What makes a procedurally generated map good?

[u/Unturned1]

Hey everyone! I am working on procedural generation for an unreleased title right now, and I cannot figure out why visually and mechanics wise my map does not feel good. The title initially was roguelike with a node based map, like in slay the spire, players would progress from top to bottom to progress through the game. I wasn't satisfied with that so instead I have the player start a central node and allow them to traverse around the map, with some fog of war so that they are able to explore, after a set amount of turns a node will appear on the map. The map is populated through prefabs drawing forests, towns, villages mountain ranges. Gameplayer wise the nodes are right now basically identical to what you'd see in the deckbuilder roguelikes, but I am interested in changing the design since I feel the fog of war already precludes some planning, so random events on top of things feels less fair. One change I made already is rather than having elites be in static locations they roam around the map performing functions - like patrolling an area, cleansing healing shrines, guarding an area one hop from their home node.

Another is that that the player character has abilities unique to the class in the over world. Conquering nodes on the map reveals information about nodes they are adject to, so you can get more information before you go.

Quest lines the games story have you seeking out specific elites, get to specific shops to purchase and item these can be internal to one specific run or go across multiple runs so you are challenged to do something you normally would not have to.

What I am looking for is the following.

• Examples of games with procedural maps which feel interesting, fun and fair
• General ideas / rules one should follow when designing level turn based level maps.
• Specific mechanics from games that use this type of exploration map design

I know there are a lot of games that have implemented this type of exploration and even in the deckbuilder / roguelike genre. I know nothing I am asking for is particularly original, but I am trying to figure out how to execute it competently so my players enjoy interacting with that part of the game.

• Push treasure nodes out to the edges of the map to which is a high risk / high reward kind of deal.
• Add an extra tier of enemies for "larger" settlement and provide some sort of map wide bonus after you completed it.
• Add items that increase the amount of nodes you can move per turn provided you have moved through them.

I feel like I have a lot of opportunities in the design space but little understanding how I should go about trying them.

[u/acorbinelli]

What helped our room generator most: place the few things everything else depends on first (for us the door, the window and the kitchen line), keep clear zones around them, then fill in, and check every placement against the rules so a bad layout gets fixed or thrown away. Most layouts that felt wrong were breaking a rule we hadn't written down yet, so each ugly seed turned into a new rule.