With the Diablo series, Blizzard took the dungeon-crawling formula of games like Rogue and Angband and redefined it into the loot-driven action-role-playing game that so many others have come to imitate. So you'd think that Blizzard would just chill. But no, they need to see if they can show up the imitators by developing a third Diablo game for a modern audience -- one that might consider 2001, when Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction came out, as "ancient history." We recently talked with game director Jay Wilson and covered all sorts of nitty-gritty Diablo 3 topics, like why the Barbarian class is the only holdover from Diablo 2, what makes a Witch Doctor different than a Necromancer, and just how far along the classes are (you'd be surprised!).
1UP: You've worked on Dawn of War and Company of Heroes for Relic -- how did it feel to go from real-time strategy games, where you control a force of units going up against another force of units, to an RPG, where it's one guy versus a force of guys?
Jay Wilson: Well, before I started at Relic, my previous experience was with first-person shooters -- Blood, Blood 2, and a few games that didn't get released -- so I have a lot of experience with action games...especially with "one versus many." Blood was very much a "one person versus tons and tons of enemies" type of game, so it kind of feels like coming home. The nice thing is that a lot of the core principles by which RTS games run -- the statistical approach to how you create units, how you create weapons and their damage -- there are a lot of parallels here. Sure, there are some differences, but there's enough cross-pollination that it doesn't feel that different, well, from a "what do I do on a day-to-day" basis kind of thing. When I play the game, obviously, it plays quite differently.
1UP: I've once asked StarCraft 2 lead designer Dustin Browder if there are any habits from his Command & Conquer days that creep into StarCraft 2, and he said that working "the Blizzard way" has erased his old habits. Are there any aspects of your previous work that's making their way to Diablo 3, or has "the Blizzard way" of creating games completely changed your design style?
JW: I think a little bit of both. My particular style of development is quite compatible with Blizzard. I kind of already did things "the Blizzard way," as much as possible outside of a Blizzard studio. I think it was one of the reasons why it was such a good match for me, and why I was so happy to come here. That being said, I like power. I like amazingly huge explosions and monsters ripping heroes and heroes ripping monsters apart, and all that stuff. I remember when we first showed Diablo 3 inside the company, a lot of guys said, "Oh, it looks like you really channeled God of War," and I was like, "No, no -- we channeled Dawn of War!" We took a lot of ideas straight out of Dawn of War, like the Barbarian being picked up and eaten by a boss -- we did all kinds of stuff like that in Dawn of War. So I really wanted to carry a lot of those things over -- the over-the-top visceral feel. It was very much what Relic was about, and it's something that I'm going to try to put in any game I work on. So I think it was a good mix, for sure.
1UP: Since you came from a different company and worked on other genres before working on Diablo 3, as an outsider, did you want to change or preserve anything from the previous games?
JW: When I started the project, I was a lot more fixated on what I wanted to keep. I really wanted to work on Diablo because I didn't want someone to take it and turn it into something else. I didn't want to make it a first-person shooter or a third-person action game. I wanted it to be the isometric Diablo that I knew and loved. I wanted the item-gain to basically stay the same. Certainly, when people see Diablo 3, they'll find lots of little changes that make an impact. But overall, the item-gain is the same basic concept as in the [previous Diablos]. The general feel of you versus a ton of enemies, the dark tone of the universe -- all of those things, I thought, were really important to keep.
As we worked on the project, I started to identify the things that I thought could be improved. The combat model doesn't have a lot of depth in the previous games. It was very much a "one-skill spam" kind of game, which I think works great for the Normal [difficulty] playthrough. I think most of the audience is just fine with that, and through most of the Normal difficulty, it's going to be like that. But as you go into Nightmare and Hell difficulties, I think that the more serious player will appreciate a game that's a little deeper on the combat-mechanic side. On the item and customization side, I think the game was pretty deep and pretty good. I still think we could do those things better, but again, it's the difference between a big significant change or small cosmetic ones.
And the last one is in story development and the universe. The previous Diablo games did not have the depth that I think other Blizzard games did in terms of the universe they created and the characters that existed within that universe. Everyone knows Deckard Cain and maybe Tyrael, but past that, who's a memorable character in the Diablo games? [Who are you] going to keep coming back for? So those things became more important as we continued to develop the project.
1UP: Can you elaborate on your "deeper combat" comment? What makes Diablo 3's combat deeper than its predecessors?
JW: Combat is as deep as the options the designers give themselves. Whenever you add a new capability to a monster -- potentially something that feels unbeatable -- it's more of an opportunity to expand the depth of your characters so they can respond to those threats. A good example would be if you look at Diablo 2: There were a couple of problems with just the power of the characters and the way they were made powerful. A player could run faster than any monster, so you could escape just about any threat. You had endless health and resource -- by resource, I mean mana -- because of potions. And you had the Town Portal, which could instantly get you out of any problem. Those were incredibly powerful mechanics to escape danger and were not class-specific. So every kind of class really had no need for anything like an escape skill or reactionary ability. They simply needed to attack, and if they ever got in over their heads, they simply ran away or drank potions. And it's the same response across the board.
So one of the things we focused on is that response -- 1) setting up scenarios where the players can't easily get out of danger without the use of class-specific skills, and 2) giving them really simple controls to use a broader range of skills without making the game that much more complex to play. I really distinguish the difference between complexity and depth; to me, complexity is adding more buttons, while depth is making a single button more powerful and versatile. So that's always been our goal -- reducing the amount of controls while making each button mean more. So that's one of the reasons we added the Hotbar; it's one of the reasons why we avoided the potion-health system. And when people play the game, they may not notice this next point that much, but we leveled out the movement speed somewhat so that the player moves at a more reasonable rate compared to the monsters.
1UP: Of all of the classes to return from Diablo 2, why did you choose the Barbarian?
JW: Well, our original goal was to not bring any class back. We wanted to, at the very least, twist an existing class, if nothing else. The Wizard really is a twist on the Sorceress in many ways -- there's nothing you can really do to avoid that, as you've got to have the blasty mage character. The real question was "can we do something a little different and more interesting?"
So for the Barbarian, well, we actually had a different character first. The Barbarian was actually a whole different class at some point, and I won't mention the name of it because, well, it will spark debate. But essentially, we all just called him the Barbarian, because he looked and acted like a Barbarian. We then started talking about mechanics, and were like, "He'll do this, like the [Diablo 2] Barbarian." We also then noticed that we added so much to him that made him better than the [Diablo 2] Barbarian. We decided that this is the one class that, when you look back [Diablo 2], you feel like he could be significantly better.
I'll use him as comparison to the Necromancer, who's almost been a victim of his own success. He's so well designed. When you're designing him, you're like, "OK, let's see -- Necromancer: corpse explosion, bone magic, curses, and undead minions." You're done; there's nothing else to do there. You can only add so much to a class before he becomes oversaturated. So with the Necromancer, he would have been exactly the same class as in Diablo 2. And if we had done him differently, we really would have betrayed the class itself, and people would be saying, "This isn't the class I expected."
But with the Barbarian, he had a bunch of different skills that were variations on the normal attack, with Whirlwind being the exception. But we had these ideas for things like Ground Slam attacks and what we call "Hulk-like abilities," such as ripping the ground up from beneath people and doing these wide swings that would catch multiple targets. We just felt like this wasn't explored yet and we could do something new. So that's what it boiled down to: The Barbarian was the one class that we felt like we could reinvent in a way that didn't require the actual kit and name to change. With [Diablo 2], I just think they did a really great job of delivering on the fantasy of pretty much every class -- except with the Barbarian; I thought they could have done better.
1UP: Someone could look at the new classes and make reductionist statements that compare them to the Diablo 2 classes. For those who claim the Wizard is just a reskinned Sorceress and that Witch Doctor is just a new name for Necromancer, what attributes would you point to that makes these new classes different and not rehashes?
JW: Well, for the Wizard versus the Sorceress, I would say that if someone makes the argument that the Wizard is just a reskinned Sorceress, I would respond, "Yeah, you're right; the Wizard is basically a reskinned Sorceress." What we couldn't do with the Sorceress very well was break into what I'd call the old-school pen-and-paper magic user. You know the old magic user who could do a variety of things, like conjure up animals out of midair or create clouds of fog and acid or control time or disintegrate things or use death spells. They had this wide variety of magic that they could use compared to the more traditional elementalist -- which is what the Sorceress is, meaning fire, ice, and lightning -- who was just more limited. What we really wanted to do is break into this area, while if we just did the Sorceress again, we'd be like, "OK, you have to do fire, ice, and lightning, but where does disintegrate fit? Where does slow time fit in?" So we decided [that we'd] just take the same class mechanics, and [that we'd] change the basic concept and name and just have a throwback to that old-school magic user to give ourselves a broader range of magic skills. But there was never a huge desire to go away from the basic gameplay of the Sorceress; there's a lot of repeated skills, and that's intentional.
With the Witch Doctor, I'd say that the Witch Doctor is not a reskinned Necromancer. He has similarities, but I would say no more so than the Hunter and Warlock do in World of WarCraft. Sure, they're both pet classes, but they don't operate the same. For the Witch Doctor, we wanted to create a class whose pets were not his primary source of damage output. Sure, you can build a Necromancer that's not reliant on pets, but most Necromancer builds are very pet heavy. The pets do a lot of the damage, and a lot of mechanics are built around debuffing the enemy so your pets can be better against them or taking advantage of the bodies your pets create by blowing them up with corpse explosion.
The Witch Doctor's pets are more of a distraction -- they're his form of crowd control. They're very transient, they don't matter as much to him, and they aren't really a primary source of damage. We wanted to have this general notion of a character who controlled all things slimy and gross, like zombies, bats, snakes, and spiders, but he didn't rely on them -- he just throws them out there. One of his most permanent pets is his Zombie Dogs, and we have a spell to blow them up because they're just not that important to him. We consider Zombie Wall to almost be a pet as well; it's a short-term pet, but it's a pet nonetheless. Each element is like that, where it's another distraction while the source of primary damage is the Witch Doctor himself. This makes him play very differently than the Necromancer, which was intentional.
I don't want to close the door on bringing back classes from Diablo or Diablo 2; I just don't want to do so with the initial release of Diablo 3. In Diablo 3, all of the classes should do something completely new. Then I'd like us to look back and figure out what gameplay gaps [exist].... Then we'd go back and satisfy our and the fans' nostalgia by pulling back some classes that we think really stood out.
1UP: In creating this game, would you say that the character classes and their powers drive the rest of the game, or are their powers created as a result -- or solution -- to problems presented by the game?
JW: Probably the best way to describe it is that initially, when we're doing skills for a class, we're not thinking anything except "what makes this class awesome? Why do I care about this guy?" Then you say, "Because he can hit the ground and create a small localized earthquake that destroys everything in front of him." That sounds pretty awesome; that sounds like a guy that I'd want to play. So early on, that's really our fixation: What is going to make this class sing? But that only really drives the first half-dozen skills. After that, we start getting into what mechanics have we put in the game that we want this class to take advantage of. For example, with the Wizard, we gave her a passive skill that causes enemies to drop mana orbs -- just like health orbs. So that's a mana-recovery mechanic for her; it plays into her resource and plays into the health-orb system.
So there, we just said, "We need a recovery mechanism for her -- what would work? Well, we can give her something similar that we already give for health." But then that doesn't mean anything for the Barbarian since he uses a completely different resource. For him, we tend to focus on skills that make him play in a way that's interesting. His "fury resource" is designed to drive the player forward, like a Barbarian, because he's very tough and is a close-quarters combatant. He wants to move forward, because the mechanic is "I have a lot of fury, which helps me deliver a lot of damage, but I'm going to lose it just sitting around." It makes him very aggressive, which is what we wanted out of the character. So that was driven by [the concept of] how do we want this guy to play. Very aggressively, and hence we built this mechanic.
And lastly, [there's] the monster design. As we get further and further into the game, our goal is to make monsters that we can't figure out how the player can defeat [with the existing skills] and give the player the tools they need to defeat them. So the design of the monsters has a direct relationship to the design of the classes. That's kind of an ongoing thing; we [decide] "Let's create a monster that has really debilitating rooting attacks that just get you stuck when you encounter them." Then we see that this really screws with the Barbarian, so we give him a skill that lets him break out of roots so that he can counter that. Those things are interesting and allow for the player to have a broader, deeper character. On the other hand, we don't want to go too far -- a lot of mechanics of World of WarCraft are based heavily on control, and we want to make sure that Diablo 3 stays mostly a combat game based mostly on attacks.
1UP: How do the "randomized scripted events" that you're adding to randomized dungeons work? Are events being procedurally generated, or do you just make a giant bank of scripted events to pull from?
JW: Option two. We do it the same way we create a lot of other randomness: We create way more assets than the average game would [need], and we pull from all those. I think if you were to pull an average random dungeon from most games, well, hold on...we have this concept of "rooms," which describes a certain size of area that gets interconnected together. They used to call them "tilecuts" in Diablo 2 -- I'm probably bastardizing the word -- but we use "rooms." So if you were to take the average dungeon from the average game, it probably would be the equivalent of 10 to 12 of our rooms, whereas our dungeons need closer to somewhere between 50 to 80 rooms. The nice thing is that while we generate a lot more content, you get a lot more time in it. So it pays off in the long run. We do the same thing with the scripted stuff; if we want you to encounter two or three scripted events, we probably make four or five times that number of events.
1UP: Can you cite some specific scripted events that might pop up during a typical playthrough?
JW: We had a lot of them in our BlizzCon build. [In one of them, there was] a series of ghosts at an altar who were seeking an object that you'd get to prove your worth. If you did get it, then they would test you by having big powerful monsters attack you -- and if you passed, you got a nice reward. Another one was coming across some fellow adventurers stranded in a dungeon who'd need your help to get out. So there are a lot of different kinds of scenarios; you'd run into people who would need to be escorted or a caravan that's been stranded. And if you stick around and protect [the caravan] for a few minutes from [an attack] that would occur, you'd get a reward. Most of these are fairly optional, where the player can decide whether he wants to do them or not, but we try to reward them well and make them pretty fun. The biggest goal we have with these is that we want to change what the player is doing. Whenever you can basically take the core game and make the player play it in a slightly different way, it makes the game a lot more interesting and keeps it from being tedious. You go from "I'm killing monsters aimlessly" to "I'm now killing monsters to protect this thing." That's easily a more interesting scenario, because it's different than what you were doing, and that's our main goal with that.
1UP: So with changes to character-class design and dungeon design/scripting, did you make any significant changes to the last major aspect of Diablo: the loot/item-gain?
JW: I believe I mentioned in the past that we are considering crafting systems. But we're not really announcing anything about that right now. But we took a few things out, like Rune Words, essentially because Rune Words is a very simple crafting system, and we're planning to do something different there. I'd say that most of the changes are minor. We've made lots of statistical changes. For example, with the more magical classes, like the Sorceress, their items were in some ways less valuable to them because they didn't have a lot of effect on their damage output, so we've added more attributes that control magic damage and things that allow Wizards to get items that do more damage and bolster their defenses and health. We have more [weapon name] affixes that play into the broader set of resources; the Barbarian has fury, so we added affixes that play with that. We generally tried to expand our approach to affixes to make them smarter.
Those are fairly simple, though. There's other things, like how we've changed the way that gems work. In Diablo 2, gems could only go on white -- or nonmagic -- items, while gems are now a separate chance for a weapon, meaning that we roll the item's base attributes, and we roll for its chance to have gem slots. So now any item, even legendary ones, can have gem slots. That plays a lot into the core of the item system [...] even if you find the best item in the game, the stats on that item have some randomness to them that means there could be a better version of that item. Well, now, if you find the best item in the game but it doesn't have any gem sockets, then it's not the best version of that item. In terms of creating item variance, we're looking to enhance that within Diablo 3.
There're still a few things that we haven't made decisions on yet -- set items, for one. I didn't like the way they worked in Diablo 2, as by the time you finally got a set together, you generally leveled beyond the use for it. So you might save them for alts, which is OK, but I'd rather that they be useful for you to begin with. We haven't really decided how we're going to fix that. We also have some new item types that we haven't announced yet that are related to some systems that we're planning. But I don't think they vastly change the system -- they mostly play into the strengths of it.
1UP: So what kind of production schedule is Diablo 3 going through? How are the classes designed -- do you work on them in batches or focus on one at a time?
JW: In terms of the classes, it's not dissimilar to StarCraft 2. It takes a lot of design resources to work on a class, so we tend to focus. Now, the further a class gets in development, we do have a tendency to "do a pass." Like right now, we're doing a pass on the Barbarian, Witch Doctor, and Wizard. While we did some changes to the overall skill system on a high level, that trickles down to all of the classes. And even though we redid the skill trees on those three, they weren't heavy-duty changes -- more like a revising of how they worked. Minor updates we'll do simultaneously across all classes. But we usually have a class that we're working on, and with the other classes, we're essentially "letting them cook." We give them time for people to play them, get a feel for them, and decide what we like and don't like about them.
The other interesting thing is that every time a new class gets introduced, they raise the bar in some way; we then have to go revisit the other classes. Best example: The Wizard is the second class we implemented. We put all of these fantastical effects on the Wizard, and suddenly, everyone was like, "The Barbarian is really weak and boring." What's funny is that in some ways, the Barbarian was more powerful in terms of flat-out game balance. But the first version of the Barbarian wasn't very effects-heavy, because he was a more physical class. We were kind of shy of putting fantastical effects on him. But after the Wizard, we were like, "You know what, effects are fine. Let's just make the Barbarian look as awesome as the Wizard." So we went back and did a redo of the Barbarian effects, just to beef them up while keeping to the philosophy of making him a physical combatant and not too magical but still as impressive as possible.
That happens with each class. When the first version of the Witch Doctor was put in, that dude was just so powerful. He was so untouchable, and we really liked that, so instead of powering him down, we really tuned some of the monsters to match his power level. But that meant we had to go back to the other classes and power them up a bit. So each class has had a tendency to ripple into the other classes and how they play.
1UP: Can you talk about the state of the classes? For example, is every class -- even the two that you have yet to reveal -- playable in the game right now?
JW: No. The fourth class is playable in game but is using a placeholder model -- one of an NPC, actually. And all of the skills are what we call "programmer art" because we haven't implemented actual skill effects. So that one is just in gameplay testing for us while we determine signature skills. The fifth class, we're just about finished concepting it and are about to start building it. We can't use placeholder art, so we're now just going to build a model and start working on the first series of skills for that one. We're actually spending more time on the Witch Doctor, Wizard, and Barbarian because of a big change we made to the skill system that we wanted to [integrate them] with -- so it's mostly just artwork that's going on for the other two classes.
1UP: With the amount of time between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 and the release of many clones, how do you plan to keep Diablo 3 relevant for a modern audience?
JW: I don't think there's been a game that came out that's made Diablo 2 irrelevant. I do think that happens; in certain genres, games will come out and make previous ones irrelevant. I don't think that's happened -- I don't think that game exists yet. So to a certain degree, we have that benefit. That being said, I think in this day and age, there are certain things that you have to deliver in Diablo 3 that the previous games did not. The reason why we're focusing on scripting, more diverse quests, and deeper gameplay -- and by deeper gameplay, I mean not just combat mechanics but also scripted events that change up what you do -- is that in this modern day of gaming, those things are really a requirement. They're the things you have to do to make a great game. In previous Diablo games, they didn't exist at all, and that was fine -- you didn't need them. I don't think you can have as light a touch on story as the previous games did and still succeed. And that's something I think really matters. On the other hand, I think there's a real gap right now in terms of PC gaming. If you're going to go do something for half an hour on your lunch break, it's probably not going to be an MMO, as that's too involved. If you want something actiony yet that still satisfies the feeling of progression that only a great RPG can [provide], there are not a lot of great games out there that can do that. So I think Diablo 3 fills a hole, even for people who play other kinds of RPGs, like MMOs. I'm a big fan of MMOs and most RPGs, but I still play Diablo 2 because there's nothing that really gives me that experience of having all the awesomeness of an action game with all the reward and progression of an RPG.
1UP: Finally, what are your "main" classes in Diablo 2? I originally rolled with a "Hammerdin" before messing around with other builds, and I'm curious about what you play with.
JW: My most developed was a Barbarian. Well, no -- actually, it's my Necromancer. While the Barbarian was what I played when the game came out, my Necromancer is all I really play now. He's in the 90s and has pretty much gotten everything he can get, so all I do is run around and kill things to see if something superawesome drops. But my Barbarian was my first class, and my Necromancer is my main. While I did play each class to take it to Hell difficulty, those two were my loves. I had a pretty cool Sorceress, but I don't think I got her as high.
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. Maarja, zal waarschijnlijk ergens bij Blizzard wel geplanned staan tussen SC2 en een eventuele 3e expansion voor WoW als die er komt, snijden ze zichzelf niet zo in de vingers :strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/204309/goron.jpg?f=community)
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, meoten ze er natuurlijk wel voor gaan zorgen dat ze een beetje balanced zijn.
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Dit topic is gesloten.
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