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[talum]

I am making a roguelike and am debating whether to allow players to input a seed. Is there any point to allowing it? Doesn't it defeat the purpose of a procedurally generated dungeon? Binding of Isaac allows for it but I have no idea why anybody would use it other than to cheat your way to earning the various unlocks faster by looking up favorable seeds. Am I missing something?

[s0]

Some people want to retry particular dungeons for various reasons. Some people want to play the same dungeons as their friends, some people want to test strategies. Roguelike players also sometimes host tournaments where everyone tries to beat the same dungeon.

Besides, why would you not include custom seeds as an option? You probably already have them in your game as a debug function (if not, you should), so why not create a menu option for it?

[talum]

You have convinced me. Well done.

[quantumpotato]

You have convinced me. Well done.

See also: Minecraft players share seeds.

If you're concerned about players gimmicking high scores, you could always have a specific leaderboard for the "all random" mode.

[krajzeg]

I'd allow it. Like Silbereisen said, having the option allows for a lot of cool stuff down the road.

Also, I wouldn't worry about players "cheating" using the option. How I think of this is different people play differently - some of them will love the thrill of everything being random, some of them will prefer to look up the seed for a specific 1-in-1000-games random encounter needed for an unlock on a Wiki to get to it faster. All of them are your potential players, and it's no use to think of looking up seeds as the wrong way to play. In fact, it's a good sign for your game when that happens - it means somebody somewhere cares enough to compile favorable seeds and share them, which is a major achievement for a game.

[Dacke]

I think I'd prefer it if there were separate highscores or a perhaps filterable highscore (show all, show only random, show only userdefined, show only from seed XYZ).

The play styles and score potential between playing a random dungeon and a predefined are very different. So if you want to play for a high score you won't be able to get a competitive result in random mode, if you've already gotten a good predefined-dungeon score on top of your highscore.

[krajzeg]

I think I'd prefer it if there were separate highscores or a perhaps filterable highscore (show all, show only random, show only userdefined, show only from seed XYZ).

In my opinion, if the seeds offer radically different odds of success, the whole concept of "random seed" highscore table is kind of dubious. It still has the top places claimed by people with the most favorable seeds, only now, they waited 50 games to get those seeds "legitimately".

Still, the OP has nothing about highscores. If it's more about unlocks, then it's a one-person competition, and you can let the player decide how they want to challenge themselves.

[Dacke]

For global high scores, I agree. But I like to have a personal one in roguelikes, that lists my results in detail (stats, items, recent log, score, etc.). That there is a random element matters less to me in that context, because each successful run is worth remembering as a mix of exiting luck & skill.

Grinding a specific seed would be a very different challenge (which I imagine I would also enjoy), but it would give so much "better" results (and most of them very similar) that it would push out my random seed runs from any such listing.