Diablo Junkie

If you’ve had the patience to listen the latest Blizzcast to the end, you would’ve been rewarded with three questions & answers from Jay Wilson, Diablo 3 lead designer/director. They deal with maps, deaths, and elixirs.

MAPS

Will we be able to use the old overlay map instead of the mini-map?
Right now we don’t have any plans to do a fullscreen overlay. We really felt that the overlay was more there because the mini-map was not very usable as a small map. We feel like when you put that map and you cover it over the whole display it actually adds a lot of clutter but we are planning to do like a fullscreen map that just covers the whole screen so that you can kind of see an entire area like if want to check out if there are any areas of this dungeon that I haven’t explored yet, you can really see more of that. But right now we’re really focused on trying to make the mini-map is very usable at the size that it’s at and so we’ve put a lot of work and the maps are actually custom made. The ones in D2 were kind of auto-generated where as ours we literally we custom make every piece of it. We have an artist go through and draw out so we can make sure that they’re really visible and very usable and so far we’re finding that it’s working really well.

DEATH

Will there be special player deaths in various situations? Like when the Siegebreaker bit the Barbarian in half during the gameplay demo.

Well what we want to do with that, especially for particular bosses is have when essentially when the player is very low on health and they’re about to die the boss essentially checks like when it attacks you, did I just do enough damage to kill you? And if so then instead of just doing his normal attack he’d actually play some kind of special I pick you up and eat you or I throw you up in the air and knock you around like a baseball or something like that. It’s a system that really our announcement video we tested it for the first time, mainly just to see – can we actually do this kind of animation interaction between the characters but the actual system itself is still not in there but we do plan to do that and that’s primarily where. We might do some other things, we’ve talked about physics based deaths we’ve talked about having the characters if they like die to a cold monster he might completely freeze solid into a statue and then shatter or things like that but we haven’t decided at this point if that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

ELIXIRS

During the gameplay video an “Elixir of Vitality I” dropped. Can you explain Elixirs and the benefits and roles they will play in Diablo 3?

Well right now elixirs are primarily to provide a short term benefit to the player. I can’t remember exactly how many off the top of my head, I think there’s maybe six different kinds of elixirs and they do things like give you health boosts or give you damage boosts, give you different stats, things like that. So whenever you find one you can essentially use it whenever you want to give you a short term buff. And then as you go through the game the ‘one’ indicates quality so the ‘one’ is kind of a low end, not very good item, it’s not bad – at low levels it actually makes a pretty big difference, at high levels it doesn’t matter that much but as you go through the game they become more and more powerful. So we have a variety of different kinds of items like that we have added in to give the player some interesting buffs. Some of them are something like that were it’s just a nice bonus to have, whereas some of them are actually game changing kind of things like you can fire them off in an emergency to be able to deal with a particularly tough encounter.

The new BlizzCast (#6) is out and there’s plenty of interesting info, especially about Starcraft 2. There’s also an interview with Anthony Rivero, Senior Character Artist on Diablo 3.

Most of the questions deal with his work on Diablo 2 and the Lord of Destruction expansion. His claim to fame is Mephisto (Act III). Since doing Mephisto runs is how I spend my time in D2, you could say he’s my favorite artist. After all, I’ve seen Mephisto’s dying animation THOUSANDS of time.

So what is he doing in Diablo 3?

Bashiok: Are there any creatures that are announced that we can talk about that you’ve provided some modeling for or have contributed to?
Anthony: The female witch doctor’s heavy armor set, her look is my design and work.
Bashiok: That was seen at WWI, the large feather headdress look.
Anthony: Yes, yes. And the scavenger monster.

Hmm, I must confess his drawing sucks (see right). I like how the Witch Doctor as a 3D model though, so let’s say Tony is primarily a 3D artist.

Blizzard announced in their last newsletter that DC Comics are starting a comic book set in the WoW universe.

Frankly, I’m not sure I’d buy a book where the superhero is a female Tauren (a.k.a COW). What’s her special power? MOO power?

Anyway, I think a Diablo comic book will have longer legs. A Frank-Milleresque type of dark and contrasty comic book might work great.

The superhero ends up getting a new super skill (Death Ray) at the end of each book. Also, he loots rare swords or armor from the boss… Is that cool or what?

A recent article at Gameriot has made a top 10 list of Diablo 3 environments.

The environments that they like are: deserts and wastelands, forests, ancient ruins, and corrupted regions. They didn’t like Hell (Act IV) and think it was done in a hurry with only two waypoints.

I tend to agree - Act IV seems a bit dull compared to the others. However, my list of worst environments is easily topped by the jungles of Kurast! The pygmies were a NIGHTMARE for my Ice Sorceress!

The guys at Joystiq are going over their first Diablo 3 multiplayer experience during Blizzcon.

The quality of the video is way better that most I’ve seen. You need to wait a bit for the multiplayer gameplay to start (at 3:08). The party is complete with all three Diablo 3 characters: Wizard, Barbarian and Witch Doctor.

The only complaint was that the screen was a bit overwhelmed with all the special effects:

The only negative thing we could see was the messy screens you’d get when playing in a party. If you have a Witch Doctor in your group casting Locust Swarm, and a ton of enemies are massing around your group, you’ll start frantically clicking at any and everything on screen.

Check out the Skeleton King fight at the end! I’m still not sure if the Wizard managed to kill it… I guess not.

You’d think that the combination of BILLIONS from WoW and the recently announced $100 for Starcraft 2 will make Blizzard sit comfortably on its huge pile of cash.

Think again. They are now thinking of “monetizing” the new version of Battle.net.

Initially, I thought “oh, we had banner ads in battle.net before, no problem”. Here’s from the horse’s mouth (Rob Pardo interview):

So Julian Wilson told us that you guys are looking monetize Battle.Net in some way. Is that right?

Wow, that’s an evil way of putting it. Julian’s turning into a business guy on me. Here’s the way I would put it. We’re definitely not looking at turning Diablo into a subscription based game…

With Battle.Net we’re definitely looking at possible different features that we might be able to do for additional money… I think World of Warcraft is a great example to look at. We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren’t core to the game experience, they’re really just optional things that some people want.

OK, that’s a relief: Diablo 3 isn’t a subscription game; changing your name to GobbleCoque is going to cost $29.

However, I still get a bit suspicious of Blizzard’s “innovation” when it comes to pricing. After Starcraft 2 is split into three separate games we need to purchase separately, I wonder if Diablo 3 is going to be the same way.

Purchase Acts I and II for $49 and then shell more money for Acts III, IV and V which are entirely optional. Optional in the sense you option OUT of all the end-game bosses, equipment, etc.

Blizzard have finally revealed the third Diablo 3 character - a Wizard. As far as I can tell from the gameplay video and the class description, it looks like a copy&paste of the good ole Diablo 2 Sorceress.

The Wizard skills revealed thus far are:

• Disintegrate - constant ray of energy going through multiple enemies
• Electrocute - chain lightning
• Teleport - blink about half a screen away
• Magic Missile - single target damage spell
• Slow Time - creates a sphere that slows down projectiles (very similar to the Protoss Mothership skill)

You can watch the Wizard in action at Blizzard’s site here.

Blizzcon starts tomorrow and there’s a ton of news related to Diablo 3 and the other Blizzard games.

Starting with Diablo 3 - there will be a playable demo (as predicted here). If you’re lucky to have a ticket, you’ll be able to play as a Witch Doctor or Barbarian. A third class will also be revealed and it will be playable too (see quote below from Blizzcon brochure):

Among these brave champions stands the enigmatic witch doctor, a spiritual warrior from deep within the Torajan jungles. At BlizzCon 2008, the witch doctor is yours to command for the first tim ever. Stop by the Diablo area on the show floor for your chance to lead this fierce new hero into the catacombs beneath the Tristram Cathedral.

While you’re there, revisit the raw strength of the barbarian - a Diablo series classic - or try your hand at Sanctuary’s newest champion, who will be revealed at the event.

So we have two basic archetypes: fighter and mage. Place your bets on who’s the next class to be revealed? I vote someone with shield … and hammer. Hammerdin!

Town portals and corpse runs are two of the things that made Diablo and Diablo 2 quite unique. Now, they’re being “revisited” by the game design team.

Town portals will be removed in Diablo 3. Instead players will be using waypoints for quick transportation. I.e. if you’re close to a waypoint, you can go back to town.

Dying will similarly be based on the waypoints system. When you die, you don’t go back to town with all your equipment lying in some dungeon. You simply get teleported to the closest waypoint with minimal health (10%?). It’s your choice if you want to go back to town or you want to gulp a potion and continue hacking.

Here’s the “official” Blizz post at the Battle.net forums:

We want to separate being in town and being out on a quest/adventure/dungeon as much as possible. Leaving the safety of a town should not be a decision you take lightly. We don’t want to remove the sense of suspense and danger by making town something you’re always going back to pretty much whenever you like. The intent is to create a greater separation from being in town, and not, and to make your time away from town a lot more tense.

On that same note we also don’t want to remove the player from the action. Throwing them back to town for every death really breaks up the action, and not in a fun, interesting, or necessary way.

So, with these things in mind we’ve found that a check point system works really well. Throughout your adventures, and generally at the ends of each “floor” of a dungeon your character is saved to a checkpoint. When you die you’re dropped back at the last checkpoint with a small amount of health, and the rest regenerates slowly. It’s obviously a very forgiving system as it is. It’s just too early to put a ton of thought in to what penalties there should be, if any, added on top of it.

Regardless, potential penalties aside, this is the death mechanic we’re currently using and it’s working really well so far.

A recent rumor that Diablo 3 will be released BEFORE Starcraft 2 actually prompted Blizzard to officially address the issue of the release date.

Here’s the summary in short: Battle.net 2.0 will be released simultaneously with the release of Starcraft 2. The best guess for that is early 2009, with a Starcraft 2 beta coming out late in 2008.

So Diablo 3 will come out AFTER that … possibly by the end of 2009. An encouraging news will be if Blizzard have a playable “demo” at Blizzcon.