DiabloFans

Haha maybe in hardcore. Having you character terminated would definitely suck in normal mode.

NEW NOTE: When i first posted this back in 2007 I expected diablo 3 to become slightly more of an MMO, something between d2 and WoW. I was also pretty certain that diablo 3 would give your character the option to choose between either joining the hell or heaven faction. This led me to write the following suggestions on the premise that D3 would support factions and that blizzard would turn diablo 3's online mode into something more than just co-opt."


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Here's what I had originally written:
Suggestion for D3:
I think factions should be decided later on in the game, instead of at the very beginning. Otherwise the possibility to choose a faction would just be an option akin to race and class selection (not much innovation there).
You know those comic books that change stories depending on which pages you decide to pursue reading. I believe this genre first started with the popular gamebook series called "Choose Your Own Adventure". Well depending on the types of quests you choose to follow, you're character might either take the path of imperturbable goodness or gradually sink into a state of evil and betrayal.

Story:
Much like Nithalak's conversion from good to evil, key NPC’s will be tempted to join the evil side either by their own volition or by having their bodies infiltrated, occupied and controlled by evil spirits against their will. This causes the World of Sanctuary to lose order within the ranks as confusion, distrust and gossip increase. The corrupt NPC’s will spread rumors, and perhaps even sabotage their own encampment to increase disorder. Eventually they might also surreptitiously open the gates and allow monsters to enter.

This is when your character enters. S/he is asked to go and fight the invading monsters that have breached the gates. At the beginning of the game every player does the same quests and fights the invading monsters accordingly until around level 25-30. But before you reach level 25-30 you'll hear a lot of gossip and name calling; one NPC saying another NPC is not trustworthy or up to something mischievous etc.
From there on there will be two story lines/two paths you can choose from. All determined by your quest selection. So evil quests will be assigned by corrupt NPC’s and vice versa. Quest will not be indicated as being either good or evil. However evil quests will be somewhat obviously suspicious or evil in nature (so choose your quests wisely, pay attention to what they say and observe how the NPC's behave themselves). You will have been warned to be on guard for evil NPC's.
The more evil quests you do versus good quests will point you in the direction of either the good faction or evil faction. From around level 50-59 you'll no longer be able to take on good quests if the majority of your completed quests were evil and vice versa. Therefore the quests that follow will inevitably lead you further into the evil world or vice versa. At this stage you are either amongst the forces of good or evil.
Eventually as the game progresses, people's factions will be officially decided, depending on whether or not they were honorable enough not to be swayed by the forces of evil. This might occur at around level 65 assuming there’s a total of 99 levels.

Once you’ve entered a faction that's when the "real" fun begins. It's when you get to use mounts and use holy versus unholy equipment. It will be an all out faction versus faction onslaught.
You'll be able to reach higher ranks within the factions based on your loyal deeds and achievements, not necessarily based on you're level. (such deeds may include killing so many opponent faction leaders (actual players from opposing factions), You get more points by killing an opponent faction general than you do a captain and so forth.) And there will be quests in which you'll be given specific task to hurt the enemy faction, like set traps, kill a certain angel or demon etc.

There could be a total of 15 to 20 ranks for each faction. the first 10 or 15 may be obtained by accomplishing tasks, while the last 5 ranks will be determined by your ladder rank. The higher you are in the ladder the higher your rank becomes. Perhaps you're kill to death ratio of opponent faction players could influence your ladder rank. So that rank isn't only about grinding but also skills.

Equipment:
I also think that white and black gear should be made available later on in the game until your fate is decided as either good or bad. Perhaps you will gain the power to wear black items only once you prove your absolute allegiance to your faction, once your officially inducted into a particular faction. After you've demonstrated your honor, they’ll outfit you with your first black suit/or white suite, and instill in you the power to enchant any item into either holy or unholy depending on which faction you’re in.
Or maybe once an items is enchanted it can never be converted into the opposing faction side as there will be an unbreakable/permanent spell attached. This means all items enchanted with either the holy or unholy aura will permanently be for either the heaven or hell faction respectively. So that unholy gear cannot be worn by members of the heaven faction and vice versa.
-The items don't necessarily need to be either all black or white, they may remain very colorful but some sort of pattern is necessary to help differentiate the two factions while at the same time giving each players a sense of uniqueness- (We wouldn't want every hell players and heaven players to look identical).

Another must have feature is special modifiers to attach to weapons once they're enchanted. These mods will differ significantly between heaven and hell enchantments. This way a paladin from the heaven faction may differ greatly from a paladin decked out with hell equipment. This will increase replayability since people will want to try out the different outfits even on identical builds.


Quests that revolve around the faction duality:
Initiation / right of passage quest:
For entry into hell: you’d be presented with a list of currently active/online heaven faction players the same level as you. Or maybe up to 10 levels below your own. Next to their names would be indicated their current location. Your task would be to seek and defeat one (or more than one) such character so as to show hell that you are truly on its side and would even battle your own kind/race in order to gain entrance into hell’s headquarters.


For entry into Heaven:
I’ve yet to come up with an idea.
Perhaps heaven will take extra caution with their initiation process to ensure that no infiltrators make it pass the gates.


From level 60-99 the game will become a sort of capture the flag battle royal between the two factions. In the last act there will be heaven's headquarters on one end, and Hell's domain on the other. In between will be a bunch of terrains/waypoints to get through from one end to the other as you near either end the terrain will look more and more bright or dark depending in which direction you're going. In this vast territory separating both worlds, both factions will do quests, and sometimes opponent factions will cross one another and PvP will ensue.


Of course at one point the good guys will eventually need to win, I just don’t know how to incorporate this into the story, what will happen to the evil faction :(.

The interesting feature that this brings is that two very different stories might evolve even though they both revolve around the same overall storyline. Perhaps Tyreal will only be seen as good on the heaven side. While he might make a few appearance in hell in which his character and loyalty might change. So the story could only be seen from every angle only once the player plays both factions. Maybe he's trying to infiltrate hell's faction or maybe he's truly lost his wits.

Yeah, that's all I want too.
The fact is, any true gamer knows that the D2 perspective we all adore, is the best angle to play the game from anyways. So no doubt players will most often keep the camera as is. However, just for the sake of eye candy, when we feel like stopping and enjoying the landscape or get a close up of our blade piercing through diablo's stomach, then a that's when the adjusted camera angles come in and amplify our visual extacy.

Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »

You should write a letter to Blizzard

Thanks. I'll consider doing one. But not without having it tested and proofed read by you guys. The more input the better.

Hehe, we should all get together and write a proffessional essay to blizzard, signed by us all. (literally we could all scan our signatures, and I could turn the letter into clean PDF and append all our signatures at the last page.)
And maybe I could also send it to them through traditional mail and seal the envolpe with melted wax and stamp it with a Diablo 3 logo. Just to make extra sure they receive it and more importantly: notice it.

But the fact is that there are only a few things I see the need to mention. I know the diablo team has a pretty good idea as to what ingredients are needed to make a successful games and they know quite well not to deviate too far away from diablo2.

All they need to do is keep the over head camera angle and incorportate the same fast pace fighting and crowd control elements that have become hallmark features of Diablo.

Oh and they need to have hell and heaven clash head on. I drool every time I imagine the brightness of heaven colliding with the darkness of hell.
And of course, there will need to be two opposing factions (Alliance and Horde = Heaven and Hell), enhanced guild functionality, and maybe even mounts?! So far all I can picture are some awsome beats for the Hell faction. I get a blank when I try to imagine the types of mounts that could be created for the heaven faction.

I sooo want to see a feature that allows every single item in the game to be able to change between a "light" version and a "dark" version. But I'd particularly want that feature to be available once you've completed hell, so that not all characters look identical. (these are the types of things that I feel the D3 dev team can figure out). So we can give them a range of suggestions, just for inspiration's sake.

You know what, on second thought, there is a lot that can be said about the next D3. And a lot of things that need to be discussed between us, to see if our ideas are remarkable or not.

I know some of you might disagree with what I would like to see appear in D3. So maybe we can all deliberate over the matter together and reach a consensus over broad matters. If we can't resolve our diagreements perhaps we could submit both suggestions to blizzard.
For example I'm a bit ambivalent about the weapon conversion between good and evil. Will they turn completely dark and completely white. Will good items only be worn by the good factions. How will this affect trade etc.
Maybe I should start a thread for it. At least we'll be more productive then counting days go by.

Zubin does have a point, and i remember reading that they intend to take their best developers from WoW and gradually replace them with new employess. This way they can transfer the experienced WoW developers to the D3 team.
But I also think, they are asking for employment because they want to see if there are any exceptional candidates out there. After all, assembling the right team is everything when it comes to creating a good video game.
And I'm sure that having an influx in developers won't hurt them whatsoever. It's never a bad idea to have more than your necessary amount of developers to work on a project.
Plus blizzard just doesn't know where else to spend all their cash X]

I have to say that it was pretty foolish of you to think that this letter could even remotely change blizzard's plans regarding D3.
If you want it to get any notice, your letter needs to be very formal, impartial and properly written. Instead of describing your emotions, try elaborating the advantages of implementing your ideas.
I like your Map editor idea... I suggest you expand on it. Indicate that you have indeed given the subject much thought by exploring a range of ideas concerning the benefits of having a campaign editor. You spent too much time complaining about the Warcraft iii editor. Instead try giving them examples of successful editors. I find the first person shooter game entitled Crysis has a really easy to use map editor. Perhaps you could recommend they use it as an inspiration incase they chose to add a map editor.

Also ideas tend to be challenged by people who may disapprove.
Try and predict possible objections people might have and set out to answer them before they need to be asked. Try and look at this from a democratic point of view: Implementing one person's wishes might interfere with another person's wishes.
For example, I'm curious to know how exactly will a map editor affect the story line? I'm assuming you wanted the edited maps to be available online. If so, have you given any thought as to whether or not Blizzard intends to create a world of diablo MMO instead of a system similar to D2'S individual game hosting system.

There are hundreds of question that need answering concerning map editors alone. And your request hasn't explored any. Blizzard needs convincing arguments.

If the letter helped you channel your frustations, then so be it. But don't expect your 'rant' to grab the attention and consideration of the developers.

One thing I recommend is that you get your questions reviewed by peers like us here on diablo 3 forums... Perhaps our opinions might change your mind on some of your suggestions. It's always a good idea to have your thoughts get reviewed by critics in the hopes of softening any rough edges that may exist.
I'm glad you took the initiative to hear us out before you sent the letter. Hope our answers prove to be useful.

I think a vanity cam would be pretty cool as well. I'm currently playing the Mythos Beta and when I press V the camera closes in on my character. Once in the vanity cam mode, you can rotate and toggle the screen to check out your character from different angles. It's really good for taking face to face screen shots of your character.

Here's an example of vanity mode:



This is how the game normally looks:


This is why I'd like to see a good panning system in D3 (I'd prefer panning in close to my character versus having to press V - that way I have more freedom to look around as I please). There's nothing like seeing your character up close and personal. It's also nice the take a good look at the NPC's and monsters. But when it comes to actually playing there's nothing better than having an above and far reaching view of the battle field.

I agree with you that they could easily venture into new avenues. But given the almost certain success of D3, they'd be foolish not to take advantage.
And we are already aware that the next top secret game will be an MMO. This doesn't look like a new project to me. It looks more like D3

Now that Activision has merged with Blizzard, they want their start to be nice and steady. I'm sure there are plenty of other new projects underway too. Activision will definetly be taking risks and so might the other vivendi subsidiary gaming companies. So for the few titles which they can produce sequels of, they would most likely want to stick to them.
Vivendi isn't just gaming either. If they do poorly in other sectors at least they know they'll have Blizzard to rely on for success. So they want to ensure that they have these pilars of support incase other areas of business fail.

Not like I know what I'm talking about, I'm no business grad. I just think there are more factors involved that should be considered. It wasn't so long ago that vivendi was try to get rid of many of it's gaming holdings. Untill of course WoW became an instant success.

I think I found just the right camera angle for D3.

I'd like d3 to have it's default camera angle to look on the character from above just like in D2.
But I'd also want to take advantage of the 3D effects. So I'd like to pan in and out and observe my character from a diagonal angle, almost at level with your character.

I think the game Loki has found just the right camera height. The height I'm refering to is when the camera isn't zoomed in what so ever. I would love for Diablo3 to have the same default camera height as when the camera is fully zoomed out in Loki. This height can be seen 3 minutes and 35 seconds into this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgTMtfEaVlw




The only problem with Loki is you can only zoom in or rotate the camera along a horizontal plane. You can’t pan vertically…

I want to see vertical panning as you zoom onto your character.

Dark kingdom untold legents has precisely this type of vertical panning which can be seen from 2:55 to 3:05 in the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKt6DJg4FnY
The panning goes from a nice height and fluidly (not abruptly, nor sketchily) pans and zooms near the character.
I think the max height away from your character should look identical to Diablo2. That way you have more room for the fast pace duels that are so distinctive to diablo.

So here are the three things I'm looking for:
1) A diablo 2 look,
2) A slightly more zoomed in Look like Loki,
3) And a God of War/Dark Kingdom diagonal look.

Another good example for camera type #3 is Aion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1LeEpB52o8

Perhaps blizzard could encompass all three camera angles so as to please everyone by intergrating a very immersive and easy to use camera panning system. The type of panning effect which can be seen from 2:55 to 3:05 in the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKt6DJg4FnY

Thanks for the welcome,

I'd also like to mention that, gaming companies try to be honest with their fans. It's far more wise for them to tell their fans upfront that they won't be making a sequel then to constantly leave them hanging.
If they leave you hanging though, then you can expect that something is in the works. Simply because they would have officially sealed/closed the series otherwise. Instead we hear the constant: "We're looking to return to the Diablo World, but right now we are busy working on other projects."

And another good show of proffesionalism is not to make any promise. Look at StarCraft Ghost. If I had been a fan, the last thing I want is unfulfilled hype. By no means will Blizzard make such a grave mistake twice. This alone in my opinion guarantees the making of a D3. Since creating hype and putting it on indefinite hold should never be done twice, and certainly not by Blizzard.
So blizzard is playing it safe by not uttering a word more than 'Top Secret'.
And the only reason they aren't saying any more is because they only officially announce new projects at large conventions and because unforseable mishaps may interrupt development.

It's almost been a decade since diablo 2 came out, If they can't formally and permanently close off the series by now, then they have definite plans to return to it in the very near future. If they came out with an all together different MMO then they wouldn't waste a second to tell us that they won't revisite Diablo.

Just imagine this: All the major press is told to attend a conference at which Blizzard will have something important to say. Everyone will obviously suspect the unveillance of D3. All the fans comes with their Diablo atire replete with hype and boiling with envy!
The lights dim down, every one keeps quiets. and then something completely unforetold is shown. WTF?! Riots ensue...
This is why: if they don't make it absolutely clear that they won't return to D3, then one is best to assume they will.

Also think about advertisement and game marketing. If they made a totally brand new game they'd have to spend so much money to get the word out. But if they make D3, word of mouth alone would be sufficient.

Hey guys, I'd just like to throw in my two cents. I've been coming to this board once a month keeping a look out for diablo 3 related news.

All I'd like to say is that I am 100% convinced that diablo III will be their next creation.

Consider this: Writing anything other than MMO next to their employment listings would be a straight up give away that diablo 3 is in the making. What if they wrote, Hack and slash instead. How lame would that be. When blizzard reveals a game they sound the trumpets and bang the drums. Writing somethine as obvious as hack and slash would ruin the big surprise. The day before starcraft ii was officially announced a good number of you thought it could be diablo 3. See how good blizz reps are at keeping a secret. Why would they stop their perfect streak of keeping silent now.

Also, an MMO doesn't necessarily equate to anything remotely similar to WOW. You can have a hack and slash game that's MMO. The only main difference between diablo II and an MMO is that you host your games instead of all being in a world.

I think as long as the camera angle is from above, and the distinct crowd control combat element is kept the same, the end result can't possibly stray too far from the original D2 we all adore.

Why would they start a totally new franchise now? True, after diablo 3 is completed they will no doubt have to invent something new. But at the moment, they have a lot to work with. It's difficult to start from scratch and create lore and all the elements that captivates gamers. Diablo has tremendous amounts of lore. There's no substitute they could invent that could compare. A game that is to take place in both heaven and hell = absolutely awsome. We're talking angels vs demons! Gaming companies would give their right "expletive goes here" to have such a great story line to work with.
They also want to get this game out as soon as possible before all their fans grow too old and lose interest. Which is beginning to dwindle on us all, as many of you (including some of the most hardcore Diablo fans) are showing signs of dismay.

Also consider that: they will most likely sell more books, more of the diablo battle chests, and all their current diablo related merchandise. Making a competely new franchise would pretty much banish these products to retailer's dusty back shelves. And thus result in a loss on potential returns. There are millions of dollars worth of Diablo merchandise sitting in store shelves as we speak.

It's as if you had all the ingredients to make speghetti but decided to make mince meat pie instead. And yet the people you're serving have an appetite for speghetti. You can't even imagine how pissed people will be with blizzard if they don't follow through with their fan's expectations.