Difference between revisions of "Player versus Player"

Revision as of 11:18, 30 January 2011

PvP, or Player versus Player is head-to-head mortal combat, pitting players against other players. The design focus of Diablo III's multiplayer is on PvE cooperative play, but PvP will be supported as well through the Arena.

PvP in Diablo III will take place only in the Battle Arena. See that article for much more detail on this issue.

PvP in Diablo III

Unlike in Diablo II, there will not be any non-consensual PvP in Diablo III; there is no more "hostile switch" or any other way to duel or PK in a normal game. PvP will be supported only in special duelling or arena games. There aren't yet any concrete details about how this will be handled, but more details will be released as the game moves through the development process.

D3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson talked about the D3 Team's philosophy towards PvP on August 20, 2008. [1]

Jay Wilson: We'd like there to be a dedicated PvP mode, and we'd like to move away from [how it worked in previous Diablo games] where players just enabled PvP. We don't have any specific plans yet because we haven't really made any active decisions. The only real PvP-oriented decision that we've made and announced is that we do not allow the hostility mode that Diablo II had where you can go into town, go hostile, pop back through a town portal, and insta-kill your friend. That just makes people not want to play the game. I know some people say, "Oh, you're taking the teeth out of Diablo." I understand why they feel that way, but making people not want to play together does not make for a better game. That's our feeling.

We definitely want there to be a PvP mode for PvP players, and we would like that mode to be a really serious, skill-based, very strong [aspect of the game]. I feel that on the side of all our games, we really try to make PvP games that cater to a competitive player, first and foremost. We don't try to dumb down or tone down our PvP games. We make [them] good, strong competitive games. StarCraft is one of the best examples. But in terms of what our actual plans are for Diablo III, we don't have anything to specifically announce right now, mostly because we're still messing around with a bunch of different ideas.

Some details may be revealed at BlizzCon 2010 as Kevin Martens suggested in an interview at the 2009 event "We might be able to show some of that next year at Blizzcon."

PvP Does Not Slow Game Development

Spurred by a fan who asked if Blizzard could leave the PvP out of Diablo 3 at launch, and patch it in later in order to release the game more quickly, Diablo 3 community manager Bashiok explained why that's not an option and why PvP doesn't add much time to the overall development. Here's his quote, from May 2010. [2]

The PvP game is being developed alongside everything else, so it’s not as if the game is done and we’re ready to ship it but then stop and take a few months to balance things. Also, it’s to be expected that the game won’t be and won’t really need to be balanced right at release as it will take some time for people to really explore and begin reaching competition levels where more extreme balance is necessary or even possible for us to properly evaluate and react to.