if a game has a progression system, it needs to do one of two things:

• if it doesn’t start off very fun but you unlock the fun, then it needs to give me some idea of what the fun is going to be like once I unlock it. it needs to make me want to keep playing to get to the fun part

• or, it can just start off fun and let me unlock different types of fun

a problem that I very frequently run into with roguelites is that they start out giving me only the blandest most insipid upgrades like “move 10% faster” or “attacks set enemies on fire” and I’m left wondering if I just need to unlock the interesting synergies or if the game just has no interesting synergies to unlock

this is especially a problem with roguelite deckbuilder games because those games entirely revolve around finding interesting synergies. but when I start playing them at the beginning I very often feel like there are no interesting synergies to be found

Slay the Spire comes to mind. I think it wanted to ease me into the complexity by having me gradually unlock more interesting cards through its roguelite progression but instead it left me wondering why anyone liked the game at all

same problem with Hades 1, to be honest

@kasdeya Hades 1 is kind of an interesting mention here, because a lot of the content isn’t really locked at the start, but you need to get quite a bit of darkness to get on a base power level that lets you actually progress far enough to get to the new stuff.
I’d say it’s still fun to start, but it sure is dependant on the progression.

@kasdeya "interesting synergies" feels like the most important part aside from your bullet points

how do skill/passive webs like FFX or Path of Exile feel where you can see a whole bunch of small upgrades but you get to plan how it all adds up and works together?

Hades 1 (and maybe 2?) feel like they slowly start showing you what's possible to avoid the info overwhelm that the above 2 examples might cause in people that don't like crunchy systems

(maybe additional thoughts later)

@OctaviaConAmore you’re definitely right about the synergy thing! to be honest it’s hard to sell me on a roguelite for just the core gameplay alone - I want to be able to get up to some shenanigans with my build lol. like Binding of Isaac would be a 3/10 game if it weren’t for the insane synergies IMO

and hmm to be honest I have mixed feelings on lots of small upgrades. I think if it’s possible to do something clever with them (like spec all into attack speed and then get a bunch of passives with a random chance to trigger per attack) then it could be okay as a small reward. but I really prefer to rarely get substantial upgrades instead of frequently getting small upgrades. because I want to feel the difference in gameplay or it doesn’t feel like an improvement to me, if that makes sense

although I can’t actually think of a game that I’ve played that does the “lots of small upgrades” thing except for Path of Exile - and in that game I was overwhelmed by everything lol and ended up following a guide that I didn’t understand. so not the best experience to draw from. when people talk about synergies in a game like PoE I actually have no idea what they’re talking about, to be honest - but I think it might be a different thing than the Binding of Isaac type of synergy that I’m thinking of

also hm - I guess that’s fair about Hades 1! and I also think that the combat, story, and characters were meant to hook me early on - to sort of tide me over until the complexity in its progression systems could build up