Ears. If you looked the debut trailer for Diablo IV‘s rogue class, that was your main takeaway – at least if you’re anything like me. The villain showed up to ‘confess’ with a large bag of ears. The priest had a very damn trophy case with ears. You might have found this strange – most ordinary people only have one or two ears without a body to hand at any one time – but if you played Diablo II In the past, you probably felt right at home.
In Diablo II, ears were tokens dropped by other players in PVP battles. If you killed someone, you got an ear with their name on it that you could sell gold for one if you were really hurt for money. It was one of those grim bits of weirdness that made it happen Diablo II special. Blizzard says the system will make a return Diablo IV, in one form or another.
“We are very excited about bringing that idea back Diablo IV, ”Told lead systems designer Joe Piepiora Kotaku in an interview about Zoom, noting that the development team is still figuring out the details of exactly how the system will be implemented. “What we don’t want to do with this is turn it into the currency, the deafening drugs, that you spend on cosmetics. That is not the focus. “
The goal, Piepiora explained, is to emphasize the appeal of the system Diablo II, instead of turning ears into yet another coin, you can stick them into the game’s endlessly spinning loot slot machine.
“We think the exciting thing about ears and interesting about ears was the fact that you actually had this permanent sign of conquest on another character that you killed as part of a battle,” said Piepiora. “We’re excited to find a way to integrate that closely with the PVP experience we have, without making it part of some kind of PVP progression. We want to leave it in that trophy room where it’s exciting to collect these things and look back on things you’ve done without feeling like you’re just grinding as many of these things as possible to get an ax or chest piece. “
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In short, there will be ears, but there will be no ear economy. The fact that some players would even expect something like this is illustrative of the uncomfortable space in which Diablo IV finds itself. Despite Diablo IIIThe disastrous launch of “always online” Diablo IV does not have a single player mode. But Blizzard isn’t trying MMO, either. While titans love Destiny and Path of Exile—With outdoor tables and other court leveling systems – now rule the stick Diablo once ruled (of destruction), Piepiora characterized Diablo as a series where even a random barrel you destroy can contain a unique weapon.
Blizzard aims to strike a middle ground between single player and MMO where encounters with other players are uncommon, and when they do occur no one will feel blind. There will be designated PVP areas in the game’s open world – called Fields of Hatred, presumably because you’re going to plant bodies there – and you can complete various objectives in them to earn currency that you can exchange for special, mostly cosmetic loot . This loot won’t be intrinsically better than weapons and armor you earn elsewhere in the game, but it will be unique. These areas will also have a lot of NPC enemies, meaning you can edit Fields of Hatred for Legendary weapons that you can also get elsewhere.
As a result of systems like these, Blizzard sees himself staring into the ear of a philosophical schism within his community. Some players want one Diablo II-like multiplayer experience where chaos reigns and anyone can trade any item – no matter how they earned it – with another player. Others want something more structured. Others-Others want the ability to play completely solo. Blizzard tries to serve them all with one shared experience. There will be some chaos in multiplayer; Fields of Hatred are designed to allow for moments of asymmetry, for example, one player ambushing another while fighting an NPC boss, and a mechanic marking highly successful PVPers on other players’ cards so they can squad and hunt them. But this is not going to happen Diablo II-2Despite controversy within the community, Blizzard is still going to limit systems like trading to some extent.
“There will be some very high quality or specific types of items [that won’t be tradeable], ”Said Piepiora. “You can imagine that if you were to do the PVP content, for example, you would get a special PVP mount. We wouldn’t allow that to be tradable as we want this to be a prestigious item that players collect. But when it comes to, say, a Legendary item with a power that is pretty good, but maybe not for you, we think it’s a good idea to find ways to make it tradable to players. “
Players have concerns that such limits can have a negative effect Diablo IV‘s end game, dropping players into a handful of activities, such as in Diablo III, where many items could only be obtained through means prescribed by Blizzard and then linked to players’ accounts. Meanwhile, Diablo II didn’t have an endgame in the modern sense, but a lot of players considered PVP the endgame – something Diablo III‘s limited systems did not allow this. But Piepiora said that in Diablo IVhigh-level players will still have something to strive for.
“There are going to be some specific types of items – quite a lot of top-tier things – that we won’t be making marketable, but we want to make sure that players who are at the endgame still have things that are marketable, that are valuable to us. them, ”he said.
Obviously, Blizzard is walking on a fine line trying to make a game that will satisfy all different types of players. Diablo series has been picked up over decades. But Piepiora thinks Blizzard has learned its lessons Diablo IIIIt’s not trying to shoehorn into an auction house or MMO elements that don’t fit. The goal, he argues, is to create a Diablo game that both listens back and looks ahead.
“For me, Diablo is a single player game you can play with friends and a board game you can play with one player, ”said Piepiora. So it’s really compatible to go both ways. We’re not trying to create content that says, “You have to get a four-player party to do this dungeon.” That’s not the Diablo experience … We don’t want to deprive players who want to play the game alone. Likewise, players who want to play it with their partner or a friend on the couch – we want to make sure it never feels like you have to move on if you don’t want to. But if you want it’s great, right? “