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Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

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Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#171

Post by fennecfoxy »

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…

Whether a modern game turns out to be fun or not is besides the point, the answer is fidelity, fidelity, fidelity.

I think it's fair enough that modern games take much more effort; we have much higher expectations as gamers/consumers than we used to.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#172

Post by cubefox »

Sakos wrote: post #161
cubefox wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelda II even had experience points, and Wikipedia counts all the other games I named as ARPGs. There is no way in which Diablo was the first ARPG. Edit: Maybe the influence of Diablo is more that it effectively ended the era of Western/PC turn-based RPGs. For Japanese RPGs, turn-based (non-action) RPGs did hang on for longer, e.g. in form of Final Fantasy.

Fact of the matter is that ARPG today generally means a Diablo-like game. It defined the genre that we know today as ARPGs. You can name other games ARPGs if you want, but it has nothing to do with Diablo or the genre that Diablo defined. I'm not sure why this sort of thing is so difficult to understand.

Pretty much all modern Open World RPGs have real time combat and are therefore called action RPGs, e.g. by Wikipedia. But a game like Elden Ring doesn't seem to me particularly Diablo-like.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#173

Post by Sakos »

cubefox wrote: post #172
Sakos wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fact of the matter is that ARPG today generally means a Diablo-like game. It defined the genre that we know today as ARPGs. You can name other games ARPGs if you want, but it has nothing to do with Diablo or the genre that Diablo defined. I'm not sure why this sort of thing is so difficult to understand.

Pretty much all modern Open World RPGs have real time combat and are therefore called action RPGs, e.g. by Wikipedia. But a game like Elden Ring doesn't seem to me particularly Diablo-like.

You're still missing the point. I've explained it to you. Not much else I can do.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#174

Post by Sakos »

nottorp wrote: post #167
Sakos wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can't agree. There is clear progression from first reaching the level cap and clearing T6 and eventually getting good enough gear to finally clear T16. Then continuing to improve your build and gear until you do GR70, 100, 130. Like, I'm never wondering if I'm actually getting stronger, because I know that if I try T6 on a fresh capped character, I'm going to get demolished. If I clear T6 successfully, I know…

So you're happy with bigger numbers? Because the content is absolutely identical from T1 to T2484... and there's absolutely no other way to increase the x in Tx except grinding lower levels to increase some stat on your gear by a small amount. Like my other comments about PoE, I'm talking about what passes for endgame. Where you have all the recommended gear and can do mostly everything. I know that you first need to…

> So you're happy with bigger numbers? Because the content is absolutely identical from T1 to T2484... and there's absolutely no other way to increase the x in Tx except grinding lower levels to increase some stat on your gear by a small amount.

So ... like PoE? I'm not sure what you want here. Every game in the genre is like this. PoE doesn't do it any better. What you described is just wrong.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#175

Post by qingcharles »

Salgat wrote: post #49
qingcharles wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We actually had it set up like that to start as we had some creatures built in Max, but the sheer amount of graphic data was far too much for the available RAM once you started added more beasties and some of them were the size of the screen.

Switching to 3D gave us unlimited movement but bought us multiple other problems like low poly count, lack of solid integration with 2D backgrounds, and difficulties in combining huge 2D and 3D rendering pipelines.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#177

Post by filoleg »

avereveard wrote: post #125
nvarsj wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The level scaling is a really bizarre design choice. Every game with this feels bad. There is no sense of progression as your character gets punished for levelling up. Some game designers think it’s a great idea though - hence it’s in D4. I’d love to hear their take.

It's the lazy way out to world design for non linear games. Why put any effort in making sure player locality influences the surrounding quest level, if player can go anywhere, let's put level appropriate enemy everywhere. Dungeon siege approach was so much better, even if the game was not as solid: minibosses or higher difficulties quests barred the access to higher difficulties areas. Within a zone, progression and…

> Why put any effort in making sure player locality influences the surrounding quest level, if player can go anywhere, let's put level appropriate enemy everywhere.

That's not how it works in Diablo 4, enemy scaling only comes into play if you go to an area that is naturally lower level than yours. Looking at the world map and hovering over areas shows their minimum "recommended" level, and enemies there will start at that level.

So you absolutely can go as a lvl 10 character to an area that expects you to be 40+ and get smacked down in a few hits by a basic lvl 40 minion.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#178

Post by lostmsu »

Sakos wrote: post #161
cubefox wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelda II even had experience points, and Wikipedia counts all the other games I named as ARPGs. There is no way in which Diablo was the first ARPG. Edit: Maybe the influence of Diablo is more that it effectively ended the era of Western/PC turn-based RPGs. For Japanese RPGs, turn-based (non-action) RPGs did hang on for longer, e.g. in form of Final Fantasy.

Fact of the matter is that ARPG today generally means a Diablo-like game. It defined the genre that we know today as ARPGs. You can name other games ARPGs if you want, but it has nothing to do with Diablo or the genre that Diablo defined. I'm not sure why this sort of thing is so difficult to understand.

> Fact of the matter is that ARPG today generally means a Diablo-like game

"Fact of the matter is that tree today generally means a birch-like plant"

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#179

Post by rasz »

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…

yet Stoneshard is exactly that https://store.steampowered.com/app/625960/Stoneshard/ 23000 positive reviews. Great game.

Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

#180

Post by aliasxneo »

pixel_tracing wrote: post #84
logicchains wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally an endless grind because enemies scale with you as you level up, so all mobs feel the same and there's no sense of progression.

This, part of building your character is the power fantasy you get when you go to weaker zones and absolutely obliterate everything. With the current system, you actually end up getting weaker as you level up

That has not been my experience. Yes, at certain moments, I am pressed to optimize. However, I'm currently wrecking WT3 with my necro. I know it won't last forever as I scale up, but that's fine with me, otherwise I'd have nothing to look forward to.
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