Arenas are small areas separated from the rest of the world. There will be various arenas spread out in Sanctuary. Each of them will have a unique design with different scenery, features and terrain. You dive into the arena with your multiplayer character and battle out using all of the skills and gear you have accumulated.
Ranked arena matches will feature team-based combat where several players in each team fight in 'best-of' matches. Jay Wilson said the development team is still looking for the "magic number" of matches. They know they want more than 1 match so players will be able to react to the other team after encountering it once, but they do not want to draw out the matches with too many games. It appears that teams will be limited to four players in each, making the biggest match-up 4v4, but no official word on that has yet been made.
To participate in a ranked arena match you will use the Battle.net matchmaking system so that you get faced against opponents with similar rank. When you complete a match in the arena you will be awarded points based on your performance in regards to kills, accomplished objectives, wins, and other factors yet to be revealed. Those points will be used to advance within the ranking system and also brings us to the next subject: rewards.
PvP rewards
The battle arena will not be a place to collect armor and weapons. The PvP reward system will be focused on achievements, ranks and titles for your character. Blizzard also hinted that ears will be returning in some sort as a proof of your victories. As of today those are the only rewards (along with the bragging rights of beating down other people online) we know of, but more are to be revealed.
Balance in the arena
Balance in the arena will be focused around the 3v3 bracket, but ultimately the Battle Arenas are not made to fill a super competitive niche in Diablo, but rather a place where you have fun fighting other players. Blizzard has stated that the matches won't focus so much on individual builds, but your teams build as a whole. They have also stated that there are certain skills being added that will be much more useful in PvP than PvE. This will let more dedicated PvP players build their characters to focus solely on PvP.
Official Blizzard Quote:
With almost 97 billion potential skill and rune builds, and then factoring in items, the talisman system, and traits, character balance isn't likely to lend itself to an eSport, and in fact the PvP for Diablo III has always been designed a side game intended purely for fun. We know you like killing each other, so that's what it's there to provide.
PvP in Diablo III is a lot about controlling your opponent. Stuns and slows are obviously very strong since they prevent or reduce the enemy's ability to do damage. In a quick-paced game like Diablo III this can become a problem. You don't want to sit around and wait for your character to be able to move while the enemy pounds on you, so to prevent PvP being all about crowd control Blizzard came up with the concept of 'counters'. Counters are abilities designed to break crowd control and they will play a big part in speeding up the PvP action.
In addition to the ranking system with team-based combat there will also be other type of PvP in the arena, such as 1-on-1 duels and unranked team battles where you can choose to fight your friends to determine who really is the best demon killing machine. More information on these game types will be available in the future.
With this system Diablo III PvP is taking a step in a new direction from the previous games. Jay Wilson also said that the battle arenas are just the first approach to PvP in Diablo III, and hopefully not their last, so we should be expecting more info on PvP in the future. Maybe they are thinking of some kind of world PvP, or maybe arenas similar to the WoW battlegrounds where killing the other player is not the only objective. Hopefully the Q&A panel will shed more light on it and answer all our questions regarding PvP.
Make sure to check out Blizzard's official page for PvP.
I myself can't wait to get my hands dirty in the arena!
Update: In the open Q&A we got some answers and clarifications regarding PvP versus PvE balance. The final answer is that PvE balance is never and in no way going to be affected by the PvP. The main focus of Diablo III is PvE and they intend to keep it that way.
It was also said that if you enter the arena with your hardcore character: be prepared for permanent death.
Hardcore arena i think should definatly have some health potions in the finished game.
I feel that if you are hanging on 10 hp and able to get a health potion and bring your helath back to even ground. it makes the match much more enjoyable. and then if i die like that. im gonna say damn that was a fun match.
Then make another hardcore char
Easy fix to this is allow an option to allow pots or not then ill have no issues with the arena, till then it's like a waste of space to me and I play Diablo for PvP.
Thunderdome much?
What they can do to fix this:
1- Spread them out, so theres no way one person can grab all of them and go back to full health.
2- You can't instantly pick it(maybe 3 seconds on it and not receiving damage), and no team heal, the globes only heal the person that grabs them, this will give more room to strategy,team-play, and map control.
Well, it would be either randomly but it should be well thought out as to when exactly.
Or they could make a few things trigger a health orb spawn. Like whenever someone dies as you said, or maybe even some kind of lever that takes a few seconds to activate leaving you vurnerable, maybe even some platforms that have to be all stepped on in some order. The options are almost endless but there really should be a list of the actual rules of the game. Like whenever you want to start a pvp battle, you need to select which options you want to apply to your arena.
I see what you mean by leaving you vulnerable. You trigger the lever and it "paralyzes" you temporarily so you can't move and defend or attack. That would kind of suck.
Well, it would not suck if you are playing a 4v4 on a big arena imo. I think there should be a few modes of pvp.
I think 4 on 4 would be too much going on at one time. Too many graphics, and with the team heal, one person could just run around and collect orbs for the other players.
Not if the arena could somehow force the players to split up. Maybe some type of an area control mode. I dono, sounds kinda fun.
I'm not *quite* sure what you're saying, but if you die once in PvP in hardcore, you're dead.
I was just playing 2v2 arena and, I have to say, even that can be a challenge to see through. Everything goes so fast, and there's so many skills going at once, that it's almost impossible to focus on more than two characters at one time. As I played it more, it became easier to follow different players and decide what I needed to cast on the spot.
@ HabeasPorpoise, great name BTW, if you look at the screen shot you see a 3v3. Yeah it can be too much, but if you and your team split up and take on a solo person, then it should go fine. unless you die then the rest of your team is kind of s.o.l.
Thats the whole point to hardcore PvP, when you dual someone else its the ultimate battle because when you lose, your character is literally dead.
Yeah. And I love the fact that they went the true hardcore way and didn't allow them to use the arena PvP as regular characters. I'm not and old hardcore player myself, but permadeath in arena is just cool! I can image hilarious battles where there's only a single survivor, all his team mates are dead, but at least he stands. Truly hardcore :). I also think it's a welcome change for D2-hardcorers where a random player might just join your game to kill you anytime. In arena it's different, sure you loose that feeling of vulnerability that you never know when/if something might be coming. But it's replaced with the feeling that when you enter the arena you know that you'll be fighting for your characters life. Literally. Sure gets the adrenaline pumping.
Also it gives great achievement chances for the hardcore hardcorers. "Play 100 Arena Battles" will be a huge feat in hardcore while not being much of a sweat for softcore.