In his most recent responses on the official Diablo III forums, community manager “Bashiok” discusses release date rumors, how they’re designing PvP, total party size, and more.
On the rune system:
The runes have really just been renamed to allow us greater flexibility in what they do so we’re not creating a weird detachment from what they’re called and the effect they provide. For example what was the multi-strike rune going to do for … say… slow time? And does that match what the name implies, or what you would assume? Probably not.
Also, personally, the newest names (which I won’t disclose in case they don’t stick) are very much in the theme of the world and Diablo. Lethality/multistrike/power were very game-mechanic in approach, and even when they moved to viper/hydra/force they had an odd mysticism attached with them. Now they’re very plainly named by interesting sounding materials. Great, very matter of fact and real in their theme, IMO.
Runes still have a general theme though, you’ll know that this rune usually increases damage in some way, and this other one usually decreases cost in some way, and this one is a wild-card and usually changes how the skill works in some crazy way. But we have enough freedom now that multi-strike/hydra whatever you know it as, doesn’t have this defined perception that it’s always going to “multi-strike”. Whatever that means to each player.
It’s not entirely transparent to the player what each rune will do with each skill, but it couldn’t have been before either. And having them be curious about the effect and learning what it is, instead of having a predetermined idea of what it’s going to do, is the better path.
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“[quality] [rune type] Runestone”
I don’t think quality names have been decided for sure yet (?), but for example it would be something like “Minor Alabaster Runestone”.
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Also I sort of like that they sound like they could exist normally even though the common people of the world probably don’t know what they’re for. “Oh hey, a piece of alabaster with a rune carved into it. Weird. Maybe someone will buy it. Hey want to buy this alabaster runestone? No? Ok cool.” as opposed to “The mystical viper rune! No idea what it does, just sort of seems like we should call it a viper rune.”
On the Witch Doctor’s Haunt spell:
Haunt. yes.
It’s essentially a fire and forget DoT that jumps around once it kills something. Pretty useful to always have out there hurting dudes.
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Julian, notorious masochist, continues to read the forums and fansites and provide more information on skills and effects.
Re: haunt, he wanted to pass along that the effect seen for the skill was “the most ridiculously temporary graphic ever.” It was never really intended to be shown in the state it was, so it’s all a bit embarrassing. But never fear as the skill itself is seeing an overhaul (technically and visually) to better deliver the concept of being haunted.
On Playboy reporting that Diablo III will be released this year:
I’ve met Jo, she’s a very nice girl (and to my surprise a capable gamer), but I think she got her info from a retailer.
No official release date has been announced for Cataclysm or Diablo III. 🙂
Some retailers (which I’ve always assumed have to have a release date in their sales systems to take pre-orders) set unknown release dates to the end of the year or a date that ends a business quarter. March 31, June 30, etc.
On rare mob glow effects:
You can actually see that one of the cultists has a lightning effect around their feet (it’s faint), indicating it’s a champion or rare with an electrical affix. The effect you’re pointing out is a post-death lightning explosion from that rare/champion. The same effect happens with all of the damage types if they roll that affix.
Rares/champions also have a faint glow to them that’s actually quite noticeable in-game (that indicates they’re not a normal enemy) but it doesn’t really come through in the quality of that video.
On PvP delaying the release:
Alright, I’ll elaborate!
The PvP game is being developed alongside everything else, so it’s not as if the game is done and we’re ready to ship it but then stop and take a few months to balance things. Also, it’s to be expected that the game won’t be and won’t really need to be balanced right at release as it will take some time for people to really explore and begin reaching competition levels where more extreme balance is necessary or even possible for us to properly evaluate and react to.
On skills increasing by using them:
I think it’s really cool in principle but doesn’t always work out, and is certainly better suited to certain types of games. It’s the very realistic concept of ‘as you practice something you get better at it’. And that’s easily understood through mechanics with very little information given to the player. You swing your sword, and hey, you skilled up in your knowledge of using a sword! You don’t wonder where that came from, you know that as you play your character you’ll become better at the things you like to do. That’s awesome.
What ends up happening though, I find, is through the infinite goal of the player to make their character as powerful as possible as quickly as possible, it turns from a concept of reality into this twisted game of getting near a rat, putting a stapler on the crouch key, and going to work while your stealth skill auto-levels. Obviously that’s an extreme case but it sort of points out a flaw in the system. You can and will do things that are very unnatural to gain skill levels that do not keep in the fundamental theme of roleplaying in which the system solely exists for.
It’s a cool system, it just doesn’t always translate from pen & paper to video games very well. And a multiplayer action-RPG like Diablo? It just doesn’t fit thematically.
That’s just my personal take on it though.
On letting the community vote on the total party size:
It’s not really one of those things that should be put to vote. In this case you’ll have to trust that these decisions are made by a man, a caring and compassionate man (but with total control over what you can do and say), that knows what’s best for you.
On whether we’ll be able to zoom in on our character:
Still no plans to have a zoom function. There’s a very slight zoom used more as a cue to the player when you enter a conversation with an NPC, but it’s very subtle and doesn’t count for what you’re talking about.
But your character is shown in all its up-close and rotatable glory on the character selection screen. At least currently.
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The difference in items is very apparent, you’ll notice your upgrades even from the game camera distance.
On whether the designers are limiting character builds:
There are no skill trees any more. Skills are still tiered by when you can buy them (essentially a level requirement) but there aren’t any trees, it’s one big pool.
Before this game even reaches a beta state there will be hundreds of people playing it internally, and most likely there will be builds that are developed during that time. But the game is specifically being designed in a way that skill progression is as much of a choice as possible. There will always be builds determined to be ‘the best’ as long as there are choices and options. Making every skill and every pathway perfectly equal would mean watering down skills, making bland options, and overall homogenizing the classes and skill abilities. So it’s a trick of balancing unique and interesting and fun skills while also ensuring that no matter which ones you pick you’re not totally gimped.
I also want to point out that skill runes can have a fairly dramatic impact on how skills function (and even look) so builds are further compounded not just by the skills you choose, and itemization and other stats that improve those skills, but skill runes that can potentially change their very behavior. And those changes can range from small things like adding a chance to stun, to very extreme things like causing an AoE knockback, and any creatures knocked back repeat that AoE knockback from where they land, and so on and so forth. So there’s quite a bit of room for experimentation if not build potential within all of that.
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I’d say it’s really too early to say what all creature abilities are and the give and take between them and player skills will be. But in general we don’t want stories where a character is unable to deal with a situation because of the build they chose. There could be exceptions if someone really wanted to limit themselves in dramatic ways, I suppose.
Resistances and immunities can be interesting in creating situational awareness. But ideally that’s simply an issue to overcome by thinking about the situation and not one that stops someone dead in their tracks because they chose a specific build. But again, we really can’t know right now what those situations could be or how they could be resolved. We have a general outlook on not screwing over the player though, so hopefully that’s comforting. 🙂
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Let’s say hypothetically that every class has around 20 skills, and let’s say hypothetically that there are 5 types of runes even before separating those out into the varying levels of rarity/power. That’s 500 runes. I don’t know man, I think that’s probably an unmanageable amount.
It’s interesting though, and pretty much the system that WoW uses for Glyphs (clearly a rip-off of Diablo III skill runes!) They get around those number issues by only have a single glyph for any one skill, and also not every skill has a Glyph.
Meanwhile all of our skills can have runes attached, and not just one type of rune, but many.
