oh, pshaw, allow me to laugh out loud, milady.

guffaw, ha ha haw!

Yes, you understood me perfectly. That is exactly what I hope future TES-games will be - although ten NPCs might be stretching it a little.

Anyway, to try and put this interesting topic back above kindergarden level: I agree with the guy that mentioned consistency. If the next game is set, for instance, in Skyrim, then I want the map to show me how Skyrim looks. Meaning that for every new character I start, the towns will be set in the same place with the same buildings. Any ruins or dungeons will be set in the same place with the same interior. The landscape will be the same - because that is how reality is. Of course, reality is also dynamic - houses are torn down, new ones are built etc. But I think it's a poor replica of that realism to have a ruin completely change position from what it were located when you played with your previous character.

Where I think randomly generating can be a good thing, can be when it comes to NPCs. You have specific ones that live in the town with their own shops and houses, and then you have visitors. These are randomly generated (if possible there should be built in a check to make sure that the visitors aren't all the same female in the same clothes as happened in Daggerfall). There could also be more random NPCs walking on the roads, and even a few random adventure NPCs in dungeons. That would make much more sense, and be much more realistic, than not knowing where a ruin or town will be located from character to character.

Im all in for randomly regenerated landcape, ruins and cities. Thing is that it gets boring when starting a new character for the 8th time, and you already know where to find all the ayleid ruins, shrines and caves.

Everytime you start a new characters is basicly a rutine.

Go to Vilverin when exit sewers.
Go to Weynon and talk to Jaufree Southeast of Chrorrol to get free items and free horse.
Fast travel to all mages guild to get recommendation ASAP.
Get to lvl 5 and go to Azuras Shrine north of Cheydinhall to get Azuras Star.

It becomes boring because you already know where to go without any real exploring. It doesent help that all cities are shown on your map right from start.

Im all in for randomly regenerated landcape, ruins and cities. Thing is that it gets boring when starting a new character for the 8th time, and you already know where to find all the ayleid ruins, shrines and caves.

Everytime you start a new characters is basicly a rutine.

Go to Vilverin when exit sewers.
Go to Weynon and talk to Jaufree Southeast of Chrorrol to get free items and free horse.
Fast travel to all mages guild to get recommendation ASAP.
Get to lvl 5 and go to Azuras Shrine north of Cheydinhall to get Azuras Star.

It becomes boring because you already know where to go without any real exploring. It doesent help that all cities are shown on your map right from start.

I'm all for loads of replayability, but I don't think game design and decisions should be based on those who are bored from the game when playing it for the 8th time, following their own start-up ritual doing so.

How about a random toggle.

ie: When you start a new game it asks you before you start "Would you like to randomly generate terrain?" Yes/No?

If you click No, you get the standard game world, if you click yes, then you go make a sandwich while it takes a couple minutes to build one for you.

Thatway everyone can start with the standard game world, and modders can mod the stadard game world, but for replayability you can crank out a new one whenever.

That would be awesome, if something like that would be possible.

Yeah good idea. And I think it IS possible. Aren't Speedtree or similiar programs capable of creating realistic worlds no matter how big?
More options is always better. Maybe the world generator could be like face generator. 5-10 pre made worlds, each different than the other. Also, tested for bugs and inconsistensies. 'Randomize' feature, that... randomizes. Possible to have a bugged terrain somewhere... Then slider for amount of forest, density of forest, amount of mountains, height of mountains, same for swamps, cities, everything you can think of. So instead of a face exactly like you want, youd be creating the world.

I think some people that are against random generation are under the perception that things will be 100% random with no consistency, it doesn't work like that. Like KhadirgroGhurkag said, you can place limitations, rules and protocols that override any portion of the randomness, and keep things flowing together...random generation doesn't mean that it will randomly place a volcano in a town, or a desert cactus underwater. You can set desert terrain rules, forest rules, mountain rules, etc. The rules that would obviously be in place make the random content consistent with what is around it. I've read through this whole thread and I haven't seen anyone debunk some of KhadirgroGhurkag's posts, the point about always having some farms around a large city and other checklists like that are some of the best arguments for having random generation I've heard.

Make the main dungeons and quests hand crafted, make some of the lesser/side quests and dungeons randomly generated, make important NPC's static, make some of the shop keepers, farmers, guild members, peasants, etc randomly generated. To create a believable, in-depth world, I think a mix of both would be best.

I agree with you here. I just think we disagree on what should be randomly generated, and what shouldn't. As I see it, terrain, ruins and landscapes doesn't change positions as fast and easily as people do. So to me it makes sense that a ruin will stay in the same position at every game and playthrough, but differet people will move about so the towns are dynamic and more realistic.

For me worry is about the practicality and the level of detail that will be possible with random generation
I don't have the knowledge to judge the feasibility of what KhadirgroGhurkag's posts claim is possible, I do know I haven't seen a CRPG with anything like the level of detail of TES III & IV that used random terrain generation
Even relatively simple random terrain generation like that used in some computer strategy games frequently produces terrain anomalies

Its handplaced items, landscapes, dungeons that make things interesting and unique like in morrowind. I would severely hate randomly generated anything but some loot and creatures.

Try Dwarf Fortress. It has the same level of polish and depth in its game systems (and this includes randomly generating the whole world) and AI as Oblivion has in its graphics. Unfortunately for its accessibility to the general public, it also has the same polish to its graphics as Oblivion does to its game systems and AI.

That's just the way you play it...

Most of my characters haven't even started the Main Quest. My characters don't join all the guilds. If it bothers you that you do this every time, why do you do it?
Is it nececry to get Azuras star that soon?

Just make a different kind of character or something. You do the same thing every time you make a new character and then complains you do the same thing every time.

I agree that Oblivion gets old quite quick, but that has nothing to do with random generation of stuff.

I don't randomized terrain at start up. Replayability is created with many intresting guilds, quests that have different endings and those endings all have impact. Not just the main quest and some other big quests, but many quests. Off course not all the quest should be epic and world changing, but the impact could be subtle and many quests could have multiple endings without it having impact at all (except rewards maybe) and quests that don't have multiple endings (but are well written and are fun to do.)

Oblivions terrain was quite boring for the most part, as if it was generated and they only checked if it was working and then some handcrafted places were added to it.

I don't mind having the terrain generated at he time of developing, but they should make sure it's interesting, and add unique places to it.

Randomizing it every start up so it remains 'fun to play' and add replay value is a bad idea, because a game that needs a new randomized world every new start to make you want to play it is a bad game anyway. The next TES should so good it doesn't NEED randomization. Though, to make it that good it probably needs generation at the development.

ryt this argument should be over zovo figured out the answer if you moan about how you want your world the same as everyone elses your a selfish git

so if u want u get static neverchanging world or a new one everytime you restart

To -Oblivion-, I like what you said about TES that they need to make the next game so good that it doesent need to be randomly generated.

I just think that I would be exiting to have randomized nature. It make it feel like its a whole new place everytime you start a character. I could just imagin how fun it would be to actually explore the land. Remeber when you wanted to find all the daedric shrines when playing for the first time? It was so exiting to go our without compass or anthing to help you find em. But after the 7th time it wasnt fun anymore. You alway knew where to find them and it ruined the exploring.

But I agree with you that if they make it so uniqe that it never becomes repetetive, I could play it again and again.

My thoughts on random generation.

Developer: Hmmm, let's just do this quick and not care how well done it is.

My thoughts on hand-placedness

Developer: Lets do this right.

For the most part, random generation creates shallow story and promotes dungeon crawling. Dungeon crawling is boring and repetitive.

I thought this through and I personally wouldn't like randomness in any higher volume than there already is. For instance: randomly generated crowds in cities - of course you won't talk to everyone, but I play a thief very often and I want to know that I can pick a richly dressed guy from the crowd, follow him home and loot it while he's safe asleep. Similar rules apply for everything, because randomness is fine until you choose to dig deeper into the world and I always do(well maybe after I clear the urgent quests that I am doing, but sooner or later I do).

Oblivions dungeons was not random generated but it still wasn't funny.

Funny?

I do think there are some areas where random generation could be added with no possible loss. For example in docks ships could arrive and leave rather than just staying in 1 place the whole game. After leaving port they might arrive in another port after a suitable amount of time (not always though, sometimes their destination might be outside the game area).

Ships with quests attached might be set up to arrive shortly after you qualify for the quest involving them. No more people telling you about a newly arrived galleon thats been sitting in the docks for 6 months.

http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000173.html

There's an interesting read from some one who actually works in the field. It relates to AI but the same logic applies to content.

In other words at present neither extreme has the complete answer.
Some areas like many quest plots are best left to artists. I'd no more trust them to a computer program than I would writing a song or poem but many areas like - using quests as the example again - the numerous FedEx quests every game has could be randomly generated. This is even more true IMO in a sandbox game like the TES series than in a linear game like NWN 1 or 2 where the much smaller number of quests can be much more handcrafted.

After some NPCs in whatever town get murdered, would be kind of nice to have some randomly generated new NPCs move into town and purchase the deceased's old residents.