Absolutely. I guess those ideas, while good, felt a bit more quest specific rather than dynamic, but I agree those things could be pretty neat as well.
I was unsure if they were in GD. May e they have small number of randomized spots and I just never noticed or just never rolled those maps.
Admittedly, the first idea is definitely quest-centric. However, the World Boss one wouldn’t have to be. For example, the weather or landscape changes caused by the World Boss could happen even before the World Boss arrives as a way of signaling the approach of a phenomenal event, and said changes could even last a good amount of time after the World Boss had been defeated. It’d just be something to show how powerful these monsters are that they can change the landscape and affect the weather with their mere presence alone. Of course, the idea itself would be a lot of work, and such I have no expectations of it being made reality. Mostly, just wanted to throw it out there.
That is true. The only “problem” I have with that idea is I don’t want it to feel like you have to plan things around MMO style world events. With that said, if it just adds to atmosphere, variety, shows you they are walking the world, etc. that could be very cool. The whole world event bosses are neat but are also make me a bit nervous. As long as I don’t feel like I need to be planning around playing with strangers to get exclusive top-end loot, then I am fine with it.
Or like you may be saying, perhaps you don’t even have to kill them, them just being there makes it dark and rainy and affects the world around them, but you don’t need to fight them if you don’t want to.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not too keen on the whole “fight with allies/strangers” as well.
Pretty much. Thus far, there’s no news on what they drop, but from the looks of the videos, it mostly seems like they drop a good amount of loot. Nothing exclusive as of yet, and preferably it can stay that way.
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Which is exactly how it should not be.
No, just make the world worth exploring, and make combat and mobility “slow”/tactical/challenging enough that you arent rushing anywhere at all.
Not talking about the secret areas outside the overworld map borders. Those are static afaik.
But the randomly placed walls/barriers within the maps are random. Changing the paths through. And in dungeons there are the occasional crumbling wall into a secret room etc. Not sure if they are random, but it would be the easiest thing in the world to make them random at least (sometimes the wall can be broken, some times it cant).
Agreed.
Randomized interiors in the map, and randomized paths at the borders (a cave, a breakable wall etc.) would go a long way to make exploration a thing.
That should definitely be part of the randomness as well. Sometimes the “random cave” can be a “random door”. It is locked, and the key is somewhere else in the same dungeon (such as behind a secret breakable wall somewhere, or from a random elite enemy), or if in the overworld, somewhere nearby.
But the way to encourage people not to “skip content”, as in, make them explore, is to make that exploration highly rewarding.
Some people will of course just rush through. That is fine. Their choice. Just make it inefficient to do so.
Agreed. Dungeons should be fully randomized. Outside of a few set pieces where it need to be static for story/pacing reasons for example.
Barricades are definitely randomized in Grim Dawn. And there are lots of them.
Not sure about the breakable walls. I though they had some randomness to them, but maybe not. The barricades might just make it feel like the breakable walls are more or less accessible.
That would be nice.
In general, it would be cool if there are some dynamic changes in enemies based on day/night cycle, weather etc. Some JRPGs do a lot with that (for example Xenoblade), which does add something to exploration as well. Going through an area in rain at night is a different experience vs. doing so on a sunny day.
But imo, if the game has anything like that, then it needs to be possible to change those effects. As in having a command for “wait until nightfall”, or do X to make it rain in an area etc.
It should not be completely random, nor should it be “wait 6 real-life hours for it to rain or get dark”.
(Technically speaking, if you choose wait until nightfall, or do something to make it rain, could just transfer you to a different game shard, so your actions dont change the game state other players are in, as that would be weird; like it suddenly becoming night due to someone else in in the same shard as you choosing to “wait until nightfall”).
Could also be cool if weather had a direct effect on combat. Simple things like enemies taking a bit less fire dmg in rain, but more lightning dmg, or more fire dmg when there is a drought etc. And again, players having some ways to affect thins, both through skills, and through interactions with the game world.
I agree with most everything here, though would you still need weather, day/night, etc. to be able to be changed if those things were not linked to certain rewards, rather just changed enemies/gameplay/etc.? Meaning it is not like you can only get X item from X enemy that spawns at X time of day during a rainstorm. Rather it just adds immersion and variety to gameplay, not gateing loot behind it.
Oh, yeah, agree. There should be an automatic day/night cycle, and weather cycle.
If there is any actual gameplay related to it, it should just be possible to “jump” to a specific part of those cycles. Instead of having to wait around until it happens. The latter would just be annoying in any game where it makes a gameplay difference.
So if the changes are only for immersion, there would be no reason for being able to change it of course.
However, even without unique rewards, only specific enemies etc., you should be able to change it. Might want to try your character against a certain enemy/boss that only shows up during night rain? Sounds silly if you cant do that outside of having to camp the area for hours/days.
Skyrim, Xenoblade etc. where these things matter generally tend to give you a wait X hours mechanism. That should exist at minimum. But allowing more action-based ways to change things could be cool too. Kill a boss or do a quest to make a weather change in the entire zone for example. Whereas any weather changes from skills/gear should probably be extremely local/temporary of course.
The problem with wait x hours is that this is a shared open world. I am not sure they could pull that off. Also I get wanting that and in some ways I agree, but then you have things like in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (and I believe Skyrim has similar things) where a skill makes your assassinations do extra damage at night. I find it kind of annoying to have to switch it to night every time I go to infiltrate a fort. Also I don’t think people should just easily be able to circumvent day/night/weather to avoid certain enemies and such. I think it is fun that you have to prepare and adapt to different situations. I feel like we are agreeing and disagreeing, but it is kind of hard to tell haha.
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Shouldn’t be an issue as I see it. If a player in shard 132213 clicks the “wait until nightfall” he can simply be moved to shard 452542 where time fits (we dont need perfect control over the hour, just simple categories; Day/night and rain/sunny/drought/storm etc., leaving lots of shards around at all times fitting each of the combinations).
That is a good point, and I very much agree with forcing people to adapt to situations. But if the waiting, or weather change, comes with some cost that should be possible to balance.
So it normally might not be worth it to make it rain, just so you can deal 5% more fire dmg, or find a specific boss. But once in a while, you might want to do it, for a specific quest, achievement, or because you just really want to try fighting that specific rare enemy that only shows up in the desert during a drought in the middle of the day.
If there is any actual differences in content (and to me, even being able to fight new types of enemies is different content; same reason I really dislike if world bosses is group-only), it should just never be required to log into the game in the middle of real-world night or wait for hours, hoping to get the lucky combination of world state that you need. That is wasting players time. But that freedom can come at some cost, of having to spend X time to do a quest etc., so you cant just jump around different world states all the time.
I’m going to test it on two new characters this weekend. Like I said, I’ve never noticed, everything seems to be in the same place each time.
GD is 99% static.
Same, GD is very static but perhaps some later expansions may have randomized things a bit so not sure… 
They only thing I can think of with the breakable objects and barricades and stuff might be different on different difficulties. Because I’ve played Act 1 at least 100 times and know exactly where everything is like it’s the back of my hand and have never been surprised but a something being in a different location.
When you say you have played act 1, do you mean you actually started a new character and played it again? Maps don’t change per character on the same difficulty, but I think they do from difficulty to difficulty…forgetting some of the mechanics. The mini-map shows areas being blocked, often by things like boulders with the mini-map having a grey circle or something in that spot. It is not a huge thing, but enough that it adds a bit of variety.
Multiple characters over normal, HC, and various mods like the WH40K mod, or the one that gave you 253 devotion points. Since you can’t respec a secondary mastery, I’ve made way too many characters to try things out. And I usually to a full clear through to the Warden since it’s pretty short but long enough to grasp an idea of liking what I’m playing.
And like I said, nothing surprises me. No old path ever seems blocked, no new path ever seems open. I’ll do some checking this weekend just to make sure.
Loaded up the game, here is a quick example of a random roadblock.
Same character, same difficulty.
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There could also be events similar to what WoW did a while back with demon invasions - where parts of the ground open up and huge swathes of monsters spawn out of there, you have to clear them then enter the portal/opening to finish a boss.
Yes this is a good idea. The world should certainly be dynamic and changing to make it feel alive and worth re-exploring. Having these weather effects happen periodically throughout the day/week to search for hidden dungeons revealed and other events that occur such as camps/towns being attacked and choosing to help or not for different outcomes such as saving the camp the towns people tell you where a hidden dungeon is or rare boss spawn.
There should also be periodic events that D2 had such as Uber Diablo spawning somewhere in the main zones.
I think they could make do with a hybrid approach. 75% or more stays static while the rest can be somewhat dynamic.
Whether we like it or not, offer something or not, D4 open world will be static and its dungeons will be pseudo-random (in a D3 like manner). And this ain’t gonna change.
When and where was this confirmed about the open world part being 100% completely static or is this just you pretending its true because you want it to be.