Back in January, Justin wrote an innocuous piece about an even more innocuous statement from a Lord of the Rings Online developer about randomized dungeons, which SSG has apparently considered doing in the past, though it “hasn’t yet coalesced into a complete thing.”
“Part of the reason [SSG hasn’t done them yet] is that you have to balance the feeling of a handmade dungeon space (which is one of our specialties) with the randomization — it’s not that hard to randomize the contents of a space, but providing a random structure and layout in LOTRO is much harder,” game designer Jeff Libby explained.
I thought Libby’s reasonable comments could be a springboard for today’s Daily Grind. Randomized content comes in lots of forms, of course, from random maps to random instances. As Libby notes, there’s always a trade-off. Would we rather have handmade, hand-placed content if that means less of it? Are we OK with certain types but not others? Where do you stand on randomized content in MMOs?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
