When done well it greatly expands the game’s replayability.
When done poorly it feels bland and boring.
I hate playing on a sponge. Handcrafted all day.
I think that like a great many game mechanics, the fact that it’s been done badly many times doesn’t mean that it can’t be done well.
I’m sure they can be done right, but I’ve never seen them done right, so I’m not for them. Everything starts to feel the same very quickly.
Not even Diablo II? I think that’s done pretty well.
Hard to put a yes or no on this.
Yes, really really yes, if it’s done right and it works well for the game.
No, really really no, if it’s done wrong and it doesn’t work well for games.
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The proc gen maps in Diablo 1 worked pretty well IMO.
It’s really interesting that one of the reasons Diablo 3 was a step down was the increase in handcrafted story elements that kept interrupting the procgen flow. Some games just do really well with it.
I feel like if AI is gonna be used in games in the future, they should implement it in the opposite way. Use it to make different stories and characters to populate a world someone actually created.
The Mantella mod for Skyrim is what I’d want out of AI video games in the future. That thing is kind of a beast imo, as you can use it to generate completely brand new stories and quests. This General Sam video where he plays through Skyrim with the mod, talking to any and all animals he comes across, really makes it feel like an entirely new type of game. I mean, he goes into a bear den after some town guards killed a different one, convinced one of the cave bears to follow him to town to get revenge for killing it, and even had a conversation with the bear over which healing spell “felt” better.
That sounds horrible, personally. The world, story and characters should all reflect one another, so they should all be designed by the same people. Using AI to cheap out on the story is how you get rubbish stories.
I should’ve been more clear in my original comment. Like create a main story and everything, but then you can also include the AI to create stories and quests on top of those that would already be in the game.
I understood you. It just sounds horrible. Sorry, no, it’s actually worse. Side stories are part of the story, so it goes without saying they should have the same designers as the rest of the story. If you think they don’t count, that’s worrying.
I like Shattered Pixel Dungeon, The Binding of Isaac and Lethal Company, so sure they’re great when done right!
They can add a lot of replayability, but they can just as well very quickly make your game suck more than if it had purposefully made levels. (I think a prominent example of bad proc-gen in general is Skyrim’s radiant quests.)
I find them really boring, especially in RPG contexts. The difference is night and day when you walk into a handcrafted dungeon that has situational storytelling, creative direction, and ambiance that conveys a specific feeling. Bethesda games do this exceptionally well, for example.
Handcrafting a world also gives meaning to exploration; when I explore a procedurally generated world I feel like I’m just walking around aimlessly, looking for just another treasure chest or enemy to fight. But in a hand-crafted world, there are specific things to look for, situational stories to be told, or even secrets to find that the creator hid. That’s a lot more fun to explore than walking around in a glorified geometric algorithm
If the game has good combat and good loot, rng dungeons means I can fight and play loot lottery forever. When encounteres are 100% scripted, with cutscenes or platforming in the mix, it gets old fast…
well, I’m subscribed to every roguelike muni on lemmy, soooooo
I don’t think I’ve ever seen “community” abbreviated as “muni”
It starts with us!
i think they are great when they are able to provide variety in terms of gameplay, challenge etc, as opposed to just being different layouts. My first thought is roguelikes and roguelites - Some of my favorite games are Binding of Isaac and Spelunky, which do it really well, and I still play the original roguelikes like Angband sometimes.
don’t matter to me. procedurally generated, AI generated, hand curated. it’s all the same imo.
is the game itself fun? is the story good? are the game mechanics fun? that’s what matters to me more then how the level gets built. granted you don’t wanna see copy/paste nonstop, that would be kinda annoying but still goes back to the game as a whole…is it fun
take Morgenstern for example, they do it. levels are kinda bleh, but I’m not there for the level specifically, I’m there for the gameplay, monsters and the loot!
That’s how I felt about Shadow Warrior 2
love em. i’m actually working as a programmer for a game right now where procedural level generation is one of my main foci. sure, like any game system, it can be done poorly, and it’s not everyone’s cuppa tea, but i like it.
It puts all the weight of the game being fun on the gameplay mechanics/loop. For number-crunching genres like roguelikes it works. If a Zelda game did it, it would suck. I put a couple hundred hours in Deep Rock Galactic, so I believe it can work under the right circumstances.
Zelda 1 randomizer is popular, and it’s all about procedural generation of dungeons and procedural assignment of items to locations. It’s not as well designed as the original Zelda 1, not by a long shot, but it combines the familiar gameplay of Zelda 1 with the novelty of procedural generation.
If a Zelda game did it, it would suck.
While I don’t find the idea particularly appealing personally, there are modified versions of Zelda games that randomize various aspects of the game (like what items are in which chests) and apparently a decent number of people do actually enjoy playing them. (Usually not on a first playthrough though!)
Ah, I’ve fallen for the classic blunder :)
To be fair, I think you hit the nail on the head regarding what works and what doesn’t. I guess it’s possible for every situation to have some edge cases, though
I enjoy A Link to the Past Randomizer, but primarily because it adds replayability to a game I’m already so familiar with. ALttPR becomes a puzzle of which chests/dungeons have the highest probability of containing progression items. Calculating that optimized routing in realtime while racing against a clock is fun. Also figuring out the best way to deal with a boss that you already know well, but now you have an unexpected equipment loadout is fun to me.
However. If I were to play a new game I didn’t have any familiarity with and its item placement and/or map layout was procedurally generated, I don’t think I would enjoy a first playthrough. I don’t enjoy variety just for the sake of variety. The proc-gen would have to have some known parameters that allow me to strategize in how I approach it in order to not seem arbitrary. If I didn’t enjoy the first playthrough of such a game, I might not be motivated to learn enough to enjoy future runs.
That’s why I think I don’t love Spelunky or Slay the Spire despite loving games that play similarly like Cave Story and Magic the Gathering respectively. I think I could love these games if I could reasonably plan ahead, but I feel those games have too much variance and the outcomes feel arbitrary as a result. Though that could just be my lack of dedication to understanding the bounds of the generated content.
Absolutely essential for the full experience in a retro roguelike.
Usually repetitive and boring in 3D.
