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Ausgamers UEE Hands-On

Ausgamers had the opportunity to test the Ultimate Evil Edition of Reaper of Souls for consoles, while talking to Blizzard's Julia Humphreys and Matthew Berger. There is a snippet of some very interesting parts below. But you should check the full article here, for more details into other specific features mentioned (like the Nemesis System).

“One of the first things we added is apprentice mode,” Julia reveals. “So you might be playing with your friends and you start new characters together and your character might be a lower-level to the others. So instead of dying all the time, running behind the other player and picking up loot and not killing… with apprentice mode what we do is take [that] lower-level character and we boost them up for the duration of that play session. So they stay the same level with the same skills, but their stats are boosted so they’ll have more toughness, they’ll do more damage -- they’ll be able to stand toe-to-toe with most monsters and contribute meaningfully to most fights. And of course the loot that they get; the experience they get is still going to be appropriate to their level”

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During my time with Julia and Matthew, I was also taking the latest PS4 build of the game for a spin. Obviously for these scenarios the difficulty setting was relatively low, but something felt a little off. No, that’s the wrong word for it… something actually felt a little right. At least as far as being held up against movement on the PC, the console version seemed a little quicker and even perhaps a bit more responsive, but I wasn’t sure if it was just me. 

“Funny you should mention that,” Matthew says with enthusiastic glee. “So in the PC version of the game and the original console version of the game, you know, you could destroy pieces of the environment [and] you get a little bit of experience; if you killed enough monsters you get a Massacre and you get a little bit of experience, and we took these features and we put them under the umbrella of what we’re calling ‘Action-Combat’ and we tweaked them in a way that they sing even more. 

“So for instance, if you destroy a set number of [pieces of] the environment in a short period of time, instead of just giving you experience we’re going to give you a speed boost for a certain amount of time,” he explain. “Sometimes you’ll notice you have the little speed trails behind you -- that’s because you guys destroyed some elements of the environment and you got a speed boost. When you do a Massacre, instead of going “oh, hey you’ve killed 25 monsters here’s a bit of experience”, as soon as you hit the minimum threshold for a Massacre we’re going to show a counter on-screen and you’re going to see it count up and a timer go down if you’re in danger of your Massacre going away. [But] then once it’s over, we’re going to give you a lot of experience.

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“The final element of Action-Combat we’ve added is Trap-Kills,” continues Matthew. “So you could always kill people with traps in our game, but we’ve increased the damage so it’s easier, and every time you kill monsters with traps, we’re going to give you increased Resource Regeneration. 

“So you were always playing the game this way, we’re just embracing this and giving you even more reasons to do it and more reasons to change the rhythm of your game a little bit because, you know, as you’re chasing a Massacre result, you might end up getting too many monsters attacking you at once.” 

The console game also flags loot drops that are specific to characters so you’re not sifting through items that aren’t there for you. Moreover, anyone can pick up loot and it’ll go to the character it’s meant to, regardless of who’s collecting. Again, it’s all part of the streamlining process, which again isn’t meant to dull the experience, but rather expedite your shift in and out of monster encounters. Breathers and micro-management are one thing, but when you’re pulled out of the action too long because of lengthy and trivial things like picking up loot, the way the game works now makes much more sense.

Multiboxing and D3

Grimiku made a post explaining Blizzard's current stance regarding multiboxing in Reaper of Souls. Essentially, while it is not supported by the developers directly, it is also not strictly forbidden, as long as the gameplay is not automated by the necessary third party software. It is mentioned that the EULA and TOS do not contain this clarification, but will be updated in the near future.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

For Diablo III, multiboxing walks the strange line of being something we technically allow, but don’t officially support. 

For clarity, players are allowed to have multiple Battle.net accounts, and each of them can have a Diablo III: Reaper of Souls license (one per account). There is no limit to the number of Battle.net accounts a single user can have, so long as no more than three of them have Battle.net Balance*. There is also no restriction to how many of these accounts can be online at once, but the methods to do so may not be supported. We do not support third-party software, and third-party software that automates gameplay is not allowed. Accounts found to be using third-party software that automates gameplay risk being closed, possibly permanently.

In other words, you can have multiple accounts, and you can be online with all of them at one time. We don’t support multiboxing in Diablo III, however, and some software used to facilitate multiboxing may violate our policies, so do so at your own risk.

* Please note that this clarification is not reflected within the EULA and TOU at this time. We will be updating both documents in the near future to correct this.

Greater Rift Ideas

A lot of players have been saying how HP and damage scaling is not the most interesting way of increasing the difficulty of Greater Rifts, and a really good thread has been created on the official forums to gather ideas for the developers to make Greater Rifts more engaging without simply having the enemies' HP and damage scale to insane levels.

It has even been "blue tagged", which means that it is feedback that's probably going straight to the developers. So if you want to contribute, make sure to drop by and leave your thoughts and suggestions!

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Hi, lots of people are annoyed by the rather uninspired "moreHP, more damage" style of scaling the greater rifts have at the harder levels. People are suggesting here and there other ways it would be possible to scale the difficulty of the greater rifts without simply making things live longer and hit harder.

Lets make a compilation of these ideas here, so that after the weekend, Vaneras has a nice easy link to give to the 'higher ups' with any/all of the good alternatives. Nobody wants trillion HP rift guardians. It will also make the repeat grind somewhat tedious when it is literally just "more of the same".

Sooo. Pop your ideas into the thread, I'll try to edit them into the OP.

So far:

1) Increase mobs mitigation
2) Populate the rift more densely and require more mobs to be killed in the same amount of time;
3) Make the rifts larger with the same density but *still* require more mobs killed in the same amount of time;
4) Increased the base movement speed of the mobs, 
5) Increased the base attack speed of mobs;
6) Given extra affixes to elite and champion packs (5 affix horde mobs anyone?), 
7) Given white mobs affixes, 
8) Used a more deadly combinations of mobs (no more act1 zombie dreams or stygian crawlers),
9) Make a more hostile environment to rift in (random arcane sentries just popping up),
10) Increase the duration of mob crowd control effects on the player
11) Player death results in the closing of the rift
12) Give mobs (white, elite or champion) boss abilities, like sandstorm, locusts, summoning adds
13) Increase the ratio of white mobs: elite packs so eventually you're facing an epilepsy inducing sea of pulsing blue and golden demons
14) Super-rares or even act bosses midway through the rift

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Thanks everybody for the solid feedback you have given so far. This is an interesting thread for sure, so I hope people will continue to share their thoughts on the difficulty scaling in Greater Rifts.

06/07/2014 15:40Posted by Aeneas

Lets make a compilation of these ideas here, so that after the weekend, Vaneras has a nice easy link

I love nice and easy links indeed... especially if they are full of juicy feedback ;-)