Diablo III Console Preview, GDC Panel Report

While the announcement of the Diablo III console versions has proven divisive, especially in light of some of the differences with the PC version (the lack of always-online requirements and auction house being the most notable), I’m fairly certain that more than a few of our readers still want to read about it, and luckily for us the Penny Arcade Report is offering some material.

The biggest and most obvious change is the ability to control your character directly with the controller, versus using a mouse to indirectly guide where you’d like them to go.

(I think one of the big changes is to make all the powers feel awesome. We really needed to go in and hand-tweak all the powers,) Mosqueira said. (Sometimes speeding them up, sometimes adding a shuffle animation between attacks, because it’s really important for us to hit that visceral experience. Direct control fundamentally changes how players play the game.)

The right analog stick is now used to evade, so it’s always easy to jump out of the way quickly. The face buttons are linked to your attacks, so you’ll need to remember which button does what, and pay attention to the cooldown timer for your powers.

The game has been balanced for these changes, and I was curious about whether using a controller had made things easier or harder for the player.

(In some ways it was a little more challenging for players. It kind of balanced out. We really wanted to make sure the combat rhythm of the game took advantage of the fact you’re using your left stick to control your character, and also the way your fingers want to dance across the d-pad, and use the X and triangle button,) Mosqueira said.

They haven’t reduced the amount of monsters, but they did change the rhythm of how the mobs attack. The monsters now come in waves, and this does highlight a more rhythm-based way to attack using the face buttons of the controller. Combat isn’t the only place the game has been improved, however.

Meanwhile, EDGE has a report on ex-director Jay Wilson’s GDC panel on Diablo III. Here’s a snip:

First, Wilson admitted that the Blizzard development team had got the item system badly wrong. Diablo revised items from Diablo II to prevent characters like Diablo II’s Sorceress, who was almost totally item-independent and hence overpowered and extremely popular.

Unfortunately, in Diablo III (Items were mathy) he said, as players needed to maximise their character’s particular core stats. (Being a Barbarian and swinging an axe doesn’t often involve algebra,) said Wilson. Blizzard has attempted to fix this with hundreds of new legendary items in patch 1.04, which are more ‘˜build changer’ items.

Similarly, combat was made repetitive by the player’s high level of skill customization. (We had no ‘˜diverse combat mechanics’ pillar. the player is a swiss army knife, we don’t know if they’re the scissors or the saw,) Wilson said. If the designer doesn’t know any of the skills a player has, not even dodges or ranged attacks, then he can’t design mechanics around them, limiting him to the few attacks universal to all classes.