Interview Topics

Developer Interview Transcript

History of Josh Mosqueira at Blizzard

Diablo Somepage: Josh, congratulations on the Diablo III game director position. Your

gave an overview of your work in the industry; can you share a bit about your history at Blizzard, and your work on the console development of D3?

Diablo Somepage: For the PS3 and Xbox 360 version, was that all pretty much developed together, or were separate teams looking at the different aspects of those consoles?

Game Director Position

Diablo Somepage: So the Game Director position covers both the PC and the console side, as far as setting the vision for the entire game?

Console vs. PC Development

Diablo Somepage: What do you think as far as the differences in development of Diablo III on the PC side as opposed to the console. I know there were some console-specific functionality that was added in, when you moved it from the PC side.

D3 Features From Console to PC

Diablo Somepage: You've talked before about why the Evade move is necessary for the console, and not necessarily for the PC. Are there other areas where there were ideas that were added to the console game, as these ports were being developed -- such as, I think there was a small little 6 second buff that you can get throughout, on the console side. Is there anything like that that you could see as being tried out first on the console, and actually making the shift over into the PC side?

Designing the Fantasy

Diablo Somepage: Going forward with the PC version, what are the main areas you would like to see improved or expanded on?

Diablo Somepage: There you go, that would certainly give a very different feel to the game, I imagine.

Xbox 360 and PS3 Diablo III

Diablo Somepage: Will the Xbox 360 version have the same feature set as the PS3, or are there any significant differences between the two?

Diablo Somepage: So the consoles are each on each on their own separate networks. Will either of those have any sort of public website display as far as the characters go, to show off to your friends, not just the people who are playing with you?

Trading and Auctions on the Console D3

Diablo Somepage: Is it accurate that for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, there will not be either a Gold Auction House or a Real Money Auction House?

Diablo Somepage: Thinking about that, and the issues that ended up pushing the creation of the Auction House on the PC side, are you worried about any of the trading issues popping up in those console versions? Will there be any restrictions there, or can pretty much anybody jump into a game together and trade, two PS3 console players for example.

Itemization Revamp

Diablo Somepage: How is the item revamp going?

Diablo Somepage: Well, I transcribed your lengthy Twitch.tv interview, so I don't want to just copy all of that. Certainly, if there has been anything that has developed since then... The one question I had was, we hadn't heard in a while about the legendaries scaling, where every legendary can drop at the different levels. Is that still part of the revamp, are you expecting to have that in?

Diablo Somepage: Right, they aren't like Heirloom item legendaries.

Itemization Revamp Schedule

Diablo Somepage: Is that something you're expecting to see before BlizzCon 2013, or is this very much down the road before this entire itemization revamp lands?

Diablo Somepage: Fair enough.

Tradeable vs. Soulbound Items

Diablo Somepage: Travis, you had

about the whole question of the wanting my loot to be great, but then how to make that possible with tradeable items being the core currently of the game. What about the idea of items that are not just a binary choice, but as you upgrade them, essentially they become soulbound, or as they become more powerful or special in some way? Something similar to the Marquise gem [items]; something that you can upgrade, it becomes soulbound, perhaps even partially -- that you could then remove for a substantial gold cost. Are there any thoughts along those lines, or are you pretty much going with just the one or the other, either a tradeable item or a soulbound item?

Diablo Somepage: I should have clarified, I was trying to get at the idea of the items that the Marquise gems go in can't be traded. So it's kind of like the item itself is becoming more powerful with that gem, but then you pay the money to take it out and the item is tradeable again.

Diablo Somepage: So from that aspect, where it's more a thing of: you can have something that's cool and basically there's a penalty, or there's a cost to remove it, from a gold sink point of view as well.

Adding Gold Sinks

Diablo Somepage: Along those lines, are there any further discussions of what type of gold sinks you will add? Is that something we may see more of those added, just to keep the economy within check, apart from the itemization revamp? Or is that pretty much all going to be part of the same big package?

2 Billion Gold Auction House Cap

Diablo Somepage: Are we likely to see the 2 billion gold cap raised on the gold Auction House?

Balancing Skills

Diablo Somepage:

that you originally put in place back during D3 beta, that all the skills were based off of, and then had moved beyond that since then. Are you likely in the near future to do what he had mentioned, to try to pull the skills back around trying to fit around that model again? Or is it pretty much a piecemeal approach when it comes to just looking at what type of skills need to be updated the most?

Achievements and Statistics

Diablo Somepage: Are we likely to see anymore achievements added throughout the game? Or is that pretty much something whenever there's an expansion or something of that level, new achievements will be added in?

Diablo Somepage: Is there any chance eventually of having statistics? Like World of Warcraft has a zillion different stats about your character: what it's done, how many times you've killed a specific boss, that sort of thing. Is any of that tracked in D3, that could be available to the players to look at?

Multiplayer Public Games

Diablo Somepage: There were many multiplayer improvements made in 1.0.8, and a lot more people now playing public multiplayer. There have been some complaints with that, where people get into public games that are already half completed, or the main objective is already done. Are there any plans to work on that, to try to give better matchmaking there?

Diablo Somepage: In those multiplayer games, when there are Barbs sprinting ahead, or other characters running off and people not sticking together. What about the idea of incentives to encourage people to stay together: like if 3/4 of the characters are in one place, and one guy is off in another place very far away, his experience or drops are reduced?

Solo vs. Multiplayer

Diablo Somepage: Thinking about the difficulty of content, the content that went in with the Ubers seemed designed for the group; you can do it solo, but obviously it is easier in a group. Is that pretty much what you're looking at going forward for new content, or do you want to push more towards solo versus grouping - where's the thought about that, at this point?

Monster Affixes

Diablo Somepage: There had been a little bit of discussion about new monster affixes. Is that something where we are likely would see progressing a new affix here and there, or is the expectation that there would be 5 new ones added all together, or something like that?

Combat Pacing and Monster Affixes

Diablo Somepage:

about the amount of damage that monsters can do, versus the amount of healing that characters can do, since Life on Hit and Lifesteal are so powerful these days at the high end. He had gone through a whole scenario about trying to deal with that particular issue. I was wondering, are there things like that, that could be handled on a monster affix level? Like a monster that would do half the normal damage, but once you engaged it, none of the healing from Life on Hit or Lifesteal would take you above 50% health.

Rewards from Bosses

Diablo Somepage: There had been some talk about making the end Act bosses more interesting. I guess it comes down to the balance of the elites versus the bosses, what do you want people to be really striving to go for? Is that something you're interested in doing, and if so would short-term smaller fixes, like letting them give a Nephalem Valor stack, or provide a big chunk of experience if you kill them with 5 stacks -- would those be the sort of things that might be considered?