Game Director Jay Wilson announces news
Wilson explains that he wants to have the characters of Diablo III to be epicly powerful compared to Diablo 1 and 2. "Being superpowered and allowing the player to defeat hordes and armies of minions will bring the excitement back into the medeval game." However, many have argued that this will take away the horror/suspense from the game and will loose interest really quickly. Unfortunately the demo is short and I was noticing the uberness of the characters.
Wilson also announced that there will be a hardcore mode for all of you bloodlusting realism players out there as well as 3 difficulty modes like previous in LOD.
Wilson also commented that he wants to "remove the old barriers" when it comes to online play on battle.net. Creating an easier join system with friends and coming up with other ways to free up the restriction in Diablo III compared to all other RPG/Action games.
Wilson explained to Diablo fans that removing health potions away will generate a more realistic experience to the gameplay. Players will not be able to stock up unlimited amount of potions and being "invulnerable" to all monsters/players in battle. With an army of monsters in front of you, it will force you to be more strategic and apply classic hit and run and evading tactics to play.
Random mini-quests will be contributing to Diablo III to help support the randomly generating maps and monsters that we saw in Diablo II. Seeing a cult performing a ritual spell or a caravan in need of assistance at random when you are in the area will put you more intuned to the game as well as re-playabliity.
Diablo III game developers are also marking the overall game economics a high priority as they are developing a system where gold is the main currency and items such as jewels or runes are not. This will defintely keep the game in check and not overflow to a pure mf game.
An attendee attending the convention asked Wilson if loot will still be incorporated as a free for all during online games. Wilson quickly replied no as they have already created a system where all other players in a game with you will not be able to even see the items if they where dropped from a monster that you killed. Now once an item has been picked up and then dropped again will allow other users to see the item.
Wilson's last direction was to only enable a maximum of 4 players on bnet games. This will encourage others to band together in completing quests and prevent servers from reaching over capacity and allow better connection quality...ridding lag.
Day one is almost to a close and there is still a whole day left for more information about Diablo III. I will be uploading several pictures of the event later tonight, so come check it out.
Thasador
Staff Member
Otherwise... yay for uber heroes!!!!!
How could they, with not a single Blizzard North person from the original Diablo on the team, and only a few non-leads from the D II team?
He said epically overpowered compaired to Diablo 2. You're perfectly right, people could solo the whole game easy. Jay wants your character to be even more powerful.
Attribute points are not player-assignable in D3. They’re not in the blizzcon build, but we thought that was just to simplify things for new players at the show. Jay says no, that’s how it is in the game now. His explanation was that it makes items even more important, and that it lets the designers plan a bit better (they can assume players will have at least X in each stat by a given level). You still get attributes, and they will still be required for equipment use, but they are automatically assigned each level up. Thus every Wizard will have the same base str/vit/dex/etc as every other Wizard of the same level. Same for the Barb and WD.
Jay confirmed that the party interface and system is gone in D3. Now when you join a multiplayer game, you are automatically in a party. Jay said that now that there’s no option to go hostile, it was pointless to force players to go through an additional party joining interface. The team is considering mechanisms that might be needed to deal with griefers or players who otherwise try to ruin the play experience.
There will be waypoints in D3. They’re not in the Blizzcon build, but they are in the full game. The team is also looking at ways to automatically jump players right to the closest one to other players when they join a game. They’re also considering some sort of scroll or other mechanism that would take new players instantly to the others in the party, wherever they are in the game world. All part of their emphasis on boosting the fun, co-op, multiplayer elements of the game.
Jay spoke at length about the newly-revealed spell runes. They are a fairly new addition to the game (they’re only enabled for the Wizard in the Blizzcon build), and are still very much subject to change. However Jay said that there are now 6 or 7 different types of runes, 5 or 6 quality levels, and that they can add as many more types or quality levels as necessary. Their rule for adding more spell rune types is to only add them when they think of a property that will be useful to enough skills that it’s a viable addition. He also said that rune properties would only boost spells and skills; they won’t add say, +5 strength, or other general attribute boosts. Runes aren’t only damage adding either; Jay mentioned the Wizard skill Mirror Image: Runes added to that skill will do things like make the images (duplicates of the Wizard) last longer, or make more duplicates appear.
Also, in a question I sneaked in after our interview time ran out, while we were packing up our gear: I mentioned Jay’s past comment that players would “hate” the next character announced, since it was so similar to a past character. (Which turned out to be the Wizard, who is clearly similar to the Sorcerer/Sorceress, and didn’t result in hate, other than some “it’s too ‘Harry Potter’” comments about the name.) Jay said that comment had been overplayed a bit, and that he’d made it fairly offhand. When I asked him how players would feel about the next character, he grew a bit more serious, and said with emphasis, “I think players wll love the next class.” How much he meant that, and how much he was merely playing off his previous “hate” comment is for us to attempt to determine.
Like, is there going to be a unique Multi-strike rune that just bounces more?
Some excellent info in that update.
By the way, "lose" comes from the word "lost". Like the TV show. Only 1 "o". "loose" is something that isn't tight.
I <3 the Grammar Police. I thought that I was the only one 0_0.
This is the only thing that still worries me. Star Wars the Force Unleashed is supposed to make you feel powerful, but you get used to it quickly, and then it gets too fast-paced to handle. I've noticed a trend in games that are supposed to make you feel powerful. That is, that they do make you feel poreful - in the beginning. Then you realize your enemies go back and forth between complete pushovers and overpowered death machines. But who knows, this is a different developer and series than any of the games i'm talking about, so i guess we'll see
less people
no party screen, you cant unparty faggots
cant join your own games
no potions
GOLD! who the fuck wants gold?
The 4 player thing is just the best possible thing they have in their current build. Their ideal goal is still set at 8 players and things are still subject to change as they balance the classes and things out. If you've seen the gameplay thus far- you can imagine that 8 players running around in this setting with their visually flamboyant skills would basically create a giant counterstrike FLASHBANG on your screen
The stat randomizing is true thus far. again still subject to change- but most likely not from the vibe of things.
I played the D3 demo 3 times total as alll of the classes. I did a lot of experimenting with the loot with my friends and we figured out the system. When we killed the final boss of the dungeon ( King Leoric) we all had 4 rare item drops (yellow) and each one of us had 4 different items drop for a total of 16 different items off the boss. They couldnt pick up/see my loot unless i picked it up and dropped it on the ground for them. Also there was no trading as you dont really start/end in a town.
I also got quite a few bags/runes. Bags go in bag slots that increase your total inventory size. And the runes dropped way too much. The loot drop ratios for everyone getting their own loot drops needs to be toned WAY down. Maybe they just had it like that for blizzcon, but I had a full inventory of all blue/rare items before finishing the first floor.
Also 8 people would be a bad thing after playing the demo. It was enough having 4 people unloading on a group of mobs, but 8 would take away a lot of the luster of the game. After playing with 4 characters it felt right.
as in call of duty 4... you hit join game and it puts you in a random game... you dont get to look through the list and pick your own
Yea but it won't be like that in Diablo 3 because the names of the games are so important.
There's no stat randomizing from what i've read, but stats are automatically assigned to your class. For example, you're not going to get a bunch of intelligence on your barb, and you're not gonna get a bunch of strength on your Wizard. It will work like World of Warcraft, where you get stats that match your class.