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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.
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!
How is that going to affect boss matches? Unless the boss monster has a load of minions, that could be quite a challenge!
Indeed, I only hope the monsters drop these "health orbs" through specific orifices. Would give a new sense to beating the proverbial shit out of them. Mostly if that shit heals your wounds.
You just got troll'd!
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Yes, it's new system for Diablo. It's not like they are claiming they invented it.
I know this is /., but try and be less anal about vocabulary choice. If I say I'm switching to a 'new' email service, that doesn't mean that email service necessarily just popped into existence. It could just mean that I haven't used it before.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
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.
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.
click...click click click click click ooh shiney clickclick click click click click click click click click...
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...
Or you'll be killed.
I may be dense, but it sounds to me like it still boils down to, "the challenge is to avoid being killed".
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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.
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
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.
In D2 you could create some pretty ridiculous builds (Like a dagger paladin) and actually have them be relatively successful as long as you were willing to suck
I'll just cut off the quote there and say that as long as there are a wide variety of builds that are viable (which there were in D2 not counting absurdities), then I don't think this is a big problem.
The enemies of Democracy are