I'm greatly disappointed with the diablo community right now. So hard to explain to casual (even veterans, sigh) players that it's going to be fine w/o follower past normal or in c-op. I think a lot are still ignorant with what diablo 3 classes has to offer through out the game and still scared of not having followers with them.
This is making me want blizzard not to reveal the remaining systems as it will only unlock a lot of cry babies. It's like rainbows all over again, roflmao.
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I love all loot fest kind of game! I will be playing all of them for the next few years. Loot fest games I'm looking forward to: LotR: War in the North,Torchlight 2,Borderlands 2 and of course Diablo 3.
I'm greatly disappointed with the diablo community right now. So hard to explain to casual (even veterans, sigh) players that it's going to be fine w/o follower past normal or in c-op. I think a lot are still ignorant with what diablo 3 classes has to offer through out the game and still scared of not having followers with them.
I to am greatly disappointed . It really highlights the unwillingness of people to accept change. I'm just grateful that blizzard chose to develop D3, I know they don't owe me anything so I don't expect anything from them.. plus they will always do what's best for their shareholders (and that's to make a popular game), thats the nature of a publicly listed company.
Wow. When I read the first post, I had my mind made up about the "followers", but after reading all these posts, I just don't know what to think. They're "followers", not mercs, meaning they follow you, they don't (and can't) kill anything.
I'm a single player guy. I first played d2 with friends, then they stopped playing, and I didn't, so I tried bnet, and found a bunch of jackasses, so I went to SP, and I enjoy it much more alone.
And now I get the idea the bliz is really pushing co-op, to the point of crutching SP to coach you into MP.
Let's face it, this is Blizzard's game, not Blizzard North's, and I'm starting to think all of us who were hoping for a Blizzard North D3 are gonna be disappointed. Blizzard has a different idea for D3 than what were hoping for, and it's much more "community" oriented.
I get it, sort of, but I feel some of us who were hoping for a complete SP experience will miss out once again, but this time we won't be able to rely on mods to make it right.
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"It's hard to kill a man once you've seen pictures of his kids"
I'm greatly disappointed with the diablo community right now. So hard to explain to casual (even veterans, sigh) players that it's going to be fine w/o follower past normal or in c-op. I think a lot are still ignorant with what diablo 3 classes has to offer through out the game and still scared of not having followers with them.
I to am greatly disappointed . It really highlights the unwillingness of people to accept change. I'm just grateful that blizzard chose to develop D3, I know they don't owe me anything so I don't expect anything from them.. plus they will always do what's best for their shareholders (and that's to make a popular game), thats the nature of a publicly listed company.
LOL. Both of your statements are false. Why are we scared of playing alone if we are saying to scrap the idea? which is what most of us are saying. thats a very big change. btw.
Look I think the bottom line here is they can make mercs work as a viable endgame component of d3 and not ruin others' experience.
Don't like mercs? They can scale the difficulty similar to the way they did in d2; just count the merc as an extra player. Now you have the option and both options are viable.
Mercs taking up screen real estate? Creating chaos? Don't use them. Difficulty scales down just for you.
And let's be honest, the "mercs create chaos" argument is a joke. You're venturing into hell filled with demons bent on your destruction. You were expecting rainbows and unicorns?
I'm greatly disappointed with the diablo community right now. So hard to explain to casual (even veterans, sigh) players that it's going to be fine w/o follower past normal or in c-op. I think a lot are still ignorant with what diablo 3 classes has to offer through out the game and still scared of not having followers with them.
I to am greatly disappointed . It really highlights the unwillingness of people to accept change. I'm just grateful that blizzard chose to develop D3, I know they don't owe me anything so I don't expect anything from them.. plus they will always do what's best for their shareholders (and that's to make a popular game), thats the nature of a publicly listed company.
LOL. Both of your statements are false. Why are we scared of playing alone if we are saying to scrap the idea? which is what most of us are saying. thats a very big change. btw.
I'm on your side silly. My post are for peeps that wanted it more than normal (my mistake was I generalized). Anyway, I went to the official d3 forums and a bit surprised that there's no lengthy thread regarding followers.
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I love all loot fest kind of game! I will be playing all of them for the next few years. Loot fest games I'm looking forward to: LotR: War in the North,Torchlight 2,Borderlands 2 and of course Diablo 3.
Well the thing is those 'nubbins' are the majority of the people who have ever played D2 (or, more recently, SC2). So catering to them, at least in some ways, is almost forced upon the D3 team. And considering the aim of this system is to encourage them to become more hardcore and involved with the online community, as opposed to just trying to appeal to them, which I would say is much more indicative of their design mindset. They want a game that has a large community and a wide range of players.
Very well said, I agree. I definitely want a lot of people, of all skill ranges, to play and love D3. And I want the features to work for everyone. That was my point, though. It's definitely not a big gripe.. But I think the reason we're all a bit miffed about followers is that it's a cool feature, but it hasn't been implemented for everyone.. it's only useful for people who will play the game through normal, single-player.
Just seems like a waste of a great feature. The main reason followers aren't viable at endgame, that I could extrapolate, is they help too much with MF and Gold grinding.
BUT... maybe, just maybe.. they're not needed at end game, because end game play is way more involved and amazing than we can imagine.
Edit: And as for the "screen chaos" argument.. try playing WoW with 25 ppl in a raid fighting bad guys that don't even fit in the screen. It's AMAZINGLY fun to be in the middle of pure chaos.. I was main tank in a very active guild, and I had to find a way to keep everything that was happening under control during extremely complex mechanics. You find a way, and it's exhilarating. I agree with those here, that we should have the option.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
I think the main reason why Blizz don't want a merc system is because it just creat to much security for the players. With 50% of the team being npcs, the party will have a too strong tanking mechanism. I think it takes out the sense of danger.
However i can't see why they added this feature in SP-Normal only. If they want to show players how cool it is to play with another players, just design a couple of quests were the player fight along side the npcs, simulating a online party.
The way it is now is extremely weird and will surely damage alot of people's experiences. It is common knowledge that blizz don't want people building characters around the followers. With SP-Normal followers the new comers will not only build character around the followers - they will loose part of thier strategy as the game progresses.
Imo it's like D2's immunities. People that don't know the game very well is pretty confident in building characters with one kind of element dmg. However when they enter hell they find out that they can't kill the act boss and are stuck there forever. Changing the rules of the game, in the middle of the game, without any preview warning is bad design.
Not to mention that its probably going to be pretty hard to build your character around the follower by level 30 considering you'll have less than seven skills. And even if you did you would probably be able to survive without them in Nightmare. And as bleakparta said most newcomers won't even understand how to build a character around the follower, and will probably just get the skills they think are interesting.
Again, why should there be options for the sake of options? If something is clearly over the top, why should it be allowed? Theres been plenty of complaints on these forums and elsewhere about too much stuff on the screen, and thats not when you're trying to keep track of your character just to survive or play effectively. I agree that we should have plenty of options, but there has to be a point where it cuts off. And in the case of screen clutter, the cut off point is where the game becomes nearly unplayable. If you just keep asking 'Why isn't this or this implemented?' then of course you're going to think that Blizzard is limiting your play. Not to mention that, if we're going to get into the 4 player limit here, its not only about screen chaos. Its also about balance. But I won't get into that.
Edit: And as for the "screen chaos" argument.. try playing WoW with 25 ppl in a raid fighting bad guys that don't even fit in the screen. It's AMAZINGLY fun to be in the middle of pure chaos.. I was main tank in a very active guild, and I had to find a way to keep everything that was happening under control during extremely complex mechanics. You find a way, and it's exhilarating. I agree with those here, that we should have the option.
And the reason it works is, for one, because of the screen angle, and secondly because of balance. WoW's health system allows for harder hitting monsters, because its someone else's responsibility to heal you. Theres no such thing in D3. Your health goes steadily down until you get a globe. If you had eight players monsters would have to hit insanely hard for it to be a challenge for the group as a whole, but that would also mean that whoever is getting attacked is dying way too quickly. For D3's screen angle and graphical effects, 4 players is chaos, but just the right amount of it. But again, thats not the topic we're discussing.
They might be the majority in terms of raw numbers (and even that's debatable), but they certainly aren't in terms of number of hours played. And I think players who show fidelity to a game and a company should be rewarded, not (as someone said above) "given the shaft".
Its really not debatable in terms of raw numbers. D2 has sold what, 4 or 5 million copies? Theres no way the online community, even if you combined every unique player across the game's life, is or was anywhere near that. SC2 has sold over 3, probably closer to 4 million copies, and even during the game's beginning the amount of players online numbered in, at most, the high hundred thousands. Its a common trend across many games that people just play SP/Campaign or whatever the game offers that isn't online.
Obviously your second point, about hours played, still stands, and we should be rewarded for that. But that doesn't have to be through followers or a similar system. Even if you had something like a box to check to include followers, people would still make builds based around them, and thats just pretty lame. Especially considering the emphasis on character power. Why should it be possible for you to make a build where you intentionally exclude normally essential parts just so that the follower can fill in the blanks?
Followers (both as hirelings in D2 and across many other ARPGs that have included similar systems) are notoriously hard to implement well, so Blizz decided against them. That doesn't mean that we won't see their usefulness expanded in the future, and it also doesn't mean that their restricting our current options. Its just something that (for reasons I've delved into countless times in these threads) is incredibly hard to balance correctly. If you get it slightly wrong in either direction, suddenly one side of the argument is outraged again. You saw how many people were pissed off because they thought followers were essential, and you also see how pissed off people are now that they think their useless (for good reason). So its much easier to simply make it a nonissue but still helpful to a large portion of the people who will end up getting the game. That doesn't mean we're getting the shaft.
Lets put it this way. Suppose WW Barbs are a common, fun build to play. Now suppose that a WW Barb benefits greatly from a Follower's AoE slow skill, to the point where it becomes overpowered. So Blizz nerfs the AoE slow, but it still helps the WW Barb too much, and the follower is still essential to the most effective WW build. What you end up with is ridiculously complicated balancing, where you have to take the followers, which a lot of people didn't want in the first place, into account, instead of directly nerfing/buffing character skills. As we all know, a game like Diablo is incredibly hard to balance, and it will only be harder with the amount of builds in D3. Why make it more complicated by allowing people to supplement their build's weaknesses with a follower?
I'm not saying balancing followers isn't a challenge Blizz wouldn't be able to handle, but clearly it would take a lot of time. And thats not even taking into account the fact that no matter how finely you balance it, people could (and with billions of build possibilities, probably will) find a way to still exploit followers to make builds with very few weaknesses, that are also lame because if your follower is down suddenly your significantly less powerful, and because you, the hero of the game, have to rely on some random guy you rescued.
Followers have 'x' hitpoints and 'y' amount of damage, coupled with 'z' magic find. To my mind, this is just a rather inelegant solution to the problem of MF. A better one could simply be to place a penalty on those MF numbers (as in resistances in Nightmare/Hell D2) without destroying them completely. You could make Mercenaries useful, but nonessential by simply having 'x' hitpoints increase without substantially increasing 'y' damage, or vice verse.
Again, even if you completely removed MF from followers and make them useful in Hell, you're still making it the easiest way to get loot. It will still be easier to SP with a follower than to get gear through any other means. Even if you ramp up the difficulty, you still have to increase difficulty and decrease loot gain in a perfect way to make it so that SP with a follower isn't the best way to get loot. Or you can just ensure that its a nonissue by making them what they currently are.
I'm sure Blizzard had plenty of iterations where mercs were available in co-op or higher difficulties, and it just ended up too chaotic or too hard to balance. If you allow followers in Hell, that will lead to the kinds of builds we saw in D2 where they're entirely reliant on the follower. Theres simply no way to avoid it considering the insane amount of possible builds in the game. So instead of going through all that balancing, Blizzard made them only usable in normal as a way to get people who just pick up the game and play SP Normal (which, again, is the majority of players) to play multiplayer.
Well, you make a lot of good points, and I don't even disagree that the substance of what you're saying is true... I still just think it's a bit silly, is all.
OF COURSE you're going to kill things a little quicker if you have someone else helping you, even if they're underpowered. That's inherent in any game system, no matter what you do.
What I'm saying is that I think it's a bit of a fanatical and excessive step to scrap followers in the endgame because you think they might give you some sort of edge.
You don't hear anyone complaining about characters being too reliant on gear. What if I want a gear-free build dammit? I don't want it to be even slightly harder for me if I choose to walk out there naked. You see where I'm going with this?
Not a peep about characters being too reliant on their skills. Still waiting to hear about characters being too reliant on the services that artisans can provide. Why?
Because these are systems that are built intimately into the mechanics of the game. And for better of for worse, so is the follower system. To make an entire system (which undoubtedly had months of work poured into it) void itself a third of the way into the game is simply bad problem-solving, and it's just plain silly.
I'm not saying that we should recreate Diablo II's merc system here. Something is dreadfully wrong when you can't win the game without hiring help. I definitely think that needed major revision as well. But not THIS major. The solution I underlined would make it so your follower would be useful, but unnecessary. I think that's a fair compromise to everyone, honestly, because at the end of the day, it SHOULD be harder if you choose to venture out there all by your lonesome than if you had someone watching your back, amirite?
You don't hear anyone complaining about characters being too reliant on gear. What if I want a gear-free build dammit? I don't want it to be even slightly harder for me if I choose to walk out there naked. You see where I'm going with this?
Not a peep about characters being too reliant on their skills. Still waiting to hear about characters being too reliant on the services that artisans can provide. Why?
Because these are systems that are built intimately into the mechanics of the game. And for better of for worse, so is the follower system. To make an entire system (which undoubtedly had months of work poured into it) void itself a third of the way into the game is simply bad problem-solving, and it's just plain silly.
I'm not saying that we should recreate Diablo II's merc system here. Something is dreadfully wrong when you can't win the game without hiring help. I definitely think that needed major revision as well. But not THIS major. The solution I underlined would make it so your follower would be useful, but unnecessary. I think that's a fair compromise to everyone, honestly, because at the end of the day, it SHOULD be harder if you choose to venture out there all by your lonesome than if you had someone watching your back, amirite?
But who says that you should have an NPC by your side in the first place? Especially if theres very few, very complicated ways of making it so you don't rely on them. If part of the Blizzard design mentality for D3 is that you are on a level way above a normal person, which it clearly is, and clearly was even before this announcement, then clearly the followers don't fit in very easily. And lets not forget that, given the problems with the D2 hireling system, it wasn't entirely obvious that it would return for D3. It was always a condition of if Blizzard could find a new way to implement them. And as much as you might theorycraft ideas you think just maybe might work, it hasn't worked in a lot of games for a reason. And it most certainly hasn't worked in a way that makes the player feel personally more power. Even people who have liked hireling systems would have to admit that having to worry about the survival of a weak NPC isn't fun.
So, instead of fine tuning a system that, as I said in my last post, could easily shift in either direction (as in useless or too useful) just based on a person discovering a build, Blizzard made it help the 'newbies' and encourage them to go online. As much as people have argued that choice makes the system useless, and even an insult, those new players are ultimately a large part of the reason Blizzard is able to make the game. After all, they do make up for a lot of the sales. And lets not forget that, if the follower system does end up promoting online play, we would all benefit.
As maka said, hardcore players ultimately make up for most of the hours played in a game, and as such they deserve recognition. For all we know, not allowing the follower system into the endgame is a favor to us. It means that Blizzard won't have to nerf any of your favorite skills because it got attached to some cheap follower build and was declared overpowered. You won't get screwed in the last few seconds of a boss fight because Diablo decided to target your follower and you suddenly don't have a reliable heal (or something of that sort.)
If the follower system was going to inherit any of the problems of the D2 hirelings, I know I sure as hell wouldn't want it there. I think thats something we can mostly agree on. But thats just a really hard thing to do. I'm not saying Blizzard isn't up to the challenge or that its not a possibility for the future. In fact, it would be an obvious target for an expansion or even a content patch (if they are going to do anything like that.) That being said, the fact that they weren't able to devise some incredible system where followers are both not essential and optional isn't an atrocity.
But who says that you should have an NPC by your side in the first place? Especially if theres very few, very complicated ways of making it so you don't rely on them. If part of the Blizzard design mentality for D3 is that you are on a level way above a normal person, which it clearly is, and clearly was even before this announcement, then clearly the followers don't fit in very easily. And lets not forget that, given the problems with the D2 hireling system, it wasn't entirely obvious that it would return for D3. It was always a condition of if Blizzard could find a new way to implement them. And as much as you might theorycraft ideas you think just maybe might work, it hasn't worked in a lot of games for a reason. And it most certainly hasn't worked in a way that makes the player feel personally more power. Even people who have liked hireling systems would have to admit that having to worry about the survival of a weak NPC isn't fun.
So, instead of fine tuning a system that, as I said in my last post, could easily shift in either direction (as in useless or too useful) just based on a person discovering a build, Blizzard made it help the 'newbies' and encourage them to go online. As much as people have argued that choice makes the system useless, and even an insult, those new players are ultimately a large part of the reason Blizzard is able to make the game. After all, they do make up for a lot of the sales. And lets not forget that, if the follower system does end up promoting online play, we would all benefit.
As maka said, hardcore players ultimately make up for most of the hours played in a game, and as such they deserve recognition. For all we know, not allowing the follower system into the endgame is a favor to us. It means that Blizzard won't have to nerf any of your favorite skills because it got attached to some cheap follower build and was declared overpowered. You won't get screwed in the last few seconds of a boss fight because Diablo decided to target your follower and you suddenly don't have a reliable heal (or something of that sort.)
If the follower system was going to inherit any of the problems of the D2 hirelings, I know I sure as hell wouldn't want it there. I think thats something we can mostly agree on. But thats just a really hard thing to do. I'm not saying Blizzard isn't up to the challenge or that its not a possibility for the future. In fact, it would be an obvious target for an expansion or even a content patch (if they are going to do anything like that.) That being said, the fact that they weren't able to devise some incredible system where followers are both not essential and optional isn't an atrocity.
Well yea. There's a few points we might just have to agree to disagree on, but I think we can relate at least in the arena that it would be better to err on the side of caution in terms of ensuring that mercenaries don't become overpowered. I'm just of the school of thought that there's always a happy medium.
In D2, there just wasn't at all. It didn't happen often, but I remember a couple times there where my mercenary was actually killing things even more efficiently than I was, and THAT definitely speaks of a broken system. I almost wonder if some of this might just be panic because the merc system failed so spectacularly. But that's another story for another day.
I think mainly my issue is a personal one: that even if it does solve the problem (which it seems it will pretty handily), it feels like a hollow victory for me at least, especially because the system shows such promise in comparison to its predecessor.
And I think that's really the crux of it. If they had done something similar in the Diablo II expansion (diminishing merc value towards endgame), I probably wouldn't complain as much (or at all), because the merc system in D2 was pretty clumsy and certainly not nearly as intriguing. The process of creating the followers was clearly much more thoughtful and evolved, and its overall a more interesting system, so it seems an awful waste to lose it.
Also, I'm with you, I expect they'll continue to tweak the numbers and play with it, perhaps making them more relevant in patches or whatever.
You don't hear anyone complaining about characters being too reliant on gear. What if I want a gear-free build dammit? I don't want it to be even slightly harder for me if I choose to walk out there naked. You see where I'm going with this?
Not a peep about characters being too reliant on their skills. Still waiting to hear about characters being too reliant on the services that artisans can provide. Why?
Because these are systems that are built intimately into the mechanics of the game. And for better of for worse, so is the follower system. To make an entire system (which undoubtedly had months of work poured into it) void itself a third of the way into the game is simply bad problem-solving, and it's just plain silly.
I'm not saying that we should recreate Diablo II's merc system here. Something is dreadfully wrong when you can't win the game without hiring help. I definitely think that needed major revision as well. But not THIS major. The solution I underlined would make it so your follower would be useful, but unnecessary. I think that's a fair compromise to everyone, honestly, because at the end of the day, it SHOULD be harder if you choose to venture out there all by your lonesome than if you had someone watching your back, amirite?
But who says that you should have an NPC by your side in the first place? Especially if theres very few, very complicated ways of making it so you don't rely on them. If part of the Blizzard design mentality for D3 is that you are on a level way above a normal person, which it clearly is, and clearly was even before this announcement, then clearly the followers don't fit in very easily. And lets not forget that, given the problems with the D2 hireling system, it wasn't entirely obvious that it would return for D3. It was always a condition of if Blizzard could find a new way to implement them. And as much as you might theorycraft ideas you think just maybe might work, it hasn't worked in a lot of games for a reason. And it most certainly hasn't worked in a way that makes the player feel personally more power. Even people who have liked hireling systems would have to admit that having to worry about the survival of a weak NPC isn't fun.
So, instead of fine tuning a system that, as I said in my last post, could easily shift in either direction (as in useless or too useful) just based on a person discovering a build, Blizzard made it help the 'newbies' and encourage them to go online. As much as people have argued that choice makes the system useless, and even an insult, those new players are ultimately a large part of the reason Blizzard is able to make the game. After all, they do make up for a lot of the sales. And lets not forget that, if the follower system does end up promoting online play, we would all benefit.
As maka said, hardcore players ultimately make up for most of the hours played in a game, and as such they deserve recognition. For all we know, not allowing the follower system into the endgame is a favor to us. It means that Blizzard won't have to nerf any of your favorite skills because it got attached to some cheap follower build and was declared overpowered. You won't get screwed in the last few seconds of a boss fight because Diablo decided to target your follower and you suddenly don't have a reliable heal (or something of that sort.)
If the follower system was going to inherit any of the problems of the D2 hirelings, I know I sure as hell wouldn't want it there. I think thats something we can mostly agree on. But thats just a really hard thing to do. I'm not saying Blizzard isn't up to the challenge or that its not a possibility for the future. In fact, it would be an obvious target for an expansion or even a content patch (if they are going to do anything like that.) That being said, the fact that they weren't able to devise some incredible system where followers are both not essential and optional isn't an atrocity.
Look nobody is saying you guys are wrong for not wanting mercs or endgame followers. We're just saying there are lots of us who wanted them, and won't have them. And -I- am saying you have no justification in your argument, since you've always had the option of not using it. And you still have that option now. We, on the other hand, no longer have any option at all. They took it from us.
Which is worse? Having the option or not having the option? That's the question you need to answer here, not "how much do i hate stupid mercs". There are other ways of getting people to go online, clear screen space, and balance the game, without taking away our options.
Look nobody is saying you guys are wrong for not wanting mercs or endgame followers. We're just saying there are lots of us who wanted them, and won't have them. And -I- am saying you have no justification in your argument, since you've always had the option of not using it. And you still have that option now. We, on the other hand, no longer have any option at all. They took it from us.
Which is worse? Having the option or not having the option? That's the question you need to answer here, not "how much do i hate stupid mercs". There are other ways of getting people to go online, clear screen space, and balance the game, without taking away our options.
And? You can actually make that argument for everything ever excluded from anything. That doesn't mean that they should be present.
To me it just feels like wasted development time. No one plays single player, and the followers don't even make an impact past Normal so they are absolutely pointless. This seems like a joke, how pathetic and a big waste of time.
I play single player; for a great majority of the time I played D2, I played campaign in all difficulties, very rarely going online. I'll reiterate what I said earlier: I don't like playing with other people that much. I've never had a pleasant multiplayer experience with most games and prefer to play by myself.
Hopefully D3 has good enough multiplayer to allow me some comfort, but just because you don't necessarily play it doesn't mean that that is fact that nobody plays it.
Honestly, the real reason why I'm excited for this game is to see what happens with the story. Keeping in mind that all the systems revealed thus far have been pretty spectacular (I'm not interested in mercs, but the system is good), that is only more reason to enjoy my single player experience. Sure, I'll play D3 multiplayer with my friends and stuff, but it's not even because it's multiplayer and "killing enemies with your friends is fun." I've never seen Diablo multiplayer as fun in many ways (to me at least) because I prefer to go at my own pace (which is often pretty fast) and I get sort of frustrated while waiting for people to recuperate just so I can continue and they don't moan and complain.
Now, I really don't see how mercs are going to work well in the endgame. I really don't see how they're going to add anything substantial to the lore either. Mercs have no real appeal to me and I don't suspect to enjoy them.
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I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
Look nobody is saying you guys are wrong for not wanting mercs or endgame followers. We're just saying there are lots of us who wanted them, and won't have them. And -I- am saying you have no justification in your argument, since you've always had the option of not using it. And you still have that option now. We, on the other hand, no longer have any option at all. They took it from us.
Which is worse? Having the option or not having the option? That's the question you need to answer here, not "how much do i hate stupid mercs". There are other ways of getting people to go online, clear screen space, and balance the game, without taking away our options.
And? You can actually make that argument for everything ever excluded from anything. That doesn't mean that they should be present.
And the difference would be that in this case lots of us are hugely disappointed we can't have it. I have no idea why you are acting like this doesn't matter, but for those of us with common sense, a topic with such strong opinions on both sides should be optional. Why are you arguing this again? Because you still haven't provided a valid reason that I can see; all I see is you telling everyone else you don't care what they get because you want it your way. And that is pissing me off to be honest.
Consider other people please.
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This is making me want blizzard not to reveal the remaining systems as it will only unlock a lot of cry babies. It's like rainbows all over again, roflmao.
I to am greatly disappointed . It really highlights the unwillingness of people to accept change. I'm just grateful that blizzard chose to develop D3, I know they don't owe me anything so I don't expect anything from them.. plus they will always do what's best for their shareholders (and that's to make a popular game), thats the nature of a publicly listed company.
I'm a single player guy. I first played d2 with friends, then they stopped playing, and I didn't, so I tried bnet, and found a bunch of jackasses, so I went to SP, and I enjoy it much more alone.
And now I get the idea the bliz is really pushing co-op, to the point of crutching SP to coach you into MP.
Let's face it, this is Blizzard's game, not Blizzard North's, and I'm starting to think all of us who were hoping for a Blizzard North D3 are gonna be disappointed. Blizzard has a different idea for D3 than what were hoping for, and it's much more "community" oriented.
I get it, sort of, but I feel some of us who were hoping for a complete SP experience will miss out once again, but this time we won't be able to rely on mods to make it right.
LOL. Both of your statements are false. Why are we scared of playing alone if we are saying to scrap the idea? which is what most of us are saying. thats a very big change. btw.
Don't like mercs? They can scale the difficulty similar to the way they did in d2; just count the merc as an extra player. Now you have the option and both options are viable.
Mercs taking up screen real estate? Creating chaos? Don't use them. Difficulty scales down just for you.
And let's be honest, the "mercs create chaos" argument is a joke. You're venturing into hell filled with demons bent on your destruction. You were expecting rainbows and unicorns?
Let me have my mercs back :'(
I'm on your side silly. My post are for peeps that wanted it more than normal (my mistake was I generalized). Anyway, I went to the official d3 forums and a bit surprised that there's no lengthy thread regarding followers.
Very well said, I agree. I definitely want a lot of people, of all skill ranges, to play and love D3. And I want the features to work for everyone. That was my point, though. It's definitely not a big gripe.. But I think the reason we're all a bit miffed about followers is that it's a cool feature, but it hasn't been implemented for everyone.. it's only useful for people who will play the game through normal, single-player.
Just seems like a waste of a great feature. The main reason followers aren't viable at endgame, that I could extrapolate, is they help too much with MF and Gold grinding.
BUT... maybe, just maybe.. they're not needed at end game, because end game play is way more involved and amazing than we can imagine.
Edit: And as for the "screen chaos" argument.. try playing WoW with 25 ppl in a raid fighting bad guys that don't even fit in the screen. It's AMAZINGLY fun to be in the middle of pure chaos.. I was main tank in a very active guild, and I had to find a way to keep everything that was happening under control during extremely complex mechanics. You find a way, and it's exhilarating. I agree with those here, that we should have the option.
-Thomas Jefferson
However i can't see why they added this feature in SP-Normal only. If they want to show players how cool it is to play with another players, just design a couple of quests were the player fight along side the npcs, simulating a online party.
The way it is now is extremely weird and will surely damage alot of people's experiences. It is common knowledge that blizz don't want people building characters around the followers. With SP-Normal followers the new comers will not only build character around the followers - they will loose part of thier strategy as the game progresses.
Imo it's like D2's immunities. People that don't know the game very well is pretty confident in building characters with one kind of element dmg. However when they enter hell they find out that they can't kill the act boss and are stuck there forever. Changing the rules of the game, in the middle of the game, without any preview warning is bad design.
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And the reason it works is, for one, because of the screen angle, and secondly because of balance. WoW's health system allows for harder hitting monsters, because its someone else's responsibility to heal you. Theres no such thing in D3. Your health goes steadily down until you get a globe. If you had eight players monsters would have to hit insanely hard for it to be a challenge for the group as a whole, but that would also mean that whoever is getting attacked is dying way too quickly. For D3's screen angle and graphical effects, 4 players is chaos, but just the right amount of it. But again, thats not the topic we're discussing.
Its really not debatable in terms of raw numbers. D2 has sold what, 4 or 5 million copies? Theres no way the online community, even if you combined every unique player across the game's life, is or was anywhere near that. SC2 has sold over 3, probably closer to 4 million copies, and even during the game's beginning the amount of players online numbered in, at most, the high hundred thousands. Its a common trend across many games that people just play SP/Campaign or whatever the game offers that isn't online.
Obviously your second point, about hours played, still stands, and we should be rewarded for that. But that doesn't have to be through followers or a similar system. Even if you had something like a box to check to include followers, people would still make builds based around them, and thats just pretty lame. Especially considering the emphasis on character power. Why should it be possible for you to make a build where you intentionally exclude normally essential parts just so that the follower can fill in the blanks?
Followers (both as hirelings in D2 and across many other ARPGs that have included similar systems) are notoriously hard to implement well, so Blizz decided against them. That doesn't mean that we won't see their usefulness expanded in the future, and it also doesn't mean that their restricting our current options. Its just something that (for reasons I've delved into countless times in these threads) is incredibly hard to balance correctly. If you get it slightly wrong in either direction, suddenly one side of the argument is outraged again. You saw how many people were pissed off because they thought followers were essential, and you also see how pissed off people are now that they think their useless (for good reason). So its much easier to simply make it a nonissue but still helpful to a large portion of the people who will end up getting the game. That doesn't mean we're getting the shaft.
Lets put it this way. Suppose WW Barbs are a common, fun build to play. Now suppose that a WW Barb benefits greatly from a Follower's AoE slow skill, to the point where it becomes overpowered. So Blizz nerfs the AoE slow, but it still helps the WW Barb too much, and the follower is still essential to the most effective WW build. What you end up with is ridiculously complicated balancing, where you have to take the followers, which a lot of people didn't want in the first place, into account, instead of directly nerfing/buffing character skills. As we all know, a game like Diablo is incredibly hard to balance, and it will only be harder with the amount of builds in D3. Why make it more complicated by allowing people to supplement their build's weaknesses with a follower?
I'm not saying balancing followers isn't a challenge Blizz wouldn't be able to handle, but clearly it would take a lot of time. And thats not even taking into account the fact that no matter how finely you balance it, people could (and with billions of build possibilities, probably will) find a way to still exploit followers to make builds with very few weaknesses, that are also lame because if your follower is down suddenly your significantly less powerful, and because you, the hero of the game, have to rely on some random guy you rescued.
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Well, you make a lot of good points, and I don't even disagree that the substance of what you're saying is true... I still just think it's a bit silly, is all.
OF COURSE you're going to kill things a little quicker if you have someone else helping you, even if they're underpowered. That's inherent in any game system, no matter what you do.
What I'm saying is that I think it's a bit of a fanatical and excessive step to scrap followers in the endgame because you think they might give you some sort of edge.
You don't hear anyone complaining about characters being too reliant on gear. What if I want a gear-free build dammit? I don't want it to be even slightly harder for me if I choose to walk out there naked. You see where I'm going with this?
Not a peep about characters being too reliant on their skills. Still waiting to hear about characters being too reliant on the services that artisans can provide. Why?
Because these are systems that are built intimately into the mechanics of the game. And for better of for worse, so is the follower system. To make an entire system (which undoubtedly had months of work poured into it) void itself a third of the way into the game is simply bad problem-solving, and it's just plain silly.
I'm not saying that we should recreate Diablo II's merc system here. Something is dreadfully wrong when you can't win the game without hiring help. I definitely think that needed major revision as well. But not THIS major. The solution I underlined would make it so your follower would be useful, but unnecessary. I think that's a fair compromise to everyone, honestly, because at the end of the day, it SHOULD be harder if you choose to venture out there all by your lonesome than if you had someone watching your back, amirite?
So, instead of fine tuning a system that, as I said in my last post, could easily shift in either direction (as in useless or too useful) just based on a person discovering a build, Blizzard made it help the 'newbies' and encourage them to go online. As much as people have argued that choice makes the system useless, and even an insult, those new players are ultimately a large part of the reason Blizzard is able to make the game. After all, they do make up for a lot of the sales. And lets not forget that, if the follower system does end up promoting online play, we would all benefit.
As maka said, hardcore players ultimately make up for most of the hours played in a game, and as such they deserve recognition. For all we know, not allowing the follower system into the endgame is a favor to us. It means that Blizzard won't have to nerf any of your favorite skills because it got attached to some cheap follower build and was declared overpowered. You won't get screwed in the last few seconds of a boss fight because Diablo decided to target your follower and you suddenly don't have a reliable heal (or something of that sort.)
If the follower system was going to inherit any of the problems of the D2 hirelings, I know I sure as hell wouldn't want it there. I think thats something we can mostly agree on. But thats just a really hard thing to do. I'm not saying Blizzard isn't up to the challenge or that its not a possibility for the future. In fact, it would be an obvious target for an expansion or even a content patch (if they are going to do anything like that.) That being said, the fact that they weren't able to devise some incredible system where followers are both not essential and optional isn't an atrocity.
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In D2, there just wasn't at all. It didn't happen often, but I remember a couple times there where my mercenary was actually killing things even more efficiently than I was, and THAT definitely speaks of a broken system. I almost wonder if some of this might just be panic because the merc system failed so spectacularly. But that's another story for another day.
I think mainly my issue is a personal one: that even if it does solve the problem (which it seems it will pretty handily), it feels like a hollow victory for me at least, especially because the system shows such promise in comparison to its predecessor.
And I think that's really the crux of it. If they had done something similar in the Diablo II expansion (diminishing merc value towards endgame), I probably wouldn't complain as much (or at all), because the merc system in D2 was pretty clumsy and certainly not nearly as intriguing. The process of creating the followers was clearly much more thoughtful and evolved, and its overall a more interesting system, so it seems an awful waste to lose it.
Also, I'm with you, I expect they'll continue to tweak the numbers and play with it, perhaps making them more relevant in patches or whatever.
Look nobody is saying you guys are wrong for not wanting mercs or endgame followers. We're just saying there are lots of us who wanted them, and won't have them. And -I- am saying you have no justification in your argument, since you've always had the option of not using it. And you still have that option now. We, on the other hand, no longer have any option at all. They took it from us.
Which is worse? Having the option or not having the option? That's the question you need to answer here, not "how much do i hate stupid mercs". There are other ways of getting people to go online, clear screen space, and balance the game, without taking away our options.
Fishmancers, Esp. CE ones, would disagree with you.
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Me want Diablo!!
Hopefully D3 has good enough multiplayer to allow me some comfort, but just because you don't necessarily play it doesn't mean that that is fact that nobody plays it.
Honestly, the real reason why I'm excited for this game is to see what happens with the story. Keeping in mind that all the systems revealed thus far have been pretty spectacular (I'm not interested in mercs, but the system is good), that is only more reason to enjoy my single player experience. Sure, I'll play D3 multiplayer with my friends and stuff, but it's not even because it's multiplayer and "killing enemies with your friends is fun." I've never seen Diablo multiplayer as fun in many ways (to me at least) because I prefer to go at my own pace (which is often pretty fast) and I get sort of frustrated while waiting for people to recuperate just so I can continue and they don't moan and complain.
Now, I really don't see how mercs are going to work well in the endgame. I really don't see how they're going to add anything substantial to the lore either. Mercs have no real appeal to me and I don't suspect to enjoy them.
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
Consider other people please.