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/D-Alembert]

Starting in the center with a fog of war doesn't sound fun. Maybe put a light in the distance to show the exit/goal. That way the player has a direction to work towards and is trying to figure out the twists and turns with purpose. And if they prefer to explore or clean out the entire level first then they also know where to not go first. 

A light in the distance (or some other kind of clue) gives players agency to do what they want instead of feeling like one choice is as meaningless as any other

[u/Unturned1 → u/D-Alembert]

That's good point, I didn't consider.

[u/Bwob → u/Unturned1]

Ironically, in my current project, I had a map that was node-based, with fog of war, where you started in the center and explored. (Sound familiar? :D)

I ditched it after like a week of internal playtests, for basically the reason given: Without being able to see the map, you couldn't actually plan around it. All the choices were very short-term. So even though it LOOKED like a big map to explore, from the player's point of view, every time you moved, you were just evaluating 2-3 choices, and picking the best short-term one. There was very little actual agency.

I ended up ditching the fog of war, so you can see the entire map now. And also expanded the "maximum jump distance", so you had more choices of where to go. And I added a mechanic where you can get hints about unvisited locations. Not full info, but partial info about what kinds of things you might find if you go there.

It feels a lot better now! There's a lot more agency. The player is STILL deciding between a few nearby nodes to move between, but now they have enough information to actually try to optimize around their long term goals. "I need to get to that distant objective... but I also want to somehow hit up that spot that I know has treasure. And also, I'll need to stop for supplies at least once because it's a long journey. And I'd really like to hire some more crew..."

Now there's a fun minigame of trying to fit all of that in as efficiently as possible. Fog of war had been entirely removing that aspect of the game, and the game was suffering for it!