Jay Wilson stated in an interview that dungeons will be randomly generated – in true Diablo tradition. Btw, Jay is Diablo 3 lead designer.
Outdoors will be persistent, however, and will not change from game to game. In other words, you can use landmarks in multiplayer as meeting places. I.e. Meet me by the river ford.
CG: Are the dungeons still going to be randomly generated?
JW: All the dungeons’ layouts are randomly generated. The exteriors are not. We have a new system of adventures that allows us to cut sections out of the terrain to put random — whatever — in there. We can put random terrain, we can put in scripted events — we wanted to add a lot more scripted events into the game.
So expect that outdoor monsters could be heavily scripted (as the terrain stays constant). They could run to a chest, get a bigger axe and come back.
The other thing I’d like to see in Diablo 3 is getting better, bigger “rogue camps”. Come on, Jay, you can make a city that’s more than 3 houses. Let’s hope that Caldium (picture right) is that city.
Think its great that outdoors isnt randomly generated.. would cause too much confusing if outdoors was changing from time to time
Have you ever played the last 2 games??
Randomly generated outdoors and dungeons was part of the unpredictableness of the game. Not knowing what you will be coming up against.
I´m with “-AAT-DEVILSDEMON “.
Randomly generated maps have been one of the true perks of any rougelike game. However, it would be nice to have some consistancy.
As the article stated, this will open up the doorway for randomly generated scripting. Creatures will have far better tactics with a consistant map. They could have fallback positions, fortifications, secret ambush zones, etc.
Heck, if Jay Wilson is using that much enviroment interaction with D3, we could see small outskirting villages between big towns. These villages would have minor services for adventrurers (and maybe some secret ones). They could also have pre-scripted and timed monster invasions where the villagers run inside their houses. If the adventurer is there, he’ll have to protect the houses from burning; especially those that harbor blacksmiths or shop owners. These helpful people could die permanently. (Like killing the merchant in Resident Evil 4).
More power to the developer! Keep the dungeons random, but give us a little consistancy!