DiabloFans

It's easy to put a negative spin on D3 features that may come from a game you don't enjoy. Like WoW.

But I think it's important, not only in game design but playing the game, to retain a subjective perspective about features, instead of objective.

"Is this a feature I could enjoy if it was entirely unique to D3? Does it alter my experience positively?"

rather than...

"I don't like this feature because it was in WoW, and I don't like playing WoW."

Blizzard has a lot of good ideas, many of which are already implemented in their current games. Games like WoW, Starcraft, Warcraft 3... uh, Rock N Roll Racing? I say, good on them for taking their own ideas and reusing them when appropriate.

One important thing about progressive game design is that you don't always have to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes the wheel is already round. You can't make it rounder.

Quote from "Siaynoq" »

You can order your own mushroom growing kits like that. It's cool cause it's like this porous block and you put it in a bag and it gets moist and the mushrooms starting growing pretty quickly. Lots of cooks grow their own at home. I never learned how to cook with mushroom much though.

My farm actually makes our own growing kits. Of course we call them "logs". But they are basically a bag full of sawdust, secret corporate stuff, mushroom spawn, and love. Mostly love.

We have thousands. Some of our customers prefer to grow the mushrooms themselves if they have the space for it.

I'm personally not a fan of oyster mushrooms, but I love shiitake. How to cook shiitake? Saute it with garlic and onions, and then use it with steak. Or you can throw it in soup, or pasta, or chili, or fry it with burgers. Doesn't have to be anything special. Personally I like to throw them in the slow cooker with whatever happens to be in there. After 5 hours of slow cooking, the flavor is really just... great.

Give me a hidden level based entirely on this:

http://diablofans.com/news-pics/diablo3-rainbow-shirt1-large.jpg

So instead of combining a tome of town portal in the horadric cube for the cow level, let us put our heads together and think of an item worthy of teleportation to such a divine world. Well, considering the content matter surrounding the creation of the pictured shirt, I have an idea:

Obsidian Shard of Unrelenting Shadowy Darkness and Monochromes. Put this item in your fancy horadric cube, and be transported to a world like no other.

I'm going to dub this world Jubilation.

Lets highlight some features:

- The color palette of Jubilation is very specific: PASTELS
- Instead of bipedal cows, we are fighting against the colorful unicorn menace! The unicorns, although menacing, are always cheerful, and instead of galloping around like you may expect them to... they hop! As though they are skipping through Jubilation with glee!
- Players spells and attacks forgo their usual graphical effects in place of rainbows!
- The final boss in Jubilation will be a giant sun beaming with happiness. Or perhaps a giant teddy bear named Cuddles. This is up for debate.

Character flavor text/speech upon entering Jubilation through the portal:

Barbarian, male
- "What is this... wonderful place?!"
- "Look! Unicorns!" (girly laugh ensues, followed by clearing of the throat) "I mean... let's kill!" (followed by deep thunderous cackle, ending nervously/awkwardly)

Barbarian, female
- "What terrors await us? Pink beasts with mighty horns?!."
- "Everything is so colorful. It reminds me of Azeroth. Wait, what's Azeroth?"

Witchdoctor, male
- "This place sickens me."
- (muffled noises of choked back vomit) "Whew, that was a close one."

Witchdoctor, female
- "I don't like it here."
- "It tastes like happiness. Disgusting."

Wizard, male
- "Surely only the Lord of Terror could summon such a horrible realm!"
- "The magical energies feel different here." (queue spell casting sound effect) "Rainbows!"

Wizard, female
- "Personally I wouldn't have gone with this shade of green."
- "Whomever the dark master of this world is, I *will* stop him. And then I'll ride that unicorn over there!"

This is a serious suggestion.

Add your ideas below.

Barbarian.

I always choose the melee characters. Maybe it's because I work with my hands a lot. I'm a hands on kind of guy.

Wait...

I see no harm in quest rewards. But they shouldn't be fixed. They should be randomly generated just like getting loot from a corpse. However, they should still be useful to the class that is turning in the quest. I don't need a bow on my barbarian, or a two handed axe on my sorcerer.

The rarity of the item should be determined by your level, the difficulty level, and the difficulty of the quest.

I'm sure Blizzard would use some sort of complex formula for this. They love using formulas.

--> To the content creator's discretion, the player should be able to create new characters that persist in the adventure, or be given previously created characters to play with
--> Characters from custom adventures will remain 100% unique to that adventure and can't be taken into a different adventure.

Not a bad idea.

There is a snag though. Considering the amount of custom games players will cycle through, we're potentially looking at hundreds of character slots needed just for custom games.

And then there's open and closed bnet.

It's not impossible, but we'd have to start looking at a completely new character selection front-end for such an implementation. Like... a drop down list, or something lol.

Or it could be context sensitive. Like if you hover over or select a custom game, there could be a pop up that displays the characters you currently have saved for that particular custom game. Or something.

Overlooked this forum. My apologies. Also I posted a link in my first post, which I think as a new member I'm also prohibited from doing. Double oops.

Hye! I'm an ex-WoW addict seeking to break the chains by engulfing myself in Diablo pudding. Or forums. I'm 25 years old. I grow shiitake and oyster mushrooms. They are of the non-magic variety. I look forward to contributing to the community in as many ways as possible.

Adios.

Quote from "Ivaron" »

Okay, I think I would rather have them create cool content themselves. But I have to agree that Warcraft 3 was a cool game because of it's customizabiilty. Anyway, rather not in Diablo.
As for what I really wanted to say..

Do you actually think we should be able to enter these maps with our normal characters? Because no matter what limits you put on it, we will be able to get some kind of unfair advantages. Why would you even think about this? It's simple. You shouldn't be able to enter custom maps with your regular characters. It's THE obvious fix. And then you can let the players do whatever the fuck they want, like in Open Bnet.

I suppose they could make it so you can create a copy of your realm character for use in a custom game.

Yeah, I would imagine this feature only to be accessible to open bnet characters. To keep things nice and tidy and in Blizzard's control, server-side realm characters shouldn't be able to access custom content.

However, the option to copy your realm character for use with custom games (essentially copying your realm character to an open bnet character slot) is a good idea. Some people just don't play open bnet. To make it easier for them, so, you know, they don't have to grind up a new character to play some custom games.

The thing that excites me the most about this type of feature is what happened with Warcraft 3. DOTA aside, there were some truly unique and fun gameplay experiences that couldn't possibly be offered in the stand alone Warcraft 3 game. With scripting and creativity, some players were able to do some really incredible things.

Some custom games that come to mind are Dawn of the Dead survival horror games, the Final Fantasy rpg maps, and of course Angel Arena, or Hero Arena, or Ultimate Whatever Arena; it went through a few names. There are of course other great examples of creative and intelligent scripting.

How To Extend The Life Of Your Product For A Billion Years

Diablo is a franchise that would benefit greatly from player generated content. What I think they should do is something that is a good mix between Warcraft 3's map editor/scripting tools and City of Heroes' recently released Architect feature.

The logistics are simple. You can spend countless man-hours developing content for your players (which you should still do, I expect a robust story driven Diablo this time around!), or (also and) you can spend countless man-hours developing the tools for players to develop content for themselves and others. And get headlines like this...

http://kotaku.com/5216590/city-of-heroes-players-create-more-content-than-devs-in-24-hours

For the sake of simplicity, let's just call this feature Custom Games, like in Warcraft 3. Separate from any ladders or other multiplayer gametypes.

Lets highlight some of the ideal features:

*For reference sake, when I use the term map, it can be assumed that this is refering to outdoor areas, or indoor dungeons.

- Includes a fully featured map editor complete with rich scripting tools and functions
- Player can fully customize monsters by choosing their name, stats, special attributes, and aesthetic by selecting from a range of pre-defined skins and colors.
- Player can edit the loot table of any customized monster, pulling from a list of pre-defined Diablo 3 weapons, armor, and items. To prevent abuse, each monster rarity type will have their own item cap. Each item, depending on it's quality and rarity, will have a scored number value. You may only include items in the monsters loot table until you have hit that value cap. The cap can not be edited, but the rarity of the monster can, consequently increasing the cap. You can only have a certain number of monster rarity types per map area. For instance, the player may not fill their map with 100 unique-rarity monsters.
- Players may import their own skins and models for monsters and npcs, allowing for truly unique denizens on their created maps.
- Players may fully customize npcs by choosing stats, special attributes, and appearance options. Npcs can be made into vendors in which case the player may edit their sellable items. As with monster customization, npcs have an item cap so they cannot be loaded with rare and unique items. Each item has a pre-defined cost based on the quality of the item and stat weights.
- Players may create their own weapons, armor and items using their own imported models and textures or using predefined models and textures. Similar to monster loot tables, weapons cannot be loaded with incredible stats. Each weapon type, depending on the rarity you assign it, is allowed only a set number of stats. Each stat has it's own "weight" which, when added to the weapon, works towards the stat weight cap. You cannot exceed the cap. The cap is defined by the rarity.
- Players may fully edit the environments allowing placement of Diablo 3 assets into their created map.
- Players can control many aspects of the environment and script them to trigger based on events or scenarios. Players can control the lighting of any object, as well as the overall map lightning. This allows for complete control over the atmosphere of the created map. Aiming for that survival-horror feel? Totally possible with the right lighting and level design.
- Players can script events using items, assets, npcs, monsters, areas, time elapsed, and much more.
- Players can create story arcs that branch to and from different player created maps. Let's just call this feature a Tome for now. A Tome consists of all of the player created maps in a given story arc. When players download the Tome they are downloading multiple maps, and when they play the game they are seamlessly loaded between the maps when they entered the user defined areas that allow them to transition to the next map.


I will expand on these ideas a little bit later, I'm short on time right now. You guys can also expand on these areas.

A few things to keep in mind. While we want to have as much freedom as possible with generated content, do not overlook the limits and caps that need to be set in order to prevent players from abusing the creation tools and just making worlds that drop nothing but set items and uniques. This is incredibly detrimental to the online diablo community. Akin to dupe hacking. We all know what that is like, and we all hate it.

Also, while this feature is incredibly ambitious and perhaps so much that it couldn't possibly be fit in Diablo 3 before release, keep in mind there are opportunities for expansions. And content patches. And also dreaming and wishful thinking.

Feel free to add to what i've put here.