Jay Wilson: “When you have a player who has more mobility, more health and endless power, essentially the only thing you can really do to challenge [the players] is to kill them.”
Bashiok answered a QQ-rampage from fan bobydole concerning this very MTV interview about Health Potions. His answer makes sense. There is a mix between nostalgia, and how gaming experience, game mechanics and systems have evolved eight years later. Sometimes you can't appeal to everyone, but gotta balance games somewhere in the middle. Personally, I have been one of those players who go into Duriel with a full stack of healing potions, do hit and run, and spam healing potions. Same with Diablo at the Chaos Sanctuary. Teleport, stack more healing potions, then return to continue tackling Diablo. Playing Diablo 3 differently would surely put a dent on the healing pot spamming nostalgia. However, shooting down the new healing concept laid by the Diablo 3 team before even getting our hands on a playable demo, or beta is a bit too early.
Bobydole: They keep touting potiopn dropping as if it's a new dynamic that's going to make the game more interesting. It's been around for decades as a game mechanic.
What made diablo interesting was the lifetap ability of most classes, it wasn't so much the potion popping, though that was important for casters.
What gets me is these guys claim they're fixing this that, putting in potion drops rather than potions, then they say some BS like this...
"We want diablo III to be beatable by just pushing one button."
No $%ing *(, genious. Diablo I and II both got that right for lower difficulties.
How about we stop trying to fix what isn't broken and refine it. Rather than, oh i don't know...
DEVOLVING ONE OF THE GREATEST GAMES OF ALL TIME TO MIMIC THE BASIC PLAY MECHANICS OF PREVIOUS BULL(*$ TITLES.
Are we making a blizzard game here or an SOE title? Quit making bull*(&$, water-down, vanilla gameplay descisions.
Blizzard doesn't cater to massive audiences, they create them.
Refine lifetap, Refine player run speeds, make synergies work better. Make some skills powerful damage-wise, but weaken a players speed/ defense over time. Make more dynamic buff abilities like berserk.
Go ahead, kill the messenger. Blizzard can do no wrong, right?, Empires never fall..
Bashiok: Hrmmm, I was really confused at first but I think you make a very valid point. However, game development and design just doesn't tend to work the same as it used to, and I'm not talking about Blizzard games, but just in general.
The days of design-by-luck are by no means gone, but far less accepting are players of flaws as valid rules. It requires a more methodical and player-serving approach. I actually think it may have to do somewhat with the increase in expectations of customer service and consumer rights... possibly the ever-shrinking attention span, regardless though, players have higher expectations from their games, and systems/rules that may have worked or were at least accepted as part of the game even a few years ago rarely fly these days. It's not the same market, and you're not applying to the same small group of core gamers anymore. Aside from that I don't think most still enjoy the masochistic, obscure, and often overly-complex or undefined game design of yore. Nostalgia blinds though.
Anyway... I don't know, I'm just a player myself, but I think I get where you're coming from and the best we can do is play games and enjoy ourselves. Maybe more than we ever have before, but nostalgia is such a powerful lie it makes it difficult to properly weigh the experiences.
I'm reading a bit between the lines of your posts though I think, and getting way too far from discussing health regeneration in Diablo games.
I know at this point I probably can't really allay your concerns in this specific case until you try it out, except to say that I believe you're wrong in regards to health globes. The overuse of potions was a path of least resistance, and I don't feel removing it detracts anything from the game except to say that it's something that was in a previous title in the series.
Those who have expressed concern that the screenshots show a difference from what was shown at the Gameplay video in WWI Paris seem to be wrong. Bashiok , Diablo 3 Community Manager, has answered fans the following:
Is it just me or does this recent pic indeed show a darker dungeon then in the previous screen shots?
Bashiok: All of the screenshots being posted were taken pre-announcement, the same time the video was shot. So no, there isn't any difference. There are darker parts, and lighter parts, and while there are certain to be lighting tweaks as we go it isn't expected to change dramatically.
Well at least one thing I noticed new in the screen shots was the barbarian has gotten new battle scars from killing demons in this picture, but in the game play video when they zoom in he didn't have as many on him..
Bashiok: Those are actually fading crit blood sprays. When you get a crit death on a monster (that isn't an elemental crit death) it sprays the hero with blood (decals) and those then slowly fade over time. The screenshot shows them pretty much faded all the way out which gave them the appearance of scars. Maybe we can get some screenshots out that show the blood sprays a bit more effectively.
Globes although a good idea in its own mind set, is also rather silly if potions arnt in it such as a mana potion, but from what ive read potions are still in it, now as one other person who started to try i repeat try and flame me for my thoughts about mana globes said.
QUOTE:except you haven't played the game and don't know how it works so
stfu
if blizzard saw it as a problem they would go back to potion spamming, but I for one am glad I can focus on hitting left and right mouse button w/o tapping 1 2 3 4
if you are a sorc you shouldn't be in the middle of people, you should be behind the barb that is tanking
it isn't going to be a grindfest where you just tap buttons and move on
you are going to have to use strats so that you aren't low on health and mana
and if you get to the point where you are low, get better at the game noob.
Hmmm have you played it? if so please tell us what its like O master of the diablo 3 forums, listen mate some of what u said yeah sorc arnt ment for close combat well NO Shit, but as another kind person stated what if you are playing alone with no help and your merc dies you run out of mana with no where to go, no mana globe drops and no mana potions exists(example), your rightfully screwed there my friend, its the same if your magic finding alone.
So please and i repeat please think things through before you post crap like that.
Those orbs are fine for me, but i guess that putting coldown in the potions (like many games) would be better than creating the orbs.
At least we won't see many potters in the duels xD!!
As for the concept in general it sounds better than spamming pots and promotes team gameplay. They said that the orbs will heal everyone in your party so that promotes team gameplay so people can stick together instead of running off all over the place in confused mayhem. Not only that but it brings challenging PvE gameplay to the mix. they have. The entire idea behind this is its just a big promotion for team gameplay and thats a big :thumbsup: for me. But as i've said in blue writing at the top, what they have now just doesn't do it for me. Cardboard cookie cutter... yea, that just aint my slice of pie.
That being said, the system may very well not work out at all. But I believe it has good potential, especially if it can remove the massive dependency on potions you had in D2.
Exacly, that's what it's all about.
"Oh, sorry, I just 'accidently' ran over a floating red orb. I swear, it wasn't on purpose!"
Did he accidently run over the red orb? Or did he do it on purpose? Atleast with potions, I knew whether he was purposely cheating or not. Now, he can just run over one and plausibly deny it.
Besides I think there could be easily a lot of improvement for pvp, specific place to fight like arenas, options like activating/deactivating items, etc.
You try to GANK someone a lower level and you consider it HIM cheating?
PKers will never cease to amuse me.
If you can't even GANK a NOOB then lol at you good sir.
Like Kenzai said I doubt there is going to be orbs laying around right outside of the town too much. Also arenas etc etc.
I'm sorry, but are people's minds really that small these days? That they can only focus on hitting 2 buttons with one hand and not have enough concentration to use the other hand?...
Every day it seems more and more people are complaining about stuff not being 'realistic'. Maybe we need a new definition of the word? Just because its not realistic doesn't make it a bad thing. The more realistic video games get, the more boring they get. We dont need more realism, I got mine right outside my door.
Regarding health globes, i think that the Devs are too influenced by GoW. Diablo 3 =/= GoW. They need some more creativeness.
<--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
doesn't suck at all
anyone remember omnishu or w/e the azn game name is... they used the souls of demons for powering up and etc too
what does suck is you trying to "prove" that there are azns in diablo...
there is no 'zomg azns do not exist' argument for diablo...
also armor and weapons do not reflect an influence, the game simply has weapons and armor that were made in ancient asia, just like they have gothic armor, arab armor, etc
influence comes from the overall feel of the game, so you would be better off showing the prime evils to say there is an Asian influence, because evil overlords who want to rape all freedom from the innocent are VERY Asian
I don't believe every gameplay mechanic needs a lore behind it for immersion.
Example: LoZ:any game, hearts. As for the potion drinking problem, Diablo is primarly a hack-and-slash game. If you implement an animation for drinking potions, how would you do it? Would your character run and drink the potion, or stop and drink while disabling your movement, like in WoW where it required your character to be sitting? If you are allowed to move a drink the potion thus starting the animation and you attacked, would you cancel the drinking animation and cancel the potion effect? Vice versa for being attacked. It would just stop the flow of action and pace of the game overall.
- The same potion you would have used to refill your health after a fight -
EXCEPT THE FOLLOWING - one less potion
Over time the constant health replenishment of health globes saves you time from going to town. During a boss fight you are not going to see a bunch of health globes unless there are waves of smaller enemies that are coded to drop them.
I'm assuming in harder difficulties you will see less health globes...
So all in all, health globes are potions you didn't have to click to pick up and push to use..
I don't get where you are trying to go with your second answer.
Realistic? Immersive? These terms are being completely misused by people. Floating red globes work for me. It's a game. The globes don't take you out of the world they've created. They aren't over the top nonsense. In fact, many of us have grown up with health like this in other games.
Is leaving the globes out going to make the game more "immersive"? I don't think so. Realism is not cruise control for more immersive. That is something that pro game designers know.