How will the game be balanced around the followers?
The followers won't be a massive part of game balance. They're there to make the single-player, normal difficulty experience feel more cooperative and to aid in enhancing the story. These factors lose some importance in multiplayer and in the higher difficulty settings of the game, and as such, the followers won't be as relevant there.
I think they look great. Skill system seems just as straightforward as it should be. It makes absolute sense to me that they should leave when co-op players come along - though I hope they leave when people get in close proximity or join your party rather than just when they join the game.
I am hoping that the scale from useful to unusable is a little more gradual than it has been made out to be so far.
They're also tuned so that they become very weak starting in Nightmare, and then are completely unusable in Hell.
Singleplayer is singleplayer, and having a follower to help you definitely isn't less useful when the difficulty is harder - if anything I would have thought you'd need them more.
Moderately weak in Nightmare, weak but usable starting in Hell and then unusable by the end of Hell?
In saying that, I have never played the game and they have played it millions of times - I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing.
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"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
Twitter: @FreddyBushBoy
No matter how much your in love with Blizzard.
This follower system is a big waste of time in both consumer and developers' end.
We don't need an entire system that becomes useless, just so it "encourages" people to play "co-op".
Anyone sense an irony here? to play with Followers, we have to make a passworded game.
But yet, they want us to start playing with real people?
In addition, god knows how many times blizzard "iterated" through this follower system.
My guess is that it took them 5~6 months just to get this thing implemented...
Could've gone to design a better 5th class and name it better than a " Demon " Hunter...
Way to go Blizzard
On the side note, what is going on with this "too much action at once" on the screen.
We are not 5 years old who only have attention span of keeping one skill at a time. Most of us have played D2, and the sheer number of action that goes on with 8 man game is not all that spectacular. Having 4 players + 4 mercs is completetly fine.
Even in some MMO, 100 vs 100 was perfectly fine. It doesn't mean you are stacking 100 players into one screen, but just the possibility of interacting with other players are always open.
Step it up please Blizzard, we're in 21st century here.
We're nowhere close to the majority of the people who will play D3. So while it might be 'wasted' on us, it will probably be a valuable multiplayer tutorial for most of the people who play the game, which will then lead to a bigger online community.
Really? You make all those assumptions based on a follower system designed for new players? Of course you're not going to find it useful. Its essentially a tutorial. That doesn't mean it has no place in the game.
People are always saying you need a passworded game to use them, or a passworded game to play solo. This is not D2 we don't know how Games will be set up. It might just be a check box that can be toggled before the game starts and while playing, or it might be a problematic way that you can only ply with friends you have, or something else entirely. we don't know how the games will be set up, so can we hold off that particular brand of judgment until we know how it will actually work.
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
If you think its gimmicky and useless sure. But its a tutorial that also has value in the story and quests it provides, while also potentially bringing more people into the online community. So no I don't think its bad at all.
Really? You make all those assumptions based on a follower system designed for new players? Of course you're not going to find it useful. Its essentially a tutorial. That doesn't mean it has no place in the game.
Blizzard has spent 5~6 months recording the voices, creating a story line, creating a 3D model, animating, creating skills, animating skills, balancing the skills. Do you really think we need a complex system as this to get people to join a "multi-player" game?
If they wanted to make a tutorial, they would've made a better tutorial alright?
There are tons of better ways to make a tutorial and implement it in the game that would "ALWAYS" be useful. Meaning a small tip video or words from the townspeople saying "Join forces with your fellow fighters ! You put yourself in danger by fighting alone !"
Having all this work and system done just so that they'll be completely out of the content (once we are lvl 60) is what makes it a huge waste of time on blizzard's part.
They could have used their time more efficiently and effectively by creating a more "get to the point" tutorial that encourages people to play co-op.
These followers are getting their own story line, lol....
Little too much for a tutorial? It makes you wonder these followers are almost complex enough to be their own class themselves...
Too much work done for too little benefit.
If you think its gimmicky and useless sure. But its a tutorial that also has value in the story and quests it provides, while also potentially bringing more people into the online community. So no I don't think its bad at all.
Then why not just go and create a "tutorial" system instead of taking a system from the previous game and hacking it apart. I have yet to be disappointed in something blizzard has done with D3, but I'm definitely in that crowd on this one. Overall that's a great track record and I'll be playing this game the day it comes out, but I feel shorted on the follower system. I was expecting something as cool as the D2 mercs at minimum, not something 1/3 as cool.
I'm usually on board with Blizzard's decisions, but making followers lame/useless past normal is moronic, and the reason they gave us for that is even more stupid. I'm not gonna play multiplayer just because my merc makes me want to play multiplayer. It didn't in D2 and it won't in D3, specially since it will be useless in hell. I really don't understand that decision.
Really? You make all those assumptions based on a follower system designed for new players? Of course you're not going to find it useful. Its essentially a tutorial. That doesn't mean it has no place in the game.
Blizzard has spent 5~6 months recording the voices, creating a story line, creating a 3D model, animating, creating skills, animating skills, balancing the skills. Do you really think we need a complex system as this to get people to join a "multi-player" game?
If they wanted to make a tutorial, they would've made a better tutorial alright?
There are tons of better ways to make a tutorial and implement it in the game that would "ALWAYS" be useful. Meaning a small tip video or words from the townspeople saying "Join forces with your fellow fighters ! You put yourself in danger by fighting alone !"
Having all this work and system done just so that they'll be completely out of the content (once we are lvl 60) is what makes it a huge waste of time on blizzard's part.
They could have used their time more efficiently and effectively by creating a more "get to the point" tutorial that encourages people to play co-op.
These followers are getting their own story line, lol....
Little too much for a tutorial? It makes you wonder these followers are almost complex enough to be their own class themselves...
Too much work done for too little benefit.
oops, forgot to type anything on my post.
I have to disagree with the "time estimate" here. As you can see by my post above i'm not all that happy with this system either, but generally you can't get an overall feel for the effort on a project in the amount of time it takes from start to finish but rather the "man hours" it took. Because it could have taken 6 months from start to finish, but that doesn't mean everyone was working on that one thing the whole time. Heck, it may have only been something like 60 man hours, which is a few hours for several people across weeks of time.
Since we don't have *any* of this information it's clear your statement is purely conjecture.
I love reading the comments here and people going over the top about systems we haven't seen yet. Now, for my 2 cents.
We've heard all along that the enemy AI will be much more advanced, targeting different players and what not, so we will actually need strategy in order to defeat groups of monsters.
Compare this to D2, where there was almost no strategy except spam the same attacks and potions. Co op will no longer be about everyone travelling closely to each other just spamming attacks, but strategy will be needed. The followers seem like a good way to introduce people to this fact that the game will generally, be tougher.
The decisions Blizzard is making for this game are really baffling me. Diablo 2 allowed 8 players, each with their own mercenary, and some even with multiple pets. A typical party (before people only played hammerdins and sorcs) could see anywhere from 16 to 30 teammates (and potentially hundreds if they were all necros). This time they limit parties to 4 players. When we first saw the followers I thought "oh that's why they wanted 4, because these followers are really detailed and will be like another player so that makes 8." Then of course we found out they are solo only.
Of course I was disappointed at first. But I started to realize this wouldn't be that bad. Lots of people like to play solo sometimes. The follower would be there to help out with your hell difficulty item finding runs. You could make a character built to work with his/her follower to farm items solo when you didn't feel like playing with anyone. So that, in my eyes, almost justified their decision to make followers solo only. I scratched my head a bit but then I accepted it.
THEN they told us followers were designed to only be useful on normal difficulty and they intentionally made them too weak to handle any higher difficulty. Coupled with the statement that normal difficulty is so easy you can mindlessly click your way to the end without using a follower made me realize that followers are, as other people have been saying, nothing but a tutorial. A very well made, very detailed, very awesome tutorial. But still a tutorial. So now I'm sitting here scratching my head at this decision again.
If followers were only there to help the story out a bit and not really intended to be used much except for the first few hours of the game why did they spend so much time and effort? They could have easily just made them NPCs that follow you around and have their own items and their own AI. It would have achieved the exact same goal and they could have saved themselves hundreds if not thousands of man hours. I think followers are cool but I don't understand why they wasted so much time working on them when they are pretty pointless in the long run. Maybe someone could explain why they did this because I'm baffled.
They should just remove the magic find/gold find skills followers have and make them endgame-viable.
"... we will ensure followers are not part of the end-game MF equation. They are not intended to be, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure they cannot be."
Making them useless in hell is a bit too harsh a step, in my opinion.
Well, followers are essentially a flavor bonus to those playing through normal the first time by themselves. It provides some story elements, but more importantly it gets the idea in their head of playing with another person. You come across each of them pretty quickly in Act 1, and then they help you throughout the rest of the game if you'd like. They aren't required to beat the game on Normal, even if you're playing by yourself. Feel free to leave them behind if you like. But they are pretty awesome.
They're also tuned so that they become very weak starting in Nightmare, and then are completely unusable in Hell. Even if you're playing alone, you will probably not be using Followers past Normal - - you can try but they're going to just be one-shot back to back. They're there as a bit of flavor, to help get people into the mindset of co-op if they're a bit reluctant, and... that's about it. They won't be usable at end-game, and they'll never replace the abilities and power that another player can bring.
It provides some story elements. That's right. The companion doesn't add any more story than is already provided. Instead, the character adds color to the situation.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Followers will not stay alive easily past Normal, and if they're not alive you aren't going to be getting their bonuses. I'm sure people will try to game this, and ideally they will fail. If not we will ensure followers are not part of the end-game MF equation. They are not intended to be, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure they cannot be.
They're also tuned so that they become very weak starting in Nightmare, and then are completely unusable in Hell.
They are not intended to be [used outside of normal], and we will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure they cannot be. In other words, this is JUST A FLAVOR MECHANIC FOR NORMAL DIFFICULTY.
Right on, what bashiok said is kinda like what I said on the other thread. Since this is a new thread I will say it again, "a game is not made solely for you" (i'm talking in general btw esp. to those crying about the system). Blizzard is trying to create a game that will make different player who plays different game style happy.
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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.
They should just remove the magic find/gold find skills followers have and make them endgame-viable.
Yeah, they could have the best of both worlds if they did that. Surely the MF & GF skills aren't essential to making them good for new players in normal difficulty. I like how they wont be used on co-op but I dont see why they feel they have to make them crap in the late game on to make them useful early on? its not binary..
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Twitter: @FreddyBushBoy
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http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/world/systems/followers.xml
Doesn't that mean they WILL be in multiplayer?
I am hoping that the scale from useful to unusable is a little more gradual than it has been made out to be so far.
Singleplayer is singleplayer, and having a follower to help you definitely isn't less useful when the difficulty is harder - if anything I would have thought you'd need them more.
Moderately weak in Nightmare, weak but usable starting in Hell and then unusable by the end of Hell?
In saying that, I have never played the game and they have played it millions of times - I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing.
Twitter: @FreddyBushBoy
This follower system is a big waste of time in both consumer and developers' end.
We don't need an entire system that becomes useless, just so it "encourages" people to play "co-op".
Anyone sense an irony here? to play with Followers, we have to make a passworded game.
But yet, they want us to start playing with real people?
In addition, god knows how many times blizzard "iterated" through this follower system.
My guess is that it took them 5~6 months just to get this thing implemented...
Could've gone to design a better 5th class and name it better than a " Demon " Hunter...
Way to go Blizzard
On the side note, what is going on with this "too much action at once" on the screen.
We are not 5 years old who only have attention span of keeping one skill at a time. Most of us have played D2, and the sheer number of action that goes on with 8 man game is not all that spectacular. Having 4 players + 4 mercs is completetly fine.
Even in some MMO, 100 vs 100 was perfectly fine. It doesn't mean you are stacking 100 players into one screen, but just the possibility of interacting with other players are always open.
Step it up please Blizzard, we're in 21st century here.
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the news team.
DiabloFans: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Live Chat
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the news team.
DiabloFans: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Live Chat
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the news team.
DiabloFans: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Live Chat
Blizzard has spent 5~6 months recording the voices, creating a story line, creating a 3D model, animating, creating skills, animating skills, balancing the skills. Do you really think we need a complex system as this to get people to join a "multi-player" game?
If they wanted to make a tutorial, they would've made a better tutorial alright?
There are tons of better ways to make a tutorial and implement it in the game that would "ALWAYS" be useful. Meaning a small tip video or words from the townspeople saying "Join forces with your fellow fighters ! You put yourself in danger by fighting alone !"
Having all this work and system done just so that they'll be completely out of the content (once we are lvl 60) is what makes it a huge waste of time on blizzard's part.
They could have used their time more efficiently and effectively by creating a more "get to the point" tutorial that encourages people to play co-op.
These followers are getting their own story line, lol....
Little too much for a tutorial? It makes you wonder these followers are almost complex enough to be their own class themselves...
Too much work done for too little benefit.
Then why not just go and create a "tutorial" system instead of taking a system from the previous game and hacking it apart. I have yet to be disappointed in something blizzard has done with D3, but I'm definitely in that crowd on this one. Overall that's a great track record and I'll be playing this game the day it comes out, but I feel shorted on the follower system. I was expecting something as cool as the D2 mercs at minimum, not something 1/3 as cool.
Just my 2 cents.
oops, forgot to type anything on my post.
I have to disagree with the "time estimate" here. As you can see by my post above i'm not all that happy with this system either, but generally you can't get an overall feel for the effort on a project in the amount of time it takes from start to finish but rather the "man hours" it took. Because it could have taken 6 months from start to finish, but that doesn't mean everyone was working on that one thing the whole time. Heck, it may have only been something like 60 man hours, which is a few hours for several people across weeks of time.
Since we don't have *any* of this information it's clear your statement is purely conjecture.
We've heard all along that the enemy AI will be much more advanced, targeting different players and what not, so we will actually need strategy in order to defeat groups of monsters.
Compare this to D2, where there was almost no strategy except spam the same attacks and potions. Co op will no longer be about everyone travelling closely to each other just spamming attacks, but strategy will be needed. The followers seem like a good way to introduce people to this fact that the game will generally, be tougher.
Of course I was disappointed at first. But I started to realize this wouldn't be that bad. Lots of people like to play solo sometimes. The follower would be there to help out with your hell difficulty item finding runs. You could make a character built to work with his/her follower to farm items solo when you didn't feel like playing with anyone. So that, in my eyes, almost justified their decision to make followers solo only. I scratched my head a bit but then I accepted it.
THEN they told us followers were designed to only be useful on normal difficulty and they intentionally made them too weak to handle any higher difficulty. Coupled with the statement that normal difficulty is so easy you can mindlessly click your way to the end without using a follower made me realize that followers are, as other people have been saying, nothing but a tutorial. A very well made, very detailed, very awesome tutorial. But still a tutorial. So now I'm sitting here scratching my head at this decision again.
If followers were only there to help the story out a bit and not really intended to be used much except for the first few hours of the game why did they spend so much time and effort? They could have easily just made them NPCs that follow you around and have their own items and their own AI. It would have achieved the exact same goal and they could have saved themselves hundreds if not thousands of man hours. I think followers are cool but I don't understand why they wasted so much time working on them when they are pretty pointless in the long run. Maybe someone could explain why they did this because I'm baffled.
"... we will ensure followers are not part of the end-game MF equation. They are not intended to be, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure they cannot be."
Making them useless in hell is a bit too harsh a step, in my opinion.
Right on, what bashiok said is kinda like what I said on the other thread. Since this is a new thread I will say it again, "a game is not made solely for you" (i'm talking in general btw esp. to those crying about the system). Blizzard is trying to create a game that will make different player who plays different game style happy.
Twitter: @FreddyBushBoy