I have never seen the weapon swap feature as such.
You either use it or don't. It's like being given a cup of coffee. You either drink it or not. you don't ask yourself- Do i know how to drink it or not.
I found the feature really useful very early on in the game, especially when you are a caster or melee- as you can have ranged weapon in your second slot.
Mid-game: weapon swap was meaningless to me. You were unlikely to find a second set of weapon/weapon or weapon/shield that was worth swapping for. Indeed you might not need one, especially if you are specializing in a particular damage- your skills without any 'boosters' are enough to cater for you with just one weapon of choice.
End-game- Weapon swap becomes important again.
For a direct-damage(melee or range)type, weapon swap becomes handy especially when you meet some nasty immune.
You can play around with a lot of combo Like having a chance to cast amp.damage(or any handy spell with %chance to cast) on one and the killer weapon on another. Or different elemental damage types concentration in different weapons. One set is cold based. The other lightning maybe.
For casters, I found weapon swap useful because you are a ranged guy. One slot will be for kickass shield and decent caster weapon for 'bad times' and the other for total killer damage(in +skills).
And no I never used it for MF because that was lame as shit. MF weapon had pitifully pathetic damage and the last breath of the boss drags on too much if you switch too early or if you wait too long, the boss is already freaking dead. I either went out in full MF gear or full killer. Waiting to hit the switch button at the right time was not something fun to me.
Anyway I found weapon swap a handy feature because it adds to customization in gampelay without carrying an extra weapon/shield in your packback and also not having to run with your tail between you legs when the heat gets turned on and you find you need to change weapons.
I remember the days of swapping out your damage gear for that Gull dagger. Although it still never seemed to make a difference for me. I still didn't get shit all.
I won't miss the weapon swapping too much. I mean, LoD was the one to introduce the feature, anyway. It's just another step in, hopefully, putting the Diablo series back to it's roots.
Totally AGREE. Back to the roots! Drop out some of the lame and pretty much useless features that came to the game with LOD. Or remake them in a lot better way.
Anyways i'm glad the buff switch is gone, pretty useless all in all.
Theres really no need for it. (Classic player speaking out lol :P)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
www.myspace.com/mpotatoes for all your Trans Siberian Orchestra listening pleasure
If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask
So in other words Blizzard don't want you to be able to hone or learn any new abilities or methods in Diablo 3 as everything will be auto taught already and the game will remain as linear as they make it from start. There will be no room for evolving gameplay much like Diablo 2 had and still does have. A fantastic design view going on there at Blizzard.
OH OH OH OH OH WAIT!!!! Let me guess...namelock will also be removed for the skill-less WoW auto namelock system cause the Blizzard reps again can't play Diablo with any skill and couldn't handle namelocking?
Everyone just says "i never use it, i'm glad it's not there". Wth ?!
If you don't want to use it, what damage this feature can do to your game experience??? Just ignore it.
This system have no disvantage, it don't take anything from players. The only possible "con" about his system is that it's complicated and noob unfriendly (but for me it's a "pro", not a "con").
I used weapon swap in many many D2 and it was allways a veru usefull feature for me. Exemples:
- Swap between one handed weapon + shield and two-handed weapons (this is veyr usefull since in some situations a shield is must have but in others it's excential to have that extra damage).
- Swap between a shield with a certain propriety and another with other propriety. Some shields give great resistances against elementals attacks, while others have better block rate. Know how to defend is one of the very few complexities of D2 gameplay.
- Swap between a weapon if needed propiety (like RIP or Life Leech) and a weapon with better damage and/or CB.
- Swap between a weapon for a certain skill and a weapon for another (like a orb with better fire skills and another orb with better cold skills in a meteorb sorc).
- Swap for a weapon with charges of interesting skills like wand/staff with LR, LT or CC curses (Dim Vision, Confusion and Attraction) and teleportantion staff (or that unique axe that give decripify and teleportation).
Those aspects was the ONLY thing that makes D2 gameplay more complex then choosing icons in your desktop. I could give then my vote of trust this time because i know D3 will be more complex then a simple point and click. But I won't buy bashiok's speech this time. Theres ZERO reason to take weapon swaps out of the game despite makes it more noob friendly... And, damnit, it's a freaking POINT AND CLICK ! Why it has to be more noob friendly ?!
They removed it because "most" people ended up using the system for reasons that were unintended by the devlopers. Unfortunately, it does come at the cost of people who used it appropriately but they decided it was not needed. We also know that are not having immunes so you do not have to worry about that. Each character also has a mobility skill so where you would have switched to a shield in an "oh shit" moment, you can use a skill now to get away.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
Jay Wilson: Well, the main reason for immunities in the game was to encourage party play. However, we have seen that some players just want to play by themselves? And that is fine, if a player wants to play single player, the player wants to play single player, we're not going to strong arm them into playing with others. Keeping this in mind, we aren't looking to have full immunities or anything of the sort; however we are considering keeping one-element immunities on enemies. Because of the way our skill system works it's almost impossible to build a character that won't have some alternate skill to attack an enemy. So then it becomes an interesting use of a skill or skills that you may not be using all the time. We think that's interesting and fun gameplay, to have to adapt to situations. The adaptation just shouldn't be realizing your character or class is broken and you have to run away or you need to get in a multiplayer game. Those are things we intend to avoid forcing the player into.
There will still be single element immunes but with the open skill tree and no synergies, all players should have a fairly wide rang of skills to use to overcome this.
How dare you question my vast knowledge of up-to-date Diablo III knowledge
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
They removed it because "most" people ended up using the system for reasons that were unintended by the devlopers. Unfortunately, it does come at the cost of people who used it appropriately but they decided it was not needed. We also know that are not having immunes so you do not have to worry about that. Each character also has a mobility skill so where you would have switched to a shield in an "oh shit" moment, you can use a skill now to get away.
Ok people ended up using it in no fun way (like MF and buffing) but are far better way to fix this issue without throwing out the whole thing.
About buffing weapons like hoto, memory and cta just make it in a way that the buff are only active when you're using the weapon. If you swap the buffs instantly vanish.
About mf weapons just add a multiplier based at the amount of damage you did to the monster with that weapon to the MF bonus. For exemple, you have a weapon if +100% MF. If you swap the weapon when the boss have 5% HP your bonus will be multiplied by 0.05 and turns into +5% MF.
About classes using scape skill instead of shields... It's just ridicolous. I assume in D3 we will have lots of gear choices (like 1H Weapon and Shield, Dual Wield or 2H weapon). I assume all those 3 "styles" are balanced, but obviously distinct, wich means every "style" have particular vantages and disvantages, dispite you having "scape skills". With weapon swap i can simply stratategically choose 2 of those 3 possibilities - and use the right one in the right time. Why is that alot more interesting then stick with one style? Because we don't want a linear gameplay. Linear game play = choose one weapon and one skill and stick with it no mather what you're facing.
About immunities. Well, just because i'm not FORCED to use a hybrid skill spec doesn't mean everyone will stick with one element and one spell. The game must support both "hybrid" and "pure" skill specs, and for hybrids a weapon swap allowying you to alternate weapons that better fits your secondary skills are very good. And even if you play with a "pure" skill spec doesn't mean a good variability of weapons isn't good. For exemple, you're a pure arcane wizard - but you could swap between a one handed wand and shield or a twohanded staff.
Assume that weapon swap is useless is assume that a character in a certain level will not be able to take advanange of a variety of weapons, he will just find that weapon that fits his spec perfectly and stick with it until find a better version of that same item. Blerg.
And the worst of all is that weapon swaps don't hurt anyone in anyway. "If you don't like it, don't use it!". The only reason for then to not put this in the game is that they want to make stuff more simple for handless players.
And i can't believe there are people that find swap useless. Sorry, but i can only assume that you never faced a really competitive PvP enviorment.
Like I said before the developers of D3 are horrible at D1 and D2. They are simply as newb as you can get. Get them in a game and I guarantee they get stomped.
They are trying to make this game as easy as it can get, as linear as it can get, and they want you to be able to play it, beat it, be the best at it without even touching a button. It's very evident with how the skills work, how no weapon swaps, how they remove parts of the game that require skill that they don't have and got spanked by. Watch namelock is next in which case this game is ruined point blank and may as well be called World of shitcraft.
I think saying that they took out weapon swap is because they have no skills and they want the game to be easy is taking it a bit far. They logically explained the problems with the system and why they took it out.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
Like I said before the developers of D3 are horrible at D1 and D2. They are simply as newb as you can get. Get them in a game and I guarantee they get stomped.
They are trying to make this game as easy as it can get, as linear as it can get, and they want you to be able to play it, beat it, be the best at it without even touching a button. It's very evident with how the skills work, how no weapon swaps, how they remove parts of the game that require skill that they don't have and got spanked by. Watch namelock is next in which case this game is ruined point blank and may as well be called World of shitcraft.
The only exception to that rule I have seen is when the original designers have either lost inspiration or lost sight of what the game was. IDK if you guys have every played the GOTHIC series, but that is what happened there.
I do agree that any NEW devs on an OLD series should at least TRY to understand the spirit of how the game was written to begin with.
Back on topic: Yeah, the devs had some good reasonings for why NOT to have weapon swaping and there are people who agree. We shall see how it works with out it.
Yeah, how much time does it really take to get in your inventory and switch item? And I assume here that D3 will support right click to equip...
Its still a waste of time, but you could still switch your stuff right before a boss dies if you want to.
What can be exploited with this, really? Magic/Gold Find? Is that what this is about?
Here is a real solution for you all: That kind of bonus apply to monsters only if they have been used for the majority of the monster/boss' life. So you would have to, say, remove at least 90% of the monster's health with that +magic find weapon equipped for that magic find bonus to apply.
Is that clever enough? I'm sure they could devise other solutions like this for that similar problems.
I say these solutions might sound hacky, but they are true solutions. I wish Blizzard would fix them, think and arrange, not just REMOVE. Complete removal of a feature because they can't be bothered to fix it? Thats called lazy. And Blizzard is not supposed to be lazy.
I used the inventory and can be very fast. I did it more to change gear depending on monsters or durability issues. I sometimes did it in battle. I found swaping for MF was a waste.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
On Strike and supporting Fallout 4 Mod Makers
Some fallout 4 mod makers have had their mods stolen and uploaded and downloaded on Bethesda's site for the Xbox One.
Exactly, the people that exploited the weapon-swap feature will still abuse it, it'll just take a bit longer, but with practice, it's gonna be very doable. As with so many things in D3 so far, all it's going to accomplish is to screw over players that used it legit.
Yep, your right.
And it was mentioned before, and answered to by Bashiok.
He said that if people start abusing weapon switch again from the inventory, they will remove the ability to do that as well.
And honestly, just looking at the number of players who agree with this decision, on various websites, compared with the ones who don't, just demonstrates TO AN EXTENT how unused it was.
Most people who used it was in game start, or game end. Buffing, MFing, etc. If by some miracle of God, you and vladdracul were the only ones on earth not using it for that, then congrats. You jsut happen to be in the 1% of D2 players who didn't.
However I do sympathize with those of you who liked the feature and used it properly as it was meant. Sucks for you guys who depended on it. But I'm sure you can do without..
Alot of the MFers, Duelers, PvMs all used it for MFing and Buffing. Even the BOTS were designed to use the weapon switch for buffs before runs.
I agree with Scyberdragon on this one, dissing the Devs by saying they are noobs is just being hateful. And honestly, most people really understood the clear reasons they gave for removing it, and agree with them.
It's not even about simplifying the game, it's about balancing, what D2 lacked, and ultimately plagued it for years. They want to balance every single tiny aspect of the game to make it mesh perfectly (a la SC). And that includes changing AND removing any systems that can be exploited or create imbalances.
And unfortunately for us, the Devs at Blizzard are the only ones on earth who fully grasp the balance issue since they know about every aspect of D3 while we know nothing. Every time we base a decision it's mostly after comparing it in D2 terms. Which is wrong by definition.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Diablo 3, Hottest shit to happen to 21st Century Entertainment since Georges "Rush" St-Pierre.______________ --------~~Mattheo's Quote of the day~~---------
----------Brought to you by Diablofans.com Forums -------- Originally Posted by mattheo_majik
I LOVE being a SEX TON!!!
I dunno were weapon swaps would fit in a balance equation.
If a certain weapon X is balanced and a certain weapon Y is balanced and you swap between X and Y theres no way it will turn out to be imbalanced. Balance can only be maded between variables that share covariance and weapons in different swap tabs have no covariance.
And yes D2 was FULL of imabalances but none was ever associated to the weapon swap feature.
So it creates a separation of players that isn't based on use of the character and skills but doing this weird little trick and swapping back and forth between weapons at specific times. It becomes a necessity to remain effective or as a strong opponent[.]
Among everything Bahsiok said this is the only one that makes sense. They simple don't want a gameplay based at switching weapons. He admits that in the end players that don't use this feature are in disvanatage and they don't think that this feature is good in terms of gameplay.
I just disagree with him. Imo combat must be based at make decisions. "What skill should I use now?". "What weapon should i use now?". No matter how complex it is right now, they are taking out a aspect that I enjoyed in the game because most people don't have enough hand and brain to master it.
I just can't imagine a RPG game were I can't change from two handed weapon for one handed one + shield. For me it's lame and a really bad news.
Cool, looks like I won't be playing anything like my amazon who switched between bow and spear, my Barbarian who switched between dual wield and a 2 hander, my Paladin who switched between sword and board and a two hander...
What a bad decision from a gameplay standpoint. I care not about PVP nor do I care about ladders.
You either use it or don't. It's like being given a cup of coffee. You either drink it or not. you don't ask yourself- Do i know how to drink it or not.
I found the feature really useful very early on in the game, especially when you are a caster or melee- as you can have ranged weapon in your second slot.
Mid-game: weapon swap was meaningless to me. You were unlikely to find a second set of weapon/weapon or weapon/shield that was worth swapping for. Indeed you might not need one, especially if you are specializing in a particular damage- your skills without any 'boosters' are enough to cater for you with just one weapon of choice.
End-game- Weapon swap becomes important again.
For a direct-damage(melee or range)type, weapon swap becomes handy especially when you meet some nasty immune.
You can play around with a lot of combo Like having a chance to cast amp.damage(or any handy spell with %chance to cast) on one and the killer weapon on another. Or different elemental damage types concentration in different weapons. One set is cold based. The other lightning maybe.
For casters, I found weapon swap useful because you are a ranged guy. One slot will be for kickass shield and decent caster weapon for 'bad times' and the other for total killer damage(in +skills).
And no I never used it for MF because that was lame as shit. MF weapon had pitifully pathetic damage and the last breath of the boss drags on too much if you switch too early or if you wait too long, the boss is already freaking dead. I either went out in full MF gear or full killer. Waiting to hit the switch button at the right time was not something fun to me.
Anyway I found weapon swap a handy feature because it adds to customization in gampelay without carrying an extra weapon/shield in your packback and also not having to run with your tail between you legs when the heat gets turned on and you find you need to change weapons.
Totally AGREE. Back to the roots! Drop out some of the lame and pretty much useless features that came to the game with LOD. Or remake them in a lot better way.
Anyways i'm glad the buff switch is gone, pretty useless all in all.
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask
OH OH OH OH OH WAIT!!!! Let me guess...namelock will also be removed for the skill-less WoW auto namelock system cause the Blizzard reps again can't play Diablo with any skill and couldn't handle namelocking?
If you don't want to use it, what damage this feature can do to your game experience??? Just ignore it.
This system have no disvantage, it don't take anything from players. The only possible "con" about his system is that it's complicated and noob unfriendly (but for me it's a "pro", not a "con").
I used weapon swap in many many D2 and it was allways a veru usefull feature for me. Exemples:
- Swap between one handed weapon + shield and two-handed weapons (this is veyr usefull since in some situations a shield is must have but in others it's excential to have that extra damage).
- Swap between a shield with a certain propriety and another with other propriety. Some shields give great resistances against elementals attacks, while others have better block rate. Know how to defend is one of the very few complexities of D2 gameplay.
- Swap between a weapon if needed propiety (like RIP or Life Leech) and a weapon with better damage and/or CB.
- Swap between a weapon for a certain skill and a weapon for another (like a orb with better fire skills and another orb with better cold skills in a meteorb sorc).
- Swap for a weapon with charges of interesting skills like wand/staff with LR, LT or CC curses (Dim Vision, Confusion and Attraction) and teleportantion staff (or that unique axe that give decripify and teleportation).
Those aspects was the ONLY thing that makes D2 gameplay more complex then choosing icons in your desktop. I could give then my vote of trust this time because i know D3 will be more complex then a simple point and click. But I won't buy bashiok's speech this time. Theres ZERO reason to take weapon swaps out of the game despite makes it more noob friendly... And, damnit, it's a freaking POINT AND CLICK ! Why it has to be more noob friendly ?!
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
Official Blizzard Quote:
Jay Wilson: Well, the main reason for immunities in the game was to encourage party play. However, we have seen that some players just want to play by themselves? And that is fine, if a player wants to play single player, the player wants to play single player, we're not going to strong arm them into playing with others. Keeping this in mind, we aren't looking to have full immunities or anything of the sort; however we are considering keeping one-element immunities on enemies. Because of the way our skill system works it's almost impossible to build a character that won't have some alternate skill to attack an enemy. So then it becomes an interesting use of a skill or skills that you may not be using all the time. We think that's interesting and fun gameplay, to have to adapt to situations. The adaptation just shouldn't be realizing your character or class is broken and you have to run away or you need to get in a multiplayer game. Those are things we intend to avoid forcing the player into.
There will still be single element immunes but with the open skill tree and no synergies, all players should have a fairly wide rang of skills to use to overcome this.
How dare you question my vast knowledge of up-to-date Diablo III knowledge
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
Ok people ended up using it in no fun way (like MF and buffing) but are far better way to fix this issue without throwing out the whole thing.
About buffing weapons like hoto, memory and cta just make it in a way that the buff are only active when you're using the weapon. If you swap the buffs instantly vanish.
About mf weapons just add a multiplier based at the amount of damage you did to the monster with that weapon to the MF bonus. For exemple, you have a weapon if +100% MF. If you swap the weapon when the boss have 5% HP your bonus will be multiplied by 0.05 and turns into +5% MF.
About classes using scape skill instead of shields... It's just ridicolous. I assume in D3 we will have lots of gear choices (like 1H Weapon and Shield, Dual Wield or 2H weapon). I assume all those 3 "styles" are balanced, but obviously distinct, wich means every "style" have particular vantages and disvantages, dispite you having "scape skills". With weapon swap i can simply stratategically choose 2 of those 3 possibilities - and use the right one in the right time. Why is that alot more interesting then stick with one style? Because we don't want a linear gameplay. Linear game play = choose one weapon and one skill and stick with it no mather what you're facing.
About immunities. Well, just because i'm not FORCED to use a hybrid skill spec doesn't mean everyone will stick with one element and one spell. The game must support both "hybrid" and "pure" skill specs, and for hybrids a weapon swap allowying you to alternate weapons that better fits your secondary skills are very good. And even if you play with a "pure" skill spec doesn't mean a good variability of weapons isn't good. For exemple, you're a pure arcane wizard - but you could swap between a one handed wand and shield or a twohanded staff.
Assume that weapon swap is useless is assume that a character in a certain level will not be able to take advanange of a variety of weapons, he will just find that weapon that fits his spec perfectly and stick with it until find a better version of that same item. Blerg.
And the worst of all is that weapon swaps don't hurt anyone in anyway. "If you don't like it, don't use it!". The only reason for then to not put this in the game is that they want to make stuff more simple for handless players.
And i can't believe there are people that find swap useless. Sorry, but i can only assume that you never faced a really competitive PvP enviorment.
Swapping between Melee (or wand/staff) and ranged weapons? That would be a good compromise if it worked well.
They are trying to make this game as easy as it can get, as linear as it can get, and they want you to be able to play it, beat it, be the best at it without even touching a button. It's very evident with how the skills work, how no weapon swaps, how they remove parts of the game that require skill that they don't have and got spanked by. Watch namelock is next in which case this game is ruined point blank and may as well be called World of shitcraft.
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
The only exception to that rule I have seen is when the original designers have either lost inspiration or lost sight of what the game was. IDK if you guys have every played the GOTHIC series, but that is what happened there.
I do agree that any NEW devs on an OLD series should at least TRY to understand the spirit of how the game was written to begin with.
Back on topic: Yeah, the devs had some good reasonings for why NOT to have weapon swaping and there are people who agree. We shall see how it works with out it.
If you're a ranged class, you can simply weapon swap to a buffing melee weapon, of if you're a melee character, swap off to a buffing ranged weapon.
And, should one weapon type have more buffing weapons than the other, then we've got a whole new host of imbalances to deal with.
Its still a waste of time, but you could still switch your stuff right before a boss dies if you want to.
What can be exploited with this, really? Magic/Gold Find? Is that what this is about?
Here is a real solution for you all: That kind of bonus apply to monsters only if they have been used for the majority of the monster/boss' life. So you would have to, say, remove at least 90% of the monster's health with that +magic find weapon equipped for that magic find bonus to apply.
Is that clever enough? I'm sure they could devise other solutions like this for that similar problems.
I say these solutions might sound hacky, but they are true solutions. I wish Blizzard would fix them, think and arrange, not just REMOVE. Complete removal of a feature because they can't be bothered to fix it? Thats called lazy. And Blizzard is not supposed to be lazy.
Yep, your right.
And it was mentioned before, and answered to by Bashiok.
He said that if people start abusing weapon switch again from the inventory, they will remove the ability to do that as well.
And honestly, just looking at the number of players who agree with this decision, on various websites, compared with the ones who don't, just demonstrates TO AN EXTENT how unused it was.
Most people who used it was in game start, or game end. Buffing, MFing, etc. If by some miracle of God, you and vladdracul were the only ones on earth not using it for that, then congrats. You jsut happen to be in the 1% of D2 players who didn't.
However I do sympathize with those of you who liked the feature and used it properly as it was meant. Sucks for you guys who depended on it. But I'm sure you can do without..
Alot of the MFers, Duelers, PvMs all used it for MFing and Buffing. Even the BOTS were designed to use the weapon switch for buffs before runs.
I agree with Scyberdragon on this one, dissing the Devs by saying they are noobs is just being hateful. And honestly, most people really understood the clear reasons they gave for removing it, and agree with them.
It's not even about simplifying the game, it's about balancing, what D2 lacked, and ultimately plagued it for years. They want to balance every single tiny aspect of the game to make it mesh perfectly (a la SC). And that includes changing AND removing any systems that can be exploited or create imbalances.
And unfortunately for us, the Devs at Blizzard are the only ones on earth who fully grasp the balance issue since they know about every aspect of D3 while we know nothing. Every time we base a decision it's mostly after comparing it in D2 terms. Which is wrong by definition.
--------~~Mattheo's Quote of the day~~---------
----------Brought to you by Diablofans.com Forums --------
Originally Posted by mattheo_majik
I LOVE being a SEX TON!!!
If a certain weapon X is balanced and a certain weapon Y is balanced and you swap between X and Y theres no way it will turn out to be imbalanced. Balance can only be maded between variables that share covariance and weapons in different swap tabs have no covariance.
And yes D2 was FULL of imabalances but none was ever associated to the weapon swap feature.
Among everything Bahsiok said this is the only one that makes sense. They simple don't want a gameplay based at switching weapons. He admits that in the end players that don't use this feature are in disvanatage and they don't think that this feature is good in terms of gameplay.
I just disagree with him. Imo combat must be based at make decisions. "What skill should I use now?". "What weapon should i use now?". No matter how complex it is right now, they are taking out a aspect that I enjoyed in the game because most people don't have enough hand and brain to master it.
I just can't imagine a RPG game were I can't change from two handed weapon for one handed one + shield. For me it's lame and a really bad news.
What a bad decision from a gameplay standpoint. I care not about PVP nor do I care about ladders.
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team