While the D3 Team has talked a lot about their planned improvements to the multiplayer experience in Diablo 3, they have yet to detail many (any?) of the actual benefits that will accrue to the players in a multiplayer game. The developers have shared their concept of MP gaming, and how they want to encourage it, but the feature changes thus far announced are all more about removing the un-fun elements of MP play that exist in D2, rather than new features or spells that will actually work better in MP games than they do solo.

For instance, here are some of the “improvements” to the MP experience that we know we’ll see in Diablo 3:

No non-consensual PvP (No Pking.)
There aren’t any details yet on how this will work, but from the hints given it sounds like there will simply be no way to PvP in regular games, and players will have to join special PvP or Arena type games to fight head to head. (Old school Mking techniques, like leading dozens of monsters to trap waypoints, will presumably still be possible. Where there’s a will, griefers will always find a way.)

Click through for the rest of this article.

12 comments

In most computer RPGs, including Diablo and Diablo 2, low level spells/skills (ones your character can use starting at level 1, or 5, etc) are generally less powerful than high level skills (ones you have to wait until level 20, or 30, or 50, etc) to start using.  I’d never thought of this as a particularly contentious issue, and in fact it seemed fairly justified to me. If I’ve got to play hours and hours before I can start using a skill, I expect that skill to do more than does a skill Ic could use the moment I first wandered out of the Rogue Encampment.

Though I’d never really thought about it, I figured almost everyone agreed on this, an assumption I had to rethink after reading the comments to this news post, in which first Bashiok, then me, defended the Witch Doctor’s Plague of Toads skill. I said that not every player would like every skill, and that perhaps Plague of Toads (PoT?) wasn’t meant to be the one you took down act bosses with, but that it was very viable early on, and a lot of fun to use. That wasn’t good enough for some fans, who disagreed with the entire design concept. They wanted every skill to be useful throughout the entire game, and thought it was a mark of poor design and balance if a skill became non-viable in the late game.

Spurred by that earlier debate, this installment of On the Drawing Board examines the issue of skill design and long term viability. Click through to see a list of the key issues to consider, then hop to the comments to join in the discussion.

16 comments

Bashiok gave a surprising (to me) reply to a question about D3’s weapon switch feature, one that opens up a lot of juicy game design discussion issues.  Here’s the question and his answer, with some On the Drawing Board style discussion below.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Will there be a quick weapon switch (‘W’ in D2) implemented in Diablo 3? Just like Diablo II we’re saving secondary weapon/shield slot and hot key for the expansion. Kidding! ... probably. We don’t have it now, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be one. I don’t think it’s an irrelevant question, maybe just not the most pressing one. I don’t think it NEEDS to be there. It’s not really an iconic part of the game. The gameplay dictates its necessity, and if there’s no reason to hot swap weapons mid-fight, then having it there just clutters the UI. Personally I just used it in Diablo II for extra item storage.

I have to strongly disagree on this one. I consider having at least one weapon switch an absolutely essential inventory feature. I missed them while playing D3 at Blizzcon last year, when I wanted to quickly alternate between different weapons on my little level 7 and 8 characters, and thought it odd that the designers hadn’t yet incorporated such a fundamental feature. In D2X, I have I never built a character who didn’t use the weapon switch for some significant purpose. At the minimum switching to some MF item for last shot boss kills, Echoing swords for bigger BO, Ali Babas for Horking, etc. Moreover, weapon switching makes numerous builds, like hybrid Amazons, possible, when having to manually switch around the items (as we had to do in RPGs made in like, 1996) would greatly reduce their viability/fun.

All that said, whether or not to include a weapon switch is a strategic issue. If you can’t easily switch weapons, then it puts more importance on the weapon you do choose to use, and makes the choice about whether or not to equip that +exp or +MF item a much bigger decision. Also, the fact that so many items and runewords had skill charges and oskills on them in D2X made weapon switching overpowered. The ability to instantly cast curses or warcries from your weapon switch made some items extremely powerful. If you had to awkwardly move them around by hand, and save space in your bags to store, them, would such bonuses would be somewhat balanced by the inconvenience? (This is all hypothetical, since we have no idea if such item bonuses will be found in D3.)

14 comments

Trading is one of the most important activities in Diablo II, or any RPG. Diablo III looks to do things differently, implementing a WoW Auction House, and a gold currency more similar to WoW than Diablo I or Diablo II. How will this affect the community?

We have been promised systems that will work very well with Diablo III, and nothing will be implemented from WoW that does not fit, but fans are naturally afraid they will bollocks up something anyway. I mean it's not every decade we get a sequel!

A lot of trade-related issues are discussed in this instalment of On the Drawing Board. Click through to read the whole article.

14 comments

Leveling up in Diablo III comes with a shiny explosion of graphics (which actually deals huge damage to nearby enemies) along with the traditional increases to your stats and skills. That’s all well and good, but how often should it occur, and how many times in total?

The D3 Team has said that 100 will likely be the maximum level, but that’s only a tiny part of the question. How long will it take to get there? Days? Weeks? Months? Longer? When will the big diminishing returns kick in as the leveling curve starts to rise? Should there even be a maximum level, or would it be more fun to allow perpetual experience increase, even if level up rewards cease? These and other issues are tackled in this installment of On the Drawing Board. Click through to read the whole article.

18 comments

This installment of On the Drawing Board examines the issue of monster variety, and after establishing what the D3 Team has told us so far, speculates about what we might see in the final game. The subject of monster variety is a question of balance. We all want some variety, but how much is enough, and how much is too much? Do you want 3 different types per area, or 10? Do you want to see the same monsters in the same areas every game, or do you prefer the D2X v1.10+ Act Five style of Guest Monsters, where you never know what you’ll find in the next fungal, stinking grotto or desolate, ice-licked plain?

It’s all basically opinion, at this point. How many, how much, how often? Click through to read the article and join in the debate.

9 comments

Last year’s announcement that no more than 4 or 5 players would be allowed in the same game of Diablo 3 was a surprising design decision. Why would they allow less than the 8 permitted in Diablo 2? Aren’t players used to the huge parties in MMORPGs going to find such small groups boring?  Players might have been asking the wrong question, though. The issue isn’t “What’s the maximum party size?”  The issue is, “What’s the ideal party size?” After all, we’re playing the game for fun. We’re not the fire marshal setting a maximum occupant limit on a dive bar.

Click through to read complete coverage of this issue, including blue quotes explaining Blizzard’s reasoning, and a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of limiting the game size in Diablo 3.

17 comments

The tenth installment of On the Drawing Board moves away from specific game features and focuses more on the intangibles. Did you play Diablo I? Did you enjoy the horror elements of it, and miss them in Diablo II? The D3 Team has talked about their desire to make Diablo III a more moody, atmospheric, creepy, horror-filled game than Diablo II was. Do you like this approach? Do you think they can pull it off? We saw a lot of good horror elements in the Blizzcon Demo, but whether the team can (or should even try) keep that up throughout the whole game is a topic worth discussing. Click through to view the evidence and join the debate.

18 comments

The D3 team has seldom mentioned Item Sets, but they have confirmed that they are planning to include them in Diablo III. How they’ll implement sets is not yet determined, as the most prominent comment makes clear. Here’s what D3 Lead Jay Wilson said in December 2008:

	Blizzard Quote:
	Jay Wilson: “There’re still a few things that we haven’t made decisions on yet—set items, for one. I didn’t like the way they worked in Diablo 2, as by the time you finally got a set together, you generally leveled beyond the use for it. So you might save them for alts, which is OK, but I’d rather that they be useful for you to begin with. We haven’t really decided how we’re going to fix that.”

This installment of On the Drawing Board takes off where Jay’s comment ends. Should set items return in D3? How powerful should they be? How can they be made more collectible, or useful? Click through to join the discussion.

9 comments

The topic of this week’s installment of On the Drawing Board tackles a less controversial issue than usual, but it’s one that’s seasonally appropriate. What do you think about games including holiday bonus content? I’m not talking about funny Christmas cards or wallpapers or website updates, but actual game content. Blizzard has made a habit of adding extra quests and items into World of Warcraft around Halloween, and many other companies have done the same, with varying results.

There’s been no word yet from the D3 Team, but the inclusion of some such events seems pretty likely, since every MMORPG and similar online game has them these days. Assuming, or even hoping they will do it with Diablo III… is it a good idea? Does bonus content fit into the game’s fiction and world? Are special, limited-edition holiday items fun, or unbalancing? Is the time the design team spends creating these features worth it, or a distraction from more important work?

Click through to read more about the pros and cons of this issue and to share your opinion…

13 comments