BlizzConline 2021 Diablo Immortal: Alpha & Beyond Panel Recap

Immortal Geposted 19.02.2021 um 22:11 von Jaydaa

Wowhead's DiscordNews WebhookBlizzConline 2021 Diablo Immortal: Alpha & BeyondQ&A Reviewing Technical AlphaSkills seem to have a dual functionality and interaction with each other that we haven't really seen in previous Diablo games. Was this an intentional change?

When it comes to skills in Diablo Immortal we definitely wanted to bring something new. It's good when classes feel familiar and a bit comfortable like a Barbarian whirlwinding through a pack of enemies, but it's also important that we deliver new experiences. The interaction between Ice Crystal and Ray of Frost is one such new interaction. A healthy mix of skills that are either new, improved, or familiar help us honor the legacy of Diablo while still pushing in new directions.

The character progression speed of Diablo Immortal feels much slower than Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. It feels more on pace with the original Diablo III where legendaries are rarer and players almost feel a bit thirsty for drops? Are you happy with the current pacing?

You always want a good pacing of rewards but you want the random drops to be exciting as well. If legendary drops are happening too often then it loses some of the excitement, but we also want to balance that around making every play session feel meaningful. Even if you don't loot a legendary item in your play session, you can still progress your character via the Paragon system which is a more reliable constant progression system.

I was initially disappointed that iconic skills for certain classes weren't available on the Technical Alpha like the Wizard's Frozen Orb, but it was really cool to see some of those return as legendary effects that modified other skills. It makes you think that anything might be possible.

That's kinda the magic of the Technical Alpha where the entire game is new and all the information isn't out there documented on the internet. There's a lot of exploration not just in the world but the skills and items of Diablo Immortal. With a little bit of a slowed down paced, players can have that sense of discovery and build creation.

There's such a variety of content in Diablo Immortal. There comes a point in leveling where you can't really continue till you explore these other types of content like bounties, elder rifts, etc. Was the break in leveling intentional?

It was absolutely intentional. In Diablo III Greater Rifts were great, but we received feedback that players wanted a larger variety of things to do. So in Diablo Immortal we wanted to make greater use of our outdoor world and instanced dungeons to add a lot more variety of content.

Our goal was to double down on progression and there to be many ways for players to progress their character at all times. We have the gem system, legendary gems, gear rank up, legendary collection, paragon, and more. This gives players a lot of choices in how they want to progress their character and different content to do so. We'll continue to look at ways to build on that.

The PvP event in Diablo Immortal feels very special and is very reminiscent of the Gurubashi Arena event in World of Warcraft. What was it like designing PvP for Diablo Immortal?

Every zone has its own event associated with it. In Bilefen there's an arena where a chest spawns that players battle over every 3 hours. In Ashwold Cemetery there's a carriage that rides through the zone every 30 minutes that all players can participate in and get loot. In Dark Wood, there's a corruption that allows you to battle a shade of yourself. For Bilefen there was just an idea for a free-for-all PvP event and it turned out to be a lot of people's favorite. Another favorite event is in the Library of Zoltun Kulle where you collect pages of a hidden tome that unlocks a secret level or even a world boss where everyone in the zone can come together to fight it. The results are different each time leading to a lot of replayability.

The PvP event in Diablo Immortal feels very special and is very reminiscent of the Gurubashi Arena event in World of Warcraft. What was it like designing PvP for Diablo Immortal?

Every zone has its own event associated with it. In Bilefen there's an arena where a chest spawns that players battle over every 3 hours. In Ashwold Cemetery there's a carriage that rides through the zone every 30 minutes that all players can participate in and get loot. In Dark Wood, there's a corruption that allows you to battle a shade of yourself. For Bilefen there was just an idea for a free-for-all PvP event and it turned out to be a lot of people's favorite. Another favorite was a was in the Library of Zoltun Kulle where you collect pages of a hidden tome that unlocks a secret level or even a world boss where everyone in the zone can come together to fight it.

One of the improved features of Diablo Immortal was the Paragon system. While it's very reminiscent of the Paragon system of Diablo III, how does it differ and what was it like designing a new Paragon System?

We had Paragon in Diablo III which was great for character progression, but once you hit Paragon level 800 it became a much more linear path. We want Diablo Immortal to have a long lifetime with frequent content updates that constantly expand all the features, so how do we design a system that is not only exciting now, but will also be exciting years into the future. That's when we decided that we wanted to have multiple Paragon trees that modify how you play your character. When we want to expand the system we can expand each tree or add additional trees.

Each class has 4 or 5 different trees. Each tree has some bonuses that are always active (circles) regardless of your current Paragon selection and some active specializations (squares) that give you some bonus that is only active when that Paragon tree is selected. Players can min-max by switching to the PvP tree when battling other players or to the Treasure Hunter tree when farming.

Currently on Technical Alpha, there's a dungeon where you go back in time to fight alongside Zoltun Kulle and meet Tal Rasha. Was this inspired by World of Warcraft's Timewalking and will this be explored more in future content?

That is exactly spot on. WoW timewalking is kind of how we've referred to it internally. The Library of Zoltun Kulle was an opportunity for us to explore this confrontation between Baal and Tal Rasha and allows players to relive it. We loved how WoW used the Caverns of Time to allow players to relive iconic events and expand the reach of the types of stories that we're able to tell. There's no announcements today about similar content, but the team is excited about the feature and will continue to explore additional ways to utilize this new tool in the future.

Every dungeon has a cutscene in Diablo Immortal and it feels like a full-fledged triple-A game even though it's for mobile. What's the design philosophy behind that?

We have a policy that we have to really show up in all aspects of the game from cinematics to sound design. A lot of mobile gamers don't play with the sound on but we still want to show up for those that do and deliver on all aspects that players expect for a Blizzard game at that triple-A level. There's a lot of excitement and enthusiasm on the team to keep pushing the limits and not hold back even if it's a mobile game.

Speaking on the story and characters, we get to hang out with Deckard Cain again. What was that like to bring him back for fans?

That is awesome! It was great to be able to bring Deckard Cain back and getting to work with Michael Gough again was outstanding. There's a short Blizzcon Segment with him. He's a truly beloved character by fans. I love that we're able to revisit those fan favorites.

But we're not just Diablo on mobile, we're a completely fully fledged new Diablo game. We have completely brand new characters to explore: Skarn one of the main antagonists of the game, the Necromancers Xul and Lethes, Valla and Josen the Demon Hunters, and many more stories to explore.

When I first heard about Westmarch I just thought that it'd be your little hub like any other Diablo game, but it feels way cooler and alive with so many players in one area. What was the design intent for Westmarch?

One of our goals for Diablo Immortal to be a mobile MMO and one of the ways we tried to make the game feel larger was a cool town that was occupied not just by NPCs but other players bringing a lot of life to that space. You get to see other players, inspect them including their gear. One of the best aspects is the actual traffic where you'll see players going for various activities or just finding their own personal perch similar to World of Warcraft.

A central town hub was something we wanted to do for Diablo III, but it never quite made it. We're so thrilled that we were able to do that with Diablo Immortal. You really get the sense that the world is real. When you go offline, the world kind of continues until you come back.

In what other ways is Diablo Immortal pushing the social limits of the Diablo franchise?

You can play through the main story campaign solo, but we've provided incentives and rewards for interacting with other players. You can party up with players in the game or other friends online. We partied up in Technical Alpha and ran a dungeon together. Fortunately, Diablo Immortal has voice chat available to communicate with your allies and all the audio just worked with no hassle.

Are there any plans for controller support?

It's one of the most requested features from feedback during the Technical Alpha. We're actually investigating how we can provide controller support for the future. Nothing to announce today but look out for updates in the future.

I loved all the different types of content in Immortal, but layers were one of my favorite types of content in Technical Alpha. I noticed some tilesets seemed to use Diablo III assets. Are we going to get more variety in tilesets?

In Technical Alpha we had two of those tilesets, but we plan to add a lot more variety to those. Layers should feel like a part of the area that you're playing where rifts pull from a global pool of tilesets being more random.

Did you expect Technical Alpha players to play as much as they did?

There are certainly some players that went really hard in the Technical Alpha and it was pretty impressive. We take it as a compliment and we know we made something special when players are that invested, especially considering it was a limited Technical Alpha where progress won't carry over. We got a lot of great Twitch clips in addition to data on how high-end and average gamers play the game.

How do you think the announcement for Diablo Immortal went at Blizzcon 2018?

That was rough for sure. A lot of players came expecting a Diablo IV announcement. We really wanted to share with fans that yes Diablo IV is in development. I am glad that now hopefully people can see that more Diablo is on its way. We have a lot of love for the Diablo universe. Our goal is ultimately to provide more Diablo options for more players.

We're grateful for all the support of Diablo Immortal. Even at Blizzcon 2018 we got a lot of feedback that yes this is good. The game kinda spoke for itself and I'm looking forward to the future where we can get the game in more player's hands.

What's next for Diablo Immortal? Is there another testing phase?

We will have a new testing phase that will include new content including a new class to test. We're hoping to bring that to a wider audience and for a longer period of time. Expect to test more end-game systems.

So everything we've tested so far isn't even the full end-game?

No. We have an epic end-game planned for Diablo Immortal. The Technical Alpha was mostly focused on the early and mid-game. The Challenge Rift was not the pinnacle of Diablo Immortal end-game. The level cap of Technical Alpha was set at 45. At release, we're planning the level cap to be 60.

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