I'll try to find the quote later, but I clearly remember bashiok saying that followers "would die a lot in NM and be totally useless in Hell". Just a friendly reminder to those still with pipe dreams of using followers in Hell.
But do we know if they had years of play time like we will to develop strategies for equipping and employing them? I don't think they did.
For all we know, they might not even have tested them with good gear. But how do they know what good gear is yet? In Diablo II, when it launched, we would have said items with high defense were awesome for armor. But now that years have passed and we've learned a great deal, even more than the creators understood, we know that lifesteal, +skills, +res, block percentages--all these little things that add up--are what make good gear. Not just elementary things. How to mix and match these modifiers effectively takes research and trial and error, and this is largely learned by players over time.
Just slapping high defense items on a mercenary in Diablo II meant nothing for Hell. Dead in seconds in most circumstances. Just slapping items with high damage didn't mean easy kills. How do we know to what length they tested followers?
Anyway, didn't they say that as long as the max player count in multiplayer games isn't reached, someone can still employ a follower to fill said positions? I could have sworn I read that...
Also ask your selfs this, do you guys like having stuff taken away from you? Do you like having hard work mean nothing and i mean nothing like really nothing. Like that thing you ordered online and well it never showed up and you can't email the contact or get a hold of them nothing.
Lets look into an example of a new player playing online but single player for a bit with his follower.
Example: Dudes playing D3, gets a follower loves it farms for it and levels it up.
Completes Normal thinking thinking his follower will get more awesome just as his character is, goes into nightmare.
Wack wack 2 shotted. Frustration is starting to set in at this point. Spent like 4 hours trying to make his follower better.
Okay well lets go online and see how this guy plays with a team. WTF WHERES MY FOLLOWER?!?!?!?
Alright ill email blizzard games bugged or something.
Alright got my email back.... WTF I WASTED ALL THAT TIME ON THE FOLLOWER TO NOT BE ABLE TO USE HIM WITH FRIENDS AND HES USELESS PAST NORMAL DIFFICULTY?!?!?
Yea thats a perfect way to keep new players Blizzard, real good.
More features doesn't always equal better. An addition of a follower in co-op, or effectiveness in higher difficulties wouldn't necessarily make the game more fun for everyone, this is a matter of opinion, and is represented by the poll option. As mentioned multiple times in this thread, and in Force's Follower Overview video -
- you do not actively level your follower. As you level your character, your follower will level with you. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, you can never touch a follower until you are max level 60, and have the same level follower when you choose to pick one up as a person whom have had a follower since first available in game.
As far as a new player being disappointed in a followers effectiveness in higher difficulties. Again, Normal and Nightmare are more for casual players, which is fine. In my eyes though Hell should be a difficult challenge, this topic is very open and varied in opinion though. Come Hell followers in my opinion should be useless, this will give another reason for new players to jump into Bnet and play with other people if he or she hasn't already.
The mention of a player being disappointed when finding out his follower can't be brought out of single play (His follower won't leave town when he's with others, as mentioned in Force's video.), hopefully will be addressed via a message when you first get a follower letting you know that they are just for single player, and maybe even that they are to get you used to the feel of co-op, if Blizzard wants to be direct about it.
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” - Albert Einstein
Keep in mind that Blizzard wants people to play the game for as long as possible. Single player is a fraction of the game really, I mean sure you get all the content but the experience comes from Co-op (In my opinion). An Co-op surely is where 90%+ of the play time is at.
From what I'm aware the game is the same size in both SP and MP. So not sure what you mean by play time.
The current system doesn't make sense to me.
I don't really view Nightmare as a place where experienced players should feel at home. I believe Normal should take very significant effort to finish, not be some kind of piece of cake like it was in DII. There's plenty of space in Normal to scale the difficulty, but making Normal easy is pretty unfulfilling for the casual players as well.
Most of the game will sit in around Nightmare. Making companions useless there doesn't make sense. If they're going to be useless, remove them all together. Playing with a companion is different than without, so people may get used to it and then having to slowly lose the companion is a bit counterintuitive.
I believe powerful companions have a place in SP, solo MP, and PvP. Whether Blizzard wants to bother or not is another issue, it seems like they don't. I won't cry a tear over it, though.
Keep in mind that Blizzard wants people to play the game for as long as possible. Single player is a fraction of the game really, I mean sure you get all the content but the experience comes from Co-op (In my opinion). An Co-op surely is where 90%+ of the play time is at.
From what I'm aware the game is the same size in both SP and MP. So not sure what you mean by play time.
I simply mean that if you had a chart of single player vs co-op concerning time spent playing, co-op would be much larger. Co-op is what will keep the game alive, and be a main force driving people to buy expansions.
The current system doesn't make sense to me.
I don't really view Nightmare as a place where experienced players should feel at home. I believe Normal should take very significant effort to finish, not be some kind of piece of cake like it was in DII. There's plenty of space in Normal to scale the difficulty, but making Normal easy is pretty unfulfilling for the casual players as well.
I hear ya about normal difficulty, but chances are it will be rather easy.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Normal is super easy. It's intentionally super easy. You will die, but you can essentially slap on gear and not think too much about it, and probably beat the game without too much trouble. There will be many people though that will get a good amount of damage and utility by keeping their follower along. But, realistically people aren't going to actively refuse the help of a follower as they play through the game the first time.
I can beat the game on normal without gemming any items. That doesn't mean gems are a waste of time as a system. One happens to be required more at higher difficulties, one happens to be more useful and fun when playing alone in Normal. There's nothing that says all of our mechanics have to be useful at all times through all difficulties and classes or else it's a waste of time, and in fact, that'd probably make things super boring.
Quote from "Equinox" »
Most of the game will sit in around Nightmare. Making companions useless there doesn't make sense. If they're going to be useless, remove them all together. Playing with a companion is different than without, so people may get used to it and then having to slowly lose the companion is a bit counterintuitive.
I believe powerful companions have a place in SP, solo MP, and PvP. Whether Blizzard wants to bother or not is another issue, it seems like they don't. I won't cry a tear over it, though.
Official Blizzard Quote:
I don't mean any offense, but you don't represent the majority of people that will play the game. For better or worse. People here, logging in with their Diablo II keys to talk about an unreleased product - - on an essentially hidden forum - - do not represent the vast majority of people that will play the game. Which doesn't mean we don't want the game to appeal to you or be a lasting game you'll want to play as long as you played Diablo II, it very much is our intent to be, but we have a broad range of Diablo fans to appeal to.
Looking at Diablo II the amount of people that bought the game, never logged on to Battle.net, and never went beyond Normal are not insignificant. In fact, they're a substantial portion of the people that bought copies throughout the life of the game. The same goes for StarCraft II. Many (maybe most) people play through the story on normal difficulty, they MAY jump into multiplayer for a bit, and then that's about it. Putting effort into ensuring their experience is a solid one is not a waste of time because some other people completely skip the story and go straight to the 1v1 ladder.
Followers fit in with that 'average' use of games very well, but their intent is to also help people expand beyond their initial intent of beating it on Normal, and then shelving the game. If the followers can get a player excited about co-op because they like playing with another character, that's a win. We also think they just add a lot to the experience up front, which is important.
And, they're memorable characters. I don't think the scope of who these people are needs to end because their health doesn't scale so we can ensure the end-game is pure and there's less visual noise in multiplayer games. We don't have any plans for them beyond what we've announced, but, I wouldn't be surprised if they became meaningful in other ways in the future. Even if they're not, if someone enjoyed playing along with them, enjoyed the dialog, and liked what they add to the single player experience (which is pretty significant) then that's not a waste of time.
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” - Albert Einstein
I mean, I am a Diablo II casual. Always was. I don't intend to be that casual in DIII but that's another matter.
I still found Diablo II's Normal easy to the point of insulting. My mom found it easy. The assumption that casuals are some braindead people is a false one, we like a challenge too. Even people who don't play Diablo are not all bad at the game, people have improved their skill over time and there are many now who can steamroll through old FPS for instance, same is the case for games like these. And I will bet you all the casuals will fiddle with runes and the like, they just won't go to minmax them into oblivion.
The difference between a casual and a hardcore is the amount of minmaxing done which really is not as significant as you (Blizzard) try to make it out to be.
The portion of gamers that will try Diablo III that have as little knowledge about these games as seems to imply in that quote is tiny and is not worth making Normal worthless for everyone else. DII's easiness pushes many of us away who's main purpose is to kill Diablo, and killing Diablo even for the first time should be hard and worth something.
In fact, Diablo II's Nightmare was usually easier than Normal.
My mom finished the entire game (DII) on Hell without an Internet connection, on a barb. She doesn't play that many games. She never Mfed. She doesn't know what a runeword is. Granted, this was some patches ago, about the time of LoD's release, but still.
My mom finished the entire game (DII) on Hell without an Internet connection, on a barb. She doesn't play that many games. She never Mfed. She doesn't know what a runeword is. Granted, this was some patches ago, about the time of LoD's release, but still.
I tried to get my Mom, and other female family to play D2.. Didn't end as well as this :facepalm:.
All an all I see your point. Even Casual players like a challenge, which Normal mode doesn't always seem to provide. Thing is though from a business perspective you don't want to risk it. Starting the game off too easy is one thing; sure it's insulting at times but you know that next is Nightmare, and lastly is Hell which is enough for most to grind through Normal looking forward to more challenging difficulties. Starting the game off to hard on the other hand has no room for those balance mistakes. A player whom is brand new to Diablo will pick it up and get frustrated very quickly. Not only do they have to learn the UI, and all these fancy new features that D3 will introduce them to without any prior Diablo knowledge, but the difficultly being any more than insultingly easy can easily ruin their first impression.
I recall perfectly my very first time playing D2, (I honestly forget my first D1 experience) I picked the Necro. Read through the walls of text Cain threw at me (Which almost turned me off right there) and wandered outside the village. I beat a few zombies, leveled, skilled summon skeleton and watched as my skele beat the crap out of everything. It was the best feeling ever. My first few times against Blood Raven I got my ass kicked, so it wasn't completely a smooth take off. Blizz is planning on having Normal be about the same as D2, which I feel for casual players will be fun/fine/great intro to the game and a way to learn the new features. An for more frequent players will be fun/fine/ great into to the game to learn it, and as long as they keep in mind Nightmare is next, and Hell will wake you up if you still find it to easy than I see nothing wrong with it.
Official Blizzard Quote:
We aren't looking to make the game any easier, we're shooting for Diablo II difficulty more or less for normal. It's an easy ramp up, pretty much anyone regardless of if they've ever played a game before or not can get in and start clicking on monsters and kill them with little trouble.
Then you have the new difficulty levels that unlock, and the game really forces you to move beyond the "easy to learn" portion and into the "difficult to master".
Actually some of the things that made/make Diablo II extremely difficult later on are usually due to bugs or design/balance issues, so it's hard to compare overall difficulty at those later difficulties with a completely new game. But in short, no, we're not planning on the game being any "easier". We've only said that we're shooting for a similar difficulty ramp in normal mode.
There are currently no plans to require more than one person to complete any areas of the game.
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” - Albert Einstein
I see where you're coming from through most of your post, this is one thing I don't though :P.
Many characters do not have their main skills in Normal, but they max out in Nightmare, so you own everything in Nightmare, then come to a screeching halt in Hell. It kinda depends. Some characters have a very slow and boring start in Normal (bone necros, and any other far-skills build).
Overall, Nightmare never really felt like a step up from Normal to me. It felt like it was an extension of Normal, with maybe Act3+ of Nightmare beginning to get challenging, and even then mostly due to immunes depending on what you built.
I think DIII's system will make this less likely to happen, though, so I'm not terribly worried about difficulties not reflecting what they should be.
Also ask your selfs this, do you guys like having stuff taken away from you? Do you like having hard work mean nothing and i mean nothing like really nothing. Like that thing you ordered online and well it never showed up and you can't email the contact or get a hold of them nothing.
Lets look into an example of a new player playing online but single player for a bit with his follower.
Example: Dudes playing D3, gets a follower loves it farms for it and levels it up.
Completes Normal thinking thinking his follower will get more awesome just as his character is, goes into nightmare.
Wack wack 2 shotted. Frustration is starting to set in at this point. Spent like 4 hours trying to make his follower better.
Okay well lets go online and see how this guy plays with a team. WTF WHERES MY FOLLOWER?!?!?!?
Alright ill email blizzard games bugged or something.
Alright got my email back.... WTF I WASTED ALL THAT TIME ON THE FOLLOWER TO NOT BE ABLE TO USE HIM WITH FRIENDS AND HES USELESS PAST NORMAL DIFFICULTY?!?!?
Yea thats a perfect way to keep new players Blizzard, real good.
More features doesn't always equal better. An addition of a follower in co-op, or effectiveness in higher difficulties wouldn't necessarily make the game more fun for everyone, this is a matter of opinion, and is represented by the poll option. As mentioned multiple times in this thread, and in Force's Follower Overview video -
- you do not actively level your follower. As you level your character, your follower will level with you. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, you can never touch a follower until you are max level 60, and have the same level follower when you choose to pick one up as a person whom have had a follower since first available in game.
As far as a new player being disappointed in a followers effectiveness in higher difficulties. Again, Normal and Nightmare are more for casual players, which is fine. In my eyes though Hell should be a difficult challenge, this topic is very open and varied in opinion though. Come Hell followers in my opinion should be useless, this will give another reason for new players to jump into Bnet and play with other people if he or she hasn't already.
The mention of a player being disappointed when finding out his follower can't be brought out of single play (His follower won't leave town when he's with others, as mentioned in Force's video.), hopefully will be addressed via a message when you first get a follower letting you know that they are just for single player, and maybe even that they are to get you used to the feel of co-op, if Blizzard wants to be direct about it.
First I never said more features = better
Second this "noob friendly" crap is so freakin dumb. How many WoW players are out there? How many CoD fans are out there?
How many people play what some would call the dumbest games ever yet play them and play them religiously? There is no such damn thing as a casual gamer. If you think for one second any person that plays games alot does not play the crap out of any game they really like then you are forgetting your past.
Any game that touches a person in a way like D2 did for most of us on this forum does not stop playing the game until they have played it to freakin death.
The "noob" excuse is just an excuse from Blizzard because they were trying to satisfy ever players wants and needs. They where better off improving other aspects of the game then to add followers that are useless.
They are NOT tutorials, they put way too much effort into them for them simply to be a game tutorial.
@onlinenow25_1448379, fact is Blizzard is a company, money is number 1. They put passion into their games true, and I believe most of the development teams aren't driven by money. Still, in order to stay afloat, expand, and keep their stock holders they need to broaden their target group. This doesn't mean they're building the game for new players though. As said in part of a Blue quote, "easy to play - difficult to master".
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” - Albert Einstein
@Winged
Blizzard doesn't need to do anything like that to "stay afloat", don't spread that rubbish around. Blizzard has long passed the situation where they're risking anything at all. Diablo III may completely fail and Blizzard will still be fine. The reason they are doing this is to get more pure profit, and fans have all right to find that greedy and negative for their franchise, because things like these have ruined games over and over again because investors are very dumb people who don't know who their target market is.
My problem with the followers is I think they are going to confuse new gamers more than help them. If I'm a new player it doesn't mean I don't ever want to enter Nightmare - that's BS, every one of us in our family we killed Diablo on Normal in Diablo I and do you think we stopped there? NO! We went on and killed him in Nightmare and Hell, too, and we'd kill him in the next if there was one. So, yes, it is a problem, there's no such "Normal is for casuals", there's "wtf why can't we use followers in Nightmare" - and this WILL happen and it WILL hurt Blizzard's profits so they better go fire some investors, along with the ones who implemented the mob blinking thing.
My problem with the followers is I think they are going to confuse new gamers more than help them. If I'm a new player it doesn't mean I don't ever want to enter Nightmare - that's BS, every one of us in our family we killed Diablo on Normal in Diablo I and do you think we stopped there? NO! We went on and killed him in Nightmare and Hell, too, and we'd kill him in the next if there was one. So, yes, it is a problem, there's no such "Normal is for casuals", there's "wtf why can't we use followers in Nightmare" - and this WILL happen and it WILL hurt Blizzard's profits so they better go fire some investors, along with the ones who implemented the mob blinking thing.
Totally agree. Imo his is a major flaw in this follower systen.
I believe if followers were "quest events" it would be alot better. They could exist in any difficulty, in multiplayer, would not confuse new players and still add the multiplayer simulation on sp.
Of course they need to stay afloat, just like any other company in the world. Right now with the world economy as it is, almost every trade is fighting to survive.
Nobody is fighting to survive. The economy is very healthy for the entertainment market. Film and gaming industry is thriving and increasing their profits tremendously. I don't view huge profits as survival. Crashing because you over-prognozed and got too greedy is not survival.
If D3 fails (something I find highly unlikely) it will hurt Blizzard's economy because the wages for its development has already been paid to the employees.
They'll be fine. It's only one of their projects, and if they spend every little bit of money they get that's their own fault.
They may take a lot of risks to get higher profits but that's pretty normal, and, again, I don't consider that survival or danger, I consider that greed.
This argument that they need to "survive" is nothing but baseless. Blizzard with their success of WoW and being tied in with Activition will not be going out of a business for a very very long time.
Your argument is purely to support Blizzard in their decision to add something they "claim" is for the casual player. Blizzard does not need our support anymore. The Blizzard now is not the Blizzard back when D2 and SC1 was made. They are a multi billion dolor corporation making millions every month.
The follower system is completely flawed and a terrible design. They are designed to fail. Why would you put something into a game that is designed to fail. Do you buy anything that is designed to fail? Do you eat food that is designed to satisfy your hunger? Do you buy games knowing that the first 8 hours will be fun but the next 32 suck hard?
They made all tier of skills in D3 usable because they didn't want skill hoarding like D2 had because the lower tier skills in D2 were made to fail.
So why are they putting in another feature such as followers that are designed to fail? So they can sell "new" followers from a cash shop. Hell thats the only thing they would do it for.
Its terrible that Blizzard has such rabid fans. Its only going to make their products worse and worse, look at CoD for example.
I believe if followers were "quest events" it would be alot better.
Its funny you mention that, I was under the impression that a lot of the random quests will have people running around with you, how effective they are I dont know, and if they die will you fail the quest? dunno, but looking at some of the vids it looks like there are some random quests that might do that, so maybe these will take the place of followers / mercs as you said in random quest events, that would ease the blow of not having followers.
But do we know if they had years of play time like we will to develop strategies for equipping and employing them? I don't think they did.
For all we know, they might not even have tested them with good gear. But how do they know what good gear is yet? In Diablo II, when it launched, we would have said items with high defense were awesome for armor. But now that years have passed and we've learned a great deal, even more than the creators understood, we know that lifesteal, +skills, +res, block percentages--all these little things that add up--are what make good gear. Not just elementary things. How to mix and match these modifiers effectively takes research and trial and error, and this is largely learned by players over time.
Just slapping high defense items on a mercenary in Diablo II meant nothing for Hell. Dead in seconds in most circumstances. Just slapping items with high damage didn't mean easy kills. How do we know to what length they tested followers?
Anyway, didn't they say that as long as the max player count in multiplayer games isn't reached, someone can still employ a follower to fill said positions? I could have sworn I read that...
""keep your follower alive""
More features doesn't always equal better. An addition of a follower in co-op, or effectiveness in higher difficulties wouldn't necessarily make the game more fun for everyone, this is a matter of opinion, and is represented by the poll option. As mentioned multiple times in this thread, and in Force's Follower Overview video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikQDykCdjmw&hd=1
- you do not actively level your follower. As you level your character, your follower will level with you. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, you can never touch a follower until you are max level 60, and have the same level follower when you choose to pick one up as a person whom have had a follower since first available in game.
As far as a new player being disappointed in a followers effectiveness in higher difficulties. Again, Normal and Nightmare are more for casual players, which is fine. In my eyes though Hell should be a difficult challenge, this topic is very open and varied in opinion though. Come Hell followers in my opinion should be useless, this will give another reason for new players to jump into Bnet and play with other people if he or she hasn't already.
The mention of a player being disappointed when finding out his follower can't be brought out of single play (His follower won't leave town when he's with others, as mentioned in Force's video.), hopefully will be addressed via a message when you first get a follower letting you know that they are just for single player, and maybe even that they are to get you used to the feel of co-op, if Blizzard wants to be direct about it.
The current system doesn't make sense to me.
I don't really view Nightmare as a place where experienced players should feel at home. I believe Normal should take very significant effort to finish, not be some kind of piece of cake like it was in DII. There's plenty of space in Normal to scale the difficulty, but making Normal easy is pretty unfulfilling for the casual players as well.
Most of the game will sit in around Nightmare. Making companions useless there doesn't make sense. If they're going to be useless, remove them all together. Playing with a companion is different than without, so people may get used to it and then having to slowly lose the companion is a bit counterintuitive.
I believe powerful companions have a place in SP, solo MP, and PvP. Whether Blizzard wants to bother or not is another issue, it seems like they don't. I won't cry a tear over it, though.
I hear ya about normal difficulty, but chances are it will be rather easy.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Normal is super easy. It's intentionally super easy. You will die, but you can essentially slap on gear and not think too much about it, and probably beat the game without too much trouble. There will be many people though that will get a good amount of damage and utility by keeping their follower along. But, realistically people aren't going to actively refuse the help of a follower as they play through the game the first time.
I can beat the game on normal without gemming any items. That doesn't mean gems are a waste of time as a system. One happens to be required more at higher difficulties, one happens to be more useful and fun when playing alone in Normal. There's nothing that says all of our mechanics have to be useful at all times through all difficulties and classes or else it's a waste of time, and in fact, that'd probably make things super boring.
Official Blizzard Quote:
I don't mean any offense, but you don't represent the majority of people that will play the game. For better or worse. People here, logging in with their Diablo II keys to talk about an unreleased product - - on an essentially hidden forum - - do not represent the vast majority of people that will play the game. Which doesn't mean we don't want the game to appeal to you or be a lasting game you'll want to play as long as you played Diablo II, it very much is our intent to be, but we have a broad range of Diablo fans to appeal to.
Looking at Diablo II the amount of people that bought the game, never logged on to Battle.net, and never went beyond Normal are not insignificant. In fact, they're a substantial portion of the people that bought copies throughout the life of the game. The same goes for StarCraft II. Many (maybe most) people play through the story on normal difficulty, they MAY jump into multiplayer for a bit, and then that's about it. Putting effort into ensuring their experience is a solid one is not a waste of time because some other people completely skip the story and go straight to the 1v1 ladder.
Followers fit in with that 'average' use of games very well, but their intent is to also help people expand beyond their initial intent of beating it on Normal, and then shelving the game. If the followers can get a player excited about co-op because they like playing with another character, that's a win. We also think they just add a lot to the experience up front, which is important.
And, they're memorable characters. I don't think the scope of who these people are needs to end because their health doesn't scale so we can ensure the end-game is pure and there's less visual noise in multiplayer games. We don't have any plans for them beyond what we've announced, but, I wouldn't be surprised if they became meaningful in other ways in the future. Even if they're not, if someone enjoyed playing along with them, enjoyed the dialog, and liked what they add to the single player experience (which is pretty significant) then that's not a waste of time.
I mean, I am a Diablo II casual. Always was. I don't intend to be that casual in DIII but that's another matter.
I still found Diablo II's Normal easy to the point of insulting. My mom found it easy. The assumption that casuals are some braindead people is a false one, we like a challenge too. Even people who don't play Diablo are not all bad at the game, people have improved their skill over time and there are many now who can steamroll through old FPS for instance, same is the case for games like these. And I will bet you all the casuals will fiddle with runes and the like, they just won't go to minmax them into oblivion.
The difference between a casual and a hardcore is the amount of minmaxing done which really is not as significant as you (Blizzard) try to make it out to be.
The portion of gamers that will try Diablo III that have as little knowledge about these games as seems to imply in that quote is tiny and is not worth making Normal worthless for everyone else. DII's easiness pushes many of us away who's main purpose is to kill Diablo, and killing Diablo even for the first time should be hard and worth something.
In fact, Diablo II's Nightmare was usually easier than Normal.
My mom finished the entire game (DII) on Hell without an Internet connection, on a barb. She doesn't play that many games. She never Mfed. She doesn't know what a runeword is. Granted, this was some patches ago, about the time of LoD's release, but still.
I tried to get my Mom, and other female family to play D2.. Didn't end as well as this :facepalm:.
All an all I see your point. Even Casual players like a challenge, which Normal mode doesn't always seem to provide. Thing is though from a business perspective you don't want to risk it. Starting the game off too easy is one thing; sure it's insulting at times but you know that next is Nightmare, and lastly is Hell which is enough for most to grind through Normal looking forward to more challenging difficulties. Starting the game off to hard on the other hand has no room for those balance mistakes. A player whom is brand new to Diablo will pick it up and get frustrated very quickly. Not only do they have to learn the UI, and all these fancy new features that D3 will introduce them to without any prior Diablo knowledge, but the difficultly being any more than insultingly easy can easily ruin their first impression.
I recall perfectly my very first time playing D2, (I honestly forget my first D1 experience) I picked the Necro. Read through the walls of text Cain threw at me (Which almost turned me off right there) and wandered outside the village. I beat a few zombies, leveled, skilled summon skeleton and watched as my skele beat the crap out of everything. It was the best feeling ever. My first few times against Blood Raven I got my ass kicked, so it wasn't completely a smooth take off. Blizz is planning on having Normal be about the same as D2, which I feel for casual players will be fun/fine/great intro to the game and a way to learn the new features. An for more frequent players will be fun/fine/ great into to the game to learn it, and as long as they keep in mind Nightmare is next, and Hell will wake you up if you still find it to easy than I see nothing wrong with it.
Official Blizzard Quote:
We aren't looking to make the game any easier, we're shooting for Diablo II difficulty more or less for normal. It's an easy ramp up, pretty much anyone regardless of if they've ever played a game before or not can get in and start clicking on monsters and kill them with little trouble.
Then you have the new difficulty levels that unlock, and the game really forces you to move beyond the "easy to learn" portion and into the "difficult to master".
Actually some of the things that made/make Diablo II extremely difficult later on are usually due to bugs or design/balance issues, so it's hard to compare overall difficulty at those later difficulties with a completely new game. But in short, no, we're not planning on the game being any "easier". We've only said that we're shooting for a similar difficulty ramp in normal mode.
There are currently no plans to require more than one person to complete any areas of the game.
Overall, Nightmare never really felt like a step up from Normal to me. It felt like it was an extension of Normal, with maybe Act3+ of Nightmare beginning to get challenging, and even then mostly due to immunes depending on what you built.
I think DIII's system will make this less likely to happen, though, so I'm not terribly worried about difficulties not reflecting what they should be.
How braindead do you have to be to be unable to play Diablo and Diablo II like they were? The game is not that difficult.
First I never said more features = better
Second this "noob friendly" crap is so freakin dumb. How many WoW players are out there? How many CoD fans are out there?
How many people play what some would call the dumbest games ever yet play them and play them religiously? There is no such damn thing as a casual gamer. If you think for one second any person that plays games alot does not play the crap out of any game they really like then you are forgetting your past.
Any game that touches a person in a way like D2 did for most of us on this forum does not stop playing the game until they have played it to freakin death.
The "noob" excuse is just an excuse from Blizzard because they were trying to satisfy ever players wants and needs. They where better off improving other aspects of the game then to add followers that are useless.
They are NOT tutorials, they put way too much effort into them for them simply to be a game tutorial.
Blizzard doesn't need to do anything like that to "stay afloat", don't spread that rubbish around. Blizzard has long passed the situation where they're risking anything at all. Diablo III may completely fail and Blizzard will still be fine. The reason they are doing this is to get more pure profit, and fans have all right to find that greedy and negative for their franchise, because things like these have ruined games over and over again because investors are very dumb people who don't know who their target market is.
My problem with the followers is I think they are going to confuse new gamers more than help them. If I'm a new player it doesn't mean I don't ever want to enter Nightmare - that's BS, every one of us in our family we killed Diablo on Normal in Diablo I and do you think we stopped there? NO! We went on and killed him in Nightmare and Hell, too, and we'd kill him in the next if there was one. So, yes, it is a problem, there's no such "Normal is for casuals", there's "wtf why can't we use followers in Nightmare" - and this WILL happen and it WILL hurt Blizzard's profits so they better go fire some investors, along with the ones who implemented the mob blinking thing.
QFT
Totally agree. Imo his is a major flaw in this follower systen.
I believe if followers were "quest events" it would be alot better. They could exist in any difficulty, in multiplayer, would not confuse new players and still add the multiplayer simulation on sp.
They'll be fine. It's only one of their projects, and if they spend every little bit of money they get that's their own fault.
They may take a lot of risks to get higher profits but that's pretty normal, and, again, I don't consider that survival or danger, I consider that greed.
Your argument is purely to support Blizzard in their decision to add something they "claim" is for the casual player. Blizzard does not need our support anymore. The Blizzard now is not the Blizzard back when D2 and SC1 was made. They are a multi billion dolor corporation making millions every month.
The follower system is completely flawed and a terrible design. They are designed to fail. Why would you put something into a game that is designed to fail. Do you buy anything that is designed to fail? Do you eat food that is designed to satisfy your hunger? Do you buy games knowing that the first 8 hours will be fun but the next 32 suck hard?
They made all tier of skills in D3 usable because they didn't want skill hoarding like D2 had because the lower tier skills in D2 were made to fail.
So why are they putting in another feature such as followers that are designed to fail? So they can sell "new" followers from a cash shop. Hell thats the only thing they would do it for.
Its terrible that Blizzard has such rabid fans. Its only going to make their products worse and worse, look at CoD for example.
This talk of Blizzard surviving and hanging by a thread is just silly.
Companies cry when they lose profit every time but in reality it's just pennies for them.
Its funny you mention that, I was under the impression that a lot of the random quests will have people running around with you, how effective they are I dont know, and if they die will you fail the quest? dunno, but looking at some of the vids it looks like there are some random quests that might do that, so maybe these will take the place of followers / mercs as you said in random quest events, that would ease the blow of not having followers.
But making them only relevant in Normal is just Blizzard giving all solo players the finger and saying: "trololol you have to play coop now"
in other news, this thread is dead. next business.
-Thomas Jefferson