Guild Wars 2

The first of two posts by me- apologies but it seems that when I get typing I get into all sorts of trouble with word limits!

I’ll start off by saying that for a long time now ive been happy with Guild Wars 2. Things are far from perfect and there are many things id like to see added and changed but for the most part I was happy enough plodding along, accomplishing my personal goals and having fun with my guild, waiting for the next patch and the next bit of ‘huge news’. But I feel that certain things are lacking in GW2 and would like to voice what I think could solve these issues.

I understand that only a set amount of content can be created by the devs in a set amount of time. I respect the work and understand that they are putting it out to the best of their ability and yes I largely do enjoy their efforts. But I feel that there are two major tools that they have failed to make use of:

1) Randomisation.
Its all well and good giving a boss a skill set but give it a week of fighting the boss once a day and you know whats going to happen and when its going to happen. The Tequatl update was a huge addition to the game and one I welcomed but as time has gone on I see now that more could have been done to make the fight more engaging. Imagine if Tequatl had….eight different skills. It throws five of them out randomly and three based on what is happening on the battlefield. Skills that actually target groups of players. What if Tequatl had a % chance at spawn of replacing a basic skill with special skills? What if he brings different minions each time he spawns each with different skills? What if the batteries are sometimes rigged so that one will definitely blow? I could go on but you get the picture. Randomise the world boss fights and you bring to the game something that I feel is sorely lacking- excitement. Each fight something different occurs and you have to rely on your skill to overcome the challenge thats presented to you.

Ok so now picture this- youve fought the upgraded Tequatl and you want to go dungeoning. You choose to go AC and get a party together before traveling to PoA. You go to the door and you see another portal. This one is swirling chaotically, shifting all over the place. You choose to enter and your party get whisked to what looks like a perfectly normal AC staircase. You proceed through the large door but wait… that corridor wasnt here before. And neither was Kohler. What if you could choose to enter a more chaotic, ‘randomised’ version of AC? Or any dungeon for that matter? A dungeon thats different each time you walk in. Some could look the same but have different mobs…. some could take parts of other dungeons. Procedurally generated dungeons that offer unique rewards like skins or mats used to create unique items. If ‘procedurally generated’ is impossible with the GW2 engine then create portals between areas and have a set amount of areas per full dungeon. A more compact version of Fractals. Randomisation is the key to excitement- if you dont know whats coming you have to react to it as and when you experience it. No preparation, just thrown in at the deep end.

Part 2- User-Generated Content

Without sounding like an kitten , isn’t this just the idea behind fractals? randomized dungeon paths?

Im talking about randomising the dungeons themselves. Each room/section and their mob/boss spawns would be random. Fractals are a large scale version of what im talking about but once you enter a fractal it is really just a dungeon where you know whats going to happen and when its going to happen.

Procedural generated stuff gives up quality for quantity, and not even good quantity at that since the patterns become really easy to see after a while. A RNG can’t determine whether or not something will be fun, a person has to design something to be fun.

Fractals are fine though because they don’t rely on RNG for level design.

I wish more games would try to randomize dungeons as Diablo does with all of its maps. I think the main reason Diablo-style games are even popular is because of the random element.

The problem is I’ve played plenty of games with procedurally generated content (some dungeon crawlers the entire game works that way) and all it really means is it takes a bit longer to learn because you have to learn each segment individually instead of the whole thing in one go.

For example there’s a dungeon crawler called Azure Dreams that came out on the Playstation and then the Gameboy Advance (and it’s the GBA version I’m talking about because that’s all I’ve played) which has about 130 levels (30 if you go up, 99 if you go down) of procedurally generated dungeon.

At first it seems like what you’re describing – it’s random and different every time which makes it really exciting. But relatively soon you realise there’s actually a finite number of possible floors and monsters. After a while you can recognise each floor as soon as it loads – you know the layout and know what to expect. Likewise as soon as you see a monster you know what attacks it has, what it’s weaknesses are and how to fight it. You might not know what’s coming on the floor after that because it’s random, but as soon as you see it you will.

There are two possible ways to avoid that happening.

1. Make the maps completely random. Don’t have a selection of segments which join together like carriages on a train. Make small squares of room or corridor or simply textures and objects and let a computer compile them randomly as the dungeon is loaded.

But the problem here is that you end up with a bit of a mess. You’ll have huge open rooms with no real purpose, long winding corridors that don’t go anywhere or just a jumbled maze of both. It also limits the type of enemies and fights you can have. You can’t have any real story because things will be happening in a random order. You can’t have enemies which use their environment or where the players have to use it to fight them because you don’t know what environment they’ll be in. Each part has to function totally independently of everything else around it, and that shows.

(And you’ve still got a finite number of objects being re-used, which again means sooner or later players will get to know all of them, especially since the fights have to be relatively simple.)

2. Have devs regularly adding new rooms, enemies, etc. to the selection and removing some of the old ones so it’s not possible for players to learn them all. This could work but it would require a lot of time and effort from Anet for something which I think would only interest a relatively small number of players.

Strange as it might seem to you OP, and people like you, a lot of people actually like having predictable dungeons they can learn. They like knowing what they’re going to get and how to do it. Learning it, getting really good at beating it, is what makes it fun to them. There’s also a group (a fairly significant group in MMOs it seems) who just want it to be easy because all they’re interested in is getting the rewards ASAP.

Taking that away would make both groups angry. It would have to be done separately, in a unique dungeon like Fractals is and I don’t think it would be worth the time and effort to keep updating it.

Danikat.8537:

The problem is I’ve played plenty of games with procedurally generated content (some dungeon crawlers the entire game works that way) and all it really means is it takes a bit longer to learn because you have to learn each segment individually instead of the whole thing in one go.

For example there’s a dungeon crawler called Azure Dreams that came out on the Playstation and then the Gameboy Advance (and it’s the GBA version I’m talking about because that’s all I’ve played) which has about 130 levels (30 if you go up, 99 if you go down) of procedurally generated dungeon.

At first it seems like what you’re describing – it’s random and different every time which makes it really exciting. But relatively soon you realise there’s actually a finite number of possible floors and monsters. After a while you can recognise each floor as soon as it loads – you know the layout and know what to expect. Likewise as soon as you see a monster you know what attacks it has, what it’s weaknesses are and how to fight it. You might not know what’s coming on the floor after that because it’s random, but as soon as you see it you will.

I actually have the disc for that about 10feet to my left.
I didn’t really like that game though. Your description of it doesn’t sound like a procedurally generated dungeon or it’s basic building block “tiles” were just too big. Anyway it sounds morel like it just has a set of different floors it can choose from.

There are two possible ways to avoid that happening.

1. Make the maps completely random. Don’t have a selection of segments which join together like carriages on a train. Make small squares of room or corridor or simply textures and objects and let a computer compile them randomly as the dungeon is loaded.

But the problem here is that you end up with a bit of a mess. You’ll have huge open rooms with no real purpose, long winding corridors that don’t go anywhere or just a jumbled maze of both. It also limits the type of enemies and fights you can have. You can’t have any real story because things will be happening in a random order. You can’t have enemies which use their environment or where the players have to use it to fight them because you don’t know what environment they’ll be in. Each part has to function totally independently of everything else around it, and that shows.

That is not necessarily the case. Path of Exile uses procedurally generated maps like many other dungeon crawlers. It has enemies that will take advantage of the environment. In one tile set the enemies can use their skill to leap on to ledges of different height(not the same as jumping in GW2 since it’s generally a one way only thing). There are others too but the point is that you can still make use of the environment as long as you pair the right types of the enemies with the right environment. Procedurally generated also doesn’t have to mean fully random, you can still have certain set pieces such as for boss fights or just to cover items relating to the lore.

The story in PoE actually seems better than in GW2. Anyway you can still impose order with random if they are set up in a way like the EotN dungeons where they have multiple floors. Each floor can deal with a different segment of the story and the environment itself can be part of the story. Story doesn’t have to be linear as long as they provide some way for the player to sort them in the correct order. The hearts in GW2 try to tell a story that way but they don’t seem to have any ordering elements.

Strange as it might seem to you OP, and people like you, a lot of people actually like having predictable dungeons they can learn. They like knowing what they’re going to get and how to do it. Learning it, getting really good at beating it, is what makes it fun to them. There’s also a group (a fairly significant group in MMOs it seems) who just want it to be easy because all they’re interested in is getting the rewards ASAP.

Well what else is there besides getting the rewards ASAP? Do it once and you know exactly where everything is every time. Maybe there is some treasure/boss/whatever hidden away in a corner somewhere? Nope. Already looked at every speck of dust that can appear in this dungeon and there is nothing more to see here.

In the procedurally generated dungeon crawlers you often find the exit to the next area but you don’t necessarily move on immediately because you might want to fully explore the area for more stuff. In the existing games stuff is generally more loot but it doesn’t have to be limited to that. Maybe both! Find Caudecus’ linen closet and become filthy rich!

Although it would be hard to explain why his house changes layout every time a different person enters…

This could be Moto’s next project after he is done with SAB.
New game, now with better graphics!

Any ‘randomised’ dungeon would have to be in addition to the standard dungeons but the idea is that they have loot unique to them.

Procedurally generated dungeons are the first thing that pops to mind when thinking about ways to randomise dungeons but ultimately the idea is to make dungeons exciting again and the first thing I can think of that would do that is unpredictability. If there are any other ideas that would create excitement feel free to speak out as id love to read them!