Alt Options, Tiered Skill Slots, and the Infamous Auction House

If this past week has been the calm, today surely was the storm as Bashiok responded to three threads on the Battle.net forums following Kaivax's minor Blue post yesterday on Diablo 3's music. In Diablo 2 when an item drops its title remains unseen unless you mouse over it, or press the Alt key. Pressing Alt has the added function of showing every item title on screen. This feature helps the player instantly take quota to what has just dropped anywhere on screen.

Diablo 3 brings options to this feature allowing the player to choice when they'd like to view item titles, and even what key they'd like to use:


Official Blizzard Quote:



We have a few different options you can pick from to display item names while they're on the ground.

The default option is that names will show for 10 seconds when the item drops, and then the name fades out. You can hit Alt again to show them for another 10 seconds. (Diablo III default)
You can also forego showing item names automatically when they drop and choose to just use Alt to show item names while it's held down. (classic functionality)
You can also choose to always show item names, and hold Alt to hide them. (I'm not sure how useful this is, but it's there)
There's also an option to make Alt toggle showing item names on/off. (my personal favorite)

We're also looking to bring back the /nopickup option from Diablo II, but it's currently a nice-to-have feature and so may not make initial release.

Additionally you can rebind any and all keys in the game, so you can easily make something like the Tab (for example) key show item names instead of Alt, if you prefer.
A special thanks to CherubDown for bringing this Blue to light promptly.
Rebinding to any key is great, but what about a mouse button or tilt wheel? Many mice now have programmable hot keys which help free up your alternate hand. For now this remains unknown, though hopefully in the not to distance future Bashiok will return with an answer:


Official Blizzard Quote:



Good question. I don't know and don't use a mouse with a tilt wheel. I can try to find out.
On a related topic item title filters were mentioned. Such a filter would allow the player to choose what type of items would be seen on screen when viewing item titles with the Alt function. For example, a player interested only in legendary items could filter out all other item classifications from the Alt key function. These types of filters won't be making their way into the game. Reason being, between the ability to salvage items from anywhere, and a larger inventory, picking up most items you see could pay off.


Official Blizzard Quote:



That's not an option currently and as far as I know we don't have any plans to implement. I think the argument against such a thing could be that since you're able to pick up and immediately salvage/sell any items without going back to town, as well as just having a great deal more storage space, means there's a good reason to pick up everything. I suspect that may not hold true for all levels of play, but we'll see.
Auto gold pickup still remains. This feature can be seen as early as the 2008 Gameplay Trailer. At 6:45 in the trailer you see the Barb walk past two small gold drops, missing them slightly. On his return trip at 6:53 you see both gold stacks be picked up, while his mouse cursor was clearly guiding him forward. Auto item pickup on the other hand has been denied, reason being it would lesson the choices available to the player.


Official Blizzard Quote:



No, we want players to be clicking on items still to pick them up. Gold is auto-pickup because there's never a reason to not pick it up, but creating 'loot vacuum' mechanics for actual items removes several layers of player decision and interaction.
In Diablo 3 this would be a lot easier to clean up.

Without any direct clarification, Skill Slots have been somewhat of a blurry topic concerning their limitations. Bashiok helps clear this up with a brief post adding to another member's prompt response:


Official Blizzard Quote:



Q u o t e:
From information I had read, it sounds like you can have all of the "high level / tier" abilities if you save your points, but it has been mentioned that the first tier items have little, to no cooldown, and the "top tier" ones have "lengthy cooldowns."

So take that as you wish, but it would lead me to believe that if you have only high end cooldowns, it might suck when you have nothing to cast :(


Right, so for example, the three final skills of the barbarian tree all currently have 2 minute cooldowns. There are ways to augment those cooldowns slightly of course, but you're still going to want a mix of skills that complement each other.
Last, and surely least we have a pretty standard response, or lack there of, regarding the unannounced Trading System. This infamous system will likely be revealed at the Blizzard Beta meeting July 27th along with a slew of other information leading to the Beta release targeted sometime in Q3.


Official Blizzard Quote:



We haven't made any announcements yet regarding trade systems, but it's something we'll be prepared to reveal soon™.

I think it's something people are going to be pretty psyched about, if not passionately indifferent.
To this our own CherubDown responded accordingly:


Official Blizzard Quote:



Q u o t e:
You think only 2 different opinions will come out of the reveal? You should know this community better by now. :)


No, no, of course not. I totally expect a veritable rainbow of positive reactions. From joy, to elation, to admiration, all the way down to a mild pledging of undying fealty.
Seeing as this Trading System will be one of the most important features in the game, surely a wide range of responses will echo around the community upon it's announcement. It will need to stand up to the expectations of tens of thousands of fans, bringing simplicity, efficiency, and player immersion together in a nice organized package; in Blizzard we trust.



In other news Thursday July 21st in San Diego, California Blizzard will be making an appearance at Comic Con 2011. At the event Blizzard, and companies licences with them will likely announce new unseen merchandise for Diablo, Starcraft 2, and World of Warcraft. The entire event runs from the 21st through the 24th, with the 20th being preview day.

Special thanks to Medievaldragon for bringing this Diablo related news to light.
Can't make it to Comic Con? Live around Cologne, Germany? Head on over to Gamescom 2011 for Europe's first chance to play the latest Blizzcon 2011 version of Diablo 3.

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