Diablo III Forum Tidbits

Diablo community manager “Bashiok” talks Skovos and boss drops in his latest responses on the official Diablo III forums.

On the latest artwork depicting Skovos:

It is Skovos, and I think this piece was something that Leonard showed and discussed at the WWI Lore and Environment Art panel. It isn’t a location that you’ll visit in Diablo III, but the artwork is a good example of the work and thought going in to fleshing out the world of Sanctuary. It’s already a very complex world with a lot of locations and events, but a lot of it still isn’t visually or contextually realized. As we want to create the feeling of a world outside of your immediate view it’s important to create or expand upon the locations and stories of that world.

As we’re working to create Diablo III we’re also working to create a more visually complete Sanctuary.

On changes to how Diablo II handled boss drops:

There’s an inherent issue in Diablo II, where the game is degenerated to a task of getting to point B as quickly as possible, spinning the wheel, and then you rinse and repeat. While a lot of people obviously take advantage of it, and it sort of becomes a game in itself to see how fast and efficient you can be, it’s not necessarily engaging. You could also say it detracts from the feeling of being immersed in an entire game experience.

Regardless of what happens or changes in Diablo III there are always going to be the min/maxers that game the systems to be more efficient, but as a goal we want to encourage players to experience the game as a whole or at least to a larger degree than an end-game that devolves in to just killing a single boss over and over. A lot of those ideas and details are obviously still under wraps but it is something we’re aware of and thinking about.