Bashiok made a quick reply about Health Orbs, and a longer one about D3’s PvP in the Battle.net forums today.
On Health Orbs, a poster asked if the orbs could heal party members even if the character who grabbed it was at full health already. And received some good news in reply:
[BLUE=“http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?fn=d3-general&t=352182&tmp=1#post352182”]That’s how it works!
We’re also playing around with some alternate functionality for when/how they’re picked up while you’re at full health, as well as some visual tweaks. Regardless we’re going to make sure it’s as fun and balanced as possible.
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As for PvP, some commenters brought up some of Jay Wilson’s comments from Leipzig, in which he said that they had big plans to improve on PvP in D3, but that a return of the in-game hostility option was not among them. The initial poster agreed with that change, but these are the b.net forums we’re talking about here, so you know angry, Blizzard-slamming comments were just around the corner. Amidst the slavering cries of “only losers play WoW,” and “Care Bear D3!” Bashiok pointed out the fairly obvious issue with enabling PvP: only the people who can duel or want to gank are going to turn it on.
[BLUE=“http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?fn=d3-general&t=352196&tmp=1#post352196”]When/Why would you choose to enable PvP in your game if it was an option? Would it be before you were max or near-max level, or twinked?
If not then you’re essentially looking for a dueling game, and wouldn’t a dedicated PvP focus provide a more logical option than a blanket PvP-on/PvP-off option which no one would enable until they were powerful enough to defend themselves?[/BLUE]
A rebuttal is offered, earning another reply from Bashiok:
[BLUE=“http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?fn=d3-general&t=352214&tmp=1#post352214”]
Would they? Players don’t generally opt-in to situations they don’t think they have a chance to win.
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