Diablo 3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson sat down with Multiplayer Blog to explain how the health system works in Diablo 3 and how it differs from Diablo 2. In short, you can’t add a new feature without removing an old one, in this case we’re talking about health potions.
The goal is to broaden the Diablo audience to more than just the hardcore fans. Lets be honest with ourselves, the health potion system was way too far out of control (broken?) By mid-game or earlier, half the character inventory was full of potions and you might have just purchased shares in the potion selling company with all the spending you’ve done there. The health potion system created the infinitely powerful character, in essence, by making them immortal.
Activision Blizzard has learned a bit about their success with broad audiences in games like World of Warcraft, which has surpassed game sales over Diablo 2, their most successful game title. What they’ve decided to do in this release of Diablo is to limit the characters ability to heal and make them “mortal” again, requiring the player to use strategy, tactics and skills to defeat enemies. Rather than charging forward pressing “1” then “2” then “3” and the other hot keys for potions, you’ll be forced to back away during strong stomp attacks, mind your enemies special attacks and defend yourself.
“One of the things that happened in ‘Diablo II’,” Wilson continued, “was the player was faster than most of the monsters and had pretty much infinite health because they would just pop as many potions as they wanted. So when you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them… by just spiking the difficulty.” (multiplayer blog)
Gating the users ability to heal is a classic RPG/Adventure game mechanism for changing the playing field in terms of difficulty. You can make a game with weaker enemies in abundance and still cause you harm, take a look back at Gauntlet in the arcade for an example of this method. You can build challenging enemy styles and dungeon traps to cause the player to mind their step, look at the classic Zelda series and some of their crazy enemies. A great example is the Darknuts from The Legend of Zelda, it was a small knight that could only be attacked from behind but had a sharp little dagger if you bumped them from the front. You had to use tactics to wipe out a full room of Darknuts.
Activision Blizzard will now have the option to create some fancy enemies with challenging special abilities that do not involve insta-kill upon contact battle tactics. You control a super hero character, not an immortal; there should be some challenge besides hacking and slashing through mobs of enemies. Wilson went on to say, “We can make a monster that affects your mobility, we can make a monster that has different kinds of attacks that are dangerous to you and that you actually have to avoid. And so it makes the combat a lot more interesting.”
One of the criticisms to the Diablo franchise has always been the “click fest” of battle. You sit still and click on enemies until everyone is dead. Perhaps, without having infinite potions you’ll be challenged to use your brain on occasion, like a real RPG and have more creative use of your money rather than investing a half-billion into the potion vendors.
Where does that lead the hardcore Diablo fans? Activision Blizzard hopes they’ll see a title with a lot more depth, a new style of challenge and a long term appeal.
Hey guys,
I missed last week’s comments so let me just add that I did indeed remove the PS4 camera plastic covers and it works well with other games/apps such as Playroom. Just Dance 2014 looks like it has not been tested/optimized at all as far as tracking is concerned on the PS4. Shame on me for getting it without researching it enough.
@PS4/XBone attach rates
I mentioned it last time but I will say it again. I try to buy as many physical copies of games as possible, especially when it comes to big titles. I did not buy a single digital PS4 game, not including the PSPlus free downloads. On the other hand, I only have two or three boxed Vita games but I would say this is mostly caused by the fact that the majority of games on that platform don’t come in boxes and are only available digitally.
I suppose that the publishers want to convince the public that going all-digital is the way to go and showing stats like that is one way to do it. Still, I don’t think this will work just yet. As far as I know, the Internet availability is not that good in the USA and a lot of users have data caps, which is a showstopper when it comes to games which require 10GB+ of download (including the obligatory day-1 patch). Also, as I previously mentioned, no one can take away your physical copy (except for a thief, obviously) but it is possible that the servers you donwloaded the game from will not work at a certain point in the future. Bah, it’s even certain that this will be the case. As much as people now go back to PS1, XBox or PS2 and play the older games, because they are still in boxes, if people in the future want to do the same with PS4 and XBone then must not rely on digital distribution methods.
@E3
Even though I’m not eligible for the giveaway (what if I give you a US address? 😉 ), let me jest say a few words about what I read and watched about E3. I went through all the briefings, including parts of the Nintendo digital event. I really liked the emphasis Microsoft put on games, including indie titles, and you could tell they learned a lesson from last year’s performance, staying away from the entertainment qualities of the new console. I’m not going to play any of the exclusive games they showed, as I’m not getting an XBone, but Sunset Overdrive looked fun and I wouldn’t mind giving it a go.
I was extremely excited about the Grim Fandango announcement. I love those old adventure games and I played most of the SCUMM titles but I somehow missed Grim Fandango. When I tried going back to it a few years ago, I had to jump through those hoops you mentioned with running old games on Win7 and then there was no sound so I decided to give up. Having the game on the Vita is amazing and it’s a great follow-up to the recent release of Broken Sword 5. And if they are really working on a sequel to GF that’s even more exciting.
I’m obviously looking forward to Uncharted 4 although we still don’t know much about the title. I really liked the first three titles in the series and I don’t believe Naughty Dog will screw the pooch on this one (get it? get it?) despite the internal turmoil.
I didn’t pay much attention to the hardware presented during E3 and I also mostly don’t care about things like Powers or the Halo TV series so I’m not going to comment on those.
I use this to play Grim Fandango on Windows 7. It works perfectly.
http://www.residualvm.org/
Hey Guys thanks for reporting on E3!
I have to admit that Littlebig Planet 3 and Uncharted 4 are pulls for me to get that system.
@PC Master race: I always have to laugh when I hear this, I myself don’t feel snobbish about it. I know I’ve said it before I just don’t feel the consoles have done much to bring me back to them. This E3 may change that with some games for the PS4. However I find I can’t imagine playing a First Person perspective game with a game pad, the movements are always too slow and clunky and aiming is a pain. Where as I enjoy using a Gamepad for platformers and such. I also love the ability to mod various games, which you can’t do with a console.
QotW: As I mentioned above Sony is releasing some games that my family and I are interested in playing. So Sony has piqued our interest again with this showing. Also the kickstarted game Pillars of Eternity showed there as well, so not all companies are staying the course as Paul said.
I also live in the US so I guess I qualify for the swag bag, my wife loves the Sims.
I forgot to respond to the part about the Beyond Earth Tech Web. I wanted to add that all the previous Civ games we’ve had a fairly straight forward Tech tree, all civs will research the same techs and it’s just a race to get those techs. The Web is designed to make it so that not all the techs will be researched by any given civ, that they will focus on one section for their faction.
What bothered me about Civ 4 and a little about Civ 5 is that there’s often a tech bottleneck in which you have no choice on what to research.
Exactly Jonah, and hopefully Beyond Earth’s Tech Web is balanced to give us a choice and decision and not just a railroad to the end tech.