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Quote from sneakywombat

You don't hear anyone complaining about characters being too reliant on gear. What if I want a gear-free build dammit? I don't want it to be even slightly harder for me if I choose to walk out there naked. You see where I'm going with this?

Not a peep about characters being too reliant on their skills. Still waiting to hear about characters being too reliant on the services that artisans can provide. Why?

Because these are systems that are built intimately into the mechanics of the game. And for better of for worse, so is the follower system. To make an entire system (which undoubtedly had months of work poured into it) void itself a third of the way into the game is simply bad problem-solving, and it's just plain silly.

I'm not saying that we should recreate Diablo II's merc system here. Something is dreadfully wrong when you can't win the game without hiring help. I definitely think that needed major revision as well. But not THIS major. The solution I underlined would make it so your follower would be useful, but unnecessary. I think that's a fair compromise to everyone, honestly, because at the end of the day, it SHOULD be harder if you choose to venture out there all by your lonesome than if you had someone watching your back, amirite?

But who says that you should have an NPC by your side in the first place? Especially if theres very few, very complicated ways of making it so you don't rely on them. If part of the Blizzard design mentality for D3 is that you are on a level way above a normal person, which it clearly is, and clearly was even before this announcement, then clearly the followers don't fit in very easily. And lets not forget that, given the problems with the D2 hireling system, it wasn't entirely obvious that it would return for D3. It was always a condition of if Blizzard could find a new way to implement them. And as much as you might theorycraft ideas you think just maybe might work, it hasn't worked in a lot of games for a reason. And it most certainly hasn't worked in a way that makes the player feel personally more power. Even people who have liked hireling systems would have to admit that having to worry about the survival of a weak NPC isn't fun.

So, instead of fine tuning a system that, as I said in my last post, could easily shift in either direction (as in useless or too useful) just based on a person discovering a build, Blizzard made it help the 'newbies' and encourage them to go online. As much as people have argued that choice makes the system useless, and even an insult, those new players are ultimately a large part of the reason Blizzard is able to make the game. After all, they do make up for a lot of the sales. And lets not forget that, if the follower system does end up promoting online play, we would all benefit.

As maka said, hardcore players ultimately make up for most of the hours played in a game, and as such they deserve recognition. For all we know, not allowing the follower system into the endgame is a favor to us. It means that Blizzard won't have to nerf any of your favorite skills because it got attached to some cheap follower build and was declared overpowered. You won't get screwed in the last few seconds of a boss fight because Diablo decided to target your follower and you suddenly don't have a reliable heal (or something of that sort.)

If the follower system was going to inherit any of the problems of the D2 hirelings, I know I sure as hell wouldn't want it there. I think thats something we can mostly agree on. But thats just a really hard thing to do. I'm not saying Blizzard isn't up to the challenge or that its not a possibility for the future. In fact, it would be an obvious target for an expansion or even a content patch (if they are going to do anything like that.) That being said, the fact that they weren't able to devise some incredible system where followers are both not essential and optional isn't an atrocity.

Again, why should there be options for the sake of options? If something is clearly over the top, why should it be allowed? Theres been plenty of complaints on these forums and elsewhere about too much stuff on the screen, and thats not when you're trying to keep track of your character just to survive or play effectively. I agree that we should have plenty of options, but there has to be a point where it cuts off. And in the case of screen clutter, the cut off point is where the game becomes nearly unplayable. If you just keep asking 'Why isn't this or this implemented?' then of course you're going to think that Blizzard is limiting your play. Not to mention that, if we're going to get into the 4 player limit here, its not only about screen chaos. Its also about balance. But I won't get into that.

Edit: And as for the "screen chaos" argument.. try playing WoW with 25 ppl in a raid fighting bad guys that don't even fit in the screen. It's AMAZINGLY fun to be in the middle of pure chaos.. I was main tank in a very active guild, and I had to find a way to keep everything that was happening under control during extremely complex mechanics. You find a way, and it's exhilarating. I agree with those here, that we should have the option.

And the reason it works is, for one, because of the screen angle, and secondly because of balance. WoW's health system allows for harder hitting monsters, because its someone else's responsibility to heal you. Theres no such thing in D3. Your health goes steadily down until you get a globe. If you had eight players monsters would have to hit insanely hard for it to be a challenge for the group as a whole, but that would also mean that whoever is getting attacked is dying way too quickly. For D3's screen angle and graphical effects, 4 players is chaos, but just the right amount of it. But again, thats not the topic we're discussing.

They might be the majority in terms of raw numbers (and even that's debatable), but they certainly aren't in terms of number of hours played. And I think players who show fidelity to a game and a company should be rewarded, not (as someone said above) "given the shaft".

Its really not debatable in terms of raw numbers. D2 has sold what, 4 or 5 million copies? Theres no way the online community, even if you combined every unique player across the game's life, is or was anywhere near that. SC2 has sold over 3, probably closer to 4 million copies, and even during the game's beginning the amount of players online numbered in, at most, the high hundred thousands. Its a common trend across many games that people just play SP/Campaign or whatever the game offers that isn't online.

Obviously your second point, about hours played, still stands, and we should be rewarded for that. But that doesn't have to be through followers or a similar system. Even if you had something like a box to check to include followers, people would still make builds based around them, and thats just pretty lame. Especially considering the emphasis on character power. Why should it be possible for you to make a build where you intentionally exclude normally essential parts just so that the follower can fill in the blanks?

Followers (both as hirelings in D2 and across many other ARPGs that have included similar systems) are notoriously hard to implement well, so Blizz decided against them. That doesn't mean that we won't see their usefulness expanded in the future, and it also doesn't mean that their restricting our current options. Its just something that (for reasons I've delved into countless times in these threads) is incredibly hard to balance correctly. If you get it slightly wrong in either direction, suddenly one side of the argument is outraged again. You saw how many people were pissed off because they thought followers were essential, and you also see how pissed off people are now that they think their useless (for good reason). So its much easier to simply make it a nonissue but still helpful to a large portion of the people who will end up getting the game. That doesn't mean we're getting the shaft.

Lets put it this way. Suppose WW Barbs are a common, fun build to play. Now suppose that a WW Barb benefits greatly from a Follower's AoE slow skill, to the point where it becomes overpowered. So Blizz nerfs the AoE slow, but it still helps the WW Barb too much, and the follower is still essential to the most effective WW build. What you end up with is ridiculously complicated balancing, where you have to take the followers, which a lot of people didn't want in the first place, into account, instead of directly nerfing/buffing character skills. As we all know, a game like Diablo is incredibly hard to balance, and it will only be harder with the amount of builds in D3. Why make it more complicated by allowing people to supplement their build's weaknesses with a follower?

I'm not saying balancing followers isn't a challenge Blizz wouldn't be able to handle, but clearly it would take a lot of time. And thats not even taking into account the fact that no matter how finely you balance it, people could (and with billions of build possibilities, probably will) find a way to still exploit followers to make builds with very few weaknesses, that are also lame because if your follower is down suddenly your significantly less powerful, and because you, the hero of the game, have to rely on some random guy you rescued.

Not to mention that its probably going to be pretty hard to build your character around the follower by level 30 considering you'll have less than seven skills. And even if you did you would probably be able to survive without them in Nightmare. And as bleakparta said most newcomers won't even understand how to build a character around the follower, and will probably just get the skills they think are interesting.

Well the thing is those 'nubbins' are the majority of the people who have ever played D2 (or, more recently, SC2). So catering to them, at least in some ways, is almost forced upon the D3 team. And considering the aim of this system is to encourage them to become more hardcore and involved with the online community, as opposed to just trying to appeal to them, which I would say is much more indicative of their design mindset. They want a game that has a large community and a wide range of players.

As far as storytelling, I'm sure that any quests that are part of the main story arc that involve the followers will still be in the game regardless if you're playing multiplayer or not. As in you'll still have to rescue the people, and go on whatever other quests that leads to (ie discovering who the Prophet is, etc). Also, any time someone is lecturing you on storyline while you're away from town (or even while you're in it), you'll be able to continue killing/questing/etc while they talk. So its not like in D2 where you have to pay attention to a bunch of scrolling text.

Quote from Boge

Reading over this has me terribly disturbed.

I can't believe Blizzards thinking with this situation. First we don't get LAN play, so no multiplayer mods. Now we only get 4 players cooperative with no mercenaries, and no mercenaries after Normal play. Why? All because someone at Blizzard thinks it's too chaotic.

Its not just Blizzard, thats been a common complaint on these forums for ages. 'Screen clutter' and 'pixelated soup' are commonly heard terms at BlizzCon panels (obviously in terms of what they want to avoid).

Hey, did you ever wonder what the players might want? I'll pitch you a key word to great game development, "OPTIONS". If me and my friends feel that the game will be too chaotic with more than 4 players, we'll only play with 4 players, but in the chance that 5 of us want to play together, it sure would be nice to be able to include that one extra person. "Too bad! You'll play the way we want you to, not the way you want to!"

What's the point of even having a merc in the first place? Is it a recruiting strategy? You mention you want people to feel the presence of another player so they'll be more inclined to play online with people. Some of us don't like playing online with strangers! Why are you trying to make us do it? I prefer virtual friends over some rude people online. If my friends can't play with me one day, I'd sure like to have my mercenary there to keep me company. "Too bad! You'll play the way we want you to, not the way you want to!"

Back to my options mention. Why can't you just have things optional? Player numbers is obvious. Why can't you have a "Allow Mercenaries" option for multiplayer? This gives the host the option to allow mercs or not. I'll bet my life more often than not they'll allow YES. But Blizzard says NO.

You have to stop looking at it as though Blizzard 'took away' our ability to have mercs. Just because its in D2 doesn't mean it makes it into D3. Especially considering how broken the system was in D2. And as far as options go, theres 97 billion builds in the game. Each skill has 5 different rune variations, and theres about 25-30 skills per character. Theres at least twenty different armor dyes and eighteen different armor looks. Why should they implement more options for the sake of options? They already have plenty of well-implemented options, why should they sacrifice quality for quantity?

Blizzard's design style revolves around them trying everything. In fact, Bashiok talked about how currently followers are available in MP, and its impossible to see what you're doing. They take feedback from hundreds, if not thousands of people and thats before the beta has even started. The reason followers aren't a part of endgame balance is because they probably were at some point and it was nearly impossible to pull off correctly, especially in a way that continues to promote cooperative play, which is a stated goal of the team. I'm not saying that its unreasonable to be disappointed that mercs/hirelings/followers aren't in the game, but you can't honestly try to argue that its part of some overall design philosophy where Blizzard wants to restrict our options.

I would assume you only do those quests when you're playing in Normal, but they could just have the quests and the followers are just at the end. They have said that the follower quests fit into the main story.

Quote from sneakywombat

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.

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.

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.

Well, at least how its been described, is that they'll get less and less useful until they're just dying all the time. So in NM and Hell you can still technically use them but they won't do much. Although if they're useful throughout Normal they'll probably have a place for the early part of NM.

Well its really because of the way Blizzard releases info. Even though most of us will end up enjoying the game regardless of whether or not we like the follower system, right now it seems like the biggest thing because its the most recent D3 info we've gotten.

I do think it's pretty damn strange that you'll be investing your time in building a "side character" only to have he/she be pointless later on though.

Which is why you really don't need to invest all that much time, gear or effort making a follower. They have, what, 4 equipment slots and a whopping total of 12 skills divided into groups of 3? There aren't that many choices involved, and even though its easily useless from our standpoint, if you look at how it will be from the point of view of someone who is just starting to play, it will be an easier transition to multiplayer. I think its a great system, and while I do wish it was usable in higher difficulties its far from the end of the world. Considering the outrage when people thought they would be essential, combined with the outrage now that people know they aren't, Blizzard had to make a choice and I think this is a reasonable compromise.

Of course, compromises always piss people off though

Quote from Bredalolz

So if I got this right, traits are..

like passive abilities/stats?

Yes. Since you can only choose seven skills, they separated passive skills into traits so you still have a reason to get them.

It's possible we have an "off-by-one" error here. If you get a trait after every three level-ups, then you'd have 19, because you start at level 1.

Ding level 1 -> 2 = 1
Ding level 2 -> 3 = 2
Ding level 3 -> 4 = 3 << First trait point

I thought that as well, but starting at level 3 and getting a point every 3 level ups leads to getting your last point at level 60, which seems to make more sense than getting your last point at 59, or really any other level.

Its something like you can respec a skill at a time. There could be other options for traits though, seeing as you'll probably be spread out across more than seven traits.

Yea, from what he described you would get 20 trait points, at levels 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 51, 54, 57, and 60 (count them if you don't believe me :P). Bashiok probably just thought of 57/3=19 and thats where his mistake came from. At least thats why I thought it was correct at first glance. Or he described it wrong. Either way its an easy mistake to correct, so we'll hopefully get an explanation soon.

Quote from Legatus1982

There is some conflicting information. An official post from (I would guess) Bashiok stating that they are aiming for a 2011 release, and this conference call where there are several people who have reported bliz saying "No games expected to be released this year"
Can we get confirmation on that quote? I haven't listened to the call.

What was said during the call was that, basically, D3's release is dependent on how long the beta has to be to get rid of all the bugs/balance issues. So their working towards a 2011 release, but they expect it to take until 2012 because of potential issues that arise during the beta. Its just like at the last conference call, where they stated that the official expectation is that the game won't be ready until 2012, but they are doing what they can to get it out in 2011.

The good news is that probably means that if the release has to get bumped to 2012, it will be early on in the year.