Since 1996, the Diablo franchise has tried its claim to the role-playing market. Although it is arguably classified as an ARPG, developers have tried bringing the player deeper in to Sanctuary with extra side quests since the beginning. Diablo I notably gave players options for a number of alternative and rewarding side quests, lending additional lore (shown in in-game, audible books) and even some extra mini-bosses to the chaos of subterranean Tristram.
Though these were arguably lessened from a player standpoint in Diablo II, developers nonetheless gave an effort to add in a plethora of mini-quests that added things such as tiny bits of lore, skill points, and stat points to your character as well as special one-time privileges such as imbuing and inscribing your name on items.
Since the beginning, we have known that Diablo III will contain a goodly number of extra quests, some that are even character-driven (as noted here where Jay Wilson says that the Monk's tattoos may be affected by the storyline):
In order to accomplish this, Bashiok explained that plug-in areas of maps would serve as mediums for randomized or extra quests:
Official Blizzard Quote:
To keep some bits of random in there though we have a bunch of small, medium, and large pieces cut out of them. In those cut out pieces the game can then place the randomized "adventure" sets. They could be artistic in nature (a fountain, an abandoned cart), they could spawn extra enemies, or they could spawn quests.
Will these be improvements from the previous games, however, or will they continue along the lines of Diablo II, where most simply skipped the majority of minor quests to get through the game? How can they be made better? What would be ideal to take from the old games and enhance with the new?
I agree though, it wasn't anything "fun" to go after, and the hits points really should scale a bit with difficulty levels (40 nightmare, 60 hell? for 120).
Its really not the same than anything else simply because they are permanent. And guaranteed. Still, your character probably won't suffer much from having 60 less HP, but people put a lot of points in vitality. Isn't that like 20 points in vitality? (depends on the character) Why would anyone throw that away?
Other than the fact I absolutely hate doing these quests and Act 3 as a whole except the end, they are worth it, in my opinion.
Yes, there were certainly players who stopped playing a character after beating the game on normal difficulty. But is that really a good reason not to add any unique content beyond that point? Perhaps those players would have been more inclined to continue playing if they weren't going to simply repeat the same exact quests. Maybe the only reason they stopped playing is because there WASN'T any additional content beyond normal difficulty.
Does anyone remember playing goldeneye on nintendo 64? Its a james bond game. For each mission, you were given certain objectives that must be completed. Blow this up, steal this, interrogate this guy, etc etc. On higher difficulty levels, you were given additional objectives. You would still have the same objective(s) from the easier difficulty settings, only more objectives were added in an effort to make the mission more challenging and interesting. I'm not saying this would be the best way, or even an appropriate way to arrange diablo 3 quests. I just think this is an excellent example of how adding quests on higher difficulty levels would enhance the replayability of the game and make it more fun. It also makes for a game that is easy to pick up and play, but still offers challenges once the player has become good at the game.
The quests must make sense, lore wise, the difficults dont. Simple as that. Ofc, so a quest chain make sense it must be achated to our character level, not to your progression in game.
And the idea of complete the again with the same character was boring execly because theres nothing different and 0% continuity. Maybe if they have acces to some new quests or continue something undone the game will have more appeal to ask the player to finish it 3 times with the same character.
And I don't see why all the lore canon must be so noob friendly. Ofc the main story (main quests) must be, but I see no reason of why the greatest challenges of the game must be a nonsense. It's almost like people don't want well elaborated quests.
I'm really split here, because its not that I would personally dislike lore late in hell, but the player that does not complete anything else than Normal shouldn't be missing on important things.
If its only some things that makes sense Lore wise, but are not really important at all, just to give you something different to do passed normal, then I guess that would be good.
I think a majority of players will do quite a bit of them, and probably all of them actually ...
These are really sensible questions to ask. Difficulties are really just present to give you something more to do with the game without actually adding more to the game, like lore. That's what we have quests for.
And if this was at all misinterpreted when I said it, I think the rewards for finishing quests should scale with the difficulty they are accomplished in, not the lore in the quest. There is no relation between lore (a creative expression) and difficulties (an incremental tool), but there is a relation between what you get from the reward and the difficulty level.
(Above paragraph is not aimed at anyone specifically.)
For instance, 20 health means nothing in Hell. Nothing (yes, I do agree it's good that it's a permanent 20 additional health, but it's so small it would be like adding 2% to Gold Find or something). The reward, health, in this case, should be scaled to the difficulty, meaning that more health should be given. Because of the difficulty incrementation, the enemies are harder and you are still only fighting with what you had before. In the same way, the reward should increment, as well.
for the first bit after release anyway.
We're talking about side quests here, not the main storyline. There are no rules saying D3 has to repeat 3 times exactly as D2 did. Side quests, by definition, are not required to advance the main storyline, so even if D3 repeats the main storyline every difficulty level there is no reason why the side quests can't be different.
If you're concerned about the 'lore' then lets consider the 'lore' introduced by the diablo II side quests. Take for instance act I. Some side quests include killing blood raven and killing the countess. The stories of blood raven and the countess might be interesting and all, but have absolutely nothing to do with the main storyline involving the prime evils. In nightmare difficulty those could easily have been different bosses with completely different stories. This way, each difficulty level could theoretically introduce new side quest stories and monsters without ruining anything established in previous difficulty levels.
So to answer your questions, the point of doing this is to make the game more interesting each time around. I don't see how it wouldn't make sense lore wise. In normal the rogue encampment is terrorized by blood raven. In nightmare just think you already killed blood raven, so now they could be facing a flying pink elephant, or whatever fearsome foe you want to come up with. It doesn't really matter. It just adds some variety, some spice.
Oh yeah I don't really wanna lose sight of my original thought, which was that side quests happening in randomized map chunks opens up a lot of possibilities. Having different quests in different difficulty levels is just one possibility.
I'm a little bit more excited about some of the other possibilities. Like blizzard might be able to add new map chunks with side quests through patches. It seems like that might be easy to do through a programming standpoint. The randomizer is already there to piece together the map, all they need is a new chunk which can be thrown in.
Of course, maybe instead of having different quests in different difficulty levels, every time you create a game the quests might be different, depending on how the random map thing comes together, regardless of difficulty level. For example the first time you make a normal game, you might find the quest to kill blood raven. The next time you make a normal game you might find the quest to kill the flying pink elephant instead. Both those quests would then also exist in nightmare and hell, you just might have to make a number of games on each difficulty level in order to eventually see both quests. I think this is slightly more interesting than having blood raven in EVERY game you ever create for example.
But I guess we'll see what blizzard does with these side quests. I'm sure there are a lot of possibilities I haven't thought of.
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I'm in agreement with just about everyone else that the main storyline should be completely expressed finished in Normal, nothing else makes sense. However I do not see why a side quest could be Nightmare/Hell specific.
Take the books. The books most certainly add much lore to the series, however that knowledge isn't given to player who play Diablo II, and undoubtedly all the info won't be given to them in D3 either. So in order to grasp all of the lore first-hand, you need to also read the books.
The same point could be made for side quests. To experience all events first-hand, you would have to play through all difficulties. Although all the lore will naturally be available on various fan sites in due time if you want to read up on it.
You are very right phrozen. I don't see why we couldn't have more lore/quests in nightmare/hell. I would even embrasse that idea since it's an incentive to go up a notch and experience something new.
I read a few more posts and I agree also. As you move up in difficulties there should be new challenges/harder mini bosses and quests etc. Maybe even more lore and extend the process of completing that difficulty. HELL maybe even a whole new act...
1. Some great rewards.
2. Unique content
3. Even MF can be increased for doing quest chains
4. They can be just fun)