Hannar said:I am pretty set against procedurally generated content because, in my experience, it has been done so poorly in the past and is very difficult to retain some of the smaller, meaningful and intentional personal touches that can come along with having an actual designer and artist control all aspects of content creation. I understand the desire to have content vary to prevent an area from becoming stale, but I think it's possible to have variety through diverse combat and group dynamics. I also value learning a dungeon and knowledge of an encounter as positive player interactions with the game world and community -- so I'm less likely to feel like an area has gotten stale.
Concur wholeheartedly. Procedurally generated content isn't even needed anyway if the development cycle of the game is efficient enough to have new content prepared for players around when the current content becomes stagnant.
So many really cool little world facets probably just wouldn't be able to exist if the game wasn't masterfully assembled by actual artists with a vision. Every MMO I've ever played has had those areas where it becomes very evident that the world builder in question deliberately did something interesting, even if there's no supplemental information. Some of the random dead druid rings in EQ are a good example. So much speculation about those, but it adds mystery.
I think I would like to see them make the mobs/loot a bit more random in dungeons so the play is a bit more about just the experience and less about the specific camps. People would probably still form certain camps but it would be based on the number of mobs that a group can kill rather than which named mob spawns in that area. I definitely want to see named mobs but maybe if they could spawn in random locations in a dungeon so that just killing trash has a chance to spawn them instead of people fighting over/waiting in line for specific camps. It would also be nice if there was a random chance for trash mobs to drop one of the items found on various named mobs.
So for instance:
Named mob 1 randomly spawns anywhere in dungeon: drops sweet chest piece.
Named mob 2 randomly spawns anywhere in dungeon: drops sweet sword.
Named mob 3 randomly spawns anywhere in dungeon: drops boots.
All trash mobs in dungeon: has a more rare chance to drop boots, sword or chest.
or something along those lines.
EQBallzz said:I think I would like to see them make the mobs/loot a bit more random in dungeons so the play is a bit more about just the experience and less about the specific camps. People would probably still form certain camps but it would be based on the number of mobs that a group can kill rather than which named mob spawns in that area. I definitely want to see named mobs but maybe if they could spawn in random locations in a dungeon so that just killing trash has a chance to spawn them instead of people fighting over/waiting in line for specific camps. It would also be nice if there was a random chance for trash mobs to drop one of the items found on various named mobs.
So for instance:
Named mob 1 randomly spawns anywhere in dungeon: drops sweet chest piece.
Named mob 2 randomly spawns anywhere in dungeon: drops sweet sword.
Named mob 3 randomly spawns anywhere in dungeon: drops boots.
All trash mobs in dungeon: has a more rare chance to drop boots, sword or chest.
or something along those lines.
I think this would make a lot of sense in most cases. It's kind of unrealistic that a king or other type of leader would stand perfectly still in one spot for all eternity. He's gonna move around his castle a bit or whatever the case may be. This encourages more player exploration and makes a dungeon adventure less predictable, while still keeping the important things the same. I would add that most bosses should have movement patterns that have some element of a routine to them that can be studied, so that the more experienced players have the reward of better being able to predict where he is going to be on a given day/time. But it shouldn't be as simple as guaranteeing "and when we round this corner, the named will be in the room ahead." (Unless that happens to "make sense" for that particular boss). Or even being like "okay well if he's not here, then he must be at his other spawn point." Most NPCs are gonna wander around their environment to a degree - make us have to work to find them :) even if we've already killed that particular mob 20x already.
Hannar said:I am pretty set against procedurally generated content because, in my experience, it has been done so poorly in the past and is very difficult to retain some of the smaller, meaningful and intentional personal touches that can come along with having an actual designer and artist control all aspects of content creation. I understand the desire to have content vary to prevent an area from becoming stale, but I think it's possible to have variety through diverse combat and group dynamics. I also value learning a dungeon and knowledge of an encounter as positive player interactions with the game world and community -- so I'm less likely to feel like an area has gotten stale.
Pantheon can have both. Static dungeons and procedural dungeons. You can even combine them, so within a dungeon, will exploring the Environment, you get a dynamic/procedural quest that spawns an entrance to a "new wing" or a "temporary construct by _______ " whoever owns the dungeon. It might only take a few minutes or a few dozen minutes to consume, but it would keep things fresh, at least. Once you're done, you're placed back in the original dungeon (or back on the surface in the case of a surface-spawned entrance).
There are options of awesome grey between the black and white. Also, those details and personal touches can and do exist in procedural dungeons, today, in other games.