Stay Awhile and Listen Quotes

“items. While Monster Hunter included a single-player mode, its appeal was its online play. The five-man crew who had worked with Capcom thought some the game's networking code looked awfully familiar. "Same network infrastructure, same style of gameplay [as the PS2 Diablo title]," Joe Morrissey said. [Return to Chapter]”
― David L. Craddock, Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II - Heaven, Hell, and Secret Cow Levels

“moved to the aura-based system. That's part of development: You throw stuff out there, and it works or it doesn't." Ultimately, however, auras passed the Blizzard North test: If a proposal's merit held up after testing, it made the cut. Auras became a defining characteristic of the Paladin. His assortment of combat skills and defensive auras enabled solo players to survive and thrive on their own, while Paladin players were sought after on Battle.net for the benefits their auras granted to parties. To fully upgrade each of any hero's thirty skills would require 600 skill points. The maximum character-level is 99, meaning players will never receive enough points to master—fully upgrade—all thirty skills. That limitation forces them to make difficult choices: maximize proficiency in a few skills, focus on a half dozen, or potentially spread themselves thin to become competent in all abilities but a master of none. Because each hero's skills are exclusive, all players wind up specializing simply by choosing a class. From there they only specialize further, investing heavily in some skills, spending a single point in others to satisfy requirements for later abilities, and ignoring most of the rest. Those limitations are not meant to restrain players, but to encourage them to think carefully about upgrades. The thought they put into skill points creates a bond between players and their avatars, and the satisfaction that comes from seeing a character evolve—as well as choosing each and every piece of a character's equipment load—feeds into Dave Brevik's peacock mentality: No two players were likely to spec out the same hero. In fact, a single player could roll several Amazons or Paladins and develop each differently. In a way, assigning exclusive skills to Diablo II's heroes was more limiting than Diablo's spell books, which could be read and cast by any of the game's three heroes as long as players dumped enough experience points into their Magic stat. Blizzard North's team saw that limitation as a good thing. It fostered agency, asking players to play an active role in evolving their characters.”
― David L. Craddock, Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II - Heaven, Hell, and Secret Cow Levels