Are procedural maps for strategy games overrated?

In my experience procedural maps in strategy and 4x games all look virtually the same with barely any difference. This makes me wonder if perhaps procedural maps are overrated. I remember back in the day when playing games like Red Alert 2 how I would typically just play on the premade maps and not bother with randomly created ones very often. This leads me to believe that as long as a game has a decent variety of well designed premade maps then the player might not actually miss not having procedural ones.

Do you agree or disagree?

 

How did you come to this conclusion? Because my experience is the contrary.
Although I only play TBSs (4x), so my experience is mainly with those and the procedural terrain is a must in order not to be utterly boring after a dozen replay. Especially where the terrain features matter from the game-play point of view (civilizations for example).

 

I dunno. In my experience playing Red Alert 2 years and years ago I found it more fun to just replay the same well balanced and/or fun maps over and over. Procedural levels felt dull and uninteresting.

 

Honestly, I played Read Alert (probably the original C&C RA) so long ago (more than 20 years ago), all the impressions fell into oblivion already. I remember I played them for a short period, but actually they were the point where I realized I don't like the RTS genre at all.

 

Tbh I think this boils down largely to how important exploration is to your game. If the game has you exploring new areas as an important part of the gameplay then proceduralism makes more sense. But in the case of many strategy games I would argue that gameplay mechanics are actually more important than not have every map be slightly different in some ways.

Furthermore, there is a middle ground. It's possible to make it so that the actual map layout is the same, but add randomness in regards to where/what stuff actually spawns in the game world.

 

Is what they look like really relevant?

I'd have thought that the purpose of procedural maps would be their impact on the strategic aspect of the gameplay. If you're playing on the same maps repeatedly then things like choke points, resource locations, paths between players, etc. are going to be the same game after game. If you add some procedural or random elements then those things will change at least a little bit between games, which forces players to re-evaluate their approach and, hopefully, makes the game more interesting as a result.

Even if a map looks 99% identical, things like making a valley wider or thinner or moving a few obstructions or resources around could make a significant difference to how a map is played.

(P.S: Wouldn't these threads be more appropriate in the Game Design section? These are very much design discussions.)

 

Define "overrated."

 

you are designing a player experience. what are the factors you want to control in order to deliver the target experience?

identify those, then you can decide which tool best meets those ends.

personally, hand-designed from modular kits is easier to produce, gives more granular level-design control, and is scalable enough for indie games IMO. Never played procedural generated game I cared for, but that's just me.