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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

I remember the moment when lag killed my hard core Diablo2 paladin.

Every game seemed more interesting when you had everything to lose. I found it interesting that this isn’t true for the general public, and all games started going easy mode to appease the masses (who wanted to experience games more like movies).

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I tend to play my games in "No Backsies" mode, where available. In KSP, for instance, you can have permadeath for your Kerbals, etc.

> I remember the moment when lag killed my hard core Diablo2 paladin.

This is why I don't play roguelikes.

Curiously, I'm perfectly fine with roguelikes since long ago, but I can't muster emotional energy to get back to XCOM: Enemy Unknown (the modern one) since one of my characters on a team died there (I still vaguely remember the map), even though I could theoretically reload a save from before it happened. The feeling doesn't seem to wane, and surprises me to no end every time I think about that.

Grab XCOM 2. Its a solid step forward from enemy unknown and you might not feel the same disappointment.

Maybe I didn't express it clearly enough, but I don't think I'd call it a disappointment, more like emotional trauma of losing this character.

I'm sorry I communicated poorly. I know what you meant. What I meant is that I think maybe you could rekindle the old joy you felt but not feel the emotional loss when booting it up since its a whole new game :)

permadeath is a gentler mechanic in games where a run lasts at most an hour or two and either ends in a win or a loss, and not being able to play that character any more.

there's also the eve online / tarkov variation where dying results in the loss of most or all items you had equipped -- potentially a major setback if you were wearing most of your wealth -- but items stashed in other locations and skill point based progression is largely not impacted

Roguelikes are turn based, you have plenty of time to set up a strategy.

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