DRL > Discussion

Less random unique generation?

<< < (2/3) > >>

Blade:
"No" without doubts. DooMRL is a roguelike, at least somehow, and i'd like to see it staying that way (i'd like it to be even more roguelike-ish, without the ability to take some path, like chaingun with EE and SoaB, doing it just as hundred times before, to win. But that's the different talk). Quite often uniques are forcing us to change totally the strategy that we was planning, they bring us a lot of disappointment and happiness, many praises and curses. And you want to take that all away. No no.

Mr_Dead:
Ditto for what Blade said.

Zi:
If uniques only spawned if they aligned with your build and strategy, it'd take away some of the variety.  Some uniques (that align best with other certain builds) are nice enough to utilize no matter what your current build is, so they're a joy to encounter.

Sure it's a disappointment when you come across something that's not useful given your current strategy (or worse, something that's never useful), but that's part of the game, the highs and the lows.  It makes finding the good ones that much sweeter.  And the player shouldn't learn to rely on finding a unique to win the game (although I will admit it definitely boosts one's chances).

The current system in place is pretty good, if it remained the same I would have no complaints.  (Buff the railgun, among other things, though.)

Dervis's suggestion is pretty good too - still mostly random but slightly more favorable to the player, but I'd want the INITIAL chance for uniques to spawn remain the same as before.

I'd also be in favor of a system where the chance of spawning a unique increases for every previous level in which a unique was NOT spawned until one is spawned (and the chance resets).  This "smooths" out the randomness a bit, and will give hope to a player currently going through a barren run.

Behrooz Wolf:
I like the general idea of making uniques more useful, but only if there's still a significant level of randomness-- the player should not always get something that would be perfect, but it should be very rare for a completely useless unique to spawn, and if a unique does spawn, at least a 50/50 chance that it'll suit your current playstyle.

To that end, I propose a weighted random spawn generator, which can be altered by kill ratios, challenge modes, traits, and previously generated uniques.

For example, at level 1, start off with an evenly weighted selection process, one chance for each unique, selected from a random bucket,  giving a 1/23 chance of getting any of the 23 uniques.  As the player plays, the chances are altered. 

The effect of the weighting should be dependent on the degree to which any situation affects their gameplay options.

[*]Player starts with AoMR?  That's a big restriction that makes a lot of uniques useless, so we'll go with a big weighting change, +4 chances each to blaster/GCB/AFJ/Trigun spawn and -2 chances for non-pistol weapons.

[*]Player chooses Ammochain?  +5 chances to minigun, (assuming minigun works with ammochain) -1 chance for pistol-category uniques that nobody will bother with, +2 chances for non-phasing armor.

[*]AoB game?  -10 chance for non-melee weapons, +2 chances for melee weapons +1 chance for phaseshift/malek armors

[*]Player chooses Brute?  +5 chances to melee uniques

[*]Player has an armor unique in inventory?  -1 chances to armor uniques.

[*]Player is killing a lot with rockets?  +5 chances to missile/rev launchers.

[*]Shottyman?  +5 chances to pancor/assault shotgun

[*]Triggerhappy?  +5 chances to rapid uniques

[*]Hellrunner?  +1 chance to non-gothic armor uniques

[*]TaN?  +1 chance to armor uniques

[*]Fireangel?  +10 chances to missile/rev/AFJ/BFG10k

[*]SoAG?  +2 chances to pistol uniques

The difficult part comes in balancing the weightings, but I feel that a general guideline could look like this:
~50% chance of getting a unique that fits your current playstyle well.
<10% chance of getting something completely useless/unusable.

I'm also in favor of adding weird minor skews to some traits to encourage more random playstyles-- like eagle eye giving +1 chances to missile launcher and phase boots or ironman giving +1 chances to any unique that regenerates ammo.  Oh, and this weighting system should be at least mostly unknown to players.  Life is just more fun when you get a useful unique, let 'em enjoy it without worrying much about how it happened.

Jimmy:
One of my favorite things in Doomrl is finding a unique that makes me decide to either: 1. adjust my build, even if some already selected traits become less useful or useless, or to 2. skip the unique.  Also, one reason I like shotguns is that they work well with generalist builds in the early game, so you can start with your weapon effectiveness traits after finding a unique (if you find one relatively early) without having already having had to do so just to survive. 

For these and other reasons I am completely against less random unique generation.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page