DiabloFans

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but the Dreadlands are wide open...and would make for a nice even distribution of the 5 classes over the world map. It would be the perfect homeland for a more sinister character.

Quote from "DarkSpidey" »

Hahaha I call Archivist

Given that somebody's already gone to the trouble to make this class playable, I'd be surprised if he wasn't hidden in the game as an easter egg, perhaps only in single player

Quote from "emilemil1" »

Well... I guess you could just ignore the fact that every human in Sanctuary are Nephalem...

The character could be given a Nephalem back-story, which is pretty much irrelevant (most people don't know the back story of any of the D2 characters) but the class won't be called "Nephalem"....

The New Blizzard have made their stance clear: they have a new vision for Diablo, and its a much less dark and gritty one. Oh well. It will probably still be a fun game.

You can put me down for Ranger. I've been guessing this one since before the monk was released!

Sure, let's just bring back the most boring failed class from D2 expansion!!! I don't think so.

Quote from "Seth" »

I think as long as it doesn't have a skill like Hammers which only one monster in the game is immune to

There is no monster in the game that is immune or even resistant to Hammers...which is why I love the Hammerdin so gosh darn much!!!

Quote from "dorgeismydog" »

Could the fifth class be a (the) Nephalem?

Absolutely not, because we know that all five classes are iconic, archetypal classes that have recognizable names outside of the Diablo universe.

This has been confirmed already, end of discussion.

Quote from "OathofChaos" »

Being that each class is capable of decimating its opponent at all ranges, we can safely assume that the last class will be able to do that very same thing. Based on this strand of logic, the last class cannot be a pure ranged class.

So, now that I've finally laid my claim, I challenge you all to an honest debate as to why I'm wrong.

Imagine for a moment that the Barbarian was the last class released by Blizzard. Then, by your logic, you'd probably be claiming that the last class can't possibly be a melee class because all the previously announced classes were also good at ranged fighting.

Conclusion: you are right that whatever class they release will likely be able to fight at any range, but that does not mean they will fight equally well at all ranges, and it doesn't mean that the name and inspiration of the character cannot be based on something ranged.

I've done some research and plotted the geographic origins of all characters in the Diablo universe. From this I've predicted some possible origins for the fifth class. Take a look:

http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21323

Quote from "Valtonis" »

didn't we already discussed this already?
the exploding heart is just an icon to show that effect
it doesn't really mean that the skill exploded the skeletons' "heart"

Right, so all the blood and body parts flying off and littering the ground are not actually blood and body parts, they are just effects to let you know that you clicked the mouse button...having nothing at all to do with blood or gore. Maybe you should tell this to the ESRB ratings committee too!

and poison doesn't have to be poisoning their muscles or flesh either. it could be destroying the structure of their bones.

Then they should have called it "acid."

if you want to get into realism, then skeletons shouldn't be able to move in the first place or even stand since they don't have any muscles or ligaments to support them or allow them to move

In the fantasy world skeletons are animated by magical energy which holds their bones together. However, there is no notion of blood that spontaneously appears out of thin-air when you hit a skeleton.

1) Diablo is an combat and item-centric game which is exactly WHY some additional text-based item descriptions can be great. In BG2, every magic item had a description about it that made it feel unique and interesting. This isn't a very good example but it's the only screenshot I could find:

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ad_d/bg2/screens/bg2ss2.jpg

Having some cool back story about the unique items you find in D3 could make them feel more unique, more awesome, more collectible.

2) I'm very curious what they will be doing to extend the late-game experience. One possible solution is to have an arbitrary number of difficulty levels. Instead of just having, normal nightmare and hell, they could just come up with a function for scaling the monster difficulty / XP / drop rates and just have it scale. Note that it doesn't have to scale linearly, so the difference between being on difficulty level 10 vs difficulty level 3 does not necessarily mean you are getting the most god-awesome drops from every boss, but it COULD mean that at least the monsters were F*ing hard to kill, and gave more experience, thereby making it a continual challenge. Or, they could have a set number of difficulty levels, but specifically design it so that a level 99 character still has an extremely hard time throughout ALL of the acts in the last difficulty level, so that they don't just have to focus on the last act.

Quote from "SFJake" »

Really?.
Ahem.

Well... I find it rather strange. Certainly DON'T get rid of it. If you really want that though, a simple option to disable gold auto pickup would be nice, so that you can do it like you want, and I can have it on auto pickup.

Uh, no...having an option to disable auto-pick up would be completely useless and defeat the point....

The reason that manual gold pickup is better than auto-pickup is that it gives the player something else to think about while playing, giving them another way to differentiate themselves by creating a more powerful player than someone else who doesn't think about these things.

A player who wastes him time picking up tiny gold drops will slow his progress to other areas of the game where gold drops are larger, which actually reduces the amount of gold he can get in the same time. But if you don't pick up any gold at all, then you don't get as much gold per second as someoen who intelligently picks up drops that are close to him and dont delay him much.

If there exists an option to auto-pickup, then this interesting decision is removed from the player because the best decision is obviously to enable it.

It also puts a damper in inflation, because people stop caring at higher levels. If gold drop is auto, it will make inflation more of a problem because EVERYONE will be picking up gold ALL the time. Yes, the inflation problem exists no matter what, but this just means that whatever sinks they introduce to counteract inflation will need to be even more effective than they would have to be.

There is one thing that could be improved: getting rid of auto-pickup on Gold. Some people like to take the time to pick up gold, tohers dont. Personally I always have a "threshold" and if its more, I pick it up, if its less I figure that the time it takes me to make 1 click is going to reduce my overall "gold per second" by picking it up as opposed to running past it, and waiting for a bigger drop. I enjoy this complex interplay. Why take it away?

The designers keep making stupid decisions based around the idea that FIGHTING is the fun thing in Diablo, and making everything else automatic so that you can spend as much possible time fighting. Well, guess what....fighting has always been the most boring aspect of Diablo. Its thinking about how to assign stat points, thinking about how to arrange that tetris inventory, figuring out how to mazimize your DPS, Gold-Per-sec, XP-per-sec, unique-per-sec, etc, that makes the game fun. I spent at least as much time buried in game manuals plotting out stat points for builds as I did actually playing, and the thinking part was the most fun part.


In my opinion MF and the tetris style inventory are iconic elements and I am very glad they will not be lost. Moreover, I think that these two elements contributed significantly to the success of the franchise.

The tetris style inventory gives the player the "feeling" of actually having a backpack and getting to put things in it, in a way that is not nearly as difficult as actually having to arrange a physical backpack full of junk...but at the same time accomplishes the effect of making the player feel like they are tangible things. The different sizes of items has several values:

a) gives a crude sense of scale to items, which makes them feel more real to the player.

introduces an additional aspect of something to be balanced, which keeps things interested....is it worth it to hold onto that 6 slot item if you're just going to sell it, or is it a better use of time to ignore it and pick up smaller items so you dont have to go back to town as frequently? You may criticize this as being "unfun" but it really is part of the fun of Diablo. Just as, when I worked on a ferry, directing cars into the slots to try to even the weight of the boat could be fun. There isn't much to do in Diablo, and I'd prefer that these simple pleasures not be taken away from us.

c) allows larger more prominent items like armor and weapons to be given more dominant artwork

As for MF, it is critical to getting players addicted to give them a way to increase their own chances of finding items...because the primary source of fun in Diablo is not killing monsters, its finding sweet shit. The prospect of finding something is more pleasurable than the actual ACT of finding something...psychologically, and for this reason finding MF items just skyrockets the addiction factor.

This plot is somewhat interesting in it's own sake, but also helps to narrow down possible locations for the origin of a 5th class.



As you can see most of the locations have been claimed as homelands already. I one case, we have the Assassin's being a breakway of the Sorcerer clan and that is hwy they have the same homeland..but this is an expansion character, and they probably wouldn't do that with a new major class in D3.

Another note is that Scosglen is described as being a dense forest, whereas the map makes it look like a desert...but this is the homeland of the Druids so I doubt we will see this as being a new homeland for anyone.

Philios is an Amazonian island, and we know that Skovos is not in the game, and from the lightly faded ink and the fact that its not connected by a land bridge, I think its safe to say that none of these islands will be in the game..although some people disagree and think theres a possibility that Philios will be visitable, perhaps even the origin of some kind of Swashbuckler / Bounty Hunter class (this could also originate in Kingsport).

Bramwell was the location of a cult group in a Diablo book, but they added it to the map meaning its probably going to be visitable...it's possible that we see a Cultist class come from here, perhaps specializing in dark sorcery magic.

We should not rule out the possibility of a Hero returning from the ashes of Tristram, one of those survivors who came to cleanse the evil from the church, perhaps a valiant Knight? Or perhaps the Knight could come out of Duncraig, we don't know much about it.

We have 2 new jungle areas, Gea Kul and Viz-Jun. It's highly possible that a new class could come out of these jungles...such as a Ranger.

There's also a possibility of some other darker class coming out of the Swamp land or Marshlands...but I can't think of what that might be.