The player can save and load at will, so difficulty takes the form of each fight being a roadblock to progress that can't be circumvented. But the consequence of permadeath- mandatory grinding through completed content- actively diminishes the former by it’s bare existence, and does so to an even greater extent in light of the ways in which Qud’s challenge is designed to compensate for permadeath.Ī typical crpg uses an encounter-based implementation of difficulty. The second comes from the intensity of the challenge, that permadeath means that mistakes have such heavy consequences. The first comes from the breadth of content, the fact that there is (or seems to be) so much to see and do. The problem is that these two forms of motivation are at odds. That is, determination to beat the game- most deaths felt clearly preventable, and I felt motivated to jump back into another run to enact the solution I imagined to each problem, or to find a solution where none yet presented itself.

The second was determination, the traditional roguelike motivation. The first was curiosity, which is the traditional crpg motivation- I wanted to see what else was there to see, along a few vectors (story, mechanical nuances, lore, world design). When I played Qud, I found myself motivated to continue for two reasons. I feel that the tension at the heart of Qud is that it mashes together two traditionally very separate genres (roguelikes and crpgs) and ends up getting the worst of both, in one specific and fatal way. However, yesterday I decided to stop playing, and while I don't regret the time I've spent with it, I have no desire to continue or to see the rest of it. I got Qud about a month ago, and in that time I've played quite a lot. TL DR: Permadeath+Open World+Hard Counters= Boring, Repetitive Game= Wasted Potential

Shades of elysium fatal error