ALTernate Styles of Looting
With the recent new information about the several options we'll have when picking up items, it brings up potentially different styles of play. You may wonder what hitting the ALT key has to do with how you play and the answer to this is very simple. Some of you may want to pick up gear while fighting, others may want to complete an epic battle and check the loot afterward. With the various options, both styles are possible, as well as a slew of others. In fact, if Blizzard adds the /nopickup option, there can be "naked" challenges, such as playing through the game while not picking up any items at all. We want to know, which ALT option do you plan on using?
Diablo III Default: 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.
Classic Functionality: 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.
Reverse-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)
Toggle: There's also an option to make Alt toggle showing item names on/off.
No-Pickup: 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.
In our previous poll, we wanted to know what you thought on item selling. Over 50% of you voted to have no item stores, while over a quarter of you also voted to sell Vanity items. A vanity item-only store is a common thing amongst games in this day and age.
I plan to pick up and salvage everything if it can be done relatively on the fly.
Edit: Typos.
Also, the D3 default is my first choice. There is a reason it's the default...
Man I hope that the gameplay is as good as that sounds.
Man that guy would have a nightmare on his hands after a successful cow level run...
Also: Probably classic functionality. I'm used to it and it makes sense, toggle names on when you want them, toggle them off immediately as soon as you're doing picking through the dropped loot.
When playing D3, you're either going to be in fighting mode, or in item pick-up mode. Toggling matches that playstyle perfectly. Note: In D3, you won't be racing with your teammates to pick up loot, since the loot that drops is only seen by you, so there won't be a necessity to simultaneously scan for loot while killing enemies.
The classic style is okay, but requires you to hold down the hotkey too long in certain situations, plus the aforementioned unintended hotkey combinations (e.g. ALT + F4, ALT + TAB). The D3 default sounds like an okay style, but I prefer to not have items always show for 10 seconds when dropping (e.g. there might be areas where a lot of items drop at the same time, and your screen might be "spammed" in a sense). Also, a 10 second duration might be too long for some people. Reverse-classic style and no pick-up style are just retarded lol, so I won't get into those.
In conclusion, toggle gives the most control in any situation.
- See what drops when it drops (Small battles means not having to press anything at all)
- And being able to view it again after the fight (If the battle lasts longer than 10sec after 1st drop)
Only thing I see the toggle function having on top of this is the loot being distracting during epic battles, so I may change to this if I find that it takes me away from the fight.
But again I want to see those oranges drop!
... So is the classic.
There really isn't any difference. As far as I can tell, a lot of people just want to hold down alt constantly because that's how it was in D2. I don't see any real benefit to it, or complaint with the other systems, so no, I don't think you're wrong. It's just taste, but still fighting over it.
Then again, maybe you just wanna keep fighting for 2 minutes in a row, destroy everything in a room, and then come back and check the loot, that would fit my playstyle too (if it doesn't take too long to do it instead of just go picking stuff up) - maybe then I might switch to "toggle" mode.