An Interview with our Level Design Department

Thanks for that! I really appreciate these behind-the-scenes posts! :)

"

Kroughfire wrote:

Great info, and interesting to get a peek into the world of game creation.

Also, huuuuge Pirates of the Burning Sea shout out; loved that game.

Oh can't believe I missed that part; was a gigantic fan too. Played that game religiously back in the day haha, was so stunned nothing else was similar to it.

Respect all the hard work, but don't like the traps. I'm one of those "ain't got time for this" and would rather just walk past the traps. I like how Izaro fight works, but not a fan of having to go though a hundred traps to get to him. I mean I hated the idea from the first announcement of Ascendancy, tried to give it a chance, I don't like it.

Wish traps weren't a thing you added, only thing I really can't agree with about Ascendancy. Like the Classes, like the Izaro mechanics... Traps just don't fit in my opinion, I make tanky characters but I don't care about avoiding traps, I build to survive monster encounters, not to avoid traps.

>"It was also a bit tricky to make it so that players wouldn't just want to skip through the whole trap section thinking "ain't nobody got time for this", we had to make sure it was worth going through and not just a simple speed bumps section."

This is exactly how I play all labyrinth runs lol

"Significantly more animated environment features is definitely something I'd love to see"

Yes please, animated environment never gets old as opposed to realistic looking environment which looks foolish as graphics in other games improve. You could begin with reworking and adding animation to some of the older maps like the upper and lower prison.

Nice to see them continue hiring top notch and experienced AAA developers, its awesome to see GGG growing and become more and more successful. The development of this game started in a small garage and was funded via crowd funding and now theyre a successful company with 60+ employees and keeps growing :)

Things that i think should be focused on now is: player and skill animation, as well as physics. D3 can be a role model for this. Also rework monster death animations. Corpses dont need to fly all over the place like in d3 - especially since necromancers need the corpses - but a physics system should be a thing

Imo PoE already does everything better than d3 - except for the fluid gameplay and impactful combat. So you need to work on this front to wrek d3 once and for all. PoE becomes awesome when you played the game for a while and understand the mechanics etc., but the slow beginning and clunky feel of the characters scare off a lot of players (especially d3 players that want to try PoE).

I know this has nothing to do with level design, but i just wanted to post it .)

oh, Maurice Moss from THE IT CROWD shaved his head and works for GGG now, cool.

Thanks for organising these interviews with GGG staff, Bex. It was a good read. It's always good to learn more about the variety of roles and the people in the office.

Bring on some mountain / snow terrain! And a snow based hideout, so I don't have to use cob webs to simulate it :)

"

snowglider wrote:

Bring on some mountain / snow terrain! And a snow based hideout, so I don't have to use cob webs to simulate it :)

+1 for snow!