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Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

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Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#41

Post by seattle_spring »

pixel_tracing wrote: post #34
aliasxneo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't disagree more. Played all of them, and the story in D4 is fantastic, not to mention the amazing cinematics. Well worth the asking price.

You get through the story in a few days maybe a week or so, then you have the rest of the end game. Compare it to Path of Exile and the difference is night and day

What about compared to PoE in the first week it came out? D4 will get better as they iterate on it based on gameplay and feedback just like they did with D3 and D2.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#42

Post by dendriti »

aliasxneo wrote: post #14
pixel_tracing wrote: post #10

How things have deviated since Diablo 2, I’m so saddened by the lack of creativity in D4 compared to path of exile

Couldn't disagree more. Played all of them, and the story in D4 is fantastic, not to mention the amazing cinematics. Well worth the asking price.

The story in D4 is fantastic "for a video game". It's still a shitty video game story that wouldn't succeed in any other medium.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#44

Post by broodbucket »

seattle_spring wrote: post #41
pixel_tracing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get through the story in a few days maybe a week or so, then you have the rest of the end game. Compare it to Path of Exile and the difference is night and day

What about compared to PoE in the first week it came out? D4 will get better as they iterate on it based on gameplay and feedback just like they did with D3 and D2.

I'm sure they will expand on gameplay but there's no indication they'll come close to scratching the surface of PoE's depth, and I don't think they're trying to. D4 is supposed to be a simpler game with a lower barrier to entry that is more accommodating to casual players. You can't get a whole lot out of PoE as a beginner without third-party resources, there's certainly a tradeoff to its many layers of complexity.

D3 and D4 are games made for people in their 30s who grew up playing D1 and D2 and now only have a couple of hours a day to play, and that's fine

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#45

Post by eek2121 »

kosei wrote: post #15

It was a different time: “Condor plans to spend one year in the development of Diablo. Personnel will consist of: one designer, one chief programmer, 2 junior programmer, 2 art director/artists, 1 illustrator/sculptor, 3 pixel artists, and 1 sound FX person” So, 11 people for a year for Diablo. Meanwhile Diablo 4 took 300+ people 6+ years. So over 150x the cost, not accounting for the fact that game developers are pa…

Yet I have to say this:

Diablo was more fun.

Diablo 2 is pretty great. My only complaints about it surround harder difficulties. Those of us with accessibility issues (like me with a gimped hand) found hell to be super challenging.

Diablo 3 sucked when it launched, however, right now, it is absolutely amazing. Blizzard has absolute gold with the tiered difficulty/rift/season design. Unsure why they didn't improve upon it...

Diablo 4 has potential, but many of the great systems developed in 1-3 are gone.

What made previous diablo games great:

A fixed level/difficulty system

Randomly generated levels

A way to measure yourself against both yourself and others. Potential for multiple unique build paths for every class. An awesome loot/gear system that eventually makes you feel overpowered until you aren't.

Diablo 4 has none of those.

Diablo 1-3 have some combination of those.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#46

Post by jonhohle »

It’s always nice to see humble beginnings like this. It can be hard at the start of a greenfield project to get ideas out without feeling like it’s amateur hour having to explain basic concepts that may or may not be novel to the people who need to be convinced to let the project move forward.

Now Diablo is one of the biggest franchises in gaming, and its early pitch document looks quaint compared to what it’s become.

Also neat to see what made it in, what didn’t, and when things that seem essential to Diablo were being discussed that early.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#48

Post by warent »

bexsella wrote: post #26
crtified wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A trivial aside, and for which I apologise in advance - not least because it may have been merely a typo - but the correct phrase is "averse [to Google]", not adverse. "Averse to Google" == "disinclined to Google"; "Adverse to Google" == "has negative effects upon Google". I am assuming you meant the former. https://grammarist.com/usage/adverse-averse/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/adverse-vs-averse/

It was an honest typo, but it did make me think that at some point with the heat of the idea of the "Metaverse" in some circles, that Google could roll out a competing "Adverse". Note: typo corrected.

Oh god please don't give them any ideas. Delete this ASAP

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#49

Post by Salgat »

qingcharles wrote: post #16
Reason077 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a 12-month development schedule. This pitch was dated 1994. Diablo was released in 1997... doesn't seem too bad.

I wrote the isometric engine for this game in about 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Proje... It was planned to be a totally 2D game in the vein of Diablo, but as this brief lays out, the amount of 2D assets required for all the rotations of the characters gets out of hand extremely quickly. After we started development we figured this out and decided to switch the characters to 3D and kee…

I like the way Diablo 2 did it, where they created 3D models then had a script render to create the animation frames at all the different angles. I did something similar for my very amateurish attempt at a game, and it saved a massive amount of time.

http://salgat.blogspot.com/2014/12/new-2d-sprite-model.html

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#50

Post by aidenn0 »

bexsella wrote: post #7

My favourite story of Diablo's development (as relayed by David Brevik in the Diablo Postmortem - see below) is the part where Diablo was made real-time. He passionately championed that it should be more like Rogue or Moria purely turn-based and permadeath. That was until he implemented real-time movement in an afternoon and attacked a skeleton. This was a directive from Blizzard, and it effectively created the ARPG…

I have no clue why, but the Diablo style dungeon-crawler ARPGs are literally the only subgenre of game that I have not found a single game from which I like.

I keep trying examples because it's such a strange (and popular) hole in my tastes.

Games I've tried:

- Diablo

- Diablo II

- Nox

- Dungeon Siege

- Divinity

- A few others I'm probably forgetting.

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