Blizzard is content to make a great PvE experience in Diablo III, so the odds of rebalancing classes to cram in arena style PvP aren’t very likely.
Now that the Diablo III: Reaper of Souls release this week is consuming the lives of players, it is understandable that some want to know what is next for the Blizzard team behind the game. One thing you can probably rule out all together is arena-style PvP.
“We have all these legendary items and set bonuses that just make you feel super powerful in PvE, and are just super unfair or frustrating to play against in PvP,” Blizzard Senior Technical Designer Wyatt Cheng told our Andrea Rene during the Reaper of Souls launch event. “I think that PvP games need to be designed with PvP in mind, and we could try to do both, but I think ultimately the PvE game would be compromised.”
Cheng did add, however, that they haven’t stopped studying the possibilities. “Although we won’t be doing anything like 4v4 arena-style combat anytime soon, the desire is still there for competition. So, I think that we can try to find other ways to still meet that player desire, probably in a more, you now, PvE and PvP combining way. Something like PvE races or PvEvP. so maybe we’ll probably be looking more in those directions.”
The new Adventure Mode is also drawing a lot of interest, something that Cheng said is pretty important to the team, as it shows off more of the world, creatures and random dungeons. “Adventure mode allows us to say ‘hey, here’s a bounty, and the bounty says go into that side dungeon, get to the bottom, kill the unique at bottom of that dungeon and that completes your bounty!’ And there’s tons of these. So we get to take you to some new places, we get to take you to some old places that you just don’t go to as much anymore. You get to go do an event. But with the bounty as the objective, you do the event, enjoy it while you’re there.”
The idea, Cheng said, was to make the randomized content more interesting. “The whole idea is to not just randomize some of that content but do it in an interesting way,” he said. “You know what’s funny to me? There are side dungeons, that have been there since the day the game launched, but no one’s ever gone into them. … I mean, like for the hardcore player, when they’re trying to play through and finish their quest or finish their area, they see a side dungeon and they don’t go into it. And we said that’s kind of shame, because, I understand that it might not be as rewarding for you to go in there right now, but you’d probably have a lot of fun just in terms of variety of experience.”
Other topics Cheng touched on:
- The Auction House is finally gone, and there have been few complaints. “Diablo is about playing and killing monsters to get the prize, so of course you want the prize. But an AH doesn’t necessarily make for the best game experience. … We want to make sure that killing monsters is the best way to get the best items in the game.”
- No comment on the console versions of the game. “I can’t answer that, but I recognize that you had to ask.”
- If you want a cool bow, look for the Cluckeye. “When you get the Cluckeye, don’t dismiss it too fast. It doesn’t necessarily tell you how awesome it is until you actually see the chicken flying through the air.”
Want to listen to the whole interview? Just play Andrea’s audio file below:
