I’m not sure why the art debate was such a topic of discussion… some gamers have a narrow range of art appreciation is all… not much you can do about that. Thankfully Blizzard does and they know when a fan outcry has merit or is just way off base. That’s why they are tweaking corpse fade and such, valid arguments. But when you have a new generation of dark games lacking artistic integrity and color you get a group of people who have decided that’s the right way to make a dark game. No color = macho? Whatevs.

On another note, static outdoors hints at laying a steady framework for a world that is going to be explore again in later games.

My only problem was this.

"organic environments don’t lend themselves to being randomly generated"

What’s he smoking? Nothing looks less organic than a static, hand-made forest. Some of the best foliage in recent gaming was procedurally generated.

He is talking about the lay out. Or you think that Diablo 2’s string of boxes were "good example of outdoor randomization?"

Yeah… You can create a much more natural realistic environment if things aren’t being changed. I guess you misread it.

Also. When you are allowed to create one layout you can give yourself more room for variety and diversity. Randomness works very well in dungeons but like he says a random outdoor world very often reduces the feel that you are in a real place. Just ask Act 3… *shudders*

Haha.

I initially greeted the “largely static outdoor areas” with a frown, but thinking back on D2… it could definitely be improved on. After all, was there anything anywhere in act 1-5 in an outdoor area that was memorable? all the surface areas in act 1 blended together, and sure, the shapes of the green grassy rectangles were different, but so?  I think it would have been boring if they’d been the exact same shape/size/dimensions every game, but they were pretty boring as they were. The same is largely true for act 2 and 3 also; you didn’t know which way to go to find the next area, but all the desert/cliffs/oasis/ruined houses, or trees/swamps/rivers looked essentially the same every game.

The areas I remember more clearly were the non-random chunks, since they were different and somewhat special. The Field of stones, the tree of inifuss, the flayer village near the Gidbinn, that cool stained glass island area in act 4, and shenk’s platform in act 5. And all of those are basically what d3’s looking at for surface area stuff. Cool, distinctive, designer-designed chunks of level, in which semi-random events can occur.

The analogy to D2 is if sometimes you got Shenk on his platform, and other times you got a bunch of champions, or an NPC with a mini-quest, or even nothing at all. It would be surprising and interesting, and you’d want to go there to see what it was each game. (At least until you’d done it 50x and memorized all 8 possibilities.  let’s hope they do get some of the ultra rare quests and events in, to spice’n up the activities.)

Yea, you make a great point Flux.  I really like the direction they are going, in static outdoor enviro’s and random dungeons. 

Maybe it will be where they will have, like you said, different grpings of monsters, say random monster packs, per game.  Where each game would have a random set of monsters but monsters indigenous to that area, at least, that is what I am hoping for. 

Like instead of hordes of Goatmen outdoors, you will see more bull demons and undead as well as their specific set of unique monsters.  That’s something I’d look forward to.

I really like that what monster types show up in an area will be more random. It will hopefully force everyone to pay attention and change strategy every now and then. I didn’t like it in D2 that you could design your character for a specific area and monster type and top the ladder that way. But thankfully with these changes, solo going one trick ponies will be pushed down to the bottom of the ladder.

Yeah. They know what is an improvement and what should stay the same. That’s why their sequels and new games keep getting Game of The Year and such. Talented and smart people.