Why Randomly Generated Content Sucks

[RandV80]

The problem with Diablo's approach is that while it may be random it's not dynamic, and that's the key component missing from the equation in my opinion. A series of a different genre that has this is Civilization, not only do you get random maps but each game with it's variety of AI civs plays out differently.

I've been waiting for a long time, since the current gen came out with a supposed focus on multiprocessing, to see the gaming industry attempt to apply this approach to an open world RPG. If you look at TES II: Daggerfall, the game is far to big to have hand built so you have to figure the game world and everything outside the main storyline was generated by scripts. So take this principle, start with a versatile random map generator like you get in Civilization that. Generates maps on a 2D scale is converted to 3D for the player(like google maps -> google street view). In the background, run the world like a strategy game, in this case a Total War would be more appropriate, and depending on what the various nation AI or game pieces are doing convert that in real time as game scripts for the player to jump into.

It's a pretty ambitious idea but the technology should be there to do it. Dwarven Fortress is probably the closest thing right now with the adventure mode but that lacks a lot of polish... being an ASCII game and all.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

After playing through Path of Exile about 30 times already, with only two acts released so far, I am still not bored of it so I guess it doesn't bother everyone.

 

[Luke Toppin]

Someone already mentioned the name already, but Disgaea did (does) randomly generated content amazingly well. The original's was a bit yawn-worthy, but Disgaea 2 and up have done a fantastic job of it (My 240hr save file from Disgaea 3 is testament to that).

 

[Baresark]

I couldn't agree more. When I was young, I used to think the whole idea was fantastic. But really, all that has happened is as is described in this article. It's the same events in the same order, but the dungeons are different. The issue is that they are not actually different, if the story says this even happens in a cave, then it's always in a cave. So, that sucks. Terraria is a fantastic example of randomly generated since it generates a whole world and a whole world worth of enemies, events, NPS's, and textures are put in random places. In that situation, it is more than just rearranging things because the whole world is different. In D3, not so much.

 

[ex275w]

Well, some of the mindless automatic biases people think you have would be against:

AAA Titles
Nintendo
Japanese RPGs
First Person Shooters
Games with a multiplayer focus
Modern games in general
Games with quicktime events
Tolkienesque Fantasy
Long cutscenes

Did i forget anything?

All other videogames that don't fit in those categories.
Yahtzee has never liked a videogame. I bet he is just kidding when he says he likes Portal, Silent Hill 2 and Prince of Persia.

 

[Dexiro]

Randomly generated content can be fantastic, it just has to be used correctly.

Level generation shouldn't be used as an excuse not to design levels, and shouldn't in any way be thought of as "this game now has 10000's of levels worth of content". People would rather play 20 well designed levels than have 10000 crappy levels, quality over quantity.

A GOOD attitude to have is using level generation to make sure that players have to be strategic and plan ahead. There are a lot of games where you memorize the level completely, Megaman for example, and it effectively removes the challenge. But in some games you won't want the player to memorize anything, and randomisation can be a great way to stop that.

 

[Dexiro]

Someone already mentioned the name already, but Disgaea did (does) randomly generated content amazingly well. The original's was a bit yawn-worthy, but Disgaea 2 and up have done a fantastic job of it (My 240hr save file from Disgaea 3 is testament to that).

Does it? I love the Disgaea series to bits but I was never a big fan of the item world'y stuff. The randomly generated levels were just weird and chaotic

 

[Eric Morales]

Rather than just making a list of Yahtzee's negative biases, perhaps we could use our knowledge to design the ultimate "Yahtzee bait" game, something he's guaranteed to like.

-For starters, it has to be developed by Valve

-Tim Schafer would have to design it, presumably he'd be kidnapped by the Valve secret army and forced to work under threat of a crowbar to the head.

-It needs to be a sandbox horror game with plenty of Prince of Persia style platforming. He also loves swinging, so lets give the main character some kind of hookshot contraption, possibly two of them to make it more like Spider Man.

-Environments have to vary wildly. Remember, this is Yahtzee we're talking about so he'll get bored with the same setting very easily. So lets have environments vary wildly. Oh! Maybe some temporal shenanigans are slowly causing multiple places on earth to collapse to a single point, so there might be a Gothic Cathedral a few feet away from a jungle, a desert, a thriving metropolis, etc. Sounds like a soft science nightmare, but whatever, I'm still not convinced Yahtzee actually cares about story.

-Absolutely nothing can be brown. Even dirt has to be some kind of brilliant purple color
-There must be tits at some point.

There, Yahtzee bait.

 

[Lugbzurg]

There was a particular game that was released a few years ago this thrived on a system like this, spawning zombies out to be different every single time. It was Left 4 Dead. However, due to the nature of the game's intelligence system, it probably wouldn't be considered "random". But, it is an example of how you can set up a game to do certain things like this that turn out different every single time and do it right.

 

[Iron Criterion]

ok, then what about Minecraft? Doesn't it have the same problem as Diablo, but worse. The game and the level starts over every time you make a new world or when you start walking for an hour in a given direction, but you have the same exact objective with the same enemies(and I want you to forget about the mods for a minute), this means that the game has not that much of a value since it's a repeat of what you were trying to do, but with no direction, and as far as I know you love the game!...

Sorry for the double post here but this man ^ had a good point that ild like to agree with and rebut at the same time. ^^'

I love that point becuase its exactly what i think minecraft is. I cant play through the game at all without thinking "done this, done this, repeititveness," and yes that aspect of the game holds little value. But that isnt the point of the game is it? Anyone including yourself will tell you the point of minecraft is to build your ideas into the world. And THAT is what makes it fun. The randomly generated world is just a slight change in setting each time.
In essence, that is why diablo falls short because your just running and killing through the same random areas.

In other words- Diablo is minecraft without the building....while searching for better pants and at the end you kill the big creeper.

Minecraft is procedurally generated not randomly generated. It's a similar concept but where it differs is in the coding, which dictates what the features the world should have and how they should be laid out. For example - lava in the mines.

 

[Iron Criterion]

Rather than just making a list of Yahtzee's negative biases, perhaps we could use our knowledge to design the ultimate "Yahtzee bait" game, something he's guaranteed to like.

-For starters, it has to be developed by Valve

-Tim Schafer would have to design it, presumably he'd be kidnapped by the Valve secret army and forced to work under threat of a crowbar to the head.

-It needs to be a sandbox horror game with plenty of Prince of Persia style platforming. He also loves swinging, so lets give the main character some kind of hookshot contraption, possibly two of them to make it more like Spider Man.

-Environments have to vary wildly. Remember, this is Yahtzee we're talking about so he'll get bored with the same setting very easily. So lets have environments vary wildly. Oh! Maybe some temporal shenanigans are slowly causing multiple places on earth to collapse to a single point, so there might be a Gothic Cathedral a few feet away from a jungle, a desert, a thriving metropolis, etc. Sounds like a soft science nightmare, but whatever, I'm still not convinced Yahtzee actually cares about story.

-Absolutely nothing can be brown. Even dirt has to be some kind of brilliant purple color
-There must be tits at some point.

There, Yahtzee bait.

Screw Yahtzee, I want to play that game.

Sounds like a soft science nightmare, but whatever, I'm still not convinced Yahtzee actually cares about story.

Disrespect Yahtzee all you want, but at least get your facts straight.

 

[Warachia]

Not that you'll read this Yahtzee, but that whole idea of AI's reacting due to programming in scenarios with different characters has already been done before in Valkyrie Profile, a really good playstation game I'd recommend, and in one of the sequels, though in that sequel they weren't random, the player had input, but not to alter the dialogue, or choose where to go, they slightly altered the main characters personality, and the rest of it was dictated by the character himself, as far as I'm aware only the first game is entirely dictated by the characters with no input from the player.

 

[Zakarath]

Another place randomly/procedurally generated content is good is in rts games like age of mythology. the overall layout stays largely the same, but there are usually just enough differences in the map to keep things interesting, while still being able to guess where things will be.

 

[maturin]

I agree. But let's have some examples of random generation done right.

Dwarf Fortress
Daggerfall
Dynamically and procedurally generated ArmA 2 missions, populating a hand-crafted map with randomized tasks and enemies

 

[Apollo45]

Well, some of the mindless automatic biases people think you have would be against:

AAA Titles
Nintendo
Japanese RPGs
First Person Shooters
Games with a multiplayer focus
Modern games in general
Games with quicktime events
Tolkienesque Fantasy
Long cutscenes

Did i forget anything?

He hates sequels too, written a few extra punctuations just to bash the them but everyone has bias, Yahtzee just likes overstating his and passing it off as fact.


I agree that random generation suck for the most part but it has worked in Disgaea, it had pre-made story levels but randomly generated extra stages that was great to help make the grinding in that game more bearable.

Real Time Strategy games. Maybe strategy games in general since he wrote that whole rant about Warhammer 40k. Management sims too. Games that do that X-Ray kill cam thing. Games that are hard.

Also games that are easy. Can't forget that one.

 

[ArkhamJester]

Well, some of the mindless automatic biases people think you have would be against:

AAA Titles
Nintendo
Japanese RPGs
First Person Shooters
Games with a multiplayer focus
Modern games in general
Games with quicktime events
Tolkienesque Fantasy
Long cutscenes

Did i forget anything?

He hates sequels too, written a few extra punctuations just to bash the them but everyone has bias, Yahtzee just likes overstating his and passing it off as fact.


I agree that random generation suck for the most part but it has worked in Disgaea, it had pre-made story levels but randomly generated extra stages that was great to help make the grinding in that game more bearable.

Real Time Strategy games. Maybe strategy games in general since he wrote that whole rant about Warhammer 40k. Management sims too. Games that do that X-Ray kill cam thing. Games that are hard.

Also games that are easy. Can't forget that one.

Well, some of the mindless automatic biases people think you have would be against:

AAA Titles
Nintendo
Japanese RPGs
First Person Shooters
Games with a multiplayer focus
Modern games in general
Games with quicktime events
Tolkienesque Fantasy
Long cutscenes


You forgot America, and fanboyism of any kind.

 

[blackrave]

Minecraft + Procedural storytelling = Greatest Game Ever!

Yes please!

 

[surg3n]

The thing I always find with randomly generated dungeons, is when I get stuck, I always wonder if it's a bug, like the random generation made the level impossible. I used to play a game in the 90's called Captive, and that randomly generated all the levels, but based on a preset seed, so everyone plays the same levels, but the game ends up being massive. To complete Captive, you'd have to play it for your entire life. Captive is a dungeon crawler, a lot like Dungeon Master, and the levels are pretty complex, and they would have bugs, like not giving you a key to get past a door that you need to get past to get the key. I played Captive a lot, if the game was 10 levels then your done, then the game would last a couple of weeks, I played it for years and still didn't max out my characters. It can make a difference, even when it is flawed, it extends the life of a game.

Another factor is development fun. Designing levels isn't fun, it's tedious, and very difficult to not end up with a boring or predictable level. If you take that burden away, then designers can concentrate on adding content, and also the game is much more fun to develop because the levels haven't had to be painstakingly laid out. It's not as if the locations on games like Diablo3 or Torchlight are memorable, maybe that's the problem... these games don't let you interact with the environment as much as they should. Players don't see an elaborate mine complex, or dungeon, they see what it boils down to... a grid, these games actual mapping systems are about as complex as a Cluedo board. Environment is just not the focus in these games, so it might as well be randomly generated, giving designers more time to add loot. I have to say, the first videos we saw of Diablo3 seemed to be a lot more environmental, like boulders falling and stuff like that... probably done before the levels were randomly generated.

I guess what would be ideal, is for Diablo3 to get a level editor, let people design their own dungeons and quests, that's really a better way to extend the life of a game IMO.

 

[Yosarian2]

I always thought that Diablo did random levels because they were trying to imitate a roguelike game (Nethack, angband, ect) just with graphics.

It doesn't quite work the same way, though. Random levels work in roguelike games because you play them over and over again, and part of the charm is that you keep finding new and horrible ways to die and then restart. Yes, Hardcore mode is sort of a nod to that as well, but even then you're likely to play the same level hundreds of times the way you do in roguelike games.

 

[Monsterfurby]

To be honest, I tend to disagree here. For some reason, I for one find the thought of a story or setting being finite almost unbearable. That is why I gravitate towards simulations and simulationesque strategy games (Dwarf Fortress, Civilization, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis...) instead of pre-scripted games. It is also the reason why I write, and sometimes while writing a story use RPG-like dice mechanics to come up with twists that I didn't expect.

Sure, you need human input to make something entirely random into something entirely new, you need to create a narrative around it. But at some point, having the possibility of letting "random dungeon #4891878937" become "the narrow corridor where my character heroically fought for her/his life" is worth more than cynically rejecting any sort of emergent story and random content.

Yes, random content is not for everyone, but for those more creatively inclined, for those that like to tell stories, even a crude random content generator can be an infinite supply of these.

Edit: I should also note that a system that automatically generates a completely new, fresh, coherent storyline would be my personal holy grail.