Monster density has been custom tailored for the consoles, since the pace of combat is different than the PC counterpart. We wanted to make sure combat flow was smooth and action packed, so you can be sure that we've kept that in mind as we adjusted the density.

Let me be more specific: The monster density updates you added in 1.08 JUST for inferno, is that coming to console?
Yes and no.

Difficulty levels and Monster Power operate a little differently on console. There will still be Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno, and completing one mode will unlock the next mode -- just like on PC. Also, within each of these modes players will able to select from different difficulty levels to suit their preferred level of challenge. On console, however, there are only 8 settings: Easy, Medium, Hard, Master I, Master II, Master III, Master IV, and Master V. At Medium and higher in Inferno, density does increase, but the increase won't be as significant as what you'd typically see on PC (due to performance issues). Similar to MP on PC, higher difficulty settings present more powerful enemies that will have opportunity to reward players with more powerful loot.

For perspective, here's the current scaling (note that this may change before we ship):

• Easy = Monster Power 0
  
• Medium = Monster Power 2
  
• Hard = Monster Power 4
  
• Master I = Monster Power 6
  
• Master II = Monster Power 7
  
• Master III = Monster Power 8
  
• Master IV = Monster Power 9
  
• Master V = Monster Power 10

Hope that helps!

Interesting quote! (Also, apologies in advance for the TL;DR response.)

While the core of the console game is based on the PC game -- you get all the same content, systems, classes, skills, and runes on the console as you do on PC -- the console version of Diablo III is really its own thing. It's a familiar, but ultimately unique experience. Our goal when developing Diablo III for console was to deliver that same visceral gameplay you get with a mouse and keyboard, but at the same time feel completely natural when using a controller. (Basically, whichever platform you prefer for gaming, you can pick that version and know that it was tweaked to be best suited for the platform of your choice.)

In order to achieve that, we've made a variety of tweaks to the the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, including a complete re-design of the UI and character controls, inventory management, as well as combat pacing and boss fights. The item game is predominantly the same, but we've also made some minor adjustments to itemization. Items will drop less frequently, but will typically be of higher quality. There's a chance that when a white or gray item drops, that it will be automatically converted to gold too. These changes were made to help manage the flow of gameplay and keep players in the midst of combat (and out of their inventory screens) as much possible. Inventory management is a little more difficult on the console version than it is on the PC, where you have a mouse to quickly navigate through menus, so this was a pretty key tweak for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Many of these adjustments inspired future changes we'd like to make to PC, and many of them were inspired by plans we already had for improving itemization as a whole. Since we use staggered development (meaning, the PC and console games more or less have separate teams and development cycles), though, it's possible that one game will receive changes before another. Over time, which game that is may switch back and forth. Even so, PC will always be the lead platform.

Regardless, here are a few interviews and hands-on reviews from PAX East you may want to check out. I've only highlighted ones where itemization on console gets addressed, but I figured this was kind of important, as it lets you get the information directly from the developers. :)

Penny Arcade Report
Kotaku
IGN (Skip to 5:25)

Thank you for linking that blog. I wanted to confirm how long ago it was, and three months is a long time to stand around and do nothing, from a player's perspective. Ask the Devs isn't even done, and the blog came before it, three months ago. Three months
Correct. Sometimes, changes to games can be made quickly. But that's not always the case, especially when you're looking at a system (like itemization) that's very core to the game itself. We can definitely understand that players would like said changes made overnight -- heck, we would too -- but we'd much rather take our time and come up with something that's actually meaningful and relevant, rather than implement something quickly that doesn't satisfy the current problems and/or make the game anymore engaging.

Everything we get is super rushed feeling instead of complete and considering the amount of time you guys spend being mum about things, we are being reasonable to doubt you guys care.
We know that some players feel that way about previous changes we've made (i.e. legendary improvements), and it's not unreasonable. Even if that's not actually the case, that's part of the reason why we're taking things a little more slowly this time around and really looking at more big/sweeping changes to the core of the item game.

That's disrespectful towards the community, even though I know you guys regret that the itemization blog came out so soon (e.g. Travis Day said that in his interview with Archon on Twitch). Once it's done, just stand up to it, don't hide your heads behind your hands, like they could cover you.

So, Lylirra, this comes from a respectful player who loves D3 : why did you guys stop communicating about itemization for so long ? You come out as very unprofessional, especially after you yourself said you guys were going to make efforts to communicate with the community
That's fair. At the moment, we just don't have a lot of details to share about itemization (beyond what we've already communicated). Our goal is always to share new information once it's available, but the tricky part is what to communicate in between those points. Do we just reiterate what we've already said? Do we talk high-level only? Or do we just remain mum until that new information is out? Players are definitely divided on what they want.

Going to back to Travis's blog, itemization was a very popular topic and we wanted to acknowledge the concerns that players had officially, even if we didn't have a lot of details to share about how we were going to approach specific pain points. That was also feedback we'd heard a lot of: "We don't care if you don't have any details to share. Just respond to us." And so that particular developer journal blog was born, as well as the following Ask the Devs topic.

The upside to posting Travis's blog when we did is that is tackled some of the major discussions players were having while they were new and relevant. It was also a direct response to the feedback we'd been given. The downside is that the blog came out just as we were starting to approach our itemization revamp, so there's not been a lot of new information to share between then and now. We're still working on the same ideas and theories, but nothing's really reached a point where we can communicate that a) these are the things have been locked down and B) here are all the details of how those systems will work. Also, the communication we've provided on those "in-between" stages has been met with a lot of criticism (see the responses to the all itemization-related "Ask the Devs" answers) so far. Some people even said: "I don't know why you're even bothering to answer this if you don't have any details to share" -- which was the exact opposite feedback we'd heard just a few weeks prior.

We'd love to do more informal chats like what Travis and Wyatt did with Archon on the May 15, where the developers just take some time to casually talk about the game and their approach to certain issues. We might not have a lot of new information to share in those chats, but at least it would establish a nice of cadence of conversation. Less formal, more frequent.

But I don't know -- is that something that you guys would appreciate? We're always willing to experiment and find out what method works best to getting you information about the game. (Granted, it may not always be new information since Diablo III doesn't iterate as frequently as games like World of Warcraft or ones that are still in beta, but I think just having some transparency and candid communication with the developers would be nice.)

Over a decade and counting ain't enough?
Not sure what you're actually looking for here with your comment? We admit the item game we created in Diablo III has flaws, we've openly admitted those flaws to our players and that we want to improve them. The next big step is to identify the right way to fix those flaws and, in the process, really re-capture that lust for loot and feeling of "HOLY CRAP ORANGE" that many players feel is missing right now.

Yes almost 100% console version will have 1.0.9
Going to nip this one in the bud. The console version of Diablo III will ship with all of 1.0.7 content, plus some features from 1.0.8 -- but that's it. Detailed that a little more here: http://us.battle.net...ic/9245624848#4

We will be performing scheduled maintenance beginning on Tuesday, June 18th at 05:00 PDT and we expect the service to be available again at approximately 11:00 PDT. During this time the game will be unavailable for play.

I think both opinions are valid here ("yes, support self-found mode" and "no, don't support self-found mode"), so I encourage you to keep the debate active. It's a good one, and I love getting to hear from each side of the fence -- specifically on why you feel the way you do.

Before this discussion gets too far, though, I did want to bring your attention to the following discussions that Wyatt and Travis had with Archon earlier on this very topic. You can find the full chat here: http://us.battle.net...izard-5-23-2013

What are the chances of us seeing a self-found mode sometime in the future?

Wyatt: That's a good question. I am playing self-found hardcore myself right now; I may take a short break from it to level Paragon this week. We think that it's a fun way to play for some people, but not everyone likes playing that way.

So I think, obviously people can play self-found kind of right now. I think the main challenge is that it would be nice to have a little bit of recognition for it, some sort of indication and validation from the server that your character is self-found. But we also don't want to do it in a way that complicates the UI. I know that our solution to this in the past has always been a little bit inelegant when we introduce things with checkbox options. People complain a lot about Elective Mode, that's a big one, or Advanced Tool Tips, or most recently Monster Power. We've sort of used options as a little bit of a crutch, to hide things from beginners, while still allowing expert players access to these things that we really want. On the character creation screen, do we really want to put another self-found checkbox on the front? I guess, maybe. To make a long story short: I think self-found is pretty cool, but we don't want it to get in the way of people who aren't interested in it. I know we use non-committal language a lot; because design is super-iterative. So it is a matter of trying some stuff out, and we like some stuff, and we don't like others, and we hate promising things only to try it internally and realize we're not happy with it. So, again, lots of non-committal disclaimers.

We've talked about maybe marking your character automatically as having been self-found until you trade. So the moment you equip something that you didn't find yourself -- maybe if I just pull up your battle.net page, then on the web page it says this character has used the Auction House, or hasn't used the Auction House. So that's definitely a soft way to maybe do something like that. The other challenge for me when I play self-found is my gold. I hate having to remember how much gold I had, to not go below the amount I started at. That's kind of annoying, it would be nice if the game just said, "This is how much gold this character has". Then if I wanted, I could opt in to having shared gold with the rest of my account. I consider it great that my gold is shared across my account, most of the time. It saves me from having to transfer gold between all my characters, which is why we did it. But it definitely does make self-found a little bit of a pain. So maybe a little option, or something. Like I said, I'm not a big fan of options, I think it complicates the UI. But I like self-found, so if we can do something to help support and promote it, that would be great.

Any thoughts on self-found mode?

Travis: Wyatt's a big fan of self-found mode, we debate that internally. Not the validity of self-found style, but whether or not we try to support that as a gameplay style. Because at some point, yeah it's cool, but at the same time we don't need to support every style of behavior that emerges in the game, as a full playstyle within the game. We don't need hardcore, softcore, self-found, XYZ because someone liked them. I will say, I think people find self-found to be so enjoyable because honestly, the game is more fun when you pull the Auction House out of the equation. When you feel like the things that you have on your character are something you can be proud of, and not just something everyone assumes you purchased, I think you have a better sense of accomplishment. So I think there is a really strong psychological draw to self-found. I've thought about doing it before, because yeah, I can buy anything I want, my characters are Paragon 60, 70-something, I forget. But there is something really compelling about the idea of just finding things on my own. Especially because it just gets back to the heart of what made D2 items fun. You got excited when you found things on the ground, and that doesn't really happen anymore.

Generally the Auction House, or the items your friends give you, whatever the case: whatever the items you're getting, usually they're coming from somewhere else, and they're usually so powerful that you know everything you ever find is going to be bad by comparison. That really does take away a lot from the gameplay experience, instead it puts the focus on the xp bar moving up which is great, but that's a very rhythmic sort of thing. It's not like sometimes your xp bar decides it's going to give you three levels, for no reason, and you get really excited! Your xp bar just sort of slowly moves along, and you make progress. But finding the cool item or the good legendary is what really mixes up your gameplay experience. I think that's really important, and I think for a lot of players that's lost. I won't say all because a lot of players don't use the Auction House, a lot of players play the game through story mode and then they're done, they play it like any console game. That's fine, too. But what's important to us is that you have fun. That's something that players want something from our game that we're not currently delivering, for some of them. And they try to find their own fun. So I think there's something there that we've talked about and it comes up a lot, and we may pursue something like that one day, it's hard to say. But it's totally a legitimate play style, and it's cool, and I think anyone who hasn't tried it should give it a whirl and make a guy and commit to: I'm only going to wear things I find on my own, and see how they feel.

I think you should try it.

Travis: I've considered it as well.

Since I've tried it, it's pretty much the only way I play right now. For right now I think the game works better in self-found, but it sounds maybe like your theory is, we can address those issues and maybe not have the need for so many players to play self-found?

Travis: I guess what I'm getting at is, I think self-found is very cool. I personally feel like the game does feel better when... TLDR: the heart of the issue is that people who play self-found, what they're really doing is saying to themselves, "I want the reward game to matter, I want to get excited about things I find on the ground." We would say yes - we want the game to always to feel like that for everybody, right now it doesn't and it needs work. What that ends up meaning I can't say, I don't know, we're still working it all out. But what players are doing when they opt into self-found, is basically they're playing the game the way they want the game to be played. They want that to be the right way to play, you want to get excited about finding items, and we want you to. But right now the Auction House sort of sets the bar for what a good item is so high, that 99% of players will never find something better than what they bought for 100,000 gold on the Auction House. That becomes a crappy feeling, so I'm saying I want to get the self-found feeling for everyone, ultimately. And I don't know what that means, I don't know how we do that, necessarily. We want items to feel exciting, we want you to get excited about loot on the ground. That's why I'm putting a lot of my time, trying to think of legendary things that are mind-blowingly awesome, because we want you to have those things in the game. It's just gonna take time.

I agree with you, that it would be better if everyone got the reward that you get from playing self-found without having to add a new sector of the game so to speak. I would probably switch back to playing regularly if I did feel like I was earning most of my gear, and to improve most I would have to find it myself.

Transcript courtesy of Diablo Somepage: http://diablo.somepa...-and-travis-day

http://us.battle.net...ic/6679558168#7 ;)

Allowing players to visually customize their character's armor beyond just dyes is definitely something we want to do. Feel free to keep debating and discussing how you'd like such a feature implemented, though! For example: would you prefer cosmetic slots or a system like transmogrification in WoW, and why would you prefer one system over another? Etc.

He wrote it 4 months ago ? U still want to hear why ? Just start working on something . I think players said what they want !
I'm not asking why, but rather what! It's something we want to do (and plan on doing), so the "why" is kind of moot. We know why you'd like to customize your appearance. :)

I was encouraging discussion more around how you'd like such a feature to work. That kind of feedback is great no matter where we might be in the development process.

From the corpse-ridden byways of New Tristram to the teeming streets of Caldeum, a hero never has to travel too far to find a fine artisan. But just as a Jewelcrater can fashion the most delicate gems or steely Blacksmith can harness raw materials to fabricate powerful armor under the light of a forge, there are also talented craftsmen outside of Sanctuary that have fantastic creations to share.

This week’s community spotlight shines on Dustin Synnestvedt and his unique stained glass panel of the Archangel Tyrael. Dustin's Tyrael piece was the final project of a stained glass course at Bryn Athyn College on Pennsylvania where students were focused on learning and practicing the basic techniques of stained glass. The final project, so named "The Angel Project," was to take the culmination of all they'd learned and create their own angel window, the final result of which was to be donated to the Sandy Hook school in Connecticut.

The choice was theirs to pick an existing angel-themed window and copy it exactly, create their own window design based off a picture of an angel, or fashion everything from scratch! The window was intended to be 16"x12" so that it could fit securely into a picture frame.

One of the requirements of Dustin's project was that students were to choose a composition that was not to complicated, seeing as designing a window is quite a challenge in and of itself! Because of this, students were encouraged to zoom in on an existing photo or focus their window on a select portion of the picture as opposed to designing a window based on an entire photo.

Dustin shared a great number of photos of the painstaking process of creating this stained glass creation, which took him around 75 hours. The process included planning, cutting the glass, shaping it further on a grinder, painting it, molding the lead connections, and then adding the finishing touches. You can find a selection of photos from the process as well as the completed piece below.

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Can’t get enough of Dustin's stained glass? Check out more of his work out on his Facebook!

-Right now it is a pain to farm demonic essences, their drop rate is just too low for an item that much needed by the players,

-Considering the actual drop rate in mp10 is 38.9% it is just extremely low, considering most players have to craft in amounts of 100 or 200 at the same time, it just gets too annoying.

-There are some upgrades that cannont be achieved without crafting at all, i'd like demonic essences to be guaranteed when killin every single elite monster in mp10. That'd be awesome
Your post is pretty interesting, because most threads I've seen (both here and on other Diablo fan sites) typically say that Essences drop too frequently. I'm glad you created it, since it's generated a lot of great debate on the topic.

Couple of questions for you so I can get a bit of context for where your feedback is coming from (anyone is welcome to chime in):

- On what MP do you typically farm?

- Do you usually just farm casually and pick up whatever Essences you acquire along the way, or do ever go out of your way to farm Essences specifically?

- About how many Essences do you pick up in a session?

- Do you use those Essences immediately, or are you a player that likes to stock up?

- When it comes to crafting, is gold the limiting factor for you or are Essences?

- How many Essences would you like to ideally see in a farming session, and why do you feel that amount would be better than what you see currently?

Thanks!

I would like to see demonic essence drop rates a bit raised, but I can see validity of having it fairly low (due to ability to craft BIS).
That's certainly one of the biggest influences on the drop rate. Even so, we're always open to making adjustments if they're what's best for the long term health of the game. And getting a better understanding for how players who would like to see the drop rate raised approach farming and crafting just informs that decision in a much more meaningful way.

Funny how a positive thread with a D3 dev's name in it doesn't get deleted. Yet the second a constructive criticism thread is posted with the same names it gets deleted.
Link me one? That criteria alone isn't reason enough for a thread to be removed.

Constructive criticism is totally fine. Threads that include personal attacks, devolve into arguments and mud slinging, or are created simply to troll the community, however, are all candidates to be locked or removed.

With all respect, I can't link them because... they were deleted?
Links to deleted threads still actually exist, they'll just to point a "post has been deleted" page. It does require that you have the URL, though.

If you see any examples, let me know. Like I said, constructive threads with slightly deviant titles shouldn't be deleted (in most cases, we'll just change the title if the content is otherwise okay).

Use your head a little bit. It's "frowned upon" because they want to promote positive discussion, not inspire a bunch of nerd-ragers to directly shout at/insult GMs/devs personally. If it's a positive point, of course it's moot, because there is no element of abuse. Seems pretty obvious.
Word.

Attendees who stop by the Activision and Sony booths at E3 this year to try out our multiplayer demo of Diablo III have the chance to walk away with a sweet PS3 skin bearing the D3 logo. (Pretty snazzy, huh?)

Rather than just let this be an E3-exclusive item, we want to give players at home the opportunity to score this loot, too! So, if you’d like to try your fate at earning a custom Diablo III-inspired skin for your PS3, here’s what you can do:

1) On Thursday, June 13, the Diablo III console developers will be taking the Sony Stage at E3 to give a special presentation of Diablo III on the PS3.

2) We'll be posting about this presentation on Twitter and Facebook – keep an eye on for these on Thursday!

3) Whenever you see a post related to the presentation on Thursday, either re-tweet it on Twitter or click "Share" on Facebook. Make sure to share the post publicly on Facebook so that you're eligible and so that we can contact you if you're a winner!
And it's that simple. We'll be randomly selecting 50 players who re-tweet and share our posts to receive the custom skin after the convention is over. Good luck, Nephalem!

Battle.Net Won't Integrate With Consoles
Is there going to be a different Bnet designed around console players or are the logins going to be linked to our console accounts IE: PSN or XboxLive?
There aren't any current plans to have Battle.net integrate with console characters. Instead, you'll be using the native platform. So, any online services you'd want to take advantage of while playing on the PS3 or Xbox 360 (i.e. online matchmaking, friends lists, achievements, voice chat, etc) would be managed by the platform's respective network -- in this case, PlayStation Network or Xbox Live.

probably generated and stored on the console since it has "ofline mode"
For characters on console (just as an FYI), players will be able to load their characters to a USB and bring them along to play on a friend’s console. You'll also be able to access cloud saves to load up your characters.(Blue Tracker/ Official Forums)

Builds Are the Same as in the PC Version
Can I creates these builds in the console version? And if so how would it work?
Skills and runes for each class are the same on console as on PC, so you can theoretically create the exact same builds if you want. The game does play a little differently, though, because of how you control your character, so you may personally find that one build plays a little better on the PC than on console (and vice-versa). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Prepare your couch and consider fortifying your living room, because on September 3, Diablo® III will unleash hell on both the PlayStation® 3 and Xbox 360®! It pays to be prepared against the forces of the Burning Hells, so get your preorder lined up for the PS3™ or Xbox 360, as added bonuses are in store for those who take the fight for Sanctuary to their big screen TV.

Xbox 360® and PS3™ Preorder Items:
All preorders of the Xbox 360 and PS3™ versions of Diablo® III will include the following diabolically enticing items,  available to all five mortal heroes of Sanctuary—be it the Witch Doctor, Barbarian, Wizard, Demon Hunter, or Monk (players who’ve been keeping on top of console-related news will notice that the bounty for preorders has expanded):

• "Infernal Helm" – Wearable at level 1, the console-exclusive Infernal Helm in-game item confers a +EXP bonus to help you whip your new PlayStation® or Xbox characters into shape
  
• "Angelic Wings" – Taunt the forces of the Burning Hells by sprouting a cosmetic pair of glowing angel wings
  
• "Bottled Cloud Dye" – Dye your armor sets a cloudy white with this heavenly dye
  
• "Bottled Smoke Dye" – Dye your armor sets an eerie smoky black with this sinister dye

Exclusive PS3™ In-Game Items:
Players who purchase Diablo® III on the PS3™ will also receive five additional PS3-exclusive in-game items:

• "The Hero’s Journey" – A Legendary shoulder item that includes a “Journey” style scarf
  
• "Drake's Amulet"– A Legendary amulet that bears a striking resemblance to the ring that Drake wears around his neck in Uncharted
  
• "Leoric's Gauntlets" – These Legendary gloves summon a ghostly skeleton to fight for you
  
• "Crimson Angelic Wings" – This cosmetic enhancement calls forth a set of red Angelic Wings
  
• "Leah's Ring" – A Legendary ring, originally given to Leah by Deckard Cain, that's usable at level 60 and provides bonuses to Magic Find, Gold Find, movement speed, and defenses

Please note that console preorder bonuses and PS3-exclusive in-game items cannot be transferred across platforms, and players will need a connection (to Xbox LIVE® or PlayStation® Network, respectively) in order to receive these items.

The fate of Sanctuary rests in your hands, and the PlayStation® 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Diablo® III will be out before summer's end, so make sure to place your preorders with your local retailer soon.

Ready your reflexes and prepare your thumbs for the demon onslaught ahead!