Admit it. When you heard that Blizzard was scrapping its plans of including PvP with the release of Diablo III, you were a little miffed. It’s not really surprising that people who play games also find enjoyment in battling other players for digital supremacy and err… bragging rights. Some of you may have even called for the heads of Blizzard bosses at the perceived slight. The good news is that they’re still working hard on the feature. The bad news is that… well, it’s still a work in progress.
Blizzard’s Jay Wilson says they’re working really hard to get Team Deathmatch to Diablo III fans everywhere as soon as possible but feels that the mode, in its current state, is not good enough. Wilson points to two issues that they haven’t been able to overcome — depth and balance:
“For us it comes to a few issues, one of which is depth. Simply fighting each other with no other objectives or choices to make gets old relatively quickly. We’ve brought a lot of people in to try out Team Deathmatch and, while some found it entertaining, most of our testers didn’t feel like it was something they’d want to do beyond a few hours. Without more varied objectives, or very lucrative rewards, few saw our current iteration as something they’d want spend a lot of time in.
“Another is class balance. Like Diablo II, Diablo III was designed to be a PvE-first kind of game, where we never compromised on player abilities in the name of future PvP balance. We want to be able to carry over as many of the crazy runes, items, and skills as possible, with their crazy effects, and alter them as little as possible. In a casual PvP mode, something equivalent to a WoW Battleground, this would be fine, but Team Deathmatch felt very hardcore, and it put a laser focus on class balance in a way that we didn’t think would be good for the game as a whole.”
To sum up, Wilson and the team believes that Team Deathmatch isn’t “the experience we feel it needs to be in order to ship, so we will be shelving it for now and exploring other options.”
So what do Diablo III fans have to look forward to then? As a consolation prize, Duelling support will be added with patch 1.0.7 which is expected to hit “sometime after the new year.” Wilson also says that they’re going back to the drawing board for a replacement to Team Deathmatch, something that will feel “more appropriate for Diablo III.” He promises that when it arrives, the mode will be available to players for free.
Are you content that you’re getting Duelling support with the next Diablo III patch? What changes do you hope they add to the Team Deathmatch replacement? Share your thoughts in the comments below!