That really depends on the game. Take Ninja Gaiden, or Super Mario Brothers, or Castlevania 1 - the difficulty ramps steeply but your characters’ abilities do not ramp at all. Zelda levels generally get harder faster than you get tougher (with some exceptions).
In some games, choosing the right advancements is a major part of the game. It’s seen most clearly in Epic Battle Fantasy 2: over the course of the game, you get 10 abilities (and only 10, out of a long lineup); picking the right ones (and ensuring that you qualify for them) is a lot of the challenge of the game. There is some of a ‘numbers go up’ element to it, but if you don’t pick the right things, you are screwed—and there’s no grinding to get ’em all. The other installments in the series unfortunately lack this.
That said, I play single-player games a whole lot less than I used to, partially due to this.
The reason I stopped playing single-player computer games.
Play better games
That would be like hauling prettier rocks.
sufficiently pretty rocks are their own reward. Do you read fiction or play any sports?
Here is an example of a better game: Portal. Was there any rock-hauling?
The Weighted Companion Cube comes to mind, even if it only lasted one level.
Do you mean it was an insight which hit you hard enough that you stopped playing immediately and completely?
No, not really. I just gradually noticed that the process is basically the same once you remove the level labels.
It’s sort of darkly funny that my second Google autocomplete suggestion for “Progress Quest” is “progress quest cheats”.
(The usual caveats about autocomplete apply, of course.)
Cookie Clicker!
That really depends on the game. Take Ninja Gaiden, or Super Mario Brothers, or Castlevania 1 - the difficulty ramps steeply but your characters’ abilities do not ramp at all. Zelda levels generally get harder faster than you get tougher (with some exceptions).
In some games, choosing the right advancements is a major part of the game. It’s seen most clearly in Epic Battle Fantasy 2: over the course of the game, you get 10 abilities (and only 10, out of a long lineup); picking the right ones (and ensuring that you qualify for them) is a lot of the challenge of the game. There is some of a ‘numbers go up’ element to it, but if you don’t pick the right things, you are screwed—and there’s no grinding to get ’em all. The other installments in the series unfortunately lack this.
That said, I play single-player games a whole lot less than I used to, partially due to this.
Ah, grasshopper, the point is the journey, not the end of it.
Besides, MMORGs take the number counter chasing to new levels (have you done your dailies, weeklies, and monthlies? X-D).