Remember the key that allowed you to swap between weapon sets in Diablo II? Well, it seems that it will not be making an appearance in the next installment of the series.
In a rather lengthy post, Bashiok revealed the reasoning behind the removal of the weapon swap key. The full response can be viewed here (yes, there was more to it than is shown).
Official Blizzard Quote:
One good reason why it's not a feature we like the idea of is that it adds a new type of play complexity that we don't want to layer on top of those that we already have. We're creating the game, the skills, the movement speed, kill rates, skill runes, and all other combat related mechanics and features to fit as tightly together as possible. Throwing in weapon swapping forces that tightening/balancing to take it into account. Only thing is that it's not a clear cut feature. You either know how to game it - or you don't. So it creates a separation of players that isn't based on use of the character and skills but doing this weird little trick and swapping back and forth between weapons at specific times. It becomes a necessity to remain effective or as a strong opponent[.]
As much as I would like to see the weapon swap key in game, this does make sense. Many times, you would have your normal weapon, and then a "buffing weapon" on your alternate set to cast buffs with. Many players grasped this, and it really did create a rather wide divide. Players who did utilize this often had an immense edge over those who could not, or could not afford to do so.
Official Blizzard Quote:
I know this is probably the wrong audience to try to make that argument to, because most of you are on the winning end. But trust us that there will be plenty of separation between you and the noobs to show how awesome you are without weapon swapping.
This is what makes me hopeful for the future. At face value, it may seem that Blizzard is simply "dumbing down" the game to better suit new players. However, when we consider the other new systems that are more complicated than weapon swapping could ever hope to be (Skill Runes), it shows that a "dumbed down" version of Diablo will not be hitting the shelves. On the contrary, it seems that it will be a blend of ease of use, and complicated features for experienced players.
Official Blizzard Quote:
You also have the issues of it just being used for storage, which feels super cheesy. Or as a means to game MF by swapping in weapons to get 0mgz uber dropz.
I hate to admit it, but I fell into this trap many a time. I would often find myself using my second weapon set as extra storage for that polearm I wanted to sell, or those javelins that I couldn't tetris into my inventory. While this is not a game breaking feature, it is rather cheesy and pointless, so it is easy to see the backing behind this point.
As for the second part, many players (myself included), would simply swap weapons when a boss was close to dying, and be rewarded with extra loot. This may seem fantastic, but there is a valid point behind it. If we are allowed to do this, then we will not have to balanced our gear between combat, and loot-finding capabilities. We'll be able to adjust on the fly, and with a minimum of consequence. Basically, it would take a large portion of pre-planning and work out of the equation.
However, I assume that players will still be able to keep alternate weapon sets in their inventory, and just swap them out through more tedious methods. While this will still acheive the same ends as the weapon swap key, at least it will come with some downsides. Since, while you are changing weapons, the demons will not be taking a coffee break.
They're coming for you, with or without their morning cup of java.
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Quote from "Sixen" »
"One in every 10 million people can potentially have a headache from this pill." God forbid she is the 0.000000001% of having a headache.
I remember the days of swapping out your damage gear for that Gull dagger. Although it still never seemed to make a difference for me. I still didn't get shit all.
I won't miss the weapon swapping too much. I mean, LoD was the one to introduce the feature, anyway. It's just another step in, hopefully, putting the Diablo series back to it's roots.
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"There's no doughnuts in Diablo. Oohhhh, I just threw it down. BlizzCon exclusive: no doughnuts. -Jay Wilson
I thought the weapon swap was lame. I only used it end game when I could afford weapons that would buff. Otherwise I would use it to hold the weapons needed for quests, or a weapon or shield that I couldn't fit into the stash
.... I think I may be one of the few who really liked it :(.
Though, this is because I played a lot of single player, and nearly ALWAYS had a weapon swap on with a ranged weapon if I was melee.
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Quote from "Sixen" »
"One in every 10 million people can potentially have a headache from this pill." God forbid she is the 0.000000001% of having a headache.
Most of my single player playing days were done when I didn't have LoD, so I didn't know the weapon swap existed. I had finally begun to play Battle.net right before I got LoD. So all of my weapon swap use was for items I couldn't fit in the inventory or for a CTA.
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"There's no doughnuts in Diablo. Oohhhh, I just threw it down. BlizzCon exclusive: no doughnuts. -Jay Wilson
Nice work, Zhar. Glad to see the people at Blizzard really trying to tune Diablo 3 as much as possible so when it does finally hit the store shelves, it will be a truly remarkable game.
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[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Avast ye! Scyberdragon be te thank for the sig, arr!
I trust Blizz to make D3 a cool game, if they say swap was a bad thing I'll agree with them. I wasn't a fan of the feature and having to buff myself each time I died by changing my gear wasn't fun at all. Anyway thanks for the article Zhar
It's kinda hard to explain to us how unbalancing the swap system IS, without telling us all the information on D3 that they are keeping from us.
So it's real obvious that alot of folk are going to disagree or fail to see the point of it's removal.
On the other hand, it is telling us something;
The ammount of balancing won't be as rediculously dumb as it was back in D2. Where they were literally forced to create 1 shot kill monsters just so they could keep providing challenge for players, who had over abused every single (unbalanced) feature in the game to make UBER chars.
When we see them basically breaking down every single system, no matter how insignificantly small it may seem, just to figure out which one can or cannot be abused is really showing that this time around they are taking a responsible approach to designing this game.
So I guess I'm all for it.
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[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Diablo 3, Hottest shit to happen to 21st Century Entertainment since Georges "Rush" St-Pierre.______________ --------~~Mattheo's Quote of the day~~---------
----------Brought to you by Diablofans.com Forums -------- Originally Posted by mattheo_majik
I LOVE being a SEX TON!!!
.... I think I may be one of the few who really liked it :(.
Though, this is because I played a lot of single player, and nearly ALWAYS had a weapon swap on with a ranged weapon if I was melee.
No you are not.
Last time there was a discussion about this and they said it wouldn't be back, people were a lot more negative than today... for some reason.
I don't care the reason they remove it, because these reasons are stupid. I mean, granted, I don't want weapon swap for all those "tricks" that I actually never did. I want weapon swap to... gasp... swap weapons normally like intended.
Maybe limit it so that one is melee and the other is ranged, can't have both. I don't know. I don't care. Just dropping the feature because other people "abused it" and gave themselves an edge by doing a lame and unfun task is just stupid.
Well, lucky us, Swapping Weapons quickly is no longer intended in Diablo 3, maybe in Diablo 2 when for whatever reason they added it, but in Diablo 3 it's not something the dev's care for you to do, if you do it, do it at your own risk.
I never liked quickly swapping weapons in a game, for all the reasons bashiok has mentioned, and because a good game shouldn't even need it.
The only times I used weapon swapping were 1) in Act I with my casters- they often didn't have good +skill weapons that they are dependent on by then so I kept a gemmed bow on switch - and 2) buffing with my CTA. The latter is a ridiculously stupid idea- oh, let's add weapons that you don't fight with! The former, well, I think was closer to the true intention of its use, but nonetheless was hopelessly short-lived.
I actually used the weapon swap for several ocations: The first and main slot was for killing the weaker masses that might attack me (a 2H weapon) and the other slot was for bosses and in case I got into more than I could handle (longsword and shield). I played both paladin and barbarian that way.
I'm guilty of the swap MF myself.....
Besides that I honestly don't care if they take it out. Lets see...one weapons swap button or lots of different ways to customize? Not really a contest
I will not miss it since I will have alternate items in my backpack to swap with on the go. I have been doing that in D1 and d2 from the beginning. It takes a little bit longer than the weapon swap button but not much longer.
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In a rather lengthy post, Bashiok revealed the reasoning behind the removal of the weapon swap key. The full response can be viewed here (yes, there was more to it than is shown).
Official Blizzard Quote:
One good reason why it's not a feature we like the idea of is that it adds a new type of play complexity that we don't want to layer on top of those that we already have. We're creating the game, the skills, the movement speed, kill rates, skill runes, and all other combat related mechanics and features to fit as tightly together as possible. Throwing in weapon swapping forces that tightening/balancing to take it into account. Only thing is that it's not a clear cut feature. You either know how to game it - or you don't. So it creates a separation of players that isn't based on use of the character and skills but doing this weird little trick and swapping back and forth between weapons at specific times. It becomes a necessity to remain effective or as a strong opponent[.]
As much as I would like to see the weapon swap key in game, this does make sense. Many times, you would have your normal weapon, and then a "buffing weapon" on your alternate set to cast buffs with. Many players grasped this, and it really did create a rather wide divide. Players who did utilize this often had an immense edge over those who could not, or could not afford to do so.
Official Blizzard Quote:
I know this is probably the wrong audience to try to make that argument to, because most of you are on the winning end. But trust us that there will be plenty of separation between you and the noobs to show how awesome you are without weapon swapping.
This is what makes me hopeful for the future. At face value, it may seem that Blizzard is simply "dumbing down" the game to better suit new players. However, when we consider the other new systems that are more complicated than weapon swapping could ever hope to be (Skill Runes), it shows that a "dumbed down" version of Diablo will not be hitting the shelves. On the contrary, it seems that it will be a blend of ease of use, and complicated features for experienced players.
Official Blizzard Quote:
You also have the issues of it just being used for storage, which feels super cheesy. Or as a means to game MF by swapping in weapons to get 0mgz uber dropz.
I hate to admit it, but I fell into this trap many a time. I would often find myself using my second weapon set as extra storage for that polearm I wanted to sell, or those javelins that I couldn't tetris into my inventory. While this is not a game breaking feature, it is rather cheesy and pointless, so it is easy to see the backing behind this point.
As for the second part, many players (myself included), would simply swap weapons when a boss was close to dying, and be rewarded with extra loot. This may seem fantastic, but there is a valid point behind it. If we are allowed to do this, then we will not have to balanced our gear between combat, and loot-finding capabilities. We'll be able to adjust on the fly, and with a minimum of consequence. Basically, it would take a large portion of pre-planning and work out of the equation.
However, I assume that players will still be able to keep alternate weapon sets in their inventory, and just swap them out through more tedious methods. While this will still acheive the same ends as the weapon swap key, at least it will come with some downsides. Since, while you are changing weapons, the demons will not be taking a coffee break.
They're coming for you, with or without their morning cup of java.
I am glad that they are looking at the old systems and fixin them.
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I won't miss the weapon swapping too much. I mean, LoD was the one to introduce the feature, anyway. It's just another step in, hopefully, putting the Diablo series back to it's roots.
Though, this is because I played a lot of single player, and nearly ALWAYS had a weapon swap on with a ranged weapon if I was melee.
Avast ye! Scyberdragon be te thank for the sig, arr!
So it's real obvious that alot of folk are going to disagree or fail to see the point of it's removal.
On the other hand, it is telling us something;
The ammount of balancing won't be as rediculously dumb as it was back in D2. Where they were literally forced to create 1 shot kill monsters just so they could keep providing challenge for players, who had over abused every single (unbalanced) feature in the game to make UBER chars.
When we see them basically breaking down every single system, no matter how insignificantly small it may seem, just to figure out which one can or cannot be abused is really showing that this time around they are taking a responsible approach to designing this game.
So I guess I'm all for it.
--------~~Mattheo's Quote of the day~~---------
----------Brought to you by Diablofans.com Forums --------
Originally Posted by mattheo_majik
I LOVE being a SEX TON!!!
No you are not.
Last time there was a discussion about this and they said it wouldn't be back, people were a lot more negative than today... for some reason.
I don't care the reason they remove it, because these reasons are stupid. I mean, granted, I don't want weapon swap for all those "tricks" that I actually never did. I want weapon swap to... gasp... swap weapons normally like intended.
Maybe limit it so that one is melee and the other is ranged, can't have both. I don't know. I don't care. Just dropping the feature because other people "abused it" and gave themselves an edge by doing a lame and unfun task is just stupid.
I never liked quickly swapping weapons in a game, for all the reasons bashiok has mentioned, and because a good game shouldn't even need it.
Besides that I honestly don't care if they take it out. Lets see...one weapons swap button or lots of different ways to customize? Not really a contest
Indeed. What does one truly have to do with the other?
When I seen expansion I understood they've rid the work...