AusGamers was given a chance to sit down with Bungie's Kevin Martens and Brian Kindregan who serve as lead designer and lead writer respectively, to talk about their forthcoming expansion for Diablo 3 -- Reaper of Souls.
The lengthy discussion covers deep aspects of the game's new antagonist, Malthael, and also covers off what's changed since the shaky rollout of Diablo 3 proper. They also ask why we're seeing an expansion, yet still no promised PvP.
"PvP has been difficult for us," Martens explained to AusGamers.
"The reasons are actually pretty easy, it’s when people start asking “What about this, and what about this?” that things start getting complex. The reason why it’s difficult to do PvP, is that we made a vast PvE game. The core fantasy for us was “I want to kill lots of monsters in lots of awesome ways”. You can’t kill lots of players in those awesome ways, or lots of players will get ticked off because they have the exact same fantasy as you, and they want to kill you in vast ways, so essentially, the game is automatically changing.
"That, plus the vast differentiation in power, and gear, and we didn’t try to balance the classes against each other, we tried to balance the classes against monsters. So your DPS versus all of the different kinds of monsters works well, but with DPS against each other, it becomes a super-rapid game of “Oh, you’re dead; oh, you’re dead; oh, you’re dead” and it’s just not fun."
Who says a dud game can't have a video game comeback?
Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky have to be up there. We're lucky and cursed, equally, to have games that can be updated now. For folks old enough to remember the Sega/SNES into PS1 and even 2 eras, if a game came out that was half baked (*cough*Angel of Darkness*cough*) that was it, no redemption. At the same time, having the option for updates shouldn't be an excuse for half assing games.
I remember when the Nintendo Seal of Approval meant something.
All those games had to release without bugs.
Diablo III still works on modern PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and remains hugely playable a decade after initial release.
Diablo III: Season 28 brings with it the Altar of Rites, an altar full of unlockable bonuses and potions that will require the gathering of tons of resources. One of things needed is the Staff of Herding, which also unlocks the famous Cow Level known as Whimsyshire. Here's how to craft that staff, for those that either have forgotten, or have never completed it.
As if the PvE was balanced! The game is far from what it had to be.
What a shame alone that they have to close the auction houses because the game does not work at all and 99.999% of the items are completely useless.
I am one of the idiots that preordered and the game was such a letdown. Diablo 2 is still the better game.