Seed to seed variation, and also thank you for Chasm

[handsomefatman]

Been a while since I played the alpha. Happy to finally get to play the full game! Thank you for Chasm.

In the alpha I gave you feedback that, while procedural, the flow and area-to-area sequencing was still similar across seeds. Watching someone else play and comparing it to my own run confirms that's still the case (though maybe we just coincidentally had similar seeds). Still a fun game, but would have been nice if the game could be much more different from seed to seed than it is.

I also asked you to make big, burly "two handers" only take up one weapon slot, and it seems like you listened. 

[James]

Yea, it's a very tricky balance with trying to make it different, but also feel handmade and make sense in a larger world. We have some ideas we'll be looking into soon that will help things I think.

[handsomefatman]

Yea, it's a very tricky balance with trying to make it different, but also feel handmade and make sense in a larger world. We have some ideas we'll be looking into soon that will help things I think.

Absolutely. And again, huge thanks. The game is a blast.

[Darxim]

tl;dr: I'd rather not sacrifice fun for randomization.

I've played some games with truly randomized levels, and they're just not as fun because of it. It's like, after the first playthrough, I don't even want to do a second. When I was playing through Chasm for the first time, I didn't have the same problems, and I think it's because of the much less randomized nature. I'd prefer my second playthrough to be less fun than the first playthrough rather than the first playthrough to be "meh". I think it's probably due to the more hand-crafted nature of the levels that even the second playthrough of Chasm is more fun than the first playthrough of the truly randomized games.

Of course, since my second playthrough of Chasm is on Nightmare difficulty, I'm not very concerned about the levels being in a different arrangement. I'm just trying not to get hit, like, ever. It's not like I remember the map layout, anyway.

[Lailoken]

Playing in mortal changes your perspective somewhat. I definitely agree that so many games take the random generation to such an extreme that everything is just mush. I would, however, not like to know exactly where everything important is from game to game like I do now. after 12 playthroughs I can predict where without hesitating or doing any unnecessary backtracking.

While this is fine, I welcome any efforts to mix it up a bit.

[handsomefatman]

Playing on Mortal doesn't change my feelings here. If I'm interested in optimizing familiar content, I'll run the same seed on Mortal.

There's nothing wrong with wanting consistency in games. Some of my favorite titles have little to no variance in play. But, to me, the allure of procedurial generation is that my experience can, and should, vary significantly between runs, because otherwise why not just design one map and make it really standout.

[Lailoken]

Ya I meant playing on mortal might change Darxim's perspective with wanting no radomization at all. Having restarted 14 times I would love a bit more variety

[handsomefatman]

Ya I meant playing on mortal might change Darxim's perspective with wanting no radomization at all. Having restarted 14 times I would love a bit more variety

My bad!