Chapter 186 - : Diablo’s Settings (1/2)

Diablo’s design could be split into three main categories.

Story and quest lines: Building the foundations for the story as well as laying out every single quest line, allowing players to experience the story of the game seamlessly.

Map and level design: Create the scenes according to the story. Each chapter was placed in a different setting with different models and textures.

Moreover, one of Diablo’s biggest pros were its dynamically generated maps. Every scene the player experiences are randomly generated. Elements such as dungeon entrances and altars are randomly generated every time, which makes exploration one of the important pleasures of the Diablo series.

Combat system and monsters: This focused on the abilities the players have in combat as well as the characteristics each monster had, making the combat system feel more rich.

After these three points are done, everything else could be polished slowly over time.

Other than that, Chen Mo also wanted to make some changes to Diablo 3 in terms of art style and play style.

Chen Mo put an emphasis on cult, dark, scary, ominous, and bloody art style as he wanted the players to feel depressed and anxious when they play the game.

He also wanted to give the players a similar fear from the gameplay.

First, cut down on player attributes and increase boss damage. This will decrease the rates at which players beat levels, as they feel more in danger against large groups of enemies and bosses.

The worst part of Diablo 3 was the growth of the player at the later stages of the game. It gets to a point when it didn’t matter if the player was dodging attacks from the boss as they didn’t do much damage anymore.

The real trouble comes from elite mobs, but they weren’t beaten by out maneuvering or out skilling them, but it was based on equipment (resistance), making the game less tense that it should.

Therefore, Chen Mo strongly considered nerfing the growth of the attributes to allow the players to feel tense from the game.

Second, build on Diablo 2’s field of view design. The player’s field of view could be smaller, making it possible for the players to be under attack by enemies out of sight. This was especially important in dark caves or dungeons.

Third, designs could be borrowed from Diablo 2.

Take the character screen for example. In Diablo 2, the screen was placed in a dark town, the characters are blanketed in darkness and will only reveal themselves after the player had made their picks.

Diablo 3 on the other hand had character selection under moonlight, dramatically impacting on the atmosphere of the game.

Chen Mo wanted to make changes to all these functions and scenes that didn’t fit Diablo 2.

Fourth, the flow of narrative and player emotions should match Diablo 2.

Diablo 2 was a master at managing and manipulating player emotions. In the first chapter for example, the player would go through safety, danger, nervous, anxiousness, restricted, release, and relax in a cycle.

The first chapter went something like this:

Town (safe), Den of Devil (Danger), Kill all enemies, field of view increased (safe)

Cold Plains (safe), Blood Ravens (Nervous), Sisters’ Burial Grounds (Extreme Danger)

Stony Field (Safe), Underground Passageway (Danger), Dark Wood (Nervous), Jail (Anxious).

Inner Cloister (Temporary Breathing Room), Catacombs (Extreme restraint), Kill Andariel (Release, relax).