Really wish this was the end of the year video? me too! you can get earlier access to all my sweet sweet recommendations right here! (no joke this time I'm being really serious): www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames Twitter is the most insidiously compulsive thing of them all - quick! run! escape whilst you can!... after you've followed me of course!(ok fine you get one joke): twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
12:03 worth noting that Hades's 'skill tree' offers its biggest improvements right away, while the skills you unlock later are more slight and/or require more game knowledge in order to be used well. It feels less rewarding, but it helps solve the issue of progression being extrinsically motivated.
I feel like it's also good to note that some of the later upgrades are basically "Skip to the good stuff" so you get the rarer boons and stuff once you've gotten to a point where small statistical differences really matter
@@kearbillings5719 I think this is very important. The later upgrades mainly focus on "you will get good options almost every run" (as opposed to "a lot of runs might not give you anything you need"). You can get exactly the same run with or without these, but instead of having to go 5-10 runs for the same progression, you just need 2-3. It's not helping you achieve something you're not able to achieve otherwise, it's achieving what you can more quickly. What is also important is the 2 sides of the mirror, the ability to switch up your bonuses for some other ones. along with the keepsakes, you can somewhat start to control the luck element. not to a point that ruins the mistery of your run, but so far that you can actually make plans.
To be fair I beat the bears first time. Had a good set of cards by accident. I got really confused when I talks about the trader attacking you, as I'd gotten passed the fight without the trader. Made more sense when I found out I wasn't meant to have!
Really great video, self control over impulses is really important when it comes to games and trying to figure out why you are keeping playing something . It can sometomes help to take a break from a game for a week and if you didnt miss playing it that much you might have been doing it out of habit instead of for fun.
i have this problem big time, most recent game i did with was Outward. put about 30 hours into it and part of me really wants to finish but at the same time i haven’t launched it in 2 weeks
Not missing it during a break is not always a good indicator. Some of the most long-term fulfilling activities often do not have that cheap emotional "hook" that is supposed to keep you coming back. And I'm not necessarily talking about games, act of learning is a good example. Sometimes you need to push yourself into it to achieve something to be proud of
3:25 As someone with 2.9k hours in Sea of Thieves this is spot on. The game doesn't give you any goal and this leads to, as you said, players struggling to find a reason to play. But for me, and I imagine for most who keeps playing, it allows me to set my own goals. The game's commendation system is great for this. While I play I know roughly what commendations I want to achieve and their requirements. That way if I find myself in a situation where I can gain progression in one I usually am aware and can take advantage of it. Another big reason for why I enjoy this game is that when playing with other people it's an absolute blast(literally!). The game is great when played with friends and often leads to hilarious moments when one of us messes up in some way or we do something really cool. I literally have over 350 video clips from the last 2 years of playing where I capture the highlights of some playsessions. I don't really know where I wanted this to go, I guess I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on the game.
Like i said in my own comment, a lot of people go into the game think MMO RPG, but it's not an RPG at all. Furthermore, not every game need RPG mechanics
I second the Gunpoint recommendation. (And if anyone's looking for another rogue-like, Gunpoint's dev/designer also made Heat Signature, which has some pretty neat systemic play)
Here's the funny thing for me: I can dedicate myself to even the longest RPGs start to finish... but when it comes to these "play it forever" games such as roguelikes, I always tire of them _extremely quickly._ I think it's because of my huge aversion to repetitive things. ... But then again... for short games that bank on replayability rather than continuousness, such as 2D Sonic games - well, let's say I have _FAR_ over 1,000 hours into Sonic 3 across my 29 years of living. So... I don't know. xD
As someone with absolutely no idea of what they're talking about, it could just be a dislike of repetition, but it also sounds like you might prefer experiences with a concrete progression and conclusion over ones where you can theoretically keep progressing incrementally forever.
Same! I tried some roguelikes but never came far. I really love enter the gungeon (No i am not good at it) but still, i i am Not good at this kind of games and improving my skills in them is really Not worth it for me. Or in sea of thiefes. I loove sailing around, chilling etc. But if i get killed all the time its not fun. I want to play 2h every now in a while. And people tell me to just get gud. But i cant and don't want to invest in learning PvP.
@@asdfasdf-xb6bv That's a good point. Something that replayable games like Sonic have that continuous roguelikes generally don't have (or at least much less so)... is _indeed_ the fact that you very concretely progress and finish them, instead of incrementally progressing forever. Yes, that's probably part of it. Good point!
Thinking about it like Darksouls, although it's not a rogue-like, I think rogue-likes should be able to be beaten without upgrades if you're good enough. Hades is actually once again a good example of this as the devs clearly thought of this and actually give you a little bit of payoff for it as well because when you beat the game with no boons, the rogue-like upgrades in the game, you get a neat little bit of unique dialogue.
It also does so if you beat it first try, technically. It changes the line about killing you over and over to "Mustered a bunch of incompetent wretches to try and kill me"
Honestly without even realizing it over the years roguelikes became my favorite game genre. And it all started with enter the gungeon, which is such an addicting and fun game.
I love the topic of weaving intrinsic and extrinsic motivation together. They are too often presented as completely seperate, and antonomous replacements for eachother
I LOVE meta progression in roguelikes. It makes me feel that each run, even a bad run, is worth it. Especially because sometimes bad luck plays a roll. Like if I land on a bad fight in FTL and die. There isn't always something to learn there. With meta progression, at least I'm growing a bit stronger to undue those non educational random setbacks. That's what makes conversations on these designs so difficult. What you described as a less effective form of progression, I found as a more effective progression. And it was less enjoyable for me to listen to the video about it, as it didn't feel like you acknowledged preference in these statement, rather described it as "for the struggling player". "Preference" is also a crucial part of observable game design :).
Hey, that's cool! I HATE meta progression in roguelikes. It makes me feel that the gaming skills I've built over the decades are meaningless, when it's clear you can't beat the game unless you grind some meta progression. However I see your point in meta progression lessening the bitter feeling of losing due to bad RNG, with no lesson to be learned there, which has made me quit games.
@@EconaelGaminga veteran player starting any roguelite on a new save would still beat it faster than a veteran rpg player starting the Witcher 3 or any similar RPG on a fresh save. Assuming they aren't speedrunners.
As someone who despises how many rogue likes there are and can't find fun in any of them this was really interesting to listen to. The available aspects of fun and ideas these games can show, yet I can't seem to grasp any of it. Extremely interesting though.
To put it in terms of the video's psychobabble, the problem with delayed gratification is that if gratification is delayed too long, people stop seeking it at all - they eat the sunk time and walk away to do something else. The reason you can't get into roguelikes is the same reason other people can't get into games like Dark Souls.
Try Hades if you haven´t already. I used to hate rouglike/rougelites until that game came along. I still don´t like the genre very much, but I´m now more incentivized to try new things in the hope of finding another Hades.
@@EriesAston For real. I didn't even know what rogue-likes really were the first time I played Hades. When I realised I had to start over from the beginning every time and I didn't get to keep cool boons I was so disappointed. I thought there's no way I make it through an entire run. But I ended up beating Hades the first time I fought him, and I've been hooked ever since
Please try Spelunky 2. It’s nice to play a game where choices and mechanic interactions are most important, not just fighting. Incredibly rewarding game that is brutally hard for a long time but each time you feel a little bit better. Plus the rng is never bad enough to ruin a run, (Faster Than Light I feel is guilty of this at times) just enough to keep you on your toes.
Huh. For me, Halo infinite was an excellent example of keeping me playing for intrinsic rewards. I couldn't really care about the story or the upgrades but going from dying to simple mobs to being able to pull cool tricks with the grapple and learning how to be a better and more efficient player I find to be be very rewarding.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone address the whole thing of roguelites being impossible on a fresh save. I find that incredibly discouraging, but it's such a popular feature, I don't understand why. I want effort to be rewarded, I want my improvement as a player to matter.
I think there are definitely games that do it right though, usually by having the meta progression be nice to have but not overpowered. The Last Spell is my current roguelite, and it's a ton of fun working out what's going to benefit me most in each run. Granted, some of its meta upgrades are really strong, like the ones that give you extra actions each turn, but the game also demands that your tactics be airtight, lest the swarms of zombies find a gap and destroy you. Now, if there was an upgrade that was like "buy this and the first night will play itself," I wouldn't enjoy that at all because it wouldn't actually test me.
@@abderianagelast7868 I think for me there just isn't a "right", because any buff makes the subsequent progress hollow. Oh, I didn't overcome my limitations, I just got a powerful bonus. It doesn't matter to me if the game is still hard after the unlock tree, because the unlock tree cheapens all of those little moments of personal growth along the way. @vipertooth Binding of Isaac has exactly the problem I'm talking about. Not only do you unlock more powerful items, it also just straight up denies you the first time you beat Mom/Mom's Heart.
@@SpriteGuard Isaac prevents you from progressing too far before you’re ready, essentially ensuring you are ready for the challenge of later stages. The items are typical rogue like unlocks, what do you want, no new items? Or all items on startup?
this video covers a lot of ground, vut I want to add that different people respond to different motivations at different levels. I for one require a games systems to push me to improve if I'm going to play it more than once, or finish it at all if its long. under a similar token, I need some depth in the games mechanics to master, or I'll master the game too quickly and drop it soon after. for some people, story telling is a greater motivator, getting invested in the characters and the conflicts they get bundled up in. and these motivations come in all shapes, sizes, and quirks for each person, and they mean different things as well for different people. "challenge" might mean enemies can one shot you to others, while for me it refers more to mastering every inch of an enemy. random chance one shot I cant dodge doesnt count as challenge for me, but for others it does. this really only further complicates making a great game for devs because of how different every person can be even in the same demographic. probably the reason most big devs settle for trying to pull all your money. probably a lot easier to do, and reliably, thinking about it.
This is why I love noita, it’s like every feature of a good roguelike taken to the nth level, and with a world chock full of secrets. If you never look for other zones and just play through the main area, heck if you never look up information outside of the game, you will miss like 90% of the content. It’s so well put together that you can spend hundreds of runs trying to get to what you think is the main goal and have an amazing experience, and never even know about more until you look into it. This is also the games main weakness, though. The devs have a hatred of anything that is too simple, and some of the puzzles and content are so obscure and complex that they absolutely require looking up externally. Some of them the community as a whole has yet to solve, like the eye glyphs or the cauldron room. But you can still have a blast playing because the game is ridiculously hard, and what makes it so addictive is that all the blame is placed on the player. That might seem degrading, but that’s only really true for people who don’t like a little bit of challenge. Every death and every failure is a learning moment. Care to experiment with a dangerous spell combo? It kills you instantly by summoning a massive sawblade or detonating 40 tons of dynamite. Better luck next time! Through trial and error, and more error, you learn what works and what doesn’t, and which enemies are manageable and which aren’t. Over time as this knowledge builds you always feel deaths are your fault, because you nearly always could have made a better choice. Noita balances your patience very well, punishing you for playing too aggressively when you don’t have the skill to back it up. You absolutely have to gain a sense for risk and reward, and noita is a game where the risk is real and immediate. If you choose to go into a dangerous zone to find good wands, you have a very good chance of dying to the exotic enemies or chemicals there. By placing everything on you, the game is addictive because you always feel you can do a little better next time.
Ive noticed that games that keep me playing have a good balance of short term action with long term planning. So games like Xcom, rougelikes, and 4x games really draw me in
The whole “using your brain’s evolutionary reward mechanisms to convince you you’re having fun when you aren’t” is exactly my relationship with idle games. I can’t articulate why I’m so addicted to them when it’s pretty much just staring at a screen, waiting until you can press an upgrade button. But oh the happy chemicals do come rushing out once you press that button. And then I think “oh I’ve sunk so much time into this, I might as well keep going for a while. Definitely not a logical fallacy there.” Idk if anyone else plays idle games like this, when they’re often supposed to be checked in every once in a while and not continuously played (although I think some devs DO know people play like this and that’s why there are microtransactions lol). I actually played a pretty interesting idle game once that had like, a fantasy adventure story. Which would have been great if it wasn’t so completely mind numbing and the wait was so arbitrarily long between each story progression. Didn’t stop me from sinking an ungodly amount of hours into it. And I was still only halfway through my second run when I quit (and there were five runs to complete the story!!!)
There are definitely incremental games out there that go more more active play than idle games do most of the time. I tend to enjoy that more than spending a minute or two checking in and the leaving it for hours again, even if that is the reality of those same games sometimes, just not as often. The idle ones work a lot better when you're legitimately focused on something else for hours at a time instead of being addicted and wanting to check in every 5 minutes.
Just for a counterpoint, as a dad-gamer, I've only recently gotten into Idle Games. It's really nice to be able to feel like I'm actually making a little progress on a game while I am, for example, feeding my kids or whatever. And then I just check in at the end of the day and make, like, 5 decisions, and then move on with my life and play a more engaging game. But I look forward to those 5 decisions a surprising amount.
@@rick30521 Whenever I played a game with stamina system I ended up just doing my dailies, spending my stamina and forget the game until the next day and repeat. This makes gaming a chore instead of fun.
Just wanna say I'm so glad someone else feels that way about sea of thieves. I loved the ship combat and the general feeling of sailing the seas, but there was literally no progression and most of the quests felt like they were just puzzles for 10 year olds
An interesting note about Into the Breach: I intrinsically enjoyed trying to figure out different strategies for each of the mech teams. Which is why it annoyed me that the game required you to purchase those teams using coins that you could get (essentially) for beating the game. They attached extrinsic rewards to beating the game when they didn't have to. I wanted to replay it anyway!
Those extra teams are essentially new game modes though. You can still play with the default team and not have any buffs stacked onto yourself. Into the Breach is a really good example of blending these elements together. You can do things to make the game easier if you want to.
I loved getting the new squads through coins but I hate that you need EVERY coin including one which is so rare through rng that you can only really get it if you knew the circumstances of getting it when you first started, to get the last secret squad. Still missing that one coin after 180h playtime.
@@thomase640 I did not even know that squad existed! Haha Not a fan of that particular design choice. Seems like padding the runtime more than anything else.
I quite enjoy rogue likes myself! They're a genre favorite because they reward mastery and let you keep playing even after the credits roll with enough of a remix to reward new playstyles and teach you new gimmicks.
4:37 xenoblade chronicles x was one of my favourite games. man the overdrive mechanic is SO SATISFYING and you can see how powerful you are as before you were just pressing and seeing ur attack happen then waiting for it to recharge, but with overdrive you hear the "click" of when your attack happens, then you can use it again. click after click after click and mmmm feels so good
Cheers for the video, it was good fun. I also found myself getting really into roguelikes the last few years and I think your point of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation summed it up pretty well. Have a nice christmas!
I just love your channel, captivating analysis of video game topics i hardly thought about and i can't stop listening, even videos where the main topic is a game i never played or watched have me feel satisfied at the end because of all the information i just received as well as examples from usually all different sorts of genres makes anything you put out worthwhile, and here is a video that touches both of the genres i play most: roguelikes an gacha games. Amazing video as always and i gotta thank you for everything i learned and realized, as well as maybe dump one or another gacha for more time spent on the better of the two genres i mentioned.
I found rogue-light city-builder "Against the Storm" on the EGS. I haven't played much else lately. You get to make cities and as you make more successful cities you unlock persistent rewards that feed back into more impressive efficient colonies.
My favourite meta progression is unlocking characters with many of the ones that are harder to unlock be weaker, as you can still keep the easier gameplay of the starting characters but get both unique gameplay and in the cases weaker characters get an extra challenge. What I really don't like is when a game has a no meta progression mode locked behind beating the game, like is in the case of the game Undermine, because when a play a roguelike I don't want to grind for meta resources.
Great video! One thing I’d note though is that the idea that having extrinsic motivations inherently cheapens the experience feels a bit off to me as someone who 100% would not have beaten Hades without the mirror rewards. I personally think it’s just rewarding in a different way, and which is better depends largely on how an individual player values rewards. I have an energy limiting disability which also causes me a lot of chronic pain. I know full well that there are games that no amount of intrinsic motivation will make worthwhile because the cost of grinding to gradually get better at a game is way higher for me than most players. I adored my time with Hollow Knight … until I encountered a boss that I couldn’t beat and couldn’t grind without getting a migraine and had to quit game, honestly making it end as a game I can’t even watch content about without getting sad. I actively avoid pure rogue games because I don’t want to have that experience again. For me, buying new death defiances in Hades wasn’t rewarding solely because “oooh new power up,” but because it gave the game a structure that made me feel like my intrinsic motivation might actually be rewarded.
Hello, I, too, have a chronic (illness, in my case) that limits my energy. And I have an injury in my wrists that starts hurting a lot when I play for a long time, so similar case here. I love Hollow Knight too, and I've found that, in order to keep enjoying during times that I encountered a rough boss, what helped me was put the game down for a while, like a week, or a month, or a couple months playing other things, and then returning. And also, tips by a friend or the internet about which charms or which strategy I should use. I don't know if this will help you, because of the differences in our condition, but I believe it's worth trying so you could enjoy the cool game again :D Have a nice day! Also, edit: do you recommend Hades? I am scared about the fact that each run is "the same" in regard to the bosses you have to kill, is it not boring after a while?
@@NairaMB hey! So sorry I didn’t respond sooner (hope you still see this). I did try looking up watcher knight tutorials when I first quit, but it’s been a few months so maybe I’ll go back and try again! That’s what I ended up doing during my run through the City of Tears (teleporting bosses are also not my forte lol). As for Hades, I personally really enjoy it. It’s like my 5th most played switch game iirc. I was also hesitant about the repetition. It was my first rogue game. Personally I found that the different weapons and god-Boon builds make the amount of playthroughs you need to 1) escape the underworld, and 2) finish the main story pretty fun. I found myself getting into a groove with my fave weapon + gods partway through so researched some other recommended builds, which teaches you a lot about the boons and how they synergize and stuff which makes it more fun to come up with new things on your own. If you’re a completionist, though, it can definitely get tedious. I’m on run like 120 or something and since post game involves a lot of difficulty challenges (the bane of my experience lmao) I’ve been using pretty repetitive builds which definitely gets tedious. You also unlock more story every run through and death, so if story is something that you enjoy in games it’s a good incentive to keep going. I’d personally recommend it, but obviously you know you’re game taste wayyyy more than I do. If you have any other questions I can try to answer them!
I was just trying to explain my love for Isaac to someone the other day. I’ve been playing since Wrath of the Lamb hit on Flash Isaac and this did an amazing job of articulating what I’ve struggled to for a decade.
I actually _did_ make it to The Orb on my first playthrough...then promptly got locked in place in corridor after corridor after corridor by the spawns on my way back out and eventually died to smites and hellfire. ...minotaur berserkers were honestly kinda OP back in 15.2 when evocations was so incredibly strong.
I've had a lot of conversations about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation with a friend who is way into fighting games, and I think it's worth noting that different people are motivated in different ways (and learn in different ways, for that matter), and that's... kinda how we end up with all these different kinds of games in the first place! I find fighting games to be almost wholly intrinsic, but for me and how I'm wired that mostly just means I see a lot of struggle and failure and don't really get any satisfaction when I accomplish some improvement so much as feel frustrated it was even hard for me at all (real healthy mental situation I've got here, clearly). Inversely, games that rely on almost any level of narrative or checklisty goals lose her entirely; she's almost entirely extrinsicly motivated and cannot even begin to enjoy the kind of games I do (JRPGs mainly but also really anything that gives me a nice checklist of shit to do I can look at and pretend I'm in control of my life.) Regarding the learning, I think Crypt of the Necrodancer and maybe Rogue Legacy are the only rougelikes I've encountered that really work with my way of actually improving at something, which boils down largely to "if the iteration time is more than a couple minutes, I will not retain a fucking thing." I wish more of these games had Necrodancer's practice areas so I'd have less situations like "I have been trying to get past floor 3 of the Gungeon for years and routinely die the second I walk in the door, thanks." I can explain a lot of why my intrinsic motivation with games is broken to hell, but this one... man, iunno. Throw me a bone tho, game devs! Let me practice things. :|
Very interesting video, finally allowed me to put a concept and words on the reason why I never managed to get invested in games like Slay the spire, rogue legacy, etc. while I have sunk many MANY hours into games more like Noita where you _are_ able to finish the game on the first ever run you have if you are very skillful and don't have to grind for updates in order to progress. well.... in the case of Noita, the wand building has a lot to do with with the way I saw it being re-playable. I knew that every run could potentially teach me something (a new spell, a new interaction of spells, new enemies, new perks, etc.). it was never about having a run just to grind currency to unlock the next skill in the tree.
You can beat your first run of Slay the Spire if you can learn the game quickly, much in the same way as with Noita. The only unlocks in Slay the Spire are new cards which will appear during runs. Although these cards open up new strategies, they also dilute the card pool. If they do make you stronger, it's only by a tiny amount and only because you understand the game well enough to exploit the new cards.
I really enjoy rouglikes especially the hard ones. Playing the game over and over again just getting better. It feels great to get further. To take less damage to go faster. Beating dead cells no damage is one of my greatest achievements in gaming and I don't think I'm going to be able to beat it. I also love the variety that all the good rouglikes provide. I still play runs in for example dead cells that I have never had before. Getting affixes that synergize in a new way seeing everything. Thats why I like games to complete to get better at. I don't write too well but thanks for reading.
this is me with deep rock galactic, and roguelikes to a lesser extent. I've owned DRG for 4 years and have almost 900 hours in it, and even though I've unlocked basically everything, I still play it every so often.
Adam, I got invited by some friends to guest star on a gaming podcast (because I'm free and they probably couldn't afford you) but I just hope you know my prep for said activity is just to watch all your videos and pretend I'm half as competent at game design as you are XD For real tho I'll be tagging you at the end for credit and linking them here in the liner notes too, so if any of those listeners are here from the future: you're welcome. Please pay this man money so we can talk more about his work.
As a beginner game developer I absolutely love and look forward to your videos. And thanks for recommending F.D Signifier! More videos for me listen to while I do game dev :)
This video comes at the right time. It explains why I enjoyed Forager but recently Archvale so so much and couldn't stop playing. Those short term rewards are lovely :D Thank you Adam, Always love your videos. Merry Christmas!
As a Black viewer/fan of your videos, I really appreciate you shouting out FD Signifier! People aren't often willing to just say that part out loud (about the video essay space on YT being fairly homogenous). Your content is great, keep up the good work!
6:23 - I feel it's worth mentioning that dopamine is arguably an even more important neurotransmitter than endorphine when it comes to the brain's reward system, especially when it comes to the *anticipation* of reward specifically. Dopamine generally creates the feeling of "wanting" something and is therefore very heavily related to addiction. The feeling of "liking" something (i.e. reward gratification) is very complex however and can come from multiple different sources/neurotransmitters. It's possible it might include endorphines, but it can also be serotonine, endocannabinoid or even cortisol (stress) neurotransmitters, etc. And sometimes its actually the *lack* of "liking"/ gratifcation neurotransmitters that makes the addictiveness of a reward even stronger. Anyway, it's all super complicated and don't expect a lecture in neurochemistry for a quick remark in a video. I just wanted to give some food for thought and perhaps a reason to dive into the rabbit hole of neuroanatomy and reward systems even deeper. Love the video as always, keep it up!
I think cortisol works on MOBAs, especifically League of Legends, the system will often put you on matches that are easy wins, or terrible losses, and some in between where your skill actually has an effect on the game, because even if you're good, you can't win every match, the stress of every play possibly going wrong enhances the experience for sure. Also, the stress of playing a game where shit could go wrong because of your decision-making (like DS games) or even something out of your control (Darkest Dungeon and every other RNG-based game) also make every positive outcome feel like pure bliss.
@@Shriukan1 Look up "schedules of reinforcement". Basically, it says that the most addictive type of reinforcement is the one when you get a reward randomly after performing an act. You can apply that to gambling (sometimes you win, but most times you lose) or you can apply that to rogue likes (sometimes you get a great combination of upgrades and items and sometimes you get shit). While on topic of reinforcement schedules, the part where I have to disagree with the video is when he claims that delayed gratification makes us want to play more. Actually, it's the other way around when it comes to addictiveness. The more you have to wait for a reward after performing an act, the less addictive it is
@@P-diddykong Exactly! Lootboxes are also a great example of this. It utilizes the same random reward mechanism as traditional gambling, which makes it so addictive (and profitable for companies) And yeah, it's often the other way around with delayed gratification. The drug intake methods with the quickest gratification onset (e.g. smoking/injecting) are generally more addictive than methods with slow gratification onset (e.g. swallowing a pill). In fact, delayed gratification is often related to *impuls control* (the opposite of addictive compulsion). That being said, you could argue, that a longer anticipation period means more time for dopamine to increase and thus possibly reach higher levels. But I'm pretty sure we're talking about a few very complex interaction effects, which doesn't just come down to a simple "delayed gratification = more addictive statement (which the video suggests). So I would agree with you, the link between instant gratification and addiction are a lot stronger in the literature than with delayed gratification.
Thanks to your video I finally realized why I love bullet heavens like Vampire Survivors so much. My entire gaming life, I’ve always loved starting out with as little as possible and feeling my character getting stronger and stronger, enough to destroy anything in their path. But the power fantasy bores me very quickly, so I’ll start over from zero and do it all again. In Empire Earth, I would intentionally bring my starting team down to 5 villagers (the minimum). I love Metroid Zero Mission because you start with so little, they don’t even give you a ledge grab at first. Whenever I play an RPG that starts you at like level 7, I always wished that I could choose to begin at level 1 instead. Bullet heaven games condense that formula into like half an hour of gameplay, where I get to quickly level up and pick my upgrades and use all that to destroy waves and waves of enemies until I’m super powered and I’ve defeated them all. But before I have a chance to get bored of being too strong, the timer runs out and the run ends, so I get to do it all over again less than an hour after starting the last time.
i really struggle to stay motivated to play any game. even the games i love. though i think that's from 'depression' rather than any fault of the game itself
Baby, the video's been posted for 5 minutes tops. You can't possibly have even watched half of it, how can you gauge its quality ? :') Enjoy Synthetik, though !
@@imrane5595 It's easy to gauge the quality, as it's made by Adam Millard - The Architect of Games. Therefore, it can only be a great video or an excellent video :p
As someone who is too slow to improve for most rogue-likes, I haven't been able to get to the end of a single one I've played so far even after pouring dozens of hours into them. I get bored of the gameplay before I'm good enough to do so, so I personally like the idea of in-game power level improvements if it would allow me to actually reach a satisfying conclusion with the game. Haven't played one that implements it yet but I'll probably be picking up Hades soon.
@@devilvocano420 And it gives you the option to turn it off when you do get better at the gameplay. Hades really is the perfect balance between skill and upgrades.
If there is one roguelike that I think you could enjoy, it's Hades. Not only is the design just that good, there is a pure, raw joy in the gameplay, at least for me. It just feels good to play. The combat is super fast, and tight, and hard, but also simultaneously surprisingly forgiving. It's amazing.
I would argue that Halo's Infinite might be bland in the general open world game industry but it's not really that different than other halos in terms of gameplay loop and story progression... The open world is there exactly for exploration, and just that exploring and doing some side quests... You're not obliged to do the side quests... Only the main ones. Doing side quests only allow you to explore with more weapons and vehicles, and if you're interested you would look in UA-cam what people do in the campaign, it's more of search your own fun and play with the sandbox kind of game, and if you want plot there's the main missions... Perhaps you burnt yourself out because you don't enjoy Halo's gameplay loop, and that's fair... Just wanted you to see stuff from another lense, idk.
I love your video on Spelunky 2. I often rewatch it, and show it to my friends. The one thing that I can’t agree with, is the whole “you’ll never finish the game” bit. So, I decided I WOULD finish the game. And I did. Now it’s my favorite game of all time. Thank you. UPDATE: I am now aiming to beat the special ending without getting hit. Almost halfway there :)
It took me 1500 runs to beat Tiamat. Now, I can do it in every 3-5 runs (assuming I’m not trying for the Sunken City or any other special ending stuff). Incredibly rewarding game.
I like how dead cells make the metaprogressions, gathering currency doesnt makes the game easy, new itens arent improvement, but new ways to play. That game really got me hooked
My problem with dead cells is that many new items are kind of bad. When I conceptualized it as a "deck building game" so to speak, i aimed for a "thin deck", i.e., i only unlocked the good weapons so that i had a higher chance of obtaining them and win
@@BaroTheMadman i tottally agree with you on this, most new itens are actually a downgrade, ive only played on one save and got up till 5bsc, but i used about 7 brutallity weapons, 4 or 5 tatics and 3 survival, the others were hard skips and were there as an obstacle
Elden Ring got me hard guys. Cant stop playing. Dropped all other games I played, never played a souls game before. Seems like this game perfected the balance between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for me (though I never heard those 2 words before). I even started a personal journal for this game to keep track where I have to go and where I have to go back when I am better prepared, or about locations I still have to explore. Something I didnt do for a long time for a game. Last game I had to make a journal for was gothic 2 I think. I try to play without guides as much as possible, and try to figure stuff out on my own and this really started to bring back fun in video games for me. Elden Ring might not be for everyone, but for people who kinda miss the old games feeling, where you have no markers on a map or a gps minimap that shows you the path where you have to go, this game is perfectly for you and I really can recommend it. But just from the start make a journal and write things down what npcs tell you and where chests are you still have no keys for, or you forget it, because the content is kinda huge. I am about 200 hours in the game, had to restart because I didnt made a journal in my first run and after like 60 or 70 hours I remembered this and that, and thought ok, maybe I should have written some things down. Then I created another character and went for another run and started taking notes, and its just awesome. I am still not done exploring in the first area, and somehow, instead of following the main route to another location, I just ended up going in the wrong way. Sometimes I feel like there is so much to do, when I look at my journal, and it doesnt stop coming, and when looking things up sometimes guides, I get overwhelmed. But still, I cant stop playing. This game really brought back fun in games for me. Before that, as a passionate gamer, i really was thinking about stopping gaming at all, since nothing out there really kept me playing. It was just boring and felt like work in some games, to find every questionmark and what not. Now it feels more like an adventure instead of work. I hope it keeps that way, but for now, this game is one of the best that came out since a long time in my opinion. Right now, if someone would ask me how I would rank that game, I would say 10/10. Definitly a great game.
Any game has a difficulty curve, ranging from unfun to fun to unfun again as you go from too easy to too hard. Roguelikes generally embrace that in a way I don't like, by starting you off on the too hard end and ending on the too easy end. I think if gameplay has a sweet spot, then designers should generally just aim for the sweet spot rather than make a huge array of gameplay experiences that are mostly dull for one reason or the other. I think gamers look at a game's length and equate it to value too easily. Lots of F2P games will happily suck up hours of your time every day and many gamers will consider this a strong value proposition, as if spending their time is not a cost to them. Most games would not be as long as they are - many would not be 1/10 as long! - if designers were genuinely trying to make them fun instead of trying to appeal to a player's sense of getting their money's worth. Roguelikes definitely contribute to this trap.
1:12 Bruh… cause they are interactive and give control, and most gamers *like* being in control. It’s why they are so popular with kids, who constantly feel they are without control, and many adults who are out there adulting, who also feel without control. Least that’s what I think. Particularly when it comes to single player non-competitive games. 7:23 Lol, this is actually where I stopped playing Factorio. I always get to right about there and then go “ugh I thought I was getting the new science pack…” 12:03 Yeah, this is the first video where I’ve disagreed with you a lot. I find that those boosts are the only things that get me to play those kinds of games. I loved it in Hades, as well as the story. I think Hades took off exactly because it had lots surrounding the gameplay loop, which is honestly repetitive & predictable (so many times I’d know I wasn’t winning the round by the time I got to Elysium). Without the story, the voice acting, the writing, the levelups between runs, and the multiple weapons, Hades would have sucked, and that’s where most of the genre ends up.
I'm a bit intrigued and confused by the thought of "trick you into thinking you're having fun," as I don't agree that's...well, possible by the definition given. If I find sitting in the park cloud watching, or showering, or moving my hand back and forth through kinetic sand to be fun, and do this for hours a day...well I'm only being dragged along by my brain's primitive reward mechanism and not doing anything fulfilling as well, but that doesn't make it less fun. The fact that there's only "Ha ha touch feels good" or "oooh slow thing looks like shape" is as basic as fulfillment goes. I wasn't "proud" of what I'd accomplished when I got home from looking at cool leaves as a kid. If you suddenly stop having fun, then that doesn't invalidate the fun you had previously, and make it a dirty trick of fake fun that's retroactively removed. If you keep playing past the point of fun, that's likely the result of predatory practices or the onset of addiction. Fun is a state of mind, if you think you're there...well, that's all there is to it. Congrats, you're there until you think you're not. Yes, YOU find achievement to be a primary source of fun. and it is a source of fun for most. But it's A source of fun, singular. It's not the wellspring of all that is fun. My favorite games have been played and played and beat into the ground. There's no challenge in Katamari Damacy I haven't stomped into the ground, rolled up the biggest bear, got the exactly 10m North Star...continued playing endless to unwind and have fun. Nothing to be gained means there's no pressure, so I'm free to explore and enjoy myself in a different way. Frankly I find that too often it's the exact opposite issue. If you make the game out to be an acheivement, something to accomplish...then it's a chore. it's a task. And goals feel nice to complete, but sometimes that's not the fun you want to have. It's not the "cool off after a hard day and have some fun" kind. I have goals set out for me all day every day where the results really matter, sometimes I want something pointless to enjoy where the results won't outside the moment to moment "Does this feel good. Does this feel fun." Sometimes you want to waste time.
That in itself is also a goal, although of a qualitatively different type. Goals can also be conditionally accomplished (your aim to have a relaxed, pleasant, non-stressful experience) _while_ fulfillment criteria are being met, rather than something that ceases irrevocably as soon as it is completed. People can also (and frequently do) misinterpret their own desires and feelings, besides deluding themselves into thinking something that they know to be untrue for whatever reason-hence the manipulation of 'trick you into thinking you're having fun'. I have had many experiences where I either convinced myself I liked in the moment more than I actually did, or kept going into based on a belief or expectation set up by the design that was actually false. His framing is narrow on motivational types, though. Accomplishment and achievement is not always a compelling motivation, and may run directly counter to what some people are sometimes looking for (you yourself being an example).
@@nevisysbryd7450 If simply "Having fun" or "Relaxing" or "having a pleasant time" is a goal then congrats, literally every game and nearly every action anyone takes has one. So these goalless games do have a goal that is being completed, the endless idle has successfully achieved its goal and is therefore not fake. I may eventually log in and not complete the goal, and its addiction may lead me to play despite not achieving this goal any longer and regret those earlier successes getting hooked, but that does not mean its past achievements never happened. And people misunderstanding thier own desires? All the time! Thier own feelings? Being mad at the wrong thing or person doesn't mean you weren't mad, it means you were unjustifiably mad. Feeling joy at my idle game isn't fake joy, even if later I start feeling less and start regretting it. I'm saying that in the moment, you DID like it as much as you liked it. You later stopped liking it, and you later started adding negative feelings onto the MEMORIES of that time. But the feeling that you have in a moment is the feeling you have in the moment. Period, full stop, whether it was justifiable or understandable or whether it was regretted it later. Emotions are real, physical things, because they are just physical neurons firing in response to physical chemicals. You have X amount of chemical in your brain at the time of playing, and saying later "Nah that was fake, it really should have been X amount" does not change the reality of the situation. Because "I have an emotion currently" is as concrete as "I am holding a pie." All emotion and self is physical quantifiable processes
I think this insight about motivation and emotional manipulation is analogous to real life interactions: people should remain cogniscent of how others try to motivate them to do a particular job, sell them an item, or even doing favours for them, as there could be underlying emotional manipulation. Fantastic vid!
I usually find roguelikes/roguelites with a skill tree/progression system indeed a bit more of a grind, where you try to make up for missing skills or knowledge with upgrades. Don't get me wrong, I am not an exceptional player and those upgrades do help me get further in the game, but you do play for the upgrade to be able to get further and not so much for the fun of playing itself. A game that I have found myself coming back to over and over again is Noita. So far, it is the roguelike I have enjoyed the most. There is no progression system and you do not need extraordinary skills to beat it, but you have to play it and get to know it. I find it very rewarding and, if I lose a run, I know I have done something wrong: I didn't know about a certain enemy, I was too confident, I went too fast, and so on. Plus, the game has a ton of secrets to discover! The main part of the game, which can take you very long to master, is just the early game if you plan on uncovering the secrets the game has to offer. They are were well hidden, mind you, and I resort to UA-camrs like FuryForged to know what to look for. But even then, completing them yourself feels fantastic. For me, a game with lots of intrinsic and (even if initially somehow hidden) extrinsic motivation.
Funnily enough, for me Sea of Thieves became more Extrinsic than Intrinsic when I started focusing on the in-game commendation system like a completionist to get the rarer late game cosmetic unlocks and titles. Ship cosmetics, pirate outfits and weapons, and titles all let both friendly and enemy players know how much time you've spent in the game (and therefore how much of a threat you are) at a moments notice.
Great video. Commenting to help engage with the cool videogame that UA-cam designed where pressing buttons makes some people see great analysis like this and other people see videos that are just nitpicking and biased. Hopefully in the future we can see more videogames that are designed to empower their players rather than exploit them.
Regarding MMOs, the video only really touches on dailies, but some MMOs actually have a fairly unique advantage for intrinsic reward. Since you know the game's been out for years with content being pumped into it and presumably has numerous more years to come, you have a pretty good guarantee that you'll be rewarded for your investment. The last couple MMOs I started playing, I put a lot of effort into really learning everything I could and trying to be effective in combat, synergizing abilities well, keeping uptime, all that jazz. By the time you get to challenging fights, you're rewarded for the effort you put in and it just feels damn good to learn and overcome them. If you clear them all, there's always more in the future. And combat is really just one aspect. You can delve into lore or more casual-oriented content and it also pays continued dividends for the effort you put in. Games vary in these aspects of course. Taking one example per game, GW2 has its renowned jump puzzles and other exploration that you can sink a lot of time into. WoW is generally consistent with quality difficult raids. FF14 has its extensive gathering and crafting subgame. Runescape has an extraordinarily unique quest+skill dependency web that can leave you planning your goals 10 layers deep. The expectation of a total playtime in the hundreds or thousands of hours really provides a unique intrinsic reward opportunity wheresoever the developers put them. And just again to emphasize for the inevitable fan wars, the things I listed are not necessarily unique to those games. WoW isn't the only game out there with raid bosses that people enjoy for their own sake for example. Also, yes, all of the games mentioned also have grinds that are excessive to most people and can keep a person playing while waiting for more content. Some of those grinds feel more optional than others, even within the same game. (And I realize my name isn't exactly helping my case here, but I'm trying to be fair to all the games listed here. Each of them has a lot more to it than can be expressed in one comment about one particular point.)
Great video. I still have a pending article to do on the "replay value" (in every sense) subject. As the time passes, and as a player of games like Path of Exile, Diablo, etc., respecting the players is more and more important to me. And i feel like our time is often a bit too much disrespected. Roguelites feeling like a plague sometimes, as it was noted in the video. I've some others issues with roguelikes, but at least you're more prone to being able to "finish" it once from the very beginning than a roguelite. My issues come when the game wants you to finish it dozens of times for various reasons which don't really work on me. But clearly, expanding the range of your possibilites is way better for the player than increasing your power to a level decent enough for you to start having a chance at the content thrown at you.
You should try From the Depths, it is a voxel builder much alike Trailmakers, but with vehicle combat put on the front seat as you try to conquer a huge map from 8 different factions. It's main flaw, the huge learning curve, is also an interesting idea for a video in how some extremely deep games (Paradox titles, Dwarf Fortress, Kerbal Space Program, Command: Modern Operations, DOTA 2, and Children of a Dead Earth just to name a few) often suffer with huge complexity barriers that scare many pontential players off, while other titles (like Civilization, Factorio, Heroes of the Storm and Total War: Warhammer) can offer similar depth while easing new players in. This is often spoken to in your videos, but i find it a topic worth the dedication of an entire video.
I just can't get arount to like rogue-like games. The fact that a hard earned and lucky-to-come-across Build can be lost by a single miskate is extreme frustrating, in adition you have to start from the beginning with (almost) nothing to show for. I don't mind the "get good" aspect, I love Dark Souls games and Sekiro, but at least in those if you fail you start at a few seconds from where you failed and your build remains intact.
The game that first sold me on roguelites was Void Bastards. I'd tried Spelunkey before and absolutely hated it. Void Bastards may be considered a bit too easy for hardcore roguelike fans, but its a perfect entry point into the genre in my opinion. Forgiving enough to avoid discouraging players not used to permadeath while still being a bit of a challenge. I also found the game really good at teaching players the basic rules of roguelikes. You're not always gonna be able to kill every enemy and loot every chest, but that's part of the fun-the risk and reward of a split second decision. Then I played Inscryption. I actually didn't make it past the angler for quite some time early on, but the first time that I did, I beat Leshy that same run. Felt amazing, I think this is when the roguelike bug really bit me. Now I'm playing Gungeon and loving every minute of it. I think I'm also gonna pick up Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, and Hades next. I don't think I'll be returning to Spelunkey, but I have a newfound appreciation for the genre thanks to a few of the more beginner friendly titles.
That’s awesome that you shouted out FD Signifier. It’s a nice break from gaming edgelords. Also, I’ve been making a game for 6 years now that has an exploration system set up in such a way that you make progress no matter where you’re exploring. So long as you’re mastering the combat.
Sunk a lot of time into a roguelike called Runers. At its core, It plays like a top down shooter with a small amount of physics interactions. The loot is runes and combiners, with runes being used to craft spells which function as most of your abilities and combiners being required to craft spells you never crafted before. Learning what spell each combination of runes makes is an intrinsic reward, but it is also an extrinsic reward since it fills in a page in an in-game reference book while also allowing you to craft spells in that book without combiners. The studio that made Runers unfortunately seems to have vanished, leaving a crash related to a special room, a few typos, and minor bugs forever unfixed unless the game miraculously gets big enough for somebody to figure out what causes the issues and make an unofficial patch. In spite of these flaws, I still enjoyed the game enough to make all 275 spells that use more than a single rune, document every spell in the game in a Steam guide because I get dopamine from working with information relevant to whatever my current obsession is, and continue playing hours after.
My issue with this video is it assumes that players will have this extrinsic value. Not everyone will. Like me, I don't care to play through the "super duper duper hard" repeat slightly different levels over and over for something that I could get by lime I dunno Learning a skill like artistry
With rouguelikes and the rewards that carry over and stats you can buy and such i like it when it’s something that really only takes in effect to help you get back to where you were easier but is just as hard later on Lets say a certain boss has a certain element or type of challenge but the item or skill that makes the boss easier is only after beating the boss or doing something just as difficult so that you still feel accomplished for doing that one thing because it was still kept it’s difficulty until your second time through were its just annoying if you get stuck on the 3rd boss when you were previously on the 20th and most of the time its just because you are getting so frustrated with that boss that you can no longer get to the boss to try and beat it making you feel like your skill is just getting worse instead of better so being able to beat the bosses before pretty consistently without making them easy is better at least in my opinion up until you get to where you got stuck and then it should just a be a wall you have to overcome not some glass that you have to break through that continuously get denser and thicker while giving you ways to break it easier by grinding
My favourite game is terraria. It has a lot of grind but I would say it's a good type of it. It's really rewarding: almost every enemy has several drops and as of 1.4 some of them can also drop a food item which is a really neat addition. You have already made a video about this game so I won't go that deep into it but just like you said it makes you feel powrefull with each upgrade acquired. There's also just so much to do, I am currently completing my bestiary ( along with gathering all info about enemies which sometimes requires killing 50 of them )
A cool trick that Hades adds is that once you've finally beaten the main objective, you are then encouraged to add *negative* modifiers to get more progression, and while you can do that in a number of ways, one of the big ones is by disabling much (or all) of your initial meta progression. And add additional difficulties. This increases the intrinsic motivation at (likely) the biggest portion of the game, because additional progression is all about mastery rather than bonuses. It's incredible.
If you're like me you can think about how much time you've spent playing pokemon over the years and be filled with a sense of wonder and dread at the sheer number lol (i'm not a hardcore fan or anything either, just so many games over the years, if anyone's curious I have 700hrs in just pokemon ruby alone)
Got Gunfire Reborn recently, and while im enjoying the game, being experienced at both roguelikes and shooters i beat Nightmare difficulty quite quickly and now im struggling through the next difficulty because the game expects you to have more upgrades, which means everything is too tanky, i do no dmg (especially early game) and it's just a slogfest that's a lot less fun until i actually have my tree upgraded I'm being punished because i beat nightmare too quickly, so i do agree with this video a lot
The algorithm really likes iceberg explanations right now, huh? I just watched this and I'm checking out your other videos now. They sound good so I pre-emptively subscribed.
In the games that I really love, I try to master the mechanics of it, aftermath, things that seems very tedious or really hard in the past become a walk in the park for me, and of course, find one or two exploits that I could use never hurt nobody, never the less, sometimes not matter how much time I spend on a game, I always find something new.
A big part of what I love in RPGs is following the power progression of my character/party. It's why games like pokemon and skyrim keep me coming back over and over, and why I'm a big Bravely Default fan. But I've realized that this is also why I lost interest in FF7 (og, not remake) so quickly. I was barely out of Midgard when I stopped playing and I recently realized why. Party and character progression felt meaningless. Not to say the game is badly balanced or anything, but the materia system made each characater feel like a blank slate to be filled in randomly whenever. I could change a character's entire job on a dime save for their limit breaks. It made it feel like I was never getting anywhere with the characters, nobody had their own combat identity. Yes games like BD and skyrim are very customizable but you have to commit to and work for the builds you want to make. 8ve spent hours grinding in BD2 because I wanted to make my dream builds and I felt satisfied when they paid off. But in FF7 I could just move some Materia around and boom suddenly Cloud is my healer and Red is my elemental mage. And then next dungeon it's something else. It made it hard to care about my party on a gameplay level and as a result I got bored of the game because while I was loving through the story, I never felt like I was making mraningful progress.
While I agree that that's one weakness of FF7, you're talking about character (combat) progression, not party progression. Party progression is about the collective capacity of the party, so having or not having the ability to move individual skills doesn't change that at all. You progress there with new skills and new ideas of how to combine everything. But mostly, I played FF7 for the story, the characters, and the world. JRPG combat is generally not all that interesting, though it can be challenging at times (like acquiring Beta first time you meet the Midgar Zolom). Currently actually playing one of those games, Epic Battle Fantasy 5, which does have a lot more character-specific abilities (and some extras several characters can use, but not at once). Has a demo, if you want to try.
You know... I'd say I'm a little offended that you didn't include Risk of Rain 2 (ie, one of the best roguelikes of the past two years)... But actually, I'm more surprised that you managed to not include it!
I find my personal problem with rogue-lite meta-progression is exemplified by my time with Nova Drift. My first run was completely awesome, the build I'd put together was fun, I downed a huge number of bosses, and got a massive ending score. Then I unlocked a bunch of new items and options and my next run was far, far worse. I got a bunch of upgrades that didn't work together and didn't even make it past the first boss. After that I ended up only getting upgrades that turned into a very un-fun playstyle that was only vaguely effective. Then there was the full speed build that ended up with the only way of doing significant damage being to crash into things after several seconds of build up and take damage while doing it. It took nearly thirty hours of runs over more than a week of getting fed up every night and rage-quitting the game to get even close to that first run, and it still came up pretty short. Eben worse, the build I managed it with was almost identical to the one from that first run, but harder to get and worse 'cause I missed out on one of the key pieces and ended up with a useless slot. I find gaining knowledge in a game, especially a roguelike is...not a thing? Maybe it's just me but I look at an enemy or boss and I know what it's going to do, this ones got a projectile phase, that one's going to shrink the battlefield with damaging zones, that guy has an enrage timer that makes all attacks instant-death, this floor is going to fall away and the enemy has high knockback, those chains are going to pull out of the ground and become a ranged weapon. It's very rare that a boss pulls out something I didn't already see coming. As for motivation...I'm not sure where my balance of extrinsic to intrinsic is. If it's too far down the Intrinsic side I get super bored, Minecraft, Factorio, and the like are at their best when they have a proper set of quests or story to follow beyond just building a base and automating things. Even playing with other people helps a lot with this as they can be a form of extrinsic motivation like one would see in Sea of Thieves. On the other hand too far down the extrinsic path and it becomes too easy to see the manipulation and flaws, every MMO I've played runs into this with Path of Exile being by far the worst with its reliance on large amounts of garbage loot that only has use for trading (which has an entire classification of its own problems) or crafting (which is one of the worst gambling systems I've ever seen, up to and including including actual gacha gambling).
Really wish this was the end of the year video? me too! you can get earlier access to all my sweet sweet recommendations right here! (no joke this time I'm being really serious): www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Twitter is the most insidiously compulsive thing of them all - quick! run! escape whilst you can!... after you've followed me of course!(ok fine you get one joke): twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Enjoy upcoming holydays and have a nice and peacefull new year.
12:03 worth noting that Hades's 'skill tree' offers its biggest improvements right away, while the skills you unlock later are more slight and/or require more game knowledge in order to be used well.
It feels less rewarding, but it helps solve the issue of progression being extrinsically motivated.
300+h into Hades and i still learn something new about why this game is so gad damn brilliant :)
I feel like it's also good to note that some of the later upgrades are basically "Skip to the good stuff" so you get the rarer boons and stuff once you've gotten to a point where small statistical differences really matter
@@kearbillings5719 I think this is very important. The later upgrades mainly focus on "you will get good options almost every run" (as opposed to "a lot of runs might not give you anything you need"). You can get exactly the same run with or without these, but instead of having to go 5-10 runs for the same progression, you just need 2-3. It's not helping you achieve something you're not able to achieve otherwise, it's achieving what you can more quickly.
What is also important is the 2 sides of the mirror, the ability to switch up your bonuses for some other ones. along with the keepsakes, you can somewhat start to control the luck element. not to a point that ruins the mistery of your run, but so far that you can actually make plans.
9:58 "You'd never ... defeat Leshy on your first playthrough"
yeah, because the game throws a wall of bears at you, if you go too far too soon!
All games can be improved with the addition of a wall of bears
Technically you can get past it
Get scissors, or a hour glass, and this wall is naught... Check bob Lennon, the guy won against leshy on his first try, no death card, no ourobouros
To be fair I beat the bears first time. Had a good set of cards by accident. I got really confused when I talks about the trader attacking you, as I'd gotten passed the fight without the trader. Made more sense when I found out I wasn't meant to have!
@@snakehorde Seen it from Bob Lennon too, the dude was incredibily lucky and the good items and good cards at the right time, unknowingly haha
Really great video, self control over impulses is really important when it comes to games and trying to figure out why you are keeping playing something . It can sometomes help to take a break from a game for a week and if you didnt miss playing it that much you might have been doing it out of habit instead of for fun.
Damn, you could of just called me out.... but yea. There are some games I just kind of play out of habit. Witch doesn't help me try new games.
i have this problem big time, most recent game i did with was Outward. put about 30 hours into it and part of me really wants to finish but at the same time i haven’t launched it in 2 weeks
Not missing it during a break is not always a good indicator. Some of the most long-term fulfilling activities often do not have that cheap emotional "hook" that is supposed to keep you coming back.
And I'm not necessarily talking about games, act of learning is a good example. Sometimes you need to push yourself into it to achieve something to be proud of
3:25 As someone with 2.9k hours in Sea of Thieves this is spot on. The game doesn't give you any goal and this leads to, as you said, players struggling to find a reason to play. But for me, and I imagine for most who keeps playing, it allows me to set my own goals. The game's commendation system is great for this. While I play I know roughly what commendations I want to achieve and their requirements. That way if I find myself in a situation where I can gain progression in one I usually am aware and can take advantage of it.
Another big reason for why I enjoy this game is that when playing with other people it's an absolute blast(literally!). The game is great when played with friends and often leads to hilarious moments when one of us messes up in some way or we do something really cool. I literally have over 350 video clips from the last 2 years of playing where I capture the highlights of some playsessions.
I don't really know where I wanted this to go, I guess I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on the game.
Like i said in my own comment, a lot of people go into the game think MMO RPG, but it's not an RPG at all. Furthermore, not every game need RPG mechanics
when you are over 30 and not a 'gamer' you start to dream about good games not longer than just a few hours.
fr man, short and sweet games so good
Gunpoint is a fun little puzzle-stealth game that's pretty short. I recommend it.
I second the Gunpoint recommendation.
(And if anyone's looking for another rogue-like, Gunpoint's dev/designer also made Heat Signature, which has some pretty neat systemic play)
gotta love people giving you some great recommendations in the comments
Short hike it's our stop, my friend!
Here's the funny thing for me: I can dedicate myself to even the longest RPGs start to finish... but when it comes to these "play it forever" games such as roguelikes, I always tire of them _extremely quickly._ I think it's because of my huge aversion to repetitive things. ... But then again... for short games that bank on replayability rather than continuousness, such as 2D Sonic games - well, let's say I have _FAR_ over 1,000 hours into Sonic 3 across my 29 years of living. So... I don't know. xD
I am the exact opposite
As someone with absolutely no idea of what they're talking about, it could just be a dislike of repetition, but it also sounds like you might prefer experiences with a concrete progression and conclusion over ones where you can theoretically keep progressing incrementally forever.
Same! I tried some roguelikes but never came far. I really love enter the gungeon (No i am not good at it) but still, i i am Not good at this kind of games and improving my skills in them is really Not worth it for me.
Or in sea of thiefes. I loove sailing around, chilling etc. But if i get killed all the time its not fun. I want to play 2h every now in a while. And people tell me to just get gud. But i cant and don't want to invest in learning PvP.
I too do strongly second that.
@@asdfasdf-xb6bv That's a good point. Something that replayable games like Sonic have that continuous roguelikes generally don't have (or at least much less so)... is _indeed_ the fact that you very concretely progress and finish them, instead of incrementally progressing forever.
Yes, that's probably part of it. Good point!
Thinking about it like Darksouls, although it's not a rogue-like, I think rogue-likes should be able to be beaten without upgrades if you're good enough. Hades is actually once again a good example of this as the devs clearly thought of this and actually give you a little bit of payoff for it as well because when you beat the game with no boons, the rogue-like upgrades in the game, you get a neat little bit of unique dialogue.
Yeah, but Hades gives you a neat little bit of unique dialogue for e v e r y t h i n g .
It also does so if you beat it first try, technically. It changes the line about killing you over and over to "Mustered a bunch of incompetent wretches to try and kill me"
Most roguelikes can, its roguelites that have this problem due to metaprogression
I'm pretty sure thats the difference between rogueLIKEs and rogueLITES
Honestly without even realizing it over the years roguelikes became my favorite game genre. And it all started with enter the gungeon, which is such an addicting and fun game.
I love the topic of weaving intrinsic and extrinsic motivation together. They are too often presented as completely seperate, and antonomous replacements for eachother
“Greatest artistic works of the last century”
Never change, Adam.
i put in over 200 hours on The Binding of Isaac: Repentance just so i could get a damned checkmark and i don't regret a thing
addiction
that game has eaten a large amount of my time too and in large chunks. I should have stopped playing the harder challenges a lot earlier
@@lukamagicc if he have addiction he will regret all his time spent. Looks like someone who just enjoyed the game.
I have 670 still not done
My switch says I've spent over 800 hours and I'm still grinding out the new Challenges and Jacob+Esau.
I LOVE meta progression in roguelikes. It makes me feel that each run, even a bad run, is worth it. Especially because sometimes bad luck plays a roll. Like if I land on a bad fight in FTL and die. There isn't always something to learn there. With meta progression, at least I'm growing a bit stronger to undue those non educational random setbacks.
That's what makes conversations on these designs so difficult. What you described as a less effective form of progression, I found as a more effective progression. And it was less enjoyable for me to listen to the video about it, as it didn't feel like you acknowledged preference in these statement, rather described it as "for the struggling player".
"Preference" is also a crucial part of observable game design :).
Hey, that's cool! I HATE meta progression in roguelikes. It makes me feel that the gaming skills I've built over the decades are meaningless, when it's clear you can't beat the game unless you grind some meta progression.
However I see your point in meta progression lessening the bitter feeling of losing due to bad RNG, with no lesson to be learned there, which has made me quit games.
@@EconaelGaminga veteran player starting any roguelite on a new save would still beat it faster than a veteran rpg player starting the Witcher 3 or any similar RPG on a fresh save. Assuming they aren't speedrunners.
@@DefinitelANonymous Mainly because the witcher 3 is story oriented and has dozens (hundreds?) of hours of dialogue.
As someone who despises how many rogue likes there are and can't find fun in any of them this was really interesting to listen to. The available aspects of fun and ideas these games can show, yet I can't seem to grasp any of it. Extremely interesting though.
To put it in terms of the video's psychobabble, the problem with delayed gratification is that if gratification is delayed too long, people stop seeking it at all - they eat the sunk time and walk away to do something else. The reason you can't get into roguelikes is the same reason other people can't get into games like Dark Souls.
The best rogue like is Noita.
Try Hades if you haven´t already. I used to hate rouglike/rougelites until that game came along.
I still don´t like the genre very much, but I´m now more incentivized to try new things in the hope of finding another Hades.
@@EriesAston For real. I didn't even know what rogue-likes really were the first time I played Hades. When I realised I had to start over from the beginning every time and I didn't get to keep cool boons I was so disappointed. I thought there's no way I make it through an entire run. But I ended up beating Hades the first time I fought him, and I've been hooked ever since
Please try Spelunky 2. It’s nice to play a game where choices and mechanic interactions are most important, not just fighting. Incredibly rewarding game that is brutally hard for a long time but each time you feel a little bit better. Plus the rng is never bad enough to ruin a run, (Faster Than Light I feel is guilty of this at times) just enough to keep you on your toes.
Huh. For me, Halo infinite was an excellent example of keeping me playing for intrinsic rewards. I couldn't really care about the story or the upgrades but going from dying to simple mobs to being able to pull cool tricks with the grapple and learning how to be a better and more efficient player I find to be be very rewarding.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone address the whole thing of roguelites being impossible on a fresh save. I find that incredibly discouraging, but it's such a popular feature, I don't understand why. I want effort to be rewarded, I want my improvement as a player to matter.
That's why The Binding of Isaac is a great game.
I think there are definitely games that do it right though, usually by having the meta progression be nice to have but not overpowered. The Last Spell is my current roguelite, and it's a ton of fun working out what's going to benefit me most in each run. Granted, some of its meta upgrades are really strong, like the ones that give you extra actions each turn, but the game also demands that your tactics be airtight, lest the swarms of zombies find a gap and destroy you. Now, if there was an upgrade that was like "buy this and the first night will play itself," I wouldn't enjoy that at all because it wouldn't actually test me.
@@abderianagelast7868 I think for me there just isn't a "right", because any buff makes the subsequent progress hollow. Oh, I didn't overcome my limitations, I just got a powerful bonus. It doesn't matter to me if the game is still hard after the unlock tree, because the unlock tree cheapens all of those little moments of personal growth along the way.
@vipertooth Binding of Isaac has exactly the problem I'm talking about. Not only do you unlock more powerful items, it also just straight up denies you the first time you beat Mom/Mom's Heart.
@@SpriteGuard Isaac prevents you from progressing too far before you’re ready, essentially ensuring you are ready for the challenge of later stages. The items are typical rogue like unlocks, what do you want, no new items? Or all items on startup?
Can't you just consider the early parts of the game a drawn out tutorial?
this video covers a lot of ground, vut I want to add that different people respond to different motivations at different levels. I for one require a games systems to push me to improve if I'm going to play it more than once, or finish it at all if its long. under a similar token, I need some depth in the games mechanics to master, or I'll master the game too quickly and drop it soon after. for some people, story telling is a greater motivator, getting invested in the characters and the conflicts they get bundled up in. and these motivations come in all shapes, sizes, and quirks for each person, and they mean different things as well for different people. "challenge" might mean enemies can one shot you to others, while for me it refers more to mastering every inch of an enemy. random chance one shot I cant dodge doesnt count as challenge for me, but for others it does. this really only further complicates making a great game for devs because of how different every person can be even in the same demographic. probably the reason most big devs settle for trying to pull all your money. probably a lot easier to do, and reliably, thinking about it.
This is why I love noita, it’s like every feature of a good roguelike taken to the nth level, and with a world chock full of secrets. If you never look for other zones and just play through the main area, heck if you never look up information outside of the game, you will miss like 90% of the content. It’s so well put together that you can spend hundreds of runs trying to get to what you think is the main goal and have an amazing experience, and never even know about more until you look into it.
This is also the games main weakness, though. The devs have a hatred of anything that is too simple, and some of the puzzles and content are so obscure and complex that they absolutely require looking up externally. Some of them the community as a whole has yet to solve, like the eye glyphs or the cauldron room.
But you can still have a blast playing because the game is ridiculously hard, and what makes it so addictive is that all the blame is placed on the player. That might seem degrading, but that’s only really true for people who don’t like a little bit of challenge. Every death and every failure is a learning moment. Care to experiment with a dangerous spell combo? It kills you instantly by summoning a massive sawblade or detonating 40 tons of dynamite. Better luck next time! Through trial and error, and more error, you learn what works and what doesn’t, and which enemies are manageable and which aren’t. Over time as this knowledge builds you always feel deaths are your fault, because you nearly always could have made a better choice. Noita balances your patience very well, punishing you for playing too aggressively when you don’t have the skill to back it up. You absolutely have to gain a sense for risk and reward, and noita is a game where the risk is real and immediate. If you choose to go into a dangerous zone to find good wands, you have a very good chance of dying to the exotic enemies or chemicals there. By placing everything on you, the game is addictive because you always feel you can do a little better next time.
Ive noticed that games that keep me playing have a good balance of short term action with long term planning. So games like Xcom, rougelikes, and 4x games really draw me in
The whole “using your brain’s evolutionary reward mechanisms to convince you you’re having fun when you aren’t” is exactly my relationship with idle games. I can’t articulate why I’m so addicted to them when it’s pretty much just staring at a screen, waiting until you can press an upgrade button. But oh the happy chemicals do come rushing out once you press that button. And then I think “oh I’ve sunk so much time into this, I might as well keep going for a while. Definitely not a logical fallacy there.”
Idk if anyone else plays idle games like this, when they’re often supposed to be checked in every once in a while and not continuously played (although I think some devs DO know people play like this and that’s why there are microtransactions lol).
I actually played a pretty interesting idle game once that had like, a fantasy adventure story. Which would have been great if it wasn’t so completely mind numbing and the wait was so arbitrarily long between each story progression. Didn’t stop me from sinking an ungodly amount of hours into it. And I was still only halfway through my second run when I quit (and there were five runs to complete the story!!!)
There are definitely incremental games out there that go more more active play than idle games do most of the time. I tend to enjoy that more than spending a minute or two checking in and the leaving it for hours again, even if that is the reality of those same games sometimes, just not as often. The idle ones work a lot better when you're legitimately focused on something else for hours at a time instead of being addicted and wanting to check in every 5 minutes.
Gacha games and their unnecessary stamina systems so you either wait until later or buy some more lol
Just for a counterpoint, as a dad-gamer, I've only recently gotten into Idle Games. It's really nice to be able to feel like I'm actually making a little progress on a game while I am, for example, feeding my kids or whatever. And then I just check in at the end of the day and make, like, 5 decisions, and then move on with my life and play a more engaging game. But I look forward to those 5 decisions a surprising amount.
I despise idle games so much. Anything with auto attack that can't be turned off is a huge no for me.
@@rick30521 Whenever I played a game with stamina system I ended up just doing my dailies, spending my stamina and forget the game until the next day and repeat. This makes gaming a chore instead of fun.
Just wanna say I'm so glad someone else feels that way about sea of thieves. I loved the ship combat and the general feeling of sailing the seas, but there was literally no progression and most of the quests felt like they were just puzzles for 10 year olds
I somehow managed to find this less than a minute it came out, and even weirder I actually own a good few of these games.
Big brother is watching
Weird, happend to me as well.
watching this video while gaming and hearing you shoutout FD Signifier feels so surreal but im really glad to hear it
There he is! It's that guy that got me addicted to Wildermyth! Get him!
(by which I mean subscribe to him and have a great day)
You'll never take me alive!!!
An interesting note about Into the Breach:
I intrinsically enjoyed trying to figure out different strategies for each of the mech teams. Which is why it annoyed me that the game required you to purchase those teams using coins that you could get (essentially) for beating the game. They attached extrinsic rewards to beating the game when they didn't have to. I wanted to replay it anyway!
Those extra teams are essentially new game modes though. You can still play with the default team and not have any buffs stacked onto yourself. Into the Breach is a really good example of blending these elements together. You can do things to make the game easier if you want to.
I loved getting the new squads through coins but I hate that you need EVERY coin including one which is so rare through rng that you can only really get it if you knew the circumstances of getting it when you first started, to get the last secret squad. Still missing that one coin after 180h playtime.
@@thomase640 I did not even know that squad existed! Haha
Not a fan of that particular design choice. Seems like padding the runtime more than anything else.
I quite enjoy rogue likes myself! They're a genre favorite because they reward mastery and let you keep playing even after the credits roll with enough of a remix to reward new playstyles and teach you new gimmicks.
4:37 xenoblade chronicles x was one of my favourite games. man the overdrive mechanic is SO SATISFYING and you can see how powerful you are as before you were just pressing and seeing ur attack happen then waiting for it to recharge, but with overdrive you hear the "click" of when your attack happens, then you can use it again. click after click after click and mmmm feels so good
Cheers for the video, it was good fun. I also found myself getting really into roguelikes the last few years and I think your point of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation summed it up pretty well. Have a nice christmas!
I just love your channel, captivating analysis of video game topics i hardly thought about and i can't stop listening, even videos where the main topic is a game i never played or watched have me feel satisfied at the end because of all the information i just received as well as examples from usually all different sorts of genres makes anything you put out worthwhile, and here is a video that touches both of the genres i play most: roguelikes an gacha games.
Amazing video as always and i gotta thank you for everything i learned and realized, as well as maybe dump one or another gacha for more time spent on the better of the two genres i mentioned.
I found rogue-light city-builder "Against the Storm" on the EGS. I haven't played much else lately. You get to make cities and as you make more successful cities you unlock persistent rewards that feed back into more impressive efficient colonies.
rogue-light city-builder? -> Sounds interesting . thx for the tip! :-)
That FD shoutout made me fall in love with you. The best crossover!
My favourite meta progression is unlocking characters with many of the ones that are harder to unlock be weaker, as you can still keep the easier gameplay of the starting characters but get both unique gameplay and in the cases weaker characters get an extra challenge.
What I really don't like is when a game has a no meta progression mode locked behind beating the game, like is in the case of the game Undermine, because when a play a roguelike I don't want to grind for meta resources.
Great video! One thing I’d note though is that the idea that having extrinsic motivations inherently cheapens the experience feels a bit off to me as someone who 100% would not have beaten Hades without the mirror rewards. I personally think it’s just rewarding in a different way, and which is better depends largely on how an individual player values rewards.
I have an energy limiting disability which also causes me a lot of chronic pain. I know full well that there are games that no amount of intrinsic motivation will make worthwhile because the cost of grinding to gradually get better at a game is way higher for me than most players. I adored my time with Hollow Knight … until I encountered a boss that I couldn’t beat and couldn’t grind without getting a migraine and had to quit game, honestly making it end as a game I can’t even watch content about without getting sad. I actively avoid pure rogue games because I don’t want to have that experience again. For me, buying new death defiances in Hades wasn’t rewarding solely because “oooh new power up,” but because it gave the game a structure that made me feel like my intrinsic motivation might actually be rewarded.
Hello, I, too, have a chronic (illness, in my case) that limits my energy. And I have an injury in my wrists that starts hurting a lot when I play for a long time, so similar case here. I love Hollow Knight too, and I've found that, in order to keep enjoying during times that I encountered a rough boss, what helped me was put the game down for a while, like a week, or a month, or a couple months playing other things, and then returning. And also, tips by a friend or the internet about which charms or which strategy I should use. I don't know if this will help you, because of the differences in our condition, but I believe it's worth trying so you could enjoy the cool game again :D Have a nice day!
Also, edit: do you recommend Hades? I am scared about the fact that each run is "the same" in regard to the bosses you have to kill, is it not boring after a while?
@@NairaMB hey! So sorry I didn’t respond sooner (hope you still see this). I did try looking up watcher knight tutorials when I first quit, but it’s been a few months so maybe I’ll go back and try again! That’s what I ended up doing during my run through the City of Tears (teleporting bosses are also not my forte lol).
As for Hades, I personally really enjoy it. It’s like my 5th most played switch game iirc. I was also hesitant about the repetition. It was my first rogue game. Personally I found that the different weapons and god-Boon builds make the amount of playthroughs you need to 1) escape the underworld, and 2) finish the main story pretty fun. I found myself getting into a groove with my fave weapon + gods partway through so researched some other recommended builds, which teaches you a lot about the boons and how they synergize and stuff which makes it more fun to come up with new things on your own. If you’re a completionist, though, it can definitely get tedious. I’m on run like 120 or something and since post game involves a lot of difficulty challenges (the bane of my experience lmao) I’ve been using pretty repetitive builds which definitely gets tedious. You also unlock more story every run through and death, so if story is something that you enjoy in games it’s a good incentive to keep going. I’d personally recommend it, but obviously you know you’re game taste wayyyy more than I do.
If you have any other questions I can try to answer them!
I was just trying to explain my love for Isaac to someone the other day. I’ve been playing since Wrath of the Lamb hit on Flash Isaac and this did an amazing job of articulating what I’ve struggled to for a decade.
I actually _did_ make it to The Orb on my first playthrough...then promptly got locked in place in corridor after corridor after corridor by the spawns on my way back out and eventually died to smites and hellfire.
...minotaur berserkers were honestly kinda OP back in 15.2 when evocations was so incredibly strong.
I've had a lot of conversations about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation with a friend who is way into fighting games, and I think it's worth noting that different people are motivated in different ways (and learn in different ways, for that matter), and that's... kinda how we end up with all these different kinds of games in the first place! I find fighting games to be almost wholly intrinsic, but for me and how I'm wired that mostly just means I see a lot of struggle and failure and don't really get any satisfaction when I accomplish some improvement so much as feel frustrated it was even hard for me at all (real healthy mental situation I've got here, clearly). Inversely, games that rely on almost any level of narrative or checklisty goals lose her entirely; she's almost entirely extrinsicly motivated and cannot even begin to enjoy the kind of games I do (JRPGs mainly but also really anything that gives me a nice checklist of shit to do I can look at and pretend I'm in control of my life.)
Regarding the learning, I think Crypt of the Necrodancer and maybe Rogue Legacy are the only rougelikes I've encountered that really work with my way of actually improving at something, which boils down largely to "if the iteration time is more than a couple minutes, I will not retain a fucking thing." I wish more of these games had Necrodancer's practice areas so I'd have less situations like "I have been trying to get past floor 3 of the Gungeon for years and routinely die the second I walk in the door, thanks." I can explain a lot of why my intrinsic motivation with games is broken to hell, but this one... man, iunno. Throw me a bone tho, game devs! Let me practice things. :|
You good, man?
Very interesting video,
finally allowed me to put a concept and words on the reason why I never managed to get invested in games like Slay the spire, rogue legacy, etc. while I have sunk many MANY hours into games more like Noita where you _are_ able to finish the game on the first ever run you have if you are very skillful and don't have to grind for updates in order to progress.
well.... in the case of Noita, the wand building has a lot to do with with the way I saw it being re-playable. I knew that every run could potentially teach me something (a new spell, a new interaction of spells, new enemies, new perks, etc.). it was never about having a run just to grind currency to unlock the next skill in the tree.
You can beat your first run of Slay the Spire if you can learn the game quickly, much in the same way as with Noita. The only unlocks in Slay the Spire are new cards which will appear during runs. Although these cards open up new strategies, they also dilute the card pool. If they do make you stronger, it's only by a tiny amount and only because you understand the game well enough to exploit the new cards.
These type of games get me so much I play them over and over again it may not be all in one go but I will defiantly come back to them
I really enjoy rouglikes especially the hard ones. Playing the game over and over again just getting better. It feels great to get further. To take less damage to go faster. Beating dead cells no damage is one of my greatest achievements in gaming and I don't think I'm going to be able to beat it. I also love the variety that all the good rouglikes provide. I still play runs in for example dead cells that I have never had before. Getting affixes that synergize in a new way seeing everything. Thats why I like games to complete to get better at. I don't write too well but thanks for reading.
this is me with deep rock galactic, and roguelikes to a lesser extent.
I've owned DRG for 4 years and have almost 900 hours in it, and even though I've unlocked basically everything, I still play it every so often.
Been watching FD Signifier for a while now. Super underrated channel.
I love the shoutout to FD Signifier, he's makes amazing videos.
Adam, I got invited by some friends to guest star on a gaming podcast (because I'm free and they probably couldn't afford you) but I just hope you know my prep for said activity is just to watch all your videos and pretend I'm half as competent at game design as you are XD
For real tho I'll be tagging you at the end for credit and linking them here in the liner notes too, so if any of those listeners are here from the future: you're welcome. Please pay this man money so we can talk more about his work.
As a beginner game developer I absolutely love and look forward to your videos. And thanks for recommending F.D Signifier! More videos for me listen to while I do game dev :)
Dude. The F. D. Signifier recommendation was awesome. Already watched several in a row, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Roguelikes rules, and nobody can convince me otherwise :D
Rouge-like's are some of my favourite games I almost never play
13:26 "All art is psychological manipulation." Damn man that is a key thing to know if you want to make good art.
This video comes at the right time. It explains why I enjoyed Forager but recently Archvale so so much and couldn't stop playing. Those short term rewards are lovely :D
Thank you Adam, Always love your videos. Merry Christmas!
What a pleasant surprise to see FD Signifier getting a shoutout here. Great show Adam.
As a Black viewer/fan of your videos, I really appreciate you shouting out FD Signifier! People aren't often willing to just say that part out loud (about the video essay space on YT being fairly homogenous). Your content is great, keep up the good work!
Great vid, as always. I always click them as soon as they drop :D
Nice shout out for FD signifier too!! He's great 👍
6:23 - I feel it's worth mentioning that dopamine is arguably an even more important neurotransmitter than endorphine when it comes to the brain's reward system, especially when it comes to the *anticipation* of reward specifically. Dopamine generally creates the feeling of "wanting" something and is therefore very heavily related to addiction.
The feeling of "liking" something (i.e. reward gratification) is very complex however and can come from multiple different sources/neurotransmitters. It's possible it might include endorphines, but it can also be serotonine, endocannabinoid or even cortisol (stress) neurotransmitters, etc. And sometimes its actually the *lack* of "liking"/ gratifcation neurotransmitters that makes the addictiveness of a reward even stronger.
Anyway, it's all super complicated and don't expect a lecture in neurochemistry for a quick remark in a video. I just wanted to give some food for thought and perhaps a reason to dive into the rabbit hole of neuroanatomy and reward systems even deeper.
Love the video as always, keep it up!
I think cortisol works on MOBAs, especifically League of Legends, the system will often put you on matches that are easy wins, or terrible losses, and some in between where your skill actually has an effect on the game, because even if you're good, you can't win every match, the stress of every play possibly going wrong enhances the experience for sure. Also, the stress of playing a game where shit could go wrong because of your decision-making (like DS games) or even something out of your control (Darkest Dungeon and every other RNG-based game) also make every positive outcome feel like pure bliss.
So for example, a frustrating game that is sometimes gratifying (but not most of the time) can be a good motivator ?
@@Shriukan1 Look up "schedules of reinforcement". Basically, it says that the most addictive type of reinforcement is the one when you get a reward randomly after performing an act. You can apply that to gambling (sometimes you win, but most times you lose) or you can apply that to rogue likes (sometimes you get a great combination of upgrades and items and sometimes you get shit).
While on topic of reinforcement schedules, the part where I have to disagree with the video is when he claims that delayed gratification makes us want to play more. Actually, it's the other way around when it comes to addictiveness. The more you have to wait for a reward after performing an act, the less addictive it is
You are describing the Incentive-Sensitization Theory of Addiction.
@@P-diddykong Exactly! Lootboxes are also a great example of this. It utilizes the same random reward mechanism as traditional gambling, which makes it so addictive (and profitable for companies)
And yeah, it's often the other way around with delayed gratification. The drug intake methods with the quickest gratification onset (e.g. smoking/injecting) are generally more addictive than methods with slow gratification onset (e.g. swallowing a pill). In fact, delayed gratification is often related to *impuls control* (the opposite of addictive compulsion).
That being said, you could argue, that a longer anticipation period means more time for dopamine to increase and thus possibly reach higher levels. But I'm pretty sure we're talking about a few very complex interaction effects, which doesn't just come down to a simple "delayed gratification = more addictive statement (which the video suggests). So I would agree with you, the link between instant gratification and addiction are a lot stronger in the literature than with delayed gratification.
Just found your channel and I'm going through all your videos. The quality is amazing 👏
WOW knowing you appreciate F.D is major love, that's dope
15:06 had me laughing out loud, which happens rarely but I so love it when it does
Thanks to your video I finally realized why I love bullet heavens like Vampire Survivors so much. My entire gaming life, I’ve always loved starting out with as little as possible and feeling my character getting stronger and stronger, enough to destroy anything in their path. But the power fantasy bores me very quickly, so I’ll start over from zero and do it all again.
In Empire Earth, I would intentionally bring my starting team down to 5 villagers (the minimum). I love Metroid Zero Mission because you start with so little, they don’t even give you a ledge grab at first. Whenever I play an RPG that starts you at like level 7, I always wished that I could choose to begin at level 1 instead.
Bullet heaven games condense that formula into like half an hour of gameplay, where I get to quickly level up and pick my upgrades and use all that to destroy waves and waves of enemies until I’m super powered and I’ve defeated them all. But before I have a chance to get bored of being too strong, the timer runs out and the run ends, so I get to do it all over again less than an hour after starting the last time.
i really struggle to stay motivated to play any game. even the games i love. though i think that's from 'depression' rather than any fault of the game itself
Love F.D. Signifier!
What a surprise recommendation on a gaming channel.
Loved it!
There's a natural tension between mastery and incremental mechanics that's hard to resolve.
Nice, a short little 18 minutes of high quality AoG content in between my 17th and 18th hour of Synthetik this week :x
Baby, the video's been posted for 5 minutes tops. You can't possibly have even watched half of it, how can you gauge its quality ? :')
Enjoy Synthetik, though !
@@imrane5595 reread
@@imrane5595 It's easy to gauge the quality, as it's made by Adam Millard - The Architect of Games. Therefore, it can only be a great video or an excellent video :p
As someone who is too slow to improve for most rogue-likes, I haven't been able to get to the end of a single one I've played so far even after pouring dozens of hours into them. I get bored of the gameplay before I'm good enough to do so, so I personally like the idea of in-game power level improvements if it would allow me to actually reach a satisfying conclusion with the game. Haven't played one that implements it yet but I'll probably be picking up Hades soon.
Hades godmode increases dmg resistance every time u die, you can reach 80% resistance, so youll definitely beat it eventually
@@devilvocano420 And it gives you the option to turn it off when you do get better at the gameplay. Hades really is the perfect balance between skill and upgrades.
If there is one roguelike that I think you could enjoy, it's Hades. Not only is the design just that good, there is a pure, raw joy in the gameplay, at least for me. It just feels good to play. The combat is super fast, and tight, and hard, but also simultaneously surprisingly forgiving. It's amazing.
I would argue that Halo's Infinite might be bland in the general open world game industry but it's not really that different than other halos in terms of gameplay loop and story progression...
The open world is there exactly for exploration, and just that exploring and doing some side quests... You're not obliged to do the side quests... Only the main ones.
Doing side quests only allow you to explore with more weapons and vehicles, and if you're interested you would look in UA-cam what people do in the campaign, it's more of search your own fun and play with the sandbox kind of game, and if you want plot there's the main missions...
Perhaps you burnt yourself out because you don't enjoy Halo's gameplay loop, and that's fair... Just wanted you to see stuff from another lense, idk.
I love your video on Spelunky 2. I often rewatch it, and show it to my friends. The one thing that I can’t agree with, is the whole “you’ll never finish the game” bit. So, I decided I WOULD finish the game. And I did. Now it’s my favorite game of all time. Thank you.
UPDATE: I am now aiming to beat the special ending without getting hit. Almost halfway there :)
It took me 1500 runs to beat Tiamat. Now, I can do it in every 3-5 runs (assuming I’m not trying for the Sunken City or any other special ending stuff). Incredibly rewarding game.
Another great video! And wooo for that little potion craft spot!^~^
I like how dead cells make the metaprogressions, gathering currency doesnt makes the game easy, new itens arent improvement, but new ways to play. That game really got me hooked
My problem with dead cells is that many new items are kind of bad. When I conceptualized it as a "deck building game" so to speak, i aimed for a "thin deck", i.e., i only unlocked the good weapons so that i had a higher chance of obtaining them and win
@@BaroTheMadman i tottally agree with you on this, most new itens are actually a downgrade, ive only played on one save and got up till 5bsc, but i used about 7 brutallity weapons, 4 or 5 tatics and 3 survival, the others were hard skips and were there as an obstacle
Elden Ring got me hard guys. Cant stop playing. Dropped all other games I played, never played a souls game before. Seems like this game perfected the balance between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for me (though I never heard those 2 words before). I even started a personal journal for this game to keep track where I have to go and where I have to go back when I am better prepared, or about locations I still have to explore. Something I didnt do for a long time for a game. Last game I had to make a journal for was gothic 2 I think. I try to play without guides as much as possible, and try to figure stuff out on my own and this really started to bring back fun in video games for me. Elden Ring might not be for everyone, but for people who kinda miss the old games feeling, where you have no markers on a map or a gps minimap that shows you the path where you have to go, this game is perfectly for you and I really can recommend it. But just from the start make a journal and write things down what npcs tell you and where chests are you still have no keys for, or you forget it, because the content is kinda huge. I am about 200 hours in the game, had to restart because I didnt made a journal in my first run and after like 60 or 70 hours I remembered this and that, and thought ok, maybe I should have written some things down. Then I created another character and went for another run and started taking notes, and its just awesome. I am still not done exploring in the first area, and somehow, instead of following the main route to another location, I just ended up going in the wrong way. Sometimes I feel like there is so much to do, when I look at my journal, and it doesnt stop coming, and when looking things up sometimes guides, I get overwhelmed. But still, I cant stop playing. This game really brought back fun in games for me. Before that, as a passionate gamer, i really was thinking about stopping gaming at all, since nothing out there really kept me playing. It was just boring and felt like work in some games, to find every questionmark and what not. Now it feels more like an adventure instead of work. I hope it keeps that way, but for now, this game is one of the best that came out since a long time in my opinion. Right now, if someone would ask me how I would rank that game, I would say 10/10. Definitly a great game.
Any game has a difficulty curve, ranging from unfun to fun to unfun again as you go from too easy to too hard. Roguelikes generally embrace that in a way I don't like, by starting you off on the too hard end and ending on the too easy end. I think if gameplay has a sweet spot, then designers should generally just aim for the sweet spot rather than make a huge array of gameplay experiences that are mostly dull for one reason or the other.
I think gamers look at a game's length and equate it to value too easily. Lots of F2P games will happily suck up hours of your time every day and many gamers will consider this a strong value proposition, as if spending their time is not a cost to them. Most games would not be as long as they are - many would not be 1/10 as long! - if designers were genuinely trying to make them fun instead of trying to appeal to a player's sense of getting their money's worth. Roguelikes definitely contribute to this trap.
1:12 Bruh… cause they are interactive and give control, and most gamers *like* being in control. It’s why they are so popular with kids, who constantly feel they are without control, and many adults who are out there adulting, who also feel without control. Least that’s what I think. Particularly when it comes to single player non-competitive games.
7:23 Lol, this is actually where I stopped playing Factorio. I always get to right about there and then go “ugh I thought I was getting the new science pack…”
12:03 Yeah, this is the first video where I’ve disagreed with you a lot. I find that those boosts are the only things that get me to play those kinds of games. I loved it in Hades, as well as the story. I think Hades took off exactly because it had lots surrounding the gameplay loop, which is honestly repetitive & predictable (so many times I’d know I wasn’t winning the round by the time I got to Elysium). Without the story, the voice acting, the writing, the levelups between runs, and the multiple weapons, Hades would have sucked, and that’s where most of the genre ends up.
Man your videos are so insightful and well thought out, thank you
I'm a bit intrigued and confused by the thought of "trick you into thinking you're having fun," as I don't agree that's...well, possible by the definition given. If I find sitting in the park cloud watching, or showering, or moving my hand back and forth through kinetic sand to be fun, and do this for hours a day...well I'm only being dragged along by my brain's primitive reward mechanism and not doing anything fulfilling as well, but that doesn't make it less fun. The fact that there's only "Ha ha touch feels good" or "oooh slow thing looks like shape" is as basic as fulfillment goes. I wasn't "proud" of what I'd accomplished when I got home from looking at cool leaves as a kid. If you suddenly stop having fun, then that doesn't invalidate the fun you had previously, and make it a dirty trick of fake fun that's retroactively removed. If you keep playing past the point of fun, that's likely the result of predatory practices or the onset of addiction. Fun is a state of mind, if you think you're there...well, that's all there is to it. Congrats, you're there until you think you're not.
Yes, YOU find achievement to be a primary source of fun. and it is a source of fun for most. But it's A source of fun, singular. It's not the wellspring of all that is fun. My favorite games have been played and played and beat into the ground. There's no challenge in Katamari Damacy I haven't stomped into the ground, rolled up the biggest bear, got the exactly 10m North Star...continued playing endless to unwind and have fun. Nothing to be gained means there's no pressure, so I'm free to explore and enjoy myself in a different way. Frankly I find that too often it's the exact opposite issue. If you make the game out to be an acheivement, something to accomplish...then it's a chore. it's a task. And goals feel nice to complete, but sometimes that's not the fun you want to have. It's not the "cool off after a hard day and have some fun" kind. I have goals set out for me all day every day where the results really matter, sometimes I want something pointless to enjoy where the results won't outside the moment to moment "Does this feel good. Does this feel fun." Sometimes you want to waste time.
That in itself is also a goal, although of a qualitatively different type. Goals can also be conditionally accomplished (your aim to have a relaxed, pleasant, non-stressful experience) _while_ fulfillment criteria are being met, rather than something that ceases irrevocably as soon as it is completed. People can also (and frequently do) misinterpret their own desires and feelings, besides deluding themselves into thinking something that they know to be untrue for whatever reason-hence the manipulation of 'trick you into thinking you're having fun'. I have had many experiences where I either convinced myself I liked in the moment more than I actually did, or kept going into based on a belief or expectation set up by the design that was actually false.
His framing is narrow on motivational types, though. Accomplishment and achievement is not always a compelling motivation, and may run directly counter to what some people are sometimes looking for (you yourself being an example).
@@nevisysbryd7450 If simply "Having fun" or "Relaxing" or "having a pleasant time" is a goal then congrats, literally every game and nearly every action anyone takes has one. So these goalless games do have a goal that is being completed, the endless idle has successfully achieved its goal and is therefore not fake. I may eventually log in and not complete the goal, and its addiction may lead me to play despite not achieving this goal any longer and regret those earlier successes getting hooked, but that does not mean its past achievements never happened.
And people misunderstanding thier own desires? All the time! Thier own feelings? Being mad at the wrong thing or person doesn't mean you weren't mad, it means you were unjustifiably mad. Feeling joy at my idle game isn't fake joy, even if later I start feeling less and start regretting it. I'm saying that in the moment, you DID like it as much as you liked it. You later stopped liking it, and you later started adding negative feelings onto the MEMORIES of that time. But the feeling that you have in a moment is the feeling you have in the moment. Period, full stop, whether it was justifiable or understandable or whether it was regretted it later. Emotions are real, physical things, because they are just physical neurons firing in response to physical chemicals. You have X amount of chemical in your brain at the time of playing, and saying later "Nah that was fake, it really should have been X amount" does not change the reality of the situation. Because "I have an emotion currently" is as concrete as "I am holding a pie." All emotion and self is physical quantifiable processes
I think this insight about motivation and emotional manipulation is analogous to real life interactions: people should remain cogniscent of how others try to motivate them to do a particular job, sell them an item, or even doing favours for them, as there could be underlying emotional manipulation. Fantastic vid!
15:03 LOL @ the shade thrown at Hearthstone
I usually find roguelikes/roguelites with a skill tree/progression system indeed a bit more of a grind, where you try to make up for missing skills or knowledge with upgrades.
Don't get me wrong, I am not an exceptional player and those upgrades do help me get further in the game, but you do play for the upgrade to be able to get further and not so much for the fun of playing itself.
A game that I have found myself coming back to over and over again is Noita. So far, it is the roguelike I have enjoyed the most. There is no progression system and you do not need extraordinary skills to beat it, but you have to play it and get to know it. I find it very rewarding and, if I lose a run, I know I have done something wrong: I didn't know about a certain enemy, I was too confident, I went too fast, and so on.
Plus, the game has a ton of secrets to discover! The main part of the game, which can take you very long to master, is just the early game if you plan on uncovering the secrets the game has to offer. They are were well hidden, mind you, and I resort to UA-camrs like FuryForged to know what to look for. But even then, completing them yourself feels fantastic.
For me, a game with lots of intrinsic and (even if initially somehow hidden) extrinsic motivation.
Funnily enough, for me Sea of Thieves became more Extrinsic than Intrinsic when I started focusing on the in-game commendation system like a completionist to get the rarer late game cosmetic unlocks and titles. Ship cosmetics, pirate outfits and weapons, and titles all let both friendly and enemy players know how much time you've spent in the game (and therefore how much of a threat you are) at a moments notice.
Great video. Commenting to help engage with the cool videogame that UA-cam designed where pressing buttons makes some people see great analysis like this and other people see videos that are just nitpicking and biased.
Hopefully in the future we can see more videogames that are designed to empower their players rather than exploit them.
Regarding MMOs, the video only really touches on dailies, but some MMOs actually have a fairly unique advantage for intrinsic reward. Since you know the game's been out for years with content being pumped into it and presumably has numerous more years to come, you have a pretty good guarantee that you'll be rewarded for your investment. The last couple MMOs I started playing, I put a lot of effort into really learning everything I could and trying to be effective in combat, synergizing abilities well, keeping uptime, all that jazz. By the time you get to challenging fights, you're rewarded for the effort you put in and it just feels damn good to learn and overcome them. If you clear them all, there's always more in the future. And combat is really just one aspect. You can delve into lore or more casual-oriented content and it also pays continued dividends for the effort you put in. Games vary in these aspects of course. Taking one example per game, GW2 has its renowned jump puzzles and other exploration that you can sink a lot of time into. WoW is generally consistent with quality difficult raids. FF14 has its extensive gathering and crafting subgame. Runescape has an extraordinarily unique quest+skill dependency web that can leave you planning your goals 10 layers deep. The expectation of a total playtime in the hundreds or thousands of hours really provides a unique intrinsic reward opportunity wheresoever the developers put them.
And just again to emphasize for the inevitable fan wars, the things I listed are not necessarily unique to those games. WoW isn't the only game out there with raid bosses that people enjoy for their own sake for example. Also, yes, all of the games mentioned also have grinds that are excessive to most people and can keep a person playing while waiting for more content. Some of those grinds feel more optional than others, even within the same game. (And I realize my name isn't exactly helping my case here, but I'm trying to be fair to all the games listed here. Each of them has a lot more to it than can be expressed in one comment about one particular point.)
Great video. I still have a pending article to do on the "replay value" (in every sense) subject. As the time passes, and as a player of games like Path of Exile, Diablo, etc., respecting the players is more and more important to me. And i feel like our time is often a bit too much disrespected. Roguelites feeling like a plague sometimes, as it was noted in the video.
I've some others issues with roguelikes, but at least you're more prone to being able to "finish" it once from the very beginning than a roguelite. My issues come when the game wants you to finish it dozens of times for various reasons which don't really work on me. But clearly, expanding the range of your possibilites is way better for the player than increasing your power to a level decent enough for you to start having a chance at the content thrown at you.
You should try From the Depths, it is a voxel builder much alike Trailmakers, but with vehicle combat put on the front seat as you try to conquer a huge map from 8 different factions. It's main flaw, the huge learning curve, is also an interesting idea for a video in how some extremely deep games (Paradox titles, Dwarf Fortress, Kerbal Space Program, Command: Modern Operations, DOTA 2, and Children of a Dead Earth just to name a few) often suffer with huge complexity barriers that scare many pontential players off, while other titles (like Civilization, Factorio, Heroes of the Storm and Total War: Warhammer) can offer similar depth while easing new players in. This is often spoken to in your videos, but i find it a topic worth the dedication of an entire video.
Learning curve? Don't you mean learning cliff? On fire? Covered in bears?
I just can't get arount to like rogue-like games. The fact that a hard earned and lucky-to-come-across Build can be lost by a single miskate is extreme frustrating, in adition you have to start from the beginning with (almost) nothing to show for. I don't mind the "get good" aspect, I love Dark Souls games and Sekiro, but at least in those if you fail you start at a few seconds from where you failed and your build remains intact.
The game that first sold me on roguelites was Void Bastards. I'd tried Spelunkey before and absolutely hated it. Void Bastards may be considered a bit too easy for hardcore roguelike fans, but its a perfect entry point into the genre in my opinion. Forgiving enough to avoid discouraging players not used to permadeath while still being a bit of a challenge. I also found the game really good at teaching players the basic rules of roguelikes. You're not always gonna be able to kill every enemy and loot every chest, but that's part of the fun-the risk and reward of a split second decision.
Then I played Inscryption. I actually didn't make it past the angler for quite some time early on, but the first time that I did, I beat Leshy that same run. Felt amazing, I think this is when the roguelike bug really bit me.
Now I'm playing Gungeon and loving every minute of it. I think I'm also gonna pick up Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, and Hades next. I don't think I'll be returning to Spelunkey, but I have a newfound appreciation for the genre thanks to a few of the more beginner friendly titles.
That’s awesome that you shouted out FD Signifier. It’s a nice break from gaming edgelords.
Also, I’ve been making a game for 6 years now that has an exploration system set up in such a way that you make progress no matter where you’re exploring. So long as you’re mastering the combat.
Sunk a lot of time into a roguelike called Runers. At its core, It plays like a top down shooter with a small amount of physics interactions. The loot is runes and combiners, with runes being used to craft spells which function as most of your abilities and combiners being required to craft spells you never crafted before. Learning what spell each combination of runes makes is an intrinsic reward, but it is also an extrinsic reward since it fills in a page in an in-game reference book while also allowing you to craft spells in that book without combiners.
The studio that made Runers unfortunately seems to have vanished, leaving a crash related to a special room, a few typos, and minor bugs forever unfixed unless the game miraculously gets big enough for somebody to figure out what causes the issues and make an unofficial patch. In spite of these flaws, I still enjoyed the game enough to make all 275 spells that use more than a single rune, document every spell in the game in a Steam guide because I get dopamine from working with information relevant to whatever my current obsession is, and continue playing hours after.
F.D Signifier's Kayne video was really enlightening and well made! Great call out.
My issue with this video is it assumes that players will have this extrinsic value.
Not everyone will. Like me, I don't care to play through the "super duper duper hard" repeat slightly different levels over and over for something that I could get by lime I dunno
Learning a skill like artistry
Noita is suffering incarnate… one of my favorite roguelikes
Thanks for reminding how garsh darn good the kirby soundtracks are :D
With rouguelikes and the rewards that carry over and stats you can buy and such i like it when it’s something that really only takes in effect to help you get back to where you were easier but is just as hard later on
Lets say a certain boss has a certain element or type of challenge but the item or skill that makes the boss easier is only after beating the boss or doing something just as difficult so that you still feel accomplished for doing that one thing because it was still kept it’s difficulty until your second time through were its just annoying if you get stuck on the 3rd boss when you were previously on the 20th and most of the time its just because you are getting so frustrated with that boss that you can no longer get to the boss to try and beat it making you feel like your skill is just getting worse instead of better so being able to beat the bosses before pretty consistently without making them easy is better at least in my opinion up until you get to where you got stuck and then it should just a be a wall you have to overcome not some glass that you have to break through that continuously get denser and thicker while giving you ways to break it easier by grinding
My favourite game is terraria. It has a lot of grind but I would say it's a good type of it. It's really rewarding: almost every enemy has several drops and as of 1.4 some of them can also drop a food item which is a really neat addition. You have already made a video about this game so I won't go that deep into it but just like you said it makes you feel powrefull with each upgrade acquired. There's also just so much to do, I am currently completing my bestiary ( along with gathering all info about enemies which sometimes requires killing 50 of them )
A cool trick that Hades adds is that once you've finally beaten the main objective, you are then encouraged to add *negative* modifiers to get more progression, and while you can do that in a number of ways, one of the big ones is by disabling much (or all) of your initial meta progression. And add additional difficulties.
This increases the intrinsic motivation at (likely) the biggest portion of the game, because additional progression is all about mastery rather than bonuses. It's incredible.
If you're like me you can think about how much time you've spent playing pokemon over the years and be filled with a sense of wonder and dread at the sheer number lol (i'm not a hardcore fan or anything either, just so many games over the years, if anyone's curious I have 700hrs in just pokemon ruby alone)
Got Gunfire Reborn recently, and while im enjoying the game, being experienced at both roguelikes and shooters i beat Nightmare difficulty quite quickly and now im struggling through the next difficulty because the game expects you to have more upgrades, which means everything is too tanky, i do no dmg (especially early game) and it's just a slogfest that's a lot less fun until i actually have my tree upgraded
I'm being punished because i beat nightmare too quickly, so i do agree with this video a lot
The algorithm really likes iceberg explanations right now, huh? I just watched this and I'm checking out your other videos now. They sound good so I pre-emptively subscribed.
I just bought spelunky 2 I'm already addicted
yessss, join usssss
@@ArchitectofGames unfortunately, i do not have access to it today i am having withdrawal symptoms
I love the puns when you put BoW in the background 😂
Never would I have thought I’d see a Treasure reference in a game video essay.
In the games that I really love, I try to master the mechanics of it, aftermath, things that seems very tedious or really hard in the past become a walk in the park for me, and of course, find one or two exploits that I could use never hurt nobody, never the less, sometimes not matter how much time I spend on a game, I always find something new.
A big part of what I love in RPGs is following the power progression of my character/party. It's why games like pokemon and skyrim keep me coming back over and over, and why I'm a big Bravely Default fan.
But I've realized that this is also why I lost interest in FF7 (og, not remake) so quickly. I was barely out of Midgard when I stopped playing and I recently realized why. Party and character progression felt meaningless. Not to say the game is badly balanced or anything, but the materia system made each characater feel like a blank slate to be filled in randomly whenever.
I could change a character's entire job on a dime save for their limit breaks. It made it feel like I was never getting anywhere with the characters, nobody had their own combat identity.
Yes games like BD and skyrim are very customizable but you have to commit to and work for the builds you want to make. 8ve spent hours grinding in BD2 because I wanted to make my dream builds and I felt satisfied when they paid off. But in FF7 I could just move some Materia around and boom suddenly Cloud is my healer and Red is my elemental mage. And then next dungeon it's something else. It made it hard to care about my party on a gameplay level and as a result I got bored of the game because while I was loving through the story, I never felt like I was making mraningful progress.
While I agree that that's one weakness of FF7, you're talking about character (combat) progression, not party progression. Party progression is about the collective capacity of the party, so having or not having the ability to move individual skills doesn't change that at all. You progress there with new skills and new ideas of how to combine everything.
But mostly, I played FF7 for the story, the characters, and the world. JRPG combat is generally not all that interesting, though it can be challenging at times (like acquiring Beta first time you meet the Midgar Zolom).
Currently actually playing one of those games, Epic Battle Fantasy 5, which does have a lot more character-specific abilities (and some extras several characters can use, but not at once). Has a demo, if you want to try.
You know... I'd say I'm a little offended that you didn't include Risk of Rain 2 (ie, one of the best roguelikes of the past two years)... But actually, I'm more surprised that you managed to not include it!
I find my personal problem with rogue-lite meta-progression is exemplified by my time with Nova Drift. My first run was completely awesome, the build I'd put together was fun, I downed a huge number of bosses, and got a massive ending score. Then I unlocked a bunch of new items and options and my next run was far, far worse. I got a bunch of upgrades that didn't work together and didn't even make it past the first boss. After that I ended up only getting upgrades that turned into a very un-fun playstyle that was only vaguely effective. Then there was the full speed build that ended up with the only way of doing significant damage being to crash into things after several seconds of build up and take damage while doing it.
It took nearly thirty hours of runs over more than a week of getting fed up every night and rage-quitting the game to get even close to that first run, and it still came up pretty short. Eben worse, the build I managed it with was almost identical to the one from that first run, but harder to get and worse 'cause I missed out on one of the key pieces and ended up with a useless slot.
I find gaining knowledge in a game, especially a roguelike is...not a thing? Maybe it's just me but I look at an enemy or boss and I know what it's going to do, this ones got a projectile phase, that one's going to shrink the battlefield with damaging zones, that guy has an enrage timer that makes all attacks instant-death, this floor is going to fall away and the enemy has high knockback, those chains are going to pull out of the ground and become a ranged weapon. It's very rare that a boss pulls out something I didn't already see coming.
As for motivation...I'm not sure where my balance of extrinsic to intrinsic is. If it's too far down the Intrinsic side I get super bored, Minecraft, Factorio, and the like are at their best when they have a proper set of quests or story to follow beyond just building a base and automating things. Even playing with other people helps a lot with this as they can be a form of extrinsic motivation like one would see in Sea of Thieves. On the other hand too far down the extrinsic path and it becomes too easy to see the manipulation and flaws, every MMO I've played runs into this with Path of Exile being by far the worst with its reliance on large amounts of garbage loot that only has use for trading (which has an entire classification of its own problems) or crafting (which is one of the worst gambling systems I've ever seen, up to and including including actual gacha gambling).