Procedural generation is hurting games.
- Thread starter Mike809
- Start date
That's not even a good faith argument and you know it. I got about 550 hours in No Man's Sky. You see all that game has to offer in about a tenth of that time, less even. NMS has numbers but the depth of its procedural generation bottoms out very quickly. The only hand created content in that game is the rendezvous areas in the expeditions. The rest just relies on the procedural system to fill it out. To drive the point home, the main story doesn't even need to take place in Euclid. I joined a friend's session whi was in Essentiam while I was just starting. The game let's you refresh the quest and it will pick up anywhere you are.
I get that people like to elevate NMS as some content juggernaut, but if you're a long time player, you start to see that the added content is rather shallow. Expeditions only ran when they want them ran. Companions serve virtually zero purpose. Ships are interchangeable without even noticing - and the inventory update made this even worse. Combat used to be laughable; post update it's marginally better. Multi tools are just skins. Freighters are glorified storage containers.
None of this is too say that NMS is bad, because it's a pretty decent game. But if people are going to shyt on Starfield and its use of procedural generation, you cannot prop up NMS in the same breath.
The point of this thread is not to shyt on Starfield , I just think its the game that has suffered the most due to Procedural generation. Bethesda games like skyrim and fallout truly shined whenever you would start a quest , and on your way from point A to point B ..you would encounter all kind of things.
I think we can all agreed that a hand-crafted environment > procedurally generated environment.
Animal House
Superstar
Facts
Like there’s a few games where I feel like if they had crafted the levels themselves it would’ve been better
But right on que brehs on defense as usual, op came in with good intentions but let’s ruin that because insecurity
Artificial Intelligence
Not Allen Iverson
If you don't like this, just you wait until AI starts making more and more of your games
a lot of games use procedural generation, but you might not know it. things like trees and mountains are often made using procedural generation. people associate procedural generation with randomness, but it really just means these things were created with algorithms. the randomness comes from the numbers (seeds) that are plugged into these algorithms. Minecraft selects a random seed when you create a new world, but if you and someone else use the same seed, you'll get the same world
what games?
Skyrim and Fallout used the same exact procedural generation system as starfield.
Starfield Includes More Handcrafted Content Than Any Bethesda Game, Alongside Its Procedural Galaxy - IGN
Starfield will include 1,000 fully explorable planets.Todd Howard has now told IGN more about the game's approach to procedural generation, what it offers, and assured us that players can ignore them in favour of a huge amount of fully handcrafted content, if they want to.
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Dallas' 4 Eva
Superstar
Bruh I like No Man's Sky but the procedural generation in No Man's Sky is not better than Starfield by any stretch of the imagination. I really don't think a lot of you have actually played these games. NMS is BEYOND redundant and it gets old FAST, because it is always the same shyt over and over again with no story or anything else. Also the combat is lackluster. The only thing NMS does better than Starfield is space travel seamlessly, but even then nobody is flying in real speed from planet to planet because that can take WEEKS in some occasions.
These complaints about Starfield are getting wierd, this game isn't perfect but for people to act like it's a bad game is fukking crazy to me.
Dallas' 4 Eva
Superstar
How has Starfield suffered from PG, but NMS doesn't? NMS is almost 100% procedurally generated and has very little hand crafted content. Starfield has TONS of handcrafted content. This is a horrible take bruh, and is objectively wrong.
Animal House
Superstar
Remnant of The Ashes, I liked both games but i feel they could’ve been better with crafted levels
I’m not speaking on Starfield since I’ve never played
Those encounters happen in Starfield, however some of the more interesting ones occur in space, which is easily skipped. I haven't finished the story, hopefully won't for a little while, but so far it seems like they send you to the hand crafted content.
BobbyWojak
Superstar
Dead Cells, No Man's Sky
I've put so much time into dead cells.
I like that game quite a bit but I really do feel like the PG aspect (and roguelikes in general) just facilitate lazy developers.
BobbyWojak
Superstar
I think it could be a good complement to to a game, with Dead Cells especially, you could have more focused levels and bosses with the PG parts being used for grinding or finding items. I wouldn't call it lazy because you still have to balance the game but it's definitely a crutch and a way to please publishers.
