With Blizzard's new epic hack-and-slash RPG around the corner it was now the perfect time for the development team to shed light on some of the key aspects of the game. Check out the summary of the first major Diablo 3 panel for BlizzCon 2011.
The panel presentation covered many Diablo 3 topics of great interest for many fans and beta testers, including achievements, gameplay aspects, class tunings, difficulty levels and changes reasoned by beta feedback.
The achievements system first appeared in World of WarCraft to later transition into StarCraft 2 as well, ending up at its current state - an inseparable part of the new Blizzard titles. Naturally, Diablo 3 will have an achievement system of its own and the development team revealed some of the ways that would be available to the players.
Play-through progression will be one of the easier to achieve goals in Diablo 3. Such rewards will come by reaching a specific level of the game (like fight through the Leoric encounter, for example). Another one will be the so called "extreme behavior", exemplified by a person reaching level 60 on a hardcore character - a task that would certainly not be a walk in the park!
The final way shown in the presentation was named "extreme shenanigans" and one of the examples, nicely illustrated in the above screenshot, was to defeat a Diablo 3 boss... with your bare hands. From the looks of it whether it is entertaining, absurdly funny or a mission impossible, the achievement would not be boring at all!
Of course, it is not fun aiming for achievement if others cannot see and appreciate your progress. The Diablo 3 team thus presented a few examples of the so called player banners that will include a crest (for PvP score), a ribbon (for a particular achievement), banner cloth, sigil and accent and, finally, a base (based on hardcore status).
The first neat addition to the Diablo 3 adventurer presented in the panel was the Stone of Recall. Put in short, the stone of recall works as a tome of town portal with endless charges which will teleport you back in town and live a portal through which you can return to monster slaying after you had repaired your items, bought some potions or had a chat with Deckard Cain. Previously introduced items - the Cauldron of Jordan (which transfers loot go gold) and the Nephalem Cube (which transfers loot to crafting material) - also came into focus for a short while.
A bit more time was spent on the three companions that will accompany every D3 character: The Mystic, The Jeweler and The Blacksmith.
Mystic's role is, basically, to enhance your items with randomly generated qualities, which aims at providing more options to the dilemma "what do I do with that stuff" and also diversify item setups and item builds, opening possibilities for unconventionally geared classes (e.g. an axe-wielding Demon Hunter).
The Jeweler is the second companion that will tag along and will deal with those shiny stones we like to gall "gems". The jeweler will be there for you to combine and transform your lesser gems into more superior ones and will also be able to add sockets to items or empty them of gems so the item can be modified anew.
The Blacksmith is the go-to guy when you will need some new legendary or unique set items. Blacksmith's repertoire will be nourished with recipe's you find during your adventure and with the required component at hand, he will craft some kick-ass gear for your character.
Every one of the three companions will level up, increasing more and powerful actions.
Before jumping to the other main topic of the presentation - the Auction House - the development team revealed some new details around the PvP system. Diablo 3 will feature a "team deathmatch" mode, which will be characterized by extremely short respawn timers in order to keep the action ever-going. According to the developers, this is an important step to keeping the game highly dynamic with not a single dull moment where you wait for all your teammates to finish the match so you can hop in. The "team deathmatch" games will be 10-minutes long and with a 4v4 format and at the end of those the team with most kills will be the winner. Players will use their PvE characters but there won't be any "skill swapping" during games, which is there to induce the feeling of being dedicated to a certain build at least during those ten minutes.
The part of the presentation focusing on the Auction House began with a short summary and comparison between the life cycles of the items in Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. In Diablo 2, the obsolete loot had a really short life-cycle - you could imbue and/or socket it, trade it to somebody or gamble it away but ultimately it all led to selling the unnecessary item for gold and stacking the latter in the millions.
With Diablo 3, Blizzard are aiming at providing you with hell of a lot more options of how to treat the loot that you don't need. The new mechanics like the improved crafting system and the auction house give the player completely new options - you can now easily craft up the, let's say, the blue shield you found, decompose it to crafting components, auction it out for something more useful to you or just sell it for gold pieces (or even real money), which now will have a lot more "weight" compared to the Diablo 2 currency.
Of course, the Auction House will not be just some sort of a big table, filled with a lot of weapons and armors. Blizzard are introducing a smart and advanced search system, which will allow you to find the item you need with extreme ease. You need a crit chance axe or precision blade for your barbarian? Mana stealing rod for your witch doctor? Resistance heavy tunic for your monk? You will find those with just a few clicks.
Classes are, of course, one of the main aspects of every Diablo game and as such they were a big part of the gameplay presentation.
One of the main focus of the development team is making the passive skills good. Blizzard are currently trying to tune each passive to fit a certain role - be it an instructional one, one carrying a large dose of flavor or supporting one or more specific builds. One of the key steps in integrating the passive skills in the class itself will be a high degree of synergy with the other skills, but not at a too high a level so there is never really a "best" build or one that breaks the fun of just playing whatever you like.
Every class was paid it's own amount of attention, regarding the tuning it has endured during the development process and the Diablo 3 beta. According to Blizzard, the Barbarian is overall in a good place, but it has been observed that when it comes to fury generation, players usually turn to skills that fuel large chunks of fury (like "Ground Stomp" or "Leap Attack") rather than skills that generate fury in small increments (like "Bash" or "Cleave"). Thus, there will be a certain amount of changes to the fury generators, as well as tuning to barbarian's end-game survivability, which is currently under the optimal level.
The Wizard is also in a good overall spot, but is a subject to a lot of tuning regarding his arcane power aspect. Blizzard are also trying to find the best way for wizards to make use of their weapon damage, so that they don't just look and compare passive stats.
The main focus of the Witch Doctor tuning revolves around the concept of mana and mana regeneration mechanics. Mana is the only non-health resource that returns to Diablo 3 from its predecessor and its user - the witch doctor - has quite a few antics in his arsenal to make the best use of it. It was even said that, with the right composition of items, runes and skills, the witch doctor can reach levels of near infinite mana regeneration, allowing him to spam spells like there is no tomorrow but sacrificing some of his offence prowess or utility to do so.
The Monk is being altered in regard to his early level (1-15) survivability, which is currently below the optimal level. A change has also been introduced to his mantras (skills that persist indefinitely and give the monk certain bonuses), who can now be activated to grant double the effect for a short time. The final aspect in the attention of the developers is making monk's combos even more versatile - whether the player likes a deep and complex skill sequences or just enjoys spamming spirit generators and spending them with another one or two skills.
Naturally, the biggest challenge for the development team is to balance the hate generation and expenditure of the Demon Hunter. Other tunings include optimizing the snare skills to keep your enemies at bay and make Demon Hunter's job of killing enemies from a distance a lot more easier.
Another topic of changes in regard to classes has spurred from the feedback, originating from beta players. As of currently, players are able to switch skills whenever they like, but (as mentioned above) this doesn't make you feel committed to a the build you have chosen. Thus, changes will be made to the way you can do that - be it by either allowing skill swapping in town only or doing it when out of combat.
The last topic in the presentation was the one about the difficulty levels. Blizzard has aimed at making the game soloable during each one of the four difficulty levels - Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno - and design the skills in such a way that each build is viable at every point of the game. Thus, if you want a petless Witch Doctor or a melee-centric Wizard - you can do that! Furthermore, the higher difficulties will be characterized by new affixes and attributes for the items as well as, naturally, heightened power of the rare and champion monsters.
BlizzCon 2011 will feature three more Diablo 3 panels today - Diablo III Lore (19:00 CET on panel stage), Open Q&A (20:30 CET on main stage) and Making of "The Black Soulstone" (00:00 CET on panel stage). Stay tuned to GosuGamers.net for more in-depth BlizzCon 2011 coverage.
