What if what we have now is all there is? (or, Dikus are the Steering Wheel)

[Malakili]

Its more about the fact that I never know precisely where to go.  I like the exploration side of things quite a lot and randomization means that even if things look a bit the same, the layout is always a bit different.

I agree that our opinions differ, and I'm not sure yours is the minority. It's probably the case that we're each willing to tolerate quite a bit of the other's preference so long as the game keeps handing out rewards.

I don't need to know precisely where to go, and I'm not (generally) trying to maximize efficiency. Having choices is a lot of fun, but I can't stand feeling like I've wasted time. If, in D2, I wandered to the opposite corner of the map when the exit was just around the proverbial corner at the start... it got hard to justify the tedious trip with experience, gold, and loot. That wasn't enjoyable, it was frustrating. Torchlight seemed to have put some effort into making its random levels a bit more linear. More importantly, I enjoyed D2's set pieces and boss fights every time. It was the long meanderings between them that eventually drove me away.

This was also true in Titan Quest.

Like Triforcer says in the original post: grinding levels and loot isn't exactly fun... it's a skinner box. It's also the best way to keep people paying for a game for month after month. Disguising the skinner box won't change its fundamental nature, but improving the quality of the skinner box might change its profitability.

Yeah, with me, at least as far as the ARPG genre goes, I find it actually plain FUN.  All that "getting to" the boss is the slaughter of 100s of minions with cool looking spells or a giant sword, this is enough to amuse me when it comes to that genre.  Its why I play hardcore more after my first play through on ARPGs that have it.  All that loot means nothing because when that character dies, and it WILL die, its gone forever. 

[Lantyssa]

Diablo meets Spore monsters and Dungeon Keeper maps.  Let players make some of the content then share it.

[Nebu]

Let players make some of the content then share it.

I'd agree with you were it not for the fact that most of the player generated CoH content was more about exploiting and less about quality. 

[pxib]

Dungeon Keeper maps would imply that there are objectives and requirements rather than mere DIY construction. Plus, in a multi-faction world one might only allow the maps created by any given faction to be used by the others. On the other hand, my experience with user generated content (in platforms from Second Life to C++) has been wildly disappointing. People love tools, but the vast majority of us are terrible at using them. Individuals with the myriad skills required to create good art, good code, and good gameplay are practically mythological.

[Tarami]

Unrelated: My take on procedural vs. handcrafted content is that, assuming a finite budget, any game has to choose where it falls on the spectrum of unique/artsy/handcrafted vs. different every time you play. A lot of people around here (or maybe the same few people over and over in multiple threads? I dunno) seem to have this pipe dream of magical content dev teams with infinite time that can have lots of both. But realistically, any game has to choose one or the other, or fall somewhere in between. For some games and genres being mostly or entirely handcrafted is appropriate, but in a game where my primary focus is to whack one thousand foozles so that I can whack my next thousand foozles 5% more quickly, any charm that comes from handcrafted areas is going to wear off somewhere around my 200th foozle anyway, and I just want something different.

Yes, budget is naturally a huge issue. My original point was that procedural content is today, and probably will keep being until some major breakthrough, so feeble that it can't to any large extent replace handcrafted content. The same goes for dynamic gameplay (AI factions et c.) because it shares the same weakness: we have no idea how to efficiently describe even vaguely human behaviour.

There are times just randomness is good enough, but it's not something I'd wager a lot of people would pay a sub fee for.

[Lantyssa]

I'd agree with you were it not for the fact that most of the player generated CoH content was more about exploiting and less about quality. 

Dungeon Keeper maps would imply that there are objectives and requirements rather than mere DIY construction. Plus, in a multi-faction world one might only allow the maps created by any given faction to be used by the others. On the other hand, my experience with user generated content (in platforms from Second Life to C++) has been wildly disappointing. People love tools, but the vast majority of us are terrible at using them. Individuals with the myriad skills required to create good art, good code, and good gameplay are practically mythological.

Of course it would depend upon the game, but be sneaky about it.  As an example, have the maps of players that beat the AI on difficult levels added to a pool of randomly downloaded ones.  Take creatures like those built in Spore that fit within certain parameters be picked for needed roles.

Part of this idea is not to let players design the entirety of the scene.  Let them do pieces at most, and take the designs from gameplay when it's not advantageous to game the system.  Sanity checks against throwing the match, as it were.

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, as far as something that may be a good thing to look at. LOTRO skirmishes are a fine example of procedural meets handcrafted. With all the pros and cons of each.

[jakonovski]

How about if you make the content hidden?

I have this idea of an MMO that is huge, like effing gigantic, over a hundred miles across. It would be mostly procedural, but all the content spots would be created and placed by hand. A bit like FUEL. But that's just the backdrop, here's what makes it tick:

There is no map. There is no fast travel, the only possible exception being if you want to form a group with your friends and even then there's a cooldown that's counted in days. The whole idea of the game is to limit the spread of information so that you will have to play the game in order to find out things. Need ore? Maybe it's 20 miles away and you need to move your whole existence there. Mobs killing villagers? You have to find their lair by walking the land.

The way I see it, you don't need all the content in the world, only for it to be consumed by a locust swarm of gamers. What you need is a sense of the unknown, an implied promise that maybe you'll find something cool behind the next hill.



 

[Mrbloodworth]

Working on a game where change, new systems and new additions are indeed not told to the player base. I have to disagree that its 100% a good idea. You will make a feature, add it in silently, then when someone figures it out, they will exploit the shit out of it because its broken, and now, perhaps months later, you need to fix it or balance it in with something else you put in months ago.

I'm speaking from experience here. Not all hidden features are bad, some can be down right disastrous.

We have "Lairs" that are concentrated spawns of some or another mob, this works out good. Randomly placed ETC... We have added entire features, such as religion, with no documentation, and have spent months fixing things as player find, and exploit them. Exploration of systems can be fun, but you are forgoing the the ability to have 1000 users slam your code and find issues while the development is fresh. You will have some players that find something, exploit it, and never tell anyone because they know it will be fixed. But at the time only 5 people know of it anyway.

2 coppers.

[jakonovski]

Good point there. I still really do feel that restriction of information is the key, because as it is content is over way too fast. Perhaps if you made the whole thing pvp, and the hidden content would be mostly shaped by the players. Burial sites could be built for guild bonuses, dams for resource creation, etc. They'd be located way in the boonies and operate unmanned so other players could loot them, but alarms would be there for retribution.

 



 

[Ratman_tf]

Its more about the fact that I never know precisely where to go.  I like the exploration side of things quite a lot and randomization means that even if things look a bit the same, the layout is always a bit different.  By comparison, something like a Dungeon in WoW is really neat that way the very first time, and then only if its a full group of people who have never done it.  Soon though, it becomes just going through the motions.

I know you could say the same thing about Mephisto runs or Pindle runs, and I've done my share of those in my day, but there is still something enticing to me about that fact that its a little different every time, even though its familiar. 

Maybe I'm the odd one out though.

Not at all. I still load up Anarchy Online for the random mission system in the vanilla game. I loved Torchlight and even Hellgate London for it.
Handcrafted content always feels like a rail shooter to me. Restrictive and forced. I can enjoy it once, maybe twice if it's really, really good content, but rarely more than that. Whereas I played the shit out of HGL and Torchlight, even though it's the same basic tilesets placed in different combinations. Now, I think that a procedurally generated dungeon style game that managed to put a little bit more than just random tiles might be on to something. I'm thinking about how in Torchlight there were hidden areas and portals and those nifty levers that opened up more of the dungeon map. Stuff like that. If the dungeon is not only shuffled, but interactive, I think it's the bees knees.