Random or handmade world?

[zyklop]

What kind of world building system is used for Grim Dawn? Will you build up the whole world with an editor from hand like it was done with TQ or will there be a random building system using "bricks" like Diablo?

[Renevent]

I think the hand made world in TQ was awesome. There's quite a few places that really inspire awe. With that said, I think what Diablo 3 is doing sounds really nice...which is hand crafted over world areas mixed with random dungeons.

[MadWasp]

Beautiful handmade outdoor areas are cool. Powerful visual produce good feelin'.

[Alek]

They are working on randomly generating the dungeons, however, the tools they would use were utilized too late, and so the matter is in question.

They did promise some random variations in the above-ground-levels, but nothing major as far as I know.

[The Old Farmer]

All random gets old fast unless you have a huge selection, I am thinking of Hell gate London which was random but after a while everything started to look the same. A combination is a good idea if it can be worked out, or a all hand made like TQ.

[Mines51]

Hand made layouts are usually better IMO, more thought out and usually more appealing to the eye. If you randomize some of the random pieces could get pretty repetitive.

[yerkyerk]

Well, it's really not known yet. I think they're trying to see if they can implement some sort of randomization (perhaps only for dungeons?), but don't know how that'll work out yet.

So, just wait for an update..

[heron]

It would be great if they can hand craft the overworld and underworld.
The underworld would be as big as the overworld. All connected.

2 maps, one for the over world and one for the underworld.
day and night cycles, werewolf are stronger at nightfall and weather system!
rain, snow, fog, etc.

kinda like sacred2.
but the lack of story in sacred 2 made the world .. meaningless.

[TheRani]

In TQ there were a lot of tiny caves and dungeons that didn't have much of interest in them. Maybe a few critters and a primitive or ornate chest or pile o' bones. Waste of space. If those had been randomly generated dungeons containing a randomly generated mini-boss and some decent treasure, that would have been a lot more fun. Maybe even a few random quests in each town that point to such places would be nice. In short, maybe a combination of set-in-stone areas and quests, and randomly generated areas and quests would be nice. If they set up the areas in such a way that the set-in-stone areas and randomly generated areas are pieces that can fit together like a puzzle, it'd be spiffy. I mean like this:

If Town X has 4 areas branching off of it, areas A & B might contain quests and locations pertaining to the actual story, and areas C & D might be randomly generated dungeons or areas with random quests. Doesn't have to be crappy randomly generated quests like, "ZOMG! Please kill Painjuggler the Giant Spider and bring back my Silver Axe!" They could be awesome quests randomly picked from a list of awesome quests. More like Darkstone random quests, and less like Torchlight random quests.

[Jerich]

I think overworld areas should primarily be hand crafted and dungeons should be random as long as the random generator is well done. Diablo 2 had good randomization for its time, other games (like Everquest in LDON) have failed. Creating good randomized chunks is fairly challenging.

- Jerich