Mechanically complex rouge-like games never seem to respect the player's time in the most fundemental way

Going on a single save for 6 months in a permadeath game in which you are expected to die, when you value progress more than the gameplay itself, sounds like the recipe for a massive disappointment.

What, are the developers wrong about their own game then? Look at their blog posts. Specializations, NPCs, animal husbandry, their ultimate goal is making the experience even longer. I don't value progress more than the gameplay, I just value progress for what it is. You have to assume that progress has zero value (It doesn't, just by the merit of time it has value.), that the game is perfect (It's not, new save-wrecking bugs are found every other week. Just a single search on the forums reveals people losing long-lasting saves to dumb shit like cars flinging into the air.), and that the game is entirely built around dying and making no material progress (It's not, there'd be no 'end-game' because a game where you are expected to die would have no need for an end-game. It's almost like people playing games and making progress, who would have thought.) AND on top of that, you'd also have to prove that adding something as fundemental as saving and loading would take away from an experience (Which, it doesn't. A man surviving for eight years on a Minecraft world isn't made any less impressive because some random guy can boot up the game on peaceful and respawn whenever they die.).

/r/truegaming Thread Parent