Advance video to 10:18
Afterwards, Blizzard responded via their Twitter, clarifying how each item slot has 18 unique tiers.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Theeliminator2k - @diablo when you say 18 sets you mean 18 different boots, leggings,etc? And does that 18 include unique armor or are they totally different?
Diablo - @Theeliminator2k To clarify, there are 18 complete tier looks. Complete. 18 individual looks for each item slot.
Official Blizzard Quote:
in diablo 2 sure they repeated the graphics but we did have 15 tiers of armor that were repeated.
i hope in the case of chest piece armor they have more armor since it is not repeating something in the area of 30 or so would seem good.
with only 18 tiers and 3 difficulties if they only have 4 acts ( just a total guess ) we are looking at only 1-2 new armor looks in a new act
Diablo 2 did not have 15. It had 5. And those were mostly recolored versions of each other with extra pieces stuck on to make them look different.
Not to knock Diablo 2. The number of looks it had are amazing considering what it took to render them out.
Official Blizzard Quote:
He means, when you equip them, 3 look very much alike with minor changes. Not that, in your inventory, they're unique looking.
Oh, yeah, icons don't count. Those will be unique per item though, too, FYI.
Speaking of the icons, yes each tier looks different. When looking at the characters though, most look almost indistinguishable. Bashiok follows this with examples of unique armor tiers on the Witch Doctor.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Hopefully this will help. These aren't new, they're from the BlizzCon 2010 panel. There are most certainly already pictures out there of these slides (if not video). These are 4 of the set appearances for the witch doctor. They're unique from each other in every way, including unique geometry, textures, and in some cases animations, and that is true of the other 14 'tiers'.
http://i616.photobuc...ok/Picture2.png
http://i616.photobuc...ok/Picture4.png
http://i616.photobuc...ok/Picture3.png
http://i616.photobuc...ok/Picture1.png
These visual looks do not determine anything about the item stats, name, quality, etc.
Next a member states how 18 tiers may not be enough to share through each act, in each difficulty. Bashiok responds explaining how there are 720 unique armor pieces in the game, not including weapons, or other item slots. Also in the mix are the dozen or so Armor Dyes which can be placed in each item slot to change its color. Bashiok also makes it clear that he is strictly speaking visually, and not about item stat variations.
Official Blizzard Quote:
it will not be cool to play a whole act and only have 1 ( 2 sometimes ) new type of armor available to find
Hrm. Not cool compared to what? I don't think this is being compared accurately to what Diablo II or even other games offer as far as visual upgrades to a character. 18 tiers, times 5 classes, times 8 armor slots is 720 unique pieces of armor in Diablo III. That's not counting weapons, or alterations to make each armor piece fit both genders. Oh, and right, the dozen or so different colors you can dye each of those pieces.
I also hope this isn't being confused with actual diversity in item drops. You're still going to be finding tons of items with varying quality levels and stats, but the best are going to always be pushing your character's aesthetic 'impressiveness' forward.
Official Blizzard Quote:
as compared to d2 you joined a new act and had access to 3-4 or so new armor types
Aside from those 3-4 being minimal changes from one another, they repeated per difficulty. We don't think that's nearly as cool.
Numbers-wise, yes, absolutely Diablo II had more "unique looks" per act. From a viewpoint of actually considering what's available in Diablo III, we've got a ton more items for you to find, and they're all unique, and amazing looking.
(The bandwidth on those WD armor images have been exceeded, though.)
Anyway, so I was wondering, are those four tier sets base items? They look like legendary sets to me. That's what confused me about the whole thing.
Jay Wilson: Well......there are 200 skeletons in the first dungeon, each with 206 bones to break and damage. This leaves you with 41,200 possible bones to crush, break and fracture each with over 900 different animations that shoot off a radius of light and other cool little gimmicks. This means that we have over 1 million more bones in Diablo 3 than Diablo 2. THE BONES OFFER LIMITLESS NUBMERSSS!1010101!!!
Reporter: ...O.k, I don't care about a compare and contrast on the two games, when can we expect the game?
Jay Wilson: NUMBERS!!!!!! ROARRRR!!!!!!!!
Seriously?...Blizzard, this isn't Mathablo.
Unless I've missed something it wasn't answered fully, and I want to know as well. Does the 18 sets include SET item looks and UNIQUE/LEGENDARY or are these going to be entirely new and separate to the 18 tiers??
are actually BASE items. They look epic enough to be legendaries. In fact, on the last one shown, the tentacles coming off the head piece actually move in-game. That seems more like a legendary to me.
"tiers is...an easy term for us" "it doesn't mean the same thing it did in WoW." So this got me thinking In conjunction with Bash's "Visual tiers" that there will be overlap between the strength of different visual tiers. So the first 3 tiers all have states in the range of 10-20 or something but the lowest tier maxes at 12 and has a minimum of 4 while the highest has a min of 10 and maxes at around 30. This carries over as you progress with multiple visual tiers having over lapping state possibilities until you reach the end game where the last 3-5 visual tiers all have the same stat cap to allow more variation between players even before adding the visually distinct legendary equipment etc.
@CherubDown In regards to the Doc sets shown. They do look epic, but I sincerely doubt anyone outside Blzz will know what the unique equipment looks like before the game is released. That removes the wonder of one of the coolest and most central parts of the game. I would be willing to bet that all of those sets are between visual tier 6 and 15 based on whet they have been saying. The elephant shoulders for the Barb was specifically stated as a 'Higher' set, not legendary, a base set at high level.
But doesn't that prospect get you pumped to see what the rest of the stuff looks like?
Yeah I think that's something that REALLY makes the class. It's really unique.
Thank you and I'm not sure why the links won't work for you, they work for me O_O.
So true.. I clearly remember my friend's first play through. He had found a Lightsabre
Phase Blade, which in game looks pretty sweet. Come hell almost every one handed sword had a high DPS.. Didn't feel very empowering.
If the animations for skills didn't suffer I wouldn't mind at all. Also though we have to keep in mind that in order to make certain features of the characters stand out from the birds eye view we see them at, some of their features are very large when viewed normally. So if a two handed axe is huge, having it on his back might look silly. We'd have to see for ourselves :).
Never noticed that.. It has room for horns and everything O_O. I doubt it, but it's an interesting catch!
A. The art team has very little to do with the development of real content for the game, so they can focus on cool stuff like this.
B. What does your question have to do with the armor sets having individual looks?
On topic, The progressive armor looks also seem like they might mix and match very well, and I wonder what the standout features for the monk, wizard, and DH will be?
I mean, if we have 18 tiers, it's safe to assume the first 14 (at least) are not gonna be used once you got items from the final ones.
Have they really addressed the problem of everybody looking the same at endgame? Sure, coloring the armor is fine, but will it really help that much?