A user at the Diablo III community forum asked as much, professing that "the forces of both gravity and friction are way too weak to look right."
While Bashiok did say that there are "some straight up issues that [the team] intend[s] to correct," he also explained that much of what is seen in-game is a faithful rendering of their vision of the game:
Official Blizzard Quote:
I don't want anyone to get the impression that we're shooting for realism here, because our goal is absolutely to make it feel like you're an over-the-top human god laying waste to the demonic masses and setting their carcasses flying free like so much loosed meat.
The moon physics, as trend followers have come to call the phenomenon, isn't limited to the Barbarian. The effect is common among many skills, such as the Wizard's Energy Twister. Dead bodies behave more like toy dolls in a hurricane than anything of a like scale in our world. But most of this is intended:
Official Blizzard Quote:
It is absolutely intentional that the barbarian's skills have crazier impact physics than other classes, because we think that fits with the visual and feel of the character - huge impactful strikes that send dudes flying, whereas the monk might be more of a 'thousand cuts' kind of fighter.
Or perhaps this is all really the work of Gravitablo, the Lord of Gravitational and Frictional Disruption, and Bashiok is merely an unwitting pawn in the nefarious Demon Lord's dastardly work.
If you haven't had the chance to observe the controversial physics yourself, or you haven't been invited into the beta quite yet, Force Strategy Gaming has an excellent video that shows just how out-of-this-world the force of gravity behaves in the world of Sanctuary:
On a side note, this is really only noticeable on the Barbarian. The other classes don't exhibit such moon-physics. It's not like they fly backwards across the screen when you hit them with an arrow.
I think it's an effect of landing an overpowered hit on a small and frail enemy. I hardly think every single mob in the game would go flying in this fashion.
This is Diablo, not Battlefield or CoD. Physics really isn't a central part of the game. Especially considering you are a barbarian fighting zombies and monsters of all kinds. In that environment, everything you know about physics gets thrown out the window, and rightly so. If I wanted realism, I wouldn't be interested in Diablo at all.
But watching the video made me laugh.
Going down = fix it so its harder/faster/heavier!
And if they hit a wall, floor or whatever, make a "SPLAT" on the surface!
This has nothing to do with realism. I have played Titan Quest, another ARPG like Diablo (probably one of the best Diablo clones out there BTW), full of mythical monsters, magic etc. Again not your typical realistic game. It had ragdoll physics and the proper sense of direction I described in my post. The more damage you dealt on the killing blow the more the monster's corpse reacted to the hit. And I can tell you landing a powerful attack and just swatting the monster off your way felt awesome. It gave your attacks a sense of real power and weight behind them, like they were real hits placed on very physically 'there' objects. No matter that you were dealing with a fantasy world, the power of your character just oozed all over the place when something like that happened. Which is what they are going for here. Unfortunately the way they implemented it makes it look kind of cartoony in that monsters just launch into the air in nonsensical and way-over-the-top fashion.
What would make you feel more powerful and badass? If you struck a monster with a swing from the right and it just inexplicably jumped 20 feet into the air? Or rather if it launched to the left (as it should), perhaps hitting a tree, some rocks or barrels on the way, or just rolling down a cliff as it carries the power of your blow with it? I can tell you from experience the latter feels great. And with the kinds of attacks that Diablo has (Cleave, Whirlwind, Leap Attack etc) it would look much better if there were monsters flying all over the place in various directions, rather than just launching straight up into the air when you kill one of them. I'm not urging the Diablo team to implement complete realism and tone everything down. I still want it to be over the top...but this is the bad kind of over the top.
Now, I'm sure that the physics guys are saying things like "we're using 9.8 m/s/s!" but the fact of the matter is that when you're not in a first person view, real gravity just looks slow. You've got to beef it up a little.
Toning it down will not take away the essence of the character. Diablo 2 never had any physics and the barbarian still felt pretty damn epic with the knockbacks.
And "only the barbarian has lunar skills" isn't a valid argument on why its okay. Your "only" part indicates at least a margin of discrepency, and you accepting it just shows complacency. If you're going to do something, do it right.
Back to the point, he's alwasy 1-hitting 15 hit points monster with attack of at least 200 points, the effect is normal to me. I would not like it if in inferno you take 12 hits to kill a monster and suddenly the last hit send it flying ...
So if you only did 5 hps more damage, than they had life... it would merely look like you knocked the enemy back with a powerful blow.
But if you hit them for say... 5 or 10x their life... the enemy might be blown clear off the map never to be seen again.
Number 2: If you are saying the way a corpse flies in Diablo isn't realistic maybe you shouldn't play a game that involves magic if you're concerned with realism...
A good thing I can note about this though is objects you'd expect to roll better than others normally do. For example severed heads roll rather nicely, while planks of wood do not. This is a tribute to the true physics engine. I do think, again, that it needs tweaking though, as whole corpses in particular almost never roll, and always slide.
You can hit the bodies again on the way down. Barbarian Volleyball is unofficially, but quite really, a thing.