Official Blizzard Quote:
Followers were originally going to be available during co-op, and actually are right now because of a bug in the current build we're playing. And it's crazy. If you're unfortunate enough to also have a witch doctor, it's insanity. Eight characters running around plus all of the potential pets. It's complete chaos. That's the biggest reason they aren't going to be available outside of single player.
Not wanting the game to be chaotic is completely understandable and is likely one of the contributing factors behind why they initially decreased the maximum party size from eight players [in D2] to four this time around. Going back and doubling the party size would be the last thing they want to do if things truly do become chaotic. However, this begs the question, how will the game feel with a full party of Witch Doctors'? If adding four more potential "summons" turns the game into chaos, how apocalyptic will the game feel with a full set of summons from each of the four WD's? Regardless, if we do want to take advantage of these Followers, we won't be able to with a full party anyway.
Official Blizzard Quote:
It encourages co-op by giving people that are going to be playing the game alone from the start many of the thoughts and process that go into playing with another person. Seeing someone else on screen. Thinking about their items and skills. Hearing them talk. That all sounds silly from a lot of our perspectives, because, we all play co-op and who needs a primer? Well, a lot of people, and that's where this encourages co-op. More people playing co-op means more people in a mindset of an online community, and that has many far reaching benefits for all players.
It seems to me like we have to drop the Mercenary line of thinking from D2 in order to understand this decision. Essentially, Bashiok makes it sound like Followers aren't really supposed to be Mercenaries, but they are supposed to act as party members that replace other real players for those users who refuse to play multiplayer. When you look at the system in that perspective, it makes this functionality great, as it adds some form of cooperation for those who would rather play by themselves, and could even persuade said user to jump online and play with other users, for some real co-op play. This is simply because once you complete Normal by yourself, or rather with the [fake player] Follower, the Follower will become useless.
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.
Now you'll be yearning for that co-op play and your only choice will be to jump on Battle.net and find some peers to game with. Blizzard is doing some real funky reverse psychology to promote the social experience, but in the end, they are still promoting the social experience.
PvP will never have followers. Sorry. It's just not practical.
A good place for you to start in this debate would be saying something that is true.
And I dont really care if mercs or followers can be used in pvp, but again I'd prefer having the option. If they aren't balanced in pvp, don't use them in pvp.
So basically you like to have an option even if it doesn't matter to you, or if they are balanced for pvp? Why would blizzard even try to add an optional npc to help you fight in a PLAYER vs PLAYER match, that is unbalanced and outside the actual character's skills? The NPCs that are unbalanced would only make the pvpers who want them to fight in the ring with them call them horribly implemented due to many reasons I don't think I need to say. If blizzard worked hard to counter this right now and balance them, they'd be putting time into a system they wanted to limit, and only have as a hand holder for the "newbies." Mercs WERE a horrible system in D2, they made your "extremely powerful" character look like a pushover when a random computer with barely any looks to him could solo a whole act. Now people may enjoy this, but when an NPC can do things in a game you can't, especially when the focus of the game is to make you feel almighty taking out the greatest demons by yourself, it makes it seem like any average joe in sanctuary can beat up the biggest baddies around, if you give them armor and train them. That's how I kind of felt about the d2 merc system.
They "could" do all these things you said, but they've already decided they mostly want your character to fight alone, or with other players, and that's why the follower system will only go as far as it is now. If they do decide to take it further later on in expansions then I would not mind, as long as they do it smartly. Even if I did buy mercs all the time, I never really liked them or looking after them.
And I'm honestly sick and tired of everyone saying 'I just want the option.' Of course you do. That doesn't mean that Blizzard should sacrifice quality just so that you have more options. We all know that its not a realistic solution to just have it be a checkmark. If it doesn't work or isn't balanced, it shouldn't be in the game. Period. There are plenty of other options in D3, we don't need more that don't meet Blizz's quality standards.
Edited for PG-13ness.
I am still trying to figure out why this was typed..... When something is clearly "wrong" in it's context you don't need to compromise. In fact your're on a forum where what you do is DEBATE, and when people debate they aren't always compromising.
And, for the record, this current system is a compromise. If you've been paying any attention to the controversy surrounding the followers, you would know that when the video was leaked, everyone (or a large, loud group) was outraged that they would be essential for MFing, or other purposes, in the endgame. Once it was announced that they're only usable in Normal, everyone (as in an equally large, loud group) has since been pissed off that they're apparently useless. So Blizzard chose something of an in between scenario where they are available in Normal for anyone who wants to have a follower, and to promote online play.
The thing is, as any person whose had to make compromises before knows, nobody ends up happy in a compromise. So now we have the current scenario.
Also, the reason Blizz isn't nerfing/buffing/modifying the system until it works is because the game's design mentality doesn't fit well with a follower. The idea is for you to feel as powerful as possible, and if you're allowed to use a follower to fill in the blanks of your build that doesn't correspond to you feeling powerful.
Not to mention that its not just a matter of buffing/nerfing it. Because of the insane amounts of builds in the game (97 billion), it would be impossible to take into account all the possibilities. Which means that they could come up with a system that works perfectly in internal testing, only to have it fall apart on Day 3 of the beta because someone discovered an insane build that compliments followers. It would be something they would have to constantly worry about, for a system that not everyone even wants.
Unless you have something to say that actually applies to the followers system (ie something thats not just a troll/personal attack), don't post here again. Take note of all the other people who want followers that I've had legitimate conversations with about the reasons for and against followers, and learn from them.
I'll say it again; there is NO REASON this can't be balanced. There is no reason any feature can't be balanced and again I'm not even going to start discussing options until you stop lying and ironically start calling everyone else childish.
There's honestly no reason to read the rest of your essay because I read the first few lines and saw BS.
Again, I never said this was the case. I only said it would be EXTREMELY hard work for a balance that could be destroyed the moment someone finds a build that works really well with followers. And theres 97 billion builds, so chances are one would tip the scales in that kind of way.
For the last time, either start reading posts and intelligently contributing to conversations, or leave. Those are your options. Stop being a troll.
@Critter- I could be wrong but I assumed that the pun was intended. If not, quite a coincidence.
So I'll just finish this conversation with you jackzor by informing you that d4 is coming out next week so this debate is irrelevant, d3 mercs have been declared better than the current follower system and that your posts are all about rift online and not actually about d3. I'm glad we all had this conversation with the unbiased moderators allowing blatant lying and abusing moderator privileges when people merely point out obvious BS.
Thanks, I'm glad you made that easy for me.
Now that we've settled that, there is no reason followers can't be made to be optional via checkbox. There is no scenario in which an OPTIONAL feature is somehow essential.
Again, until this basic fact is acknowledged this debate simply can't move forward.
As for "personal attacks", there are no personal attacks here, there's only people spreading obvious misinformation and me having a hard time correcting all the lies. If people had been telling the truth to begin with this debate would have been rather straight forward.
I'm not trying to personally attack people or intentionally make them look bad, but when somebody posts something that clearly isn't true and I have to clarify, well, they end up looking bad.
Why should they include something thats entirely unbalanced? Even though the option obviously makes it non-essential, it would still lead to a scenario where some people have builds that rely on them, and therefore would only be able to play in games where that checkmark is checked.
They're not going to include something, even as a checkmark, unless its well balanced. And its simply nearly impossible to balance for reasons I've explained before, and as evidenced by the fact that Blizzard decided it wasn't worth it even though there were probably iterations where followers were available in co-op and higher difficulties.
And on a separate note, you can't honestly accuse me of misinformation. Not only is it impossible for my opinion to even be misleading, seeing as it is, after all, an opinion and not fact, but nearly everything I've said is based on something from Bashiok's posts after the followers were announced. I'm simply presenting what I interpret as Blizzard's reasoning behind the limited follower system because some people seem to have not even read what Bashiok said in direct response to questions like theirs. And lets not forget that you're the only one claiming I'm being misleading, and clearly it hasn't convinced you, so obviously its not a problem either way.
Nah just kidding buddy I chuckled.