Diablo 3 Developer Explains Health and Potion Changes 177
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."
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Speak for yourself. That is what made the Diablo games different. In fact, the many hours that I spent playing Diablo and Diablo 2 gave me the inventory management experience to land me my dream job. You are currently reading the post of the Senior Late Night Inventory Management Specialist at Safeway Food and Drug, Whitefish, Montana.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
I miss the days when inventory management was a challenge, rather than being simplified away into nothingness. Developers need to learn that just because you can simplify a game mechanic into meaningless doesn't mean you should; do it too much and too often, and you get today's dumbed-down pile of shovelware games.
And yes, I had the same reaction to the dumbed-down "inventory" system of Deus Ex 2 as opposed to the elegant, tricky system in the original Deus Ex. When a RPG launcher takes up the same "space" in inventory as a handgun, something is off.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
I think there's a way for you to enjoy modern inventory systems.
Whenever you pick up an item, pause the game.
Then start up a game of tetris, easy for small items, increase difficulty as the item size increases.
Beat 99 levels in row. If you fail you do not have enough inventory space for the item.
Unpause the game. If you completed 99 levels, add the item to your inventory. Otherwise leave the item behind.
This way, the rest of us can actually play the game and you can still play inventory management.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
As funny as that was, it annoys me when games allow you to carry phenomenal amounts of weight without considering the awesome difficulty of having 14 different massive hammers over your shoulder at once.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone knows you don't carry 14 different massive hammers at once, you carry 12 massive hammers and a magic box with 2 massive hammers inside it
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Sure, that's fine for little boys and sissies! Real men will first locate a bag of holding [wikia.com], most often after completing a rousing game of sokoban [wikia.com]. They will then attempt to find an altar [wikia.com], and convert it through sacrifice if of the incorrect alignment [wikia.com]. Having accomplished that, they will dilute several potions [wikia.com] using fountains, and with the water produced will pray [wikia.com] over the previously located altar. Now, having holy water, they will dip their bag of holding to bless [wikia.com] it. Having completed these simple step
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Here's how to join Nethackers Anonymous:
telnet nethack.alt.org
and also join #nethack on FreeNode.
Right, because realism is so important (Score:2)
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 ha
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Perfect realism is silly, unless you're making a simulator of course. That's why abstractions exist. Removing choices however does not make games better, it often just makes them seem dull by the end.
Personally, those moments of "do I give up this or that" are part of the fun of the game. Knowing you might be making the best decision, or that you might be making the next level difficult for yourself.
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Oh yah? Well in WOW you can carry 6 backpacks at once. I'm going to try that next time I go hiking.
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I have a massive hammer.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never been able to decide if I like a weight based inventory (like The Elder Scrolls) or a slot inventory (like Diablo) more. Both systems have their pros and cons, but I think a mix would be best. Sometimes really small things can be very heavy, while large things can be light. A slot inventory that gets dynamically adjusted based on the weight of things you are carrying would be good. Small heavy things would reduce the available slots, while large light things might give back half the space they take. It probably sounds a little half-baked, but I haven't fully worked out how I'd implement it yet, so it IS half-baked :P
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Slowness due to inventory is annoying as fuck though. I'd prefer like this: Size and Weight. You cannot pick up more than X size units of items, you cannot pick up more than X weight unites of items. No gray areas, no slow downs. And very large 'slot space' that is unrelated to the limits, so you can organize how you like.
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My reponse (Score:5, Funny)
Git offa ma lawn - ooh, shiny! *begins furiously looting*
Damn you and your addictive games, Blizzard.
Re:My reponse (Score:5, Interesting)
That's also one of the big changes they are putting in to Diablo 3. When you're in a multiplayer game, each item drops for a specific player, and only that player can see that item until they pick it up (and drop it). So no you don't have to loot furiously or out ninja-click your teammates to get shinyz any more.
For those who think I'm talking out of my ass:
http://blizzplanet.com/news/2537/ [blizzplanet.com]
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Thank god.
All I could think of when I read the summary was "Elf shoots food."
Metroidiablo (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Re:Metroidiablo (Score:5, Interesting)
Plentiful and common health potions that can heal the main character from near death to perfect health reliably and repeatably aren't the least bit realistic either.
This changes health management in two ways:
1 - health isn't tied to inventory
2 - the graphic for "health item" looks different
I hope nobody is complaining that this represents some grave cheapening of the game. It wasn't Fallout, where health items are rare, cost a fortune, and come with some of the side effects of actual drugs.
Oh any word on if Fallout 3 is still going to be scarce on the health power ups? The demos have looked combat-y (which is fine, it's certainly the most interesting bit of a game, at least visually) but is the game such a heavy shooter that they're going to need to throw downside-free stimpacks at the player all the time?
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You had to use stimpacks?
I quickloaded every time my character lost a hit point, and hoarded those things like solid gold.
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Maybe FO wasn't this way, but in FO2, I ended the game with 40 super stims that healed tons of damage and then hurt you a little bit afterwards. That was more than enough stims to kill a person with the side-effects alone, and I don't know any drugs whose side effects include losing ten hit points. Not to mention that you could in one random encounter find the most powerful healing item
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I'll never forget beating Diablo 1 by carrying all mana potions instead of health potions and then using mana shield.
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There is no level 146 in Diablo, the maximum character level is 50.
Re:Metroidiablo (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're missing an important gameplay point. You actually have to KILL mobs to obtain health orbs while in combat. A lot of times in Diablo/Diablo 2 on the harder difficulties (and especially hardcore in D2) often times when faces with extremely dangerous packs of enemies or difficult bosses, you'd have to town portal REPEATEDLY to restock on potions, before a single monster had fallen. Admittedly, this was pretty bad game design. It pulled you out of the action and felt "cheesy".
The obvious answer is to tune difficult groups of monsters and bosses with this in mind (or provide alternate sources of healing through things like abilities, life leech items, or secondary mechanics to drop health orbs BEFORE an enemy or set of enemies dies), but it's still a considerably bigger change than simply "unlinking healing items from inventory".
Overall, I do think it's a positive change, I just think you're oversimplifying it.
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America's Army was great and handled health nicely. Of course, games usually lasted no more than 5 or 6 minutes...
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The first that came to mind for me was Zelda, where you also get regular free hearts so you virtually never need to bring a potion. And this feature has been in EVERY Zelda since the very beginning, so it's hilarious watching these developers act so clueless when hyping up their "innovation".
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Not bad, but using Kingdom Hearts as your example would resonate better with the BAWWWWWers.
Didn't Xmen Legends or Marvel Ultimate Alliance do this as well? I seem to recall something like that, but I also seem to recall there being potions in at least one of those games.
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Good comparison, especially since those games are essentially Gauntlet Legends with new skins and RPG-lite elements, and Gauntlet Legends is essentially an arcade version of Diablo.
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Na, they play more like Diablo than Gauntlet Legends. But both Diablo and Gauntlet-foo have Rogue-likes in their ancestry, so they're closely related cousins.
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It's Marvel Ultimate Alliance that does it, X-Men Legends (at least the first one that I own) still uses potions. If memory serves me correctly, the PS3 Untold Legends game also does it that way. As I've said before, Blizzard is playing catchup to all those PS2 Diablo clones. That's what happens when you slack off, dev wise, for years. WoW is not an excuse, Square-Enix can do an MMORPG and STILL develop hordes of games. Of course, being a console dev house, Square-Enix actually works hard rather than b
Strategy in MY D3? (Score:2, Interesting)
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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
You're forgetting part of the "strategy". It was hack and slash and oh noes my health is low pop a big rejuvie potion. Don't attempt Diablo without at least 16 of em!
I'm quite glad about this change. Like the quote from the summary, "
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The fear of M-S-L is greatly reduced now with absorb gear. M-S-L won't even tickle a absorbed oriented zealer.
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A good, proerply gear spellcaster in D2 would pretty much instantly kill everything on the screen at all times, except for the things that instantly killed you. Not much stratgy there. Of course, I never saw the appeal of a game where the only real gameplay was to kill the same boss over and over for 80 straight hours to get a couple of good items, but no one can deny that it was in fact appealing to a great many people.
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My friend who was into D2 deeply had a sorc with 2 or 3 damage types, each of which could pretty much insta-kill the screen if the monsters weren't immune to that type of damage. There was actually one heck of a lot of strategy that went into deriving the build/gear to make that possible, but the gameplay was deadly dull. He really would do runs against some boss for 80 hours of gameplay to get some piece of gear he needed to make it all work.
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I don't believe that I suggested that there was a problem, only that I did not see the appeal.
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My experience in D2 with a variety of Sorcersses that were usually extremely good in 2 of the 3 trees... 30 skill in chain lightning + 30 skill in frozen orb for example plus a bunch of auxilliary skills / items for mana regen, resistances, etc.
I still found the end of nightmare / hell very hard. Sure I could kill everything on a regular screen almost instantly, and even most bosses were a cakewalk. But the big level bosses and their minions were hard (Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal) -- but while hard,
Marvel Ultimate Alliance (Score:4, Insightful)
What about bosses? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:What about bosses? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's to say an "orb" doesn't fall out if you hit the boss hard enough? It doesn't necessarily have to die....
Re:What about bosses? (Score:5, Funny)
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One would think that a smart boss would then realize it is better to not spawn countless minions that just feed you health and mana.
"Oh, hey, I've got him on the ropes here, now I'll just spawn another 20 bats to go harass him and it should be done with...
Wait a tick, are my guys dropping health for him, wtf? No wonder he managed to get all the way down here."
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"All right, I'm steamed now! I'll just rise up onto my hind legs and swing my elephant tenderizer up over my head, so I can spl--"
"Aw, shit! I just ruptured the squishy minion pipe! It's fuckin' raining health in here now!"
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Even the gameplay movie they have up on their site (from E3) only shows monsters dropping orbs when they die. The way it currently looks, bosses have certain attacks and you need to run around a lot and avoid them and pick up orbs dropped by previously beaten monsters.
Back to listening to "Town" and "Tristram" by Matt Uelmen on B-net mp3 player [battle.net] - brings back memories (always did like the Bauhaus [specifically the end of Mask] sound of those tracks with the 12 string - all the new stuff released so far for
Re:What about bosses? (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone mentioned Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, which I think is a very good comparison.
While defeating enemies in the game would cause them to drop health and mana orbs, bosses would drop them on a regular basis while you beat on them (I think ever 25% of so.) So, you didn't have to be able to defeat the boss without dying - just able to knock 25% of his health off so you could heal up enough to keep on beating on him.
This could work for DiabloIII as well, though I can remember some fights where I wasn't even able to put a dent in the stupid boss the first few times I faced it, dying a good 4 or 5 times before I figured out the strategy for my combination of boss and character class.
Marvel Alliance Diablo gameplay (Score:2)
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 be
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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 damag
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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
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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? B
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>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 [hardwarecentral.com]
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
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I stand corrected.
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Darkwatch is an FPS that uses a similar system. When you get low on health, you have to stop shooting the big enemies to pop a few skeletons and replenish your health with their blood clouds, which also refill your vampire powers. It works well.
Whatever system they use, I think Blizzard, of all companies, can be trusted to balance the game and shape it to -usually remarkably- work.
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Well I'm pleased (Score:2)
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 ali
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Now that you point it out, it does seem obvious that the makers of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and WoW will be unable to apply rudimentary game balance to their new mechanic. I'm sure they'll just take all of the monsters from Diablo 2 and make you fight them with these newfangled orbs. Really, when has Blizzard ever released a well-balanced game?
Please let me know when your next game is coming out, I'm sure it will be lots of fun.
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That's easy enough, bosses drop on occassion. Be it pure random chance (each X HP of damage you do gives a 10% chance of a drop) or number of hits, or straight damage correlation, or whatever.
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it amazes me how half of the comments here are about players using sorceress builds.
[disclaimer: i was paladin, then switched over to a fire sorc]
I Call Shennanigans! (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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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
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The problem is, the game designer's control of the pace of healing means they also control how you can create your character.
If you create one with less health or using a different strategy than the devs had in mind, you may be permanently stuck by way of not being able to kill things fast enough to get the orbs.
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 potions down a lot.
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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.
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Black death zombies, and yes, it was permanent.
My mature, well thought out response (Score:5, Funny)
click...click click click click click ooh shiney clickclick click click click click click click click click...
PhysRx Engine (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Well Just Great (Score:2)
I guess Diablo 3=fail or something.
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And then, you have the rejuvenation and full rejuvenation potions, which heal both health and mana, instantaneously, and which you cannot buy. I usually hoard tons of them 'for tough spots', which of course never come.
I hated when the one patch they released killed the ability to make rejuvenation potions from health and mana potions. Instead of being able to actually play and enjoy the game, I had to keep stalking places where I could find them instead until I had enough to cube together into full rejuv p
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So does this mean.... (Score:2)
That TPing back to heal means we _finally_ get to waste Deckard Cain? :)
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Well, I enjoyed leaving him in the cage, defeating Baal first :D
I gladly paid the identify costs for that.
Orb monster drops? WTF no! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Or maybe they could, you know, while they're borrowing ideas from the PS2 Diablo clones, they could borrow the concept of having a quick health/quick mana button. Which first appeared in the PSone port of Diablo!
*Upcoming*? (Score:2)
For loose definitions of "upcoming".
Blizzard borrowing yet more ideas from PS2 games (Score:2)
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 hap
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MPU
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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How is that going to affect boss matches? Unless the boss monster has a load of minions, that could be quite a challenge!
Usually destroying local boxes or other various destructible environments released orbs as well in other games. Perhaps this will be similar?
Re:"new" ??? (Score:5, Informative)
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It's new to the Diablo franchise, perhaps this is what the author meant. Potions, after all, have been a staple of the past two games.
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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. D
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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
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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/ [bay12games.com]
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
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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.
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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.
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You say that like the gameplay was the bad part of Kingdom Hearts.