About game generation

[GlassGo]

Last 50 games was played on Nightmare. Almost all chars are ~20+ lvls.
http://te4.org/user/35987/characters
And sometimes one game differ from another like sky and earth.
Around x2 or x3 difference in found artefacts, and decent loot.
I don't want to argue, maybe it is random without any bad code, but I'm sure it would be good for game, if it will be improved.
It's very nice when the game rewards you, and not so much when it does not.

I generally thought, that if you played on Nightmare, you'll have better loot, or same but more.
But what I got - extremely big extremes in drop.

[Atarlost]

A human's ability to perceive probability (odds, randomness, etc.) is very poor. If a music player uses a true random shuffle, people complain about it playing two songs in a row by the same artist. Well... that's true random. Randomness clusters. Most music players use a special algorithm for their shuffle feature to make it what people *think* is random.

Maybe monster and loot generation should as well for the same reason. We don't use raw noise for terrain generation and we probably shouldn't use raw noise for population distributions either of objects or creatures either.

For instance rares/uniques should probably not clump. An unusually high or low prevalence on a given level can make for difficulty spikes or boredom. Creature types maybe should clump more than raw noise if it's possible to prevent them from clumping the same in consecutive levels (or more than two consecutive levels for a dungeon long enough to give variety even with such clumping) because that kind of clumping makes for a varied play experience. Items probably should not clump except as dictated by vaults because both feast and famine make the game less fun. Feast raises the threshold for interesting (unless all the stuff is for the same slot), making loot more boring until you out-level stuff and famine is itself boring. Perception bias in dud vaults is also a fun reducer.

True randomness is valuable in things like saving throws and attack rolls, but if you want to make a game fun it's far better to acknowledge and account for perception bias than yell at people that they're wrong and stupid for having it.

[HousePet]

It would require a lot of work and drop performance to do such things.
And imagine the outcry when people discover it isn't random.

[jotwebe]

Also, it's not a proper roguelike if it doesn't make you shake your fist at the RNG.

[GlassGo]

Positive sample - http://te4.org/characters/35987/tome/a4 ... 2a89babb15
My last char.
From the start to death - loot was interesting and useful, what I have found on the floor - same useful and interesting.
From moment I found leather gloves with Fire Breath on first floor of Norgos lair, I realized that it is a game I was looking for, and talked about.
And I was not mistaken.
Drop from zone bosses often was 2 art insted of 1, I often found arts on the floor and plain mobs often drops art.
I found 5 arts in Ruined halfling complex, for example.

It was great, and very interesting game (also, dump cave is just a graveyard on Nightmare lol, it wasn't first char died there), and who will get bad from it, if loot drop always be so?

[Atarlost]

It would require a lot of work and drop performance to do such things.
And imagine the outcry when people discover it isn't random.

Compared to the rest of the level generation the computational cost would be down right trivial and I wouldn't expect more outcry than there is that the levels are assembled from pre-designed room templates instead of being truly random.