Why I Dislike Monster Nests

[Bluddy]

So in my original post ("Constructive Criticism") I mentioned one of the things I dislike about monster nests. I do think the incentives to destroy monster nests far outweigh reasons not to, but that's not the real thing I dislike about them. It took me a while to put into words what I didn't like about them.

Monster nests are a throwback to some old games I can't even remember. The only games that have used monster nests recently that I can remember are puzzle games like Braid and Abe's Odyssey.
The reason for this is that monster nests are completely artificial. They're entirely non-immersive IMO. In puzzle games, you sometimes need to replace specific enemies once they've been killed. This is because puzzles may depend on a monster being in a specific place. It's artificial, but it works. 

There's no reason to have monster nests in a realistic game though. Most ARPGs just spawn monsters off-screen, and this works really well. AVWW has a bit of a unique problem in that it's split up into screens -- there isn't one open area. Still, I think specific solutions can be thought up for each area to make monster spawning more realistic.

Overland areas could spawn just like ARPGs. They could generate monsters offscreen, or in the worst case, if there are too many players onscreen, monsters can spawn from caves, out of building doors/windows (as if they broke out of the building) or from the corners of the screen (including the top corners for flying monsters).

Caves could spawn off-screen if they're big enough, or at their exits. An exit to the outside should always be able to spawn monsters, but entrances to other caves could also spawn monsters so long as those caves haven't been cleared.

Within buildings, monsters could spawn from either doors, windows, vents or perhaps holes in the walls.

The one exception to this is boss rooms, which are somewhat artificial (but in a cool way) to begin with. You expect bosses to have minions spawning around them. I'm totally ok with using monster nests of some sort for this, though I'd prefer something like magical portals instead.

However, I'm not sure if my reaction to monster nests is shared by other folks. What's your opinion?

[x4000]

Having monsters spawn offscreen except in boss rooms would certainly be doable.  And you're right that I wasn't thinking of modern games when I added them; my biggest influencer there was probably Demon Stalkers, from 1989.  Also various other games from that era.

I've certainly coded games with offscreen monster spawning before (mostly Mario clones), and it's easy enough to do.  Something about monster spawners simply seemed more interesting to me, though.

[Hearteater]

I agree, there is something interesting to them.  Mainly in how you deal with them however.  If there are a few types maybe.  Some that spawn three enemies close together with a longer pause inbetween.  Some that spawn only when you get near them.  Others that spawn only when they take damage.  Maybe the existing spawners would be more interesting if I saw some visible "countdown" for when they spawn the next monster.  Maybe the skull eyes light up from bottom to top, and when all three are lit they spawn.  Kinda puzzle-game in feel.

[superking]

I still dont see many good reasons to have monster spawners almost everywhere. When players visit a tile, they generally clear out all the monsters en route to their destination, collect or kill, then teleport home and never intentially visit the same tile again.

It would be nice to be able to clean out sectors during a single play session, then just have them all respawned when you exit the game and reload. I find monsters constantly respawning is more annoying than anything else, and it means the monsters have to be feeble to compensate for their numbers.

I can see more reason for spawners to frequent boss HQs, caves etc

[Hearteater]

That is true, in normal boring chunks there isn't really much point.  Which is basically the situation now.

But if chunks start getting more challenging for purely non-monster reasons (obstacles) then monster spawners add to those challenges and become part of the puzzle itself.  In fact interesting monster spawners could make a nice challenge to a chunk by themselves.  Imagine a chunk with a bat spawning monster nest that spawns one bat each time you cast a spell, but otherwise won't spawn anything.  Suddenly that chunk becomes a lot more challenging.

[Professor Paul1290]

I also think that maybe it would be better to remove monster spawners outdoors because as superking mentioned there isn't really that much backtracking in the game anyway. I think it would be more fun to have more threatening monsters that don't respawn rather than weak ones that do respawn.

However, the one thing I do like about the spawners is that they are there where we can destroy them to stop the onslaught, so we do have some way of interacting with them even if it is rather simple.


Something I think would be really cool would be to instead have monster nests as something more rare and special. Monster nests would be placed in certain buildings and in specially marked rooms, similar to stash rooms. A group of unusually strong monsters would occasionally, maybe once every few minutes at random, spawn at an entrance leading to the nearest spawner.
Basically, you'd be trying to create the impression that there is a monster nest somewhere in the region that is occasionally sending out groups of unusually strong monsters to seek you out. Each region would maybe have one of these if at all as you'd want them to be rare enough for the player to take notice when they are present in a region.

I suppose this would be tricky since rooms aren't actually generated until you enter them, but it might be possible to fake that they are coming from a certain location until the player actually decides to go there and destroy the spawner.

[Dizzard]

They do seem strange, I don't have a major problem with them but it does make it seem like there's a wizard/force spawning them into the land of Environ rather than it actually being their home/ecosystem.

[zebramatt]

I think that players only wanted destructible monster spawners because (i) the spawners exist; and (ii) they want to be able to clear monsters from the current (or local) area.

If there were no monster spawners and monsters only respawned in an area after you got x chunks away, that achieves the same result without compelling players to destroy spawners, and without leaving areas forever devoid of monsters.

It's a traditional dungeon crawler approach ('Diablo-style', you might say) but it's possible the current system is exacerbating the inherent tedium in areas.

[superking]

I also think that in areas that do contain monster nests, it would be nice if regular attack spells could hit them instead of forcing the use of firetouch

[Bluddy]

I think the key thing about using regular monster spawning (rather than nests) is that the spawning levels adjust based on the needs. It's quite clear that users want the ability to clear out areas if they want to. I suggest these rules, which are an expansion of what I originally mentioned:

1. In overland areas, the default spawning rate off screen should be moderate to low. The assumption is that it's open space, you're in the wild for the most part, so there's nothing blocking monsters from showing up.
2. However, if the player is making a concerted effort to wipe out mobs in the chunk, clearly the intention is to reduce the number of mobs, and that should be allowed to give a sense of accomplishment. In this case, it's as if the mobs are driven out of the area and spawning should be reduced to a minimum.
3. So long as there are other adjacent chunks that have not been cleared out (I don't mean entirely cleared out but mostly cleared out), monsters could occasionally spawn.
4. If a player chooses to empty out all the overland areas of a map tile, that's his choice. At that point I think spawn rate should be reduced to a trickle or perhaps even halted.
5. If there's an enemy presence of some sort (enemy tower, raging mobs, bosses, wind storm etc) the spawn rate should be higher, including in adjacent chunks. The idea being that it's more challenging to get to the boss fight since they encourage other evil beings.
6. Within buildings, spawn rates should be much lower than outside. Spawn rates in this case just simulate monsters moving around from one room to another, so clearing out a room essentially prevents monsters from spawning unless there's an entrance to another room that hasn't been cleared out -- then there's a chance that a monster will spawn.
7. Within caves, spawn rates should be higher than buildings but lower than outside. You can clear out caves but it's much harder since they're so big and branch so much. The same rules apply as buildings, so that if you wanted to you could clear out caves starting from the innermost cave and working outwards. It's just a lot of work that's not really justified -- they're caves, they're going to have enemies...
8. Over time, there's a good chance that rooms and caves will spawn monsters again. That means that if you warp to a cave you previously cleared that you haven't been to in several days of game time, it'll probably have monsters again. A cleared room has a smaller chance of spawning monsters over time, but it's still possible.
9. It'll be nice if overland areas that have been completely cleared stayed that way for a certain amount of time or for a number of turns or until some event happens in the macro game. The problem is that that encourages people to spend time clearing out overland areas. But then again, this game is supposed to enable people to pick what they want to do, so if they want to do that, why not?

I'm all for monster nests as macro-game entities that need to be taken care of. They could cause very high populations of monsters in the area.