I do not think it was cancelled for good - at least the Feature List (2nd bullet point) still states:
Destructible environments give evidence of your massive battles while collapsing stonework and flying shards of furniture can be used tactically to cause further injury to your foes.
Flying shards of furniture are in the game. Now I am curious about their capability to damage enemies (and the player) myself.
I actually don’t know if it is working or not. If it is, it isn’t very noticeable and needs to be rebalance. The way the damage is implemented needs to changed anyway for it to scale right.
So, whether it is broken or working but just not very well, we need to either put more time into it or cut it. I keep meaning to look into it but we’ve been preoccupied by bigger issues (like getting Act2 done) so I haven’t yet.
I think we should be able to get this working though in the future.
Hi medierra,
thank you very much for taking the time to answer on this.
For what is worth, I for one would really love to see this feature making it into the final game.
If it’s just broken but already implemented, then hopefully it won’t take too much time to fix.
Keep up the good work!
Just wanted to let you guys know that I ended up purchasing the game from your website.
Developer that takes his time to answer and nice community (which makes me hopeful for the multiplayer) convinced me.
Keep up the good work, I’ll give my feedback on the alpha section as soon as I can have some hours of gameplay.
hello
I cant find that big cemetary shown in the image in the opening post. Where is it?
Cemetary will be in another Act. Probably Act 2.
Destructable objects are there. I’ve destroyed furniture and walls to hidden areas. So its there. Just imagined destroying objects that would damage the opponents. But that would just be a bonus. Most of the time it wouldn’t be used. Just look at D3 with the candelabra’s and pillars holding up weak walls. Destroy it and the opponents still walk away with 25% left of their life. So not much of a miss if it wouldn’t make it into the final release. Perhaps something for an expansion or general addition after full release.
Ok, not trying to necro old threads or anything but this is one of the most recent posts I’ve seen and this comment relates to it anyway…
So, destructible environments. Awesome! One thing though, every time I bash in a door or break a vase or any other object, the pieces explode across my screen as if my foot kicking it had the force of dynamite. I imagine it has something to do with the physics engine but at the same time the enemies seem to fall down in place and their dismembered body parts dont fly across the screen so everything seems to be working fine there. Just some initial impressions as I play through this wonderful game. Cheers 
I necro this thread again sorry, but to me this was an important feature that made me purchase the game, it was advertised on the features list of the website and I have yet to understand if it will be in the game at all.
Any news?
The Feature List was updated since you asked last time.
Destructible Environments give evidence of your massive battles as you kick through house doors, destroy furniture and smash crumbling walls to reveal secret passages.
But I have no information, if this just reflects the current state of development - the feature might still be in, but so that you do not notice enemies are taking damage - or if “Destructible environments […] can be used tactically to cause further injury to your foes.” was scrapped for good.
Yes the fact that they changed the description on the website doesn’t look like a good sign 
But at least I still hope that if the damage is not calculated for the all the destructibles, they will still put in falling/objects that can be activated or are present as traps like in D3.
I think it can be a fun mechanic and I really hoped GD would expand into that.
I give my approval to this!
So almost two years have passed since I first asked about this.
Grim dawn is growing up to be a really beautiful game. I am especially happy about the optimization/performance, it runs almost flawlessly now at 60fps with all maxed out.
I am not really demanding anything here, I guess you decided to drop some features or completely forgot about them/didn’t have time to spend on them.
In case you decided to drop it, would it be possible to know the reasons?
Is it because you thought it wasn’t significant to the gameplay?
Is it because it required too many resources you felt would have been better spent elsewhere?
At the moment I feel that the destructible environments are underused at best.
Some furniture now and then, doors that you break open instead of doing so normally, a couple of secret walls, sometimes with the hint on the minimap that pin points it.
So much more could be done with it, both for combat and for exploration.
I hope it is still possible to make you reconsider and overhauling the mechanic, especially since you had so much of the code/graphic already in.
It wasn’t really a conscious decision to drop it. It just sort of got indefinitely pushed to the side by other higher priority things.
Then occasionally when I did remember it, I’d think of all the work that would be involved and issues that would need to be resolve to make it function well and I’d quickly decide to forget about it again and get back to my other work.
Part of the problem is that, as the game expanded, we added new environments and many of them don’t have any breakable things or even anything obvious that we really could add. So it would end up being a gameplay system that was much more prevalent in some areas than others, which could make balancing weird. Even when it was working, it felt like you had so little control over what was breaking, that it was hard to use very tactically. It was also difficult to tell when enemies were taking damage from flying debris vs. your own attacks, especially when there are a dozen enemies on-screen. When you’re spamming AoEs that kill enemies in 2-3 hits, a flying chair leg causing some damage isn’t that noticeable. Plus, half the time enemies end up breaking the stuff themselves - what happens then? Do they cause damage to themselves? If it causes extra damage to the player, is that going to result in unexpected damage spikes? If so, seems like it would get silly where you’d be thinking “oh no, better not stand near any furniture, debris might kill me”
I think ultimately, this is something that maybe sounded better on paper than in practice. Given the work it would take to make it work in a way that was really useful and impactful, and some question about how well it could ever be telegraphed to the player, I’m not sure it is worth the effort that would be needed.
Who knows, maybe I’ll look into it again at some point. My immediate thought though is just “ughh… not sure how to make this work better… back to the 5000 other things I’m supposed to be working on” :undecided:
like making the blockades which randomize zones destructible with dynamite?? seriously though, that’d be awesome right? “you can take the most direct path towards your destination, but it’ll cost ya!”
I can understand your reasoning, fair enough.
Still even tossing a bone here and putting in a little bit of it like the falling arch, some explosive barrels and a couple of traps, a bit more of electricity/hazard here and there… sounds more reasonable? It just has to add flair, it doesn’t need to be game changing. Something along the lines of what is already present in diablo 3 for instance.
If you are really averse to that idea, then more focus on random battles/interactions to be found between different factions (like monsters/animals/undeads/humans among themselves) would be much appreciated.
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer though, medierra, and keep up the good work on GD along the awesome folks at crate.
+1. Do like. Tagged. Ear marked. Etc.
So, after a long wait, I finally managed to play the full version of the game.
The wait was well worth it, I had a blast, you really did an excellent job on the game. It also runs smooth, never crashed while playing, no real bugs experienced, and I was really impressed by starting a new character and seeing how much better the first two acts looked. Congratulations 
This also means that I finally got to see the location where the arch of the original screenshot was taken from (also amazing to see the changes in all these years).
At the moment, from what I can see, the arch can still be destroyed… that part is still in the game… the only thing that is missing is the actual effect after the fall…
Now I don’t want to go back to the part about the other destructible objects, the kind of damage calculations required for the debris etc, you already explained well enough how complicated it was to find the right way to do it.
However, in the specific case of the arch, I wonder why it can’t work like for example the bombs you can find on the ground in the plains of strife (loved the location and the bombardments by the way)? It just takes a % of the monster/your overall health if you are hit, scaling with the difficulty level.
Maybe you could consider adding a stun/slow or similar debuff for a few seconds, that’s it. (sort of what it also works in diablo 3 I guess?)
I mean that if a formula to make every destructible object’s shattering can’t work, you can still create specific kinds of these, like the above mentioned bombs, the spikes in another level (can’t remember which) or the archs in this case. Best part compared to diablo 3 though, you can’t actually “highlight the trap” but have to aim at it/ avoid it, and it can also damage you, not only the enemies.
I hope it wouldn’t take too much effort to add some damage to something that is already in the game?
I am insisting so much in the matter because personally speaking, I think that having different ways of killing and things to be wary of when fighting can really spice things up and add more tactical awareness to the fights, which would be further reinforced in this game thanks to your beautifully hand drawn maps.
Nice wich again let me wonder when the crash gets fixed so i can play my trickster again…
W8 release new stuff until the game is playable again for all classes…
There is nothing being released… this is 6 years old.