Diablo III Introduces Dueling in Upcoming Patch

Timothy Chang

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Jun 5, 2012
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Diablo III Introduces Dueling in Upcoming Patch



Blizzard offers a free-for-all arena "without the potential for griefing" from Diablo II.

The Diablo III faithful won't be seeing a Team Deathmatch mode anytime soon [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121275-Blizzard-Shelves-Diablo-III-Team-Deathmatch-Mode], as Blizzard reckons it isn't up to the "high-quality Blizzard experience" that fans are expecting. On the other hand, the company did mention that a dueling mode is on its way in an upcoming patch, which has been detailed in an official preview.

Wyatt Cheng, Technical Designer for Diablo III, penned the official blog post on the new game mode, which "allows players to test their mettle against fellow Nephalem". The new dueling option will support up to four players in free-for-all combat.

To start a duel, the player needs to speak with an NPC at the inn in New Tristram, which teleports the player's party to the Scorched Chapel. This newly created dueling arena features four main areas: a church, a graveyard, a river, and a lake.

"Our intent is to provide players a safe, opt-in location where they can fight one another for bragging rights (or maybe science) without the potential for griefing as it existed in Diablo II," Cheng explains.

Those looking for something beyond fighting to the death will be disappointed to learn that there will be no scorekeeping and no objectives in this mode. It also looks like the only thing at stake is pride: death will not be permanent in the Scorched Chapel, even for Hardcore characters. Durability damage will also be nixed while a character remains in the dueling area.

"We wanted dueling to be as simple and straightforward as possible, so we created a minimalist system," Cheng says. "We know that even without rewards and objectives, some players just want to beat each other up.

"Some matchups may be one-sided, and we don't expect that battles will be necessarily balanced. But that's okay, because dueling in Diablo III is more about kicking ass and taking names in a no-holds-barred sort of way, and this design certainly allows you to accomplish that."

In addition, the new patch will include a number of updates to the Wizard and Monk classes. There will also be a new set of Rare crafting recipes that will generate account-bound items; changes to the "Monster Power" system; and some modifications to "Reflects Damage", "Molten", and "Plagued" affixes.


Source & Image: Diablo III Blog [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/8414560]

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Karoshi

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Jul 9, 2012
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Hell yeah, looking forward to getting my ass kicked. Gonna try it out as soon as the patch hits.
 

Richard Allen

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Mar 16, 2010
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Ohhh well this changes everything! Now I must spend $50 to what amounts to a graphical upgrade to a 12 year old game. /s
Blizzard needs to change or die. They haven't done anything new since wow took over their company and Diablo 3 was a painfully disappointing for a long time fan. 2013 and you think adding an ah to a click fest is going to work? not to mention you load it up with shitty anti-consumer drm. Activision killed blizzard. The talent is gone and they are going to have to work to get it back.
 

dangoball

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Jun 20, 2011
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mrhateful said:
I think the phrase is: Too little too late
Yup, first thing that went through my head. Uninstalled D3 just yesterday, after not touching it for quite some time and this is definitely not enough to make me install again.

Blizzard offers a digital version of WoW with expansions up to WotLK for "proving myself in the battle for Sanctuary", anyone know how to turn that into money? :p

Richard Allen said:
Activision killed blizzard. The talent is gone and they are going to have to work to get it back.
Activision killed Blizzard and EA killed Bioware, those are the sad truths of todays gaming industry. We can disagree, we can complain, but that's about it.
 

Dogstile

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Jan 17, 2009
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Still not interested. My entire uni class was excited for this game. They all bought it and played it for a week, some for about two. Then they all came back disappointed that it wasn't as good as Diablo II. Rather glad I was out of money that week or I would have been one of them. I don't understand how Blizzard made Diablo III so terrible in comparison to II.
 

ExtraDebit

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Dogstile said:
I don't understand how Blizzard made Diablo III so terrible in comparison to II.
Most of the original brains behind diablo franchise is gone and replaced by some asshole called Jay Wilson.
 

tehroc

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dangoball said:
Activision killed Blizzard and EA killed Bioware, those are the sad truths of todays gaming industry. We can disagree, we can complain, but that's about it.
Blizzard killed Blizzard. Stop trying to scapegoat Activision on this. Mike Morhaime learned to embrace corporate culture. It's all about the short term profits now, no one bothers to look at the long run anymore cause they plan to cash out whenever it's best for them. Blizzard is an autonomous entity that makes it's own decisions.
 

Easton Dark

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SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
NameIsRobertPaulson said:
Yeah... no. I have one friend who still plays, and I'm glad I never did. Meanwhile, me and four friends just started another campaign in Torchlight 2.
Torchlight 2 is fucking awesome man, I got it in the recent Steam sale and it took me by surprise. I disliked the original but 2? Respect. They got a lot of things right.
I thought you were having issues logging on to play online? I guess that got resolved huh.

OT:

Oh awesome. I guess that gives the two people still playing something to do.

:p
 

Tamrin

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tehroc said:
Blizzard is an autonomous entity that makes it's own decisions.
That made me think of this quote.

Now if you begin to feel an intense and crushing feeling of religious terror at the concept, don't be alarmed. That indicates only that you are still sane. ~ Wally Weaver
 

poiuppx

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Wait.

All of the wait.

You mean to tell me, after all this time, with all the money this game is said to have brought in, the best you could do was a stripped down one on one dueling mode with fewer features than the original Counterstrike? This crap wouldn't have been given a pass in 1999!

Unbalanced, no rewards, no objectives aside from bashing each other around... then what the hell was the point? What was the point of balancing and rebalancing the classes and items and all that? What was the point of DOING this?

Cripes. I skipped this game because I'm not in favor of always-online anything unless it has 'MMO' in the genre sub-heading, but I hated myself for doing so at the time because I loved D1 & D2. Now? Now I want to give slightly-younger me a hug for avoiding this malarky.
 

geizr

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Oct 9, 2008
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I already finally gave up and uninstalled the game. I can't get my $60 back, so I have to content myself with recovering 12GB of HDD space that can be put to better use.

Oh, well; life moves on, but without the futile grinding.
 

Ghonzor

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Jul 29, 2009
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Does anyone actually still care about this game?
I can't honestly even remember a time I played D3 and actually enjoyed myself.
This just seems like Blizzard is grasping at straws in an attempt to win back a player base that just could not give less of a fuck.
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

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Sep 10, 2008
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Dogstile said:
Still not interested. My entire uni class was excited for this game. They all bought it and played it for a week, some for about two. Then they all came back disappointed that it wasn't as good as Diablo II. Rather glad I was out of money that week or I would have been one of them. I don't understand how Blizzard made Diablo III so terrible in comparison to II.
Some of those who worked in Blizzard North (devs behind the first two Diablos and closed in 2005) are now part of Runic Games, the people behind the Torchlight series that plays allot like the older Diablo games.

They even managed to get Matt Uelman back to do the music.