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Diablo 3 Dev Talks Multiplayer Options, Long Dev Cycle
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."
Maybe that produces a disappointingly small market, no? Keep in mind that WoW doesn't exactly have a small consumer base.
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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.
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.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Actually, that's incorrect. That player type is a parasite, but a necessary one. Without the griefers, things are boring.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Play HC if things are boring, much more fun and if you get in with a good group there are no griefers.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
That's weird, I'm pretty sure that where you typed "boring" you meant "fun."
That's funny, I play D2 with Glide wrappers so that I can have more of the pretty effects =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
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.
"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." Or it could be the fact they want their marketing machine ample time to get the hype running....
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.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If I'm wielding a sword with fire attributes I want to see the sword flaming when I'm carrying it.
Yeah, me too. But look at the first part of the gameplay video--the weapons are two regular hatchets, and nearly every swing is a bright red streak, and every stomp creates a blue and yellow effect. There's nothing magical about a barbarian's stomp on enemies, so adding colorful effects kills contrast from actual magic and hurts realism.
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.
There are degrees of realism. Not counting the number of arrows you shoot, or casting a magical fire wall, are obviously part of the fantasy game. That doesn't nullify the advantage of realism in other aspects. Lord of the Rings was an awesome movie, in spite of its fictional components, but it was awesome because it was all made to appear realistic.
Those bosses better be optional or multiplayer-only then, it'd suck to run into something you cannot fight in singleplayer and get stuck.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Bowzon/summoner was kick ass aswell.
I disagree. If you announce too early, people get fed up of waiting and move on - the excitement dies down. After that, people start saying "Vapourware" etc. The trick is to announce at just the right time so the game is released just as the hype reaches its apex. Unfortunately, games get delayed so much you end up either missing this, or releasing an unfinished game. Usually both.
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.
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...
Yes, they would be more receptive to negotiations.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
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 low-magic setting we don't typically ever see a magic item at all, let alone something flashy. If we do, even a +1 butter knife becomes a long lost artifact sitting inside a jungle tribe's ancient catacombs.
So, to answer your question, no I don't imagine every magic weapon or even most magic weapons in my D&D games to be constantly glowing/sparking/flaming. Sometimes gaudy and flashy works in a particular setting, other times it doesn't. Depends on the setting and what kind of world the players want to be in.
You're right. Blizzard usually doesn't time things right which ultimately screws up their games. WOW and Starcraft are two prime examples. Those went NO WHERE. In case you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic.
Sorry about the mess.
I clicked your link from your previous post, had a quick read of the Mana series wiki; that, together with the ideas you espouse of single-box multiplay on a large screen suggest that you want Diablo 3 to be a console release. After all, a console is a computer purpose-built for gaming, connected to the TV (usually), and with controllers for multiple simultaneous players.
So are you wanting it to be a console release?
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.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
When my leather-bound he-elf dances through the trees he calls his friends, something will be flaming.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
Wow, I haven't played Diablo 2 in quite some time, I guess I missed a lot of content. This Barack Hussein Obama character has really extended the Diablo mythology quite a bit, I didn't even know there were cars, internet, and government in the game now. I guess that's cool and all, I just wished they would have balanced the Paladin a little better.
Perhaps those games were successful in spite of bad timing? I wouldn't say the success of WOW was based on an early announcement.
Just for the record, I have no idea what the announcement lead time was for those games, only I, as an individual get less interested the longer I have to wait. Will I play DNF? Not likely.
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.