Interview: Diablo Creator David Brevik Discusses His Feelings on Diablo 3
Posted 19 August 2012 by RushsterThis week I was fortunate to catch up with 
David Brevik at Gamescom in Cologone to find out more about his new title Marvel Heroes but also to find out what he thought of Diablo 3, after all, he created the Diablo franchise. In the interview David talks quite openly about Diablo 3 and the mixed emotions he feels about the game and all the backlash from the community since the game was released.
Watch the video, or if you prefer, you can read a transcript after the break.
You can also check out the press demo video I shot of Marvel Heroes with the Gazillion team on IncGamers, view the full interview with David or jump into our new Marvel Heroes forum.
IncGamers: You are very well known in the world of ARPGs, and I am going to ask you, Diablo 3 is probably the most anticipated PC title in 10 years. What’s your opinion on the final product?
David Brevik: Honestly, I think that they did a lot of the things the best they could, it was a very different game than I would have created, the team and personalities, the people, the talent and all the design philosophies of the people that worked on it in Irvine, we called them Blizzard South, those people have their own style and the their own way they like to design. It was very, very different from the Blizzard North.
So I think that when Blizzard South took over the development of Diablo 3 it was inevitable that they were going to create an experience that was in the Diablo theme but concentrated more towards the things that they liked to experience. Including more story and things like that.
When Blizzard North shut down they lost a ton of experience with why the Action RPG works and what about it works. That’s really difficult to recover from. They didn’t have the experience of people that knew it well. This is why you do things with random levels for example, and so when you lose that experience you are going to create a very different experience in the end than we would have created.
IncGamers: Do you think they bought the wrong people in? As we understand, Jay Wilson, for example, his background was RTS. From our point of view it looked like they misunderstood what kept people playing, The type of loot drops, which has been a big issues. One of the other issues is they have not listened to their community, and they have not analysed what makes up that addictive Diablo experience. What are your thoughts on that?
David Brevik: Well, the loot system. They made some decisions with the loot system that were very different than the way that we did it in Diablo 2 and I think that obviously the community has been upset with some of the decisions they made. Having all of your powers work off your main weapon and things like that, to having blues that are more powerful than yellows. Eventually the auction house and how that worked, even something as simple as when you equip an item and it’s bound to your character permanently would have totally changed the dynamic of the game.
It seems odd that they have not really responded in a quick fashion to some of these things. I think they are very well aware of the problems at this point and are trying to fix some of this stuff. It’s a shame that they had to learn some of these painful lessons
IncGamers: As you created Diablo, how do you feel about it? Do you feel a little let down that the legacy has kind of been mashed up?
David Brevik: I have very mixed emotions about it (laughs). On one hand I am sad that people haven’t enjoyed Diablo because it’s a love, a passion, and its obvious people still have a giant love and passion for Diablo and they are speaking out about it because they have such love for it. That makes me feel great.
I am sad because people are outraged and, you know, some of the decision they have made are not the decisions I would make and there have been changes in philosophy and that hasn’t gone over very well. I think in that way I am a little sad.
I am also a little happy, which I hate to say, it shows that the people that were involved in Diablo really did matter, and so I am happy that it has come to light that how talented that group was and how unique and special that group was. I am hoping that, as this happens very often in the industry, you see it with Call of Duty and things like that , when the people leave the game changes and it shows how critical people are in this industry.
IncGamers: One of the questions the Gazillion guys asked me to ask you was, where did the name Diablo come from?
David Brevik: I thought of the game when I was in high school and I lived in the east part of San Francisco in a town called Danville and I lived at the base of Mount Diablo and that’s where the name comes from. Once I found out what the mountain name was, I thought that was awesome, I didn’t speak Spanish, so I thought I wanted to use that as a title for a nemesis in a videogame. It’s simply from where I lived.
IncGamers: Well thanks a lot David, you’ve brought a lot of pleasure to millions of people over the years and hopefully you’ll continue to do so.
Update: Some of the Diablo III developers, including Jay Wilson, reacted angrily to Dave’s comments in this interview. See this post for quotes.
Update #2: A few hours later Gazilli0n issued IncGamers with a statement reading
“We admire Blizzard and Blizzard games. David was asked about Diablo 3 and gave his honest opinion and we stand by him 100%. Marvel Heroes is David’s vision and is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2. We’ll be in closed beta soon, so visit MarvelHeroes.com if you want to check it out.” – Leo Olebe, VP Marketing Gazillion Entertainment.
This was a really good interview.
Thanks man. I asked him to be as honest as possible, and I think David did a good job. I will say Marvel Heroes is pretty damn sweet, got some good hands-on time. You should watch the press demo linked above as well as the full interview.
This was solid gold. I think you asked all the right questions, and Mr. Brevik’s answers were as forthright as he could possibly make them. It is obvious that he still cares about the fans and the experience he and his team at Blizz North created, and (reading between the lines) he is quite upset with many of the decisions taken by the new Blizz Diablo Team.
He’s been pretty dam^n honest in admitting that he is somewhat gratified by the D3 mess as it proves that people matter. and By God looking at the state of D3, he sure is right!!!
Anyway, the changes now being put in place (e.g. 1.04) will hopefully help set thing on a more even keel.
Overall a great interview. Very relevant to all us long term player.
As I go to sleep, I shudder at the troll’o'flame wars that will infest the comment section for this article by the morning.
Also, will there ever be an interview with one of these guys beyond generic “how do you feel about this game?” questions/answers? The polite “it’s nice but not what we would have made” is getting old.
It’s kind of like getting policy questions for politicians during an election.
Well… today’s competitors might one day be tomorrow’s employer I guess.
Yes, his answers were spot on. Blizzard Irvine is a different team, and they make their games according to a certain style. That’s why the original Diablo feeling is lost forever. Many of us simply have to move on, and realize that Blizzard won’t produce what we want. It’s damn sad, really.
Minus the part where the complainers aren’t moving on at all…
I think I cried a little watching this interview earlier this afternoon. Great job on the interview, though. That was sad to hear, but it’s how we all feel, anyway.
And by how we all feel, you really meant how you feel.
trying to be nice but not say there game stinks lol
I hate how disrespectfully he speaks about people Blizzard. These are the people that created Warcraft, Starcraft and WOW and all of these games have a community which is equally passionate as Diablo community.
I hate this indirect talk. Dude grow a pair of balls and say “D3 sucks because we didnt make it and we are clearly superior game developers compared to people at Blizzard”. Thats all good and fine but the core gameplay of D3 is amazing and everything else is fixable. He can laugh now but I think Blizzard will have the last laugh…
Please leave. This is a Diablo fansite, and this man created Diablo.
I think he knows a thing or two about the ARPG genre, he’s been creating them for almost 20 years now.
D3 dev team has many fresh out of WoW, with Jay Wilson as a RTS developer. And as of now, I haven’t played D3 in close to a month.
Hell, PoE is even more interesting, and I honestly feel it’s a mediocre game.
Edit: BTW, what do you mean by core? Lackluster story, no immersion, and a very lighthearted experience in a series that was known for Dark Gothic Hack n’ Slash?
What core part of Diablo 3 was amazing again? The combat? Yeah, I agree, it’s pretty decent. Waited 10 years for sub-par combat? Nope, at least I sure as hell DID NOT.
Are you that pathetic dude that tells his friends not to buy D3 because its not worth the money (yet i bet you have more than 100 hours put in it)?
I dont want to turn this in to another discussion about how good/bad D3 is. I like it…you dont…fine.
I am annoyed by his lack of respect for people who are probably the greatest game development studio in the world and whose money allowed him to make Diablo in to a great game after they bought Condor games.
Do you think that long developement time of Diablo games and always being late is not influance by Blizzard and their cash?
DO you think that great cinematics are not influanced by Blizzard>
Do you think that “gamepley first” is not influance by Blizzard?
wow, i mean… just wow. You my friend, you’re pure undeluded crystal clear fanboism. no ryme, no reason just devotion to your mistress. Blizzard fired Blizzard North and then proceded to form a ragtag bunch of “talented” people form other divisions to give birth to the ****fest we call d3. see, i said it for Brevik. Now back to your cellar, worshipping Blizzard.
Lack of respect? He doesn’t even work for the company anymore. I’m surprised he was that polite about everything in the interview. You can even see the pauses in the conversation where he bites his tongue to be a little diplomatic about his answers.
Absolute moronic fanboy reply. Simply unbelievable. You must have never experienced the true joy of D1 or D2 upon their release, and are thus unable to compare to D3. This man created the franchise and is giving his most honest replies. You, on the other hand, just like mowing on wilson choad it seems, no matter how stale or tasteless it might become.
this kid is probably jay wilson undercover, or one of those guys who was butthurt from brevik’s comments
Brevik made diablo so we should trust his opinion on everything ARPG related? What about this quote from the interview: “having blues that are more powerful than yellows.” Only an idiot that doesn’t understand ilvl would say something like that. By the same logic, whites are better than yellows because ilvl 63 white weapons have higher dps than ilvl 10 yellow weapons.
His suggestion of bind on equip is equally idiotic. That sort of thing belongs in WoW, not D3.
He also acts like Blizzard has been completely ignoring complaints, when the upcoming 1.0.4 patch addresses pretty much every legitimate complaint people have had since release.
I admit D3 was far from perfect on release, and perhaps the released product was lesser than what D2 has become over the past decade, but D3 has superior core gameplay and 1.0.4 is just the first major step towards making it a game that far exceeds its predecessors. To act like D3 is a failure is just ignorant.
Blues were more powerful than yellows up until tomorrow. Check back a couple of months on this website — it was fully covered.
As for not listening to their customers, it’s two-fold. They listened to their customers after their product shipped because the game didn’t live up to expectations. Blizzard admitted faults in certain areas and decided to listen as to how to improve it — vital at the time.
However for the past 4 years they were developing the game. Made core improvements, dumped a ton of stuff, and had their internal testers give feedback about was fun and wasn’t fun about the game. A few stories about ex internal testers emerged here and there, and who knows if they carried any validity as no one wanted to be identified as someone breaking the NDA.
There was plenty of time for Blizzard to ask around and receive feedback. Blizzcon, other venues, beta testers (and the what, 8 month beta was it?).
Rare weapons of the same ilvl(item level) did have higher damage than that of a blue weapon with the same ilvl.
Your statement is akin to calling yellows are more powerful than oranges just because a rare ilvl 63 weapon (obviously) has higher damage than an ilvl 30 legendary weapon.
Stat budgets due to their randomization was a mess and made incovenient for everyone.
…and this has been the case ever since, apparently the site is moderated by some really biased people that they have presented this concept.
Nevertheless, all of that has been fixed now. Condor or Blizzard North had four years in making D2, in which the game was utter crap at release compared to how Diablo was, it took LoD a year more for them to fix it. Even then that was not enough as in how it took almost about 1.5 years to make into the game that everyone now loves and remembers as Diablo 2.
It took almost 11 years for the D3 to release as it took Blizzard “South” to clean the mess of the North and provide a proper game in a cycle of 5 years and except the PvP, the game is at a much more better point that D2 was after a year of its release(aka 5 years after its initial start in development)
Disrespectful? You do realize this guy CREATED the game from ground up and the guys at blizzard plainly destroyed his work. If there is one guy who can criticize Diablo it’s really him.
BTW: He has been very polite and gentle in the manner he presented his points and views on HIS game. There is also a difference between growing some balls and acting like a pussy… you sir described the pussy way of doing things, but if acting like a total bitch is your way… it’s OK. Now would you kindly leave this place, you buffoon.
FFS he expressed his opinion. I don’t agree with him but he sure as hell belongs here. I can safely say that you sound like a blatant hater and don’t think for yourself. Yes, I’m very disappointed with the game myself and have stopped playing for now. It’s the type of people like you though that grind my gears.
I kinda agree and a bit sad that the game creator of diablo would have that kind of feeling. If he’s a superior game developer, then lets see some games, no?
Diablo 1, 2 is old. They’re great and popular games, but for that time. This guy just doesn’t seem to factor in any idea that what drives people to like d1/d2 no longer exists because gamers are spoiled with casual gaming and mmo rpgs that are vastly superior in satisfying the same addiction that made diablo and diablo II sucessful.
Also, d3 was developed with community feedback from diablo 2, but apparently, d2 gamers don’t know what they’re talking about. for example, itemization in d2 sucked balls and when d3 tries to make itemization in d3 more personalized, they get different results. no point in pointing fingers, but i hate it when people assert the notion that the community is always right.
anyways, d3 still has a lot of potential and i cant wait to see how the game changes.
This is why you’re a moron. Diablo 2 was addictive and fun because of its itemization and builds that could be based off of said itemization. It opened up a lot of fun possibilities. This guy wasn’t ****ting on Blizzard. He answered honestly and thus made it a good interview.
Have you seen the Torchlight guys answers when they get asked about Diablo 3? All they say is how ‘neat’ the story was and that its a ‘fun’ game. They created Diablo 2 as well, they know D3 is ****.
A lot of us have played 100+ hours because we’ve been hoping and searching for what made Diablo 2 so much fun.
Hopefully 1.0.4 brings it closer to that level.
and again, you’re a moron.
d2 itemization sucked balls because everyone had the same build and set of unique items.’nuff said. sets and rares are crap. and it was always the same uniques. if u played d2 for a long time, you’ll know this. going back to d2, its really hard to believe the gameplay can even compare to today’s game. in other news, lets continue this misconception of nostalgia driven game philosophy. d1/d2 was addictive because they were the first action RPGs to capitalize in the pc gaming market with a compelling dark and mysterious theme. d3 is 10x more critical and analytic about gameplay than d2 ever had but failed to deliver to the ‘current’ generation of spoiled gamers. if d3 was released as a different name and similar graphics the same time d1/d2 was around, i’ll bet my balls that d3 will come out as the better game.
You can’t be serious?
You should market your own tee-shirts. Just make sure they have four holes and not three.
Wait your saying that the itemization sucked… because certain builds were better than others.
the items suck, because certain skills were OP… that make s a lot of sense…
Whoever says rares in D2 were crap didnt play it, period.
You know all the duped items in D2 ? THEY WERE GODLY ROLLED RARES.
You should take a look at “Dwarf Fortress” and see how “spoiled” some of us are…
It’s not that harsh, really. And also I’m happy that finally someone had the balls from the old developers to say out loud what they really think.
I think you are missing the main point here. This man has much more balls than some of the current people in Blizzard will ever have.
@IgorAl It’s fine that you have different taste in video games or perhaps never experienced the greatness of diablo 1 and 2. But when the teams working on a franchise completly change mid-run and the philosophy of the game takes a U-turn it will not please alot of people, however talented the new team may be or how good their designs and ideas can be. Franchises should never be continued with a different approach.
Also I believe he is extremely polite in his comments and honesty, considering how lame d3 is right now. His team did make all the difference.
I wouldn’t say he’s disrespectful, but it’s clear he’s really bitter and happy to see it fail (which it hasn’t really). It’s like “ha! you fired us and now your game sucks.” He’s of course very careful to say “that’s not what I would do” rather than saying they made the wrong choice, but overall, all he’s saying is that they don’t know how to make good ARPGs and that he could have done it better.
D3 is a great game for appealing to a large population, and hopefully with PvP there will be more reason to play. The main problem comparing it to Diablo 2 is that they didn’t give us any reason to keep playing. Without ladder resets or character expiration, there’s a clear end in sight. Once I get 1 of each class to 60 and get good gear, the only reason to farm is for PvP. Hardcore is an exception, but most people aren’t willing to play that. Throw in the ability to trade easily via the auction house, and you get to the end far more quickly.
With d3 being online only and thus incredibly difficult to mod, it’s unlikely to have any cool mods that could expand it’s lifetime, and players will simply have to wait for the expansion to come out to have a reason to play again. Now there’s nothing wrong with a $60 game giving you 200-500 hours worth of play (which is a great deal) and being over, but I know I spent more than that on D2 and won’t on D3. It’s a combination of character expiration and the fact that I’m grown up with a full-time job, but it’s still sad.
You should know something..the original Diablo team and Starcraft team don’t work at Blizzard anymore. So normaly the people that made Diablo 3 were originaly gathered from the WOW team. People that curently made the Starcraft series have no resemblance whatsoever with the original creators (or in this case maybe 1-2 remained from those) and of course, WOW is wow..not the one that was…but the one that is atm, pandas and asian art that has wondered far from the original idea. In conclusion stop kissing Blizzard where the sun don’t shine, the interview was the truth and in my opinion he had a hard time finding words not to insult them like he should have!
Its really not… Concepts were in place long before the merge….google it before you spew dude! Blizz used to make legends, then kotick turned it all into a money making only oriented machine. The art is dead…just wait and see. It now exists solely on the past glory and most of the dev team isnt even the anymore and has been replaced. Its like EA sports. Everything from now on will be a lousy sequel. And btw…nice TOS on d3 ! If they dont make it anymore, they shut the server down and you’ll be scraping your cat’s feces off the rug with the d3 disk
). No, no single player…just shut down. Anywayz, he has the right to speak like that imo, besides his tone is pretty darned warm when you realise that it was his project, his glory and d3 sold cuz off his work and not based on merit.
No one hates what the original Blizzard North team made its about Diablo 3 made buy a totaly difrent team Blizzard South and Jay Wilson f*cked it up Diablo 3 isnt diablo only the name Diablo 3 is boring sh*t idablo 2 is flawless stil playing after so many years
David Brevik should’ve been in charge of Diablo 3
Lets be honest, most of the dev have no idea what makes a great ARPG; or Diablo game for that matter. Kinda wish Blizzard went with a new IP instead of making Diablo 3 part of the Diablo series.
But to be honest, my favorite franchise, in my opinion, will be forever butchered (pun intended).
I think, out of respect, they should let him finish the franchise that started his career. Also as a wink to the fans.
So he could release another Hellgate: London?
/trolololol ok nap time for reals
Or a real Diablo game?
you don’t believe in second chances do you?
Like second chances for D3 development team to fix the easily fixable mistakes with Diablo III?
The one they are doing right now as well? Oh, yeah.
Except it isn’t easily fixable. They have to put the rpg back in the arpg and give people character customization. On top of that they need to remove the 100% complete dependence on weapon damage determining whether a skill is good or not. Oh, and don’t forget the rest of the items all need the same stats to be useful(all resist, vitality, primary stat, crit, crit dmg, etc).
And let’s look at 1.04 shall we? They add more legendaries with interesting abilities, awesome! Too bad the drop rate will be the same, oh wait they add a guaranteed drop? But now it is bind on equip??? As for “fixing classes” they simply buff damage all over the place.
Ya, these guys are really doing a good job of fixing the game they broke in the first place. Sorry, but they released something that was so very wrong that the same people are never going to fix it. It took them 7 years to break it and now people think they will fix it in 4 months? Maybe if they brought on the original team and gave them a year it could be fixed.
People have hours in this game because the game demands it, not because they *want* to put the hours in. Now that competition is coming out, they have other options.
If the expansion is free i will give them a second chance but wont pay a dime for another Diablo game made buy the same fail team in front wit Jay fata*s Wilson thats for sure .
No, I am just of the opinion that the Diablo 2 team got lucky and has far, FAR great infection of fanboism among its fanbase than Diablo 3 or any of the current Blizzard projects ever will.
The mythical Diablo “spiritual sequel” by the “real Diablo devs” has yet to grace this world despite the supposed talent being out there in the wild, unhindered by the evil of Kotickvision.
FruitLord:
Your wishes will not come true. The genie is out of the bottle, the “rpg” wont be put back in a way that would leave the – imho, genius – rune system intact.
I do not really get the double standards at play here: if we look at the endgame of Diablo 2, unless you have some very specific items, you will NOT have too much options to really have a strong build – but it is still easier to just mess around in hell with any sub-par build. So is in Diablo III: You can clear hell with a lv60 character with pretty much any build, which is insane variety. Inferno, damned if they do, damned if they do not?
Point is: you do not want Diablo III fixed. You want it to be transformed into Diablo II.5HD, which is NOT going to happen, so obviously, you call it a mistake or a broken game. But reality is not that simple. Diablo III has a lot of weaknesses on its own, but being strongly different from Diablo II is NOT one of them. The developers, however, ARE fixing Diablo III to be a better Diablo III game than it currently is, and that is going to be successul, judging by the 1.0.4 efforts. They are not fixing it to be a better Diablo II game.
I’ve already presented an idea for bringing back a kind of skillsystem through runeupgrades, so I will take an idea to bring rpg into the game through multiplayer here:
How about adding synergies to multiplayer games? The technical basis of the game and the skills by themselves are solid and explicit enough that it could be pulled off. (Although it would be a real tough amount of workload on the animations team…)
Let’s say you go into the game with a Wizard using Disintegrate. The game already got a Wizard in it who loves the use of a Time Shell runed Slow Time. And whenever your Disintegrate hits the Slow Time bulb, your making a third of your normal damage to all enemies in the bulb while your Disintegrate emerges on it’s other side, adding the radius of the bulb to your effective reach.
Or a Plague of Toads using Witch Doctor, whose toadies are teleported right in front of random enemies near (not in!) the bulb, this time through Slow Time runed with Time Warp, resulting in a 100% hit chance for ALL your toadies. (Alas imho one per target zone max of the three put out at once.)
This are just two examples and not well thought through concerning how to best fledge out the “personality” of each character. But it could indeed be used that way – and it would easily result into fulfillement of the marketing sentence, brought before release, that we “want to play multiplayer”.
Hellgate: London > Diablo 3
Sad but true.
If it had had the time for polishing D3 got, one wonders what would have happened to the game…
That’s a bold statement. Hyperbole probably though. No one can say that with a straight face.
Bloody easily. Hellgate: London is a great game, and D3 sucks in every aspect.
The Itemization is terrible… But there is a lot of good to find in the game as well, and I hope one day, they’ll be able to fix everything they’ve messed up and repair some of the damage they’ve done to the diablo name.
Until then I’ll probably be playing PoE.
It’s interesting that he mentions that the people in the Irvine team didn’t have the ARPG experience to know what works, what doesn’t work, and why.
If that is indeed true, I think they are learning fast.
Interesting Interview.
I’m sure that they are learning and that eventually they will get the gameplay aspect tiddy and clean. They only thing that saddens me is the soundtrack and story, those won’t be fixed I think.
Really good interview.
This: “Having all of your powers work off your main weapon and things like that…” is a bold, true statement.
What a game that this guy created. There aren’t many other games where the community is so passionate about it that they will actively seek out the developers to tell them how to fix the game. I love the guy for making the game, but way to much of my life has been spent playing diablo. I think that i’ll go outside now (maybe).
It is also wrong – having weapons that are just stat sticks and chances to get +skills is not enjoyable. There has to be some way for end game weapons to matter, and therefore power has to be based on them.
u srsly need new camera, this one is crappest crap ever
Click “HD.”
If you’re still having problems, it’s on your end. Looks to me like it was shot in at least 720P, if not 1080P. Looks crystal clear to me.
Actually, it was a conscious decision to take the ‘crap’ camera. We had so many appointments and not enough of us there to lug around the big HD camera which is TV quality and has a massive carry case. We had 48 hours to wrap stuff up so every minute of moving around the massive convention mattered.
What is important here is what is being said, this could have been recorded on a tape recorder with no video at all and have nearly the same impact. Why even bother to critique the camera quality? Man, people will bitch just to bitch, no?
Repeating what’s been said: Kudos to Rushter for putting this together. Loved hearing about Mt. Diablo! I used to drive my VW Vanagon, albeit slowly, to the top to go camping when I was younger!
Where this guy works? What he sells?
On a more serious note:
The 1.0.4 seems to be a “mea culpa”.
I’m old. Most games I play/played are single player/played with friends.
D3 seems to be a business model (not a bad one) mashed up to a franchise I love.
Imo, it’ll never be like D2 (I’m not talking about Bnet, which is better on 2.0, imo; I’m talking about Single Player).
Just take your time and look at the magic find olympics (MFO) on the SP forums. Two players found a zod today.
My point? D3 is too locked on a playstyle – the way “south” team wants the franchise to be. The Diablo franchise seems to work better as a more “open-ended” one. (with a SP mode, a Bnet support and a “mod support” aka median/rising sun).
No, D3 doesn’t “suck”. And I, even as SPlayer, will buy the expansion at the pre-sale. I just don’t plan to spend more time at D3 than I spend on D2 nowadays.
And it still fells better, after 10+ years, to find a Harley on a tourney than finding a rare lvl 63 sword with “4 right mods”.
He is a little more direct with his points but i think i kind of prefer the stuff scheaffers mentioned, rather than brevik’s, because there is 0 mention of the pros in Diablo 3 (Yes, you heard that right)and i do not think that is fair.
The graphics and the gameplay itself is very nicely done & smooth (server latency stuff aside…)and i agtree with scheaffers that that is something done almost perfectly and i wouldnt change it.
Cons: The itemization and ramdomization as well as the customization of characters is really lacking compared to diablo 2.
Final thoughts: Before Diablo 3 was releases in those interviews, you hear a lot about how hard they are focusing on the actual gameplay of Diablo. On that font, i think they have done that really well.
But they UNDERESTIMATED the importance of customization in general. They KNOW THE PROBLEM NOW and at worst, i would expect the first expansion to greatly change how things work now and correct most of the problems the community have.
TLDR: Don’t give up on diablo 3 yet, this is only the beginning.
You can’t really just use the graphics as a positive vs a 10 year old game. The gameplay is better but the itemization ruined the game for me. As for customization I find they really droped the ball on. I find I have no real reason to create another character of the same class where in diablo 2 in to this day I find myself making new characters and trying random builds and likeingor hating them.
I guess graphic’s isn’t exactly the right word to use.
But rather, the “feel” and how the environment looks together as a whole is done very nicely in an action RPG and you can tell the game graphic designers put a lot of work into it.
Good enough that the next time you play an action RPG, you will base it on the diablo 3 standards in the next few years.
You’re right there, but it’s the only part of the game done right at the moment. Itemization, character developement, the important aspect of choices (that allowed you to make the character “yours”), progression curves, … , there the game lacks deeply right now. Now we’ll be seeing, if the “Blizz South”-team understood and patch 1.0.4 can mend things to a degree, or if they are just on track to candy the popcorn they’ve delivered.
@Deathlight: You are right – visual appeal and combat is great.
I even understand the logic of linking damage off the main weapon; it helps to allow you to scale damage up more easily by upping your wep stats. ufortunately, they coupled this to lousy drops and poor balancing vis-a-vis monster affixes in Inferno, so we have all the player rage.
IMO the Irvine team saw players grinding D2 for years and mistook what it meant. They thought we loved the grind; what we love is the ‘wow!!’ of FINDING great loot. That is missing. Moreover, the low level cap (which we hit way too fast) also causes the game to become more of a grindfest with no progress.
btw: I totally respect your opinion and I agree with many of your points, including that the game will grow better as the devs learn more.
Well it’s a 5 minute interview standing in a hallway at a video game show. I’m sure if Dave wrote up a full comment on D3, he’d include a bunch of pros and cons. In this he’s speaking off the cuff and replying to questions that are asking what he thinks went wrong or could have been done better.
Maybe Rush should have asked, “what did you like about d3 and what would you have done differently?” but I thought it was cool to hear Dave’s honest opinion and not just PR bull**** like we get from Blizzard itself.
There’s also a learning curve for the d3 devs. Like Dave pointed out, few of them had any ARPG experience, and that showed in some of the problems with D3C. Thankfully, the devs seem to realize most of their errors and they’re working to correct them in patches.
This actually restored much of my faith in D3. One of the defenses of D3 has been “Oh, but D2 didn’t really get any good before several patches and the expansion”. And then the counter-argument, well – why didn’t they learn from that?
But as he points out, it’s a completely different team on D3, and it seems they needed to repeat some of the same mistakes. The upcoming patch might not solve everything, but I definitely feel they are heading in the right direction. Come a couple of patches more, and the inevitable expansion, all will be right in the world.
Most exellent interview, btw.
All will be right in the world? Cain will still die to a butterfly, the bosses will still tell you their plans and you’ll be grinding for pants that fart.
As long as the itemgrind is fun, I couldn’t give two squirrels about the story. Just give me autoskip.
Fun fact: Played my very first playthrough with a friend I’d been pestering about diablo 3 for months. When azmodean had his fourth “Bwahahaha, here I am on my holophone, telling you my planz” my friend burst out on vent laughing, and logged off.
Also, butterflies cause tropic storms. Just sayin’.