DiabloFans

The statue won't necessarily be released before the game. Product merchandise is usually released after the product. They're just cashing in on the pre-release hype to get some pre-orders.

I like you Doppel, Azylium and Ferret (even though Doppel doesn't [like his arguments :P]), because all three of you have valid and well-reasoned arguments. As I read through the first few pages, I was considering the points you made in the last two pages, and was just about to post them when I finally stumbled on them.

Auto-stats or no, in the end it all comes down to what Diablo is all about. In other, more traditional, RPG's, stats are more important and influence everything from damage through crit chance to how well you communicate with NPC's and the deals you get at stores. Items in those games are far less important and fairly generic. Monsters are also not as important and fighting is a lot less frequent and involved (ITO skill use, dodging projectiles, aiming for weak spots, target priority) etc.

Diablo is an Action-RPG, which means that the items and combat are a far greater part of the game. As Ferret has mentioned, improving stats necessitates and implies weakening items and monsters. I would love to see stats mean more in Diablo, but it's just not feasible without turning it into a different kind of RPG.

I'm also convinced that Blizzard considered everything discussed in this thread, and came to a similar conclusion. I think the problem is that they don't have the time to come and explain their logic to their fans in excrutiating detail, so some of us end up thinking that they haven't considered all the facts. Before replying with something like "you can't be sure of that" or whatever, consider that it basically comes down to who we're talking about and what they've done in the past, like so many others have said. I guess you could call it faith.

My problem with Diablo's, and pretty much every other RPG's, item system has always been that good (i.e. unique, good rare, etc.) items are too hard to come by. You have to depend on luck to find them, instead of, say, being able to buy them at certain specialised shops or crafting them through mini-games/recipes/etc. The auction house is still a trading system between players in that you're just replacing items as currency with gold as currency. This does work a lot better, but i'd still like to see actual meaningful interactions between the player's gold/skill and the game to acquire good and useful items.

Fair enough. Apparently Britain is feeling the effects quite severely too, because pretty much every financial transaction in the world goes through London.

Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »

Besides, not all WoW.players are american. Hafl are chinesea 2 million are european. So we'll see.

And the financial crisis is only affecting America? (I DO have a bachelors in economics :P)

Thanks Siaynoq. I was just thinking that half the people here were jumping to so many conclusions and almost purposefully misinterpreting Wilson's words so they could get a rant in. This is Blizzard, they're not going to screw anything up too heavily, and if they do, they'll correct it in a patch or expansion.

I'm a South African and it's 8:43 AM here. BLIZZCON day! Now I just have to wait for you folks in California to finish Thursday so we can get this party started.

If there's something wrong with the in-game model, it's that it doesn't look mangy enough. In fact, it looks well-groomed.

I like the in-game version. It looks like a cross between a hyena and a mole (the claws mostly) and some kind of serpent/daemon. With regards to similarity to the concept art, the in-game model does look a lot like the most recent image (the one that's also at the top of the Scavenger page).

edit: I just checked out the gameplay video again and noticed that the Witch Doctor's mongrels look a lot like the scavengers from Diablo 1. I guess they decided to give the new scavengers a more furry, mammal-like appearance and browner textures to differentiate them from mongrels. Also, the mongrel's model and some of its animations are very similar to the new scavenger's.

IMO the game should have autosave (checkpoints), waypoints, and TP scrolls! Anything that allows people to get back to the portion of the game they still haven't completed before as quickly and easily as possible. Death penalties and other mechanics should take care of the avoidance of death and increase the difficulty. Forcing people to redo parts of the game they're done with does not increase the "difficulty," only frustration.

TP scrolls should be on a cooldown like some people said, but they shouldn't be the only way to get back to an area, otherwise players will end up sitting around waiting for the cooldown to finish before attempting a difficult boss fight. Having them be non-combat is probably the best solution.

Being out of town for longer periods will also increase the value of identify scrolls, which became near useless after rescuing Cain in Diablo 2.

The Titan Quest rebirth fountain system is very similar to the checkpoint system found in old games from before computers had enough memory to store autosaves, quicksaves, or waypoints like we know them today.

I bought Abe's Oddysee on steam a while ago, and that game implements a "diamond," or checkpoint, system in which your progress is saved every few screens or so. Depending on the frequency of the checkpoints, this can be similar to autosave. It appears that is what Blizzard is going for, probably in addition to some variation of the traditional waypoints and town portals.

I like this mechanic because, IMO, all games should have quicksave or at the very least, autosave. It's just annoying having to re-walk areas you completed before, especially since the monsters will remain dead.

Keeping track of how many times you have died can kind of be an incentive to not want to die, if only for bragging rights. Adding some form of "fatigue" or exp and loot penalty for a few minutes after death is another option. And the incentive for not dying in HC is obvious.

Well that was a rather long first post. I've been reading the forum since the announcement, but felt like posting on this topic since it's an aspect of game design I think about a lot.