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Randomized dungeon system... Why not?
Rockgod99
Member Posts: 4,640
I don't get it. If someone is going to release a pve focused dungeon runner why not put in a randomized dungeon system to keep people from getting bored? Imagine going in to a dungeon that's different everytime. Different mobs and strats for pulling, different bosses with randomized phases, randomized loot tables, random quest npc and the full nine. Is it too hard to pull off? Why haven't we seen a system like this?
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Its been awhile since I played the game, but Anarchy Online had "Mission Terminals". You could move alot of sliders back and forth, building an instance that suited you and your groups wishes (Or solo wishes).
The instance would be generic, made to reflect your decissions using the sliders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Runners#Graphics_and_gameplay
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I do agree about this. But I think that with all guides on the internet lots of unskilled players can do dungeons nowadays. So for that reason they probably don't want to change it, as unskilled players need those guides and tactics. And giving both options for a small group of pro's is probably too expensive.
Ty. I could have sworn Dungeon Runners had randomly generated content.
"(whose level layouts and content are randomly regenerated each time a player logs into the game)"
I haven't played Dungeon Runners since it was in the very last Beta Stage. The game wasn't bad, it just wasn't fun at all.
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I dont think they would want to mess with the art style of some dungeons. They are setup a certain way to play a certain way. However, I agree a random system for less important dungeons would be more fun than the same thing over and over. Take LOTRO Barrow Downs area. In it you have several portal which go into crypts. Whats in them isnt really important, so you could randomize the layout, mobs, bosses and achieve the same result.
Heh, I read "Dungeon Runner" in your OP as the game itself, not as a generalized term. :-P
The reason you don't see more games with randomized dungeons, is because it really takes away from what brings most people to games like that. Where as, when you have a hand crafted dungeon where things are put in a place for a purpose, be it aesthetic or a function of the dungeon, it really changes the experience completely. With randomly generated dungeons, you aren't adding content to the game, you aren't adding complexity, really.... they only thing you're adding is a mindless boring grind where you completely clear out the dungeon, just to turn around and leave to do it again.
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Heh, I read "Dungeon Runner" in your OP as the game itself, not as a generalized term. :-P
The reason you don't see more games with randomized dungeons, is because it really takes away from what brings most people to games like that. Where as, when you have a hand crafted dungeon where things are put in a place for a purpose, be it aesthetic or a function of the dungeon, it really changes the experience completely. With randomly generated dungeons, you aren't adding content to the game, you aren't adding complexity, really.... they only thing you're adding is a mindless boring grind where you completely clear out the dungeon, just to turn around and leave to do it again.
I think it's like that because noone has really evolved the mechanic. What if someone did manage to create a dungeon that felt hand crafted? That felt unique and epic everytime you entered? Sure old school dungeon crawlers with the mechanic were kind if simple bit with today's tech I think it would be much better. More that just random rooms, corridors, mobs and loot.Playing: Rift, LotRO
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No one has managed to do that yet.
I have to admit that I'm surprised how much aversion to randomness games have ... I remember as far back as Might and Magic III getting frustrated that random encounters had essentially disappeared in favor of fixed spawn points.
Perhaps I simply haven't tried the right games, perhaps best practices have discovered that quality control/debugging is an order of magnitude more difficult with a soup of random events or perhaps its just one of those "roads not taken" - nobody's going to go down that road until someone else steps forward and blazes a trail.
I'd love to see this. It's very disappointing that Blizzard chose not to incorporate this into WoW. Instead they created an endless treadmill of players running the same, static content over and over for predictable drops. It boggles my mind that this is what passes for "skill". I cringe a little every time I see some wanna-be major domo on a LFG channel saying, "Must know fights".
I'd love to see a quality game come out with random, scaling encounters where everyone has the same chance to get decent drops instead of catering to the few who can't take two steps without a group where everyone knows the script.
For my money, I'm more excited about Runic's Torchlight 2 than I am about any of the upcoming MMORPG releases, including Guild Wars 2.
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1. Randomizing a dungeon helps very little with "keeping people from getting bored".
Granted, it does a tiny little bit, because the dungeons will get harder.
But human beings are not that simple that you can entertain them with simple random alone.
2. Randomizing requires instancing.
Like, eww.
*pokes Adamatine's imagination*
Maybe if it was done correctly though. I always envisioned playing the instanced battlegrounds in WoW, but having the terrain and locations of objectives and powerups be randomized to promote scouting and communication. Fog of War, anyone?
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Oh but we are that simple. That's the reason the most played games in history use a simple high score leader board mechanic. Why games like tetris, minesweer and solitaire are among the most played and why millions and millions of people played a little random dungeon crawler named diablo for 20 years! My friend there are games like canabalt on mobile platforms that's have sold a hundred million apps and it's nothing but a little dude running and dying over and over on a random map. Human beings are simple enough that randomness could just be the next big thing in this genre.Playing: Rift, LotRO
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Random is usually the opposite of quality.
You can have a finite number of high quality dungeons or you can have a (technically) infinite number of shallow ones. One of the reasons I hated Diablo. But apparently some people have no problem with dynamic but shallow content, personally I think that random generators are lazy design but if it works I guess.
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Has been tried several times, usually with only one common result: suckyness.
Because the 'randomization' ironically often becomes repetitive very fast, believe it or not.
There are always elements that return time after time in these randomized dungeons (and sometimes they make no sense whatsoever) and the randomized nature just means that you are running through the same makeup mixed up in different corridors filled with some random mobs that don't really fit there.
Hellgate: London is one of the big examples of failure in that regard.
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My thought is that randomized dungeons could never be "designed" to be beaten in a certain way such as many games such as WOW build them now.
As such, you'd probably have to limit them to pretty much tank and spank encounters and not attempt anything too fancy, just make it so if you bring enough firepower and/or healing you survive.
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Agree 100%.
Diablo's randomized dungeons didn't enhance replayablility for me in any way whatsoever. Randomized gear was KINDA cool, but it pretty much created a system where almost everything was total trash. Hellgate:London... pretty much the same thing.
Changing things up a little bit here and there, not too bad... special encounters, etc. But CoX is a good example of just random maze stuff in MMO's. It makes the mission interiors the most lackluster bit of the game.
Well first off you need to determine how random. Since we are dealing with code, randong is not truly random, all the graphcis and rooms will have to be scripted before hand and then the server just randomly puts them together.
CoH has this.
You have maybe a dozen or two different styles, and each style has maybe 50-100 types of rooms and halls. When you walk in, the server just selects the style and randomly arranges a bunch or rooms in that style.
The problem was even though it's random, it doesn't feel like it. Because you have seen the same thing over and over and over and over again.
To have thousands of styles and thousands or rooms, maybe 10's of thousands all looking different but still fit with the theme of whatever dungeon you were going for. WoW that is some monumental coding if you as me anyway.
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Randomized dungeons like EQ's LDoN expansion? Honestly, I have absolutely NO idea why games don't use that more often, and why even EQ1 isn't coming with another LDoN style of expansion. It makes perfect sense to randomize the dungeons a bit to ensure longevity. I know LDON was one of the most popular expansions in EQ, it really boggles me why games today don't utilize it more, or why EQ doesn't come out with LDON v2.
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Randomized dungeons (or as they call it procedural generated) is the holy grail of game development.
Its obviously not easy to acomplish. I mean its not hard to do, but its hard to do right.
Dungeon Runners was closed because it didnt really work good for them. Hellgate London did it good but they lacked variation.
The latest procedural generated game "Torchlight" is great sucess. The game was developed in under 6 months. And why not when all the content is random ? You dont need level designers
But how about MMO ?
Good question.
Probably because MMO developers lack talent. There i said it.
Procedural generated content is hard to do right. And they just dont know how to do it.
There is MMO called "Rifts Planes of Telara" that promises to have random created events. And dungeons that change every time you visit them.
SO lets hope
Why can't a game have both?
A 'randomly generated' dungeon system still needs all of the art assets created, and most likely modular rooms, hallways, areas, etc to be pieced together by the system. What's from stopping devs from using those same assets to hand tailor a few 'epic' dungeons?
Just as random dungeons can seem shallow and boring, pre-made dungeons can get extremly boring and repetitive, especially when the loot system forces you to endure treadmill like completely of said dungeons to even get a shot at the loot you need to progress.
Random layouts would not make sense. There is only so much room on a planet. It goes beyond the layout of the dungeon. The issue is more at the core of the approach and the content, than the dungeon itself. Dungeons play heavily into the fact that we are playing game lobbies and not MMORPGs. Random dungeons would just add to that fact.
I doubt that we will ever get anything close to what would take place in a PnP RPG though...sadly.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
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