For a while, meta progression felt like a clever way to keep games fresh. You’d unlock new gear, perks, or passive bonuses between runs, and that sense of forward motion made failure feel productive. I still remember how ground-breaking this felt the first time I played Rogue Legacy. The game nearly made me look forward to losing, limiting any frustrations I would get from losing. Over time, however, the novelty has worn off. More and more I feel like instead of removing the frustration, meta progression is removing the sense of improvement.
Having meta progression means that you come back stronger after every run, this completely blurs self-evaluation. You lost but you feel like you played well. Do you just need to unlock more stuff or are you not understanding something? It’s really hard to say. How do you improve if you don’t know how well you are doing? Losing is the usual way for a game to tell you you are doing badly, but this is thrown out the window in games with a strong meta progression. I personally often end up assuming I just have to grind more, which isn’t a great feeling. And then, when I succeed, it doesn’t feel rewarding because I know I only succeeded because of the meta progression.
Having this meta progression as a crutch also stops you from engaging deeply with a game’s mechanics. Not only can you continue playing badly and win eventually, it is also hard to build fundamentals on what is essentially moving ground. Is 100 damage good? Now maybe, but that might not be true soon enough. I’ve recently had this problem with Ball x Pit, for example. I didn’t engage with any of the stats because they all changed so fast that I didn’t see the point.
I’m mostly referring to progression that makes you more powerful. I still very much like sideways unlocks which can serve to ease players into the game or to bring more variety in as the game goes on. I think Megabonk handled this pretty well recently, for example. Does meta progression still feel rewarding to you?
The meta progression in Rogue was just learning all the tricks of the game. Like what all the various monsters could and would do, the writing system, ELEBETH, and just figuring out the deeper mechanics that aren’t explicity explained to you.
I like Shiren 6 (Serpentcoil Island)'s take on it. Shiren the Wanderer tends to be more roguelike than lite, but there’s always been some meta progression.
In 6 instead of making you directly more powerful, it’s mostly about unlocking new mechanics and alternate routes to choose from in new runs.
There is another bit of meta progression I am not much a fan of, and that’s kind of inherited from older episodes, which is ways to save your items and retrieve them in next runs. But it was mostly the previous game Tower of Fortune which had this ultra easy and exploitable, kinda ruined the flow of the game for me.
Metaprogression was always pretty unrewarding, dripping in upgrades and unlocks so you buy a game, but you don’t get the game you bought until 10-100 hours of time invested playing a worse and/or more limited game. It’s always been weird how so many people say they need progression to enjoy a game. Fun was always a better reason to play a game than progression. Fun is why better games have ways to rebalance to match the things progression adds along the way. It’s just a shame people will basically scorn most games that don’t offer some kind of cross-run progression nowadays, so devs are stuck doing something. Not just roguelites, either. Look at what’s happened to Diablo-style ARPGs, where the addiction mechanics have pushed things to where people want seasonal resets so they can meaninglessly re-grind, because the fun has shifted to grinding loot (and trading), and the game doesn’t matter once you have enough that loot isn’t changing things for you. People don’t even want significant gameplay, as it just slows the grind. Then the inevitable endpoint of unlock/progression based play is horde survivors, where the games have openly admitted the actual play isn’t even the point anymore. It’s just builds, unlocks, and grinds, watch it go.
But I never really got people acting like you can’t tell how you’re doing in a game as things shift, or they can’t engage with systems because things get added, or a win doesn’t feel like a win. It’s not usually that hard to tell how you’re playing or how stuff works. These things are rarely that unusual, and if winning on easy isn’t good enough for you, look for the higher difficulty. If there’s no option to adjust difficulty and give a good play experience, that’s the problem, not the progression. Difficulty always needs options, and people should play at the level where the game feels good to them, not get stuck trying to prove something by defeating the game. Just like devs should not take a lazy, one-size-fits-all path, especially if that path means more experienced players only get a less interesting game.
Finally, contrasting “sideways” unlocks to power progression is often a deception. Many games with sideways unlocks gain a great deal of power/easing from adding options, synergies, and opportunities. Then people try to act like the experience is more pure than some other game where things get easier just from stats. Yeah, stat upgrades are obvious, but you didn’t start in the same place as before when you’ve altered the game and drop pool to your advantage.
Not much to add, but this was true from the beginning for me. I have “Roguelike” excluded from my Steam searches because around the time Hades got popular it was a source of so much slop where you’d spend most of your hours in the first two levels. Many of those games I hated were highly regarded.
Yeah I don’t really like the model where it starts basic and hard, and each failure makes it a little easier.
Feels like it would be more interesting if you started with high stats, and each successful run you had to remove or lower something. Sure, you won with 200 health but can you win with 100? Hades kind of had this alongside the upgrades as you go.
I didn’t like dead cells or rogue legacy that much because it felt like I would’ve won if I had grinded more, and that’s not what I want.
I feel like games are usually a mix of execution challenges and numbers challenges. In a pure action game or other games without progression (eg: chess) you win or lose from your decisions and input. But in numbers games, you win or lose based on the stats. There’s really no way cloud from the start of the original ff7 can defeat disc 3 bosses. The numbers just aren’t there.
Some rogue-lites feel like they’re trying to be execution games but have a less clear numbers check on top. Doesn’t always work for me.
I do really like the traditional rogue like Crawl: Stone Soup, though. No meta game aside from the occasional player ghost.
For me, intend to dislike pure roguelikes because of the lack of meta progression. I tend to get a limited amount of time to play, so I don’t like games that require a time sink to get enjoyment. And as I get older I’m getting less ‘gud’ at games too. This is the reason I avoid almost all multiplayer, most grindy single player (ubisoft) and pretty much all soulslikes.
I like the feedback loop of the game getting easier without me necessarily having to do the heavy lifting of getting better. And it doesn’t have to be straight upgrades. Hades with its weapons is mostly sidegrades, and those are fun too.
I agree. I couldn’t finish Hollow Knight because my reaction times just aren’t what they used to be. It sucked because otherwise I love that game. I haven’t even attempted Silksong.
For a while, meta progression felt like a clever way to keep games fresh.
It always felt like a cop out to me, TBH. I’d rather you give me fewer tools and a lot of potential for synergy among them. Dead Cells definitely has more weapons than Dante has in DMC5, but the amount of shit you can pull off with Dante is insane in comparison because every weapon can do so much. People are still discovering new tech to this day: now that’s keeping things fresh.
More and more I feel like instead of removing the frustration, meta progression is removing the sense of improvement.
It always felt like this from the get-go. It needlessly muddies the water: am I progressing because I’m improving, or am I progressing because I’m unlocking more powerful weapons/perks? The answer is most likely a blend of both, but it’s never clear what’s the bigger reason.
I recommend Magenta Horizon or The Dishwasher if you want something similar to Rogue Legacy/Dead Cells without rogue elements.
I have a very low opinion of “sidegrades.” Games used to give you all their options up front.
This overwhelming trend during the past 15, 20 years to trickle-feed the player unlocks does untold harm. For one, players are rarely ever talking about the same game because everyone is at different points in the progression. The actual game doesn’t start until the final thing is unlocked and this is often a place that most players will never reach.
Can’t tell you how much advice I’ve read that goes something like “use X with Y” where at least one of those is locked behind 50 more hours of progression and my eyes once again roll all the way out of my head. As a developer, don’t you want players to experiment with the things you put in the game?
Can’t tell you how refreshing it is to play a game like NetHack where I can install a fresh copy and not have to worry about managing my save files because everything that’s in the game is… in the game. Also, a quick study can start winning games much sooner because their options aren’t all gated behind arbitrary time sinks.
But even just… skin selection in multiplayer. Games used to give you ALL of them from the start and players could just, you know, pick the one they liked. This whole ‘grind to show off how cool you are’ is a dark pattern to coerce players to spend more time on the game than they want to.
You know what this is, is developers are catering to diamonds and they forgot that some of us are spades.
I just wanted to say, very interesting article! Thanks for posting
That link to the different player types was very interesting. I’m somewhere between an Achiever and Explorer. Probably more explorer, but I am a sucker for hitting the next level, gear upgrade, etc.
The antithesis to what you and OP are describing would be The legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild. But even fans of that formula are tired of it after 2 games in the series because as much freedom as it gives you, it‘s overwhelming.
I think what I‘m trying to say is that trends have cycles. They come and go. What you said is a valid opinion that I can kot possibly disagree with. However, these down sides become more apparent with time until we‘ve had enough and move on to the next thing. I am sure we‘ll remember most of those games fondly one day regardless. Nostalgia will kick in one day and we‘re able to look past the flaws again.
That is exact;y how I feel about MMORPGs. Limited event items, items available at specific levels but you’re going to be there grinding and grinding for hours. You might not even get that thing anyways until what was 9 hours of grinding turns into 7 days of grinding. That’s not progressing, that’s sweatshop levels of work. How is this fun? How is this rewarding? You go through all of that and all you get is maybe a few pats on the back before everyone is back at the woodwork again.
I don’t like any game that makes you feel like you’ve got to live on it to go anywhere. Sure, I play Diablo 2 which by guilt, can fall into the same category. But I make that an exception per my preferences. It’s like that’s the only game I’ll only have room for that I don’t mind doing it for, but any other game, I can’t be bothered and it is just dropped dead cold.
This is also why people hate mobile games because their premise largely can constitute dark patterns.
Developers who make these games want you to have a sense of “pride and accomplishment” (like EA expected you to). But all I feel at the end of the day? “FUCK YOU DEVELOPERS, GO TO FUCKING HELL!!”
You could vary the genres you play more. I love Ball x Pit, but I don’t play a lot of rouge-likes, so I’m not desensitized to the mechanics as much.
I’m a huge fan of rogue-lites. I don’t think I’ve come across any meta-progression mechanic that has bothered me as much as you say.
Hades was probably the most jarring example for me. Mirror upgrades made the game significantly easier and there was little chance of a beginner rogue-lite player managing to complete a run without these. Then by the time the mirror upgrades were unlocked then it felt like I needed to rapidly turn up the “heat” to keep the game challenging at all. I can see why they’ve made such a drastic difficulty curve because they’re appealing to a wider audience than normal rogue-lite audiences (Binding of Isaac audiences would never tolerate such hand holding). I’m still fine with that.
I’ve got a bigger problem with abilities/items being locked behind impossible difficulty. Some items I will never unlock in Dead Cells, because I will never be able to do 5BC (got to 4BC max). Same with Enter the Gungeon and beating the final final boss and extra bosses. In those cases I wonder why the devs have made aspects of the game that the majority of the population will never get to engage with. I just download a 100% completed save file when I’ve made all the progress I could have. I think we should be given the option to access all unlocks after 100 or 150 hours of gameplay or some such option.
Overall, I’ve got no problem with the inclusion of meta-progression (or not). If they implement it well and make a fun game, that’s all that matters to me.
There’s a game where I could use some sort of meta progression (because I suck): Noita.
I’ve never made it deeper than the first three levels. I probably never will. So much cool shit down there that I’ll never see
For a while, meta progression felt like a clever way to keep games fresh. You’d unlock new gear, perks, or passive bonuses between runs, and that sense of forward motion made failure feel productive.
Sounds like regular progression?
Sort of. Roguelike’s defining feature as a genre is the reset of all player progression between runs, and the random generation of the runs themselves. Basic progression is transitory, so a name for progression that goes outside the runs and doesn’t reset is useful
I think a good evolution of roguelite meta-progression is actually extraction mechanics.
Like escape from duckov etc. is essentially a roguelite where you have to survive and extract with your meta items, which I think is better for keeping you on your toes and feels less “grindy” than traditional roguelite meta-currency.
I feel like this is why I dropped playing many rogue-likes and am currently addicted to playing arc raiders, as you lose so many things if you die and have to self-evaluate every single time you don’t get home.
I have to get home and survive in order to actually grow my character positively, where dying punishes me for losing (almost) everything and gaining very little experience points to allocate to my characters permanent buffs.
I sincerely wish these kinds of grinding games would keep the good name of Rogue out of their mouths. No, it’s not -lite, it’s the exact opposite of Rogue!
It was never “clever” or “keeping the game fresh”, all I see this as is a crutch for badly designed gameplay. “Ok but the game gets fun as long as you play it THE WAY WE INTENDED” no I’m sorry if you’re gonna keep the game’s actually fun part behind a 30-hour time gate, I’m refunding that shit. There’s been games that were fun, but I lost my safe file for and thus all the progression is reset and it’s just not fun to grind anymore, I’ll go play something that gives me the whole game that I paid for, right off the bat.
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