Sounds great. The whole game seems like it has so much polish. I cannot wait.

I think it’s a mess only 7 buttons.

Diablo 2 got 16 buttons. Going down to 7 (in fact, 6) is a mess, in my opinion.
Add the impossibility to customize the buttons (I’m not sure here) and being obligated to use 1-4 plus mouse… and it will be annoying.

This is by far the worst DiabloIII new at the moment, in my opinion.

Because the game is clearly D2.5 with Paladins/Necros running everywhere with 10+ active skills on the mouse wheel, and you clearly know how many abilities every build will use in combat, and you clearly know that the only location where we can assign skill hotkeys is the new hotbar?

I mean, it’s not like so many RPG’s that came out lately and use a hotbar totally had multiple hotbars that you could switch between with a single hotkey?

Blizzard totally lost it, man. Surely, in their corporate greed of unicorn and rainbow casual-dumb-it-down-land they forgot the basics of UI design!

Uh, the hot*bar* on screen only has four spaces. That doesn’t mean at all that there are only four available, assignable hotkeys. I would be willing to bet that there are enough hotkey slots to keep your fingers in knots, don’t you worry.

It makes perfect sense to reduce the number and I think 7 are enough.
Who seriously used and needed 8 or more skills bound to keys in Diablo?
I never really needed more than 6 skills in Diablo2 for normal playing.

This seems good. I’d been wondering how targeted skills would work on the hot bar. I thought maybe you’d hit the correct key to select it, and then left click to target, and it would use that instead of the normal left click skill.

I like this.

I only ever need to use 8 hotkeys including tp.

Valmy
It is customizable.

Eh… Diablo 2 had TWO hotkeys, mouse left and mouse right. Those were the one two that you could cast a spell from. Previously you could switch those two around, but you still had to cast spells using those two mouse buttons. Now you have 7 places where to cast spell. It didn’t say anything about having switches between the skills - though I think 7 skills is enough.

So previously you pressed F4 and then mouse2 when you wanted to cast your shiver armor (and back to F1). Now you just press 4 and continue instantly.

this is one of the few things I’m dubious about. I like lots of hotkeys and fully customizable hotkeys.  I’m not particularly interested in the game trying to guess for me how I want to set up my skills; I can figure that out on my own.

The bigger issue is in how many skills the characters will have. the D3 team has been saying, at least since blizzcon, that characters will have about half a dozen active skills. Hence 6 or 7 hotkeys are plenty (as of Blizzcon, the belt slots could be mapped to a potion type thing, or a spell, while the mouse buttons were only mappable to spells). As most of us know from D2, even mapping every key within reach of the left hand could be insufficient at times, such as while playing a Necromancer and using several summons, some attack spells, lots of curses, town portal, etc. (Especially back before synergies discouraged such varied play styles.)

It’s all conjecture to talk about D3 skills yet (I’d be surprised if the current skill trees look at all like the blizzcon style) but it seems clear that we’ll se a lot more passive than active skills. And it seems likely that heavy specialization will be required. Characters will be using just 4 or 5 or 6 active skills throughout their careers, which seems limiting… but if each character has multiple viable builds with like 10 or 12 equivalent quality active skills, that’s no so bad. Especially if the respecing options allow changes during a character’s life, so you can try out different styles if you get bored with the one you built initially.

Don’t read too much into the whole “intelligent UI” thing.  Lol @ Flux for saying you don’t want the game to assign your skills.  It just checks if it’s a targeted spell like MM or Cleave, or an untargeted spell like Frost Nova and puts them in the mouse or hotbar if there’s room.  If the whole thing is filled, nothing happens.

Mouseman is right.  Diablo 2 had only two hotkeys.  And besides, the F buttons are too far away and spread out to manipulate effectively.  Also, don’t worry about Town Portal taking up a slot.  The 5 and 6 keys can be used like a potion belt for potions and scrolls.  I always thought it was press the button and the spell is cast wherever your mouse is, not push to queue and click to cast.

I’m hoping Blizzard lets you use the Space Bar for another active skill.  Would be good for things like Soul Harvest that you use repeatedly.