Well theres simply more areas for stuff to happen, so it would logically follow that there will be more random quests/monsters/events. Especially if they move away from 'Oh at the end of this act is a different colored Fallen.' And even if it takes 4 playthroughs to see all the quests, you would get different combinations of the quests every time, and 4 playthroughs of 4 acts through 3 difficulties before you start seeing quests being repeated is pretty good anyways.
With the random enemies and random events that takes place in the new static world, i think it's good enough variety to me. Have to play through though to see.
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I love all loot fest kind of game! I will be playing all of them for the next few years. Loot fest games I'm looking forward to: LotR: War in the North,Torchlight 2,Borderlands 2 and of course Diablo 3.
I think Blizzard is on the right track. The big factor to which this fixed world will win or fail I feel is how many squares there are in each area. If only one or two spots in a certain area have these cut outs, than they'll be looted over and over. I personally still want to search around a bit for things, maybe not as much as D2, because lets face it act 2 was really frustrating sometimes.. That was the main reason I.. My friend.. My imaginary friend downloaded the map hacks until they became unsafe.
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” - Albert Einstein
I'm a fan of static outside areas, assuming that they are the main mechanic in which players progress through the game, one act to another. At least I will know where to go if I have to run through the damn game with every character. I like how it makes sense thematically in terms of the overall layout of the world as well. I hope they have found a good ratio between static areas and random content.
Diablo 2 had way too much traveling involved. Most of the time you were more concerned about getting to the next area than enjoying the area you were fighting in. So long as they don't repeat that mistake, it's all good.
There has been a lot of debate spurred on by the fact that Diablo III will have a static world. What does this mean? This means that when you play Diablo III, the borders to the world you move around in will always be the same. The same path will be taken to get to the city that is always in the same location. This was not the case in Diablo II. Players spent ample amounts of time, walking along the borders of each area trying to find the entrance to the next area. Even base camps like the Rogue Encampment would have a changing exit.
There has been numerous reason given as to why Diablo III has chosen to do this. The first one being that they can increase the quality of these environments by not having to structure and design them in a way that lent itself to randomization. Another reason was that it gave it more of a real-world sense because we all know cities don't just move to random locations in the real world. Bashiok has given us a few more reasons for this decision:
Official Blizzard Quote:
The exterior landscape will for the most part be static, but with pockets of randomness (this doesn't include monster spawns which are still quite random). You'll always know where the towns and roads are, and know the edges of the map. We felt that exploring the exteriors to find landmarks and quest areas wasn't very compelling. It's also more productive for co-op to be able to say to a friend 'Let's meet at this shrubbery' and everyone knows how to quickly get there every time. Dungeons are more linear in the way that content is encountered, so they can be randomized quite a bit and you're not very likely to be just running around aimlessly. If you do hit a dead end you're at least assured you encountered plenty of battle (and thus loots) on the way.
Now, with all that said, the most important thing to remember is that not every area of the map is static, mostly just the borders. Within these borders are areas, ranging from small to very large, that will be randomized every time you play through the game. These areas are not just randomized monsters, as monsters will always be randomized in all areas of the maps. These random pockets can produce rare chests, dungeons and quests.
Official Blizzard Quote:
So while the exterior is largely static, within that defined landscape there are literal square holes (from small to huge) and within those empty square holes a great number of possible pieces can be dropped in. And they're chosen randomly. So you may play a few games and always see empty terrain in the same place, but on your next playthrough you'll instead have a broken down wagon appear and a quest giver that needs you to go kill a unique fallen shaman who stole his tools to fix it. And maybe the playthrough after that the square puzzle piece is a short dungeon to explore with a big chest or mini-boss at the end. Ideally it'll encourage exploration of the exterior zones over and over, hoping to find that a rewarding adventure has appeared.
As if this randomization was not enough, Diablo III will still have completely random dungeons like they did in Diablo II. Every time your character enters into the depths of Sanctuary, you will encounter different rooms and combinations of pathways. But to even add randomization to these randomized dungeons, some of the rooms will even have these pockets of randomized events that will offer even more variety in the countless amounts of playthroughs.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Dungeons on the other hand are completely randomized, same as Diablo II.* All of the halls and rooms and all the bits are shuffled around and it's all different every time. Some of the rooms themselves will offer unique quests if they're rolled up, and in some cases individual rooms themselves have those square chunks missing and within those randomly chosen rooms a number of random events can occur. It's a bit involved to explain, but very simple in practice (I believe some images of the square puzzle pieces were actually shown at a BlizzCon?). *Some small "dungeons" are completely hand crafted and won't include randomization of layout at all, but these are generally things like wine cellars or other underground areas of a few rooms or less.
Whether or not you agree with the static world in Diablo III, it is clear that every time you play Diablo III, it will not be the same occurrences you ran into the first one hundred times you played the game.
There has been a lot of debate spurred on by the fact that Diablo III will have a static world. What does this mean? This means that when you play Diablo III, the borders to the world you move around in will always be the same. The same path will be taken to get to the city that is always in the same location. This was not the case in Diablo II. Players spent ample amounts of time, walking along the borders of each area trying to find the entrance to the next area. Even base camps like the Rogue Encampment would have a changing exit.
There has been numerous reason given as to why Diablo III has chosen to do this. The first one being that they can increase the quality of these environments by not having to structure and design them in a way that lent itself to randomization. Another reason was that it gave it more of a real-world sense because we all know cities don't just move to random locations in the real world. Bashiok has given us a few more reasons for this decision:
Official Blizzard Quote:
The exterior landscape will for the most part be static, but with pockets of randomness (this doesn't include monster spawns which are still quite random). You'll always know where the towns and roads are, and know the edges of the map. We felt that exploring the exteriors to find landmarks and quest areas wasn't very compelling. It's also more productive for co-op to be able to say to a friend 'Let's meet at this shrubbery' and everyone knows how to quickly get there every time. Dungeons are more linear in the way that content is encountered, so they can be randomized quite a bit and you're not very likely to be just running around aimlessly. If you do hit a dead end you're at least assured you encountered plenty of battle (and thus loots) on the way.
Now, with all that said, the most important thing to remember is that not every area of the map is static, mostly just the borders. Within these borders are areas, ranging from small to very large, that will be randomized every time you play through the game. These areas are not just randomized monsters, as monsters will always be randomized in all areas of the maps. These random pockets can produce rare chests, dungeons and quests.
Official Blizzard Quote:
So while the exterior is largely static, within that defined landscape there are literal square holes (from small to huge) and within those empty square holes a great number of possible pieces can be dropped in. And they're chosen randomly. So you may play a few games and always see empty terrain in the same place, but on your next playthrough you'll instead have a broken down wagon appear and a quest giver that needs you to go kill a unique fallen shaman who stole his tools to fix it. And maybe the playthrough after that the square puzzle piece is a short dungeon to explore with a big chest or mini-boss at the end. Ideally it'll encourage exploration of the exterior zones over and over, hoping to find that a rewarding adventure has appeared.
As if this randomization was not enough, Diablo III will still have completely random dungeons like they did in Diablo II. Every time your character enters into the depths of Sanctuary, you will encounter different rooms and combinations of pathways. But to even add randomization to these randomized dungeons, some of the rooms will even have these pockets of randomized events that will offer even more variety in the countless amounts of playthroughs.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Dungeons on the other hand are completely randomized, same as Diablo II.* All of the halls and rooms and all the bits are shuffled around and it's all different every time. Some of the rooms themselves will offer unique quests if they're rolled up, and in some cases individual rooms themselves have those square chunks missing and within those randomly chosen rooms a number of random events can occur. It's a bit involved to explain, but very simple in practice (I believe some images of the square puzzle pieces were actually shown at a BlizzCon?). *Some small "dungeons" are completely hand crafted and won't include randomization of layout at all, but these are generally things like wine cellars or other underground areas of a few rooms or less.
Whether or not you agree with the static world in Diablo III, it is clear that every time you play Diablo III, it will not be the same occurrences you ran into the first one hundred times you played the game.
THAT.... was awesome. Thanks for the good read after a long week.
I've been annoyingly consistent on this one - this is the single lamest thing about D3's approach.
They spent a hundred million bucks to make this game, and will be cannibalizing a multiple of that on an annual basis to release it. With all of that sacrifice on a business level, you would think that they would be up to the challenge of not going backwards from d2 in terms of not even having random directions out of a given town hub.
Of all the ways that the D franchise has been neutered and WoW-ized, this may hurt the most, and is the most obvious example of how they have lost the connection with the original Roguelikes that spawned the game.
I personally disliked D2's random outdoor environments. It always just led to me having to cover an entire area before I found the waypoint, just to have to do the same thing the next time I entered an area. And from the sounds of it, D3's environments will basically be random with static borders and roads, so they're easier to navigate. Still just as much, or close to as much, replayability without the wandering around part. Large outdoor environments simply don't lend themselves to being completely random.
Yes, I think D3 has a fine mix of static and random from what I've read. Of course we're gonna have to test it out, but it sounds prime. It solves the D2 impatient map hack problem, but will still be interesting with these random patches. Hopefully, they are many, very random, and cover a large block of land (well some of them - the smaller blocks will also be special.
I think the "fired tester" described them as "glued together rectangles". Unsurprising, seeing as how there isn't a single person on that team with random dungeon experience from Diablo 1 or 2, as a designer, coder, or artist.
I personally liked the small touches of randomization in terms of the town exit and placement, it made each game feel a little more unique, even though I agree that it was badly implemented in most cases.
My whine is that because d2 botched so many non-dungeon randomness elements doesn't mean it isn't a great idea if it is done right, and a team with nearly infinite resources really has no excuse.
Well either way, they want the outdoor maps to be easier to navigate and remember. The only way to do that is to have a small number of random environments or have static areas. And dungeon randomness is obviously awesome, and its easier to make them easy to navigate because theres a smaller, more linear area to move through, so they kept that. You can say that randomly generated outdoors would be better in your opinion, but the justification behind is a good/obvious one so its not like the D3 team is just cutting corners.
but the justification behind is a good/obvious one so its not like the D3 team is just cutting corners.
You shouldn't need to justify anything after spending a hundred million bucks and twelve years on any entertainment product.
It isn't cutting corners - just wimping out, and wimping out based on an unfamiliarity with the "maximum randomness" ethic that originally inspired the game. Of course, that is asking a bit - almost all of the team joined more than a decade after that original inspiration happened, any many of them were probably in diapers when the first Rogue was released in 1980.
I love when people can completely ignore logic and reasoning to prove their own point. They have stated numerous reasons as to why they did this. If you really want to believe that it is out of laziness, cutting corners, or wimping out, that is your own delusional choice to.
Otherwise, I for one see the bad mechanic they are talking about and agree with the reasoning behind changing it and how they changed it. If walking around the border of each area just to find the next exit was fun for you, then I am afraid that the D3 approach of adding more randomness in a fun and meaningful way will not be for you.
You could always just play WoW to help them keep that cash cow floating since D3 is going to cripple the company into bankruptcy anyway. Ironic how a game that is supposedly sucking so much, in your opinion, is still going to draw in a big enough crowd to kill a large portion of wow subscribers, according to your opinion. I know...I know... It's because they are turning Diablo into wow...
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If walking around the border of each area just to find the next exit was fun for you, then I am afraid that the D3 approach of adding more randomness in a fun and meaningful way will not be for you.
I think that random levels, when done right, aren't just fun, they're the essence of the game (along with the obvious element of randomized loot). Are they annoying, boring, and frustrating when not done right? Of course, just play through the Act 3 Jungles, right?
I worry that the team doesn't really understand the primacy of this, or doesn't have the experience to really execute it.
The "fired tester" has some good points - if I want 'torchlight' I can spend the ten bucks and play it. If I spend six times that (and deal with the massive install and internet log-in) on a project that took ten times as long to make, I expect much, much more, including incredible depth and replayability. A static world (and dungeons that are as predictable as torchlight, if not moreso) is a big compromise on both those things, whatever the rationalization.
WoW relies on the actual players to give it a live feel. As an SP game by yourself, it is pretty weak. It is a shame an SP-centered game goes that route.
If the "fired tester" is your source of information, then there is nothing else I can say to help.
And there is still lots of randomization, if not more that D2 so... Just because the borders are not randomized in the world? All of the dungeons are still completely randomized with random events within this randomness. And before you quote the "fired tester" again, just watch the crafting sanctuary vid from last years blizzcon on our youtube page. It explains it on how they are designing dungeons. The randomness that will also appear within the static border will vary much more than they did in D2. They will have unique "boss" fights, quests or even complete dungeons to explore which, again will be completely randomized. I think this is a lot more work and randomness compared to the random placing of walls in D2.
But as I said, if random borders is more fun to you then what I mentioned, that is your choice. I just don't see how you can call the team lazy for expanding randomness compared to D2.
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I just don't see how you can call the team lazy for expanding randomness compared to D2.
I never have, and never would call them "lazy". Nor, I admit, is it fair to criticize them for design elements that may be imposed on them by management.
But a static world is obviously the opposite of "expanding randomness", and I have a feeling the tester's "glued together rectangles" has an element of truth.
Also, I don't want to jack this thread into a discussion of that guy's Q&A, but everything he posted sounds about right to me, though, of course, it is heavily colored by opinion. But in terms of replayability, I would take the opinion of someone who has played it for thousands of hours way before someone who has played one or two in a tightly-scripted blizcon build.
Also, there's almost no such thing as "random" elements in terms of boss and quest design. Bliz circa 2012 is far too risk-averse to do crazy name generation and random pallette skins. If they even try material like that, it won't last long in the beta. Randomness always works against narrative, which is why the old D games were very vague in terms of it. It was by design.
I don't even believe that the "fired tester" even worked for Blizzard, ever, but that belongs in another thread.
And I am confused about your last section. So D3 has less randomness because it has a strong narrative. This is exactly the point. They found a way to include randomness, more so than D2, without disrupting the narrative of the game. Man, the Diablo team is genius. All they had to do was put in randomness within some walls rather than just randomizing walls which destroys narrative.
Good story + random events, dungeons, quests and bosses = WIN
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Diablo 2 had way too much traveling involved. Most of the time you were more concerned about getting to the next area than enjoying the area you were fighting in. So long as they don't repeat that mistake, it's all good.
THAT.... was awesome. Thanks for the good read after a long week.
They spent a hundred million bucks to make this game, and will be cannibalizing a multiple of that on an annual basis to release it. With all of that sacrifice on a business level, you would think that they would be up to the challenge of not going backwards from d2 in terms of not even having random directions out of a given town hub.
Of all the ways that the D franchise has been neutered and WoW-ized, this may hurt the most, and is the most obvious example of how they have lost the connection with the original Roguelikes that spawned the game.
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Also, still totally random dungeons Mr. Gheed.
I think the "fired tester" described them as "glued together rectangles". Unsurprising, seeing as how there isn't a single person on that team with random dungeon experience from Diablo 1 or 2, as a designer, coder, or artist.
I personally liked the small touches of randomization in terms of the town exit and placement, it made each game feel a little more unique, even though I agree that it was badly implemented in most cases.
My whine is that because d2 botched so many non-dungeon randomness elements doesn't mean it isn't a great idea if it is done right, and a team with nearly infinite resources really has no excuse.
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You shouldn't need to justify anything after spending a hundred million bucks and twelve years on any entertainment product.
It isn't cutting corners - just wimping out, and wimping out based on an unfamiliarity with the "maximum randomness" ethic that originally inspired the game. Of course, that is asking a bit - almost all of the team joined more than a decade after that original inspiration happened, any many of them were probably in diapers when the first Rogue was released in 1980.
Otherwise, I for one see the bad mechanic they are talking about and agree with the reasoning behind changing it and how they changed it. If walking around the border of each area just to find the next exit was fun for you, then I am afraid that the D3 approach of adding more randomness in a fun and meaningful way will not be for you.
You could always just play WoW to help them keep that cash cow floating since D3 is going to cripple the company into bankruptcy anyway. Ironic how a game that is supposedly sucking so much, in your opinion, is still going to draw in a big enough crowd to kill a large portion of wow subscribers, according to your opinion. I know...I know... It's because they are turning Diablo into wow...
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
I think that random levels, when done right, aren't just fun, they're the essence of the game (along with the obvious element of randomized loot). Are they annoying, boring, and frustrating when not done right? Of course, just play through the Act 3 Jungles, right?
I worry that the team doesn't really understand the primacy of this, or doesn't have the experience to really execute it.
The "fired tester" has some good points - if I want 'torchlight' I can spend the ten bucks and play it. If I spend six times that (and deal with the massive install and internet log-in) on a project that took ten times as long to make, I expect much, much more, including incredible depth and replayability. A static world (and dungeons that are as predictable as torchlight, if not moreso) is a big compromise on both those things, whatever the rationalization.
WoW relies on the actual players to give it a live feel. As an SP game by yourself, it is pretty weak. It is a shame an SP-centered game goes that route.
All just my opinion, Scy, please no attacks.
And there is still lots of randomization, if not more that D2 so... Just because the borders are not randomized in the world? All of the dungeons are still completely randomized with random events within this randomness. And before you quote the "fired tester" again, just watch the crafting sanctuary vid from last years blizzcon on our youtube page. It explains it on how they are designing dungeons. The randomness that will also appear within the static border will vary much more than they did in D2. They will have unique "boss" fights, quests or even complete dungeons to explore which, again will be completely randomized. I think this is a lot more work and randomness compared to the random placing of walls in D2.
But as I said, if random borders is more fun to you then what I mentioned, that is your choice. I just don't see how you can call the team lazy for expanding randomness compared to D2.
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I never have, and never would call them "lazy". Nor, I admit, is it fair to criticize them for design elements that may be imposed on them by management.
But a static world is obviously the opposite of "expanding randomness", and I have a feeling the tester's "glued together rectangles" has an element of truth.
Also, I don't want to jack this thread into a discussion of that guy's Q&A, but everything he posted sounds about right to me, though, of course, it is heavily colored by opinion. But in terms of replayability, I would take the opinion of someone who has played it for thousands of hours way before someone who has played one or two in a tightly-scripted blizcon build.
Also, there's almost no such thing as "random" elements in terms of boss and quest design. Bliz circa 2012 is far too risk-averse to do crazy name generation and random pallette skins. If they even try material like that, it won't last long in the beta. Randomness always works against narrative, which is why the old D games were very vague in terms of it. It was by design.
And I am confused about your last section. So D3 has less randomness because it has a strong narrative. This is exactly the point. They found a way to include randomness, more so than D2, without disrupting the narrative of the game. Man, the Diablo team is genius. All they had to do was put in randomness within some walls rather than just randomizing walls which destroys narrative.
Good story + random events, dungeons, quests and bosses = WIN
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