Random level generation, what needs changing.

[Kurtino]

This is a 2 parter about the level generation system.

Firstly, I like that the random level generation is a step in making each level unique but honestly it's not very good.

They feel very unstructured. We have a set waypoint to go too but every other door way and enterance is oepn. I don't mind walking into a small room to unlock credit boxes but the structure at the moment literally just generates a whole bunch of rooms and puts you in spot A and objective in spot B.

This feels very unprofessional and unstructured. You can derail and keep going backwards and backwards to find absolutely nothing. Sometimes you can go down elevators, open door ways etc just for no reason. This is bad level design. Don't leave huge door ways and parts of generated map open if we're not suppose to go there.

To solve this you could setup multiple objectives, side quests or optional bounties and treasures for alternative routes and the penalty would obviously be wasting time on a timed mission or harder enemies spawned or even bosses.

At its current stage its literally just a bunch of different connected pipes and tubes that are all random with very little structure and you can be going anywhere for no reason. Although I do like freeroam in games as everyone does this feels very different from true free roam.

Secondly the "random" level generation honestly doesn't feel random at all. Realistically its room generation and I honestly think that this is worse than a actual level solid level being made.

This gets tiring and repetative very quickly and honestly it just feels cheap. From the small things like the vent dropping cinematic at the start (but theres no vent) to entering each room again and again thats just a cut and paste of areas, it's not very interesting and doesn't actually add anything to the gameplay. I've been past that same room that has that hidden vent area so many times that I'm honestly sick of it and it feels stupid to be passing a sort of secret area that I thought I found exclusively on a level when I first played and realising its just generated each time and put somewhere randomly.

Generally speaking in random level generation people appreciate it when more key things are random, such as actual terrain and item placement, bosses and mini bosses, side quests, objectives and themes. Having rooms random doesn't really impress much, especially with the room placement being unstructured. It's like walking into buildings in games to find that the buildings are exactly the same inside the interior and you feel like "damn the makers copy and pasted this all over the place" even in games like Arma 2/Day Z/War Z in large open environments when you walk inside different towns and houses to find the same inside and structure. People don't like that I certainly don't.

The only true random objective I've seen so far is the locked door thing and honestly it's probably one of the worst. It's constant and just slows down the pace of the game and it doesn't feel part of the game just like a random timer going off if you aren't clearing things fast enough to slow things down even more it's certainly no ones favourite and the novalty wears off almost instantly. Same for the hacking itself, it's nothing special once you've done it the first three times and sometimes it's even buggy with lines connecting up but not being rotated right.

Also, the room limitation means that objects inside rooms are either non existant or unspecial so there's barely anything unique them and it also means that large scale open environments aren't seen, which is also lacking.

There's more that needs to be done with the levels but I think the random level generation at the moment is a interesting idea but not a step in the right direction.

[Gentlemoa]

I agree with you and i think some minibosses, sidequests would be really nice and they would make the missions alot more interesting

[Spoopy_Skeletor]

I really hope a new random generation of levels gets implemented, the game is starting to get boring.