Post-Blizzcon Blue Roundup

As we let the Blizzcon information sink in Blizzard is not resting. There have been some interesting blue posts recently and this is a roundup of the most notable ones.

Item linking:
Bashiok very clearly stated (even including emoticon representation) that he would be surprised to not see item linking in Diablo III. It was not in Diablo II, but is now considered standard in any online game where loot plays a big part. (hint: Diablo)


Official Blizzard Quote:



We really want item linking through chat, I think it's one of those things that is universally agreed upon. I'd be shocked if it wasn't in for ship. And I'd make a face like :o

There needs to be a way to show people in the game an item you just got without opening trade or dropping it.

Quest items:

Official Blizzard Quote:



Quest items are now stored directly within the quest itself. They don't take up any space at all.
So instead of digging through your bags and all your items to check if you really got that last demon skull you can just open up the quest log and check.

Skill point-hoarding:
Perhaps the most interesting post was made in a thread where a user expressed some concern that removing skill requisites to move up in tiers would encourage point hoarding, something that Blizzard wants to avoid in Diablo III. Bashiok replied that respeccing is what will counter that issue.


Official Blizzard Quote:




Respecs aren't nailed down, but it's very likely they'll be introduced through questing and one awarded to you. So that's one for each difficulty (probably).

I think it's awesome people are trying to plan out builds already. I think it's crazy to think about going through half of the game without taking a single skill. I'll admit I haven't tried it, but I can't ... I don't know, it just doesn't really seem doable. This isn't Diablo II. I remember going 20+ levels before spending anything.

If your goal is to level as fast as possible, I don't see how point hoarding until level14 would actually grant you any benefit with the ability to respec. Even if it's not until later. Having spectral blade until you can respec into teleport isn't going to kill it for you. Not having a skill for the first 14 levels, I think, might.

When I have some free time (haha) I'll try to test it and see how well I do with no skills and no traits. Ugh. Sounds painful.

Bashiok actually decided to give the test a shot and shared his gameplay experience with us. He created and played a Barbarian and Wizard through level 1-6 without picking up any skills or traits. Although the tests were rather limited he found himself in some trouble, especially with the wizard. The conclusion he came to was that the experience didn't feel very good. For the Barbarian the first levels were no real trouble since it is a class designed around using his weapons. But even then, approaching level five it got tougher. With the heavy spell-using Wizard it was a lot worse. Dying because you could only use your weapon swing was not fun and slowed down the leveling pace.


Official Blizzard Quote:




I talked to Jay briefly about point hoarding yesterday and he brought up a couple good points. First of all is that the balance of availability of respecs should be that there is no incentive to hoard points. Hoarding points isn't fun, and if that means having respecs be more common, so be it. I think the better point he made though was that runes have a dramatic effect on skills, and one that likely can't be fully realized by theoretical builds. An example he gave was Magic Missile is a tier 1 skill, but fully runed will rapid fire projectiles easily make it end game viable, and cheaper to cast than other higher tier skills. With skill points alone very few early skills can boast late game efficiency, but high level runes can sometimes (not always) change the rules.


Along with the gameplay log Bashiok also gives us some interesting pieces of information. He cleared up that there will always be a rune for each skill that does nothing but improve the damage or efficiency of the base skill. There have been some questions about that runes changes skills quite dramatically and sometimes you might just want to keep the original effect. Would you have to keep that skill unruned? With a flat "power-up" rune for all skills that cause no problem.

Something that also seems to be making its return thanks to the skill rune system are builds focused on low level skills. It is something we often saw (and see) in Diablo II, especially after synergies was introduced and people will probably enjoy the customization opportunities that comes with it.

He also mentions that the designers have plans for some kind of tangible rewards for people who like to reroll characters, but no real info is given about what kind of reward we can expect. This would serve to give people a reason to actually reroll a character of the same class even though we have respeccing. For example Bashiok mentions giving +1 trait point for each Witch doctor you create after your first one turned 60 (a made-up example, not taken from the game). Source

A minor details to note is that Bashiok estimated the test to have taken about 45 minutes each, giving us a hint of gameplay length in the very early levels. Although that would probably have been much shorter given he was actually allowed to use skills.

If you wish to read the full post in its entirety click below:

Official Blizzard Quote:




I gave this a shot today. First I picked a barbarian, it's my go-to character, which in hindsight was probably dumb because being melee it's likely going to get along much better with no skills, but also the build in question (why I was testing this) was a wizard.

Keep in mind this play experience is based on ignoring skills and traits, and simply equipping items found or purchased. This is something that I argue is non-optimal, and so I'm testing it to prove a point, but hopefully in an objective way.

Ok, so with the barbarian. Start the game with sword and board, and this takes 1-2 hits (usually 1) for the softer zombies and 4-6 for the tougher ones. At level 2 I found another one hander (basic low dps club) and started dual wielding. This helped a bit. Finally found my first piece of armor halway through level 3. Pants! At some point I was back in town and was able to (barely) afford a new broad axe to replace the mediocre club I had picked up. And then I realized I could have bought a better weapon, but now had almost no gold. Dual wielding with some style now anyway, and hitting quite a bit faster as the APS of the club it replaced was pretty low. Venturing out I ran into my first champion (one strong guy with a couple affixes, and a pack of his friends that take on the same affixes), this time it was a Molten Teleporter. Grotesques. Tough because melee'ing molten means I'm standing in the fire trail and taking damage regardless of his actual attacks. I managed to take out two of the smaller guys, then died. First death at level 3. Almost died again trying to take out the remaining two (one of which was the actual champion), but prevailed. Plodded along until level 5 where I died participating in a random quest event. Managed to use a potion, but it wasn't enough. Died. Ran into another champion group, Carrion Bats, molten teleporter again!? No matter, they were fairly easy. Then I ran into a miniboss (?) and survived with only a few health. It was a close fight. Plodding along, then I ran into another champion pack which were clearly bugged as they one shot me every time. After throwing my corpse against their attacks five more times I decided to stop.

So, I wouldn't say that it was a tough experience, the melee nature of the barbarian and built-in toughness made it not too terrible. But keep in mind that was only until level 6. I'm sure going to 14 would have been increasingly painful. Using skills I'm positive I could have avoided all of those deaths (barring the bugged champions at the end).

Ok, so I swapped to a wizard. So again, playing, just wanding everything to death (weee), until I found a sword. Started slicing things in the face, not much difference attacks-per-monster wise, I just prefer it to wands. I ran into a medium sized pack of zombies aaaaand, dead. Level 2, first death. After finally clearing that pack out I was lucky enough to have a rare spawn, an easy rare, and lo and behold he dropped a very nice wand for me. I'm one-shotting everything at this point and I'm going along fairly quickly. No real trouble until I hit level 5 and start running into more champion packs, and a few more random quest events. All of which either kill me at least once or take me within an inch of my life. Definitely not too fun and a real slowing effect in my attempts to rush levels.

So I think the takeaways here are sort of muddled due to a very limited (and potentially flawed) test. I talked to Jay briefly about point hoarding yesterday and he brought up a couple good points. First of all is that the balance of availability of respecs should be that there is no incentive to hoard points. Hoarding points isn't fun, and if that means having respecs be more common, so be it. I think the better point he made though was that runes have a dramatic effect on skills, and one that likely can't be fully realized by theoretical builds. An example he gave was Magic Missile is a tier 1 skill, but fully runed will rapid fire projectiles easily make it end game viable, and cheaper to cast than other higher tier skills. With skill points alone very few early skills can boast late game efficiency, but high level runes can sometimes (not always) change the rules.

-ed Also sort of on that point, there is always one rune for every skill that boosts flat damage or efficiency of the base skill. You're never forced to keep the rune slot unused because you don't want to change the base skill into something else. I had seen some confusion on that.

Of course the availability of respecs always brings up the question of rerolls and necessity of multiple characters. Personally I think you're going to want to have a PvE and PvP character of each class anyway, but beyond that we have plans for players that like and want to re-roll, and to reward that in a tangible way.

Anyway, hope this was enlightening to some degree. The game is still a lot of fun to play, even in such sub-optimal circumstances. It's been a while since I've just played from the start of the game and there's some really awesome stuff going in.


We also got some small pieces of info from the Diablo twitter. One was about the number of character slots per account and the answer was: "More than 10, probably less than 50".

About numbers of skill points received: it is not nailed down yet, but you will get at least 59 as you level to 60, with a possibility of more being added as quest rewards.

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