PAX East 2012 News, Infos, Videos, Screenshots...

[carrierx]

Hurray, I finally got to play this on Sunday. Felt right at home as soon as I sat down! Everything felt good and right and I had no issues. Only got to play for 20 minutes or whatever but it was still enough time to start right in hardcore, forget to watch my healthbar, and die to something at like level 5, hahaha... Can't wait for release, keep it up Runic, so excited to play again!!

another one !

Get his eyes ! The preciousssssssssssss!

[globalist]

Um, yeah settle down folks. I guess I should have marked my post as being 'Sarcastic'. I really doubt they stole anything. There are places in Dungeon Defenders that look a lot like Runics style. It's not a new style, Runic just puts their own spin on it, that's all. And really? How the hell can anyone steal art from a game that isn't even out? Settle down people sheesh lol

Besides. Good artists borrow, great artists steal. It doesn't matter how similar the art styles look, you never know, their game might just be transformative enough to be their own unique spin on things.

If you "really doubt they stole anything", then why make posts like this on Yotube?

Wow. It looks like they didn't even bother changing the textures on the models they stole from Torchlight lol

ZiddersRooFurry 21 hours ago

[dreamrider]

Well, he did stick that "lol" in there, indicating that the post was in jest.

dreamrider

[SimonSaysBaka]

Dam, Im even more excited for the game now, this will be the first game I will take time off to play in a long long time.

Excellent work guys, looks awezome!

[travisbaldree]

ye.. that confused me
ghost bar was slow interpolation of normal health bar, but monster died when already normal health bar run out, so I'm missing the point there a bit.
why not highlight portion of health bar decreased by caused damage and then slowly shrink it linearly. This will at least give info about how hard you hit monster (by seeing how big highlighted area is). I think Aion has something like this?

The only purpose of the ghost bar is so that you can easily see what percentage of their health was removed - damage is still instantaneous.
Same thing happens on your own health globe. If you have numbers turned off, or sparse, or you just don't look at them, it provides an at-a-glance way to tell how much damage was dealt, relatively.

[Jackalhead]

I like how the ghost bar feels. Makes it feel like you're actually bleeding the life out of them somehow.

[noy0824]

Hi everyone!
Wow, PAX East was great! The response from everyone was awesome, and I want to thank NVidia for the opportunity to show there. We hadn't planned to show it publicly because we are so busy right now, but NVidia made it possible by supplying a venue and great help from their staff, so thanks to them!

I also want to clear something up - there are evidently articles and posts floating around that we have a release date - we don't! There was a "misunderstanding" based off a quote involving the release date of Diablo III. While talking about that, the point I made was that we didn't want to release at the same time they do if we happened to be finished at the same time, and would want some breathing room on either side. I said the ideal breathing room for that would be about 30 days, but that we are, as always, committed to finishing it right and have no date in mind. If you look at the source article, the only actual quote from me is the one word, "ideally", without the rest of the conversation. We will release when it's done, and we don't know exactly when that is yet.

By the way, we were right next to the Blizzard guys showing Diablo III, and I mean RIGHT next to them. Like 8 feet away. It was great! They are really cool guys, Bashiok and Chad, and we had a fun time chatting and checking each other's games out.
Far from being awkward, it was like hanging with old friends with a lot of mutual respect.

Anyway, I haven't looked at this thread at all, or any of the coverage from PAX except the occasional tweet, because I got home at midnight last night, so I'm going to spend some time this morning checking it out. Based on the reaction from people playing, I'm looking forward to seeing what people have written and posted.

Max Schaefer
CEO, Runic Games

the great Max Schaefer!! clap.. clap..

from the video of gamespot i noticed that rendering behind the wall looks great now.. you can see more detail in the character and enemies.. i dont know how to explain but they really look great now.. the map icon than i've seen so far are.. round, leaf, heart and skull shapes

[Dusho]

...

The only purpose of the ghost bar is so that you can easily see what percentage of their health was removed - damage is still instantaneous.
Same thing happens on your own health globe. If you have numbers turned off, or sparse, or you just don't look at them, it provides an at-a-glance way to tell how much damage was dealt, relatively.

aah.. i see. but then wouldn't it make sense to make ghost bar catch up onto normal health bar before receiving next blow.. that way you will see effect of each blow. When looking at fight in video (mark 3:41), you see that ghost bar is way too slow than normal health bar.
But then, I guess it is hard to come up with time constant during which to catch up to normal health bar (attack speed, fastest one in game?).

[fkl]

but then wouldn't it make sense to make ghost bar catch up onto normal health bar before receiving next blow.. that way you will see effect of each blow.

but when you think about it, you don't need to see the exact moment ghost bar catches up to know much you hurt the monster. you already know monsters current health, what you need is giving previous state more screen time and a ghost bar does just that.

[jamesL]

at 3:58 http://www.gamespot.com/events/pax-east ... id=6370555

when the player is standing at the steps of the burning building

if the player just stood there, would he receive fire damage and eventually die ?

[amb2010]

From the video it doesn't look that way since the player did stand in it (or run into I suppose is more accurate) for a second or two and nothing happened.

[gold163]

I think the burning building is just there for cosmetic effect. It's in the starting area anyway so it wouldn't make sense for some oblivious player to become too damaged from it.

I think we have enough hazards in the form of monsters to worry about Although I will say I didn't really notice a lot of traps, but that may just because of the outdoor environments and lack of chests.

[Omnifas]

at 3:58 http://www.gamespot.com/events/pax-east ... id=6370555

when the player is standing at the steps of the burning building

if the player just stood there, would he receive fire damage and eventually die ?

wouldn't be too hard to add

[adoomgod]

http://www.gamespot.com/events/pax-east ... id=6370555 (the same video on youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpXQO76bjrY)

Really not a good player. Really. Did he use a potion more than once? Bleh. I know he was rushing to show off as much as he could but, his combat skills.... He just let his mana run out and never hit a mana potion. I wonder if he even plays computer games...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaPiY5rR29w

Better. Probably should stick in normal though, unless that was a higher difficulty, then he should stick to that .

Bleh. Bleeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I'm just jealous.

[Rusty]

Haha Doom you make me laugh. I am jealous as well.

The second video made me more interested in the Embermage. My engineer will still be first, but the Embermage looks pretty stinking awesome. Some of those skills and weapon effects just look amazing.

Also of note, you can see one of the Engineer's bots in action about 3/4 of the way through the second video.

PS. Did anyone else see this http://youtu.be/i2we_dHrud0

[Chthon]

So, I re-watched the gamespot video with my trusty pause button at the ready.
Some things jumped out at me, and some things I was able to tease out with well-timed pauses.
Items of particular interest (to me at least) are in bold.
Questions (for Runic or whoever feels they are able to answer) are underlined.

[4:46]
Hover display for "Bloody Sweep Blade" (blue claw weapon)

• Attack speed is expressly shown. Yes! TL1 was confusing as heck trying to figure out what the actual speed on a weapon was. How much faster was "very fast" over "fast"? Well, now we know.
• A follow-up question: How does increased attack speed work? Does "X% faster" take on its plain English meaning -- your attack rate is increased by X%? Or does it work like Guild Wars and decrease your attack interval by X%? Or something else?
• Bimodal item reqs -- Items (or at least this item) has requirements that looked like "X str and Y dex -OR- lvl Z." Very, very interesting. My first instinct is, "cool, now I can use (low level) off-spec items with very special mods."
• Uh, is there a rounding error in the item damage calculations?
  The "Bloody Sweep Blade" has the following stats:
  
  • 15-35 damage
  • 0.64sec attack period
  • 30 damage over 5 sec (bleeding effect?)
  And it shows a DPS of 40. How is that possible?
  
  • If we count only the base damage, we should have ((15+35)/2)/0.64 = 39.0625 rounds to 39, not 40.
  • If we include the bleeding(?) mod, then we should have (((15+35)/2)/0.64) + (30/5) = 45.0625 rounds to 45, definitely not 40.
  The same thing with the white berserker claw: ((9+22)/2)/0.64 = 24.21875, rounds to 24, not the 25 shown.
  My best guess is that everything over X.0 is getting rounded up to X+1.

[General combat observation]

• The charge bar seems like it's charging based on damage dealt, rather than per hit. (as I've mentioned elsewhere, that's probably a good thing in terms of balance.)
• The charge bar seems to be charging a lot slower here than in the runic-made demo. (Perhaps because the interviewer wasn't very good and/or had a low level character?)
• "shattered" = broke the monster's shield? What causes shattered to occur?
• rocks = D2 hidden stash

[5:50]
The merchant

• It seems that she is not wearing a shirt, despite the fact that people probably sell her low-AL tops all the time...
• I noticed elemental resistance potions (grants 40 resist for 5 min) in her inventory.
• Follow-up question: How do resists work? Do they subtract an integer off incoming damage? a percentage? something else entirely? (If an integer, how can 40 resist stay relevant later in the game?) How do they differ how armor works, if at all?

[6:36]
The stat panel!

• Strength
  
  • Gives a % increase to weapon damage.
    
    • That strikes me as a really elegant way to represent it.
    • Looks like it scales 0.5% per point.
    • Looks like the bar is around 200% long. Correct?
    • Assuming the above, str theoretically maxes at 400 points or level 80 if sinking everything into str. So, the level cap is probably 100 to stop more realistic 3str/lvl builds from hitting the max?
  • Boosts critical damage.
    
    • Also a % increase.
    • Looks like it scales 0.4% per point
    • The bar appears to be 100% long (which would also jive with how MAx kept saying "double damage" in reference to crits).
    • Which would imply crit bonus maxes at 250 points in str.
• dexterity
  
  • improves critical chance
    
    • Looks like it scales 0.2% per point
    • Bar appears to be maybe 50% long, which implies a cap at 50%?
    • It makes me happy to see physical damage dealers need str+dex again. Feels more like D2. My TL1 destroyer had decision-making that was a little too easy when it came to stat points.
  • Chance to dodge
    
    • Looks like the math for dodge is identical to that of crit
    • cap at 50%?
  • fumble recovery
    
    • (for those who didn't catch it explained elsewhere, a fumble is an anti-critical hit that does a % less than normal damage.)
    • This reduces the fumble penalty.
    • But it's hard to tell what's going on here. It looks like you start at doing 24.9% of normal damage if you fumble at 0 dex and then do 0.3% of normal damage more for each point of dex. Is that anywhere close to right?
• focus
  
  • increases mana
    
    • OK, that is very D2-like. I think I like this. (I'm assuming vitality will increase hp too.) I miss having meaningful control over my max health/mana.
    • What's the scale? I'm guessing that not all of your max mana comes from points in focus. Here we see a lvl 3 with 5 focus has 55 mana, so I guess 10mana*lvl + 5mana*focus. Even close?
  • "Chance to parry"?
    
    • I see it in the header text, but no bar. Hidden stat? Removed from the game but not the text? Not implemented yet?
  • Increases magic damage
    
    • Looks like this shares math with weapon damage.
    • I note that magic weapons use the focus stat rather than str. Great. Being totally unable to deal weapon damage as a caster always annoyed me about D2, and I felt tying caster weapons to a caster stat was a great improvement over D2 in Guild Wars, and I expect to like it here too.
    • On the topic of casters dealing weapon damage, in the other video, I think I saw the mage's wand shooting little magic bolts as its base attack. Good. I greatly prefer caster weapons being ranged.
    • Question: If a melee weapon has elemental damage in addition to its base physical damage, will that elemental damage scale with focus, strength, or neither?
  • Execute chance.
    
    • Looks like 0.2% per point.
    • Looks like a 100% long bar.
    • Very interesting that melee characters are being given an incentive to split stats 4 ways.
    • Speaking of 2-handing, is the attack speed going to work the same way as TL1? TL1 dual wielding has been (rightly, it seems,) criticized for always doing less damage than one-handing your better weapon plus a shield. If I recall correctly, the "right" answer would be to swing your arms independently, but what happens in TL1 is that the attack speed gets averaged and then applied per arm, meaning each arm swings ~50% slower than it should. Is this fixed in TL2? If not, does execute provide enough added DPS to make up for the lost DPS because of slower swinging? How much damage does execute do -- is it equivalent to 2 hits at once, or is there more to it?
      (An alternative "right" way to do dual wielding would be to average the attack periods, divide by 2, then apply that to each arm.)
• Vitality
  
  • The interviewer doesn't mouse over vit. Arg!
  • Guessing it gives bonuses to hp and armor. Correct? Does it do anything else?
  • Also, since I was never clear on this in TL1, I might as well ask: How is armor going to work in TL2? Is it just an integer knocked off the incoming damage? Does it reduce the incoming damage by a percentage? Something else entirely? Also, what's the difference between armor and resists?

[7:10]
The skill panel!

• General stuff
  
  • 15-point caps.
    Are these hard, soft, or squishy caps? ("Hard" meaning like TL1 -- put X points in and that's as high as it goes; "soft" meaning like Guild Wars -- can't put more than X points in, but you can achieve a higher, unlimited value by using non-skillpoint things like gear; "squishy" meaning that you can't put more than X points in, and you can increase it somewhat beyond that using gear, etc., but eventually hitting a hard cap.)
  • Really curious about these skills scaling with player level. What's the rationale behind that?
• Eviserate
  
  • AoE hit, causes damage over time (bleed?)
  • bleed scales with player level. Interesting.
  • Inflicts X% of weapon DPS.
    
    • This mod has always puzzled me in TL1. Weapon DPS is a rate, but it sounds like it's getting fed back into the equation as a damage range. This would mean that weapons faster than 1sec/attack will do more than their the top of damage range at "inflicts 100% of weapon DPS," and weapons slower than 1sec/attack will do less than the bottom of their damage at "inflicts 100% of weapon DPS." Is that correct? Also, what's the attack speed on skills like this -- is it fixed regardless of weapon or does it inherent the weapon's speed? Inheriting the weapon's speed would mean that, out of two weapons with the same DPS being input to the skill, the faster one will do much more final DPS from using the skill.
      I'd really, truly appreciate a thorough explanation of what exactly "inflicts X% of weapon DPS means."
• Wolfstrike
  
  • charging attack, hits everything in path, knockback, stun
  • Another stat I've never quite understood from TL1... what's a unit of knockback, and do they cancel 1-to-1 with knockback resistance? Is there anything more to the equation than those two variables?
• Blood Hunger
  
  • passive that heals you a % of max hp when you critical strike.
  • Seems borderline overpowered. (But then again, so is leech...)
• Rupture
  
  • unclear if it's a single-target or multi-hit skill. Says both "foes" and "target."
  • knockback, stun, then monster does an AoE explosion after a delay.
  • explosion scales with player level.

[8:55]
HALF a skeleton crawling after the player!

[10:13]
Loading screen flavor text hints at new enchanting system:
"most items you find [I wonder what "most" means] can receive two enchantments from enchanters. Enchanters can remove existing enchantments so items can be enchanted again. Master enchanters can be discovered with special talents."
Ohhhhhhhh
So. No more turning any old piece of junk into the strongest weapon on earth. Nothing is going to be more than 2 mods better than what the devs put in the drop tables. No more losing a good item to chance. Assuming a given enchanter can potentially give more than one mod, a huge gold sink trying to get the right combination. (Possibly tilted too far against the player if the pool of possible mods is too big.) Sounds like the best mods are reserved for the master enchanters. Wondering if they're going to be random encounters or rewards for hard quests.

[11:40]
death penalty is just gold, or more gold.

[11:57]
bear traps!!!

Greens are always id'ed. Blues are always id'ed on pickup if their level is yours or below. When you level up it does this check again. Uniques are never auto id'ed.

Fantastic!

finally some HQ video, though I'm a bit disappointed with what I saw...
running speed is really fast, looks like you can outrun everything in level..

Doesn't bother me. It worked in this demo, but it's not a viable long-term strategy. Just like in D2, running past monsters will sooner or later leave you in a bottleneck with monsters ahead and monsters behind. And then you die.

fast speed also makes it harder to target, as we saw again

That might be an issue. In TL1 the Haste spell got hopelessly too fast. I'd rather not see that happen again.

[DarkTails]

That's the third time I see people comment that the player probably sucked. He was only like level 4 and was running into mobs of monsters that were level 7, obviously he's going to get pounded (at least that's what it looked like from the fuzzy quality, I ain't waiting to load HD on my middling connection lol), so how about everyone lay off before Gamespot publishes an article about what douches we are on the forums

[hawkn]

Idk, I managed to hold my own in very hard against a champion who was a few levels above me (okay fine, I kited him for 5 minutes). So therefore he sucks.

Also, there wasn't much that we didn't already know in the video, but it was still entertaining.

[amb2010]

[*]Uh, is there a rounding error in the item damage calculations?
The "Bloody Sweep Blade" has the following stats:

• 15-35 damage
• 0.64sec attack period
• 30 damage over 5 sec (bleeding effect?)

And it shows a DPS of 40. How is that possible?

• If we count only the base damage, we should have ((15+35)/2)/0.64 = 39.0625 rounds to 39, not 40.
• If we include the bleeding(?) mod, then we should have (((15+35)/2)/0.64) + (30/5) = 45.0625 rounds to 45, definitely not 40.

The same thing with the white berserker claw: ((9+22)/2)/0.64 = 24.21875, rounds to 24, not the 25 shown.
My best guess is that everything over X.0 is getting rounded up to X+1.[/list]

[General combat observation]

• The charge bar seems to be charging a lot slower here than in the runic-made demo. (Perhaps because the interviewer wasn't very good and/or had a low level character?)

Just felt I should answer (or take a guess I suppose) those. I'm assuming the issue with damage counters is the number of things affecting it that you can't take into account with a simple formula of the damage per second. Armor or resistance of the monsters for example or any skills that increase damage and what not.

EDIT: I was wrong about the charge bar speed, they did mess with the speed of the video but they slowed it down in spots, not sped it up.

[Zidders]

so how about everyone lay off before Gamespot publishes an article about what douches we are on the forums

Your mom. ^_^