For those of you – and I imagine it’s more than a few – that were waiting for new info on Diablo III, it seems that the wait is finally over, as details from the game’s beta are starting to be released. First of all, PC Gamer lets us know that the game will feature a real money in-game auction house. The auction house will serve to regulate the player-to-player transactions and Blizzard won’t sell any item on it, although they will receive a “small flat rate” for every item put up for auction. Here’s how Blizzard justified this undoubtedly polarizing move:
(We think it’s really going to add a lot of depth to the game,) says executive producer Rob Pardo. (If I have more money than time I can purchase items, or if I’m leet in the game I can get benefits out of it.)
(The players really want it. This is something that we know people are going to do either way. We can provide them a really safe, awesome, fun experience, or they’ll find ways of doing it elsewhere.)
That’s not the only controversial choice, as they’ve also revealed that the game’s DRM of choice will require players to be constantly online:
(It’s the trend that we’ve been moving towards,) Alex says. (Obviously StarCraft 2 did it, WoW authenticates also. It’s kind of the way things are, these days. The world of gaming is not the same as it was when Diablo 2 came out.)
I check with him to be absolutely sure: there’s no way to play without being online? (There’s no offline play, you have to be connected to the internet.)
…
(We thought about this quite a bit,) says executive producer Rob Pardo. (One of the things that we felt was really import was that if you did play offline, if we allowed for that experience, you’d start a character, you’d get him all the way to level 20 or level 30 or level 40 or what have you, and then at that point you might decide to want to venture onto Battle.net. But you’d have to start a character from scratch, because there’d be no way for us to guarantee no cheats were involved, if we let you play on the client and then take that character online.)
(Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t play a game by yourself of course you can. You can go into and start any game that you want, you’ll just be connected to the Battle.net servers, and we can authenticate your character.)
As for the game proper, previews of the beta are surfacing on the net, and they seem to only have good things to say about the highly anticipated title.
GameInformer:
Each class uses a unique resource (two, in the Demon Hunter’s case). This has obvious advantages in terms of differentiating their playstyles, but don’t expect any big surprises in the mechanics. The Wizard’s fast-regenerating arcane power functions like Rogue energy in World of Warcraft. The Barbarian’s fury is basically WoW rage, building off of basic attacks and being consumed by more powerful strikes. The Witch Doctor’s mana is exactly what you’d expect. The Monk’s spirit gauge is interesting; it builds slowly as he uses normal attacks and is quickly depleted by using special skills. On the other hand, his specials generally don’t have cooldowns, so Monks can burst huge power at the expense of being relatively weak until they can re-energize their spirit. Finally, the Demon Hunter combines the concepts of mana and arcane power, using quick-replenishing hatred to fuel their offense and slow-recharging discipline to power defensive escapes.
I didn’t have time to play through the whole build with each character, and spent more time with the Barbarian and Wizard than the others. Dabbling with all five left me impressed with the variety between them as well as the marked difference between playing different builds of the same class. Using debuffs and pets to keep monsters away from you and eat their life force as the Witch Doctor is nothing like a Wizard blasting them into bits with raw elemental power, despite the fact that they’re both spellcasting ranged classes. Likewise, the Barbarian’s gonzo smash-oriented combat style is distinct from the Monk’s stolid, defensive tactics. The Demon Hunter, as a physical ranged class, is unique among the five. I love what Blizzard has done with making positional tactics primary to that class, with powerful stationary traps and acrobatic escapes complementing bread-and-butter projectile attacks.
Dynamically generated one-off local events are a great addition to the game that help keep things from feeling too samey. I encounter an abandoned cellar being looted by pygmies. Fighting a swarm of bad guys in these tight quarters is an interesting battle for my fragile wizard, made more tense by the race to kill the treasure bearer before it opens a portal and escapes with the loot.
IGN:
Once the announcements were finished, we did get some time to go hands-on with the game. We decided to load up the monk character who, unlike in our previous play session, started out at level 1. Our brief adventure was centered around the village of Tristram, an old favorite with a recent undead problem. Once we gained a few levels and unlocked our third skill slot, we settled into a combination of Deadly Reach, Lashing Tail Kick, and Breath of Heaven. Deadly Reach is a basic damage ability that replaces your normal attack and can strike multiple enemies if they’re close together. Lashing Tail Kick is a stronger attack that costs some spirit energy–the monk’s energy resource–and knocks enemies back. Finally, Breath of Heaven is a great burst healing spell that can save you in a pinch.
We quickly found that once you fall into the groove of Diablo, it’s hard to pull yourself away. Encounters also felt a bit more dynamic in this game than in the previous ones thanks to the variety of enemy types. Some would explode when defeated and damage anyone nearby, while others would release smaller foes upon death. And since the monk’s spirit enemy is slow to generate, we could just rush through an area spamming our most powerful attacks at will. When playing in multiplayer, gold and loot drops were unique to each person, though we could still trade items once we had picked them up. Based on what we played, Diablo III is coming along well–but even so, Blizzard still wasn’t ready to set a release date other than to repeat its new catchphrase of “when it’s ready.”
Eurogamer:
Each character now has just six active skill slots (and three powerful passives, replacing the more complex traits from last year). Skills simply unlock as you level up, as do the slots – you start with two. Skill points and character respecs have followed attribute points into the bin, and skills can be swapped in and out of slots completely at will. The system is breathtaking in its simplicity and flexibility.
Wilson explains the change of heart. Players faced difficult choices on whether to go deep or wide in their skill investment – yet those choices were subsequently trivialised by the ability to respec, and the whole system conflicted with the Diablo player’s desire to swap disposable early skills out for shiny new ones.
“What the system wanted to be [is] almost, in some ways, more like Borderlands,” he says. “If you played Borderlands, the primary thing that you’re doing all the time is shooting a gun. And that changes frequently because you always get new items that change what you’re doing, and that’s what keeps the combat really interesting. Diablo is the same model, except we don’t base our skills off weapons, we base them off of the skill system.
“If changing [skills] was a really big deal, we’re basically telling the player, ‘You’re not really supposed to do that.’ But they are supposed to do that. What’s the problem of just letting players change the skills whenever they want?”
Joystiq:
There are no skill points or talent trees at all, which marks an interesting diversion in the series. Cheng says Blizzard did a lot of testing, and found that the number of choices players made wasn’t as important as which choices those were. “Would you rather have one percent bonus crit that you choose five times, which is a system that we could have gone with, or would you rather just pick one passive and say I’m good at critical hits?” asks Cheng. “Would you rather make 20 small decisions or three big ones? What we find, especially when it comes to defining your character, is that three big ones is more interesting and compelling.”
Polish also means that Blizzard is smoothing out the flow of gameplay, and one new choice that they’ve made is that players will no longer have to return to town to sell items. Early in the game, you’ll get a “Cauldron of Jordan” that sits in a permanent inventory slot and will pay out vendor price for anything you don’t want. There’s also a “Nephalim Cube” that will grind unwanted items into the game’s raw crafting materials, so any time you need to clear your inventory you can do it right where you stand, instantly.
“Bottom line, we’re an action RPG,” says Cheng. “And we want to keep the action flowing. Obviously there are objections, like shouldn’t there be some reason to go back to town?” And there still will be, at points. Quests return you to town, your (account-wide!) stash is there, and the vendors, repair, and crafting NPCs are all there. “But at the end of the day we want to do what plays best and what played best was the ability to decide at any time, do I want to make this item into gold or do I want to make this item into crafting materials.”
