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Diablo 3 Developer Explains Health and Potion Changes
One of the new features in the upcoming Diablo 3 release is a change from the traditional potion-guzzling, inventory-clogging system of previous games to a new scheme in which monsters drop health orbs on the ground that refill your health when you touch them. Lead Designer Jay Wilson says the change makes for more varied gameplay and a more consistent way to scale difficulty. He told the Multiplayer blog:
"When the player has similar downsides, it means we can make a lot more interesting monsters. We don't have to kill you to challenge you. We can make a monster that affects your mobility, we can make a monster that has different kinds of attacks that are dangerous to you and that you actually have to avoid. And so it makes the combat a lot more interesting."
Yes, it's new system for Diablo. It's not like they are claiming they invented it.
Really? You mean now there's a goal other than fighting until either you or the bad guys are dead?
To make you go slower so it can kill you easier.
It can kill you by hitting you, by zapping you, by freezing you, by burning you...
Er, no, I don't think you get what they mean. They don't mean "We don't have to hurt you through successive attacks in such a manner that you will eventually be slain unless you take action in order to challenge you." They mean kill, like a killing blow, as in who cares if you have full health you die right now.
In D2, because you could pop a Rejuvenation potion that instantly healed you to full whenever you wanted, most of the time attacks that merely hurt you by hitting you, zapping you, freezing you, burning you, were all no big deal. The only attacks that were ever really dangerous at all were those few that would either kill you in one shot, or would do so much damage so rapidly that you'd have to burn through your entire inventory of potions to survive for more than a second or two. Diablo's Lightning Hose, random Multiple Shot+Fire+Lightning enchanted mini-bosses, the necromancer bosses' Corpse Explosion, Duriel's charge if you weren't a heavy armor class... and well not really a whole lot else.
It was a combination of immensely easy on the one hand, and incredibly cheap on the other, with insanely fast transitions that would leave you saying "WTF just killed me?!"
The new system sounds like a huge improvement. By having orbs drop from enemies, this means they can control the pace of health recovery, and it means that slow hurting attacks can be dangerous if you can't get enough health orbs to recover in time. By not letting the player have access to basically 16x their health pool (or more), it eliminates the need for insta-kill abilities just to make the player sweat.
If D3 is able to be challenging without being cheap, maybe I'll actually try playing Hardcore (die once, dead forever, like in the Rogue-likes Diablo inherits from).
The enemies of Democracy are
See Baldur's Gate.
You have a maximum number of slots, and a maximum weight. If you go a little over the weight, then you slow down. If you go a lot over, you can't move.
There is no level 146 in Diablo, the maximum character level is 50.