To a poster who complained about the obscuring visual fireworks created by various Diablo 2 skills, Bashiok explained the D3 Team’s design philosophy.

Keeping the visuals distinct and “readable” is an extremely important focus for us, and as has been stated quite a few times, relates to a lot of the art style and direction choices.

You need to be able to read the scene, tell monster and player apart, and not have it turn into a mess of spell effects. While we’re really aiming for over-the-top skills and effects, it’s going to be a constant goal (and likely struggle) to keep those in line so that in a multiplayer game it’s going to retain its readability.

It’s fine for things to get chaotic, it will happen and we want there to be mass-mayhem and slaughter, but we’re trying to keep the game playable even during the chaos. It’s a balance.

Other fans are hungry for more content, and are already wondering if we’ll see the goods at Blizzcon. Will we get a gameplay movie? Bashiok deals with one such fellow with Roper-ian grace, acknowledging, inspiring, and redirecting him so smoothly he never even feels the PR knife slide in.

Well, you’ll just have to wait and see!

In the more immediate future a few of us are heading out to Leipzig for GC next week. We’ll be joining our friends from the Blizzard Europe office to meet and greet the fans. If you happen to be passing through Germany and also happen to have a ticket to the convention, be sure to stop by and say hello.

Other forum goes are not so easily put off, and a follow up question is quickly posed, asking what sort of information we’ll see released to coincide with that major German gaming event. Not a whole lot, apparently:

From what I gather I think I would equate it more to our presences at similar booth-style conventions, ComicCon and GenCon Indy in years past, for instance. We have a booth, usually some gaming stations set up, and we talk with people about the games and hold interviews. I fully expect some good interviews with Jay to come out of it, but I would more or less expect that to be the main focus of information coming out of the show regarding Diablo III.

Stop by and say hi though. I think I may be the only Blizzard person there with a goatee, so I should be easy to spot. I’m scheduled to be there every day to chat up fans about the game.

Source: Diii.com

Some quick questions and answers from the community answered by Bashiok.

Will the acts be separate, or all blur together?

Act transitions haven’t really been discussed externally. It would be cool to have something a bit more engaging; however, I think the Diablo II style zoom-zoom to the next act …worked.

Can characters fall or be pushed off the edge of a level?

No. Unless it’s part of a special event or something.

Can we filter B.net games by mod being used?

We’ve never supported and don’t intend to support “mods” for Diablo II or III.

If there are forest landscapes like the Kurast jungle, can we clear them out or will they be pre-defined paths like in D2?

We haven’t announced/shown any locations beyond those on the website.

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Some quotes from Bashiok on the complaints som gloombuggers have had regarding the barbarian character being to “magical”:

I don’t get that feeling while playing one. I think the Hammer of the Ancients ability is definitely magical to some extent, he’s effectively summoning a giant hammer to smash an enemy.

I kind of fill in my own blanks as to where it’s coming from and it feels very natural to me and the Barbarian “kit”. I kind of see it as - and like the idea of - the barbarian … I guess drawing upon the power of his ancestors. It feels very Norse, very mythological, and somehow tied to a family bloodline of great and powerful warriors. Summoning the power of a giant hammer? Hell yeah! If a barb is going to do anything magical, it’s going to be so he can use a big *** ethereal hammer.

Someone responded “But if you have the magical ability to hit so hard you break the rock beneath you, WHY ARE YOU HITTING A ROCK?”" to which Bashiok unleased his response:

Because it looks cool, and it’s a very physical and apparent way to get the basic mechanic of a “crowd control” skill across.

I don’t see anything “magical” about it either. Is it realistic? No, but why should it be? Immersion and reality aren’t intrinsically tied.

I doubt that will be the last we will hear about this, the gloombuggers tend to go on for ever with their nags…

A three page preview with lots and lots of information and even a full page with Questions for Jay Wilson has been posted on Gamesradar and while its quite a long read, it has some nice tidbits that i recommed you check out. Here is the short questions and answer section for you, but make sure you read the rest of this article as well on the Gamesradar website.

Q&A with Jay Wilson, Lead Designer

We cornered Wilson and forced him to reveal why the devil made him do it.

PC Gamer: How has working on World of Warcraft affected Diablo III’s development?

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A post regarding what Activision can and can not change about Blizzard has been posted over at Kotaku.com where they sat down with World of Warcraft game director Jeffrey Kaplan:

The development talent at Blizzard now has a new publisher and parent in Activision Blizzard. If you ask the developers, they’re enthusiastic about the change. “All game development is still completely within our Irvine headquarters,” World of Warcraft game director Jeffrey Kaplan told Kotaku during our sit-down today. “There’s no outside influence at all in the development of Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 or WoW.”

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A topic regarding the possibility to add weapons markers on bosses as one fight them to make it more fun and enjoyable was replied to by Bashiok. The answer was neither positive or negative, regardless which side of the discussion you belonged.

For boss fights we don’t really want to just start throwing “damage decals” on them. It can very easily be too subtle if you’re fighting a smaller boss or one that has odd geometry to it, and it can also end up that no matter the flavor, style, and cool look to a boss you just end up fighting a big gory mess.

Also we think that we can go a lot further than just simple decals and get something much cooler out of a boss fight. So what we hope to do for at least the bosses where it makes sense is to show more apparent and visually noticeable damage states. Instead of a blood splatter they may actually lose a limb, or a piece or armor, or - like the Thousand Pounder - may transform in some dramatic way changing how the fight progresses. We want to go a lot further than just showing sword slashes and instead use dramatic and noticeable (which can be difficult in a game like this) ways to indicate a boss’ current state.

Speaking of battle damage though, and I don’t think this came across in the gameplay video or any of the screenshots as of yet, but when an enemy dies a critical death it actually drenches your hero in blood if you’re within proximity of the spray. It’s awesome.

After a member commented on the effects on loosing a limb and how it might make the boss easier to fight he quickly replied:

It was just an example I made up, I don’t know if the loss of a limb would actually happen or make sense for a fight.

Solivagant has written another great post about the comparison between Diablo 3 and Fallout 3 which I find to be a very nice post well worth reading and pondering upon. What do you think?

I’ve received a lot of feedback regarding a post I made on my Destructoid blog, more positive than negative so I decided to continue that line of thought and further compare Diablo 3 and Fallout 3.

I started my post by stating that everything that I’d seen on June 28 got me interested in Diablo 3. Everything that I’ve seen since then has only gotten me even more interested.

Specifically, Leonard Boyarsky’s involvement as Lead World Designer. His title means that he’s the guy in charge of making sure the storyline holds up, in charge of all the details and tales that, as I mentioned in my previous post, kept running backstage while chaos erupted in the forefront in the previous games.

While you were mass clicking some miniboss, somewhere in the gameworld an NPC kept waiting for you to come back, ready to present you with your next quest. This NPC had a name, a personality, a backstory, a personal agenda.

But you barely got to know any of it.

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Blizzard community guru and gossip/newsmonger for Diablo 3 posted some information regarding the ability to kill other players without their approval, also known as PK’ing, will not be an option in Diablo 3. PvP, or Player versus player vill instead be focused on to satisfy players bloodlust.

We’re - in general - not big fans of griefing for any game. It’s really only “fun” for one person, and that definition of fun isn’t generally something we’re going to want to encourage. It’s far more positive to encourage and support meaningful and skillful options and systems within a game, than a mechanic for people to instantly turn against one another for no meaningful gameplay reasons.

I definitely remember running with my friends, and someone toggles it, and bam everyone is dead and your one friend is laughing. Ok, ok, good joke I guess, and then you run back and *bam*, you’ve toggled it to get them back. After a while everyone usually agrees to a truce because it’s just a waste of time. But I also remember running with random players and losing extremely nice items because of it, not cool. I’m sure that it was a feature that was right up some people’s alleys, I won’t deny there are some that would enjoy nothing more than to see others frustrated, but is that truly something that should be encouraged through design - if not directly opposed?

We have a large focus on cooperative play for Diablo III, and the mechanics and design decisions related to multiplayer are likely going to be based on supporting and encouraging it as much as possible, and not breaking it down.

That doesn’t mean that PvP won’t have its own focus, but those are details and features we aren’t yet discussing.

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