More Randomness, More Replayability For Games? 57
Thanks to GamerDad for its 'Long Shot' editorial discussing whether randomly generated gameplay and maps make for more interesting videogames. The author argues: "As time has advanced and games have become less like the arcade games of old, plotting and story have removed the randomness from many of our games... That's to say nothing of the gameworlds themselves... The places you'll visit are always going to be the same with each play through." However, he points out: "Ensemble Studios has done an absolutely superb job of making online play in Age of Mythology exciting through the use of random maps. These maps are generated using excellent seed criteria that give the player the feeling of playing a pre-designed map but with completely unique designs every time", concluding: "I'd like to see the same kind of thing applied to first person action and more."
Randomness would be good (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm in the middle of playing through the Rainbow Six 3 campaign mode, and what I've been dealing with is the same thing that I have seen on every other FPS:
I walk into a new room, and start getting shot at. Instead of running out, I continue to move forward to draw fire from as many enemies as I can. Yes I die, but now I know where everyone is.
Reload my last save, and this time I enter the room knowing where everyone is. I 'sneak' in, kill them, and move on.
I would say that this is 'smart gameplay'. It works, but it is also 'cheating'.
But that is the only way to do it, when they hide the enemies behind boxes, tables, etc, and they are set to ambush you as you walk by.
While I do LIKE this type of gameplay (problem solving really) it would be nice to have some randomness built in, to keep me honest.
Ikaruga (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, on the other side, there's stuff like Diablo, Phantasy Star Online or Minesweeper where the random spin is pretty much the saviour of the game.
Another issue with random whatever (evel, monster placement, etc...) generation is that, most of the time, it sucks. No care or human ingenuity is used. For example, F-Zero X's random track generator creates tracks that aren't half as good as the 24 built in ones. All the randomly generated Doom level I've played from various programs can't even compare to maps which are made by anyone who knows roughly what they are doing. Again there are counter examples, like the levels in Worms which were randomly generated.
I think it all boils down with how the game needs the player to deal with possibilities. If there's something which needs to be unknown, or some unknown factor, what better way to set it up than have it picked out randomly?
I'm only trying to point out that it's a double edged sword, as the article seemed very pro-random. The dungeons in Daggerfall were just completely uninteresting, yet the author suggests this is down to a poor random generation algorithm? I don't think so, the dungeons were generally well constructed from a technical point of view. They were boring because it is just boring to wander randomly around a dungeon full of random, meaningless corridors and templated rooms, looking for a random item placed randomly somewhere in the dungeon, so you can get the item back to the random villager who gave you the random quest to do this. It just sort of hits home that maybe you're really wasting your time?
Re:that's because R6 3 wasn't made by Red Storm (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I found that Rainbow Six had enemies with "Aim-bot" accurracy. This resulted in either the mission being very easy or very hard (your teammates are easily gunned down by one enemy should you fall.)
Rainbow Six (Raven Shield) was the first game in the series where I noticed that enemies were in different locations than normal for each attempt of the map. However, in general, they were usually in the same place and could be dealt with by using Auto-Aim (either that or you die as soon as you step into their FOV - especially on 'Elite' difficulty.)
Of course, it was also the first game where I actually noticed an unnecessairy delay after throwing a grenade and switching to your primary weapon. (Why the fsck do you have to draw a second grenade and put it away before switching? Didn't see anything in the manual or training on how to do this properly.)
Random maps? (Score:3, Insightful)
Worked for Rogue/NetHack/Moria/Angband/ToME for years
Gauntlet wasn't random (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, I agree with one of the other posters: purely random levels just make the game meaningless. It is the same with soaps on TV (which I consider to be randomly generated for the purpose of this argument): I'd rather see a good, one-off story, then see the same elements repeated in different combinations again and again and again.
Either way works, depending on the game (Score:2, Insightful)
X:Com (Score:2, Insightful)
More Replayable Games? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about doing it right? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Xbox version of "Toejam and Earl" boasted completely randomly generated worlds. According to my friends that have played it, though, the levels aren't really all that different from the ones that were generated the time before. Heck, I've even heard someone say that the random levels took away variety from the game.
On the other hand, we can't have random levels that don't work. Putting a snowy mountain in the middle of a rainforest just won't work, and it's not fair to have random levels that are impossibly difficult (as mentioned in another post, F-Zero X has generated race tracks with incredibly sharp turns and no walls).
Still, randomness is appealing. I love puzzle games like Tetris, mainly because the experience is different every time. The basics are the same, but the actual challenge is never the same.
It's been said, but this would be great for some genres. There are too many shooters and strategy games for the PC. Find a way to develop random maps that are logical, challenging but not overwhelming, and fun and you've got a goldmine on your hands.
As far as I can tell, finding a good randomization system is the biggest hurdle. If we clear that, then we've just found a way to put level designers out of business. :)
It's simple (Score:2, Insightful)
So everytime someone says it either works or doesnt work in Game X, it always boils down to the quality of the random generator.
Not really read all the comments... (Score:3, Insightful)
Random maps have always been the best (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, many of the sequels dropped the random maps, and were lousy. They just never seemed to figure out the correlation.
The Space Between (Score:3, Insightful)
(This could be related to Wolfram's lambda parameter in cellular automata research as well: a game that 'hovers on the edge of chaos' would seem to be more interesting than either one totally deterministic or totally random.)
Of course, it goes without saying that this sort of analog parameter would have to be designed into the game from the beginning. Obviously, it's just easier to declare a certain sub-set of the game objects to be 0 (totally random) and another sub-set to be 1 (fixed). That's precisely why randomness in games *isn't* that interesting: too much all or nothing.