The original interview available here. I have removed much of the original interview from Diablofans courtesy to Sol Invictus. The full version is available at the link above. Two questions really caught my attention however.
Question 5
I'm really linking the sound of this. It's wonderful to have these things in games, where you can look up facts and figures that are more often than not quite useless from a gameplay perspective. But at the same time it adds more to the game; I know I always spend lots of time pouring over monster stats and lore etc. whenever I play Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry or any other game that has a function like this. And now we'll all be able to do the same in Diablo III. At least when it comes to lore.With regards to the lore stuff that you mentioned earlier: is it like a book that you carry around that has all the journal entries and all the stuff you encounter. Is there gonna be anything like that in DIII?
Leonard Boyarsky: Yeah, that's what we're working on the interface of that right now. We've gone through a lot of iterations on it but it's basically that, a lore log that you can access and hear the different stories that you've picked up along the way. At least that's our current iteration at least. We've gone through a lot. I'd have to bring in our interface guy to bring in how many.
This could also be pushed however far Blizzard wanted. It could include monster stats like Diablo 1 did, and theoretically strategies and builds, although that'll probably never happen.
Question 14
This sounds very promising. Any guesses as to what he might mean when he says they have a solution to prevent endless Baal runs?Yeah that was a huge problem in D2 where people did Bloody runs or Baal runs over and over.
Leonard Boyarsky: Yeah, we have ideas about how we want to handle those things, specifically it's something we've talked about at length and we have a solution that we think is gonna work really good and keep people from having to continually do the same runs over and over.
I'm thinking some form of randomized arena, or perhaps the last levels of the game change setting, monsters and bosses each time you start a new game or something like that? What do you think?
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Posted Oct 20, 2009-
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Posted Oct 20, 2009How is running Baal 10,000 times going to impact anyone other than me? Why would they put something in to the game that would not let me replay content?
Hellgate: London did that, and it was one of the worst things on the planet.
Edit: Let me clarify.
In Hellgate: London, there was content that, if I beat it with one character, that character could not repeat it. That is really the only 'solution' to the 'problem'.
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Posted Oct 20, 2009This idea would be great if we had the monster encyclopedia and all it had was a picture of the monster and that monster's name, and as we kill off those monsters, stuff will be written in there about how the monsters act, what they do, strengths and weaknesses, and where they reside.
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Posted Oct 20, 2009Leonard Boyarsky: I think so. The thing is, when you have an action game it?s really difficult to maintain that kind of feel. I think Diablo 1 did it really well. The first game did it really well. And that?s what we?re going for. But you know, it?s fast paced, you?re killing...
It?s not like? I look at the difference between the first Alien movie and the second Alien movie. When you?re killing fifty monsters at a time it feels less horrific than when you?ve got a haunted house and you?re avoiding one monster.
So the action elements of the game work against the horror elements a little bit, but we?re really trying a lot to get that kind of Gothic Horror feel as much as possible. Cause that?s what we feel that the Diablo universe, at least as far as like I said the human experience, has revolved around."
His response to the last question is the most interesting to me. It's something I have been wondering about. His description of their direction is important. Because, ok, we have not seen anything so far in D3 that would make me feel that it had the feel of D1. I was wondering if the dungeons were going to get bloody and grotesque and scare you a bit. That is what I wanted. And the fact that he iterated on the "human" experience as a gothic horror simply has a beautiful ring to it in my opinion. I think Diablo 3 could be the best game of the series if they can pull this off properly. I will be utterly thrilled. This is the first news I have felt compelled to comment on in some time as a matter of fact.
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Posted Oct 20, 2009I wish he could have asked if there is going to be an achievment system.. im an achievment whore. =)
Ive played many games in that u must run or hide from a monster... it creeps me out! I would love to see 7 of my friends freak out at the same time =) lol.
Two thumps up to this post!:thumbsup:
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Posted Oct 20, 2009Would you mind not posting the entire interview in your article? I rely on traffic to keep my website afloat. Could you please just copy a segment of the interview (1-2 questions) and direct the rest of the article to Hellforge?
Thanks
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Posted Oct 20, 2009This is almost confirmed by StarCraft 2, which will have achievements. It was shown with the new bnet, and everyone is expecting D3 to have achievements.
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Posted Oct 20, 2009oufff !!! I hope, technologi doesn't fit in this type of game, I hate the mix between 2 ages like final fantasy ((sword and gun) I don't understand how a man with sword can beat man with gun ??)
EURK I don't want see useless descriptions and useless items... It's not kinda cool to have something to read that a waste of time.
I want to feel the same fear as d1 !!
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Posted Oct 20, 2009And you won't get that, either?
What the fuck? Just don't read them? No one is forcing you.
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Posted Oct 20, 2009I never had to repeat content in D2 with any of my characters (except for when I faced the barbs on hell difficulty with my sorc... always one that had cold resistance). I did, however, repeat content willingly.
The way it was worded made it sound like the problem was repeating content intentionally. My experience with Diablo is that I never had to repeat content unless I wanted to. Actually, that was the experience of everyone I knew. None of us needed to do Baal or Meph runs, we simply chose to do so because they were the best outlet for loot.
So, if there is a limit of any kind (either total number, time in between, or only being able to do it once) on what I can and can not do in D3 then the game will be fairly useless to me. I've already played the game when it was called Hellgate: London.
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Posted Oct 20, 20091) Diminishing returns penalty for re-doing the same thing.... this is how DDO does it. People still end up farming the same areas quite a bit because they're still so much better, but there's alot more variance in that game because you get rewarded for completing missions rather than killing monsters. Implementing something like this in D2 would see people go elsewhere than just bloody foothills.
2) A goal or bonus for completionist.... for example, kill every major boss in the game, get a reward... or full clear every dungeon in the game, get a reward.... or complete X different quests, get a reward. The reward could be some massive xp/gold/item boost, it could be granting access to a special level with high rewards, it could be anything. You'd need a system to track what a character has done from game to game, but assuming you put the effort into that, you can end up with something pretty strong.
3) Rotating events... like every day, there is some new XP hotspot that everyone congregates at. Or, one of the quests each day gets a higher reward than usual and it is publicized which one it is. A number of MMOs use this to concentrate their player base on the same area. It can lead to some repetition of the same content in a day, but the area would keep changing from day to day.
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Posted Oct 20, 2009That feels a little counter-intuitive. Shouldn't you reward players for doing different runs rather than punish them for doing the same runs? There's a difference between those two, and I much prefer the carrot method over the stick.
I would like this, but I don't see it as a permanent solution. The new level would be the solution, not the actual achievement of killing every boss.
Perhaps.
I envioned some advanced extra non-linear dungeon wiht some clever method of stopping repetition that I haven't figured out. Compared to that dream image all other suggestions seem a bit "less", if you get what I mean
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Posted Oct 20, 2009It's just useless content, I don't want the game release delay because of that little detail bringing nothing to gameplay essence.
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Posted Oct 20, 2009Gameplay is such a vague term it's ridiculous. My gameplay will most certainly be enhanced if I get lore added into the game, and a platform from which I can easily access it. For me, Diablo is not just about going from one next monster to the next, and therefore this is a change that I and many others welcome.