[Medievaldragon]

This week the Diablo III Community Manager Bashiok answered a few questions from the Battle.net forum community continuing the analysis of the gameplay video shown at the 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitationals.

Quote

Whether all classes will have an ability to traverse obstacles like the Barbarian did, or if they will have to use alternate routes.

Bashiok: While the crumbling bridge could be taken quite literally, it was intended to get the idea across that Diablo III will have more interactive and responsive environmental hazards. Of course if such obstacles existed in the way they were displayed every class would need some way to proceed. At this time we aren't announcing any additional class abilities though.

Quote

Is the demo dungeon really Tristram Cathedral? The screenshots are under the Tristram entry on the website, but it's got a different name in the demo. Is it really a test dungeon all around, including the name? Is is it akin to the mini dungeons of Diablo 2, same texture set, randomly generated and individually named.

Bashiok: It used the same "tile set" as the Tristram Cathedral dungeon including a specially made entry room. It was a static and specifically crafted dungeon especially for the demo, so yes it includes the look for Tristram Cathedral, but it's not a true piece of the game as you would play through it.

Quote

I've read comments from different developers that the remaining character classes will be entirely new, others indicating there are other classes that have been re-envisioned and revamped. Which is it? Fans are commonly assuming at least the pure caster like the Sorc will return. The Lore guys have also made a point of emphasizing the look and attitude of "veterans" from D2.

Bashiok: Hey, are you kind of kid who reads the last page of a mystery first? Who pesters the magician to tell you his tricks? Who sneaks downstairs to peek at his Christmas presents? Nooooo... of course you're not. That's why I'm noooot goooonna teeeeell yoooou!

Quote

Characters can use any and all types of items, barring class specific ones (if I remember an early post you made correctly.) Yet no requirements are listed on the items in the demo. Too early to see the complete package, or change in item requirements?

Bashiok: What I said was: "... we don't plan nor have any armor items at the moment that are class specific - although the bonuses and stats may be better suited to a certain class - anyone can pick up any chest/shoulder/leg/etc item and wear it. However, there are some weapons/off-hand items that are class specific."

No changes to this yet, there just weren't any drops that were class specific. We essentially "hand placed" every drop that happened in the video. We knew people were going to dissect and scrutinize every detail, and everything that drops in that video was purposefully and specifically chosen to be dropped... everything.

Fun fact: I played as the female barbarian for the recording.

Quote

The awesome biting off of heads and such...does it relate to game play in some way, or is it a visual effect?

Bashiok: Well the way we imagined the final fight going down when thinking about the flow of the presentation was to have a few heroes killed off, and thought it would be cooler to see someone get ripped in half by a giant demon than just fall down. While it was an event made for the presentation it could definitely be worked in to the actual end-product. We try not to spend time on anything that can't be incorporated in some way. If there's a mockup or some cool flavor added in somewhere to show something off, we want to build it so that it can actually be used.

Quote

Outdoor environments. Are they for the most part randomly generated like the dungeons? I've been getting the impression there are more static areas , excluding cities, in the outdoors as opposed to the dungeons.

Bashiok: They're for the most part static. With the outdoor environments we felt we could get a lot more out of them by crafting large and visually impressive scenes, which random map generation really just doesn't allow for all that well. By that same token one of the main goals with Diablo III is to flesh out Sanctuary, to make it feel more like you're in this living and breathing world. With towns shifting around everywhere you do sort of lose a sense of cohesion, and an attachment to the places you're visiting.

On a very slight technical note - for random map generation you're essentially creating a bunch of rooms that can all fit together in various ways. It works quite well for a dungeon which is essentially a series of rooms any way. For an outdoor environment though it tends to make it either fairly bland, or fairly linear just by how the edges have to line up. You're either running zig-zag patterns to find the map edges, or you're running down a narrow pathway. Neither are extremely compelling, and at the same time you're losing the visual grandness that could come from a fully hand-crafted and artistically realized environment.

That said, the outdoor areas aren't completely static.

[Black Demon]

My point is always the same:

PLZ BLIZZ MAKE ME A MAGE!!! Nice looking, fireballin' mage!!! plz!!! Able to cast thunders on his enemies, set them ablaze with fireball and meteors from the sky, and to freeze them with cool ice storms!!! PLZ!!!

^_^

[cheebalover]

i hope bitting the head off will be part of the game and not only a presentation showoff, of course no boss would be able to bite my head off because i would nail him first..haha :D

[FingolfinGR]

looks like they're toying with us alot :)
"every item drop was hand placed"? I'm guessing they're having fun by placing a staff (caster) and a bow (ranged) and watch us puzzled about which class stays and which not... Anyway, it pretty much confirms there will be a caster and a ranged class, even if we dont know anything specific.

as for the "biting the head off" ability, i think fatalities arent hard to implement at all. Especially since there arent any healers around, its not hard to have the program calculate killing blows and make them look as spectacular as we saw.

[milanv]

Black Demon said:

My point is always the same:

PLZ BLIZZ MAKE ME A MAGE!!! Nice looking, fireballin' mage!!! plz!!! Able to cast thunders on his enemies, set them ablaze with fireball and meteors from the sky, and to freeze them with cool ice storms!!! PLZ!!!

^_^

there might not be a class called mage or something close to it but there has to be a class that is mainly caster.

back to the topic...

I just thought of something about the items. they can make a system that would calculate which of the players in the group needs some item the most and drop it for him (maybe only work for higher-level items) and still have that thing where you can drop an item so everyone can pick it up.... just a thought...

[Lucion]

What concerns me is the radical changes mooted:

1) Venturing above ground will be very static but a richly painted canvas nevertheless. We will not get random areas like the Black Marsh or Cold Plains.

The randomness of the maps in D2 aids replayability. I take the point that quality graphics has won out over random tiles with the same edges in order to allow seamless joining. I am ambivalent here. Bring on the richly drawn maps. But how soon will these same maps begin to be repetitive when replaying?

2) Non-class specific armour. Some modifiers will be more useful for some classes (perhaps e.g. "+10 to mana") and some armour just won't make sense for some classes. So that hasn't changed. But this means we now won't get the Barb helms and the necro shrunken heads and the druid pelts.

Can anyone suggest why this has happened? What is the good of this?

------------------

I want to see heads getting ripped off and my character's arm getting ripped off and me having to limp back to town for repair to one leg and with a gaping hole in my abdomen. With a trail of blood in my wake too and some monster following behind, licking up my entrails.... :D

Glad to hear that the disappearing path the barb had to leap/tele over was just an example of what is possible. Giving everyone teleport would suck.

[Digital-Storm]

I am definitely concerned with the static world. It will make the game seem too linear. You can simply know where to go to get to bosses, kill them, get items, and repeat, where as Diablo 2, you actually have to find the area half the time. (Unless you use programs) :(

[Mr.Yoshida]

Please everyone, try to read the the entire post before jumping to conclusions.

*Out door areas will be mostly static, does not mean the whole world will be static and everything in it.

*There was no class specific armor in D2... everyone could wear any type of armor, it just looked different on the characters. It was noted previously by Bashiok that there would still be class specific weapons and such.

[Bolts]

I don't even knoe why people ask this guy questions, there all half answers. No good info at all. And there's no way that Blizzard are gonna come up with brand new characters with completely diff skills. They'll just copy the old character's, give em new names and a few new skills.

[Zvolen]

I find it interesting how he emphasized that everything was hand picked to drop in the game knowing the whole community would scrutinize each item. If you didn't know before then understand now that Blizzard knows what they are doing and nothing that was shown was an accident but put there fore a purpose.

I am not too worried about the outside worlds being too static, I personally like the fact that a town will always be in the same place it makes more sense. That doesn't mean the landscape won't change. Its basically like it is now. The room with each boss is static but getting there might not be.

[Ninjy]

I'd like to point out that too many people are expecting, with every new post, for there to be hundreds of new details. This isn't going to happen, and it's time to get over it. Constantly complaining about a lack of details isn't going to change Blizzard's stance on being very quiet about their work. Rather than expecting differently, you should expect 95% of each post or article to be revisited of reworded information that is already known to the general public.

As for the semistatic world, I think this makes a lot of sense. A lot of you worry too much about this. First of all, remember that specifically everything that was shown in the 19-minute gameplay footage was engineered, by hand, for that demo in specific. Also, Blizzard has made an excellent point about the semistatic areas - it provides players with familiarity. By looking at the surrounding semistatic area, you know what random dungeons are north, southwest, and southeast of you -- or any direction for that matter. This is really an important gameplay aspect, and works out better than absolute randomization. It also specifically enhances the psychological response of players by accentuating the differences between where the player can feel safe, rest, catch a breath and perhaps go for a cup of coffee, and the dungeons where the player knows to stay on edge.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that with regards to character classes, Blizzard will probably offer a mix of both old and new, with several skills that, with its combined effects, are new to the Diablo series. You can read more about this in the blog of an ex-Blizzard-employee, who stated that during his stay with the Hydra development team, the original plans were to scratch all Diablo 2 classes and start fresh. The current team is probably doing their best to find a sweet spot between the familiarity of Diablo 2 and excitement that new things can offer.

I hope this clears up a few things for most people.
Peace out.

[sansad]

hmm, if you follow tradition and try to spread the classes out some classes really need to be there.... You gotta have some sort of guy/girl with a pointy hat who, you know, throws fireballs and lightning and shit... and by the same demands there is a place for someone fighting with bows and arrows. the RPG curse I guess?

What I think blizzard is doing is specializing these "jobs" a bit further to give the characters some character. The barbarbarian is left because he's already so darned specialized, just a big muscle with a Maul attatched.

As I see it it might go something like this:

* Barbarian - Offensive badass de'jour.
* Paladinisch - Defensive guy in shiny plate, upholder of what is right blah blah...
* Necrom...err...witchdr - Scary guy who's more like a defensive spellcaster
* Lone ranger - Uses bowandarrows, also has a sturdy animal companion (wow hunter?...)
* Magelike creature - But more specialized, not the all-rounder like sorceress. Perhaps an arcane spellcaster??? Can you make copses explode with arcane magic?????

There are many roles to fill but I get the impression that they're going for more specialized characters this time around. No char will play like the other(period). AND, they want to shuffle the cards a bit. Perhaps the paladin won't return, maybee he'll be like a cleric this time around.... :P


Making sense??

[FingolfinGR]

the one thing that i've been worried about is that the dungeons of each area wont be as important (and thus less interesting to explore). Take for example "The Pit" in act 1, the tombs in act2, some random caves in act 3 and abaddon in Act 5 (those are the few that come to mind). I went to explore them once/twice but then i found there wasnt anything of interest in there.
Where "something of interest" should be either a quest that tells a story, a new boss or good loots.

[sansad]

Anyhow, we might be getting a nice gameplay demo with 1-2 new classes(and other stuff) for December 24th.

[sansad]

FingolfinGR said:

the one thing that i've been worried about is that the dungeons of each area wont be as important (and thus less interesting to explore). Take for example "The Pit" in act 1, the tombs in act2, some random caves in act 3 and abaddon in Act 5 (those are the few that come to mind). I went to explore them once/twice but then i found there wasnt anything of interest in there.
Where "something of interest" should be either a quest that tells a story, a new boss or good loots.

Overall I think D2 lacks in that perspective.... there's absolutely no sence of "ok, where should I go now?!?!" Cain always tells you exactley where to go and where to find some old body part that you need for whatever reason.

You also know exactly how many quests you have to do in each act and you basically run into them.

So right there is something that could be inproved a lot. The whole explore shit to find quests and then you need to explore some more to solve the quest.... and that might force you to look in said "pit" or "cave". :)

[freodo]

Mr.Yoshida said:

*There was no class specific armor in D2... everyone could wear any type of armor, it just looked different on the characters. It was noted previously by Bashiok that there would still be class specific weapons and such.

Incorrect. There was class specific in D2. Barb helms, Dru helms, Nec shields, and Pala shields.
I wouldn't be surprised if they bring back cs items and add more like helms for wd.

[Xizor]

Would be cool if the head ripoff etc. was a death animation kind of thing, so that when you essentially die it could play those gore like animations :P

[Etecoon]

freodo said:

Incorrect. There was class specific in D2. Barb helms, Dru helms, Nec shields, and Pala shields.
I wouldn't be surprised if they bring back cs items and add more like helms for wd.

they said, there will be class specific offhand and mainhands...soo...you can take nec shields and pal shields off that list of yours, theyre only taking out the ugly druid helms and barb helms :D

[Tats]

In regards to the outside world being static, i think this would be totally fine.
My reason? well, imagine your walking around in the new D3 world of sanctuary, and lets say you just destroyed the monsters in "The den". And you want to help your friend do that in the next game. You get into that game, and you go to the same place the Den was last game, but its not there! The map is the same, but the content generated on it is different.

If this is the case, then I am perfectly fine with the outside world being static.

[sansad]

Tats said:

In regards to the outside world being static, i think this would be totally fine.
My reason? well, imagine your walking around in the new D3 world of sanctuary, and lets say you just destroyed the monsters in "The den". And you want to help your friend do that in the next game. You get into that game, and you go to the same place the Den was last game, but its not there! The map is the same, but the content generated on it is different.

If this is the case, then I am perfectly fine with the outside world being static.

I can see how you think in this matter....

For me a static world is fine as long as it is HUGE. If they are static and the same size as in d2 then there might be cause for alarm. But, I really don't think it was the randomness of the "world maps" that has kept us playing for all these years. When I play I mostly run against the sides to find the quickest ways to the next area anyways. The first time I played through I remember exploring every inch of the map, the trouble was that there really isn't that much interesting there anyways. But, you still need to find the "exit". AND, a static world map doesn't mean that they can't randomize where entrances to different dungeons are. Sure, the location of cities may be static and that would work for me. :)

So what's interesting then? My answear is, the dungeons. If blizzard can build on what was good and then make it worthwile to explore the dungeons more than I'm quite happy. :)