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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."
Thank goodness! No more 10 minute sessions of inventory management just to juggle your potions around.
Git offa ma lawn - ooh, shiny! *begins furiously looting*
Damn you and your addictive games, Blizzard.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Monsters drop health orbs on the ground when you kill them, instead of a potion system? So, in a way, what they've got now is Metroid applied to a dungeon crawl?
(yes, there's a billion other games that do that, Metroid was just the first to come to mind)
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
It sounds as if they wanted to bring in a strategy angle for the PvE element with this new installment... I remember not needing much strategy at all in Diablo 2, just hack and slash and power through everything. Also, if I'm understanding TFA correctly, there are no potions (But as you get further and further into the game, you start having to go, 'Okay now I've really got to use this ground stomp thing to stun some monsters and get some distance from them to recover.') They also imply the monsters will be weaker to balance this out however, so it'll be interesting indeed to see how everything turns out.
Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3... Blizzard is going to make some cash off me when they finally hit the market.
This is the exact system used in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Which was also an evolution from a potion system in X-Men Legends 2. That said, it's actually a very *good* system. I approve.
How is that going to affect boss matches? Unless the boss monster has a load of minions, that could be quite a challenge!
So, if there's an extended fight like, say, DIABLO...
A fight which you might not survive with just the health and mana you have in your orbs, what do you do? If you can't chug potions, you have to, in effect, execute the monster perfectly to even survive. I think that the orb system is better when you're hacking and slashing your way through several monsters that actually die, but when you encounter monsters that are not easy to get down, then you might need a heal or two. I certainly prefer chugging potions to relying on support classes (like priests, druids, paladins and shamans in wow) to heal you.
Move sig!
to a new scheme in which monsters drop health orbs on the ground that refill your health when you touch them.
What exactly is new about that? I've played a hundred or so games that used that system, many of them 10 or 20 years old (you know, back when action games didn't have an inventory).
There's nothing new in Diabolo, not in 3, not in 2, not in the first one. It's an excellent and fun implementation of very old game concepts, but I've yet to see anything in it that wasn't done before.
So please, I know this is /., but try to get the facts right every now and then. They changed the system to a different one. Nothing new about it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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So... what is your proposal then? A health and hunger bar?
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
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.
There were monsters that had attacks that could affect your mobility in Diablo II. There were certain attacks you really had to avoid unless you were in the top tier of players in Diablo II. It doesn't sound any different to the person who didn't try to pimp out their toon to the max so they could easily walk all over everything. And honestly, not everyone could, not with how the games economy was so horribly screwed over by the botters.
It's far from impossible to implement, I just think that most players wouldn't be interested. I mean, mech games from over a decade ago have had individual component damage, so that a lot of hits to your unit's arm would render it unusable/destroyed, but you'd still be able to fight. However, most players don't want to worry about stuff like trying to hide their character's vulnerable side, or using specific healing items for each type of damage they incur. Metal Gear Solid 3 featured this, to a point, wherein there was a specific sequence of items used depending on the injury (bullet wound vs broken bone, etc.) but it felt more like a minigame they tacked on, than a tactically implemented system. I'm pretty sure many players, myself included, would enjoy a damage system that mapped hits to the exact area where weapons make contact, and would inflect realistic injuries. Armor would then have to be judged based upon the areas of the body it covered, and the materials it consisted of, instead of comparing items for which one has a higher bonus to defense. Many more players, however, seem to not want to worry about micromanaging their character's physiology, and prefer the system of "Use a healing potion/spell when my health gets down to x%."
I'm sure other games have done it, but Fallout 2 comes to mind as one that included full effects from targetting/hitting specific body parts. I'll be curious to see if Fallout 3 goes in the same direction.
I think a lot of that stems from the desire to keep the focus on bashing monsters' brains in. In tabletop games, you have all the time in the world to ponder your next move. In a game like Diablo, you have to act quickly or become "Ahh... Fresh meat!". Although I wouldn't mind a little more complexity to the way a character's health is calculated, I would be disappointed and perhaps a little agitated if it had a negative impact on my time spent killing things.
Could it be a little more realistic? Yes. Do I want it to be? No. In a real-time video game, trying to make gameplay elements too realistic can destroy the fun of the game, and that's NO GOOD! On the other hand, in a turn-based strategy game, more realistic gameplay elements can enhance the fun of the game. All in all, I think we can expect another mind-blowing, more-addictive-than-crack, FUN masterpiece from the brains at Blizzard and I can't wait.
I really liked the Diablo series, but I have got to say that I got utterly sick of endless button mashing to apply potions.
It never really added anything to the game in my opinion, in fact I felt it was the worst part of it. I went on to play the dungeon siege games, and there I deliberately avoided using health potions, simply so I wouldn't have that button mashing experience again. I died a lot, but its more interesting if you have to retreat rather then apply an inventory full of potions just to stay alive.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
You say that like the gameplay was the bad part of Kingdom Hearts.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
click...click click click click click ooh shiney clickclick click click click click click click click click...
The reason we stick with that "one-dimensional" indicator is probably that it's simple and flexible. There's only so much data you can keep in mind when you're playing a quick-paced, reflex-based game like Diablo; a more complex health system would be more likely to bog things down than to make the game more fun.
Another Blizzard post (maybe in the D3 website's FAQ) says that potions still exist. They're not completely gone, but probably are more rare. It will also be nerfed with a cooldown, just like in WoW.
IMO, this will make the game more interesting than just potion spamming. You actually will have to use some skills and strategies in order to play effectively.
Today, when you have ridiculously powerful personal computers running massive 3D simulations with thousands of concurrent interacting users - you'd think the game industry could innovate just a little bit around the idea of character "health".
Amen!
Back in the day there was a game (well a game/screensaver) called "Lunatic Fringe". It was sort of like asteroids, but instead of a health bar for your ship, you had several health bars. On was for your guns, one for your engine, one for your turning jets, one for your long range radar, etc. If you were shot or ran into an asteroid you took damage to one or more of them and those parts of the ship began to malfunction. If your guns were slightly damaged they might fail to fire one time in ten. If they were severely damaged they might only fire one time in ten. If your turning jets were damaged you sometimes you could turn the ship and sometimes you couldn't or it would turn the wrong way. The gameplay was absolutely awesome!!! Ever since I've been looking for a game that incorporated this same gameplay element.
For a new Diablo style game you could start moving more slowly and erratically staggering. Your spells could fail. Your attacks could go in the wrong direction, hitting no one or the wrong person, maybe even allies. Your blocks with your shield could become less frequent or stop as an arm was disabled. Your vision could blur or become jumpy.
Just count me as one very strong vote in favor of your idea.
It's about time games took health seriously. I guess the Nintendo Wii is starting to have an effect on PCs as well as consoles.
After having only played the Diablo demo, and missing Diablo II entirely, just when I am considering an actual Diablo purchase I get this. How in the hell am I gonna go through the whole game getting scads of potions and hoarding them for that really difficult encounter that never comes??? That's how I play RPGS, people, I gather potions and never use them!
I guess Diablo 3=fail or something.
fallout 2 had this, very you could get hurt in different parts, affecting you in different ways, and the same went for the enemies, hope for some of those goodies in fallout 3 also.
it's going to be a good game year, and a bad school year..
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
That TPing back to heal means we _finally_ get to waste Deckard Cain? :)
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
As opposed to what... ice-based attacks that freeze/slow? Poison that drains health? And what, avoiding those *&^*&^ Pit Lords and Abyss Knights at the River of Flame? Yeah, I don't see anything new here, ffs. As someone who likes fending off PVP'ers in the middle of fighting demons, I'd prefer being in control of my health, rather than being dependent on monster drops.
Just having a system where potions in your inventory were dropped to your 'belt' hot-bar automatically would be an improvement far beyond the orb system.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
If you don't mind the rogue-like style of interface (or gameplay), perhaps you should consider Dwarf Fortress?
Free and constantly under development. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's a great game with a fun community -- and the scope of the project is both immense, and slowly taking real shape.
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
This game exemplifies the problems and advantages of such a system incredibly well.
It has two modes --
First: a Civ mode called Fortress Mode where you try to survive in an environment of your choosing with a starting crew of 7 dwarves
Second: Adventure mode where you play a single entity in the world.
In both modes, every single entity tracks damage to individual body parts, and each part is rated on a scale ranging from healthy to completely missing, affecting every aspect of the life of the character. After one of my cats attacked an infiltrating kobold, it lost an eye and a leg, as well as suffering major head injuries. It spent the rest of it's life wandering aimlessly in my fortress and passing out randomly from the trauma until a goblin killed it during a siege.
For loose definitions of "upcoming".
Sounds interesting I'll check it out. I lost a good 6 months of my life to Rogue and Angband back in the day. Oh well, here we go again.
The problem with Marvel:Ulitmate Alliance and God of War is that everyone basically play the same character.
With Diablo you have characters that wear more armor, have higher hit points, less likely to get hit due to physical distance, do less damage/second to a single target.
Against a boss with 4000 hit points, a barbarian would be ok with getting a full health bar after dealing 1000 points of damage but a Sorc would need a recharge (health and mana) once every 500 points of damage delivered.
Blizzard had better realize this.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Bleh.... Just make it like Anarchy Online: Heal up differently depending on whether or not you are in combat. Combine that with potions that stack up into the thousands and you don't have to worry about moving them around. In AO they have two different sets of healing but I don't think that's necessary. Just make it so that it has a moderate initial bonus, then heals slowly but progressively gets faster unless you take damage.
What they did will cause progress to slow down through an area with little health vs how much damage you take. I mean, are they going to remove the ability to go to town and heal up? Will the character not heal slowly over time?
How are support classes supposed to pick up the healing mid-fight? Do they really want an Amazon that is being harried running into a big pack being tanked by a barb to try to heal up?
I agree with you about the stupid instant death things. Those undead stygian ankle biters were a real pain in the neck. It's ok to have monsters that can kill you in one hit if you can prepare for it ahead of time by changing your equipment or tactics, but having 1-hit KOs on random mobs with the lighting set to 1/2 second in front of you is just ludicrous.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
I'm pretty sure Blizzard is not clinically retarded.
That said, you're also assuming that "a full health bar" is just as easy for both classes. If a Barbarian has a lot more raw HP, the orbs may not fill him up as much - sure, he can do 1000 damage without needing a pit stop, but after grabbing five orbs he can only do another 250 before he needs another. Meanwhile, the Sorceror, with Frost Armor and Freeze Monster, is able to stay away long enough that those same five orbs yields another 500 points of damage.
Except even that's broken :D but, seriously, Blizzard made their reputation off good balance and polish. I don't think they'd make such an elementary mistake, especially such a mistake which would be caught trivially in playtests. And I can guarantee that Blizzard is already doing heavy balancing playtests because that's what Blizzard does.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I think there are a lot more people from Montana on slashdot than you know. We have nothing better to do! :P I hail from Columbia Falls, MT. I'm close enough that I can find out the real identity of the Anonymous Coward grandparent post by driving 15 minutes to Safeway. :P (If I didn't want to make a call. :P) Will I do it.. No. :P
They need quite a bit of play testing, 5 characters and say 3 builds for each. I can name quite a bit of very good companies/games with at least one big flaw that playtesting should have gotten.
E.g. - Bowazon vs. the boss Duriel. Small enclosed area with a very fast charge attack. Impossible when starting out because you are only level 8(?) (in the later two difficulties you better equipped/skilled/faster to handle him purely with a bow). You needed to put one point into Jab (the javalin tree) and wack away at him like that. You never use Jab again in the game. That should have been caught in playtesting.
Another issue that should have been caught during playtesting; Amazon with Buriza and Guided Arrow. (Burizon)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You should be encumbered when you carry 14 hammers. They should mess up your ability to stab the Demon Prince Ba'al in the forehead with the Swift Sword of the Whale which you've socketed with four soulstones. And while you're at it, shouldn't all that copious gore cause you to slip? Maybe you can sue Ba'al for not hiring an industrial engineer to spread sawdust on a floor which he could reasonably have expected to be covered in minion guts.
Of course, if we're going for maximum realism, Ba'al probably has a better lawyer than you do.
Seriously: if abstraction results in extra fun, abstract away. Diablo is a game about item collection, at its core. If you have any pretense of realism you have to start throwing away items as soon as you get new ones, which gets in the way of player strategizing and causes them to feel regret (Noooo this hammer would have gone perfect with the breastplate I left to rot in the dungeon!)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
For the record, health items weren't rare, expensive, tied to a limited inventory, or even dangerous or difficult to use in Fallout or Fallout 2. Fallout 1 had healing items on random encounters, on most guards, and on vendors (who, with a very modest Barter skill, would actually PAY THE PLAYER to take their entire stock), besides just being sprinkled liberally in bookcases and footlockers. Fallout 2 made them more plentiful in all of those locations; additionally, in Fallout 2, vendors regularly restocked, AND one possible party member could make a large number of extra Stimpaks and an infinite number of Super Stimpaks. Add in the ease of accruing phenomenal amounts of cash by selling tall stacks of expensive weapons dropped off weak enemies...Oh yeah, did I mention that ordinary Stimpaks were weightless (effectively took no inventory space), and that an infinite number of them could be guzzled in battle for the cost of going to inventory (4 or 2 AP)?
As for the aforementioned side effects of Super Stimpaks, it's worth considering that the things usually didn't get used to heal friendlies. This was because they were slightly less common and rather more costly than Stimpaks, they had a weight (1 unit, still tiny), and a few minutes after doing their healing, they incurred a delayed damage effect. The uptake was that keeping track of just how many you'd used during a fight just wasn't worth the effort, especially given that it amounted to an unavoidable death once you had OD'ed on the things (hope you had an old save). This made them much more useful for assassinations, since using them counted as a non-threatening action to the AI and guaranteed a kill, no reloads or abuse necessary.
The plentiful quantities of healing items made the First Aid and Doctor skills, as well as the Stamina statistic and a number of regen and health mod perks largely pointless outside of a few quest requirements and a couple quirky character builds (Jinxed builds, for example, need Doctor to repair injured body parts in the field, but such injuries are rare otherwise).
The Fallout games did many innovative things and are well worthy of praise, but they pushed chemical/potion abuse just as hard as the Diablos (or the Elder Scrolls games, to touch on the Bethesda issue) did. More so, actually, since the only "buffs" in the game came from drugs, and many quests required certain baseline stats, which almost any character could reach by using the proper chemical regimen.
Let's see, they have ripple water from Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Check
Health orbs from Marvel Ultimate Alliance. check
Art direction and environments that look like they popped out of those Snowblind engine games, BG:DA, Champions of Norrath, etc. Check.
Doesn't look that much different from a PS2 game? Check.
It's about time Blizzard learned something from console devs, considering they once were console devs themselves. However, it's a bit late in coming and rather obvious that something like this happened:
Blizdev1: Hey let's finally get around to getting off our lazy asses and doing D3.
Blizdev2: Okay, but lets look at our competition first.
Blizdev3: I hear the PS2 has a lot of Diablo clones, why don't we look at those in addition to all the PC clones.
Blizdevs get PS2.
Blizdevs in unison: What the? Ripple water? Rotatable AND zoomable camera? Look at those spells and magic effects. Look at those environments! These games look better than Diablo II! How did they do this! My god, look at this company's output, this Snowblind did 4 games in less time than we did 1! There's no way we can port Diablo to the PS2 now, not with this kind of competition.
Blizdev1: Perhaps we should borrow some ideas.
Star Wars Galaxies handled damage in a different way. Characters had three different pools which could be damaged Body, Action and Mind. If any one pool dropped to zero or lower your character would be KO'd or possibly killed.
Attacks where randomly assigned as hitting your Torso, Legs, Feet, Arms, Hands, of Head. A hit to your torso reduced your Body pool primarily. A head hit affected your mind pool mostly. Hands and feet hits damaged your Action pool and I think legs and arms affected action and body. There were special attacks that you could learn that would let you specifically target and hit various areas. But normally an attack would be randomly assigned to any one of those areas with varying probabilities,Torso hits being the most common and head hits being the least likely.
There was a huge variety of armor types available in the game each with individual stats for protection against different types of damage, the best of which was very cumbersome to wear. The Majority of players had a far smaller mind pool than anything else and so most people would take headshot type abilities. Which resulted in most people running around with the very best helmet they could find and a chest peice to match, maybe some leg armor and then just leave the rest exposed to try and keep their encumbrance down.
There was a lot more too it but that's the gist of it. I found it an interesting system though really too complex to become widely popular.
As good of an idea this is, this wouldn't stand up in PvP. With deteriorating performance based on state, it becomes a contest of who gets the first shot. Any class with ranged or crowd control abilities would dominate every match-up.
One on your back, two on each arm, and one... well... you know. There.
...or, if you don't have a prehensile tail, you could just hang it on your penis.
I think you're more likely to be level 18 when fighting Duriel.
As good of an idea this is, this wouldn't stand up in PvP. With deteriorating performance based on state, it becomes a contest of who gets the first shot. Any class with ranged or crowd control abilities would dominate every match-up.
I disagree. It would change the balance of power but not break it. The ability to absorb more damage before having problems or to avoid taking damage (heavy armor) would balance well with the ability to hit from a distance (as it does now). It would actually allow for more variety as well, because some attacks may not be as damaging, but could make hitting easier (wider range or area of effect) partly mitigating the effects of damage.
MPU
E.g. - Bowazon vs. the boss Duriel. Small enclosed area with a very fast charge attack. Impossible when starting out because you are only level 8(?) (in the later two difficulties you better equipped/skilled/faster to handle him purely with a bow). You needed to put one point into Jab (the javalin tree) and wack away at him like that. You never use Jab again in the game. That should have been caught in playtesting.
That's ridiculous. You don't ever have to put a point in any skill in the game that you will never use again. Just fill up on pots, get a well equipped merc. At worse it may take a while, or a few deaths if you're not careful. Methinks it's been awhile since you played because you could barely handle Act2 and level 8, much less Duriel. I am assuming you're talking about single player because this isn't even an issue in multiplayer.
I'm guessing you're trying to say that Burizon's were overpowered? Buriza is hardly even used by bowazon's any more with the addition of rune words. I agree that Guided arrow is somewhat of a cheap skill in PvP. But as a lightning sorc I can just teleport around until they get bored of shooting and then one-shot them with lightning. I think there are some balance issues with some of the classes (there always are) but for the most part I believe they are pretty minor. Once the monsters got buffed the bowazon became much less effective.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
>Just fill up on pots, get a well equipped merc. At worse it may take a while, or a few deaths if you're not careful.
I wish it was that easy. Diablo was easier.
As one example:
http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/archive/index.php/t-127713.html
And you can't afford a few deaths playing on Hardcore.
Buriza had 100% piercing. Guided Arrow changed the course of the arrow. So it went;
1. Hit boss with guided.
2. arrow pierces/passes through boss
3. guided is still active, so arrow does a 180 back to the boss
4. back to 1. up to five times.
This was later corrected in a patch.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I stand corrected.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Okay, anyone else here reminded of the Kingdom Hearts health... kill enemies and the drop an appropriate amount of health and mana orbs equal to their level.. and you can have x number of potions to back you up when required.
The system works really well - except that in the first part of the game you run around like a goonie picking up orbs.. whereas later in the game you get this nifty ability "treasure magnet" or similar that is like a whirlwind around you to automatically pick stuff up. Really really useful - no more spending a minute after each fight vainly trying to run over every health / mana orb you need. When you get the powerup for the TM it's really excellent - every fight has the chance to boost you to 70%+ health and mana. It can really suck when one party member needs health and another automatically picks up lots.. but besides that it's really good.
I can see the idea working for D3.. but even so I can't see it working without the ability to self heal in some fashion.
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