Personal and Professional Practice 3: 'Research' Studio Brief - Blizzcon 2014

Diablo III - What’s Next Panel
The next panel that I watched was what’s next panel for Diablo II, a game that I am very interested in playing. They started off by talking a little bit about the game already and then moved onto talking about what they were going to be changing about it in the upcoming patch. 

Treasure Goblins

They are now going to be creating a whole family for them as they were so popular in the game which is an interesting idea and the queen definitely looks great! In the original game there was one main treasure goblin that dropped your regular loot as you chased him down. But there was also 3 others which aren’t as well known due to them being difficult to spot and the only difference in them being that they wore different coloured pants. They wanted to change this as they thought it was kind of cheating. 

The Gem Hoarder is the first one and they have changed him so that he is white in colour and drops gems as you hit him and then a multitude of gems as you kill him. The next is the Odious Collector, who will drop crafting materials, and the final one being the Blood Thief who upon death will drop blood shards. The thief’s now also have increased visibility and different sound effect to make them more noticeable. 

Adventure Mode

They introduced this mode in Reaper of Souls, which gives you the ability to go to each location and explore it fully as this is something that’s not always possible during the story mode. In adventure mode they also changed some of their maps around so that they weren’t completely the same every time you went to them. They also added in another vector into legendary gems so that you can get even more powerful and create even more builds. 

Greater Rift Changes

These were introduced in the last update and they wanted to make the generation of the levels more random so they have increased playability. They have changed this so that they have really nice level generation so that players do not hit dead ends and have to walk for 2 and a half minutes to get back to the next turn in the road. They are also experimenting with the death of the character and how long you have to get back to your body for the respawn.

Season II

Conquests that are included in the game at the moment so that you can get a higher level of rift. The players want to be on top end of the leader board. Speed racers requires the player to complete the entire game in under an hour, something that requires them to think about what there doing fully before they start.

Monsters

They have started to introduce a few more monsters as well into the patch update, like the swarmer monsters that have come down from the mountains and from the forests to attack. They have also introduced the Rat King who is a new monster that is very unattractive, in true Diablo fashion. He has albino rats living inside of him and they come out of his back to attack you and when he dies. They are also going to be introducing a Yeti family at a later date as well.