With the upcoming release of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls and patch two.0.ane, Blizzard is aiming both to innovate a ton of dandy new content to Diablo Iii, and to significantly ameliorate the game's existing content and gameplay systems. Every bit lead designer Kevin Martens told me at a contempo preview event, everything they're introducing shares one thing in common, "expanding replayability and sanding off the crude edges of the randomness of the game." In outlining for me the means in which Blizzard hopes to do this, he started off by focusing on the content of Reaper of Souls.

"Reaper of Souls is cool for us because--and this is e'er true for expansions--we tin can accept everything we've learned from the main launch of the game, nosotros've had 15 million people play information technology and we've seen crazy things happen, and we tin build on that base. We're not stopped by tools and technology anymore; it'due south more about doubling downwardly on what fabricated it fun. So at the high level, we've got three major things: we've got our new class, we've got act five, the continuation of the story, and we have Adventure mode."

Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls - Crusader Bounties Gameplay Closed Beta

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The Crusader

As he demoed the crusader for me, Martens shed some lite on Blizzard's philosophy when approaching class design, and on what the studio specifically hopes the new class will offering players. "Tactically, his role is a midrange melee grapheme, to brand him stand up out from the existing barbaric and monk classes. Nosotros've given him midrange holy abilities. We always ask ourselves, this is true for anything at Blizzard that we do, 'What'due south the fantasy?' When a player plays this, what are we trying to engage in them? In this case, it was a war machine made human. If nosotros took a modern battle tank and turned it into a medieval warrior, how would that work? An of import part of that is that the armor is function of the weaponry. His shield is a cadre function of many of his abilities." To demonstrate this, he performed the blessed shield assault, which had the crusader hurling his shield at surrounding enemies.

Random city environments

Moving on from the new class of Reaper of Souls to the expansion'south environments, Martens said, "Something nosotros wanted to do simply were unable to do in Diablo 3 was making the urban center every bit a randomized surroundings. We've made Westmarch into a super-random zone that still feels like a real city, which goes to the betoken of replayability over all. All the zones in human activity five are randomized, both inside and out, and that'southward unlike the zones in Diablo III, where the exterior zones had set exteriors and the big pieces of content that switched out inside them. At the aforementioned time, we didn't want people feeling like they had to play the aforementioned story over and once more, and while you still can do that, that'due south where Adventure manner comes in."

"The metaphor I tend to employ is cars. Anybody gets to drive a Lamborghini. It may non be the elevation-level Lamborghini, yous might have to play a long time to find that one, but everybody gets to endeavor out the wacky, crazy, powerful stuff. Guaranteed."

Run a risk style

For Martens, Adventure mode is about making the existing content as enjoyable and rewarding to players as possible. "We have all these random systems, nosotros accept all these pieces of content, and nosotros wanted to detect a fashion for a varied experience to be the best way to play. It's already the about fun way to play, only people tend to go where the power is, they tend to get where the items are. Nosotros wanted to make sure that the all-time manner to get gear was also the about varied manner to play."

Senior level designer Larra Paolilli took over to explain Blizzard's intentions with Adventure mode in more item. Describing the mode every bit Diablo III's get-anywhere, slay-anything sandbox mode, Paolilli called upwardly the earth map from which yous access the mode's content. "You're free to play however you want, by yourself or with friends, and yous tin kind of design how you lot want to play and the corporeality of time you want to play. So you lot can merely go and farm if you desire to play that way, simply if y'all desire to play for 15, 20 minutes or and then, you lot can do bounties." These were indicated past exclamation points in specific locations on the map. "Those are randomized content from throughout the unabridged game, and each time you come in, they'll be different. Then where they are within the act, and what they are, volition be different each time." Bounties can involve killing bosses, clearing out dungeons, or completing other goals, and they advantage you with experience, gold, and rift keystone fragments. Collect five of those and y'all tin can admission a rift. Rifts, Paolilli explained, "are multilevel dungeons that take a mix of tilesets, lighting and monsters and put them together in a combination y'all oasis't seen earlier. So each floor can be something different. And they all culminate in a unique boss fight. And these are the best fashion to become loot."

Ah yes, loot

New to Diablo III in the expansion are randomized city environments like Westmarch.
New to Diablo 3 in the expansion are randomized city environments similar Westmarch.

Patch 2.0.1 introduces a significant overhaul to Diablo III'due south loot system, an overhaul which Blizzard refers to as Loot 2.0. Explaining what this overhaul would bring to the game, Martens said, "Start and foremost is the smart drop system, which is that items have a high-per centum chance of rolling stats that are good for the character that finds them. So if you're a witch doctor and you find a great witch doctor dagger and because of the random number generator, you get a bunch of strength on it that you lot totally don't demand, what a waste. OK, well, first we've made it and then that it's much more probable to be intelligence or armor or vitality or something that you're going to want. We also have class-specific affixes, a bunch of new ones." He highlighted a specific piece of gear that carried with information technology a 14 per centum increase to damage done by the witch doctor's fetish regular army.

Martens hopes that by increasing the quality and multifariousness of drops for classes, Blizzard can also increase the variety of ways in which people play Diablo III. Previously, he said that players tended to option sure abilities and stick with them for the duration. One aim of the new boodle system is to encourage players to endeavour new things. Using the witch doctor as an example, he said, "If you don't employ fetish army and you start to get improvements to the damage, you might desire to endeavor it out. Maybe non with 14 percent, just you find 2 or iii items that have plus fetish army damage and you kinda tin't resist."

Correcting past mistakes

Martens also talked near how Loot 2.0 is designed to fix what many saw as a flaw in the boodle system. "Legendaries were always supposed to be the all-time items in the game. Mathematically, we did not make that the case. You could get a yellowish item that was more powerful even though the legendary had a absurd ability, and that became a difficult choice that wasn't as fun as we wanted information technology to be. " Now, he says, "The best items in the game have gotten a lot meliorate."

Martens is confident that the new system will pb to a better experience for everyone. "We're being way more generous with our drops. So nosotros're actually dropping fewer items overall, y'all don't have to go back to town and clear your numberless as frequently. But between the smart drop system and the generosity on our set and legendary items just being exponentially college, you're much more likely to get awesome items. The metaphor I tend to utilise is cars. Anybody gets to drive a Lamborghini. It may non exist the elevation-level Lamborghini, yous might take to play a long time to detect that one, just everybody gets to attempt out the wacky, crazy, powerful stuff. Guaranteed."

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