First, some nitty gritty about the characters themselves. We learned yesterday that the three Followers are the Enchantress, Scoundrel, and Templar, but just who are these characters? Each one will have their own unique story and personality to add to the game. As you play through the main story arc, you will run across these characters in need of some form of assistance. After helping them through their own journey, they will lend their abilities to you. As they venture with you, you will explore their backstories. They will make note of particular instances or comment on something that is going on. They will help tell the story to the player while they are out fighting demons instead of having to sit and read some books.
Beginning with the Templar, named Kormac, he is a stoic character with righteousness on his side. His order is actually trying to retrieve scrolls and books that Lazarus had taken before the story of Diablo I. Betrayed by a corrupt member, you will find Kormac locked up in a dungeon. After you free him and slay the corrupt order member, the Templar will offer his services of protection to you. Kormac has a varying play style that will be valuable no matter what class you are playing. If you need a tank character, he will be able to fill this role very well. However, if you are already a melee oriented character, the Templar can offer healing and other supportive abilities.
After finding and rescuing Kormac, the next Follower you will run into is Lyndon the Scoundrel. Lyndon is a dark humor type character with a questionable sense of morality. Once belonging to a thieves guild, Lyndon was disgraced and thrown out of the guild. Perhaps motivated for more personal gain, he will join you for opportunities to obtain better riches and items. Lyndon is a sort of throw back to the Diablo I Rogue. His focus will be on ranged attacks with the use of a bow or crossbow. However, if a ranged damage dealer is not something you are interested in, he also has a variety of other skills that are more focused on his Scoundrel title like helping you get more gold.
The last Follower you will run into, about a third of the way into the story, is the Enchantress Eirena. Her story is a bit more shady and will unravel as the story continues. All we know when we meet her is that she is following a Prophet who has the ability to control people. In the midst of a fight, she is trying to protect some people and needs your help to save them. After doing so, she will follow you on your heroic journey. Offering magic-based ranged attacks, Eirena will be able to cast from afar to deal damage. However, thanks to her skills gained from the Prophet, she can also offer you services in helping control your foes for you to kill.
Moving past their stories, we go into the mechanics of how this system will work. First and foremost, it is important to note that the Followers system will only be available to those playing in a game by themselves. If another player joins the game, the Follower will head back to your caravan. However, if you find yourself alone again in this fight, the Follower will come right back to aid you. This was done to help players who want to play by themselves but decrease the clutter if multiple people are in one game. Along with this, despite having all three Followers at your disposal, you may only use the services of one at a time. But do not worry, all three will gain experience regardless if they are being used or not. This will allow you to use them when you want to and not because you have to in order to level them up. You can also switch them out whenever you want to aid you best in different scenarios. If a follower "dies," you will not have to go back to town resurrect them. This is how it was originally planned but Blizzard felt like it took too much time away from fighting and caused players to not even use them. Instead, the characters will be knocked out temporarily. After about 15-20 seconds, they will regain consciousness and rejoin the fight. If this is too much time for you, you can channel on them and help revive them sooner. To help keep them fighting longer, they will also gain the effect from any health globe you pick up.
Each Follower comes with their own unique skill set to choose from. Every five levels up to 20, you will gain access to a new set with three different choices. You can choose one from that set to help cater to your liking. Along with skills, you will be able to customize your Followers with some gear. One amulet and two rings will be able to be equipped by them to help customize their stats to the play style you have planned for them. Along with this is a weapon slot. Each Follower will have a distinct group of weapon choices that they can equip but there will still be some variety. Perhaps a heavy damage dealer is what you want for your Templar, so you give him a two-handed weapon. But if you are looking for a tank, then you can give them a sword and shield. The last item slot, which can be seen in the inventory screenshots, is for a class specific item. The only one we know for sure is the Templar's tomes. Speculation for the other two may be a satchel or quiver for the Scoundrel and perhaps some off-hand orb for the Enchantress. These unique items will only be for each particular Follower. These characters were purposely left with a limit to their customization and stats to help lighten the load of these characters. Blizzard did not want players to feel like they were leveling a second character. Instead, you are able to help design this person who will fight along with you when needed.
Moving on to the last part, the way the Followers function in a game is very important. Their are no direct controls for your Followers. Meaning, you cannot tell them to attack a particular unit or to heal you whenever. Instead, this will all be handled by the advanced AI system that has improved since the previous game. Player control is more based on the skills you give them. An example that was given of the AI is the Enchantress' energy bomb skill. A massive AoE, the Enchantress will use this skill when the player is low on health to help clear out some demons and hopefully get some health orbs. Healing and other support skills will be used similarly to best help your character in the fight. Now, there are a lot of people who are afraid that these Followers can be used to do all the killing for you while you just stand and wait; this will not be the case. This is handled in two ways. First, monster AI is improved. Back in Diablo II, you could just stand back as all of the demons would attack your hireling. Now, monsters will not just target the player closest to them. Certain monsters are programmed to go after the person in the back first while others will go after the biggest threat at the moment. Players will constantly have to be on their toes this time when fighting hordes of enemies. If this is not enough for you, then each Follower can be managed to not steal kills from you and instead just help you kill them more easily. If you do not want to spec you Follower with damage skills, then you can focus on more crowd control skills so you can still do all of the killing, or even choose more passive bonuses like extra magic or gold find. Either way, they have designed these Followers to not be a necessity to the game but will just aid you if you would like. Keep in mind, that they will also still level with you even if they are not being used so if you decide you want to use them later, you will not have to go back to re-level them.
If you would like to read any of the interviews that were conducted, you can check out the links below. You can also check out the official Diablo3 site page.
Interviews:
- GamePlanet
- AUSGamers
- NowGamer
- FZ
- GameStar (it's German, here is a translation)
- IGN
- Diablo3-ESP
- GameInformer
The Followers system actually seems perfect to me. I can see myself using them for a little while, have a bit of fun with them, but when I get into nightmare I would deffinately rather solo or co-op than have to rely on the followers. And they would deffinately not be good to have in co-op, it takes away from teamwork and strategy - thats the whole point of co-op. EDIT: just to clarify, it's not that I think they wouldn't be good for co-op, more that they would be rather pointless.
Also worth noting, every class is DPS related so not having followers on harder difficulties should be a non-issue (although I understand that some ppl just prefered playing with mercs through the entire game in D2)
Final thought - Having the system the way it is will, in my opinion, make players learn their character more and learn how they can compliment other team members better (a good thing!).
There's 2 options really:
1. you make Followers strong and useful and the game too easy.
2. you make Followers weak and useless and the game challenging.
Now what Blizzard did was a compromise. They said that normal will be easy and the followers will be quite useful there, but on Nightmare and Hell difficulty they wont.
That said, the characters will be getting more and more powerful during that time and coop will really do the trick to have a game that's both challenging and doable.
Now the mercs in Diablo II weren't really needed, right? Try telling that to a sorc on hell difficulty without an act 2 merc with that runeword weapon that added conviction (that was the aura, right?).
Diablo II was full of imbalances. They grew on us over the years cause we played alot, but this doesn't mean that's a valid reason to keep them in the sequel.
That being said, even though obviously the vast majority of people here won't really use them, the majority of people who actually play D3 will. Most of my friends that I introduced to D2 only played through Normal once, maybe a few times. Most people see the end of the story as the end of the game, and if this system works as intended and makes people want to have a co-op partner by their side then it benefits everyone. The person who would've normally just played SP Normal and dropped the game gets more time for his money and we get a larger online community.
Obviously you can wish that followers were useful because you liked hirelings in D2, but keep in mind that the day the video was leaked all the rage was about followers being essential, and once they were announced as being non-essential all the rage was about them being useless. So obviously a compromise had to be made, and if you look at it from an objective point of view Blizzard clearly made a good decision.
If followers are useful late game you force competitive players to take them because they want to be the best they can be. On Hardcore, if followers are useful you have to take them to ensure that you can survive the whole time, and that isn't fair to players who hate them. If you're a player who loves them, you can have them, but they won't help you. It won't hurt to take them along.
Is this an ideal solution? No, but its impossible to please everyone. Personally I am pleased with this because I as a player wanted to solo the game with an elemental/summon druid, and didn't want to have to deal with Mercs. This, in the patch that I last played that character, proved impossible, and it wasn't even hardcore. that is simply opinion though.
As a balance issue not having them be useful (and therefore necessary) for those who want to solo is probably the better choice because the classes are actually balanced (well, hopefully) and this allows everyone who wants them to enjoy the company but not the people who don't want them. It's a tough call but not everyone can be pleased and I know that many people are pleased with this solution (and I bet there are many people not posting who like it, because most people post only what they are upset about)
Also, If you are unhappy with this system, I am sorry you were in the group that got short-changed in this system. But there are other systems that are just how you want them to be hopefully and that you can fully enjoy, even while someone else is upset about those systems. That is the nature of these things. There are few games (perhaps none at all) that I am 100% pleased with, but that is because the producers want to incorporate things such that most people like the whole even if part of it really isn't what they are looking for. If there are no systems you enjoy, then don't buy the game, if there are some then enjoy those.
This is very similar to classes. I will probably never play the monk. I just don't like it, but I wont make a fuss about it because others do like it and I will enjoy the game even if I never use an entire class
Bottom line not everyone can be pleased by everything, but some people are pleased by this, so perhaps the best idea is to look forward to the good things and write this off a setback if that is how you feel.
Strange. Sounds almost like D2 classic when mercs were useless.
It seems we are going backwards on this one sadly enough.
Why does it have to be one way or another? I'm not the first to say it but they could try and balance them into the game so they are usable at all difficulties. That doesn't mean they are essential to end game (they weren't in d2) but they were certainly another tool to be used. I'm sure it takes some work, yes, but I doubt it's beyond considering.
I don't have much more to say on this that I haven't already earlier in the thread, but I'm getting the overall feeling that most people don't like this system the way it's currently implemented. There is a lot of negative feedback, whether or not it's constructive, on this and other threads and many other forums.
But, if it comes down to having d3 sooner or waiting for a system like this to be revamped for another month, or whatever, I'd rather have the game as is. It's not a terrible system, just one that will be wasted on many players including myself.
Because they are not looking for a mercenerie system like the D2 one.
And i glad they don't want to implement one!
The greatest problen, is, what the hell they are doing. Why leave a merc system in normal and remove it in the rest of the game? Why normal should have a extra feature ?
It adds a bitter taste in the game progression. Loosing something good, no matter what, is frustrating. Imo there are better ways to implement this system...
I wanted to point out something VERY important regarding the follower system: I believe Blizzard is taking a big shortcut in order to release the game sooner. Why? Think about it:
1.) No one sets out to design and develop a complex system (such as this) only for 1/3 of the game (much lower % of game time)
2.) Act4 of Diablo2 was obviously shortened so the game could be released (hence they've done it before!)
3.) Balancing nightmare and hell and end game with mercs is a huge task, think about it: Remember D2 mercs with high level runewords that gave negative magic resist auras etc. that broke magical immunities in hell? Basically what you end up with is REQUIRING twinked mercs just so you can do hell. I personally DO NOT WANT to rely on my merc if I dont want to. If it dies I dont want to be stuck not able to progress until it resurrects.
In effect Blizzard has decided it is just too hard to balance mercs end game such that they are a.) useful and b.) not a necessity. They want to release this year and BETA soon... so they have taken a shortcut and resigned this system to normal only, and invented some nice "reasoning" for the news media and websites to consume.
Cant wait for D3 and hope to see ya'll on bnet!
Thanks. I just cant believe Blizz would set out through all these months of design (years?) to come up intentionally with something JUST for normal difficulty. To me it wreaks of something that is being short-circuited now that they are in balancing phase, "hey about that follower system...mmmmm yeah it just aint gonna work end game". It smells of a compromise to me!