Terrain design will probably be fairly similar, hopefully with lots of quality of life improvements though.
Terrain / area/ level design is totally my thing.
I cant judge on scripting or dialogue, but the "level design" with the DOS1 editor is almost like a dream come true, easy to use and very powerfull. I would even say it is "elegant".
You can't have powerfull tools without a certain level of complexity though, but still, if you have worked with terrain editors before you should be on your way with level design in DOS2 very quickly.
The DOS1 one is without a doubt the most amazing editor I have ever worked with, and I have worked with quite a few of them the past 20 years or so.
Huh, that's a very rare opinion. Terrain design was definitely powerful, but I found it very tedious and frustrating at times (No undo feature for textures = THE WORST). And yet, you're right that with power comes complexity, and I'm not entirely sure what kind of major changes would make it significantly easier to use besides stuff like texture undo, adding more textures to the texture tool at once.
First off I probably should have said the DOS1:EE editor, as I have only used that one. I have never used the original editor.
I actually prefer the DOS1:EE "right click to erase texture" over an "undo", having both could be nice though.
One of the things I love about the editor is the way textures are handled, each being their own layer (with their order being important). Having multiple textures under the brush would not be very usefull for me, as I try to have as little overlapping textures as possible, but each his own I guess.
I can't think of anything that would significantly improve the ease of use either, not without the loss of functionality anyways, and I would hate anything like that.
Probably the most useful thing would just a bunch of videos by the main level designers (Nord!) about their process and little tips and tricks. Stuff like what paint level certain textures tend to clamp at best (e.g., grass looks good when applied at 50% rate on top of Sand at 75% application with a Base of X dirt.) Obviously a lot of it comes down to experimentation, but some jumping off points would help a lot of people ease into level design.
I agree with that completely as I think the "preparation phase" (wich textures, vegetation and "placeables" to use to get a certain atmosphere) are the most time consuming of the proces. Once you have that sorted, the actual building can be done extremely fast.
I intend to do (and publish) some "studies" of my own once I get my hands on the editor.
