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DiabloFans Exclusive Jay Wilson Interview

Sixen

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Nov 23rd 2009, 05:08pm
DiabloFans recently completed an exclusive interview with Jay Wilson. We had the chance to ask him about monk skill trees, class specific quests, and a lot about the item system going into the game. This is the first interview conducted by DiabloFans in some time and reveals a lot about what's going in regards to the Diablo III development. Thought i'd give you guys the heads up, =).

DiabloFans: Back in Diablo I a player could find Elixirs. If you drank one it gave you 1 stat point (ie: drink elixir of strength, you gain 1 strength point). Seeing how Diablo III's stat points are non-customizable, by a leveling standpoint, could elixirs be an option to give stat points some player customization?
Jay Wilson: Well, if we did something like that, we would fall right back where we were in Diablo II. As far as stat point expenditure, we don't consider it to be a very strong customization system. Now, there are ways within the game to customize stat points mainly through items. However, there are still a lot of things and systems that we haven't even shown yet that are going to be new ways to approach your items that will allow for new "customizations."

DiabloFans: What are the differences in the difficulty levels in Diablo III other than just monsters doing more damage? ie: What reason will people have to play through these modes after having already beaten the main story of the game on an easier difficulty setting?
Jay Wilson: We haven't really gotten into the difficulty settings a lot; we're still just working on the core content for the game at this point. The primary reason as to why a player would want to progress through the game, through the several difficulties would be for more of a challenge. There will be also better item customization, for example a Level 100 character in a higher difficulty would see and wear items that a Level 30 character would not have a chance at seeing in the lower difficulty. Said items will also look and feel completely different whereas in Diablo II a lot of times you just had a remodel of the same old items with different names.

Source: DiabloFans.com
dinobot US

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Nov 28th 2009, 07:46pm
I don't really care about the fixed stat allocation of Diablo 3 that much. In Diablo 2, it isn't really a change since most serious builds basically required you to add no points to Energy and all points to Vitality.
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Illidan Stormrage EG

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Nov 29th 2009, 11:06am
Ureh was one of the game settings but got removed....that's a little disappointing but anyway i find it strange that they r already removing stuff to get the game out sooner...
Also, I dont feel quite surprised with this whole removal of the tree structure...ever since they implemented this whole x points in any level opens the next level regardless of tree, the whole tree architecture became pointless.
dinobot US

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Nov 29th 2009, 11:27am
Quote by DiabloFans
DiabloFans: What are the differences in the difficulty levels in Diablo III other than just monsters doing more damage? ie: What reason will people have to play through these modes after having already beaten the main story of the game on an easier difficulty setting?


Have this person ever played Diablo before?
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stebo88 US

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Nov 29th 2009, 06:24pm
Jesus. How in the world does Diablo Fans get access like this? Squeezing in an interview must take some serious ass kissing.

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Omega US

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Nov 30th 2009, 02:35pm
Stebo, it is all about who you know and more importantly knowing how to bribe those you know ;) (JK). Well joking aside I saw this interview before and there are a few things that caught my eye.

Jay Wilson: Well, the main reason for immunities in the game was to encourage party play. However, we have seen that some players just want to play by themselves? And that is fine, if a player wants to play single player, the player wants to play single player, we're not going to strong arm them into playing with others. Keeping this in mind, we aren't looking to have full immunities or anything of the sort; however we are considering keeping one-element immunities on enemies. Because of the way our skill system works it's almost impossible to build a character that won't have some alternate skill to attack an enemy. So then it becomes an interesting use of a skill or skills that you may not be using all the time. We think that's interesting and fun gameplay, to have to adapt to situations. The adaptation just shouldn't be realizing your character or class is broken and you have to run away or you need to get in a multiplayer game. Those are things we intend to avoid forcing the player into.
The lack of immunities is already known; The possibly that enemies would still have an immunity to one element is, to my knowledge, new of course this in not that big of a deal due to the reason Jay wilson point out.

the other quote of note

Jay Wilson: We removed Ureh from the game as a setting to try and get the game out sooner. However, we like including things from the books and from other sources. No promises, but it's definitely something we've discussed.

This sounds like the city of Ureh was going to be in the, but not a vital part so Roland's theory that the prime evils would appear in the game through Ureh does not seem to hold up any longer due to this(unless they have it for an expansion). I could just be reading to much into this though.
Found this on you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMAbNFptzAA is Cain something or what.
stebo88 US

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Nov 30th 2009, 05:55pm
The situation with Ureh being removed from Diablo 3 is no biggy. Perhaps they may add Ureh in an expansion pack. Like they said, they simply don't have time to add it, so it might be an addition in the far future.

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ShadowHammer US

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Dec 1st 2009, 09:53am
Well, either way, Ureh isn't too important for their plotline if they can just leave it out.

Regarding attribute points, I like the system from D1 the best. Having no limit on attributes in D2 seemed silly to me. Sorry, but if you devote your life to magic, your strength potential isn't going to match a barbarian who focuses on melee fighting. I realize that each character class received various bonuses differently for attributes (I.e., a Necromancer didn't receive the same bonuses as a Barbarian if he put points in Strength), but I prefer caps on attributes according to class.

I'm curious to see what system D3 ends up using.
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mustachio NZ

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Dec 1st 2009, 01:50pm
it would be interesting to have different caps on each class so its primary attribute has a higher cap than the others so when the others reach their max you can still increase your primary ones, so your the wizard and even tho all your other attributes have maxed your magic strenght (sorry cant remember the actual term, someone please correct me) will still increase, so your wizard get stronger and stronger over time (since all of the best wizards are old and wise it would make sence)
dinobot US

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Dec 1st 2009, 07:03pm
Last I recall, the Stat system would be much more similar to D1 than D2. I remember that a lot of people complained in that they liked the D2 system in which the players have the freedom to add to whatever they want. However, most competitive players ended up following the same guidelines, so this isn't that much of a change.

Then again, the characters who are effected are the fun accounts, like glass cannon archers.
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ShadowHammer US

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Dec 2nd 2009, 12:56pm
Quote by dinobot
Last I recall, the Stat system would be much more similar to D1 than D2.


That would be cool. I can understand the flexibility of the D2 system, but it just seemed to take away from the uniqueness of character classes.

My preference is based more on logic/reasoning than actual in-game usefulness. Although, I don't recall complaining too much about the attribute caps in D1. I would have liked a higher cap on Magic for the Warrior class, but that was only because I played around with casting spells after I maxed the other stats.
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Omega US

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Dec 2nd 2009, 02:52pm
I am okay with the per-allocated stats as long as there are still enough ways to play around with your character.
Found this on you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMAbNFptzAA is Cain something or what.
dinobot US

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Dec 2nd 2009, 04:45pm
Quote by ShadowHammer
My preference is based more on logic/reasoning than actual in-game usefulness. Although, I don't recall complaining too much about the attribute caps in D1. I would have liked a higher cap on Magic for the Warrior class, but that was only because I played around with casting spells after I maxed the other stats.


The complaining came from Diablo 2 players on that Diablo 3 stat system is going to be based off D1's cap.

Quote by ShadowHammer
That would be cool. I can understand the flexibility of the D2 system, but it just seemed to take away from the uniqueness of character classes.


I agree, but I believe that the reason on why Diablo 2 is as strong as it is today is because we can make whatever we want with whatever we want. Granted, if patch 1.10 never came out, Diablo 2 was still a pretty good game, but 1.10 definitely made the game last much longer. From Blizzard's standpoint, that's a success.
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ShadowHammer US

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Dec 3rd 2009, 01:10pm
Quote by dinobot
I agree, but I believe that the reason on why Diablo 2 is as strong as it is today is because we can make whatever we want with whatever we want.


I would say the strength of D2 is based more on skills, rather than unlimited attributes. What I mean is, your character can use skills and items to make up for a poor attribute. This allowed a character to put more points in other attributes, that normally they may not have. Of course, not having limits allowed you to experiment with fairly different builds.

I think you could combine skills and stats to create unique characters, while still maintaining reasonable limits.

Hopefully, D3 will use a combination of both systems.
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