Diablo III Crusader Design and "The End is Near" Gameplay Video
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 2570
With the auction house a thing of the past and the Reaper of Souls expansion pack mere days away from release, Blizzard Entertainment has started to divulge some interesting new details about the add-on by penning a new blog on the design of the Crusader class and tackling a series of questions submitted through Twitter about the new profession. What's more, they've given us a "The End is Near" gameplay video to take in:
And here are some excerpts from the design update and Q&A:
Armed with these pillars, the system designers moved to the brainstorming phase of design. This phase included a number of different meetings as well as an open invitation to the team's designers, artists, engineers, programmers, and producers to share their ideas for Crusader skills, too. Everyone on the development team could participate in the ongoing brainstorm and no idea was considered too silly or too simple so long as it related back to the pillars.
Ideas could come in the form of pictures, of a word or sentence, or some swanky combination of both! They could be entirely unique or reference existing imagery from a movie, television show, book, comic, or game. The High Heavens were the limit.
For the original five heroes, the goal of this phase was to generate a variety of different ideas that could then be distilled into three to five iconic skills for each class. With this kind of experience in skill building already established, however, the team decided to skip that particular step for the Crusader. Instead, they split the Crusader's skill list right down the middle, dedicated half its skills to melee and half to ranged attacks, and immediately started to translate different ideas from the brainstorm into something playable.
Whether it was the image of a powerful warrior swinging a massive weapon and sending his enemies flying every which way like Sauron in Fellowship of the Ring (Sweep Attack), hurling a shield like Captain America and watching it ricochet between demonic skulls (Blessed Shield), or calling down the wrath of the heavens like Zeus himself (Heaven's Fury), brainstorming played a pivotal role in the creation of the Crusader skills you see today.
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@Diablo #CrusaderDesign Why are Crusaders able to wield 2Hs in one hand while Barbarians cannot? Doesn't jive with existing lore.
Answer: Crusaders can only duel-wield a single 2-handed weapon, and shield. The shield is iconic to the Crusader, and falls perfectly in line with his story of being a knight all too familiar with the battlefield.
One more time, just to hammer this home, the Crusader can't dual wield 2-handed weapons (come on, so OP,) he can only wield a 2-handed weapon and a shield. Mechanically this was done to allow the Crusader the option of wearing his shield and still having weapon options. As for the Barbarian, we don't have any plans to allow that right now, but wouldn't say it's completely out of the question for the future.
