Rant about Rogue-Likes, Destiny, and RNG. (Destiny)

by Harmanimus , Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 12:42 (2701 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I take personal offense to the suggestion that Rogue-likes almost universally suck (not really, but hear me out). I will admit a lot of them have major issues, but most of that is either a baseline lack of enjoyable gameplay or a misunderstanding of what content is good when procedurally generated.

In the context of gameplay I think everyone cannagree that Destiny doesn't have a problem with its core loop. There are a lot of Rogue-likes with gameplay loops that are just not to everyones taste, and some rely too heavily on the repetion of failure for a lot of players. Also an aspect I think Destiny doesn't have excluding Raid Design.

Now, in regard to developers not understanding what is good in procedural generation? I have my personal taste which leads to my theories on this. Now, the joke at the start comes from being introduced to playing Rogue as a small child on an old Tandy computer. Circa 90-91. It was highly influential on my entertainment. My conclusion is that the things that make a good Rogue-like are the exact same as the things that made Rogue good. Those are the things that don't change between runs.

Yes. Bear with me while I talk about how the best aspect of randomly generated games are the parts that aren't randomly generated and why the random generation is still important. I have three examples I'd like to reference in regard to how Destiny could benefit from the same ideas. A lot of these were things I wished PoE had when I first heard about it. It is also what I wanted the Dark Woods to be.

Diablo: Or the Controlled Random Experience -
Obviously Destiny has drawn a lot from Diablo on the loot side of things. But I think the location generation and enemy spawning was the best aspect of the original Diablo. It is why it was content that was worth replaying. There were things that were set (what tileset was used on floor and what enemies are able to be spawned) and things that were random (the layout and enemy distribution) allowing for unique but generally predictable experiences. I don't think this would be a problem at all for Bungie to build, especially with the structure of their art assets/design and my understand of how their antagonist AI works. I might be wrong there, though.

Don't Starve: Or How Players Influence the Random Experience -
In Don't Starve, and as it follows Don't Starve Together, the key thing is that the game plays in cycles. It is a survival game but you improve your chances of survival through base building. This is also the same sort of reason Minecraft works for a lot of people. The ability to build or set actions is very powerful. It gives players the ability to creator order within the chaos. With Sync Plates and Dunking mechanics it wouldn't be hard to establish things that players get randomly being turned into results that they have control over. Whether that is summoning Scorch Cannons that refresh or other resource generators/healing points.

Binding of Isaac: Or Why Random Factors Help Emergent Experiences -
There is so much i can discuss here about BoI as to a Rogue-like done "right" that I won't try. But there is one aspect I think would work effectively in a fame like Destiny. The best and worst experiences in BoI exist because of the interaction of different items overlapping and interacting. When you beat that Final-Final-Final Boss when you are out of health because you happen to shoot spreading projectiles that eliminate enemy projectiles is a very powerful experience. Destiny has modifiers. And we've already been shown how some of these create challenging experiences and how some when combined create absurd novelties. Arc Burn, Airborne, Brawler Peregrine Greaves I am looking at you.

So, in summary, tl;dr, w/e: Destiny has everything in place to support good procedural gameplay. How much time investment it would take to incorporate those systems compared to building new fleshed out Patrol Spaces? I don't have an answer. But in the context of being done right I think Destiny already has the necessary foundation for benefiting from procedural generation.