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dtgreene: snip
So... it's a roguelike where with each death the first levels become easier, but later levels will be generated keeping in mind your present stats. Apparently endless as you can just keep scaling the numbers...

I think the first levels will quickly become so boring no one will want to play them again, despite being random.
Also think the later levels if you do get to them will be very samey, because the play when you are level 1M and so are the levels is functionally going to be exactly the same as when you are 1B and so are the levels, or 1T and so are the levels...
Which two are already the main gameplay loop problems I see with several rogue likes design...

I actually thought you were going in a different direction with this, before I got to number 3, because the concept seems to me to have the seed of something that can really rogue likes audience:

Don't scale the levels, don't have them be infinite. bye bye problem 2.
Have the level scaling difficulty curve up obviously, and just allow the player to always finish the game, in the sense that the more times he loses, the easier it will be to finish. Big mitigation on problem 1.
Plus have a meta objective of how little deaths you need before you complete the game and unloke traditional Ironman mode (one life - no stats reincarnation). And that should keep the hardcore challenge seekers happy.
1 and 2 remind me of Rouge Legacy.
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pimpmonkey2382.313: No, not enough sexual inequality. :)
Haha, there definitely some discrimination against those who don't believe in reincarnation there.
An interesting concept for sure, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be "my thing" as I'm not a big fan of randomly generated gameplay.
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dtgreene: 2. When you die, you reincarnate. You can choose a different class (which, let's suppose, can be a humanoid class or a monster class). When this happens, your new form will have higher stat growth, which further increases the more you reincarnate. You do start back at level 1, however, and the dungeon is re-generated.
Does this mean it makes sense to commit a suicide a few times in the beginning of the game, just in order to get a higher stat growth?

Little off-topic: Such ancient game as The Faery Tale Adventure (1986, Amiga) handled dying quite nicely. If you died, your brother would continue your quest from the home village. If he was able to reach your body, he'd acquire all the items and gold the dead brother had accumulated by then. There were three brothers, meaning three lives. EDIT: I think I remembered wrong. One brother could be revived twice by a friendly fairy, meaning each of the three brothers had three lives, IIRC. So, nine lives in all.

In reallity though, I always just reloaded the game if I died, playing with the same brother all the time (no permadeath). But it was a neat concept anyway. EDIT: Did some Diablo game have somewhat similar, ie. if you die, you can get your items by reaching your own corpse? Anyway, FTA did the same much earlier.
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dtgreene: 3. Stats scale like they do in Disgaea. With enough levels and reincarnations, you can eventually get stats in the millions, and the game contains challenges appropriate for such levels of power.
I generally dislike this auto-tuning of the game digfficulty.
Post edited October 12, 2015 by timppu
The way I see it, the only difference between this and a normal roguelike is that you get higher stat numbers the more you die. Difficulty scaling means that these numbers don't have any effect on actual gameplay, so it's basically just a way for people who like to see large numbers to get them easily. As timppu said, if you want these high numbers it would make sense to just get yourself killed a lot of times up front.

To me, that doesn't really sound like a draw, but maybe there are some people who are so in love with large meaningless numbers that they'd care.
Post edited October 12, 2015 by ET3D
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pimpmonkey2382.313: No, not enough sexual inequality. :)
Heh, and someone recently asked how your rep got so low..... LOL

+1 for making me literally laugh out loud though. If the PC police can't take a joke sometimes, fuck 'em.
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dtgreene: 1. At first glance, the game plays like a traditional roguelike. Random dungeons, turn based (but without separate battle screens), and permadeath (but see later points).

2. When you die, you reincarnate. You can choose a different class (which, let's suppose, can be a humanoid class or a monster class). When this happens, your new form will have higher stat growth, which further increases the more you reincarnate. You do start back at level 1, however, and the dungeon is re-generated.

3. Stats scale like they do in Disgaea. With enough levels and reincarnations, you can eventually get stats in the millions, and the game contains challenges appropriate for such levels of power.
This is pretty much describing Guided Fate Paradox to a tee minus different class reincarnation.
I like rogue-likes. I also don't mind random generated dungeons. I hate all games that make me do 'farming', kill the same monsters over and over again just to make them drop a better weapon or get more experience.
I prefer turn-based games, because they make me use my brain as my fingers are not as fast as they used to be. Do you know Titan Quest? I always hit the bushes and not the monsters with my strikes and spells, so I decided to play as a petmaster, letting my magical companions kill the enemies.
I like the idea behind Rogue Legacy, don't own it because of the mentioned preferences. Would love to see a turn-based alternative.

The statements in the OP looked quite nice at the first glance, but creating a new character and starting from the very beginning every time I die is not my cup of tea. Each player has his/her own playing style or preferred class of a fighter. I prefer magicians over barbarians, range fights over melee strikes. Don't force us to change our style every time we die. Maybe letting us improve certain stats or skills depending of playing style (amount or used spells, melle strikes etc) or how long the character survived? If one makes suicide too often, he/she will never unlock more powerfull skills... (Which means you have a treeoof skills. Basic ones at the beginning and depending on the tier one skills, more varied tier 2 and tier 3 skills)
Less skilled gamers could benefit from the exp they gain each time they die. The more skilled gamers could create children that have skills that complement their style and maybe developing the children in a specific way would create the ultimate killing machine... who knows?
It seems some people have misconceptions on how enemy scaling would be handled.

Enemies would scale based on the dungeon level, not how powerful your character is. However. There would be an option to make the enemies stronger, much like in the Disgaea series with its Stronger Enemies bills. Hence, you can make the main dungeon more difficult (and rewarding) if it gets too boring.

Another idea is that, once you beat the main dungeon, you unlock something like the Land of Carnage from the Disgaea series. In this dungeon, enemies would start at over level 200 and grow in power from there. At the end would be a superboss, a being that would be about as powerful as Baal in the Disgaea series is. In particular, being at max stats would not make this fight easy.
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dtgreene: In particular, being at max stats would not make this fight easy.
So there would be max stats? Suppose I die 1000 times up front to make me go up levels quickly, would that mean that after a few levels up I won't be able to go up any more?
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dtgreene: Enemies would scale based on the dungeon level, not how powerful your character is.
Okay, so it's basically a way to save having a wider variety of enemies by using those you already encountered with higher stats. Am I getting it right this time?
Post edited October 12, 2015 by ET3D
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dtgreene: In particular, being at max stats would not make this fight easy.
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ET3D: So there would be max stats? Suppose I die 1000 times up front to make me go up levels quickly, would that mean that after a few levels up I won't be able to go up any more?
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dtgreene: Enemies would scale based on the dungeon level, not how powerful your character is.
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ET3D: Okay, so it's basically a way to save having a wider variety of enemies by using those you already encountered with higher stats. Am I getting it right this time?
The problem with dying quickly is that you wouldn't get a chance to fight and kill stronger enemies, which would make it take longer to get powerful than if you took the time to get strong enough to kill those powerful levels. Just because you died 1000 times doesn't mean you can take on the superboss.

Actually reaching max stats would take a while, and one idea I have had is that, once you reach max level, you would be able to gain permanent stats (that are not lost on reincarnation) by killing enemies. If you die before reaching max level, you don't get to increase any of those stat bonuses (which, like different sources of stats in later Disgaea games, have a separate cap from those you gain just by leveling up and reincarnating for better growth).

Having enemies scale does save from having to have a huge variety of enemies, but there would still be many types of enemies, each with different abilities, some of which don't appear until the deeper levels. For example, if there is an enemy that can breathe fire on you from anywhere on the floor, it would not appear until deep in the dungeon. (Is this example, which happens in Shiren the Wanderer, even fair?)

Another thought: Ideally, the main dungeon would be balanced so that an experienced player who thoroughly explores each floor would be able to beat it on her first or second run (starting from a new save). A less experienced player would die a bunch, but would still be able to beat it (at default enemy strength) without having to do what people call "grinding"; that would be saved for postgame content like what I am calling the "Carnage Dungeon" (the one with level 200+ enemies on the first floor).
Honestly this sounds exactly like Clicker Heroes, but with a different combat system.
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pimpmonkey2382.313: No, not enough sexual inequality. :)
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OldFatGuy: Heh, and someone recently asked how your rep got so low..... LOL

+1 for making me literally laugh out loud though. If the PC police can't take a joke sometimes, fuck 'em.
That was because of a scammer with a million alts down voting me.
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dtgreene: It seems some people have misconceptions on how enemy scaling would be handled.

Enemies would scale based on the dungeon level, not how powerful your character is. However. There would be an option to make the enemies stronger, much like in the Disgaea series with its Stronger Enemies bills. Hence, you can make the main dungeon more difficult (and rewarding) if it gets too boring.

Another idea is that, once you beat the main dungeon, you unlock something like the Land of Carnage from the Disgaea series. In this dungeon, enemies would start at over level 200 and grow in power from there. At the end would be a superboss, a being that would be about as powerful as Baal in the Disgaea series is. In particular, being at max stats would not make this fight easy.
And what would be stopping the boredom of plowing through the weaker levels to reach the right levels?
Teleportation to the right level?
Then it will not be different than reloading the game again.