Wishful Thinking: A Truly Random Dungeon
Amatera
In addition to World of Warcraft, I've found myself playing a couple of "loot whore" games lately, and they've got me thinking about the balance between static and continually-generated end-game content. These sorts of things can be important when considering how entertained or bored your players are going to be when they reach a certain point in the game where there is, relatively, nothing "new" to be accomplished, and I'm wondering how such concepts can be applied to our favorite MMO.
I first started down this path by picking up From Software's punishingly awesome Demon's Souls. As opposed to the Diablos and Titan Quests of the world, Demon's Souls can be an extremely slow burn. You're not running around hacking your way through unrelenting hordes of enemies and picking up everything in sight just for a run back to the vendor to sell it for a meager some of gold. In fact, in this game, you can't sell anything at all! Upgrading your character and equipment is done with souls, which are more akin to experience points than currency. Instead, when something drops from an enemy, you decide if you want it right then and there, and if you're overburdened, that means you either leave it to rot or drop something else you already have in your inventory.
You see, Demon's Souls rewards you for patience and planning, taking on each fight as if it was your last (and it often is, even against lesser enemies). It's an incredibly difficult title for the average twitch gamer to progress through, but the feeling of taking down a big, nasty boss who would otherwise one-shot you can be immensely satisfying. The problem with the game is that there is a relatively small set of loot to pick up, and even though multiple play-throughs are available, you'll largely know exactly what to expect the next time around. Sure, enemies will hit harder and award more souls when defeated, but you'll know boss strategies by then and where you found that awesome sword last time. Plus, weapons can only be upgraded to a maximum of 10, with a few small, branching paths to explore that unlock at certain points, each subject to the same restrictions.
Demon's Souls is an important case study because it provides an extremely strong first run, with iterations there-after becoming less important or engaging. To keep a game going past this phase, the player has to either be allowed significant means by which to continually strengthen their character or be faced with a fresh set of challenges to overcome. This is where more traditional "loot" games excel, with randomized drops and dungeons to play-through, ensuring that, at least to some degree, the feeling of seeing something you've never seen before is maintained.
[caption id="attachment_8483" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Borderlands may feature random loot, but you can expect to fight this monster every time you play."]
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But at the same time, randomization gone wild can be just as dull without some greater purpose pulling the experience together. This brings me to Borderlands.
Developed by Gearbox, this first-person shooter has been given a nice, shiny coat of role-playing paint to keep people playing long past the initial campaign. This type of game can be a tricky sell, and while I won't say Borderlands is a run-away success, it's fun enough and beats the snot out of the last major attempt at the genre, Hellgate: London. The game features the good-old randomized loot system of its forebears, complete with mixed-together names that can tell you instantly what modifications an item might feature once you learn to decipher the lingo.
The problem here is that it all cuts off rather early, as most people will hit the level cap of 50 mid-way through their second run. There is the option to continually farm for slightly better guns or class mods, but with no further to progress in the game (there is no third play-through and enemies reach a maximum level of 52 currently), you just end up combing one small corner of the map over and over again. While gear might be randomized, the environment remains static like it does in Demon's Souls. Sometimes you will get variations on the enemies, but the locations remain precisely the same in terms of structure and the subset of foes that you will face within them (for instance, you will never find Skaggs suddenly spawning where Bandits always have).
Neither of these game philosophies works for World of Warcraft alone, but at their cross-section, they might provide something worth adding to the game at some point in the future: a truly random dungeon. I'm not talking about picking what to run on any given day out of a hat, like the new Dungeon system allows you, but rather one that features a continually changing set of encounters worth revisiting over and over again. Let's face it, 5-mans are painfully simple these days as it is, and while Wrath of the Lich King features a lot of good content, a handful of its instance feel kind of half-assed.
Look at Azjol'Nerub. Tiny dungeon, three bosses, very little trash (especially if you let Hadronox web the enemy spawns). Is this what the mighty Nerbuian nation deserves? Sure, we get Old Kingdom, but besides the architecture, it seems decidedly un-Nerubian. Blizzard felt so sorry for Anub'Arak, they had to give him a second chance! But I digress...
What I'm really getting after here is a truly random dungeon. Something that a player would want to run repeatedly. Something that would make them more than badge factories. If Blizzard wants to continue making the rest of the 5-man content accessible, then why not consolidate all that potential into one, constantly shifting dungeon for those people out there who really want to experience a challenge at that level again?
Now, the most difficult part of creating something like this, arguably, would be making the layout itself random. It just makes the development process a lot more complicated, because you have to be able to test all kinds of different permutations and make sure that nothing can be broken by players. Would be nice, but not a deal-breaker.
The meat-and-potatoes of WoW are its encounters. And what better to challenge players with a fight that they least expect? The game already does this, but in a muted and less complete fashion (i.e. Confessor Paletress calls up random memories, Violet Hold features limited variation in its encounters, and you can end up going against slightly different setups when fighting Faction Champions). I say Blizzard needs to go whole-hog and just throw everything into the pot. Even the trash could be randomized (within reason, of course)!
Instead of the Live Raid at BlizzCon 2009 showing off upcoming content as it has in the past, Premonition was faced this year with a decidedly different task: taking on several bosses at the same time, all topped with a surprisingly tricky encounter with the infamous Hogger. That's what I want. That's what I want to experience, and I think that's the best thing any of us could currently get out of a random dungeon at this point in time. If we can't use the philosophy for 5-mans, then why not turn it into a simple, arena-style raid?
Give people a reason to return to the Argent Tournament after everyone has moved onto Cataclysm content by featuring random or, at least, a rotating array of encounters to experience. Imagine having to tackle two or three completely different bosses at the same time and the new strategies that would have to be put together on the fly to deal with those combinations. To me that sounds like fun. And what of itemization? All bosses could give rewards from the same pool of loot, reducing the need to produce new equipment for each permutation of a possible encounter. Or it could still just be a badge factory, but at least earning them would be a lot more entertaining.
They key though, and I realize this, is to make the content optional. It should never be a roadblock to progression. I suspect that if a "truly random dungeon" like this were ever to come to fruition, it would be co-opted by raiders like the current Onyxia revamp has been. At least until the next tier of content. But some people still wouldn't enjoy the idea and I can respect that. And yet, for others like me, it sounds like a unique and engaging way of tackling the game. No pre-set strategy you looked up online would work; we'd all be flying by the seat of our pants like we used to in the old days. I guess that's why it's called wishful thinking!
What do you think the pluses and minuses of a dungeon like this would be? Is it something you would be interested in running, even if it didn't feature nice rewards, or are you the kind of person who would rather move forward and prefer Blizzard working on more reliable content?
[/caption]
But at the same time, randomization gone wild can be just as dull without some greater purpose pulling the experience together. This brings me to Borderlands.
Developed by Gearbox, this first-person shooter has been given a nice, shiny coat of role-playing paint to keep people playing long past the initial campaign. This type of game can be a tricky sell, and while I won't say Borderlands is a run-away success, it's fun enough and beats the snot out of the last major attempt at the genre, Hellgate: London. The game features the good-old randomized loot system of its forebears, complete with mixed-together names that can tell you instantly what modifications an item might feature once you learn to decipher the lingo.
The problem here is that it all cuts off rather early, as most people will hit the level cap of 50 mid-way through their second run. There is the option to continually farm for slightly better guns or class mods, but with no further to progress in the game (there is no third play-through and enemies reach a maximum level of 52 currently), you just end up combing one small corner of the map over and over again. While gear might be randomized, the environment remains static like it does in Demon's Souls. Sometimes you will get variations on the enemies, but the locations remain precisely the same in terms of structure and the subset of foes that you will face within them (for instance, you will never find Skaggs suddenly spawning where Bandits always have).
Neither of these game philosophies works for World of Warcraft alone, but at their cross-section, they might provide something worth adding to the game at some point in the future: a truly random dungeon. I'm not talking about picking what to run on any given day out of a hat, like the new Dungeon system allows you, but rather one that features a continually changing set of encounters worth revisiting over and over again. Let's face it, 5-mans are painfully simple these days as it is, and while Wrath of the Lich King features a lot of good content, a handful of its instance feel kind of half-assed.
Look at Azjol'Nerub. Tiny dungeon, three bosses, very little trash (especially if you let Hadronox web the enemy spawns). Is this what the mighty Nerbuian nation deserves? Sure, we get Old Kingdom, but besides the architecture, it seems decidedly un-Nerubian. Blizzard felt so sorry for Anub'Arak, they had to give him a second chance! But I digress...
What I'm really getting after here is a truly random dungeon. Something that a player would want to run repeatedly. Something that would make them more than badge factories. If Blizzard wants to continue making the rest of the 5-man content accessible, then why not consolidate all that potential into one, constantly shifting dungeon for those people out there who really want to experience a challenge at that level again?
Now, the most difficult part of creating something like this, arguably, would be making the layout itself random. It just makes the development process a lot more complicated, because you have to be able to test all kinds of different permutations and make sure that nothing can be broken by players. Would be nice, but not a deal-breaker.
The meat-and-potatoes of WoW are its encounters. And what better to challenge players with a fight that they least expect? The game already does this, but in a muted and less complete fashion (i.e. Confessor Paletress calls up random memories, Violet Hold features limited variation in its encounters, and you can end up going against slightly different setups when fighting Faction Champions). I say Blizzard needs to go whole-hog and just throw everything into the pot. Even the trash could be randomized (within reason, of course)!
Instead of the Live Raid at BlizzCon 2009 showing off upcoming content as it has in the past, Premonition was faced this year with a decidedly different task: taking on several bosses at the same time, all topped with a surprisingly tricky encounter with the infamous Hogger. That's what I want. That's what I want to experience, and I think that's the best thing any of us could currently get out of a random dungeon at this point in time. If we can't use the philosophy for 5-mans, then why not turn it into a simple, arena-style raid?
Give people a reason to return to the Argent Tournament after everyone has moved onto Cataclysm content by featuring random or, at least, a rotating array of encounters to experience. Imagine having to tackle two or three completely different bosses at the same time and the new strategies that would have to be put together on the fly to deal with those combinations. To me that sounds like fun. And what of itemization? All bosses could give rewards from the same pool of loot, reducing the need to produce new equipment for each permutation of a possible encounter. Or it could still just be a badge factory, but at least earning them would be a lot more entertaining.
They key though, and I realize this, is to make the content optional. It should never be a roadblock to progression. I suspect that if a "truly random dungeon" like this were ever to come to fruition, it would be co-opted by raiders like the current Onyxia revamp has been. At least until the next tier of content. But some people still wouldn't enjoy the idea and I can respect that. And yet, for others like me, it sounds like a unique and engaging way of tackling the game. No pre-set strategy you looked up online would work; we'd all be flying by the seat of our pants like we used to in the old days. I guess that's why it's called wishful thinking!
What do you think the pluses and minuses of a dungeon like this would be? Is it something you would be interested in running, even if it didn't feature nice rewards, or are you the kind of person who would rather move forward and prefer Blizzard working on more reliable content?
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