Why Randomly Generated Content Sucks

[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.

 

[Alterego-X]

What we're talking about is basically a non-interactive text-only Bioware-style RPG...

That sentence sounds like Yahtzee just reinvented the Visual Novel medium.

Not the randomly-generated-plot idea itself, that part is original, but this strating point's description was worded incredibly awkwardly, it's like describing an interactive theatre play as "Imagine a movie that's played out by living actors right in front of you, and..."

 

[ipuntmidgets]

Well to solve the problem completely is to:
A. STOP MAKING ME BE ONLINE TO PLAY SOMETHING I PAYED $60 TO GET AHOLD OF.
I know this won't actually fix the problem, but it probably would make people more apathetic towards the flaws in the game. I know its taking out DRM to shove problems under the rug, but personally i would care a lot less about the problems of a game if I didn't have to always have to be online with it.

B. Make the world large enough that randomly generated dungeons would become difficult to notice.
I know this another throw it under the rug and hope no one notices kind of thing but hear me out. When i think of this i think back to the elder scrolls series. that game doesn't have randomly generated dungeons, but the world is large enough that players don't care. in fact I think that if Bethesda were to put a few randomly generated dungeons in there RPG no one would care or notice. Since D3 is an online game they could implement this over time. Slowly making the world larger and large with the updates that are forced unto players anyway until they have a world large enough that permanent dungeons become the norm over randomly generated and that people can get a different experience without having to completely change there playstyle. I understand that the way that D3 is shown and played may not support that kind of map construction, but I'm throwing up ideas.

C. Stop being lazy asses.
What i mean by is using the forced online gameplay and making different versions of the dungeons. In fact if they want to be lazy with it they could just post something on there forums asking players to make dungeons for them so that they don't have to. D3 has something that the MMO environment has enjoyed for a long time. Changing the game to suit the community. This means that they can make constant improvements to the gameplay allowing them to make more and more variantions to dungeons, bosses, and story. The reason that I am afraid of this forced online gameplay is that they will squander this chance to improve a game over time to something far better than what you originally paid for. I know this kind of thing probably wont happen because blizzard has to much money to care. you arn't paying monthly to use D3 so more than likely they wont hear you over all there money.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Binding of Isaac works because a "full" game is meant to be maybe 90 minutes from beginning to end.

Diablo is a much longer term so it is a bit of apples and oranges comparison. Compared to something like Titan Quest where every map was the same the minor differences the random generation make for a noticeable if inconsequential increase in variety.

The best example of pseudo random generation is ADOM where the story and overworld map are fixed, but the individual dungeon maps and items are random. It works very well.

I know yahtzee doesn't like the idea but procedural gen is the wave of the future. Games will just be too big to design every element.

 

[Dangerious P. Cats]

I'm of the view that random maps would work a lot better in a multi-player game since story is a lesser concern (sadly) and players will in effect replay multi-player much more than single player. Games would feel new and fresh each time you played, and players who know maps creepily well would no longer have such a huge advantage. You could do it in interesting ways as well. Rather than just having a purely random map you could have a total war style RTS where players each add terrain to the battle field before the battle could create an interesting tactical dynamic for example.

 

[Squidbulb]

That's an interesting idea, but I'm a writer not a programmer, so I have no idea how to make that.

 

[Voltano]

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!...

I think one flaw in Yahtzee's argument with random-maps is he is only analyzing individual rooms with single encounters, but is not considering how they are all chained together. Sure if you walk into a room with three skeletons and three pillars lined up again, you'd have an understanding on how to solve it. But repetition of this could drain resources like health, mana, or healing potions that a new "room" of the dungeon which might be even easier could be even more difficult. This is why I think the "Sheol" level in "The Binding of Isaac" is even worse then the fight with Satan himself. Technically the rooms repeat themselves such as the fights with the Fallen bosses in three rooms in a row, but each one is taxing on your reserves before you can even get to the final boss.

But as for comparing "Minecraft" with "Diablo 3," the former encourages you to think about what to do in a given situation with the resources handed to you--while the latter doesn't. For example one map I created spawned me on an island in the middle of an ocean with no trees--so right there I'm in trouble as I don't have any wood to rely on for making tools to mine coal. "Diablo 3" only gives me "fancier pants" to dress my avatar in, but only does little effect to my overall statistics--which are static to another avatar equal level to mine. Plus with the skill tree simplified and no need to distribute ability points, leveling up in the game feels more like a typical JRPG where you don't get to customize your character. Once you have a level 60 Barbarian, all you have to do is play "Barbie dolls" with it instead of re-rolling a different Barbarian to get a different build and management of resources.

 

[Weaver]

I like randomly generated content; specifically dungeons. IMO it was a huge fault of Titan Quest and Dungeon Siege 1 & 2 to have the same maps every time. Maybe I'm some kind of super genius (I'm not), but I generally remembered where important things in each area were and it took any exploration out of it. In random ARGPs you can happen upon an experience shrine, or a rare monster, or when you find the dungeon you at least don't know where you're going.

It makes it a reason to explore and it keeps you guessing about what could be in the next hallway, or behind that next door. Would nethack and dungeon crawl: stone soup be the same if you played through the exact same floors every time, with the same bosses on each floor?

It would be awful; no one would play it.

 

[Amgeo]

I tend to agree with Yahtzee on a lot of things, and I think this is one of them. Randomly generated content is not inherently bad, it's just another tool that developers can use. I'm sure that a game will use it effectively at some point in the future.

 

[Darren Grey]

I think many are missing the point Yahtzee has made. Procedural generation can be great, where the designer writes algorithms which create content based on specific rulesets, with the focus being on producing interesting and replayable content. At the heart of things it involves making a basic AI level designer. Diablo III doesn't do this, it just randomises room placements, with all the rooms being samey. There is no procedural design. It's just rolling a dice to see if you get room x or y.

The likes of Dwarf Fortress, ADOM, roguelikes, and a fair few modern indie games all use procedural design, not simplistic random placement. Left4Dead's AI director uses procedural algorithms rather than just throwing random waves of enemies at you (imagine how crap that would be). Random sucks, procedural rules And you can have procedural stuff that involves very little random number generation that still produces vastly different results with each playthrough.

I'm not sure procedural text narrative has much of a future though. In stories we care too much about character motivations, desires and actions, and getting an algorithm set to make a story with interesting elements of this is quite difficult. There's been some cool stuff done, but it's nowhere near believable. However in games there are ways to effectively make use of procedural narrative but without writing, instead using light touches and letting your imagination and the context fill in the details. A bit like the computer making an interesting and compelling charcoal sketch, though it's incapable of every producing a lifelike portrait oil painting.

 

[Zortack]

I think yahtzee is getting kind of tiresome with the whole anti-mainstream crap. Now I don't really enjoy DIII but it's got nowt to do with random dungeons.

Get over yourself, you're not the new games-prodigy, if you were someone would've hired you by now. Mainstream is mainstream because apparantly they hit a stroke with the general public, deal with it.

 

[Rack]

There's no such thing as randomly generated content, only procedurally generated content. A good procedure will make interesting designs that promote strong replayability, a bad procedure will make you think the design is random.

Diablo 3 is the latter and uses it badly. Still, there's a baby in that bathwater.

 

[Bad Jim]

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.

There's no such thing as randomly generated content, only procedurally generated content.

All generated content in actual games is procedural, but that doesn't mean it's not random. You don't know what your Minecraft world will look like until you play it, and neither does Notch.

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.

User generated content is a lot better generally. I've been playing Portal 2, which recently got an easy to use editor. There are now over 100,000 maps available, which are mostly terrible, but there are still lots of really good ones, more than Valve could ever make themselves. I don't think any algorithm could even generate new puzzles at all.

Users can write quests with real stories and interesting dungeons. Much better than randomly connecting rooms and filling them with a random assortment of monsters.

However, there is a slight flaw in using user content for an MMO. City of Heroes allowed user content once, and it took roughly 3 nanoseconds before there were maps designed for powerlevelling. Diablo 3 would probably suffer similar abuse.

 

[The Random One]

The problem with procedural design is when it's used as a crutch, as opposed to as a tool. Procedural design does not allow you to not do any level design, it forces you to do it differently.

BoI does it right. So does Spelunky, in a completely different way. BoI creates good levels by having solidly designed rooms with iterations of monsters and treasures. Spelunky creates good levels by putting together chunks which are solidly designed to interact with each other in different manners. But both are solidly designed, and are completely aware of what procedural generation lets them do and what it doesn't, instead of using it to replace their work.

Did i forget anything?

"Video games", I think.

 

[duchaked]

ooh I know
a Battle Royale game
where you start as a different person each time
and being a different person with different combat skills from some to none, the weapon (or item) you are given would be different
that'd be insane cuz you'd have to play differently depending on who you're stuck with that round

I'd be proud of the idea, but it's not exactly mine lol
but it would be nice to (maybe) see it done in a game?

 

[0over0]

I have to say, that was an excellent article and--as an added bonus!--some of these posts are also excellent.
Kudos to you all (except the slackers, you know who you are)!


This message was brought to you by a randomly selected algorithm. Have you hugged your procedure today?

 

[Breywood]

So I took some time to wonder why I managed to clock so many hours in Diablo II and didn't find the randomly generated items and maps a problem from 2007 when I hit "addict" level.

You found your particular bar and you set to jump over it. Any character class has several builds which can be made viable, and the drops are rich enough that you'll find something in a few 20 minute runs, if not for the character you're playing, then the one you're building on the side. Blizzard included enough variety and challenge in D2 that you didn't mind the fact you were running the same bosses over and over and over again.

Now, if it's not your thing, I'm fine with that. But I didn't see the randomly generated dungeons as much of a hindrance as other aspects of the game. It took the edge off the monotony, but I can't say that in itself it completely blunted the sameness.