Diablo III Forum Activity

Diablo community manager “Bashiok” discusses camera viewpoints, staying friendly to colorblind players, two-handed weapon mechanics, and more in his latest responses on the official Diablo III forums.

On the increased stash size being removed from the Diablo II v1.13 patch:

We’ve recently completed a revised version of the Diablo II 1.13 patch that removes the increased stash size. A larger stash will unfortunately no longer be a feature included in patch 1.13 due to the previously mentioned concerns. As higher priority work continues on Warcraft III we’re hoping to complete our quality assurance tests for the 1.13 patch in the next few weeks. But as always, the types of issues that may appear and take higher priority are rarely foreseeable. We continue to plan a release based on our best intentions.

On two-handed weapon mechanics:

Funny enough right now two-handers on the barbarian are much stronger than dual-wielding because most of his skills are based on weapon damage and the game doesn’t add up the damage on both weapons while dual-wielding (yet). So actually we’re trying to make dual-wielding better right now, but, that of course means two-handers will probably then fall by the wayside and we’re back in Diablo II’s shoes. The witch doctor and wizard don’t really apply, the monk has specific skill support for his weapon choices, and the … *mumble mumble mumble*.

Off the top of Wyatt’s head there’s a few ways it could be addressed. One potential way would be to have passive skills that allow someone to specialize in two-handers or dual wielding, and we can stat and tweak those however we need to make them effective. We could also make special affixes that can only be rolled up by two-handers that overcome the innate issue of it only being one item.

Bottom line though is we intend for two handers to be as viable as any other weapon choice and we’ll do what we need to to make sure that happens.

…

Well the affix idea was more along the lines of having something like the highest strength affix a two-hander could roll would be 100 points, and the highest a one-hander could roll would be 50. So everything would even out. Of course that doesn’t offset things like block, but it’s just sort of a half-hatched solution anyway.

On the fifth, unannounced class:

Well the game was originally announced with the barbarian and witch doctor. BlizzCon ’08 saw the announcement of the wizard (at BlizzCon, not three weeks after), and BlizzCon ’09 saw the announcement of the monk.

The fifth class was something that was decided early on, but after continuing to work on the game and the other classes it just wasn’t up to standards any longer. So it’s back on the drawing board.

We only have one class left to reveal, it’s sort of a major card we can still hold close to the vest. While development doesn’t depend on our plans to reveal it, we definitely aren’t going to tell everyone what it is just because we know what it’s going to be.

On using a fixed camera:

It’s a fixed camera. Back when we announced the game we had our dialogue interaction set up where the camera would zoom in, and you’d see the characters up close and they’d talk to each other in this zoomed in view. We threw that out a long time ago though just because it was too intrusive, it stopped the game, pulled you out of the action, and just felt like too much. There was also a point where we zoomed in on the character in one of the videos to show some attack animations and item switches better, but that’s not a feature of the game.

The camera doesn’t zoom or tilt or rotate, it’s a fixed camera.

It’s kind of fun to watch people that have never played a Diablo game before, or it’s been a long time. They immediately go for the WASD keys, and when those do nothing they then try holding down the right mouse button to rotate the camera. Sometimes by accident they’re reminded it’s click to move.

It’s just not a control scheme and camera angle that are used a lot these days, there’s maybe been a handful of games in the past five years that qualify as isometric arpg’s? So anyway, props to all those games and the developers keeping the style alive. We’re continuing the tradition, proudly, because we feel it’s the best way to present a sequel in the Diablo franchise.

On being colorblind friendly:

There are people on the development team that are colorblind so it’s something we’re constantly aware of. Aside from that though as a company we’re always interested in making our games as accommodating as possible. World of Warcraft for instance added a color blind mode which helps clarify item quality levels through text and not just color, whether Diablo III will need that option or not – it may.

On taking some ideas from Torchlight:

We all play a lot of games so it’s without question that if someone finds a feature in some game they enjoy, or encounters something especially cool, we’ll see if it could work for us.

Regarding mercenaries, the most we’ve said is that for Diablo III we have them and we’re calling them followers… and that’s all we’ve said. So I couldn’t comment on what features they would or wouldn’t have or speculate on if a feature would work for us or not. You’ll just have to wait and see.

We’ve said since announcement that we want to make sure you can get items to other characters quickly and safely. It could take any number of forms, an account-shared stash is one option we’ve talked about.

These aren’t really new ideas, not to discount them being fun or useful additions to any game, but there’s always something to learn. We also just like having an excuse to play more games.