So, there has been back and forth conversation about the actual role of mercs (hirelings). We have seen some "followers" in the first gameplay video but it turns out that these archers were only NPC's meant to join and die soon after much like the barbarians in Act 5 in D2.
Official Blizzard Quote:
What you've seen are the throw away helpers you can pick up on the field and they follow you, and are helpful, but usually die off pretty fast. They're not intended as a replacement for the mercenary system of yore.
I wonder just what plans they do have in store then for the actual mercenaries for D3.I hope that we at least get to do more than equip a helm, chest, and weapon on them. Some skill allocation mught be fun to help customize your merc and some basic controls like stay, attack, defend would defintely help to keep them alive.
Someone said something that we would here more about followers from the blizzcon this year. I think it was bashiok or probably Jay. Not sure who said it but I am 100% sure that they haven't revealed some kind of special thing about it.
I got the impression there were two different types of followers though from all the information. There's the ones that die that you can pickup during missions and such that die off relatively easily that we already know about and there could possibly be a more powerful hireling type of one but that's just speculation. One thing is certain they haven't revealed all the info on them and they said there would be more info on it.
I am not going to use mercs but I hope Blizzard surprises us in this area. Well my two reasons for not liking the mercs are that I don't want something helping me to finish the game and that they are too stupid and thus die too quickly.
My mercs never died too often. But I usually preferred the ranged ones. I know in D2 everyone went for the Act 2 merc cause you could equip him with Insight among other runewords, but the Act 1 and 3 mercs were pretty decent at crowd control and they stayed out of range of most swarms of enemies.
And I wouldn't see the merc as just being there to help finish the game. You still have to manage your merc. But they should definitely add more features to the merc without having to manage it any more than you did in the last game. I think there should also be options for making him fight offensively or defensively only.
In Fallout it was kind of cool how you could tell your party members to either stay close to you or keep your distance. Something like this would have to work differently in Diablo though since it's not a turn based game. But maybe there would be an invisible circle around you that they would either have to stay on the outside or inside of.
The only useful mercs in D2 were Act II mercs at higher levels. They've got to change a lot for the new mercenary system to be appealing.
Mm, maybe for some there's just no difference between useful and effective. Like, the Act 2 mercs were the most effective for killing things, but all the mercs were pretty useful in simply helping to manage crowds and stuff.
Mercs were fun. They just seemed a little pointless sometimes. They did their job.
I enjoy the idea of finding them along your journey and them just kind of dieing off when it gets a little too thick for em. It's new, less hassle, interesting for the story.
I actually liked the mercs, especially when soloing from scratch without importing items from other characters. Equipping a rogue with a gemmed hunter's bow could really help quite a bit, and the first thing I did when entering act two was gambling for a good polearm weapon. Agreed, later in the game they were more of a nuisance, but still with some tweaking I think they'd have great potential. But even if the mercs in D3 were not much different from the ones in d2, I'd gladly use them.
I don't think they're going to implement any of that though. Probably they won't want you to have to care about your mercs too much, so the action stays focused around your character. If they wanted to improve on the D2 merc system, they'd have to give you more control over your merc (issue orders etc) and probably that's not what they're looking for.
So well I wouldn't be surprised to see only the "throw away mercs" they've been talking about in the final game.
I actually liked the mercs, especially when soloing from scratch without importing items from other characters. Equipping a rogue with a gemmed hunter's bow could really help quite a bit, and the first thing I did when entering act two was gambling for a good polearm weapon. Agreed, later in the game they were more of a nuisance, but still with some tweaking I think they'd have great potential. But even if the mercs in D3 were not much different from the ones in d2, I'd gladly use them.
I don't think they're going to implement any of that though. Probably they won't want you to have to care about your mercs too much, so the action stays focused around your character. If they wanted to improve on the D2 merc system, they'd have to give you more control over your merc (issue orders etc) and probably that's not what they're looking for.
So well I wouldn't be surprised to see only the "throw away mercs" they've been talking about in the final game.
Word. Even giving the ability to give your Mercs orders is a pretty good idea. Yes, They'd want you to focus primarily on yourself but if you were capable of doing both, why not. For more "advanced" players maybe. Sounds interesting, but I still enjoy the idea of them not being apart of "you", and dieing off. Maybe thats the whole lore nerd inside of me.
Official Blizzard Quote:
What you've seen are the throw away helpers you can pick up on the field and they follow you, and are helpful, but usually die off pretty fast. They're not intended as a replacement for the mercenary system of yore.
I wonder just what plans they do have in store then for the actual mercenaries for D3.I hope that we at least get to do more than equip a helm, chest, and weapon on them. Some skill allocation mught be fun to help customize your merc and some basic controls like stay, attack, defend would defintely help to keep them alive.
I got the impression there were two different types of followers though from all the information. There's the ones that die that you can pickup during missions and such that die off relatively easily that we already know about and there could possibly be a more powerful hireling type of one but that's just speculation. One thing is certain they haven't revealed all the info on them and they said there would be more info on it.
And I wouldn't see the merc as just being there to help finish the game. You still have to manage your merc. But they should definitely add more features to the merc without having to manage it any more than you did in the last game. I think there should also be options for making him fight offensively or defensively only.
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I enjoy the idea of finding them along your journey and them just kind of dieing off when it gets a little too thick for em. It's new, less hassle, interesting for the story.
I don't think they're going to implement any of that though. Probably they won't want you to have to care about your mercs too much, so the action stays focused around your character. If they wanted to improve on the D2 merc system, they'd have to give you more control over your merc (issue orders etc) and probably that's not what they're looking for.
So well I wouldn't be surprised to see only the "throw away mercs" they've been talking about in the final game.