...we’re redesigning the skill system to some extent. It’s got pros and cons right now, but we think we can do better. So we’re doing what we can to make the skill system more interesting. (blue quotes overlap images :()
My reaction: I'm really glad Blizzard love iterating. I get it. But this is not an iteration process! This is a drastic, game-altering mechanic we're talkin' about! The game is slated for Q1 next year (roughly). That gives you 4 months at most to get those systems in, test them, and balance them?! I don't know, it just seems to me like they're cutting it pretty close.
2.
How does Blizzard ultimately decide something’s done? Do you take a vote? Consult a Magic Eight Ball? Stick a fork in it?
Official Blizzard Quote:
That’s a good question. We know a game’s done when other game teams aren’t getting their work done because we can’t pull them away from their computers. This happened with StarCraft II. We were seriously losing production time because StarCraft was killing everybody. And it was like “Well, I guess it’s done, because we can’t pry people away from it.” That’s kind of the litmus test.
But it’s a lot of things. I mean, when Jeff Kaplan, Tom Chilton, Dustin Browder, and Rob Pardo say, “This feels done to me,” that’s a good sign. You’ve got some pretty wise voices talking
My reaction: That's probably one of the best answers I've ever heard from a company. When projects are being pushed by your higher-ups and ultimately your investors, it's good to know Blizzard has it spot-on when it comes to releasing the game. (in other words, stop QQing about release date :P).
3.
You announced that 70 percent of Diablo III’s items come from upper difficulty levels. Do you think it’s dangerous to wall off so much content for so many players, or is that just sort of where hardcore gaming is at this point: The base game’s accessible to everyone short of your grandmother – who doesn’t have hands – and better players can choose to seek out more of a challenge?
Official Blizzard Quote:
It’s interesting, because it’s tempting to think of it like a wall where there’s half the players and the other half. Diablo’s a great example of a game that’s more of a slope. We expect everyone to be able to finish Normal, and then we’re trying to make a better ramp into Nightmare than Diablo II did. It wasn’t that obvious to everyone that you were supposed to play Nightmare after Normal. A lot of people thought “Oh, it’s just harder? What’s the upside?”
But we’re trying to make it clear that, no, we want you to go into Nightmare, because we actually expect you’ll be able to play Nightmare. Nightmare’s very playable. After you’ve gone all the way through normal, you should have the practice and chops you need to handle Nightmare. We don’t think there’s really a wall there.
On Hell [difficulty], there is a bit of a wall. We don’t expect everybody to play that effectively in Hell. It might be beyond some players’ abilities. And then Inferno is not meant for everybody. That is specifically meant to be for people who are a little crazy [Laughs]. So we actually said, “Inferno is not for you to part of the audience.” But we think that’s OK because there are so many things you can get as you play through the game that you’re not really gonna be hurting for that top tier armor. If you really want it, you’ll really work for it.
My reaction: Does this mean Nightmare will really just be another tutorial and we won't have a real challenge until Hell?
4.About Online-only and Modding:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Our problem on Diablo III [...] is we want people to play cooperatively and hook up with their friends really easily, but we don’t want cheaters or hackers. One of the reasons we did the Auction House is that we don’t want people going to shady third-party websites and getting their account info stolen. I mean, that’s terrible. So we decided to say this is a game about playing – oftentimes with your friends.
And the complaints we got from Diablo II mostly involved cheaters and hackers and tons of stuff that really makes the experience bad. So, for the game experience of Diablo, having an online requirement [is a natural choice]. And people forget that it’s server based. You send us the info, so we can catch cheaters very easily. It’s not easy to cheat. People are going to have to put some effort in. That allows us to keep the quality up for the vast majority of people.
But some games [...] you just want to cheat or mod, and that’s right for those games.
...
What I love about what’s happening with games right now is you’re seeing a resurgence of these smaller games that do one thing really well. Minecraft is an example of how much demand there is for people to just do whatever the heck they want. That’s never going away.
So for games like Diablo III, it’s right for us to be online, control the experience, and make sure it’s clean. But for other games, it’s right for them tp stay offline, give people all sorts of wacky control, and let them hack the bejesus out of it. That’s always gonna be true. There will always be people who take these online games and rip ‘em apart. So the demand is there. And if the demand is there, hopefully someone will try to create a game to fill it.
My reaction: I'd say a lot of people want to mod D3. That's all I'm gonna say since this is kindof a dead horse anyway.
4.About Online-only and Modding:
[blizz='http://www.vg247.com/2011/10/30/devil-may-launch-soon-blizzards-bender-on-diablo-iii/']Our problem on Diablo III [...] is we want people to play cooperatively and hook up with their friends really easily, but we don’t want cheaters or hackers. One of the reasons we did the Auction House is that we don’t want people going to shady third-party websites and getting their account info stolen. I mean, that’s terrible. So we decided to say this is a game about playing – oftentimes with your friends.
And the complaints we got from Diablo II mostly involved cheaters and hackers and tons of stuff that really makes the experience bad. So, for the game experience of Diablo, having an online requirement [is a natural choice]. And people forget that it’s server based. You send us the info, so we can catch cheaters very easily. It’s not easy to cheat. People are going to have to put some effort in. That allows us to keep the quality up for the vast majority of people.
But some games [...] you just want to cheat or mod, and that’s right for those games.
Blabla that has nothing to do with it. Like always. Online only and modding in no way cease to exist for this to exactly as he said they want it to be. Its pathetic really. I'm so sick of them trying to stay on the nice side when you're just not. Stop spitting excuses, you don't give a shit about modding or offline and just want to control us and have us all on your RMAH. I guess its completely unrealistic to expect a company to ever tell the truth, since no company actually respects people.
Yeah, beating a dead horse. Yeah, you're sick of hearing me. Bite me.
I am pretty sure the first answer and the "redesign of the skill tree" is in regards to skill swapping. They said they didn't really like the in-town only skill swapping they had been playing with so maybe they are working on a solution to that. It's something that must be fixed for release anyway since skill swapping in the current sense is easily abusable (see video@my youtube channel for demonstration </endblatantpromotion>).
So I don't think it's something super major which will delay the game noticeably.
Answer 1. I think hes talking about skill swapping and a better skill cut-casting-time trick that's currently in the beta. Of course why couldn't he just have been more specific? probably because he's a blizzard employee, and they are all trolls to some extent
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blizzard used to care about releasing Diablo III, then they all took an arrow in the knee...
I remember them saying they are working on making the skill system even better because they are waiting for other things to finish, so its not what keeps delaying the game. The Skill system they had was pretty much ready for launch.
well, we know they are working on runestones and since runestones greatly affect skills maybe the two things are linked.
Also quick swapping is an issue they'd like to deal with before release.
What I don't get is how it happened their marvelous testers didn't notice quick swapping would be easily abused.
I mean, as soon as we heard about quick swapping we knew it would stir trouble.
I don't think they are stupid so I think there is some other issue and they are messing with us.
I think internal tests are biased. People, generally, don't want to find things that are wrong with their own product. Players on the other hand, want to find every bug, glitch, and exploit they can, whatever gives them the upper edge (look at duping in Diablo 2). It's this that makes me wonder why they haven't intesified their beta test (also, the fact I haven't gotten a beta invite makes me wonder why they haven't intesified their beta :P)
...we’re redesigning the skill system to some extent. It’s got pros and cons right now, but we think we can do better. So we’re doing what we can to make the skill system more interesting. (blue quotes overlap images :()
My reaction: I'm really glad Blizzard love iterating. I get it. But this is not an iteration process! This is a drastic, game-altering mechanic we're talkin' about! The game is slated for Q1 next year (roughly). That gives you 4 months at most to get those systems in, test them, and balance them?! I don't know, it just seems to me like they're cutting it pretty close.
I really wouldn't worry too much about that. I'm about as cynical as they come regarding the release date. I stand by my estimate of mid-late march. However I think when he said redesigning the skill system, it was just a poor choice of words. We know they are still throwing around ideas for how unattuned runes will work, or throw them out all together, or some other solution we haven't heard of yet. Runes are part of the skill system, so this is probably what he was talking about. Also there's the solution to the skill swapping issue that they don't want people swapping skills mid-boss fight, but also don't want to lock you down too much forcing you to go to town. They are still looking for that happy medium.
My reaction: Does this mean Nightmare will really just be another tutorial and we won't have a real challenge until Hell?
Difficulty is SO subjective it's not even funny. The point is they are naturally going to create a mold of the base skill from the casual audience. So expect the tiers to shift based on your experience. They want one difficulty to be the "wtf this is insanely hard" area. For casuals it will be too damn frustrating and they will just be happy with beating Hell (by using what they learned from the other two difficulties). Inferno will hopefully require YOU (and by proxy, the community on forums, chat, etc) to come up with new strategies that the other difficulties did not essentially introduce you to by making it pretty obvious what you needed to do to survive. So hardcore fans will be willing to face through Inferno, casuals will not...at least unless they decide to cross that threshold and start changing things in their personal life to make more time to master the game.
Nightmare is just going to feel like New Game+ with higher stats. In fact it will probably be easier in comparison to Normal in some ways if you do any farming in Normal before hitting Nightmare since I'm sure Nightmare's creature level will be only just above what you saw at the end of Normal. You might get caught off guard by a new mob special property or combo of properties but you may not even die from it. It's just going to be there to show you of how they will ramp the harder difficulties up.
This is a drastic, game-altering mechanic we're talkin' about!
you're over-reacting, they aren't revamping all the skills, just "a system". We know of two skill systems they are revamping, 1) Skill swapping and 2)Runestones.
They aren't revamping how the skills work, just how often/where you can swap. They also aren't altering how runestones function with skills, they are just trying to find the best way for players to find, collect, horde and use runestoned skills so it's no where near a game-altering mechanic they are playing with.
My reaction: Does this mean Nightmare will really just be another tutorial and we won't have a real challenge until Hell?
Doesn't matter, they are probably just easing the curve. Any Diablo player worth his salt (ie everyone in this forum) is going to spend virtually zero time in normal and Nightmare mode anyways so why does anyone care if Nightmare is toned down a little? They've said explicitly that Inferno will be a tuned up version of D2's hell which should be more than enough for any Hardcore Diablo player. Seriously, don't worry about it, they are WELL aware that we want a challenge and they fully intend to give it.
this compounded with that SK level 1 kill video have me shaking my head at people. Would you even raise an eyebrow if someone made a video of level 1's killing bloodraven? I'm pretty sure you could get a level 1 to 1 shot Blood raven with the right twink gear and no one would bat an eye. Christ, someone apparently beat HELL DIABLO at level 1 with poison potions, does that mean D2's hell mode is a joke (well without dupeword gear that is).
People need to chill out about this difficulty thing.
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1. My reaction: I'm really glad Blizzard love iterating. I get it. But this is not an iteration process! This is a drastic, game-altering mechanic we're talkin' about! The game is slated for Q1 next year (roughly). That gives you 4 months at most to get those systems in, test them, and balance them?! I don't know, it just seems to me like they're cutting it pretty close.
2.
Official Blizzard Quote:
That’s a good question. We know a game’s done when other game teams aren’t getting their work done because we can’t pull them away from their computers. This happened with StarCraft II. We were seriously losing production time because StarCraft was killing everybody. And it was like “Well, I guess it’s done, because we can’t pry people away from it.” That’s kind of the litmus test.
But it’s a lot of things. I mean, when Jeff Kaplan, Tom Chilton, Dustin Browder, and Rob Pardo say, “This feels done to me,” that’s a good sign. You’ve got some pretty wise voices talking
3.
Official Blizzard Quote:
It’s interesting, because it’s tempting to think of it like a wall where there’s half the players and the other half. Diablo’s a great example of a game that’s more of a slope. We expect everyone to be able to finish Normal, and then we’re trying to make a better ramp into Nightmare than Diablo II did. It wasn’t that obvious to everyone that you were supposed to play Nightmare after Normal. A lot of people thought “Oh, it’s just harder? What’s the upside?”
But we’re trying to make it clear that, no, we want you to go into Nightmare, because we actually expect you’ll be able to play Nightmare. Nightmare’s very playable. After you’ve gone all the way through normal, you should have the practice and chops you need to handle Nightmare. We don’t think there’s really a wall there.
On Hell [difficulty], there is a bit of a wall. We don’t expect everybody to play that effectively in Hell. It might be beyond some players’ abilities. And then Inferno is not meant for everybody. That is specifically meant to be for people who are a little crazy [Laughs]. So we actually said, “Inferno is not for you to part of the audience.” But we think that’s OK because there are so many things you can get as you play through the game that you’re not really gonna be hurting for that top tier armor. If you really want it, you’ll really work for it.
4.About Online-only and Modding:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Our problem on Diablo III [...] is we want people to play cooperatively and hook up with their friends really easily, but we don’t want cheaters or hackers. One of the reasons we did the Auction House is that we don’t want people going to shady third-party websites and getting their account info stolen. I mean, that’s terrible. So we decided to say this is a game about playing – oftentimes with your friends.
And the complaints we got from Diablo II mostly involved cheaters and hackers and tons of stuff that really makes the experience bad. So, for the game experience of Diablo, having an online requirement [is a natural choice]. And people forget that it’s server based. You send us the info, so we can catch cheaters very easily. It’s not easy to cheat. People are going to have to put some effort in. That allows us to keep the quality up for the vast majority of people.
But some games [...] you just want to cheat or mod, and that’s right for those games.
...
What I love about what’s happening with games right now is you’re seeing a resurgence of these smaller games that do one thing really well. Minecraft is an example of how much demand there is for people to just do whatever the heck they want. That’s never going away.
So for games like Diablo III, it’s right for us to be online, control the experience, and make sure it’s clean. But for other games, it’s right for them tp stay offline, give people all sorts of wacky control, and let them hack the bejesus out of it. That’s always gonna be true. There will always be people who take these online games and rip ‘em apart. So the demand is there. And if the demand is there, hopefully someone will try to create a game to fill it.
I encourage everyone to read the entire interview.
Yeah, beating a dead horse. Yeah, you're sick of hearing me. Bite me.
About difficulty: normal is tutorial, NM is normal, Hell is NM and Inferno is Hell.
But in D2 NM was not such a big challenge too and I really hope Inferno to be reallllly hard to beat.
Thanks for the info, CherubDown
You've kept us waiting back from 08 >.<
Waiting for a game for 4 years is quite an experience...but not a good experience...anyways, come on Blizz, I really can't wait to play it!
So I don't think it's something super major which will delay the game noticeably.
Also quick swapping is an issue they'd like to deal with before release.
What I don't get is how it happened their marvelous testers didn't notice quick swapping would be easily abused.
I mean, as soon as we heard about quick swapping we knew it would stir trouble.
I don't think they are stupid so I think there is some other issue and they are messing with us.
I really wouldn't worry too much about that. I'm about as cynical as they come regarding the release date. I stand by my estimate of mid-late march. However I think when he said redesigning the skill system, it was just a poor choice of words. We know they are still throwing around ideas for how unattuned runes will work, or throw them out all together, or some other solution we haven't heard of yet. Runes are part of the skill system, so this is probably what he was talking about. Also there's the solution to the skill swapping issue that they don't want people swapping skills mid-boss fight, but also don't want to lock you down too much forcing you to go to town. They are still looking for that happy medium.
Cool interview though.
Could someone plz make a Diablo 3 clone with offline mode..
And no, not torchlight, blääääääh.
:: Enkeria [Twitter / Twitch / Website / Tattoos]
Difficulty is SO subjective it's not even funny. The point is they are naturally going to create a mold of the base skill from the casual audience. So expect the tiers to shift based on your experience. They want one difficulty to be the "wtf this is insanely hard" area. For casuals it will be too damn frustrating and they will just be happy with beating Hell (by using what they learned from the other two difficulties). Inferno will hopefully require YOU (and by proxy, the community on forums, chat, etc) to come up with new strategies that the other difficulties did not essentially introduce you to by making it pretty obvious what you needed to do to survive. So hardcore fans will be willing to face through Inferno, casuals will not...at least unless they decide to cross that threshold and start changing things in their personal life to make more time to master the game.
Nightmare is just going to feel like New Game+ with higher stats. In fact it will probably be easier in comparison to Normal in some ways if you do any farming in Normal before hitting Nightmare since I'm sure Nightmare's creature level will be only just above what you saw at the end of Normal. You might get caught off guard by a new mob special property or combo of properties but you may not even die from it. It's just going to be there to show you of how they will ramp the harder difficulties up.
you're over-reacting, they aren't revamping all the skills, just "a system". We know of two skill systems they are revamping, 1) Skill swapping and 2)Runestones.
They aren't revamping how the skills work, just how often/where you can swap. They also aren't altering how runestones function with skills, they are just trying to find the best way for players to find, collect, horde and use runestoned skills so it's no where near a game-altering mechanic they are playing with.
Doesn't matter, they are probably just easing the curve. Any Diablo player worth his salt (ie everyone in this forum) is going to spend virtually zero time in normal and Nightmare mode anyways so why does anyone care if Nightmare is toned down a little? They've said explicitly that Inferno will be a tuned up version of D2's hell which should be more than enough for any Hardcore Diablo player. Seriously, don't worry about it, they are WELL aware that we want a challenge and they fully intend to give it.
this compounded with that SK level 1 kill video have me shaking my head at people. Would you even raise an eyebrow if someone made a video of level 1's killing bloodraven? I'm pretty sure you could get a level 1 to 1 shot Blood raven with the right twink gear and no one would bat an eye. Christ, someone apparently beat HELL DIABLO at level 1 with poison potions, does that mean D2's hell mode is a joke (well without dupeword gear that is).
People need to chill out about this difficulty thing.