For those of you who are lucky enough to have gotten a beta license for Diablo 3, you might already know what I’m going to tell you, but for those who do not, take heed. A feature not present in Diablo 2 has made its way into Diablo 3, and while they might seem harmless now, I can see people obsessing with them. These things I’m talking about are the combos.
Doing a certain feat, like killing a certain number of enemies in one hit will net you one of these combo experience bonuses. There are five known ways to get this bonus in the beta right now:
- Massacre – for killing a certain number of monsters in quick succession (see the above video for the current record, belonging to HunterStarcraft).
- Mighty Blow – for killing a certain number of monsters in one attack.
- Pulverize – for killing a certain number of monsters with the environment (these can actually stack, so dropping 2 chandeliers on monsters in quick succession will add to the record).
- Destruction – for destroying a certain number of environment objects with one attack (this is very location dependent).
- Survival – for surviving a battle at extremely low health (luck will pay a major part in this I think).
- Savior – for saving a teammate from death (I do not know if this one actually happens in the beta, I’ve never seen it, but it is in the game files).
In addition, there are a few more that seem to be related to PvP only, like Domination – killing the entire enemy team. You can check out all of the data-mined stuff over here, courtesy of Diablo IncGamers.
Now then, the thing about these callouts is that all of them give you experience. The more impressive the feat, the higher the amount of experience you will get. You can get two six-kill Massacres in close succession, or you can get a 12-kill bigger Massacre. The experience bonus you get is higher if you do the more impressive feat, making people want to go higher and higher.
This is where the game design genius comes in. Diablo has already been a game about loot, getting loot to increase numbers, getting numbers to kill bigger monsters for better loot and hence even higher numbers. Blizzard has added another of those addictive elements to the game: High Scores.
To convey and encourage high score behavior, they have implemented achievement logging, in the same way as the Frogger leaderboard in an arcade would. Only it isn’t visible. The one thing that gives it away is the text “NEW RECORD” written over the feat you have made.
If you are not convinced that fans won’t be able to see much daylight once Diablo 3 comes out, then hide yo kids, hide yo wife, hide yo husbands and yo computers, cuz Diablo 3 may turn out to be the most addictive game that has come out in a long while.
