Static map vs. Procedurally gen

[Tanyon]

I have to admit I like the game but I am concerned that it is a static handmade map.

Most games I play are ones that involve survival and base-building the most hours I have are in ones where the map changes which are procedurally generated, it adds life to the game Valheim and 7D2D being my two most played. Sure I have hundreds of hours in ARK, V-Rising and Conan but a lot of that was because when a new expansion drops I play it again. (I have never done any PVP in any survival game that's not my thing)

Once a game with a static map hits 1.0 I feel like you play it once and then boom what? Where is the change of scenery or desire to play again?

I'm not saying I won't get a few hundred hours out of this game, it looks very promising but that could be thousands if there was more flavor.

Just my thoughts. Curious what you guys think.

[Heikob]

I usually prefer procedurally generated maps if they're not barren or poorly made.

I'd love the option to have both like Wildmender does (default is a static map, but you can generate a random one)

That way they can guarantee a handcrafted experience for the first playthrough and let you explore procedurally generated worlds if you want something fresh for the next playthrough.

[Odetta]

Really hoping it will have PGMs. I love handcrafted maps but for replayability the PGMs all the way.

[Tanyon]

OK so I'm not alone that's good to know. Like I said looks good.. I'll play the crap out of it just curious what others thought.

[Toast]

Hi there! Because our game is a highly detailed voxel based world, and has a strong emphasis on story and exploration, we decided that a pre-built world would be the better option for our game. This wasn't done out of laziness or because procedural generation would be too hard, but rather that procedural generated worlds inherently come with a pretty strong lack of structure. They will always inherently be less detailed and coherent than a hand built world, which would have made it pretty much impossible to actually achieve a level of story telling and world building that we wanted to do with our game.

There's definitely upsides to both systems, but because many survival games already use procedural worlds we wanted to do something different. We are definitely aware of concerns players have for replayability, but rest assured we have a lot planned to make sure our game is rich with content and can be played for a very long time :)

[Odetta]

Originally posted by Toast:

Hi there! Because our game is a highly detailed voxel based world, and has a strong emphasis on story and exploration, we decided that a pre-built world would be the better option for our game. This wasn't done out of laziness or because procedural generation would be too hard, but rather that procedural generated worlds inherently come with a pretty strong lack of structure. They will always inherently be less detailed and coherent than a hand built world, which would have made it pretty much impossible to actually achieve a level of story telling and world building that we wanted to do with our game.

There's definitely upsides to both systems, but because many survival games already use procedural worlds we wanted to do something different. We are definitely aware of concerns players have for replayability, but rest assured we have a lot planned to make sure our game is rich with content and can be played for a very long time :)

Thanks for the answer. Please don't count out random gen entirely. 7 Days to Die's plan is to have a story driven, handcrafted map and an open world sandbox that is procedural. They just did it opposite of your team, which is to make the open world sandbox random gen maps first and then the story. They would basically be two different modes and experiences. So please just keep in the back of your minds as a possible feature in the future.

[Tanyon]

Originally posted by Toast:

Hi there! Because our game is a highly detailed voxel based world, and has a strong emphasis on story and exploration, we decided that a pre-built world would be the better option for our game. This wasn't done out of laziness or because procedural generation would be too hard, but rather that procedural generated worlds inherently come with a pretty strong lack of structure. They will always inherently be less detailed and coherent than a hand built world, which would have made it pretty much impossible to actually achieve a level of story telling and world building that we wanted to do with our game.

There's definitely upsides to both systems, but because many survival games already use procedural worlds we wanted to do something different. We are definitely aware of concerns players have for replayability, but rest assured we have a lot planned to make sure our game is rich with content and can be played for a very long time :)

HEY really appreciate the answer. Thank you. Good dev right here.

[Azrapse]

I like the hand-crafted world in the game. It feels less random and samey than procedural worlds.
Like, Valheim has a huge round world, but you could take a extremely thin slice of it from the center to an edge, and you would basically still see all the game has to offer in that thin slice. There is not discovery or uniqueness when everything is just the same with different parameters.

For replayability, just enable the Steam Workshop and let people create worlds with an editor so that we can play Enshrouded in Skyrim, Hyrule, Middle Earth, Westeros, or wherever the modder desires for totally new and fresh experiences and storylines.

[info]

Originally posted by Toast:

Hi there! Because our game is a highly detailed voxel based world, and has a strong emphasis on story and exploration, we decided that a pre-built world would be the better option for our game. This wasn't done out of laziness or because procedural generation would be too hard, but rather that procedural generated worlds inherently come with a pretty strong lack of structure. They will always inherently be less detailed and coherent than a hand built world, which would have made it pretty much impossible to actually achieve a level of story telling and world building that we wanted to do with our game.

There's definitely upsides to both systems, but because many survival games already use procedural worlds we wanted to do something different. We are definitely aware of concerns players have for replayability, but rest assured we have a lot planned to make sure our game is rich with content and can be played for a very long time :)

the world design is amazing. I have only praise for basically anything in this game, UI, combat, graphics, .....

but you can't call yourself exploration focused if you take away loot that dropped if someone dies.
it leads to people playing super safe and not going into areas until they can steamroll the content. thus creating a boring build up to a "safe state" and then a boring steam rolling of the area in question.

I know how this works, cause I play like that. and I will always downvote games that make me play like that.
loot despawning and (corpse runs) is something from an era when there was exactly ONE game that came out and was talked about.

it wasn't a feature people liked, it was tied to the extremely few games that came out and occupied people's time. now I can simply decide not to play crap like this because my time is more valuable.

it's just as much an anti-feature as the crap other games do, but yours thanksfully not. like non-rebindable keys, lacking mouse support or denuvo

I am in awe how well you let people rebind keys. it's so well done. I can just do 2 button combos, even with mouse and keyboard mixed??? that is amazing!
you do everything right. but then you don't let me explore cause I may get into a fight with too many guys and even if I barely win, the loss of loot that I already earned would bug me so much, I'd quit the game. never take something away from people. it's such a basic rule of game design.

if you want to cater to people who like that, make it an option. but if I see a loot bundle on the ground, it better be there for a good long while.

this isn't an MMO in the 90s that can't handle too many items on the ground because computers only had 8 Megabytes of RAM.
this is 2023. there is no technical reason. this is simply a middle finger to the customer

[Tanyon]

Originally posted by info:

Originally posted by Toast:

Hi there! Because our game is a highly detailed voxel based world, and has a strong emphasis on story and exploration, we decided that a pre-built world would be the better option for our game. This wasn't done out of laziness or because procedural generation would be too hard, but rather that procedural generated worlds inherently come with a pretty strong lack of structure. They will always inherently be less detailed and coherent than a hand built world, which would have made it pretty much impossible to actually achieve a level of story telling and world building that we wanted to do with our game.

There's definitely upsides to both systems, but because many survival games already use procedural worlds we wanted to do something different. We are definitely aware of concerns players have for replayability, but rest assured we have a lot planned to make sure our game is rich with content and can be played for a very long time :)

the world design is amazing. I have only praise for basically anything in this game, UI, combat, graphics, .....

but you can't call yourself exploration focused if you take away loot that dropped if someone dies.
it leads to people playing super safe and not going into areas until they can steamroll the content. thus creating a boring build up to a "safe state" and then a boring steam rolling of the area in question.

I know how this works, cause I play like that. and I will always downvote games that make me play like that.
loot despawning and (corpse runs) is something from an era when there was exactly ONE game that came out and was talked about.

it wasn't a feature people liked, it was tied to the extremely few games that came out and occupied people's time. now I can simply decide not to play crap like this because my time is more valuable.

it's just as much an anti-feature as the crap other games do, but yours thanksfully not. like non-rebindable keys, lacking mouse support or denuvo

I am in awe how well you let people rebind keys. it's so well done. I can just do 2 button combos, even with mouse and keyboard mixed??? that is amazing!
you do everything right. but then you don't let me explore cause I may get into a fight with too many guys and even if I barely win, the loss of loot that I already earned would bug me so much, I'd quit the game. never take something away from people. it's such a basic rule of game design.

if you want to cater to people who like that, make it an option. but if I see a loot bundle on the ground, it better be there for a good long while.

this isn't an MMO in the 90s that can't handle too many items on the ground because computers only had 8 Megabytes of RAM.
this is 2023. there is no technical reason. this is simply a middle finger to the customer

Thanks for stopping by and hijacking the post to complain about corpse runs some more.. there is an ENTIRE thread that the devs have already seen on that and have responded. Good lord. This was specifically about the map design, functionality and replay-ability..

For the record Valheim has sold 10 million units, 7 Days to die has sold 16 million units MINECRAFT 238 MILLION copies sold and all three have corpse runs.. you think way too highly of your opinion.

"I can simply decide not to play crap like this"

Then don't play it. Simple.

[Rex Smashington]

Starfield is the perfect example of why procedural isn't always good. All those barren planets. ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz

For a narrative focused game hand crafted is always superior. It works in 7 Days to Die because the game has pretty much no story. It's just a repetitive gameplay loop for thousands of hours.

[DeLindsay]

Hand crafted Map > Procedural generation all day, every day.

[Tanyon]

Originally posted by DeLindsay:

Hand crafted Map > Procedural generation all day, every day.

Nice to see you DeLindsay... hey now.. Forever Skies is procedurally gen.. and we love that.. well the POIs aren't but the placement is.

[DeLindsay]

Originally posted by DarthTanyon:

Originally posted by DeLindsay:

Hand crafted Map > Procedural generation all day, every day.

Nice to see you DeLindsay... hey now.. Forever Skies is procedurally gen.. and we love that.. well the POIs aren't but the placement is.

To be fair FS never ending POI's does indeed get boring. I just wish their 1st Major Patch this Monday actually had Ship building bits. I'm cool with an entirely new POI type but once you've visited all of it's variants then meh.

Same can be said about hand crafted worlds because it's always the same locations, but, all the Devs need to do is add dynamic events to the world to make it seem alive. They already have Procedural loot, you could have procedural events as well like the Enshrouded all the sudden one night attack your Base. Or those 2-eared "Bunnies" overpopulate and eat all your crops (once we can plant them), or even a dynamic weather event that actually destroys part of your Base (yes, I know some of you just winced to me saying that).

IMHO that's a better way to handle things, hand craft the World then use Procedural generation for random Events to make that never changing World seem more alive.

[WaylanderPK]

The only downside in hand crafted maps is repeatability. Maybe a couple of different spawn points might alleviate this?. I would prefer procedural generated maps, though the trick is make them appear designed rather than just thrown together. Valheim's Procedural Generated Maps is one of the reasons I keep coming back to play it. I'm not sure I'll play Enshrouded more than a couple of times, and then mostly to try different builds.

[bliznots]

Originally posted by info:

Originally posted by Toast:

Hi there! Because our game is a highly detailed voxel based world, and has a strong emphasis on story and exploration, we decided that a pre-built world would be the better option for our game. This wasn't done out of laziness or because procedural generation would be too hard, but rather that procedural generated worlds inherently come with a pretty strong lack of structure. They will always inherently be less detailed and coherent than a hand built world, which would have made it pretty much impossible to actually achieve a level of story telling and world building that we wanted to do with our game.

There's definitely upsides to both systems, but because many survival games already use procedural worlds we wanted to do something different. We are definitely aware of concerns players have for replayability, but rest assured we have a lot planned to make sure our game is rich with content and can be played for a very long time :)

the world design is amazing. I have only praise for basically anything in this game, UI, combat, graphics, .....

but you can't call yourself exploration focused if you take away loot that dropped if someone dies.
it leads to people playing super safe and not going into areas until they can steamroll the content. thus creating a boring build up to a "safe state" and then a boring steam rolling of the area in question.

I know how this works, cause I play like that. and I will always downvote games that make me play like that.
loot despawning and (corpse runs) is something from an era when there was exactly ONE game that came out and was talked about.

it wasn't a feature people liked, it was tied to the extremely few games that came out and occupied people's time. now I can simply decide not to play crap like this because my time is more valuable.

it's just as much an anti-feature as the crap other games do, but yours thanksfully not. like non-rebindable keys, lacking mouse support or denuvo

I am in awe how well you let people rebind keys. it's so well done. I can just do 2 button combos, even with mouse and keyboard mixed??? that is amazing!
you do everything right. but then you don't let me explore cause I may get into a fight with too many guys and even if I barely win, the loss of loot that I already earned would bug me so much, I'd quit the game. never take something away from people. it's such a basic rule of game design.

if you want to cater to people who like that, make it an option. but if I see a loot bundle on the ground, it better be there for a good long while.

this isn't an MMO in the 90s that can't handle too many items on the ground because computers only had 8 Megabytes of RAM.
this is 2023. there is no technical reason. this is simply a middle finger to the customer

Thanks for the headache. You said you don't have to "play crap like this"... the simple solution is DON'T.