FRONTPAGE Diablo III Beta Gameplay Screenshots & Movie

Bashiok said:

This is may be a good a time as any to REVEAL TEH SEKRITS! that Inferno monster levels aren't linear any longer. They get progressively more difficult. This was really a reaction to Inferno playtesting. Our original intent was to have a flat difficulty level where you could go wherever you want, farm for items, and it'd be no more or less difficult than any other area in Inferno. This caused a few inherent issues for us, though:

• It just felt wrong. It didn't feel right to be progressing through the game and have it stay pretty much the same difficulty the whole time. It felt like a letdown to get to the final boss of the game and it be no more difficult than the first.
• There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into. We expect that anybody with enough time and dedication will reach level 60. But the jump in difficulty to Inferno needed to be different amounts for different people. For the crazy people they need a HUGE ramp in difficulty, for a more “casual but still hardcore” audience you want an obvious but milder increase in difficulty. So for the crazy people who play non-stop they’ll hit Act I and get a challenge, but 1 month later they’ll still have something to work on (Acts II, III and IV). For the “hardcore-casual” they will reach level 60 later and not get brick walled when they reach Inferno. They can experience some “small victories” working on Act I with the dream of maybe someday reaching the later acts.
• Longevity. We know people really want goals to work towards and challenges to overcome. We made Act III and Act IV really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only. It felt wrong to make ALL of Inferno that brutally hard.

Now, you may be saying “I thought you wanted us to be able to farm anywhere we wanted. Now we only have half as much area in the game to farm in? What gives?” Our goal is to make the loot mathematically better in the later acts without making the earlier gear completely obsolete. We feel Diablo II actually did a very good job with this and we expect Diablo III to perform similarly.

Specifically, people in D2 did Diablo runs, Mephisto runs, Pindleskin runs, Pit runs, Baal runs, etc. because the loot in Diablo is extremely random. Even though the theoretical best items might come from the later Acts, well-rolled items from earlier acts will still be better. Internally we find sometimes after an intense session of brutally hard Inferno it can be really fun to cruise through Hell Act III or IV and it’s not too uncommon surprise when an upgrade drops. We expect this to carry through to Inferno difficulty where somebody who can theoretically farm Act IV will likely still enjoy romping through Act I simply because the drop potential is still there. It’s all because of the highly random items having lots of overlap in their power distribution curves.

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General

• All characters have been wiped. Please note that this wipe will also affect gold, items, auctions, achievements, followers, and artisans.
• A new feature has been added that allows players to view their FPS while in game
  • To access this feature, hit Ctrl+R (for PC) or CMD+R (for Mac) while playing
• The cooldown on swapping skills while in Normal difficulty has been decreased from 15 seconds to 5 seconds

Classes

• Barbarian
  • Active Skills
    • Bash
      • “Clobber” rune now has a 35% chance to stun the target for 1.5 seconds
    • Revenge
      • Heal decreased from 6% to 5%
• Demon Hunter
  • Active Skills
    • Caltrops
      • Discipline cost decreased from 8 to 6
    • Smoke Screen
      • Discipline cost decreased from 18 to 14
      • Duration decreased from 3 seconds to 2 seconds
      • Now provides a 10% movement speed boost while invisible
      • Can now be used while under the effects of crowd control abilities
        • Using Smoke Screen will break the effects of crowd control, as well as cause your character to be immune to additional crowd control abilities for its duration
    • Vault
      • Discipline cost decreased from 10 to 8
• Witch Doctor
  • Active Skills
    • Haunt
      • Now performs 575% weapon damage over 12 seconds (down from 15 seconds)
    • Sacrifice
      • Weapon damage increased from 200% to 275%

Crafting

• Gold and material cost for crafting recipes have been adjusted
• The chance of salvaging Rate materials from Magic items has been increased

Items

• Class-specific items no longer have the chance to be generated with affixes that cannot be used by that specific class
  • For example, “Increased Hatred Regeneration” will no longer appear on Wands
• Demon Hunter one-handed Crossbows have received a damage buff
• Spirit regeneration on Monk items has been increased

Monsters

• Slow, stun, and other movement-impairing effects are now more effective on Treasure Goblins
  • In response, Treasure Goblins will now sprint away for a moment after being hit
• Scavenger monsters will now burrow less often
• Zombies will no longer feast on corpses unless they are full health
  • This is to address an issue which was preventing zombies’ enrage timer from resetting correctly

Bug Fixes

• Players can now queue for Public Games on “Reign of the Black King” after killing the Skeleton King
• Players queuing for a specific Public Games quest should no longer be placed into groups on a different quest
• Being hit with a knockback ability while using Tempest Rush will no longer disconnect you from Battle.net
• Placeholder text should no longer appear when looking at deceased Hardcore characters in the Hall of Fallen Heroes
• There should no longer be a delay when accessing the Auction House
• The female monk should now properly play her “Not Enough Resources” error message instead of her “Invalid Location” error message when attempting to perform an ability without the required amount of resources available
• Items with affixes that reduce resource costs will now correctly reduce the minimum amount of a resource required to perform a skill
• Several Simple and Advanced tooltips have received grammar corrections

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Pvt.Dancer said:

YES! its hard to believe we can say that! less than a month away till we are grouping and demolishing the forces of evil!....

after reading that i sound like such a nerd.... for diablo? I will accept that title.

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Diablo III Beta Patch 17 – v.0.11.0.9327
Released 4/17/12

General

• All characters have been wiped. Items, gold, auctions, achievements, followers, and artisans have also been wiped, and Beta Bucks have been reset to 50.
• Cross-game chat is available! Beta participants can now keep in touch with their Real ID and BattleTag friends, no matter which Blizzard game they're playing.
  • Please note that some restrictions do apply for BattleTag chat:
    • You can only send BattleTag invites while logged into the Diablo III beta client
    • You can only receive BattleTag invites while logged into the Diablo III beta client

Bug Fixes

• For a full list of documented game and service bugs, please review the Known Issues sticky located in the Beta Bug Report forum.
• Players should no longer be desynced from the server after watching or skipping a cut-sceneProjectile spell effects should no longer be invisible when casting them
• The Auction House should no longer lag and generate ERROR_1 when attempting to switch currencies
• The Auction House should no longer display your amount of Beta Bucks as 0 unless you actually have 0 Beta Bucks

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