14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Blizzard working on the coming console version of Diablo 3 says that one of its main aims with the new version of the game is to get as many players interested in playing together as a group, which is one of the best ways to experience the title.
Julia Humphreys, a senior producer on Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition, tells AusGamers the entire studio is sure that gamers who have friends will quickly find that the same screen cooperative play delivers an unique experience which cannot be replicated on the PC.
The fact that gamers are close together and can talk while battling monsters and solving quests creates a series of interesting interactions, and Blizzard wants to make sure that there’s no reason to ever drop a player based on their level and their character development choices.
Julia Humphreys states, “One of the first things we added is apprentice mode. So you might be playing with your friends and you start new characters together and your character might be a lower-level to the others. So instead of dying all the time, running behind the other player and picking up loot and not killing, with apprentice mode what we do is take lower-level character and we boost them up for the duration of that play session.”
The characters do not gain access to any sort of new powers and they might still be a little underpowered when compared to their high-level buddies, but they can still be useful in a fight.
The Blizzard developer adds, “Their stats are boosted so they’ll have more toughness, they’ll do more damage -- they’ll be able to stand toe-to-toe with most monsters and contribute meaningfully to most fights. And of course the loot that they get; the experience they get is still going to be appropriate to their level.”
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition is designed to exploit the unique opportunities offered by home consoles and to deliver the experience for the first time on next-gen platforms from Sony and Microsoft.
The core game mechanics are not changed in any way, but Blizzard says that it has tweaked the control scheme in order to offer all players a comparable experience.
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition will be launched on the PlayStation 4, the PS3, the Xbox One, and the 360 on August 19 of this year.