Not before Diabo II came out they weren’t!
But yeah, rigging the compulsion machine has definitely been a global effort
That still leaves roguelikes, whose only play mechanics rely on compulsive/addictive behavior
Though I suppose tower of druaga was the ultimate foreshadowing of the diablo games
I’d argue that description, as I think the larger effects of roguelike mechanics is to supercharge learning and present varied situations with meaningful consequence (this is why I think the structure might be even more suited to action games than RPG mechanics).
Regardless, I think they were niche enough up through 2010 to have little influence on most people making games and the players; the leakages of their structure were largely seen as interesting failures (Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, and other darlings), excepting Diablo, but that really took the random loot tables into its own world.
Unless you see the path as roguelikes->MUDs->graphical MUDs (Everquest), in which case, yeah, that’s potent, but that hits late 90s, a full fifteen years after everyone learned from Dragon Quest.
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come on, you know this is exclusively a criticism of bad roguelikes that lean too heavily on the restart loop and don’t have varied enough play
like there’s a reason that stone soup was regarded as such a salve to RPG compulsiveness
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Counterpoint:
Camus here is talking about the meaninglessness of life itself: and precisely the best defense of pursuing meaningless videogame achievements is that all other ambitions are also meaningless
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And even Nethack was very much aware of the grind, one of the devs wrote in response to guides on pudding farming (a monster that divides on any damage and every instance has a chance to drop any loot): “The DevTeam has arranged an automatic and savage punishment for pudding farming. It’s called pudding farming.”
(It’s no longer possible in current version to make an even stronger point against it)
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Also, RTS games. Civilization, Red Alert, Star Craft, War Craft, all were huge during the PSone JRPG heyday. Not to mention, Diablo 1. There were also some flares out there like Starsiege Tribes, Which were ahead of their time and had highly dedicated communities.
I’m indicting roguelikes in terms of teaching extremely unhealthy gameplay patterns. JRPGs(aside from Tower of Druaga and the games it influenced) were largely innocent of this until the PSX era because they were naturally constrained small-scale (by today’s standards) works. Indeed, the only post DQ game you referenced was Final Fantasy VII. That came out the same year as Ultima Online, and between the two I would say UO had a far more noxious influence on game design trends (even as an avowed liker of UO, no game does grind like Ultima Online did)
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how is stone soup a salve to RPG compulsiveness? People play the game over and over compulsively, even when the game plays itself (MiBe), they will sit there tapping o to win.
I don’t know what that is and I think you’re setting up a false dichotomy between an expert audience of one genre and a mainstream audience of another
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Tulpa… you’re sounding like a jerk. None of that applies exclusively to roguelikes. Replaying a game you enjoyed is no worse than rereading a book you like or kissing someone you’ve already kissed.
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minotaur berserker, which is the exact opposite of ‘expert audience’ playstyle.
I think there may be some erasure of engaged amateurs in your analysis
I would categorize myself as formerly an ‘engaged amateur’ of roguelikes but now I just see them as a pathological anti-design with occasional exceptions.
having deep thoughts about the fact that there was a “Pandemonium!” port for n-gage
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the guy who made ringo ishikawa has early development vids of it up on his youtube clarifying the connection my brain made
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Whenever I find myself excoriating an entire genre of anything, I find that, perhaps, I am experiencing some kind of internal bias.
Or, to be less passive aggressive, statements like these make it hard to actually take your argument seriously because they are so dismissive.
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Also the implication is that the only people who play the majority of roguelikes are addicts and fools, which is rude as heck!!
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As an addict and fool I have never found roguelikes compelling
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