sorry, that was supposed to sound more sarcastic, i forgot about the limitations of text
I forgive you, son.
I hereby declare that I fully agree with Blizzard's proposed follower system after becoming a member of the Society for the Protection of Gamer Grandmas and Children(PGGC).
Cast away your doubts and join us.
Amen.
Sounds like they spent a lot of time for a tutorial guide for single players... also have they said anything about screen resolutions? It sounds like they are saying we are gonna be stuck at some stupid resolution like 800x600 again.
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I don't always play hack and slash games, but when I do, I play Diablo. Keep slashing my friends.
Sounds like they spent a lot of time for a tutorial guide for single players... also have they said anything about screen resolutions? It sounds like they are saying we are gonna be stuck at some stupid resolution like 800x600 again.
Screen clutter is not about resolution. It's more about the effects. Since the game is becoming graphically prettier (now THAT's a gay term), spell effects will be more grandiose (WTF is wrong with me today?). As a result, when you'd have 4 players + 4 followers, all spamming spells on a monster, you wouldn't see half a shit in there. That's why number of players/combat NPCs per game has to be lower. Diablo 2 wasn't really all that jacked up on effects and playing with like 3-4 players was already cluttered quite a bit. With all the summons, mercs, players and spell effects, the game was almost unplayable. Decreased number of players plus cooldown on skills (=no spell spamming) makes things much clearer in battle.
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A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head!
Imo the follower system, the way it is present, have one big flaw.
People will choose wich follower fits their character best. People will also choose their skills and items. No matter how "small" those choices are, they are choices. Jay Wilson said "we don't want to follower to feel like secondary character". As long as people choose their skills and use then freely, this is execly what they will feel. Not us, that already kno that they will be useless beyond normal. But the new players, wich they are trying to please by adding this, will truely feel that the follower IS a part of their characters.
However, later in the game, the follower will be scraped. It will feel like, as you advance in the game, a part of your character will be scraped. Found out that the guy who helped you so much time will no longer follow you have a bitter taste.
Imagine a avarage casual player starting to venture in the nightmare difficulty and fiding out that the guy that he build so carefully is now obsolete. Seriously, i can't imagine anyone getting happy with this situation. Everyone feels weird when advancing in the game the amount of game features decrease.
Imo theres a great way to fix this system. Remove a few follower customisation features and their ability to follow you anywhere you wanna go. Those 3 followers will be only present while you doing a quest related to then. Also, make then scale and take a part in MP (1 follower per party, not per player!). The benefict of those chages:
- The player will not have a sense that theres something missing between Normal and the higher difficultiess, wich is the number one problem right now.
- They can take a part in MP w/o making a fuz.
- They still play a big role in the game, add alot of lore elements and makes the world of sanctuary feels more filled with cool characters.
- They still play their main role: show to solo players how cool play with another player might be. Solo player will make a quest chain with some of the followers and see how cool it is to see a friend protecting you from danger by ccing the monsters, for example.
- They make some quests chains feels really unique and special. Not only the quest chain will involve a character you might like, but this quest will also have a really unique gameplay. Playing with a templar tanking and healing is surely alot different, for example. They can even build some new mechanics using the follower in specific situations. Like a certain boss that loose his shield when the enchantress curse him, for exemple.
- The item and skill choices don't need to be removed! You still pick a feel skills for your follower and still give him items! The only diffenrence is that they will not level up with you since you will be using then only pontually.
Imo this design would make followers a perfect addition to the game. My 2 cents!
Imo the follower system, the way it is present, have one big flaw.
People will choose wich follower fits their character best. People will also choose their skills and items. No matter how "small" those choices are, they are choices. Jay Wilson said "we don't want to follower to feel like secondary character". As long as people choose their skills and use then freely, this is execly what they will feel. Not us, that already kno that they will be useless beyond normal. But the new players, wich they are trying to please by adding this, will truely feel that the follower IS a part of their characters.
However, later in the game, the follower will be scraped. It will feel like, as you advance in the game, a part of your character will be scraped. Found out that the guy who helped you so much time will no longer follow you have a bitter taste.
Imagine a avarage casual player starting to venture in the nightmare difficulty and fiding out that the guy that he build so carefully is now obsolete. Seriously, i can't imagine anyone getting happy with this situation. Everyone feels weird when advancing in the game the amount of game features decrease.
Imo theres a great way to fix this system. Remove a few follower customisation features and their ability to follow you anywhere you wanna go. Those 3 followers will be only present while you doing a quest related to then. Also, make then scale and take a part in MP (1 follower per party, not per player!). The benefict of those chages:
- The player will not have a sense that theres something missing between Normal and the higher difficultiess, wich is the number one problem right now.
- They can take a part in MP w/o making a fuz.
- They still play a big role in the game, add alot of lore elements and makes the world of sanctuary feels more filled with cool characters.
- They still play their main role: show to solo players how cool play with another player might be. Solo player will make a quest chain with some of the followers and see how cool it is to see a friend protecting you from danger by ccing the monsters, for example.
- They make some quests chains feels really unique and special. Not only the quest chain will involve a character you might like, but this quest will also have a really unique gameplay. Playing with a templar tanking and healing is surely alot different, for example. They can even build some new mechanics using the follower in specific situations. Like a certain boss that loose his shield when the enchantress curse him, for exemple.
- The item and skill choices don't need to be removed! You still pick a feel skills for your follower and still give him items! The only diffenrence is that they will not level up with you since you will be using then only pontually.
Imo this design would make followers a perfect addition to the game. My 2 cents!
so you basically want more of those tag-alongs that die relatively quickly, but stronger so they last the whole quest
thats the argument for them maybe, but the whole lure of a follower is it follows you where ever you go, and the customization is important too
but if you limit it to one and leave ANYTHING changeable, who gets to decide what they wear, what skills they have, their role etc. Sure there are methods in which this could be done, but it would be messy, and at the end of the day, not viable.
besides, if your going to have one mercenary, it might as well be an actual player
with multiple mercenaries, they chat spam and waste screen space, so there is no way they work in multiplayer
if they lasted throughout single player, there could be places where the player finds the content much too easy, because to balance around the /players suggestion relies on the AI being sufficient, as well as players using a limited set of builds that incorporate the mercenary, not to mention blizzard having to determine the worth of the mercenary in all acts and balance the final monsters around single player twice
not only that, but with the current system, and sufficient places to provide tips, they could show how the game is better with other people, think of the PGGC from earlier in this thread
there is a reason this was blizzard's direction from the start, and didn't change
This is actually the first thing I've heard about Diablo 3 that I really don't like. Matter of fact, it actually kind of makes me angry. What is the point of implementing a follower system and placing that much time and work into it, if the followers become obsolete in the following two difficulties?
I know there's a large crowd that doesn't feel like the followers should be a crutch, and that's fine, but making them completely useless seems like it's going a step too far.
I for one almost exclusively play singleplayer in Diablo 2, and I kind of like having that mercenary around, even in the endgame, and while I agree with the people that say the follower shouldn't be a crutch, I also think it's counterproductive to invest that much effort into a system that becomes completely useless in the higher difficulties.
This is actually the first thing I've heard about Diablo 3 that I really don't like. Matter of fact, it actually kind of makes me angry. What is the point of implementing a follower system and placing that much time and work into it, if the followers become obsolete in the following two difficulties?
I know there's a large crowd that doesn't feel like the followers should be a crutch, and that's fine, but making them completely useless seems like it's going a step too far.
I for one almost exclusively play singleplayer in Diablo 2, and I kind of like having that mercenary around, even in the endgame, and while I agree with the people that say the follower shouldn't be a crutch, I also think it's counterproductive to invest that much effort into a system that becomes completely useless in the higher difficulties.
Am I in the minority here? Thoughts?
it's because you misunderstand the point of the followers, check out the PGGC earlier in this thread
D2 mercs were broken for a reason, and part of that is because their simply hard to implement and balance. Again, if there was some currently unthinkable way to make them both non-essential but at the same time useful, I'm sure Blizzard would have opted for that. But thats simply not possible. So instead they dedicated to having them not be a factor in the endgame instead of going through insane amounts of balance for something a good chunk of people were arguing against when the video was leaked.
I completely understand why people who wanted a better merc system in D3 are disappointed. Obviously this isn't a great replacement. I think we were all disappointed when we saw a kickass video of followers only to learn we won't be using them that much. But that doesn't mean that this system doesn't have a defined purpose. The reason they put 'so much time' into it (and, really, this kind of system probably didn't take as much time as, say, the Artisan system) is because it has the potential to encourage people who are just playing SP on Normal for the first time to try out multiplayer. If you already know that you only want to play single player, fine. But theres plenty of people who just played D2 on SP Normal and shelved it. In fact, that probably describes the majority of people who ever played D2. So its worth spending time on a system that could potentially lead to some of those people instead getting involved in multiplayer and higher difficulties, because that means a larger online community, which then means a game that sticks around for longer.
As for the people saying this was all just a waste of development time, I would argue that balancing the followers in a way that would satisfy everyone (as in the people who want them to be useful and the people who want them to be non-essential) would be a process that would take much more time than the current system. You might say "Oh, well just do whatever the equivalent of /players 2 is in D3" but its considerably more complicated than that. In order to ensure that SP with a Follower doesn't become the best way to MF (even if you removed the follower's MF skills) you'd have to both increase difficulty and decrease loot drops in an almost perfect way. If you make it too hard, people start complaining that followers are useless again. If you make it too easy, people start complaining its the best way to MF. It would be something that the team would have to constantly be worrying about after release.
How could anybody in their right mind think that removing the system's effectiveness in higher difficulties is the solution?
I can't stand having mercenaries in hell. Short of not having them in the game at all, I am glad I'll be able to experience them without having it ruin gameplay.
Just to confirm: Is the Followers the first of 3 of the much-anticipated systems announcements to go until beta, or does followers not count for some reason?
I don't know if they've said theres 3 systems that are going to be announced before beta, but yes the followers do count as one of the systems you are referring to.
This is actually the first thing I've heard about Diablo 3 that I really don't like. Matter of fact, it actually kind of makes me angry. What is the point of implementing a follower system and placing that much time and work into it, if the followers become obsolete in the following two difficulties?
I know there's a large crowd that doesn't feel like the followers should be a crutch, and that's fine, but making them completely useless seems like it's going a step too far.
I for one almost exclusively play singleplayer in Diablo 2, and I kind of like having that mercenary around, even in the endgame, and while I agree with the people that say the follower shouldn't be a crutch, I also think it's counterproductive to invest that much effort into a system that becomes completely useless in the higher difficulties.
Am I in the minority here? Thoughts?
it's because you misunderstand the point of the followers, check out the PGGC earlier in this thread
@Nekrodrac, man i love that acronym
I don't think I have misunderstood anything, if I may be so bold. I simply think it's an extreme solution to a relatively easy problem. It's nothing but numbers, at the end of the day.
Followers have 'x' hitpoints and 'y' amount of damage, coupled with 'z' magic find. To my mind, this is just a rather inelegant solution to the problem of MF. A better one could simply be to place a penalty on those MF numbers (as in resistances in Nightmare/Hell D2) without destroying them completely. You could make Mercenaries useful, but nonessential by simply having 'x' hitpoints increase without substantially increasing 'y' damage, or vice verse.
Of course, this is but one hypothetical solution to it, and it's definitely not even the best, but at the very least, it would present you with the option to tailor your play to choose to have them or not have them without substantially affecting the gameplay in any truly significant way.
What I'm essentially saying is that I do think there's a way to keep everybody happy, and I just don't necessarily think that their proposed solution is the best way to do it, that's all.
Followers have 'x' hitpoints and 'y' amount of damage, coupled with 'z' magic find. To my mind, this is just a rather inelegant solution to the problem of MF. A better one could simply be to place a penalty on those MF numbers (as in resistances in Nightmare/Hell D2) without destroying them completely. You could make Mercenaries useful, but nonessential by simply having 'x' hitpoints increase without substantially increasing 'y' damage, or vice verse.
Again, even if you completely removed MF from followers and make them useful in Hell, you're still making it the easiest way to get loot. It will still be easier to SP with a follower than to get gear through any other means. Even if you ramp up the difficulty, you still have to increase difficulty and decrease loot gain in a perfect way to make it so that SP with a follower isn't the best way to get loot. Or you can just ensure that its a nonissue by making them what they currently are.
I'm sure Blizzard had plenty of iterations where mercs were available in co-op or higher difficulties, and it just ended up too chaotic or too hard to balance. If you allow followers in Hell, that will lead to the kinds of builds we saw in D2 where they're entirely reliant on the follower. Theres simply no way to avoid it considering the insane amount of possible builds in the game. So instead of going through all that balancing, Blizzard made them only usable in normal as a way to get people who just pick up the game and play SP Normal (which, again, is the majority of players) to play multiplayer.
One good thing about the system is that it will be interesting when you start your second toon.
I mean, yeah, you could have someone power-act you through Normal, but this way, you get to experience the game for yourself again, allowing for interesting replayability.
You guys act like all Hell has broken loose. Pun intended.
But seriously, you could argue that it was a "massive waste of dev time" as Magistrate and the some people on the bnet forums put it, but that's only true for those people who either won't be using the system or those who plan on playing with friends at the get-go. For all the rest of us, it's not a waste of dev time. We want something interesting to happen when we play through the second, third, and fourth time. One of the most boring parts of playing D2 right now is starting a character. It's pretty much the same each time. Now with this system there seems to be a bit more variety to the early game.
Also, n00bs will be very happy to hear that they can still play the "single player" version and not get hammered when they forget to just keep right-clicking.
Personally I think it's silly not to have the followers to only be available to you via Normal difficulty. Or, however it's implemented, I think the Followers should also be capable of making it to level 60 with you for any time you want to play single player.
There's been quite a lot of debate on this topic (obviously). I made a poll about this if you guys want to weigh your opinion against others: Take the poll
I think the problem I'm having with this new system is that I'm thinking in terms of D2 mercs. Blizz just wants this system to add a spice to the beginning of the game and get people use to co-op. Since I've been stewing over D3 over years and have had tons of time to create my own ideal(or pretense, from past experiences with this kind of system) which has made this kind of shocking. I'll wait til beta until I judge it since I'm so torn.
I forgive you, son.
I hereby declare that I fully agree with Blizzard's proposed follower system after becoming a member of the Society for the Protection of Gamer Grandmas and Children(PGGC).
Cast away your doubts and join us.
Amen.
People will choose wich follower fits their character best. People will also choose their skills and items. No matter how "small" those choices are, they are choices. Jay Wilson said "we don't want to follower to feel like secondary character". As long as people choose their skills and use then freely, this is execly what they will feel. Not us, that already kno that they will be useless beyond normal. But the new players, wich they are trying to please by adding this, will truely feel that the follower IS a part of their characters.
However, later in the game, the follower will be scraped. It will feel like, as you advance in the game, a part of your character will be scraped. Found out that the guy who helped you so much time will no longer follow you have a bitter taste.
Imagine a avarage casual player starting to venture in the nightmare difficulty and fiding out that the guy that he build so carefully is now obsolete. Seriously, i can't imagine anyone getting happy with this situation. Everyone feels weird when advancing in the game the amount of game features decrease.
Imo theres a great way to fix this system. Remove a few follower customisation features and their ability to follow you anywhere you wanna go. Those 3 followers will be only present while you doing a quest related to then. Also, make then scale and take a part in MP (1 follower per party, not per player!). The benefict of those chages:
- The player will not have a sense that theres something missing between Normal and the higher difficultiess, wich is the number one problem right now.
- They can take a part in MP w/o making a fuz.
- They still play a big role in the game, add alot of lore elements and makes the world of sanctuary feels more filled with cool characters.
- They still play their main role: show to solo players how cool play with another player might be. Solo player will make a quest chain with some of the followers and see how cool it is to see a friend protecting you from danger by ccing the monsters, for example.
- They make some quests chains feels really unique and special. Not only the quest chain will involve a character you might like, but this quest will also have a really unique gameplay. Playing with a templar tanking and healing is surely alot different, for example. They can even build some new mechanics using the follower in specific situations. Like a certain boss that loose his shield when the enchantress curse him, for exemple.
- The item and skill choices don't need to be removed! You still pick a feel skills for your follower and still give him items! The only diffenrence is that they will not level up with you since you will be using then only pontually.
Imo this design would make followers a perfect addition to the game. My 2 cents!
so you basically want more of those tag-alongs that die relatively quickly, but stronger so they last the whole quest
thats the argument for them maybe, but the whole lure of a follower is it follows you where ever you go, and the customization is important too
but if you limit it to one and leave ANYTHING changeable, who gets to decide what they wear, what skills they have, their role etc. Sure there are methods in which this could be done, but it would be messy, and at the end of the day, not viable.
besides, if your going to have one mercenary, it might as well be an actual player
with multiple mercenaries, they chat spam and waste screen space, so there is no way they work in multiplayer
if they lasted throughout single player, there could be places where the player finds the content much too easy, because to balance around the /players suggestion relies on the AI being sufficient, as well as players using a limited set of builds that incorporate the mercenary, not to mention blizzard having to determine the worth of the mercenary in all acts and balance the final monsters around single player twice
not only that, but with the current system, and sufficient places to provide tips, they could show how the game is better with other people, think of the PGGC from earlier in this thread
there is a reason this was blizzard's direction from the start, and didn't change
I know there's a large crowd that doesn't feel like the followers should be a crutch, and that's fine, but making them completely useless seems like it's going a step too far.
I for one almost exclusively play singleplayer in Diablo 2, and I kind of like having that mercenary around, even in the endgame, and while I agree with the people that say the follower shouldn't be a crutch, I also think it's counterproductive to invest that much effort into a system that becomes completely useless in the higher difficulties.
Am I in the minority here? Thoughts?
it's because you misunderstand the point of the followers, check out the PGGC earlier in this thread
@Nekrodrac, man i love that acronym
I completely understand why people who wanted a better merc system in D3 are disappointed. Obviously this isn't a great replacement. I think we were all disappointed when we saw a kickass video of followers only to learn we won't be using them that much. But that doesn't mean that this system doesn't have a defined purpose. The reason they put 'so much time' into it (and, really, this kind of system probably didn't take as much time as, say, the Artisan system) is because it has the potential to encourage people who are just playing SP on Normal for the first time to try out multiplayer. If you already know that you only want to play single player, fine. But theres plenty of people who just played D2 on SP Normal and shelved it. In fact, that probably describes the majority of people who ever played D2. So its worth spending time on a system that could potentially lead to some of those people instead getting involved in multiplayer and higher difficulties, because that means a larger online community, which then means a game that sticks around for longer.
As for the people saying this was all just a waste of development time, I would argue that balancing the followers in a way that would satisfy everyone (as in the people who want them to be useful and the people who want them to be non-essential) would be a process that would take much more time than the current system. You might say "Oh, well just do whatever the equivalent of /players 2 is in D3" but its considerably more complicated than that. In order to ensure that SP with a Follower doesn't become the best way to MF (even if you removed the follower's MF skills) you'd have to both increase difficulty and decrease loot drops in an almost perfect way. If you make it too hard, people start complaining that followers are useless again. If you make it too easy, people start complaining its the best way to MF. It would be something that the team would have to constantly be worrying about after release.
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I can't stand having mercenaries in hell. Short of not having them in the game at all, I am glad I'll be able to experience them without having it ruin gameplay.
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I don't think I have misunderstood anything, if I may be so bold. I simply think it's an extreme solution to a relatively easy problem. It's nothing but numbers, at the end of the day.
Followers have 'x' hitpoints and 'y' amount of damage, coupled with 'z' magic find. To my mind, this is just a rather inelegant solution to the problem of MF. A better one could simply be to place a penalty on those MF numbers (as in resistances in Nightmare/Hell D2) without destroying them completely. You could make Mercenaries useful, but nonessential by simply having 'x' hitpoints increase without substantially increasing 'y' damage, or vice verse.
Of course, this is but one hypothetical solution to it, and it's definitely not even the best, but at the very least, it would present you with the option to tailor your play to choose to have them or not have them without substantially affecting the gameplay in any truly significant way.
What I'm essentially saying is that I do think there's a way to keep everybody happy, and I just don't necessarily think that their proposed solution is the best way to do it, that's all.
I'm sure Blizzard had plenty of iterations where mercs were available in co-op or higher difficulties, and it just ended up too chaotic or too hard to balance. If you allow followers in Hell, that will lead to the kinds of builds we saw in D2 where they're entirely reliant on the follower. Theres simply no way to avoid it considering the insane amount of possible builds in the game. So instead of going through all that balancing, Blizzard made them only usable in normal as a way to get people who just pick up the game and play SP Normal (which, again, is the majority of players) to play multiplayer.
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the news team.
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I mean, yeah, you could have someone power-act you through Normal, but this way, you get to experience the game for yourself again, allowing for interesting replayability.
But seriously, you could argue that it was a "massive waste of dev time" as Magistrate and the some people on the bnet forums put it, but that's only true for those people who either won't be using the system or those who plan on playing with friends at the get-go. For all the rest of us, it's not a waste of dev time. We want something interesting to happen when we play through the second, third, and fourth time. One of the most boring parts of playing D2 right now is starting a character. It's pretty much the same each time. Now with this system there seems to be a bit more variety to the early game.
Also, n00bs will be very happy to hear that they can still play the "single player" version and not get hammered when they forget to just keep right-clicking.
Personally I think it's silly not to have the followers to only be available to you via Normal difficulty. Or, however it's implemented, I think the Followers should also be capable of making it to level 60 with you for any time you want to play single player.
i think that covers it all, right there.
There's always a place for puns in my book. It's been a Nightmare getting them all together!
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