MTV - ‘Diablo III’ Designer Describes How Game Will Appeal To ‘Diablo’ Fans And Broad

MTV Multiplayer's Tracey John shares another part of their Q&A with Jay Wilson (Diablo 3 Lead Designer). Jay Wilson discusses why potions were removed from the game, and what the plan is to change game mechanics for handling monsters and bosses; and how the game will appeal to Diablo fans. Read the article.
Jay Wilson: “When you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them.”

Bashiok answered a QQ-rampage from fan bobydole concerning this very MTV interview about Health Potions. His answer makes sense. There is a mix between nostalgia, and how gaming experience, game mechanics and systems have evolved eight years later. Sometimes you can't appeal to everyone, but gotta balance games somewhere in the middle. Personally, I have been one of those players who go into Duriel with a full stack of healing potions, do hit and run, and spam healing potions. Same with Diablo at the Chaos Sanctuary. Teleport, stack more healing potions, then return to continue tackling Diablo. Playing Diablo 3 differently would surely put a dent on the healing pot spamming nostalgia. However, shooting down the new healing concept laid by the Diablo 3 team before even getting our hands on a playable demo, or beta is a bit too early.

Bobydole: They keep touting potiopn dropping as if it's a new dynamic that's going to make the game more interesting. It's been around for decades as a game mechanic.

What made diablo interesting was the lifetap ability of most classes, it wasn't so much the potion popping, though that was important for casters.

What gets me is these guys claim they're fixing this that, putting in potion drops rather than potions, then they say some BS like this...

"We want diablo III to be beatable by just pushing one button."

No &#$%ing *(&#, genious. Diablo I and II both got that right for lower difficulties.

How about we stop trying to fix what isn't broken and refine it. Rather than, oh i don't know...

DEVOLVING ONE OF THE GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME TO MIMIC THE BASIC PLAY MECHANICS OF PREVIOUS BULL(*&#$ TITLES.

Are we making a blizzard game here or an SOE title? Quit making bull*(&$, water-down, vanilla gameplay descisions.

Blizzard doesn't cater to massive audiences, they create them.

Refine lifetap, Refine player run speeds, make synergies work better. Make some skills powerful damage-wise, but weaken a players speed/ defense over time. Make more dynamic buff abilities like berserk.

Go ahead, kill the messenger. Blizzard can do no wrong, right?, Empires never fall..

Bashiok: Hrmmm, I was really confused at first but I think you make a very valid point. However, game development and design just doesn't tend to work the same as it used to, and I'm not talking about Blizzard games, but just in general.

The days of design-by-luck are by no means gone, but far less accepting are players of flaws as valid rules. It requires a more methodical and player-serving approach. I actually think it may have to do somewhat with the increase in expectations of customer service and consumer rights... possibly the ever-shrinking attention span, regardless though, players have higher expectations from their games, and systems/rules that may have worked or were at least accepted as part of the game even a few years ago rarely fly these days. It's not the same market, and you're not applying to the same small group of core gamers anymore. Aside from that I don't think most still enjoy the masochistic, obscure, and often overly-complex or undefined game design of yore. Nostalgia blinds though.

Anyway... I don't know, I'm just a player myself, but I think I get where you're coming from and the best we can do is play games and enjoy ourselves. Maybe more than we ever have before, but nostalgia is such a powerful lie it makes it difficult to properly weigh the experiences.

I'm reading a bit between the lines of your posts though I think, and getting way too far from discussing health regeneration in Diablo games.

I know at this point I probably can't really allay your concerns in this specific case until you try it out, except to say that I believe you're wrong in regards to health globes. The overuse of potions was a path of least resistance, and I don't feel removing it detracts anything from the game except to say that it's something that was in a previous title in the series.

Those who have expressed concern that the screenshots show a difference from what was shown at the Gameplay video in WWI Paris seem to be wrong. Bashiok , Diablo 3 Community Manager, has answered fans the following:

Is it just me or does this recent pic indeed show a darker dungeon then in the previous screen shots?

Bashiok: All of the screenshots being posted were taken pre-announcement, the same time the video was shot. So no, there isn't any difference. There are darker parts, and lighter parts, and while there are certain to be lighting tweaks as we go it isn't expected to change dramatically.

Well at least one thing I noticed new in the screen shots was the barbarian has gotten new battle scars from killing demons in this picture, but in the game play video when they zoom in he didn't have as many on him..

Bashiok: Those are actually fading crit blood sprays. When you get a crit death on a monster (that isn't an elemental crit death) it sprays the hero with blood (decals) and those then slowly fade over time. The screenshot shows them pretty much faded all the way out which gave them the appearance of scars. Maybe we can get some screenshots out that show the blood sprays a bit more effectively.

Comments

  • To post a comment, please or register a new account.
Posts Quoted:
Reply
Clear All Quotes