Ears. If you watched debut trailer for Diablo IVHis dishonest class, that was your main food – at least, if you’re anything like me. Rogue appeared at the “confession” with a large bag of ears. The priest had an ear trophy. It may have seemed strange to you – most ordinary people only have one or two unincorporated ears at a time – but if you played Diablo II Once upon a time, you probably felt at home.
In the Diablo II, the ears were chips that other players threw in the PVP fight. If you killed someone, you have an ear with their name, which you could sell for one gold if you were really hurting for money. It was one of those gloomy pieces of weirdness that made her Diablo II special. Blizzard says the system will return Diablo IV, in a certain form.
“We are really excited to bring that idea back Diablo IV“Said lead systems designer Joe Piepiora Kotaku in an interview with Zoom, noting that the development team is still sorting out the details of exactly how the system will be implemented. “What we don’t want to do with this is turn it into money, the ear gain, which you spend on cosmetics. That is not the goal. ”
The purpose, Piepiora explained, is to emphasize the system’s appeal Diablo II, unlike turning your ears into another coin, you can insert into the slot machine the prey that overturns endlessly.
“We think the thing that was interesting about the ears and was interesting about the ears was that you basically had this permanent sign of conquest over another character that you killed as part of the fight.” said Piepiora. “We are excited to find a way to integrate closely with the PVP experience we have, without being part of, like, some kind of PVP progress. We want to leave it in that trophy space where it’s interesting to collect these things and look back at the things you did without feeling like you’re dying for as many of these things that you can get to get a ax or a piece of chest. “
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So to summarize: there will be ears, but there will be no economy. However, the fact that some players would expect such a thing is illustrative of the awkward space in which Diablo IV is found. Despite Diablo IIIDisastrous launch “always online”, Diablo IV will not have a single-player mode. But Blizzard isn’t trying to make one MMO, either. While the Titans like it Destiny and Path of exile– with loot tables and other leveling systems of the playing field – now master the pace Diablo once mastered (of destruction), Piepiora characterized Diablo as a series in which even a random barrel you destroy could contain a single weapon.
Blizzard pursues a middle ground between a single player and the MMO, where meetings with other players will be rare, and when they do take place, no one will feel blinded. There will be designated PVP areas in the open world of the game – called Hate Fields, probably because there you will plant bodies – and you can fulfill various objectives inside them to earn coins that you can exchange with special prey, mostly cosmetics. This prey will not be intrinsically better than the weapons and armor you gain elsewhere in the game, but it will be unique. These areas will also contain many NPC enemies, which means you’ll be able to cultivate the Hate Fields for legendary weapons that you can get elsewhere.
As a result of such systems, Blizzard wakes up looking at the ear of a philosophical schism in its community. Some players want a Diablo II– like the multiplayer experience in which chaos reigns and anyone can exchange any object – no matter how they won it – with any other player. Others want something more structured. Other-others want the option to play entirely solo. Blizzard tries to satisfy everyone with a single common experience. Will be some multiplayer chaos; Hate fields have been designed to facilitate moments of asymmetry – for example, a player stalking another while fighting an NPC boss and a mechanic marking particularly successful PVPs on other players’ maps, so to be able to equip and hunt them. But that won’t be it Diablo II-2. Despite controversial within the community, Blizzard will further limit systems such as trading, at least to some extent.
“There will be some very high-end or specific types of articles [that won’t be tradeable]”, Said Piepiora. “You can imagine, if you were going to do, for example, the PVP content and you would get a special mount only for PVP. We would not allow this to be marketable, because we want it to be a prestigious item that players have amassed. But when it comes to a legendary article that has pretty good power, but maybe not for you, we like the idea of trying to find ways to make them changeable for players. ”
Players have he expressed concern that such limits could have a negative impact Diablo IVthe final game, directing players into a small handful of activities such as in Diablo III, where many items could only be purchased by means prescribed by Blizzard and were subsequently linked to players’ accounts. In the meantime, Diablo II it didn’t have an endgame in the modern sense, but many players considered PVP to be an endgame – something Diablo IIIlimited systems did not allow this. But Piepiora said that in Diablo IV, high-level players will still have something to look for.
“There will be certain specific types of items – pretty much top things – that we won’t change, but we want to make sure that players who are at the end of the game still have things that can be changed, that are valuable to them. “, he said.
It is clear that Blizzard is going on a fine line, trying to make a game that satisfies all types of players Diablo the series has grown over the decades. But Piepiora thinks Blizzard has learned its lessons Diablo III. Don’t try to gather an auction house or MMO items that don’t fit. The goal, he suggests, is to create a Diablo game that listens both backwards and looking forward.
“For my part, Diablo it is a single player game that you can play with your friends and a party game that you can play with a single player “, said Piepiora. “So it is really compatible to go both ways. We’re not trying to create content that says, “I have to go to a four-player party to make this dungeon.” That’s not it Diablo experience … We don’t want to move away from players who want to play alone. Likewise, players who want to play it with their partner or friend on the couch – we want to make sure you never feel like you have to go beyond that if you don’t want to. But if you want, it’s great, isn’t it? ”
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