I think those are called rogue-lites, for the reason that real rogue-likes (e.g. nethack, DCSS) actually wipe out all your progress on each attempt.
It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, just what I've observed in gaming discussions.
Traditional roguelikes seem cool in theory, but I like co-op for most of my PvE content, and like most turn-based games, no co-op to be had there.
Yeah that’s another difference. When you play NetHack online [2] [3] you run into the ghosts and graves of other players, not just your own previous characters. I have run into levels online with the ghosts of 3 different people who were all killed by various dangerous monsters that kept accumulating more powerful equipment from each victim. It can be quite ridiculous!
Roguelikes were designed to play like arcade games in that you’d always start over from scratch and try to get a high score. Most attempts ended in failure but as you got better at the game it was reflected in your score. Even after players achieve a high degree of expertise they still find the games challenging to win and so they keep playing and enjoying them for years to come.
Meta-progression takes away the from-scratch element and just allows you to win through sheer persistence, chipping away at the problem until it’s easy enough for you to finish it in one final run. But then what? The game is no longer the same challenge it was when you first started. It’s like a mountain that keeps getting smaller every time you attempt to climb it, until it’s finally shrunk to the size of an anthill. This is not a recipe for a game you can play for many years.
Ultimately, what meta-progression does is turn a roguelike into a standard narrative RPG just like any other. This is one where the player’s goal is to reach the end of the game and that’s it, not to learn the game’s systems and reach a high level of mastery.
Although generally I find the meta progression of things goes too far and starts off too weak.
There is another approach based on unlocks, where the player unlocks new characters or game modes rather than having a single character get more and more powerful with each run. Some people prefer these unlocks but others don't. I saw one streamer, Jorbs, who got a brand new game and immediately looked up a save file hack to unlock everything from the beginning because he so detested unlocks.
Roguelikes really benefit from long-term development and continual balancing, new content, and quality of life updates in response to feedback from players. These are games meant to be played and mastered over the course of several years. Traditional commercial game releases are much better suited to one-and-done style single play-throughs.
The other major commercial model, the subscription- or microtransaction-supported long-term game development, such as you'd see with popular multiplayer games like Fortnite or League of Legends, would seem to be a viable alternative for Roguelike development. I don't think it would work out in practice, however, since most gamers don't seem to be interested in playing a game to mastery unless it involves a high level of competitive play.
I think it should be optional though. There should be an option to unlock everything from the beginning for players who don't want to fiddle around with that stuff and just dive into the full experience. Players like Jorbs can feel so strongly about it that I think they're actually offended by games that try to curate their experiences to that degree.
I'm particularly interested in the area of coop games where you've got two players of radically different capabilities. I really like newer games in the vein of "Split Fiction" or "It Takes Two". But they tend to assume somewhat equal levels of competence for skill based sections of the game. So if I try to play with my wife I have to wait over and over again as she fails what are to me basic jumps. I'd love to see more exploration of asymmetric gameplay. Where it's not just both players having to navigate the same obstacles, but allows players to better leverage their skills to overcome something together. I remember staying up late nights with my now wife playing Diablo 2. But now I'm at the point where I want to push high tier rifts and she just wants to finish the story line. I'd like to see more examples of coop games where the burden falls more heavily on one player and the other is mostly along for the ride. Not all gamers are looking for the same things out of their games, but that doesn't necessarily mean they shouldn't be playing together.
It's funny that you mention that. NetHack, one of the longest-running traditional Roguelikes (in active development since 1987) actually has a Tourist class. However it's not what you think. The class is based on the tourist character Twoflower from the Discworld series of books. This class is the hardest one in the game because it starts with the least amount of fighting ability, no weapons (apart from some darts), and no armour (just a Hawaiian shirt).
You do, however, also start with a credit card (useful for jimmying locks), some healing potions, a lot of food, a lot of money, some scrolls of magic mapping (maps), and an expensive camera (the monsters in the dungeon hate flash photography)! But until you become a lot more experienced shopkeepers will recognize you as a tourist and try to rip you off, so you better spend your money wisely!