The Death of Your Followers (and Attack Rating)

Recently, we've received some more information about a few different systems in Diablo III during some discussion on the Battle.net forums, along with a few informative tweets.

To start off, we recieved some much needed, if miniscule, information about NPC followers in Diablo III.

Official Blizzard Quote:



CalamanderRu: @Diablo Does it mean that NPC can take damage or even die?
Diablo: @CalamanderRu Many of them, yes.
At first look this simply confirms the obvious: NPCs that follow you around will die. However, Bashiok's reply seems to imply that you'll fight at the side of NPCs that won't be able to die, such as DiabloWiki.com - Deckard Cain Deckard Cain following the Barbarian in the Gameplay Video. Fighting along with Tyreal as you make your way into Diablo's lair? It could happen. Who knows what NPCs, new or old, will ask for your assistance and then come along with you for the quest or two they send you on? Though if you're interested, our very own Don_Guillotine took a stab at what NPC's we may be encountering.


Bashiok then gave us a very good description of the hit chance in the upcoming game in the start of a lengthy thread on the Battle.net forums.

Official Blizzard Quote:



Essentially all attacks have a flat 5% chance to miss, with the exception of most ranged spells, AOE, and abilities with larger resource investments. There's no blanket rule that's easy for me to lay down to show which can't miss and which can, it's sort of handled on a case by case basis. Most melee attacks have a 5% chance to miss, but then some melee attacks can't miss because the resource cost is substantial. It's sort of common sense in a way, that a range attack has to be aimed and connect with a moving target so a chance to miss in in the player's skill, so no need to have it on the ability (some exceptions exist). AOE just doesn't make good sense to miss because if the enemy is in the area of effect that's their bad. Skills with big resource costs have that investment in them, so giving them a chance to miss feels lame. Skills that can miss are usually the low/no cost melee attacks, spammable attacks, etc. And no, there is no stat or way to augment/reduce chance to miss.
As Bashiok points out, this system is based on a combination of aim and percentages, depening on the attack. Area of effect attacks hit as long as the the player or monster is in, well, the area. Ranged attacks, in most cases, travel in straight lines and whether or not the attack hits the monster depends on where the player aimed. Obviously this will vary with the skill, as some ranged attacks may follow their target. The melee hit chance is simply a percentage, and if you are within melee range you will hit the player or monster 95% of the time in order to simulate the potential misses with a ranged attack. This also means that DiabloWiki.com - Attack Rating Attack Rating won't be returning in Diablo III, and it appears as though the miss rate will be constant for melee characters and will not be able to be improved by stats.

The conversation in the Battle.net forum thread then turned to talk of player skill, and Bashiok chimed in on this topic as well.

Official Blizzard Quote:



I think the point is that there is some perceived level of 'skill' difference between those that know the systems and work within them, and those that just play the game and are oblivious to them. When instead we're actually attempting to avoid that 'I did the math so I win' type of puzzle solving, and instead place more of the skill difference up front with actual gameplay. There will still be plenty of places for the min/maxers to blow away the casual weekend warriors, though.
Obviously, Diablo is going for a balance of allowing casual players to play and enjoy the game, while still implementing mechanics and challenges that allow people to show off their prowess. As Bashiok describes, the separation between hardcore and casual players will be less based on a knowledge of the math behind the game's mechanics, and more on knowing what skills, runes and gear to get and whether or not you know how to play your character's build.

This topic continued in a somewhat heated discussion, where Bashiok explained how min/maxing works in Diablo III.

Official Blizzard Quote:



First off, there seems to be an idea that these things are being 'dumbed down', which is of course not the case. No matter what systems we have in the game, as long as there is some reasonable amount of complexity, each and every one of them will be torn apart, put on a spread sheet, and digested by those that want to get mathy about min/maxing the game, and it will lead to being more successful. That's a given, and we don't have to design in complex systems that we don't think feel fun to accomplish it. The majority of the systems that exist are fairly complex once you move beyond the easy-to-use interface, and I fully expect you all to pry up the cover and rip the wires out to make something better.
It appears as though there are plenty of complex systems with a lot of depth. Bashiok seems to be going out of his way to assure us that min/maxing will be very important to get the most out of your character. However, that does not translate into complex interfaces. As seen during the Blizzcon 2010 Crafting Sanctuary panel, Diablo III's interface has gone through many iterations to become as easy to use as possible.


Official Blizzard Quote:



Secondly this isn't Diablo II, and I know it's easy to get caught up in that mindset because for the most part it's the only reference (WHERE'S THE BETA!?). We don't have spammable health potions, we think that's a great change, and we know most of you do too. That means a whole lot things to how damage is dealt and received. Really huge spikey damage does not work in a system where you can't quickly overcome those spikes by spamming potions. Because of that systems like chance to hit shift to instead offset defense, resists, and damage taken. End of the day it's the same thing, but the game benefits from the swap from one end to the other. We technically have more stats in Diablo III than Diablo II because of this. More stats is more knobs is more math is more ways to rule through tweaking it.
Bashiok brings up a very interesting point here when it comes to the damage system in Diablo III. As we all know, Diablo III uses DiabloWiki.com - Health Globes Health Globes as the main way to gain health instead of the DiabloWiki.com - Potions Potions we all know from the first two games, and this makes it so that the entire damage system is different in Diablo III when compared to Diablo II.

And yea, where is that beta?

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