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Diablo 3 Dev Talks Multiplayer Options, Long Dev Cycle
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Oct 03, 2008 11:03 PM
from the where-would-i-put-this? dept.
from the where-would-i-put-this? dept.
AusGamers spoke with Blizzard's Jay Wilson recently about Diablo 3's multiplayer experience. Among other things, Wilson said the developers were making an effort to encourage cooperative gameplay. For example, each player within a particular game will see different loot drops from monsters, which prevents competition over who can click an item the fastest, and encourages trading. He also mentions that a team is already working on methods to prevent cheating, and he discusses why Blizzard games tend to be announced so long before they're completed. "One of the reasons why we actually prefer a really long window before we release a game is because we want a lot of feedback; we want to hear what people like and don't like about it; we want to give them several opportunities to play it before release."
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Blizzcon 2008 Wrap-Up 173 comments
This year's Blizzcon saw 15,000 gamers descend from 27 different countries to take part in two days of discussions, tournaments, and sneak peaks at upcoming releases. Several big announcements were scattered among a raft of new details about Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Wrath of the Lich King. The new information went a long way toward drumming up interest for what already appear to be worthy successors to old favorites. Read on for more.
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Single Player please. (Score:4, Interesting)
I loved Diablo 1 and Diablo 2. However, I'm not really interrested in multi-player games. I only hope Diablo 3 will keep an enjoyable single player mode.
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>Diablo wasn't significantly different in multiplayer. D2 was even less different.
D2X in single player is close to impossible in Hell difficulty. Only a few characters, with very high end equipment, can hope and complete the game.
Also, a lot of items were available in multiplayer only, and that's a pity. Like Smartcowboy, I very much prefer single player.
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Re:Single Player please. (Score:4, Funny)
Can a session really be "fag" if there's only one person playing?
Parent
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Well I think that's part of the problem! I quit playing World of Warcraft because I got to the point where I needed a group to make progress. But if you're part of a group of friends or a clan then you have to play whenever the group plays, whether you want to or not. Otherwise you get left behind levelwise.
Multiplayer RPG is really fun if you and your friends have a ton of time to spend. But people who are busy, have scattered friends, or just want to play occasionally need a valid
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Re:Here's some fuckin feedback (Score:5, Insightful)
If the only thing Blizzard does is to remove incentive for assholes to play the game, it will be a resounding success for the vast majority of players, and for Blizzard. Griefers ruin the game for everyone except themselves.
Sorry you want to grief players to have fun. Go ahead and leave, because we won't miss you one fucking bit.
Parent
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Actually, that's incorrect. That player type is a parasite, but a necessary one. Without the griefers, things are boring.
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That's weird, I'm pretty sure that where you typed "boring" you meant "fun."
No they aren't (Score:4, Insightful)
All games get boring eventually, griefers or no.
However, games that give plenty of room to griefers are only more interesting to griefers. Griefability does not make the games at all more interesting to the rest of us.
Griefers always insist that their selfish and rude behavior is actually of benefit to those whom they make suffer, and it simply isn't true.
Yes, anti-griefing rules makes the game more boring....to griefers. I say good. I hope they make it as boring as possible to griefers, because the fewer of them the better.
Go grief each other somewhere else. And good riddance.
Parent
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Don't care if I'll be missed, and I'll find a way to grief you in game. If we can interact, I will find a way.
Griefer (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, at first I thought you were complaining that Diablo 2 is filled with jerks who just click and cheat and make your games unfun. Then I realized that you're that jerk and don't want your own fun spoiled!
I'm not very impressed by your ability to click a mouse or to download hacks that somebody else wrote. But I've learned that different folks get their jollies in different ways. It'd be nice if Battle.net could set aside a server just for all the jerks and hackers. Call it "Thunderdome". Or "Hell". They can go click, exploit, scam, and spam to their hearts delight. The rest of us will go play something fun and friendly.
Parent
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There is only one problem with your suggestion.
Griefers don't want to have fair competition, and don't really want to fight other griefers. It's why UO died such an ugly death. They were hemmoraging subscribers at a pretty awful rate before they made the whole "light/dark shards". That just happened to get rid of the rest of the players. (And while the UO fanbois always recall how absolutely GREAT the game was prior to that change, I noticed that after the change, the PvP side of things was a barren was
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Re:The biggest problem with D3 (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. If I'm wielding a sword with fire attributes I want to see the sword flaming when I'm carrying it. When you play a tabletop game, and your character has a badass magic weapon, don't you imagine the weapon glowing/sparking/flaming?
It was? I thought it was the fun of nonstop hacking and the ability to fire tons of arrows without having to carry any and the ability to cast walls of fire on all who oppose you. That doesn't sound realistic to me.
Parent
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When you play a tabletop game, and your character has a badass magic weapon, don't you imagine the weapon glowing/sparking/flaming?
No, actually. My DM personally prefers to have the particularly powerful items/artifacts rather mundane. Sometimes you'll get something flashy, usually it only extends as far as Sting glowing in close proximity to orcs in the LoTR.
There are times where we've almost thrown an item away [ie an old rusty dagger] but decided to cast an identify spell on just in case, and it turns out to be [in this weapons' case] a +2 dagger of levitation or similar.
More importantly, if we run a campaign in a particularly
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When my leather-bound he-elf dances through the trees he calls his friends, something will be flaming.
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They probably gave special effects to the stomp because it is probably a "spell like feat type" ability, even if it's not truly magical. Charge attacks in the PS2 Diablo clones have similar effects.
As for the red streaks, I didn't notice those. Ahhh, if you pay close attention the red streaks don't happen for every axe strike. Bet those are specials too, notice how the mana doesn't go down? Bet he's using feats all the time with an umlimited mana cheat to show off the eye candy.
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There shouldn't be colors involved with every sword and axe swing.
There should be swords and axes that don't have colors involved with every swing. And not just ones that suck.
There. Fixed that for you.
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Bowzon/summoner was kick ass aswell.
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How can you encourage cooperative gameplay if the players who want to cooperate live together?
Any time I've ever lived with people who game, all of us had their own PCs. Network them together and off you go.
PS: Some friends bought Kane & Lynch for the PC and were shocked to discover that cooperative multiplayer was not available by using 2 PCs; you had to both huddle over 1 PC with a split screen, one player using an XBox gamepad. For this reason I won't trust any title with the "Games for Windows" MicroSoft tag...
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Besides, two copies of a $40 game without single-screen multiplayer are more expensive than one copy of a $60 game that includes it.
This has only ever been a problem with Steam games. Unfortunately, family-oriented LAN play is almost impossible byway of Valve's idiotic DRM.
Diablo shouldn't have to split anything if both players' characters stick within a few meters of each other. Secret of Mana didn't.
No. Just no. The Playstation version of the first Dialbo forced you to stick together and it was horrid. Not being able to go off on your on severely gimps everyone.
It sounds to me as if you just need to buy a console, dude.