Particularly when you're not in cities, the likelihood of you coming across other players is fairly low. Joe Piepiora: From the design side, it is important to us that the player feels they are isolated as they wander around the world. How have you tried to retain that traditional sense of what Diablo feels like to play with these light MMO elements, where you get these social experiences? Newscast: After Redfall's launch woes, where next for Xbox? So how has Blizzard tuned Diablo 4 to retain that single-player feel despite these MMO-lite elements? Will Diablo 4 ever force players to group up to obtain certain rewards? And what about class roles for raid-style boss fights? I put those questions to Diablo 4 art director John Mueller and associate game director Joe Piepiora in a recent interview - here's what they had to say. There's a cool claustrophobia to the 'do it alone' dungeon crawling in Diablo 4, so it can feel a little jarring to see other Lone Wanderers step on your turf. You play the 'Lone Wanderer' who strives to help humanity survive in a brutally oppressive, bleak world. There's a clan system, raid-like boss fights such as the aforementioned Ashava battle, and a player revive mechanic.Īt first glance, these systems are at odds with the traditional Diablo dungeon-crawling action RPG experience Blizzard is shooting for with the bulk of Diablo 4.

Unfortunately, I failed miserably (yes, someone managed to solo Ashava in the Server Slam beta).Įncountering other players in the always-online Diablo 4 is but one of a number of MMO-lite elements in the game.

I also joined a group to take on Ashava, a world boss encounter designed for 12 players. Outside settlements, most of my impromptu encounters with other players revolved around public events either in progress or just finished (annoying). It's the kind of thing you'd expect from an MMO - perhaps in a city set within Blizzard's own World of Warcraft. I saw players running around Kyovashad, the city in the Fractured Peaks region, popping into and out of portals, visiting vendors and milling about. If you played Diablo 4 during any of the various playtests Blizzard has held ahead of the game's early June launch, you'll probably have run into another player or two.

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