How good is the procedural generation?

[tukkek]

Hi guys, really considering buying this and would appreciate some feedback on how good the map generation is. I've played a bit of Torchlight 2 again today and even without having played in quite a long time, I could really immediately recognize a lot of the templates used for random map generation (using the Endless Dungeon mode).

So basically: how good are the maps n Chronicon? How long does it take for them to start feeling a bit repetitive? A few hours? Dozens of hours?

I understand the game is early access and I'll take that into consideration, of course :) but since the game doesn't seem to have mod support quite yet, it's important to know how much attention is being put into that part of the game, as it's very important for me, personally.

[のヮの]

Hmm, I honestly don't remember playing a game like this where the procedurally generated maps felt nice and refreshing for many playthroughs. Torchlight 2 uses a mix of procedural and static maps during the main story mode, this game does the same thing. I'd say they're on par when it comes to "freshness", however this game is considerably shorter, with a less elaborate campaign and I'd say the maps are generally smaller as well.

Torchlight 2 endless mode, if I remember correctly, featured a mix of procedural and static maps from the story mode, this game doesn't. Instead it features some of the procedural maps and a few of them can be generated with different tilesets, for a decent number of variations. There used to be one or two more layouts but they got removed from endless due to being awful. Maybe other layouts currently in the game will make it to endless in the future. Also, this game is still missing some of the story content, which I imagine will feature new layouts that might make it to endless.

In any case, for me the story mode got repetitive after like my third run, but so did Diablo 123, Torchlight 12, Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, Sacred 2, Dungeon Siege 123... so even if I prefer big, elaborate static maps, I guess in the end it doesn't really matter to me. And in the case of endless mode, I think the most fun part is trying out different classes and builds, so I don't really care about the maps getting repetitive.

There is one ARPG that I played that felt great, with lots of different maps and challenges, it's called Victor Vran, but it's substantially from all the games I listed. It plays more like a Zelda game, if you know what I mean.

tl;dr, it's an action RPG, expect action RPG levels of repetitiveness.

[tukkek]

Pretty high praise if you're saying this is one of the best among so many of the classics in the genre, but message received when you ultimately say it's still the typical action-RPG formula with static content as well.

Thank you very much for your in-depth response. May I ask you how long you've been playing Chronicon?

[tukkek]

About Victor Vran: I've looked into it and I've seen it being said that it's very RPG-light, more like an adventure or even arcade game with a "action RPG" coating to it. Is that what you meant too?

[のヮの]

Sorry for the late reply, I don't check the forums very often. I didn't say this game is among the best. I think you misunderstood when I said it's on par with Torchlight 2, I was just referring to the procedural map generation (it's what you asked, after all). Still, I do quite like this game a lot, but it's not as good as, say, Grim Dawn or Sacred 2. Recently I played Diablo 2 and I think Chronicon is already somewhat better overall. I'd say it's almost on par with Diablo 3 at the moment in terms of game quality (yes, I think Diablo 3 is better than 2, fite me), but with the potential of becoming one of the great titles eventually, if only because this game's dev actually listens to the players and isn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Blizzard. Although, as far as I know, it's only a single person, so it might take a few more years of development.

I've been playing Chronicon since around version 0.50 and the game has improved a lot since then, slowly but steadily. Unfortunately it has also gotten a lot laggier, but that's more my computer being 11 years old than the game being poorly programmed (I think). I haven't been playing non-stop though, I usually play a few weeks or a couple months and then stop for a few months, but I did play a lot back when I started.

Regarding Victor Vran, you described it better than I did. So yes, in the end it doesn't have much to do with Diablo-style ARPGs except for the medieval fantasy setting, it also doesn't feature procedurally generated maps except in a small part of the game (in one of the expansions). Nevertheless, I think it's a fantastic game. I felt you were looking for a game with more varied challenges but I don't know any in the Diablo genre, so I suggested Victor Vran.

Oh also, there's Path of Exile. I've played it a little some years ago, it seemed really great and I feel I haven't given it a proper try. But I hate that forced online ♥♥♥♥ so I'm not going to.

[tukkek]

When I said Chronicon is "the best", I meant procedural-generation-wise, which is what I took away from your comment. I absolutely agree that Grim Dawn is the best game without even the tiniest allowance to be made here - especially when the base game is even cheaper on sale (hey I put 100 hours into the base game alone).

Sadly if Victor Vran is more action and less RPG then I'm not willing to even try. I hear it's a great game a lot but it's just not for me if it's RPG-light.

Path of Exile was probably good at some point but nowadays the extremely heavy speed-clear meta also makes it a RPG-light, arcade-heavy, dumb bullet hell game and not an Action RPG. This video says it all and the devs are recorded on camera saying that they don't see any other way to balance the game that isn't speed-clear, which is complete and total nonsense. Just go take a look at how literally any top Twitch streamer plays the game.. It's not for me, thanks.

Grinding Gear Games is now largely owned by Tencent, a chinese company well-known for making mobile-style micro-transaction-heavy shallow, dumb games that pushes their playerbases to the limit when it comes to getting the most profit for the least amount of effort put in. They'll keep dumbing down the game in order to attract the most costumers and it shows - a lot.

Chronicon is basically unplayable right now, the lag is so heavy it takes me ten minutes to finish a floor. I can see a lot of potential here but like you, I'll wait another year or two before checking back on it. The developer says he's ready to leave Early Access in the coming weeks ("early 2020"). I cannot stress how much of a mistake that would be. The game feels like 100% EA still.

And it's not your CPU. My CPU is god-tier for work-related purposes and the game is slow as molasses.

[Alastor]

Originally posted by tukkek:

When I said Chronicon is "the best", I meant procedural-generation-wise, which is what I took away from your comment. I absolutely agree that Grim Dawn is the best game without even the tiniest allowance to be made here - especially when the base game is even cheaper on sale (hey I put 100 hours into the base game alone).

Sadly if Victor Vran is more action and less RPG then I'm not willing to even try. I hear it's a great game a lot but it's just not for me if it's RPG-light.

Path of Exile was probably good at some point but nowadays the extremely heavy speed-clear meta also makes it a RPG-light, arcade-heavy, dumb bullet hell game and not an Action RPG. This video says it all and the devs are recorded on camera saying that they don't see any other way to balance the game that isn't speed-clear, which is complete and total nonsense. Just go take a look at how literally any top Twitch streamer plays the game.. It's not for me, thanks.

Grinding Gear Games is now largely owned by Tencent, a chinese company well-known for making mobile-style micro-transaction-heavy shallow, dumb games that pushes their playerbases to the limit when it comes to getting the most profit for the least amount of effort put in. They'll keep dumbing down the game in order to attract the most costumers and it shows - a lot.

Chronicon is basically unplayable right now, the lag is so heavy it takes me ten minutes to finish a floor. I can see a lot of potential here but like you, I'll wait another year or two before checking back on it. The developer says he's ready to leave Early Access in the coming weeks ("early 2020"). I cannot stress how much of a mistake that would be. The game feels like 100% EA still.

And it's not your CPU. My CPU is god-tier for work-related purposes and the game is slow as molasses.

You prolly played POE a long time ago, the games is better than ever, endgame wise, content wise, customization and build wise. Also it got much harder to stomp through content via, boss and monster buffs. If anything this expansion people were complaining that the game is too hard and they cant progress (which is stupid because i agree with you before this expansion the game had gotten way too easy). BUT with the new expansion last league, the new bosses, map system, watchstones, new influences and crafting are better than ever.

My only complain with POE is the performance, which will be fixed along with its remaining issues and engine, when POE2 releases in a year. I have been playing POE since beta, got over 20k hours on it and i can say its one of the best arpgs out there, second only to my favourite (mostly for nostalgia reasons) D2. Honorable mentions are also Torchlight2,Grim Dawn and Titan Quest.

As for Chronicon, the lag is a problem now, it never used to happen even with a huge number of monsters so im guessing its something the dev has to cleanup on the code. The procedural generation its pretty standard, i kinda like the smaller scale rooms, since it feels less tedious to explore through. Dont expect too much variety but if you want tha endless "tower" like progression it hits the spot. All in all id recommend the game for its price it offers a lot of variety and builds, there are quite a lot of items to build around that completely change your playstyle and the devs is steadily working on the game as well.

[のヮの]

tukkek, I'm sure most of the lag in my game is due to my computer being ancient, this game used to run super smoothly some years ago, but by then there would hardly be anything going on at the screen at any given time and the damage and health numbers were tiny compared to what we have now. There was a huge drop in performance for me when the dev switched from using fixed point numbers to floating point for damage calculations, and that obviously burdens hardware the most. I also know that the CPU is the biggest bottleneck on my computer (dual core lul). There were also various engine and graphical updates along the way that might have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up things further for me. I can't vouch for the dev being super proficient at programming, so I imagine there are plenty of smaller things he could optimise, but nothing major that wouldn't require major overhauls of the game, I assume.

Not only that but I watched a video recently and the game runs super smoothly for that guy, though his build is light on performance (it's a build I made, so I'm sure of it). Here's the video in question: https://youtu.be/CeAGUnsLDrE (there are more videos by other people that you can check)

In any case, if the game is running like ♥♥♥♥ for you and it's not your computer, try the solutions here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/375480/discussions/0/1291816880493891180/ or maybe try asking around in the forums or discord. There have been plenty of people with performance problems unrelated to hardware. Also, from what you described regarding your taste in games, I'm thinking this game is just right for you, so give it a try before you give up.

Regarding PoE, I do actually enjoy what you described, maybe I'll give it a solid try in the future. I've also read somewhere in the past that although Tencent owns the developer, they're not trying to steer the direction of development towards the Pay2Win style garbage, but I know very little about this. Let's just hope they're happy enough with the profits they're getting that they'll keep letting the PoE devs do their thing.

[Prometheus]

The procedural generation sucks to be honest. Most of the maps are square, instead of path like. And there are too many pots.