DiabloFans

Awesome! Definitely one of the more detail-rich interviews for D3. So all the resources systems are pretty much confirmed.

Witch doctor - Mana (grows with leveling up, regens slowly, replenishes w/ mana potion/orbs)
Monk - Spirit (similar to rogue combo-ing in WoW, you do charge attacks to generate spirit, then a finishing move to use it up)
Barbarian - Fury (normal attacks & damage taken generate it and magical attacks use it up)
Wizard - Arcane Power (a capped fast-regen resource not unlike WoW rogue's energy system, which does not grow with levelups, but can be enhanced with skills and items)

I can't believe Jay let those info go (especially resources for monk and wizard) without waiting for Blizzcon, but then hey I ain't complainin'.

I agree, it was pretty pathetic, partially because all the jokes were spoilered through the trailer already (both both this week's and next week's episodes, which will be the only two that have parts about Blizzard). Ah well.

It's out:

http://video.ign.com/dor/articles/1062228/the-jace-hall-show/videos/jacehall_prt_ep1_012910.html?show=hi

An Ice-based elemental attack by a boss freezes you completely in-place for X seconds, during which (*) damage over X seconds is imposed, and at the end of it the boss will RAM at you.

If your HP is completely drained by the ice damage-over-time, then you shatter into bits of bloodied ice by the ramming; if you didn't die from freezing, you have 0.5 seconds to react and try to dodge the ramming attack: if you do you barely survive, if you don't the boss deals a huge melee damage and smashes your tattered corpse against whatever wall stands in the linear course of the ramming attack.


edit: oh and if a teammate is heroic enough to sacrifice him/herself and take on the ramming attack for you, even if your HP dropped to zero due to freeze damage, you still survive with 1 HP.

Quote from "3rdfoundation" »

I think a penalty of gold and experience is enough. If you ramp up the experience penalty that alone would make people take death seriously (lose a character level and any skill/attributes given to that level).

I like the idea of damaged items as well. Items in diablo have never been painful to repair. If they are severely damaged when you die and you make repairing items really expensive it will make people think twice about dying.

I also don't understand how picking up loot is going to work if you can't take it back to town to sell it. I tend to fill up my inventory space with charms. If I couldn't take it back to town it would seriously change the way I organize my player. I'd leave a lot of space and actually carry an identify tome.

Charms may not be in DIII, just like a lot other items and aspects that don't make a comeback.

Quote from "Sildrugtanni" »

The D2 death penalty was easily one of the worst/stupidest I've ever encountered. All it did was make me spend a minute running back to my corpse. The gold loss was inconsequential, and the exp loss (for me, who usually didn't level beyond 80-85 because there wasn't any real incentive beyond that) amounted to a couple Baal runs. Let's not kid ourselves by saying the D2 penalty was hardcore in any way, shape or form; it wasn't. "Oh no! My corpse is surrounded by monsters that kill me before I reach it! What do I do?! Oh, wait, I'll just exit and make a new game."

And to those anyone who says WoW didn't have a death penalty, I'm guessing you didn't play much at high levels with a lot of purple gear. Dying meant your items would lose durability, which may not sound like a big deal, but it cost an ass ton to repair. This was especially bad for raiders who needed money for mats, pots, etc.

Your point towards D2 death penalty is that it amounts purely to annoyance and not to punishment. The fact is that, an annoying death penalty is just one that is not severe enough to be felt as a punishment.

Both of those detriments work towards giving the player a constant (sometimes intense and adrenaline-rushing) pressure to STAY ALIVE and perfect the character skill-and-item-wise to achieve better survivability.

The balance in an RPG like this is to penalize the player here and there enough that the player is greatly contrived to worry about how he can make his character better, but still have those penalties moderate enough that they don't grief the players (too much).


@Blizzquote,
Personally like a few earlier posters, I feel that instant full-gear respawn does not by any means fit the conventional concept of "death", even when relative to any other RPG games.

We are role-playing in these video games, for god's sakes, we either play hard-core in which the role-playing is a bit extreme and when you die you die, or less than HC but still having the scene of death drawing your breath away and making you regret that last false move you did.