8.21.2009

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Blizzard announced that, the monk will be the latest addition to their character classes for Diablo 3. The monk in first made his appearance in Diablo 1 as an expansion character. This time he will be part of the core pack. Blizzard have setup a new page for the: Diablo 3 Monk. Here is an excerpt from the page:

The last weeks of autumn had settled upon Ivgorod, and the first breath of winter had crept into the air. As night fell and the sun dipped below the horizon, I was all too grateful to take refuge in a tavern. As I entered, I noted a certain tension in the room. Despite the hour, it was not busy, with only scattered, small groups huddled at the tables around the edges of the room. The benches at the center of the room were empty except for one man. The man seemed ignorant of the cold. He was dressed like a beggar, wearing little more than an orange sheet wound around his body, leaving half of his chest exposed. A garland of large wooden beads hung around his thick neck. His head was completely shaved, with the exception of a wild bushy beard. Then, recognition struck me: upon his forehead he had a tattoo of two red dots, one larger than the other. As any informed student of the peoples and cultures of this world must also realize, this man was one of the monks of Ivgorod, the secretive and reclusive holy warriors of the country.

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8.10.2009

Bashiok describes what themes some of the dungeons in Diablo 3 will be like on the Diablo 3 forums. It seems there will be a wide variety of dungeons themes in Diablo 3 that will give players a different feel every time. Read his comments below:

I think there's a nice juxtaposition between the larger more epic dungeons and the others that may be less epic but have very specific tones and themes associated with them. When you step inside one of the more epic dungeons, like the Tristram cathedral (and considering its past, shouldn't it be epic?) you immediately know you're somewhere important. Somewhere that looks and feels magical in its presentation and lighting, as opposed to, say... a cave. Still cool! Caves are still awesome, but you probably don't want magical purple and green lighting in a cave, it's probably going to have a much different and subdued feel. If it's a natural cave it may have light streaming in from cracks above, or if it's a mine it might have lighting from lanterns. Much earthier and natural. Then you walk into some ancient tomb of a powerful wizard, oh crap, this place clearly has something else going on. The lighting is a bit unnatural, maybe some sickly greenish hues to set a theme and mood.

That type of theming adds a lot to keeping the scenery changing and interesting. If you're just fighting demons against a grey or brown backdrop for hours and hours, days and days, maybe years and years... it gets boring. Interesting, themed, and contrasting scenery all help ensure visual longevity.

I think before too long we'll have shown a nice cross section of the dungeon types and looks. It's been too long staring at the one dungeon. Each one has a very unique look and feel, so it's really cool going in to each one and having a total change of scenery. It's all very exciting and we're all looking forward to sharing it with you and seeing the fan reactions just as soon as it's ready.

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7.14.2009

Bashiok mentioned on the Diablo 3 forums that the size of inventory can be increased through the use of bags. Sounds like Diablo 3 will borrow similar features from World of Warcraft. More details below:

Just a few things off the top of my head regarding upgradable bags.

Upgrading storage size is a great reward, and can be much better than any incremental weapon/armor upgrade. (Kills/min could easily calculate out to be much greater without having to stop to clear inventory as much with a bag upgrade as compared to a damage increase from a weapon upgrade.)

Building off the last point, it helps add the sense of your character becoming more powerful and gaining more from the time spent playing.

Increasing the storage size over time/play experience is a great way to scale the player's sense of the game's complexity.

Beginning with a small and limited amount of space teaches the player early on that inventory management is an important part of playing the game - and sometimes generating income.

Making and keeping the player aware of their limitations can also help keep a better sense of structure and focus. Being overwhelmed is sometimes as detrimental to a play experience as being bored.

Also keep in mind that while we're obviously dropping bag upgrades off of monsters now, we could choose any number of alternative ways to get them to the player. Or maybe a combination of different ways. Whatever, I just wouldn't focus on the 'how' of them being delivered right now.

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6.30..2009

Bashiok responded to a question regarding loading screens in the Diablo 3 forums. He says the days of the slow moving loading status bar will be gone. Check his comments below:

There aren't any loading screens. Personally I think it's amazing and I don't understand the magic the programmers have worked, but the game is instant or near instant. The same is true for initial game load. Start up the game, create a character, click a button and the game world shows up. No waiting and no real discernible pause. Mileage may vary slightly of course, but it would (from what I've seen) be in the realm of a second or two second pause at most.

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5.22.2009

According to a blue post that was posted on the battle.net forums, skill trees will not be "tabbed" like it was shown before. All Diablo 3 Skill Trees will be shown side by side. Also, Blizzard is removing the need to follow one particular branch in a skill tree. Instead, they are moving toward a unified tier progression. This means if you spent 5 points in tier 1 skills, all tier 2 skills will unlock regardless of where your 5 points were allocated.

As you mentioned and I had said in that rather lengthy post (http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=16137707438&postId=161356375740&sid=3000#48), we're under heavy iteration. The version shown off with BlizzCast was a prototype in many ways, and a jumping off point in others.

We're working with a modified skill tree system now of what we showed, under heavy testing and scrutiny. It's of course not final, the ideas it proposes are something we're happy with in their direction but they could very well change. In fact I would bet on them continuing to evolve.

So, the system we have now. you.ll have to just picture it without any visual representation, sorry. They're not radically different visually except that the trees are all viewable at the same time. Taking the barbarian trees for instance (berserker, battlemaster, juggernaut) they're not tabbed now, but instead all viewable at the same time. Side by side.

This is important due to how they are now a unified tier progression. Instead of spending 5 points in the berserker tree to then begin spending points in the second tier of the berserker tree, the new design allows you to spend wherever you like. As long as your points in the first tier of skills adds up to five, the next tier for all trees is unlocked.

So, I could spend 2 points in Heightened Senses which is a berserker skill, and 3 points in Bash which is a Juggernaut skill, thus adding up to 5 points and granting me access to the second tier of skills for all of the trees. With this amount of freedom you can see how easy it is then to diversify yourself and your build. You're no longer gaining abilities through investment, but instead more through choice and personal preference.

It certainly diversifies the types and amounts of builds available to players, that's obvious. This style of a unified tier approach also helps in a few other areas though. Since all of the trees are open we can clean up the trees a lot more, removing redundant abilities. We don't have to throw in skills that are important, such as damage mitigation, all over the place. You will always have access to those skills no matter where you're spending, so they can instead be focused into a few key skills. Another way it helps is by allowing players access to the skills they want, and the skills we want them to have. Every barbarian is probably going to want whirlwind. And why not? What this tree style allows for, and one reason we're pretty keen on it, is that we aren't saying "You're a berserker" barbarian, you can't have whirlwind.. Instead, you're a barbarian!, pick the key skills that define you and your character as you want them to be.

One important addition to this is the skill caps themselves. Currently we're envisioning the majority of skills to be capped at 5 points, to begin with. As a form of progression we're planning for players to be able to increase the point caps of skills. More than likely to a maximum of 15. It's a system that's still under heavy design, but the fact of choosing and increasing key skills beyond their initial cap is important to this new unified tier system.

So, once again these are things that are still under heavy design and iteration. They're changes we're testing, and while we like how they play there are certainly issues or flaws that could cause an entire switch to something else.

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4.9.2009

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Blizzard leaked some information on the new look and feel of the skills tree for diablo 3 on their forums.

Unlike the Talent tree in World of Warcraft, you don't get all the basic skills with bonuses to the skills that you put your points in. In Diablo 3, all spells and skills are learned by allocating points into the tree of your choice. Your decision will either unlock new Diablo 3 Spells or improve existing Diablo 3 Skills.

Here is the quote from the actual post:

I should stress that what everyone was allowed to see was a behind the scenes glimpse at where the UI is now. BlizzCast specifically serves that purpose, and by showing unfinished work we take the risk of people critiquing our work before it's done. To that same effect though it's an amazing way of getting feedback, but that doesn't change that it should be understood to be unfinished work. Moving on...

The Diablo III skill tree is a skill tree and not a talent tree because you learn all of your skills from it.

You aren't given new abilities every other level from a trainer. There's no expectation that you'll have some specific ability at some level. There's no role requirements that dictate where you have to spend points to hurt monsters. The points you spend determine exactly how the character is built, how it functions, and what it's able to do.

So, people are comparing the trees for a few reasons and using these reasons as negatives. I'll try to cover them all.

1. "They look similar." Yes, they do. They're both downward expanding trees, they both have icons that you can spend points in, they both have arrows that determine expansion into other skills. These were all features also in the Diablo II trees.

2. "It's unoriginal." I agree. It's only after 10 (?) or so working concepts of various other skill tree designs that we were able to arrive at the conclusion that this is a system that works and achieves the goals that we want to achieve (we showed those failed designs at BlizzCon btw). There's no point in trying to put in something new and complex just for the sake of originality. When people play the game will they remember that it's not new, or that it's not fun? I want to heavily stress again on this point that the skill trees are not finished, we're still in the process of heavy iteration and experimentation.

3. "Point requirements to advance down the tree is lame." One of the main problems with the Diablo II trees was point hoarding, which was the act of holding on to all of your points until you are able to reach a skill you want to put points into. This may not be an issue to some players just because it's so easily dismissed as 'part of the game', but from a designer perspective it's a huge failure. You are giving the player a reward and they are hoarding those rewards because they have nothing enticing to spend them on. This was attempted to be remedied through a patch by introducing synergies, unfortunately they caused their own issues. World of Warcraft looking at the Diablo II trees for inspiration saw this flaw but took a different approach in solving it, instead implementing a point requirement to advance down the tree. The player now has to spend points to advance, and with that comes the ability to provide more impacting and meaningful places to spend them.

4. "Cookie cutter builds!" Again these are skill trees, not talent trees. Every single ability you can cast/use is learned through spending points in the tree. This allows, in comparison, for a huge amount of customization. Now, that doesn't escape the truth that there will always be builds considered to be the best, but that's more an issue of balance, not skill tree layout design.

   Also on that point, and I've said it before, character customization is a core design goal of the game. It's one of a few, and that means that we're not going to release the game unless we're happy with the amount of customization available.

   So, hopefully that touches on most of the main points being used over and over again as a reason to hate the skill tree. Once again I want to ask that you approach the game with a question rather than a statement. If you follow up "I don't like this" with "I wonder why they decided to do it that way" then we can have a conversation. If you're just making a statement the best I can do is read it. There's no way for me to comfortably reply to a post that has no intention of learning about the game.

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