Your views on 'randomly generated dungeons'?

Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:33 pm

Whats your view on randomly generated levels and such? Stuff like loot and monsters, as well as their positions are randomly generated as well.

I've recently been playing this Binding of Isaac, which is a 'rogue-like game' (which apparently is a genre, i didnt know that before), and i'm hating randomly generated stuff. Especially because the items are randomly generated, and the items are rather situational. Not to mention sometimes even getting to the items are situational; e.g You either need item X or a bomb to get to the treasure on a floating platform, however the level you're in has none of those, but almost all of the treasures are on floating platforms. Which means you get nothing on that level, which would negatively impact your performance in the game later.

I loathe chance and luck in games. Any kind of 'X% chance of Y occurring' just irks me; i don't like the fact that i lost because of some random number in the computer, i'd rather i lost because i wasnt good enough at the game. There's enough of luck and chance in the real world, i don't need more served up to me in games.

Though of course, randomly generated stuff does allow for more replayability to a certain extent.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, i suppose the reason for this is that I like the setting and music of the game a lot, and the gameplay a fair bit. And the randomly generated situations are infuriating. So its like 'Ah, this game has wonderful atmosphere! Wait, what? I DIED AGAIN DAMN @##$%'. :wallbash:

Edit: Speaking of which, i just saw this video which said 'Lets Play - The Binding of Isaac Episode 437 My Luckiest Run ever!'

The horror! :(

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Robyn Howlett
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 5:53 pm

Some games do them right, and when done right, are greatly appreciated. Then some games are just a crappy randomizer thrown on everything and they svck because it makes winning impossible

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Laura Tempel
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:17 pm

You should play Faster Than Light
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Dewayne Quattlebaum
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 6:02 am

Yeah in the case of Binding Of Isaac I think that there should have been certain mechanics to help with the randomly generated design. I hate getting 4 dark rocks which could include A Small Rock (+damage) and no bombs, especially during the first map. Or just as I've gotten a bunch of money to spend I get that damn Greed in the Shop. Binding Of Isaac is the best example of how 'not' to do randomly generated design cause in that game everything comes down to pure luck. You could be given such bad items that by Cathedral you have no way to defeat the final boss. Or you could be given several "activator items" (items which you can only carry one of, those you use by hitting the space bar) in a row which means some or all of them are going to be completely worthless. Sometimes you're given a room which your character simply cannot complete without taking damage.

I think that if there is to be a randomly generated design then it needs to have some structure to it as well as some design patterns to follow as well as generating items and stuff according to tiers. Binding Of Isaac is otherwise a fantastic game which I've spent over 146 hours on but the random design means that unless I get a good item in the first treasure room I'm just going to restart the game. I'm not going to waste 30 minutes of my time only to realize that with the stuff I've been given there is no chance in hell that I'm going to be able to reach The Chest.

A game with random design need to have some kind of structure to it, it needs to have some design patterns that it needs to follow. Cause complete randomness doesn't work.

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N Only WhiTe girl
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:08 am

Nothing wrong with them. To me, they're just another type of dungeon among many.

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gemma king
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 5:42 pm

This. It depends on both the system of randomization, and on the game (i.e, some games are more suited to randomized world/loot/etc).

I've played and enjoyed various roguelikes for decades. On the other hand, I've also enjoyed hand-crafted & linear games. :shrug:

(On recent roguelike I've tried - Sword of the Stars:The Pit - is somewhat flawed. There's so much stuff for it to randomly randomize, that it's hard to count on anything. Crafting recipes are all well and good, except if you have almost no chance of finding the materials in any game. Or so many weapons, armor, tools, ammos, etc.... I've done runs where I've been throwing away weapons left & right because I was finding so many; and then I've had runs where I'm still using the starting pistol & knife on level 8-10. In a game with item degradation, as well as repairs reducing the maximum durability, so that items will eventually become useless.)

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Anna Krzyzanowska
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 4:08 pm

Lazy design choice plain and simple. Doesn't get any lazier.
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Becky Palmer
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 7:28 pm

:ermm:

You do know there are entire genres & playstyles built on the concept, right? We're not talking about "Oh, Beth used a dungeon generator to make the dungeon maps in Oblivion".

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Jack Bryan
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 6:55 pm

When it comes to randomly generated dungeons, it's really key that theres variety in regards to what you might find. A good example of this is Diablo II or Dragon Warrior Monsters 2. There are plenty of different items with different properties in Diablo that will make that dungeon crawl unique. In Dragon warrior monsters, each randomly generated world has its own rarity of monsters and items that will lead you to another randomly generated world.

A bad example of randomly generated dungeons is (obviously) Oblivion. The problem with oblivion is that it's supposed to be feel somewhat of a random dungeon, but it's very clear that the dungeon is leveling and adjusting with you. Once you play the game with a second character you can almost see what's coming next... it loses the random feeling. It was a very smart idea in theory and I think it works much better in Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

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Heather M
 
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Post » Sun Dec 08, 2013 4:20 am

The ideal game for me would be a game that randomly generates everything in a way that makes sense, making every playthrough of it completely unique.

Minecraft's map-generator is fantastic, from what I've seen.

The problem is, the more complex the game, the less random stuff you can do without the risk of breaking something. In minecraft, with its very simple world and gameplay, it works beautifully.

Randomly generated things are great when done right. But for example in Skyrim, the so-called radiant quests are not random at all and actually just repeat the same thing. Loot at the very least should be random most of the time though, which I feel Bethesda is doing fine. (just remove level-scaling and we're golden).

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Alexxxxxx
 
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