DiabloFans Interview With the Devs: Highlights
DiabloFans had the opportunity to speak to Josh Mosqueira, Travis Day and Wyatt Cheng and while we work on the full transcript we wanted to summarize the major points in an easy to read form.
The Game
- There will be announcements about new features before BlizzCon
- Even though he loves PvP, Travis hopes Diablo 3 doesn't go down the eSport road, because when you focus on that type of PvP content you’ll have diminished results in the PvE part. Diablo 3 is meant to be a PvE game
- Archon and Wrath of the Berserker changes won't come in a “vacuum”. They'll be part of a bigger change to class skills. This way skill power can be redistributed more effectively
- Blizzard are working on including the Mystic back into the game, but it’s still not clear what unique feature she might offer
- There are talks about making Paragon levels account-wide, so that you don't feel like you're losing experience while playing your Paragon 100 character. Also potentially adding customization like stat allocation to it
- If additions to the Paragon system are made, people that already have the required Paragon level will get the rewards on patch day
- The different Blizzard teams not only give feedback to each other, but sometimes even help each other with development
- The Diablo team draws a lot of inspiration and even “some direct ideas” from the community and even mentioned specifically some of our “Suggestion” articles that have gained some good popularity
- The Diablo 3 team has actually just received the new PS4 development kits so the translation for that platform is yet to be done. They really like the features on the PS4 controller and want to try and do something cool with the trackpad and share button
- Diablo 3 will not be a launch date title for the PS4. It will come in 2014. The developers prefer to try and get the most out of the different features that platforms have, instead of just porting the game to each of them
- There aren't any plans for Diablo 3 on portable devices
- When an expansion comes the main concern will not be to ship it simultaneously on all platforms, but instead try to make the expansion features as relevant to each platform as possible
- Jay Wilson approached Josh for the position of Lead Console Developer, because of their long past of working on other projects together
- Josh tries to play a variety of games besides Diablo 3, like other ARPGs and even some Call of Duty in his spare time. Currently he's looking to try The Last of Us
- Travis explains that Josh is the type of person that really thinks about the grand scheme of things and how the different features may pan out in the long run and their exact purpose in the game
Rule #1 of Grammar Nazism: Make 100% sure you're right. While some style guides (Associated Press, Economist) might agree with you, others (Chicago Manual of Style for example) occasionally seem to be okay using plural for collective nouns. The question is whether you consider the company as an entire unit (as in, "Blizzard has lots of employees") or the individuals of this company (it's not the company working on the Mystic, but its developers). Going with singular you're right in almost all cases, but sometimes the plural isn't wrong either. It's more of a stylistic issue. By the way, as a non-native speaker it still "sounds wrong" whenever I hear commentators referring to a sports team using plural (Manchester United are rubbish), but I've learned to accept that all languages have their counter-intuitive quirks.
On topic: I LOVE that they stress again that e-sports is off the table for now. Focus on PvE and fix that first, thanks. By the way, some of you seem to be a bit self-centered if you think that just a couple of suggestion topics are the reason why the Mystic will come back. Many people still haven't realized how close the Mystic was to being part of the release version. It's not like without the community's suggestion they would be unable to develop a game. In fact, all suggestion are based on beta concepts and have only small "novel ideas", so please give credit where credit is due.
Which ones?
Just because you're not interested in console (and I'm not interested in console news, either) doesn't mean no one else on DFans is. There are lots of people interested in the console, plus it's just the one thing most of the devs are working on right now.
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Haedrig_-_Conversation_Achievement
No, it's separate character development.
For instance I have a level 100 paragon wizard, but right now I am playing my DH and she is paragon 41. I don't feel gimped in power by playing my 41 DH because I know I need to progress her separately and get her just as strong. To me, it's no different than having a level 60 monk and a level 30 wizard. The only way I have felt hindered on her is by losing the 300 MF/GF that my wizard has at level 100. I enjoyed starting her at level 60 no paragon and watching her progress to 41 and I will enjoy progressing her to paragon 100. I don't want her to just automatically be 100 and have nothing to do on her and lose any sense of progression. I want her to gain exp and actually play her and power her up, even if just a minimal amount per level. The reason I don't play my wizard anymore is because I don't gain experience so I don't really feel a sense of progression, all I do is play item lottery by killing monsters which isn't that fun lately because if I spend 4 hours farming and gain nothing I don't even have paragon level progression to feel I did something worthwhile. We shouldn't be striving for less things to do, but more things, and making paragon completely account bound would do just that.
What I would really like to see is have an insane paragon level cap (or another champion system with 100 extremely difficult levels that take thousands of hours to progress through), and you gain absolutely no benefits, it's strictly just for bragging rights and showing how long you have played your character in comparison to others. So at least you are progressing in some way at all times, even if just for vanity.
To be clear, in case there are any misunderstandings my stance would be to have any perks that don't affect character strength (MF, GF, vanity items) should be account-wide based on the highest paragon level and any character development progression should be based on that specific character's personal paragon level (stat points, paragon skills).
But this is inevitable when a corporate culture spends a dozen years moving away from actual focus on their products and promotes people based on their ability to play politics.