The Salvation of Diablo III: The Response

One of the many long-running threads concerning the issues plaguing Diablo III and what Blizzard Entertainment can do about them has warranted a response from designer Travis Day over on the official forums, and while it certainly doesn’t address any of the points with specific details on how they’ll be dealt with, it does at least give us a small window into the design decisions they’re making on a daily basis. His thoughts on item affixes and the auction house:

Items are a topic with a tremendous amount of depth and also a very sensitive subject, so I’ll do my best to provide some of our insights into the matter. Removing (bad) affixes is certainly a suggestion that surfaces from time to time, another suggestion is to group all the good affixes into a shared category so that they can’t all roll on the same item. I think on the surface those sound good but the reality of what they would do to the itemization isn’t what we want. I addressed the topic of the (bad) affixes in a prior post about items so I won’t go into too much more detail here, but I think it’s well within our ability to make those affixes compelling for some people, Pickup Radius and Witch Doctors are a good example of this. Specifically as it relates to Thorns, no one will disagree that in its current state is pretty lackluster, but it supports a play style that I’m sure we can capture with enough alterations to both the core mechanic and some supporting class abilities and passives.

As it relates to bucketing affixes so Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Attack Speed are mutually exclusive, yeah that would add more choice to item selection, but it would be artificial. I think this issue has some underlying causes that we should look at before going to the extreme of preventing them from existing on the same item. One of the first reasons trifecta items are an issue isn’t that they are so good; it’s that they are the only thing that is good. Of course you want the only three stats that increase your character damage in a meaningful way on the same item, because there are ONLY three stats that increase your character damage in a meaningful way other than your primary stat. I don’t want to derail this by getting into why primary stats were introduced or debate whether they are good or bad. I do want to say that Diablo 3 has been through much iteration during which a vast number of approaches to stats and items were tested and in the end we felt primary stats were the right thing for Diablo 3. I think a better approach to this issue is to introduce more affixes that players are interested in, so there is a sense of tension over what the six affixes are on your (ideal gear). When a perfect pair of gloves is (Core Stat, Vit, Res All, Crit Chance, Crit Dmg, Attack Speed) and you can’t even imagine another stat you would want instead of one of those, we have a bigger problem. Introducing more choice instead of less and giving players more ways to feel like they are customizing their character is what we want to see. If gloves also had the ability to roll +% School Damage, +Life on Hit, Skill specific affixes, plus a couple more things you want, than players may find themselves in a situation where trifecta isn’t as clearly defined anymore.

The (problem) with trifecta items can’t be discussed without also pointing out that it is only a problem because the AH makes obtaining these items so easy. On a basic level, I have no problem with items existing that players highly desire, but when it is a forgone conclusion that you will have those items then we have problems. If the auction house never existed, players wouldn’t be upset that trifecta exists, they would be upset that they haven’t been lucky enough to find their own trifecta items. To summarize, I think the right solution to this problem isn’t cutting trifecta items from the game, but rather it’s about getting to a point where you want more things than you can fit on an item.

I think your affix ideas are cool, and we have spent a lot of time lately talking about what kind of awesome effects we could put on items that we don’t currently have. I’d even say that as cool as some of these ideas are, we can go even further. We are putting a lot of effort into coming up with really awesome item ideas for future content. I’ll give one quick example of my personal favorite so far before moving on and also to give context to the direction we are moving in. Imagine a pair of Legendary boots that read (Makes you ethereal, allowing you to freely move through enemies). Whether or not that idea makes the final cut is hard to say, but we want to really push the boundaries as much as we can, so legendary items become things that players can get really excited about.

Thanks, Blue’s News.