DiabloFans

I understand the screen clutter, and I agree, it's terrible! But I've played Diablo II a TON with my friends, sometimes we'd have 6 or more players, and one of them is a Necromancer...big mistake there. Having like 8 skeletons along with the players was a joke. However, every other time I've played Diablo II with 3 of my friends, screen clutter was not an issue, even with the mercs.

Thinking about this a bit, I understand an issue with balance. Some people said they hate having a mercenary and it's really not fair to them if a Mercenary is a significant part of their strength. When they don't have it, they're underpowered. The opposite, if you do have one, you could be overpowered. So for balance sake, no question, you either need a merc or don't.

On a second note, Diablo 1 was an awesome game as well, and you didn't have a mercenary in it. The more I think about it, that might have played a big part in the "dark, "scariness" of Diablo 1. When you played alone, you were alone. It helped add some mood that Diablo II didn't have as much of.

I will agree with others though about how having it in Normal and not anywhere else is a completely idiotic idea. Give them always or ditch them completely. You think me having a AI mercenary is going to make me want to play online with strangers!? Whatever. You're wasting your time with the mercs.

Reading over this has me terribly disturbed.

I can't believe Blizzards thinking with this situation. First we don't get LAN play, so no multiplayer mods. Now we only get 4 players cooperative with no mercenaries, and no mercenaries after Normal play. Why? All because someone at Blizzard thinks it's too chaotic.

Hey, did you ever wonder what the players might want? I'll pitch you a key word to great game development, "OPTIONS". If me and my friends feel that the game will be too chaotic with more than 4 players, we'll only play with 4 players, but in the chance that 5 of us want to play together, it sure would be nice to be able to include that one extra person. "Too bad! You'll play the way we want you to, not the way you want to!"

What's the point of even having a merc in the first place? Is it a recruiting strategy? You mention you want people to feel the presence of another player so they'll be more inclined to play online with people. Some of us don't like playing online with strangers! Why are you trying to make us do it? I prefer virtual friends over some rude people online. If my friends can't play with me one day, I'd sure like to have my mercenary there to keep me company. "Too bad! You'll play the way we want you to, not the way you want to!"

Back to my options mention. Why can't you just have things optional? Player numbers is obvious. Why can't you have a "Allow Mercenaries" option for multiplayer? This gives the host the option to allow mercs or not. I'll bet my life more often than not they'll allow YES. But Blizzard says NO.

I'm just a little bit sick of what I heard today. We're hoping for a sequel to Diablo II with all the standard features we've become accustomed too, but Blizzard is saying NO. My ears are bleeding now from that word. I'm sorely disappointed in you, Diablo III development team. You need to allow the players to play your game the way they want to, not the way you think they should.

No. Have you played Titan Quest? I play a healer with my friends. It isn't necessary at all, but it is helpful, and it's a nice change of pace sometimes.

Also, no friends are NEEDED in Diablo, but it is helpful and more fun with other players.

So the way to do it is to make it helpful, but not necessary.

Titan Quest did this right. You could create your character and manually heal with them, but it wasn't necessary.

That's how Diablo 3 should be. If you want to play a healer, you can, but it's not required.

So in other words, play online or don't get any good stuff.

Since it sounds like modding won't be available, us single player/offline people are not going to be happy with this situation.

My friends and I created our own custom mod and I cannot play Diablo 2 without it now. So without a LAN option, that means no modding, which means no custom mods to make the game better for some of us. :mad:

60.

How about a death like in Aliens, where you get stuck with a sharp tail, lifted up, and then ripped in half by the two hands?

I understand what you guys are saying, but when someone falls behind due to whatever reason, it sucks for them to slowly fall further and further behind in level. Then they start feeling like they should run out alone to catch up on experience and the whole party thing starts to fall apart.

It's because the graphics are too good. Blizzard can't release a game with updated graphics. They have to wait 2 years until the graphics are old and outdated. It's their moto.

The biggest change I hated in one of the Diablo II patches was that they severely reduced the radius at which you had to be near a kill in order to gain the experience for it. Cooperative play is great, but when you're FORCED to be right next to someone to get experience from something they kill, that's not fun.

My friends would often complain that they were falling behind in experience because they stopped to look at an item that dropped. Being 2 screens away just isn't big enough.

How wide is the radius for gaining experience with your party?