Diablo 3.5 «Vessel of Hatred»

Panel hosted by Tim Ismay, Senior Producer, D4

First up: David Kim, Lead Systems Designer

We've announced 3 classes:
First up: Sorceress, Master of Magic
Deals Damage from a distance - shows some video of Conduit Skill - invulnerable, deal damage, infinite teleport
Chill Mechanic: Targets hit chill, stacking movement speed reduction, stacks up high enough that it freezes the enemy

Barbarian is back! Physical melee damage dealer.
Arsenal system - 4 weapons equipped, means more item affixes and more legendaries than other classes.

Druid is a Shapeshifter - human, werewolf, and werebear.
Uses Earth and Storm magic.
Shifts happen when you use a particular school of magic
Bonuses attached to shape shifting can be timed with use of skills

Skill point system - goals is increased sense of power progression, power, and customization
Skill points - pretty straight foward - either pick new skills or rank up existing skills.
Skill points granted on level up and on discovery of skill point tomes.
Bottom of the tree is most powerful - from simple to more complicated play styles.
Uses example of a cold branch on the wizard tree - i.e. skill that says instead of freezing, you get a bonus to damage.

Second: Angela Del Priore
Open World/Shared World
Dungeons are not open world - max party size 4, still 'private'
Campaign areas start as private, only to you and your party. Once you've completed the campaign objective for that area, the world becomes shared.
What does open world mean? Seeing players outside your party, public events, huge shared bosses
Collectibles, open world pvp, other players, crafting materials - all in the Open World.
How many players? Achieving a certain feeling - it should feel like a bleak and dangerous place so on occasion you'll see one or two other players but mostly be alone. Exceptions will be something like world boss event where more players will be seen in a certain area. Towns are the same.

Example of playing D4 with other players: You can jump into parties - party leader's state in the campaign area is shared with the party. Not stuck in your own story mode.
Clans will exist - with clan banners.
In game voice chat for parties and clans.
2 player couch co-op on consoles supported.

What about more solo players? Nothing has to be done in a player, all the best content can be done solo or in a group - nothing stopping you from doing everything on your own.
The level to which you engage with others is totally up to you. It's just as viable to play alone.

Third up: Zaven Haroutunian
Talking about Dungeons
Lots of dungeons in D4 - we want them dark, dangerous, and scary.
Dungeons are randomly generated.
Wants a tension between risk and reward in D4 dungeon crawling.
Randomly generated buildings OR exteriors.
Seamless exploration - this means no more loading screens to go from one floor to another! We can blend randomly generated tile sets together - dungeons can be sprawling interconnected areas.
As you're crawling your way through dungeons, there will be random events and dungeon objectives.
Random events: no longer restricted to a certain place in the world - i.e. Altar of Bishibosh in Whispering Woods or Alter.
Dungeon objectives - creates a sense of identity for a specific dungeon to set them apart from one another. Objectives are completed by doing specific things in the dungeon like killing a specific mob. Doing more objectives changes the dungeon i.e. once you complete an objective, the final boss could be alerted and send more mobs at you, etc.
End game dungeons: We know doing one thing over and over again is not great. Look for Varied Content, Strategic Depth, and Player Agency.
Adding a new item called a Dungeon Key - for a specific dungeon, upgrades a specific dungeon to an End Game Dungeon - improves quality of drops.
Dungeon keys can roll a specific affix for that dungeon.
Example - Lightning Pulse - adds a lightning pulse which chases you through the dungeon until you complete a particular objective - can't be killed until that particular objective is done.
Plan is to haven hundreds of dungeons in the game. Upgrades to dungeons, changes in difficulty and affixes, will require different builds, skills, etc.

Fourth: Joe Shely on Monsters
Fallen lunatics are back!
Skeletons - in D4, new item called Skeletal Ballista
Elites: new category of affixes
Enhancing Affixes - so for a mob that shoots arrows, they can gain Multishot. But if it's on a Fallen Shaman, instead of resurrecting one brute, he resurrects three.
Boss: Tomb Lord - resurrector, blinds you with storm of bone, etc.
New to D4 - Evade ability available to all classes. A dash and a strike back - good to get out of things.
Unstoppable - Break out of crowd control and become immune.
Boss: Ashava - first world boss. VERY LARGE!