Diablo III Forum Activity

In his most recent responses on the official Diablo III forums, community manager Micah Whipple (thanks Real ID!) discusses item durability, destructable environments, the skill rune system, and more.

On item durability:

Regardless of any arguments on specifics of how long it should take, or a burden to your mental capacity, it’s one of the few ways that gold can be drawn out in a nice steady stream and isn’t specific to any features or choice. It’s a constant deflation technique that counts on nothing more than someone playing the game (ie fighting monsters).

It’s a true gold sink, you get no real benefit from it, but it’s also one that makes sense thematically, is accepted as a game mechanic already, and hell, it works. I wouldn’t expect everyone to be cool with the concept of it, but hey, sometimes you have to do unpopular things to keep more important aspects in check (ie A working economy).

On whether the game will have achievements:

Achievements are a feature of the Battle.net platform, sooooo…

I unno?

On resolution changes with the Diablo II v1.13 patch:

What this means is that (when in windowed mode) when you press the maximize button (which is also new in 1.13) the window will stretch to fill the largest available 4:3 square on your display. When the window stretches, so does the image. This is not a way to run the game in a higher resolution than 800×600. When we say “(hooray widescreen users)”, we mean to highlight that widescreen users who weren’t happy with their graphics cards distorting the 4:3 game image to the native widescreen aspect ratio of their display, can now run the game in maximized windowed mode without image distortion.

Additionally we also added the option for users who would still like the image to distort itself, (to fill up the available horizontal space) through the command line argument nofixaspect (which can be added in your game shortcut properties).

There are no in-game menus for changing these options or using these features.

On destructable environments:

Only specific interactive objects will actually damage enemies. The falling wall, detachable chandeliers (AND MORE!). They’re specific ‘trap’ items that you can lure enemies toward and then spring on them. The little bits of physics objects that bust apart from destructables don’t cause damage. You’re in charge of doing damage – not seeing how much debris you can fling at a monster.

On the skill rune system:

I think the skill rune system, while not an original concept, is pretty revolutionary – at least for the Diablo series and the way we’re implementing it.

Really though I don’t think there are any ideas for any games where you’re going to say WOW THAT IS NEW! (unless you’re just unaware of where else its been used) All game mechanics and ideas are essentially evolutions of existing concepts. The actual changes we see now (in games) are mostly based on interfaces and control systems (motion/touch) but even those ideas are decades old.

Anyway, skill runes. Live it.

Also, I’m not worried. We have so much stuff we haven’t talked about yet. I guess it’s easy for me to go “Pshaw you so crazay!” and then launch into the Martin theme song. But I have to catch myself. Yes, what we’ve shown so far is Diablo with new visuals and maybe not much else beyond the skill rune system that’s new or exciting. But it’s there, and the game will seem familiar but have enough fresh and new going to keep it… fresh and new.

On Battle.net 2.0 name identifiers:

Sixen, how would it feel if you log in day one, excited to grab your name, and someone else already has? And so you’re stuck having to use some variation.

That’s what we want to avoid. And the reason for the identifier, and now the three digit character code. The identifier was confusing for a lot of people, and was heavily misused. People were generally using it to duplicate the name they wanted; Bashiok.Bashiok for instance. Or some people put their account passwords in there. Email addresses. Zip codes. All sorts of crazy stuff.

So we have an automatically generated three digit character code that doesn’t make your nickname look all funky and ugly, it’s only viewable in certain ways, but it offers all the benefits of a unique identifier. For more ‘profound’ members of the community 😉 it’ll quickly spread what their character code is (that’s what the three digit identifier is called) and it’s simply a matter of quickly verifying it in any interactions with them.

The character code is coming back in phase two in early July so you’ll have plenty of time to check it out.

On whether items will unlock other class abilities:

Build items that give you other class abilities? Hell yes I’m going to start playing again, that sounds AWESOME. But which abilities were given determined the long-term effects. Also, in their defense, they’re generally very difficult runewords to create under normal circumstances. It’s fairly easy to justify creating some of these things with the idea that only a few people will be running around with these powers.

As it relates to Diablo III, I wouldn’t say “never”, but providing a way to gain access to other class abilities is not something we’re looking to or planning on implementing in the foreseeable future. I think if at some point years after the game is released we need some way to spice things up, honestly it’s one fairly easy way to do it. I also think we have enough knowledge and know how and experience to be able to intelligently control such things. But I would also hope that those smarts could maybe help us find better ways to keep things interesting.

And on weapon types:

I don’t think throwing in new weapon types is necessary to keep weapons interesting, or that because we haven’t added a bunch of new ones means that we’re somehow failing.

We’re dealing with very classic weapons and types. Adding more for the sake of having more doesn’t mean it’s going to be better. And really, adding more at this point probably means that we’re going to start coming up with some really weird stuff.

Concentrated coolness.