Patient Gamers

I enjoy A Link to the Past Randomizer, but primarily because it adds replayability to a game I'm already so familiar with. ALttPR becomes a puzzle of which chests/dungeons have the highest probability of containing progression items. Calculating that optimized routing in realtime while racing against a clock is fun. Also figuring out the best way to deal with a boss that you already know well, but now you have an unexpected equipment loadout is fun to me.

However. If I were to play a new game I didn't have any familiarity with and its item placement and/or map layout was procedurally generated, I don't think I would enjoy a first playthrough. I don't enjoy variety just for the sake of variety. The proc-gen would have to have some known parameters that allow me to strategize in how I approach it in order to not seem arbitrary. If I didn't enjoy the first playthrough of such a game, I might not be motivated to learn enough to enjoy future runs.

That's why I think I don't love Spelunky or Slay the Spire despite loving games that play similarly like Cave Story and Magic the Gathering respectively. I think I could love these games if I could reasonably plan ahead, but I feel those games have too much variance and the outcomes feel arbitrary as a result. Though that could just be my lack of dedication to understanding the bounds of the generated content.