cool thing starts off at less than 50% of its regular ability and you have to buy back the remaining 50%
Improving my digital me makes me feel good.
Every time a number go up, game make me feel good.
>Every time a number go up, game make me feel good.
take good
Monster Hunter isn't "metaprogression," it's just progression
>Monster Hunter
Isn't that just normal progression? You aren't starting the game over every hunt but starting off with a stronger and stronger character, you're keeping one character that gets upgrades over time as you go through the game.
>Metaprogression
Why did you stick the word meta in front of the word progression? Are you a cunt? Are you a zoomer cunt? Stop murdering the English language. With idiotic pretension.
It has a specific meaning in the context or roguelites, that being progression that functions outside of the normal permadeath runs. It is a prefectly accurate application of the Meta prefix.
I didn't invent the term anon. You can shout at me for "metacurrency" which is not semantically correct, but it's the closest thing I could think of to describe the various currencies that serve no purpose other than unlocking basic game mechanics or whatever else.
you didn't invent the term but you sure as fuck don't understand it if you think it applies to Monster Hunter
You can really think of Monster Hunter's game loop as multiple runs where you get stronger in between.
Monster Hunter without metaprogression exists, and it's called arena mode.
you can, but that would be a stupid way to think of it
metaprogression is a crutch used by shit devs that don't know how to properly balance the game to artificially extend your playtime
Without metaprogression, why even bother? I don't play games for fun, I play them to create a sense of ownership in my life because real life fucking sucks.
This is the true for everyone else even though they claim that not to be the case. People have very little agency in the world while also getting relatively little appreciation for suffering through. Metaprogression helps you forget that nothing in your real life has any value.
This is a bit pushed. Just say that it provides a sense of progression which pays off for the time invested into what is essentially a waste.
That said, i'd rather a game be rewarding on its inherent artistic and creative value, like a good novel or a movie, rather than on the trickery used to make the brain think it was time well spent.
I get the point you're making but I still think you're wrong. A game is nothing but a contrivance anyway; it's a totally bullshit challenge that you engage with only for the feeling of overcoming a challenge. Beating a video game is not making a smart stock trade or building a house or successfully repairing a busted car or cooking a meal; it doesn't provide you any actual real, tangible rewards of any kind. A video game is, in a certain sense "artificial difficulty: the medium".
With that in mind I don't think adding reward tracks to make the player feel like even their failures are small successes is a bad thing. In fact, it's probably a really good thing, it provides you what you came to the game to get while still giving you more layers of challenge to look forward to.
What's insidious about "brain trickery" is when a dev tries to substitute "challenge" for "time spent", and the game is just endless grind for drip-fed rewards. Because then the game is not about the satisfaction of overcoming the challenge, it's just about the reward mechanism. But I don't think metaprogression is that. The things you unlock for future runs (currency, upgrades, whatever) are still earned through good play, it's not like you just get 1 bonus for each run you do. It's a way of providing long-term reward for short-term challenge engagement in a game type that prevents stopping and starting.
As a non-roguelite-example, I love DMC5, but I haven't played it much since I All-S'd it. The most playtime it got out of me was grinding red orbs to get all the dance super-moves. And I was glad to do it; I love the combat, and engaging with the combat to "grind" unlocks by being stylish was just enough of a challenge to get me to spend a few dozen hours redoing fights I had already S-ranked, and having a blast. So I appreciate that "metaprogression" of super expensive moves was there. Did the game trick my brain? Sure, in a sense. I wanted it to.
>like a good novel or a movie,
>rather than on the trickery used to make the brain think it was time well spent.
How the fuck is a movie or a book not also just using "brain trickery" to make you feel like you didn't waste your time? That's how they're fucking made, and what they're made to do. All entertainment is designed to trick you into liking it, because at the end of the day it's all just an illusion to get you to forget your shitty life.
That soundtrack, that color grading, that ad campaign, that script progression, etc, everything in a movie is designed to trick you. Same for fucking anything else.
A cereal box is designed to trick you into looking at it and get interested in buying it due to the image composition, colors, font selection, etc. It's all the same. Claiming you play games for their "inherent artistic and creative value" is the most goddamn pretentious thing imaginable. It's like saying you jerk off to porn because of its artistic merit.
I like it when it functions as a justification for playing the game. A game like Dead Cells, I die a lot, I've played that game hundreds of times and I'm still inching my way towards clearing BSC5, but the fact that even when I'm losing, I'm gaining something provides a nice motivation to continue.
I don't think metaprogression should be an "intended course"; a game should be balanced to be beaten systematically by a skilled player in a few tries. But drip-feeding little unlocks and assists to players, not as a critical component of them eventually beating the game, but as a way of justifying 15 minutes of play that isn't likely to amount in a significant clear, makes the game more fun.
If a game is good, it wants only the flimsiest of pretexts to boot it up and start playing. But it's still important that they be there. There needs to be something that's still "to do" in the game to get me to play it instead of something from my backlog. Yes, I COULD just play the game again and accomplish nothing at all, if I enjoy it, but I'd rather feel like I'm checking something off. I have limited time to play games and retreading old ground isn't quite as satisfying as feeling like I've accomplished something, even if minor.
The best metaprogression takes the form of increasing difficulty.
like the binding of isaac your first run ends after you kill mom. You don't even get to go into the womb until after you "beat the game" once.
This creates a difficulty curve that aligns with player's skill increasing
perfect image to describe the issue. games should get harder as you get better at them, not easier. Even worse, if the game is not that difficult to begin with, all of the shit in the game is just useless.
If I'm playing an actual roguelike then metaprogression can fuck off. unlockable classes is sort of okay.
For other games sure, why not.
It's required.
People will bitch about it on Ganker pretending they care about how it "takes out the skill".
Then they'll buy and praise the shit out of roguelites that do it because
>me keep replaying me get closer to win
is what your dumb monkey brain actually wants and adding metaprogression is the only way to achieve it on the game's end, rather than on your end.
it's rewarding you for playing arcade games but minus the gitting gud, as this says
More like "stop doing roguelites".
I like progression, and I like building a specific character I find fun to play as. Designing an action game as a "rogulite" (because you can't be arsed to design actual progression or replayability) makes it so you can't build shit and are encouraged to go for all the strongest upgrades to decrease your chances of eating shit and dying. Maybe some of them will be fun to use if you're lucky.
I wish the trend was for roguelike modes in regular games instead.
>game gets harder and unlocks more content as you play it more (isaac)
very based
>game is balanced around you having a bunch of numerical upgrades and requires grinding the same content over and over again (hades)
fuck off
>play through game
>having fun
>unlock a bunch of shit after beating a few playthroughs
>90% of the unlocks are either dogshit or filler items
>new playthroughs are now less enjoyable and more tedious because the item pool is filled with shit now
Ugh.
Isaac's biggest flaw.
Fucking Steakmund.
>filtered by MH