Hey, new to the forums and just wanted to share an opinion.
I have been playing Conan on and off for the last year, but I keep coming back to it because I love the gameplay and its unique systems. However with that said the map is stale.
Sure it is great when you first start but now its boring and old. A player who has played for a solid 2-3 weeks will have the layout practically memorized, everyone knows the best places to build a base, and where to camp for resources.
So Funcom could either just add in a new map but that would get old too, so why not just end the problem and just make a procedural generated map systems. That way players get new maps to explore, and that way Funcom doesnāt have to make new ones that would fall into the same issues.
Because the world is fixed and the resources are intentionally distributed so that everyones experience is the same. 2-3 weeks is not enough time to learn the entire map Iām afraid. There is way more detail than you give it credit for.
Procedurally generating terrain that comes close to handcrafted in quality isā¦ well, not impossible perhaps but insanely hard. Procedurally generating terrain that is technically different but feels samey, now that is doable, but I question what youād actually gain from that in the long run.
Anyway, I am quite sure this game is not set up to deal with procedural terrain in any way, shape or form - it has enough problems handling pre-generated terrain (for reference see: undermeshing, the never-ending fight against).
I also think the resources that would be necessary to add it would be better spent elsewhere.
But even there, after like 2 hours of exploring every planet looks the same. You got acid planets with mushrooms, hot planets with big leaf plants andsnow plants with pine trees. All that changes are the colors from time to time, an ocean might be green instead of red and so on but other than that? Not much difference sadly. Once you realize that, exploring becomes kinda boring because planets seem just too similar all of the time. And it doesnāt help that the alien bases and outposts on the planets look all the same as well, thatās where you really feel like in a copy and paste world if you use this analyze searcher beacon to locate all the base types and ruins.
I for one are not a fan on procedural generation.
What i believe here is that so far every comment i read here is got a point. Yes when i played solo, ofline, alone in my house, to learn the game, several times i fall asleep with the controler in my hands. Grinding games (and the old of my ageš) can have this affect. Butā¦ when i started play online, i discover that after of 2 months of solo gaming i have possessed only 30% of the of the game. And so i learned more and never fall asleep again. And i join this forum after 10 months of playing only conan and I still learn more. Right now, having 11 months experience of the game, and 1 month following the forum and getting info (witch i thank you all for this), I still feel that i have more to learn. So my point is that everybody experience this game differently and everybody runs to different opinions, but everybody is right. But for me, this ālittleā map still have surprises.
Yes I have first played it roughly 3 months ago, I built several bases on different planets with a friend but after some time I didnāt know what to do anymore. We build many different types of bases like underwater stations, I even rebuilt maps from Overwatch on some planets (Ecopoint Antarctica for example) but the lack of decoration items (I donāt know if there are mods to solve that problem) makes building things a bit stale after several bases.
Exploring was really fun at first, especially because I play lots of Stellaris where exploring space and its anomalies is a big part (even if itās a strategy game and not a first person game) and NMS really reminded me of that phase in the game. But after some time it becomes very repetitive, the missions lead you to different planets but they are all rather the same, you may find the occasional special planet with giant plants and giant dinosaur like animals but other than that most planets felt really similar to each other.
If they added randomly generated ādungeonsā and bases on every planet it might spice up things a lot because exploring and things like āarcheologyā would be more puzzle like since you have to search more for the artifacts but right now itās just too similar on every planet (like the ruins, the keys to open the coffin are always at the exact same spot).
The game was really fun when we played it but, hunting for special S class and exotic ships was really interesting as well but the world needs a bit more ārandomnessā in terms of generation in my opinion.
The amount of memory alone to handle āreal enginesā details on that scale would be mind boggling.
You look at games with ārandomā and its done in such small scale. Or done with such file sizes, you get something like Minecrafts algorithm to builds billions of world idās. (which many of oddites still)
Iām pretty sure a algorithm could be done for the engine. It wouldnāt really be randomā¦
Even minecraft has set default predeterminers. So each world has ID, that can vary bases on set numbers.
Amount of time it took to build those to point of playableā¦ or maybe just because the detail of game is so small and easy to work around blocks maybe.
If you look at Creation Engine for ES/Falloutā¦ and how it can sorta pl;ace tree and bushes.
Meh, nevermindā¦ in reality.
I think making lets say 20 small islands, 100med ones, several large ones. Having them placed on a 4000x4000 Map, Having them 360 degree rotatable. Have them set to Varible weather and eco systems.
So lets say Large Land Mass #7 Could spawn snow and jungle, or Jungle and desert.
You could then set section of #7 Land Mass to Differnt set ups. So Section 10 thru 20 could spawn Cliff landscape (prebuilt) or Jungle Tree (prebuilt) Or Swamp.
Youād have make several section prebuilt, but have them randomly picked when world is created.
It would be hand crafted, but random which parts you got. It would be much less load then a full random generatoed world.
Thou amount of dev time to premake themā¦
iām not sure, but i belive Ark made more maps instead of changing the main one, the problem here is that the main story of CE is about this particular zone, somewhere in the hyborian continent.
But, if what the frost giant said is true, there could be more maps with different layouts and different terrains but with the same things to explore, only placed in different locations.
