Diablo III on PS3 and PS4 may have offline co-op

Sony has revealed information on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 ports of Blizzard’s hit hack-and-slash title, Diablo III. Much of this information was revealed by Sony's John Hight during an interview with GameTrailers host Geoff Keighly. The video is no longer hosted on YouTube at the time of publishing.

Hight said, "You can have four people on the same screen - no split-screen, we just zoom the camera out. Or if you're offline..." This implies that the game will have four-player offline co-operative mode. Many gamers have complained about the lack of an offline game mode in the PC version of Diablo III.

Hight has also mentioned that the PlayStation 3 version of Diablo III is much further along in development than the PlayStation 4 version. He revealed that the developer team had some thoughts about how the DualShock 4's touchpad could be used. The game is set to come with all the updates out of the box, along with PVP. Currently, Blizzard hasn't announced any release date for the console ports.

The interface is getting redesigned for controllers

Blizzard revealed information on the PVP elements of Diablo III back in January. PVP was added to the game in patch 1.0.7. The biggest addition was the addition of duelling. To duel another player, you need to talk to an NPC named Nek the Brawler at the inn in New Tristram. Speaking to him will take you and your party to the Scorched Chapel—a new zone designed specifically for PVP. The zone has custom geometry and features four areas: the church, the graveyard, the river and the lake. At the moment, dueling supports up to four players in a Free-For-All format, which means you can fight people either one-on-one, have a three-player Free-For-All, or go all out in a full four-player Free-For-All.

The new zone was created so that players don't get griefed by other players when they're not looking to duel. At the moment, the game doesn't keep any score and there are no objectives. "We wanted dueling to be as simple and straightforward as possible, so we created a minimalist system—we know that even without rewards and objectives, some players just want to beat each other up," Blizzard stated.

The patch also saw some balance changes to the classes. For class balance, Blizzard has focused on improving the Wizard and the Monk in this patch. The Wizard has received a buff to some of its spells such as Arcane Orb, Blizzard and Shock Pulse. There are also some small changes, like allowing Illusionists to reset the cooldown of Slow Time and increasing the slow effect of Temporal Flux from 30 percent for 2 seconds to 60 percent for 3 seconds.

The Monk is also getting some buffs, especially to spells that spend its Spirit. This was mostly done to offer players some alternatives when they have excess Spirit in a fight. A typical Monk keeps casting Mantra of Conviction with Overawe for a 3-second bonus to spend excess spirit. "While this is totally legitimate, we want to provide alternate uses for your extra Spirit. As a result, we are greatly buffing all the damage-dealing Spirit Spenders to try and provide an alternate use for your Spirit."