That’s close to the actual plan - see [post=7919]Starting Town[/post].
Ah, goodie! This is fine with me as it seems like a way to promote progression through the story, although doesn’t it conflict a bit with the statement medierra made at some point about the game being completely open from the start? Also, since games like this tend to be made for tons of playthroughs, it might be a little boring having to go do the same quests in the same order every playthrough just so you can actually run around the whole world. Or at least maybe they could offer a way by which the areas could be unlocked in any order, just so you didn’t have to take the exact same path every time through.
The monotony of doing the same quests in the same order over and over in TQ was one of my dislikes about it, as over time it sort of devolves into a formula of sorts, rather than a new adventure each time. although I guess I shouldn’t complain, as I can’t think of any game that does it another way (at least not in the genre of ARPGs). However, it would be awesome if GD was the first!
It is my understanding that this is the case e.g. you need materials to build a bridge to a new area, but once you have the material, there are three bridges of which you could build one, unlocking one of three areas, depending on which you decide to build
Hey Crate, a long time lurker, so I am not new, just made an account now though.
Anyway, I would just like to add my opinion about the “openness” of the areas. I am a long time fan of ARPGs and play D3 currently. What I never really liked about the Diablo series is the size of the levels, besides some areas in D2. So I think you should take a page out of the Sacred series. The gameplay for Sacred I found quiet boring and more repetitive then usual, however, the size of the world was by far the selling point for me.
As long as the character development is compelling and the gameplay is just as addicting as Diablo, then a huge open world would be much appreciated haha. Though, I would be very much content with large open and instanced zones. 
What I mean by large zones, is take the largest area in D3 right now (possibly the Desolate Sands or the Field of Misery) and times it by 5, this should be an average size of a zone (in my opinion). This is my biggest peeve with the game, the areas aren’t big enough haha.
In conclusion, I know what I asked for above is most probably impossible with your budget and that only a select few people, like myself, would enjoy. If anything, at least make the areas bigger than the ones in D3 and TL2 (assuming you’ve seen the beta).
TL;DR: The bigger, the better.
PS: I did play TQ, and enjoyed it very much.
Disclaimer: I, in no way, take responsibility for wasting the time of anyone who reads this useless post. 
“Open world” usually makes me cringe because most do not implement it well. I’ve never had a problem with linear.
Oblivion did it perfectly–which is why I can’t understand Skyrim’s going backwards. (“We want you to be able to encounter foes too powerful for you and too easy for you.” WTF? I don’t want that! I want a winnable challenge. I get enough frustration and disappointment in real life; I don’t need it in my leisure activities.)
Two Worlds .NE. Oblivion. Two Worlds is one of my favourite games (in spite of its entertaining-for-unintended-reasons voice acting) but open world sabotaged its linear quests. My first play-through, I was lost, confused: NPCs made no sense because they were talking about scripted things I’d not seen but was supposed to see. Frustrated, I found a very nice walkthrough; once I used that as a checklist, I had an awesome second playthrough, the experience the developers intended but did not facilitate.
A regulated world seems to be the way to go.
Path of Exile, at least when I played it, did open areas poorly in my opinion. Maybe it was just because of the zoomed in camera, but areas felt huge with nothing interesting to find in them. I think there’s little point in making a huge area if there’s no reason to explore it, because just rushing ahead to higher level areas will be more profitable. My favorite area was actually that linear narrow cliffside one because I felt like I could clean out the entire map while still feeling like I’m going somewhere.
I don’t understand why a casual player would be more likely to get lost and not know where to go. Doesn’t casual just mean someone who spends less time on the game? Or does it somehow imply a less intelligent person?
A casual player is one who isn’t into researching character builds, doesn’t care about itemization, and isn’t into online site dedicated to making your character better. They play the game to play the game. they might quite easily pass on an upgrade because the item they currently have looks better.
Some casual players actually play the game longer than what others might term as “hardcore” simply because they like to take their time in and around the game. This might be different for a single player game, but I know “casual” players in WoW that put way more hours than I did into the game 
So person in a hurry or un-intelligent person… Well there’s also the third possibility. Those people lacking environmental awareness.
Compared with somebody that has loads of time, is very intelligent and has great spatial awareness, all three are prone to failing at a more complicated game. However is is hard to say which of the three is the casual player… perhaps all/any of them!?
A casual player is one who isn’t into researching character builds, doesn’t care about itemization, and isn’t into online site dedicated to making your character better. They play the game to play the game. they might quite easily pass on an upgrade because the item they currently have looks better.
Doesn’t explain why they would get lost more easily though. It worries me if Grim Down is designed to be playable by someone who can’t even look at a map and his quest log and figure out where to go. Sounds much like when he described the publishers wanting Titan Quest to be playable by “our grandmothers”.
Seems odd that “casual gamer” would mean an un-intelligent person or someone lacking environmental awareness, since those are general personality traits.
And I really don’t understand how one could get “lost” in a game that is played from an isometric perspective in the first place. Unless there are mazes?
there is no “too open”. if it it was possible i’d like a whole planet to explore and conquer. with the possibility to teleport to other planets and conquer them too with my army of the undead.
Have a boss that artificially strangles access to a higher tiered level? You’ve got to be joking. That’s like all the fun of fighting Durial as a Lagomancer in Diablo 2… what’s that my 20 levels of character progress worthless because you want me to suddenly re-spec for glorified PvP.
The problem is the game can be played single player and casual gamers after a hard day of work ‘will’ play it single.
If you have a gatekeeper that restricts their ‘fun’ character from progressing all you will achieve is to frustrate them into saying the game is shit and rage quitting (thus having the game fail their expectation of being able to relax to some mindless slaughter).
If there is a way around the Gatekeeper, it’s more palatable.
Ideally you want things to feel close but able to be circumvented or tactically approached. Sacred failed me as a gamer because it was too open and i quite often got lost mindlessly grinding when that was quite the opposite of my intent.
You need a system like an overlay that can keep you apprised of the geographical features if you don’t simply want to make superhighways to quests, because lets face it an arrow saying over that ways some shit… uh eventually; is no real help to anyone.
I agree. Although I play Sacred occasionally its openness just leaves me struggling. It’s the same for Oblivion. I much prefer TQ’s method of letting me explore areas without wandering completely off the track of following the main quest.
I haven’t played Sacred much lately (not got back into it now I have a new PC), but when I play I do the main and side quests and I don’t think I covered more than 20-30% of the total map area available in doing so. Couple that with the fact that you no sooner clear an area, move a little way off and come back and it’s full of foes again was a real put off for me. I don’t want to waste hours exploring and tackling constantly re-occuring foes, I want to get on with following the story. Exploring all that area in Sacred would only be something I’d do after I finished all the levels in the game - which I’m unlikely to do since I find it pretty boring to play.
As You brought up the example of Sacred, I have to say that I do like Part I without Underworld quite a bit! In my opinion this is a perfect balance between openness and progressing forward. Although I do like Sacred II including Ice & Blood much, in this game it do feel a bit overwhelmed by the largeness of the different regions. It is fun to explorer them and there is much to discover, but as a occasional player whom doesn’t like to run through a game only to get to the next level of difficulty, I do have a problem with the largeness of the maps of Sacred II. When there is so much to discover, I personally would prefer when then the level of difficulty could be changed by the player during the game or the game does it on its own by scaling to the level of the char.
So, my point is, openness a big yes, but it has to be balanced to the story and side quests so that you not get lost in the way that when you like to do all the quests (incl. side quests) that the game gets too simple in the end.
First off, Azrael didn’t say anything about bosses, just “higher level enemies” in areas that are further along in the main quest, something that Crate has already confirmed will be in the game. Secondly, it sounds more like you hate bosses in general rather than stuff that blocks your access. I’m fairly certain there will be bosses in Grim Dawn.
D2 may not be the best game for drawing parallels with Grim Dawn. Titan Quest would probably be a better example. In TQ many abilities that were useful against groups were also good in boss fights, and I’m sure that the same will be true in GD.
I don’t see how playing single player has anything to do with this. And I don’t foresee anyone raging simply because there is such a thing as a boss creature. Maybe if the boss has a cheap ability or something of the sort…
You’re definitely right about this. I don’t want to end up doing too much wandering in GD; I would rather feel like my exploration is directed. Some kind of overlay sounds good to me, something that allows you to see yourself in relation to the entire map.
So I guess I’m saying: Openness=yes, Lots of aimless wandering=no
I love exploring in almost any game I play. If there is a map to fully uncover then I will go out of my way to uncover it. It is even more fun when there is a reward for doing so.
How open is too open? More than I can play in a lifetime. Anything more than that would anger me because I couldn’t do it. Exploration is great, finding new landscapes and new enemies, and especially new loot. Finding fragments of journals like in sacred would be cool, larger areas more journals. Open is great.
I don’t think you can really be too open. As long as I have somewhere to go, and something to fight against, I’m happy.
Then of course, I’ve never been hard to please
GDFTW!
I enjoy games that give me different ways to play based on the mood I’m in when I boot it up. Some days I want to focus on progressing to the next milestone, some days I want to kill lots of monsters/other players, and some days I want to putter around and look for collectibles/explore points/unique monsters.
The games that did that best had wide open areas with well defined paths to major objectives, and some reason to leave the defined path. I prefer that the fog of war gets revealed in sections, ala WoW, instead of having to swipe back and forth to make sure you didn’t miss something in that 4x4 pixel black spot on the map.
I’m playing the GW2 beta and they have a really neat system where you find scouts that can reveal some features of different areas if you talk to them. I haven’t played enough to make up my mind, but I’m thinking that they’re a little too thorough with what is on your map. They have a measure of how much of the map you’ve “completed” though and it would be frustrating to be one explore point away from 100% and not be able to find it.
I’d rather look for visual cues when I’m exploring - as someone mentioned earlier, overgrown roads, torches, etc. I’ll see a structure in the distance and wonder what it is and see if I can get to it. I’m one of those poor souls that will always be led astray by will-0’-the-wisps (or blood smears leading into a dark foreboding cave depending on where I’m adventuring…)
I thought Elder scrolls was too open. There weren’t enough visual cues to make me feel like I was exploring with purpose. The trail of bread crumbs needs to start from the obvious path. While it’s exciting to stumble across some old ruins in the middle of nowhere, it’s annoying to comb an area and find nothing. I won’t explore if I have no indications that there is something to find.
(Basically echoing here things that others have said.)
The world should be explorational without being wide open and spilt out all over the place. I’m envisioning a long road winding throughout the entire main game trek, offering a satisfying and replayable experience on its own, rich and deep for those who wish only to experience the core story: and those who dare venture off the beaten path must choose to make an effort against a considerably discouraging level of danger - one that provokes a true and constant sense of apprehension for the player from the get-go throughout all the progressive difficulties. You shouldn’t at all feel that the game encourages you to wander into the wilderness, but forces you to plow your own way to the succulent rewards you know lie there, should you choose to pursue them.
One specific technical device adding to the atmosphere, as someone mentioned above, is fog-of-war reforming and closing in again, or the tight focus of exploration is lost.
Being able to place map markers, then, would be a crucial feature, and in my opinion the player should have to do so manually. Magical auto-maps would be a little too handy, and there should be no realtime gps system.
The key is immersiveness.