Procedural Generation in RPGs

[Faarbaute]

I've always disliked it and it's one of the things that really turn me off from playing a game.

When I say procedural generation, I mean anything from randomly generated quests to terrain, stats and gear, on the fly or during development.

It really deflates the sense of intent and purpose in your game and while some amount can be okay, it really cheapens the experience.

While I do make exception for something like Diablo, where the randomly generated content is the entire point of the game, I hate to see that shit in RPGs.
I also understand that nobody is going to be placing every tree in a forest by hand, but you'd atleast like to pretend that the world you're exploring has been constructed with care.

What do you guys think?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

In before everyone pretends procedural generation means generating an entire boring world instead of something creative like using it to randomize units(and their abilities/skills/talents/...) in encounters to keep them interesting.

 

[Faarbaute]

something creative like using it to randomize units(and their abilities/skills/talents/...) in encounters to keep them interesting.

While this is a good example of it beeing used very well, and to great effect, I'd still mutch rather see 10 hand placed encounters then 10 semi-randomized encounters, if given the choice.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

something creative like using it to randomize units(and their abilities/skills/talents/...) in encounters to keep them interesting.

While this is a good example of it beeing used very well, and to great effect, I'd still mutch rather see 10 hand placed encounters then 10 semi-randomized encounters, if given the choice.

It's kind of funny to see such strong pushback to procedural generation in general here when randomness is used so much in tabletop RPGs for things from random events to building monster encounters
Rolling for random encounters has been part of D&D since -- iirc -- OD&D, and it was also used for generating the composition of monster encounters. It was additionally used to determine if they were hostile or not depending on the 'monster' type.

 

[Butter]

Procedural generation is a poisoned well because it's been used by 6 million hack developers who couldn't be bothered to design levels, items, encounters, or quests.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Procedural generation is a poisoned well because it's been used by 6 million hack developers who couldn't be bothered to design levels, items, encounters, or quests.

There's just as many RPGs with shit hand-placed content.

 

[Bigg Boss]

OBLIGE is great for this for Doom. Such a shame there is not something like that for RPG's.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

To a certain extent I think most RPGs have some form of it or another in random encounters or at the very least scaled leveling. Most of the bigger (in size) games have it in their overworld map too, since developers aren't really thinking deeply about some random section of the forest where there's nothing but forest. Personally, I'd like to say I care for the hand-crafted content more, but I find myself usually more drawn to games with well-done randomized content. The games with the really good hand-crafted content are few and far between. Most "kill 10 of X creature" quests are indistinguishable from game to game, and it doesn't really matter if the game generates them on the fly or if the developers have a careful plan for which creatures I take out in what order.
Now, of course, the problem is that so many shit developers have poisoned the well, but the thing is if those people hand-crafted their games, it would still be hot garbage. Its disguising their weaknesses. You can do a lot of cool things by combining them together. Sid Meier's Pirates, for instance, has a completely pre-built world, and a handful of premade quests, but most of the game is interacting with what random elements the game throws at you. It would not be as good as it was if it was completely hand-crafted. While Sea Dogs is not as beloved, despite having considerably more hand-crafted content. Because its hand-crafted content is slightly worse than Pirates randomly generated stuff.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Procedural generation is fine, there are some games where it really works, Minecraft, Daggerfall and Terraria are excellent examples. In general I prefer handcrafted content though. Games that are heavy on procedural generation rely heavily on their systems and the players ability to make their own fun, but none of them can be as deep or interesting as highly crafted games.

Obviously as Rusty said there's things like random encounters that can be good and fit in any game, depending on how they're used.

 

[Crichton]

I think procedural generation is just like stochastic combat outcomes; it makes perfect sense for things that should be uncertain (i.e. you play through a dungeon entirely differently if don't know what's around the next corner and without procedural generation, that only happens once). I think Daggerfall dungeon layouts/populations are a perfect example and the Daggerfall (or Skyrim) random quests aren't far behind. Even random maps in 4x games force you to scout instead of just bee-lining for where you know the enemy camp to be.

When I dislike procedural generation, it's generally when it's used for things that needn't be random, like the random NPC locations in Mount and Blade, or when it's just lazy. Random items for NPCs frequently fall into that category because the developers are too lazy to properly curate the lists (Why does an owlbear have a potion of clear thought?). The subtype system used in the Kingmaker roguelike mode is infuriating for slapping random ugly graphical filters on indiscriminately to make nonsensical combinations (air + dugergar = electrical duergar or whatever nonsense). Similarly, procedural generation combined with lack of randomization leads to an uncanny valley; every randomly generated goblin thief carries a dagger and 2d6 gold coins; never a kukri, never a club, never a gem, always the same equipment because the developers were too lazy to create a list (sadly Kingmaker roguelike does that one too)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

color-coded randomly generated items are the worst, btw.
not to be confused with items crafted by hand that are randomly placed, which can be cool because you'll be surprised by what you find

99% of color-coded puke items are complete fucking garbage and don't even make sense as to why they should exist beyond gamification.

 

[Shaki]

color-coded randomly generated items are the worst, btw.

100% agree, one of the many reasons why D:OS games were a huge decline.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I remember one highly regarded mod for Oblivion where the author basically just randomly colored existing monsters and elementals and got rave reviews for it. Fighting a blue daedroth over a plain vanilla jaundiced looking one was not my idea of fun. However, the color coded thing in Metroid Prime was at least used as as important gameplay element where you had to switch weapons according to the color of the pirate/monster variant you encountered, and it was crucial in end-game boss fights where they'd change color (and ranged attacks) and you had to adjust accordingly. But just throwing randomly rainbow monsters at you feels contrived as fuck. Sorry, this doesn't really have much to do with procedural generation in RPGs but I just felt like getting a good gripe off today.

 

[Divine Blessing]

procedural generation is the singular option to provide individually unique content en masse, everyone will experience in a different, unique and therefore personalized version. although very minor, it is already established with many solid proofs of concept, from Minecraft to Remnants Of The Ashes and will be elaborated in the near future. cuz procedural generation is the power fantasy of every dev to deliver not just (almost) endless replayability, but said unique individual experience, no one else than the player may tell his personal stories of.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Procedural generation is fun for the feeble minded. I want actual human-written content by talented people with minds in games; otherwise it's like that old Commodore PET A.I. poet program that loaded off a data cassette my brother tried to impress me with back in the mid-70s where the A.I. routine would just spout randomly generated "poetry" that looked like it was written by an old alcoholic poet that suffered a series of severe strokes that left 99% of his brain dead.

 

[0wca]

I've always disliked it and it's one of the things that really turn me off from playing a game.

When I say procedural generation, I mean anything from randomly generated quests to terrain, stats and gear, on the fly or during development.

It really deflates the sense of intent and purpose in your game and while some amount can be okay, it really cheapens the experience.

While I do make exception for something like Diablo, where the randomly generated content is the entire point of the game, I hate to see that shit in RPGs.
I also understand that nobody is going to be placing every tree in a forest by hand, but you'd atleast like to pretend that the world you're exploring has been constructed with care.

What do you guys think?

I think it can be used, but sparsely.

You can make certain, smaller things procedurally generated like encounter maps (if there are random encounters in the game).

Certain stats of gear could also be proceduraly generated like a small, added bonus to its stats, but that green, blue, purple shit should be avoided.

Path of Exile can take lot more liberties with this (and it does), but that's because it's a multiplayer game.

 

[ADL]

I'd be interested to peek into the parallel universe where Todd never got his hands on The Elder Scrolls series and we got Morrowind as intended by LeFay & friends because Daggerfall is

and so is dorffort adventure mode so I'm inclined to say procgen is awesome and good when used correctly.

 

[tritosine2k]

(...)

What do you guys think?

(...)

Path of Exile can take lot more liberties with this (and it does), but that's because it's a multiplayer game.

Path of Exile has a rather sad procedural excuse for "Grand arena" that's as of now room after room and afaict arpg universe can't seem to catch a break from that as a whole.

 

[Raghar]

something creative like using it to randomize units(and their abilities/skills/talents/...) in encounters to keep them interesting.

While this is a good example of it beeing used very well, and to great effect, I'd still mutch rather see 10 hand placed encounters then 10 semi-randomized encounters, if given the choice.

When you see these 10 encounters second time, you'd know already how to handle them.

 

[0wca]

(...)

What do you guys think?

(...)

Path of Exile can take lot more liberties with this (and it does), but that's because it's a multiplayer game.

Path of Exile has a rather sad procedural excuse for "Grand arena" that's as of now room after room and afaict arpg universe can't seem to catch a break from that as a whole.

Fair enough, but I'm saying that procedural generation belongs in games like that. D2 also had proceduraly generated map layouts.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Procedural generation for runtime level generation is boring and probably the worst example of it next to randomly generated color-coded loot puke.

There's a common theme between basically all instances of when randomness is good and when it's bad: it's great for altering existing hand-created content to keep it interesting and add uniqueness. I find it more interesting when I don't know where the Ultra Legendary Crushmaster Hammer is when the game starts because its location has been randomized from a developer-curated list of good possible locations for an artifact of power. I find it more interesting when the enemies I face don't all have identical spell lists and aren't the same few enemies copy-pasted over and over all wearing the same gear and looking similar. Underrail's chance to spawn content could be contrasted to runtime level generation.
So on and so forth.


--
With regards to randomly generated loot, while I was never a fan of it I just thought it was bad design. I never really stopped to think about how dumb most of it is until -- I can't remember who said this or what I was watching -- someone mentioned how dumb most randomly generated items are and asked "why would anyone actually make this item?"
And... that made a lot of sense. Why do these items exist? Most of them are pants on head retarded vendor trash(or disenchantment or what have you), why would ANYONE make this item in essentially any game world?
They wouldn't. Making magical items would be difficult you'd assume, therefore they'd make useful items. These items are stupid! They shouldn't exist.

 

[Divine Blessing]

dont worry, Skynet taking over RPG wont happen soon:


https://play.aidungeon.io/main/home

You are fgh, a cyborg living in the the futuristic city of Zail. You have a bionic arm and a holoband. You're walking down the dark city streets while neon lights flash brightly above you. As you pass an alley you see a man lying in it, fast asleep. You walk by without realizing that he's there. A man rushes through the alley towards you. He points a pistol at your head.

You bionic arm.

Your bionic arm lashes out and grabs the man's head. You pull it down. Your arm breaks and the man's head snaps back. He shoots you in the stomach.

You holoband.

You pull out your holoband and wrap it around the mans neck. You begin to strangle him. The man struggles and begins to yell. "Hey! Stop! Let me go, you...!"

You strangle.

The man's struggles cease as his body goes limp. You release him and look down at the man. He's still breathing. "Thank the gods that's over," you mutter to yourself.

You strangle.

The man is dead and you wonder what to do now. A car screeches to a stop and the engine cuts off. Two figures step out. "I'm sorry, but we have to kill him."

You ok.

"No, no, no, that's not what we should do." "What do you mean? What's the plan?" "We can't let him spread the cyborg virus."

You virus.

"Wait, what are you talking about? I don't have any cyborg parts."

 

[tritosine2k]

Procedural generation for runtime level generation is boring and probably the worst example (...)

Maybe if they would ever devise something else than rooms and "telegraphed" jump scares ( instead they just gave wider corridors for "fast clear" cuz that's what's played in PoE anyhow), they'd have a chance to explain their loot formula and have their own formula cuz that's what came with d2 when they borrowed it lol.

That said GGG 's daily labirynth layout shared by all users is ( was) apparently innovative but abandoned seemingly. Also they locked up the boss forever : lol
.

 

[Azdul]

Procedural generation is a poisoned well because it's been used by 6 million hack developers who couldn't be bothered to design levels, items, encounters, or quests.

Manual design means that designers can ignore motivations, goals, politics, economy and ecology - and just spawn 3 enemies of this type and 2 enemies of that type and a healing potion when player enters the room.

In manually designed game player is the only agent of change in the world. If powerful ruler had lost his precious artifact 2 minutes walk from busy town - it will stay there forever and nobody will ever pick it up. Once all quests are done - previous regions are stuck in permanent stasis.

Many designers have a burning desire to create emotional moments and dramatic stories - and treat the world as a static decoration. As the technology progresses, the dissonance between 'story event' and the story created by player himself goes beyond jarring and straight into 'unintentionally funny' territory.

Designing every little detail by hand was the only option on 8-bit machines. However, when you replace text descriptions with realistic graphics - you lose suspension of disbelief, and all tropes of RPG design become painfully obvious. You either use a computer (aka 'procedural generation') to simulate more and more aspects of the world - or get stuck in the past with tried and true design - like JRPGs did.

 

[Faarbaute]

something creative like using it to randomize units(and their abilities/skills/talents/...) in encounters to keep them interesting.

While this is a good example of it beeing used very well, and to great effect, I'd still mutch rather see 10 hand placed encounters then 10 semi-randomized encounters, if given the choice.

When you see these 10 encounters second time, you'd know already how to handle them.

This is where ideally, there would be other systems at work that prevent the game from just beeing a series of puzzles to solve with one correct solution. For starters, you could bring a different character or set of characters to face the same challenge. Circumstance could alter how events play out in practice, like failed rolls or skillchecks, use of stealth, subduing a patrol to prevent an alarm from beeing sounded, kidnapping someone instead of killing them, there's alot of ways this could remain challenging and fun without having to randomize the encounters.

On a related note, I'd also never advocate to have the same encounters repeat in the same game. You shouldn't fight the same band of orcs, with the same gear and the same levels and the same formation, over and over again. If you want to feature a second encounter with orcs, maybe this time they have brought bowmen, the third time they are accompanied by a warlock or siege equipment. Unless you are facing a mindless horde, and their sameyness is a point in and of it self. But then you can still alter the terrain or give them a numerical advantage or something. Be creative.

It dosen't take alot of effort on the part of the developers to make these encounters unique, fun and different. In contrast, procedurally generated content just feels lazy and insulting.