Wilson Answers Diablo 3 Solo Gameplay Question

Solo Gameplay

Is it possible to play the game alone? Does it make a difference whether or not I play in a group or solo? Are there better drops, are there more monsters? Is there any special incentive to play one way over another?

Wilson: We’re trying to make the game slightly more attractive to play cooperatively. When you play in a group, each player gets maybe a little bit more loot, but not necessarily any better loot than you’d get in a solo game. The drop system in Diablo works like a slot machine, the more drops you have, the greater chance you have to get something better. So the co-op situation is fine-tuned so that the chances of monsters appearing are higher. Let’s say we’re playing with 3 people, all together, and we defeat a skeleton. The skeleton drops something for everybody, but your drop can only be seen for you, nobody else. So we no longer have to fight with others to get our fair share of drops.

We don’t want players to be alone, we’d rather they be in a group. You might be at a slight disadvantage playing solo, but not enough that you won’t want to play. We adjust automatically whenever players join or leave. You likely won’t see any loot changes from boss kills, and it’s not necessary, since when he dies everyone will get their own loot, which is the biggest change from Diablo 2. This can become advantageous if you exchange and trade your drops with theirs and is another way to bring players together. It’s also one of our main objectives, we want players to be level with each other and we don’t want them to be discouraged to overcome obstacles together [at the risk of maybe not getting any loot]. We don’t want people to be like “I don’t want to play with you because you steal all the loot.” So we remove the possibility to do this, so the experience can be positive for every individual who decides to play.