Random Dungeons and the problems that come with it

[Marston]

Hello there.

I am currently working on a game which basically mimics the Ancient Cave from Lufia II. However, I am spicing things up a little with random events, stronger enemies, bosses, a class system etc. (I would actually just post the project, but it's completly in German, so I am not sure if you would have that much fun with it - then again, it's pretty basic and doesn't have that much text except for the items and spells).

I would like to start a discussion how a game, that is basically completely random, could be made interesting enough to last for hours upon hours.

I am pretty sure many of you remember the Ancient Cave from Lufia II. For those who don't, the Ancient Cave is an optional dungeon. You always start at level 1 and without spells and equipment. You can find every item from the game randomly within chests. Sometimes rare blue chests appear, items you get from those chests are not lost upon re-entering the dungeon - so you may start out with a weapon that gives you +100 atk on the first floor (and on level 1 that is). However, if you die you loose all items you may have found. To leave the dungeon, you need to find a certain item that appears randomly in a chest after floor 20. The whole cave has 100 floors and a boss at the end.

And that's pretty much all. As said, I am doing basically the same, but I've added a few other things:

- A class system, there are several classes you can unlock and learn skills from. Unlike the Ancient Cave you don't loose levels in your subclass (only your main class) and also maintain all skills.

- Every floor may have a random event, this can be an additional red chest, a healer (who only heals HP), a salesman (with 3x3 random items which change every floor) or a magic pot (which can be fought and give you much exp, gold and JP (for the classes to learn skills)).

- Every 5 floors you may get another random event: A healer (who heals everything), a treasure room, a shop (again chosen randomly from 3 sets of goods, but he sells much more, anything between 5-15 items) or even a boss. I am also planning to add puzzles or even small mini dungeons as random events.

- Blue chests, as stated above. Every chest can appear as a blue one. You can also buy items from blue chests from a shop in the "Main hall", but these are extremly expensive. However...

- ...you also get a random quests from a guy. He wants a random monster drop you may have found (or may have not found). He will give you 10x the amount of gold you would get for selling it. However, items can only be sold in the dungeon, so you have to choose to either sell them there or hope he wants them and get more gold.

- Elite enemies. Every enemy can appear as an elite version, which is much stronger but also gives 10x exp, gold and JP.

- Random stats for enemies. Every enemy, including elite enemies and bosses have variieing stats.

Now, I ask you: Is that enough? Of course, if the battles are simply no fun no amount of features is enough to justifiy a dungeon with 50 or 100 floors. So balance is a really important, but how can you get a good balance when so much randomness is involved? At the moment, my game starts out pretty hard, but once you get your first spells it becomes much easier - to the point were it may be too easy. But what do you balance the game around? Would it be okay to implement a boss you can only beat if you have item X from a blue chest (which you of course would be able to buy beforehand)? Would it be okay to require certain classes for certain parts of the game, even if there is no indicator how to unlock said classes? Where do you need to draw the line?

Discussion, please!

 

[Andar]

There are two ways here: one is to simply ignore the balance and give the player several ways to go down, so that he can walk around too strong enemies. However that form of a game system applies only to a rather limited number of player...


Second way is to use weighted randomness.


Let's say you have 100 different items that can be gained from a chest.


Then, instead of using a function Random(1..100) you'll use a function Random(1..20) + playerlevel to gain the number of the item found.


That would result in the player getting only one of the first twenty list entries in the chest if he's just starting, and that he needs to advance to level 80 before he has a chance of finding the ultimate item#100.


Later during playtesting you can shift and modify the lists for balancing, without having the randomness destroying everything.

 

[Marston]

I am actually using something like weigthed randomness. You can only find 3-4 items of the same kind. So, once you would find the 5th item (which will then be the strongest one) this will replace the first (which by that point is the weakest one). And this continues for the whole dungeon (the same goes for the blue chests).

But what about more specific things, like the mentioned required items or classes. I probably won't do something like that, because at least I think that's a bit too much, if you simply can not advance at the floor 50 boss, because he paralyses the whole party on turn 1 which can not be avoided unless you have 100% resist on at least one character. Something like this is imo too much in a game with much randomness, but maybe I am alone with this.

 

[Bonkers]

Now, I ask you: Is that enough? Of course, if the battles are simply no fun no amount of features is enough to justifiy a dungeon with 50 or 100 floors. So balance is a really important, but how can you get a good balance when so much randomness is involved? At the moment, my game starts out pretty hard, but once you get your first spells it becomes much easier - to the point were it may be too easy. But what do you balance the game around? Would it be okay to implement a boss you can only beat if you have item X from a blue chest (which you of course would be able to buy beforehand)? Would it be okay to require certain classes for certain parts of the game, even if there is no indicator how to unlock said classes? Where do you need to draw the line?

Discussion, please!

Random enemy stats is rather risky even in a set threshold for earlier floors.  You risk battles being too easy or annoying upfront.  

Since the ancient cave is nothing but battles, the monotony alone would be tedious unless you made it more like Etrian Odyessy where the characters could explore elements and have methods to return to town etc and events and quests independent of the dungeon.  Features aren't going to save something you're forced to do constantly without a break in the action.  This sounds like a hack and slash grindfest.  Diablo to use another example had such planned events every few floors to break up the hordes of monsters, but in Diablo you can save inside of the dungeon unlike the ancient cave.  

You also have to deal with the characters being essentially naked and with no means of buying equipment so gold is irrelevant.  They have no method of progressing expect survival which is always questioned and can't be tracked even by progress per floor completed.  

I'd recommend translating the content you do have so a closer look could be done.

Since you are going to have blue chests I assume there is content outside the dungeon and normal items reset or disappear when the dungeon is left or you are defeated along with your levels.  Does this mean you cannot save inside of the dungeon as well?  That would make it more of a rogue like in ways.

There really is no way to balance that many random elements.  If you've played Rogue Legacy the dungeon changes each time unless you have an architect and even then the rooms are random save for the set bosses.  Everything depends on player style and how quick they learn.

 

[Marston]

I have no content outside of the dungeon, those blue items are basically to make your life easier once you re-enter it (basically, it's just like Gift mode from Lufia 2, where you can only play in the ancient cave). However, I plan to implement savepoints, but only once every 10 or 20 levels (not sure at the moment) because I know how friggin long the ancient cave was. No thank you, never again without savestats.

A translation doesn't really make sense at the moment. You could play the first 20 floors (of which I've only reached 11 so far, so nothing beyond that point is even remotely balanced) and that's it. Since the only thing missing are basically items and enemies, I want to finish these first before I would translate it (because otherwise it's just doing everything twice). However, as said, there isn't much text and I am pretty sure you could figure out what each skill does because of the icons etc. 

 

[Tai_MT]

How to make a game interesting that is completely random?  Ever play Spiral Knights?  It's a free download of a game and I've sunk something like 100 hours into it.  It's not as fun solo, but quite fun with friends.  Which, in all honesty, is why I quit playing it...  My friends quit playing it.  But, the way it is designed is actually quite interesting.

Here's how it works:

You don't level up at all.  Your "level rating" is determined by the equipment you are wearing.  Recently, they have added "Questlines" that will give you basic equipment so you no longer have to scrimp and save to purchase it.  It does its dungeons by "floors" and each floor can have different things on it, but they are usually themed.  The goal of the game is to reach the "core" of the strange planet you are on.  Each set of 10 levels requires you to have a specific "rating" to even tackle due to the difficulty.  Your weapons and gear can gain levels and they gain it based on the amount of "heat" you collect on each floor.  You also collect money, which is used to buy new equipment or buy the blueprints for equipment so that you can build it yourself.  Naturally, in a player based economy, anything in the moderate to high tiers is massively expensive (mostly because it's so hard to find and come by).

But, you're asking about the dungeons, right?  So, here's how they keep the dungeons interesting:

Each dungeon floor contains gimmicks (the harder the dungeon levels, the more gimmicks and longer the levels).  These gimmicks range from puzzles, trap rooms, killing waves of enemies, treasure rooms, locked treasure rooms, monster arena rooms, and fairly deadly hallways.  Each floor is randomly generated each time you come to it.  But, we also have "set floors".  What do I mean by that?  Well, if the section of the dungeon you are in contains a boss monster, generally the two floors before the boss monster as well as the floor with the boss monster are preset.  They never change other than what loot might drop.  Defeating bosses gives you "tokens" that you can redeem for some fairly good gear once you put a few levels into it.  So, you will naturally want to grind out these tokens a bit.  That's really the point of the dungeons, to help you get more loot to get better equipment to get deeper into the dungeon.  There are also "rest" floors between long stints or after bosses which contain shops that sell either items you can only use in the dungeons, or loot you can use outside of them as well.

Now, if you want, you could create an interesting story to go with your random dungeon.  Create some randomly generated rooms that will dispense some story if you want (Runescape does this with its Dungeoneering skill).  You're going to want to break up the action with at least a few rooms that are of some interest to the player.  Anyway, those are just my thoughts.