The Diablo III Thread

[BlackKnight]

Diabloii.net has uploaded video of a 1-hour Q&A session about the game. It answers some of the questions you might have that aren't covered by the official FAQ.

 

http://www.incgamers.com/Videos/42/Diablo-3-Developer-Panel

[OverlordMondo]

Cartoony Warcraft-style graphics = fail.

So they should've gone into the graphics options and turned down the gamma a little? My god, how did they screw up so badly?

The contrast and gamma just hide the problems with the current approach. Too few polygons, and textures that are not made to look real. Compare that Barbarian's shoulders with anything from WoW. It's the same style. There is no texture to them, no aging, no stains or battle wear. They are just bright yellow and bright orange- that sort of contrast you only get in a cartoon, not in real life and certainly not in the kind of gothic art direction the previous Diablo games went for.

I am seeing neither bright yellow nor bright orange. I see brown with black shading. I have no idea what you're talking about.

[BlackKnight]

Do you happen to be a WoW player, Mondo? I am referring to this Barbarian's threads btw;

 

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/barbarian.xml

[OverlordMondo]

Do you happen to be a WoW player, Mondo?

Yes, I am. Are you suggesting my eyesight is poor? Because it is. I can link a picture of the barbarian, though.

 

 

There it is. Brown. Then some fleshy colors for his flesh. If you could please highlight the yellow and orange, I'd appreciate it. My WoWsight can't tell the difference.

[BlackKnight]

I added the link. Please refer to my last post. If you greenskin that guy, he will be an Orc.

[OverlordMondo]

I added the link. Please refer to my last post. If you greenskin that guy, he will be an Orc.

Yeah, didn't see the link. Even looking at that though, I don't see bright yellow and orange. I see a very pale yellow attached to a dirty leathery brown. If you changed his skin color to green, he would be an orc, that is correct. Not that there are things that doesn't apply to, but I can't say you're wrong.

[Wizard]

Let me just also get on my box and whine about the creative direction for Diablo III for 1 second.

 

-All the lore text on the site looks like it was thrown to some hack writer when you compare it to any of the eloquent narrative in the D1 and 2 manuals.

 

-The art style seems... uneven. Does the mild Oriental influence in the logo and SFX seem a bit out of place to anyone else? They take a tiny bit of unmarked land from the original Sanctuary map, make it bigger and call it Xiansai. Great flocking idea, morons. This isn't WoW- Diablo's world would benefit more from consistency than having every culture on Earth thrown in. Sanctuary was a mix of the European and middle eastern dark ages with the exception of the Aztec-inspired Travincal City. Now we are going to have the Asian flavour to things- something that's all too trendy today. Need to add exotics to something? Copy-Paste generic Asian faction in. Just seems like a very typical, almost cliched design choice.

 

-Witch Doctors, for that matter... what's up there? Every Diablo fan on this planet wants the Necromancer back. It is the favourite class in Diablo II- no questions. Replacing him with this cheap imitation is a kick in the face to every fan out there. Let's just hope there is a really, really good lore rationale for having Necs as an unplayable class...

 

-Also on the one hand you have all the ancient-to-middle ages locales of the previous games but now the new city Caldeum looks like it was taken straight from LotR or something. Huge towers, bright green domes? Seems like they threw the Diablo series' gritty realism out the window when they designed that place.

 

-Speaking of realism, what is with their post-Warcraft III style anyway? This set of designers does a good job with so few polygons but damn, if there was even one series that should have been spared the Saturday morning-treatment it should have been Diablo. Looking at the gameplay vid now in HD, I know it is Diablo. I know that is a Barbarian using Shout, and Whirlwind... but honestly I have a tough time convincing myself this isn't DotA or a custom hero map from WCIII. The style worked there. But WCIII came out in 2002, an expansion, an MMO and Starcraft II ago. It's old now.

 

I'm probably the biggest Diablo fan here. So expect more bitchin' from me in the coming day or so . None of these are major gripes- Blizzard, in a few key ways, just seems to have forgotten what made the Diablo atmosphere so special at some point in the last 10 years. Here's hoping they remember before release time.

 

So if you agree on any points just raise your hands and let me know

1) don't care

2) don't care

3) I play sorceress, there for I don't care

4) HIGH FANTASY GRIMDARK? IN MY DIABLO? NEVER!

5) Eh, walking the line with that

 

You aren't the biggest fan, just probably one of the pickyest. Just sayin. We can pretty much blame Chris for any problems that pop up for the Diablo lore. The dude pretty much knows when he makes a mistake (lol Hakkar! LUKE SKYWALKER, NO ONE HAS THOUGHT OF THAT!)

[Smilee]

Even though the necromancer was replaced by the witch doctor, (necromancer was by far my favorite class) I'm still waiting to see how he plays out in the long run. It's just way too early too tell if he's not going to meet the old player's standards or not.

 

Also due to a new lead designer (Jay Wilson, dawn of war anyone?) I can expect some interesting changes in the future.

[BlackKnight]

Unless he personally wrote the text on that site I'm not blaming him. Who knows what the story arc is? It's too late to make a call on that- I was just complaining about the quality of the writing on the site.

 

You aren't the biggest fan, just probably one of the pickyest. Just sayin.

And you would know, huh? And if you think I'm the pickiest it sounds like you've never been to boards on any Diablo site. Or the Battle.net forums either.

[OverlordMondo]

Also, about the polygons. Blizzard purposely keeps the hardware requirements of their games to a minmum. Too many developers push the limits of graphics with their games, to the point that most people can't play them. Blizzard avoids that symptom as though it were AIDS.

[Wizard]

And you would know, huh? And if you think I'm the pickiest it sounds like you've never been to boards on any Diablo site. Or the Battle.net forums either.

Yes I have, I've complained tons before, but I don't bother it, I just usually tell em to "stfu, your buying it anyways".

[ken_cinder]

Why do I keep hearing "No necromancer" or "They've replaced Necromancer with Witch Doctor"?

 

Where is your proof, when only 2 classes have been shown, and there are to be five like in the previous game? Maybe that stupid Amazon will bite it? Ya think of that? There are no MALE Amazon's, but there can be females in all the other classes.

[BlackKnight]

It's by process of elimination. There are only 5 classes, so there isn't really room to overlap anything, especially when 1 Bow user (most likely an Amazon / Assassin hybrid) and 1 Healer class (Paladin / Monk) are almost obligatory. And then if they go and include a Mage / Sorcerer for pure a pure magic class they've already made up the 5.

 

It just seems very unlikely that when there are so many types of classes available they would double up on the Witch Doctor. He practically has the Necromancer's Summoning and Curses trees already, and has just traded Poison & Bone for Fire Magic. A Druid / Necromancer hybrid, if you wanna think about it that way.

 

Where is your proof, when only 2 classes have been shown, and there are to be five like in the previous game? Maybe that stupid Amazon will bite it? Ya think of that? There are no MALE Amazon's, but there can be females in all the other classes.

 

This came up in Warcraft where WoW let you make Male Night Elf Hunters and Rogues and Female Druids. Those were, lore-wise, single sex only classes. It didn't stop them then though.

 

So yeh, there is no saying Necs won't be in D3 or an expansion, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Lucandrake]

Witch Doc pretty much replaced Necro with the few skills it showed there, unless necro does the same exact crap except with fury creatures now it turns out to be skeletons and bones.

 

I just still can't get the last few seconds of the cinematic out of my head, when that witch doctor gets owned so fuking disgusting, it's just, cool .

[BlackKnight]

Summary of that Q&A video since the site is taking a beating right now;

 

# “I don’t think we’ve broken a hundred on screen at a time, but we’ve flirted with it,” says Jay of monsters.

# The core ideals for the game have stayed consistent over the dev period. Jay says the style and look of the game is the thing that’s changed the most.

# They’re talking about voice comms. Want to improve on it.

# Blah de blah. Sounds like it’s running out of steam a bit. Five minutes, says Mr PR.

# “We’re in hardcore production,” says Jay. They’re working mainly on content at the moment.

# “Diabllo is not that is very mod-friendly game because of the random nature,” says Jay. Mods haven’t been a big focus. It’s difficult with this title, he says.

# They’re talking a lot about co-op. “We really see the single-player and co-operative play as the same thing,” says Jay.

# “The biggest thing we have to help us protect against piracy” is the community, says Frank. People want to be a part of Battle.Net.

# Seasonal stuff - a la WoW - is a “cool idea”.

# They’re going to “discuss” a beta, but nothing confirmed yet.

# “It’s always our goal to run on a broad range of systems,” says Jay. They won’t confirm system specs.

# They use Zelda and WoW as inspiration for boss design. Jay says the bosses are going to be much more complex than Diablo II.

# You can pick character gender, but you can’t customise. They want you to kill monsters as soon as possible.

# They don’t have the boss frequency yet. Jay says the boss in the stage demo wasn’t a boss at all, just a creature.

# The characters in the game will have their own plotlines and stories.

# “Our goal is to sim-ship in as many languages as possible”: Frank. He says it’ll be very hard to do, though.

# “We haven’t made a decision about our financial model,” says Jay. All regions are different.

# The game has real physics, but it’s not a “pure, physics reactionary system.”

# The blue teaser image was supposed to be the face of Diablo. Jay “doesn’t know” what the purple penguin was.

# A lot of different locations. Dur.

# It’s going to mix random and static maps. They’ve been experimenting with random exits, entrances, monster placement, items, and so on.

# We definitely want to add web functionality, says Frank.

# Around 50 people working on the game.

# Story for the game starts 20 years after the events of Lord of Destruction.

# Targeting a length “similar” to Diablo II.

# They’re going to improve trading, apparently, but are still working on how it’s going to happen.

# They won’t talk about the skill tree format. Sounds like it’s not nailed down.

# We’ve got so many monsters to reveal, says Frank.

# “We’re very interested in the consoles but we don’t have any plans at this time to become a console developer”: Frank.

# They’ve just confirmed Diablo III for Mac. “Absolutely,” said Jay when asked if it was happening.

# “The Diablo III team is definitely thinking about e-sports and whether or not it makes sense for the game”: Frank.

# Frank just said they’re planning PvP features but they’re not saying anything about it right now.

# “We have a new version of Battle.Net that will appear in the coming months,” says Jay. Frank says the new features for Battle.Net will be seen in conjunction with StarCraft II’s release.

# When it’s done. “It’s far too early in development for us to put a release date for it,” says Frank. It’s been in development for four years.

# “Brand new 3D engine that we developed in-house.” Jay says they don’t have a name for the engine.

 

http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/06/28/l...ess-conference/