Followers Viability
Posted 7 January 2012 by Elly
Bashiok has made a sort of status update on the 
Followers.
As you know Followers are single player companions but initially they were only to be of use in normal difficulty and Blizzard would work post-release to ensure they could not be taken beyond that point, no matter how much the player tried. Colourful rumblings from the community caused Blizzard to reconsider the wisdom of this restriction and at Blizzcon 2011 they announced that Followers would be viable in all difficulties. Not necessary, but available. Today’s update from Bashiok better explains their reasoning behind that change and finishes by asking for feedback on how you think you will use your Followers, (if at all).
The entire update is after the fold.
At BlizzCon we announced that we had taken that player feedback and were indeed working to make the single-player followers (templar, scoundrel, and enchantress) viable in the later difficulty levels.
We want to share some of the details surrounding this change and what it will mean for the single-player experience.
A lot of us wanted to see followers become viable throughout the game too, and agree they really add something to the experience as a whole. One of our main driving forces in making this decision was the benefits of the co-op experience, and the disadvantage of playing alone in the Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno difficulties. Followers won’t follow you into co-op games because you’ll already have the superior firepower of your friends to help you, but playing alone you’re going to want to take advantage of their benefits. We’ve made the later difficulties of the game brutally difficult, and we realize that for those attempting to tackle these later difficulties alone, they’re really going to actually want some additional support in the form of the followers.
Some players didn’t like their experience with mercenaries in Diablo II. We took feedback regarding mercenaries very seriously when designing Diablo III followers, and they differ from mercenaries in a few key ways that we think set them apart and resolve many issues. First of all, there is no resurrection or cost to your followers’ deaths, which makes their upkeep far less intrusive. When a follower takes enough damage to “die”, they simply take a knee, catch their breath, and after a few moments are back in the fight. That downtime could potentially have an effect on your own survival, but it’s unlikely to create a situation where you’re worrying about them or constantly working to keep them alive. We don’t want to turn what could be a fun benefit into a punishment by making players pay for their followers’ poor combat choices.
Secondly, when you die, so does your follower. These aren’t characters that can hope to compete or continue on without you. While some players prefer to be the lone wolf taking on the forces of evil, our intent isn’t to dilute the hero aspects by adding more wolves to your wolf pack. We want followers to be an extension of your bad-assery, not a liability. The followers could almost be considered automated buffs/damage skills, but of course with quite a bit more flavor and customization options.
We still have some tweaking to do with the followers, including their skills and end-game balancing. We continue to discover cool little ways to improve how each follower performs and the complements the different heroes. Our intent is to ensure players who take followers along find them to be helpful additions to their single-player experiences.
In the meantime, we’re interested to hear what you think of followers at end game and what your intent will be. Will you ever play alone, considering the benefits of co-op (personal loot drops, increased killing speed)? If you do play single player will you bring a follower? Or do you intend to challenge yourself by not bringing one?
I would honestly be happy with the follower acting like this in the end game:
A mobile buff that has high life and extremely small damage output, or even just a satellite that cannot be targeted but cannot take damage. The buff could be something small that compliments a build. I wrote this on battle.net, but what I like about followers isn’t a combat experience, but a narrative experience.
infi merc re PLZ
I’m glad they are sticking with Followers being SP only, and I will use them. But I have to sigh a bit at this:
“First of all, there is no resurrection or cost to your followers’ deaths, which makes their upkeep far less intrusive. When a follower takes enough damage to “die”, they simply take a knee, catch their breath, and after a few moments are back in the fight. That downtime could potentially have an effect on your own survival, but it’s unlikely to create a situation where you’re worrying about them or constantly working to keep them alive. We don’t want to turn what could be a fun benefit into a punishment by making players pay for their followers’ poor combat choices.”
First off, resurrection cost was irrelevant in D2 because gold was like water. I really didn’t find it intrusive, just a logical game mechanic. If you’re unlikely to be “worrying about them or constantly working to keep them alive” then basically they are saying that they intend to remove any strategic element to followers. I’d rather they weren’t completely “set it and forget it,” that even if you can’t control their AI you at least have to be concerned about their welfare the way any powerful hero would need to be shepherding a weaker sidekick through danger. In multiplayer with other humans even if there is no healing or support class, you still don’t want to do stuff to get your friends in trouble. I think this should need to be mimicked with followers – if you want them with you, you gotta take care of them and they’ll take care of you!
In D2 resurrection cost was either nothing at all or a bit of an annoyance until you could save up your gold. When you happened to be low on gold (from a few deaths in a row on a particularly nasty champion, for example) the resurrection cost was most certainly “intrusive”.
Nor does shepherding a potentially goofy AI sound especially “fun” to me, and I’m glad the penalties for followers getting taken out of the fight are small. Yes, you’ll probably do better overall if you try to synergize with your follower and not do things that will cause them to die, but this shouldn’t translate into a need to ‘shepherd’ them, nor into stiff penalties for their deaths. There are possible ways to include the “strategic element” you want that don’t relate solely to keeping them alive, such as synchronizing your attacks with them for maximum effect, choosing follower skills that best complement your own abilities, and choosing equipment to maximize a follower’s effectiveness. Those choices can all be very strategic, even in the absence of a need to shift-click potions to feed them to your merc.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer it if there were more/better options for controlling followers, especially some kind of AI controls. I just know that’s not going to happen. But I do have some faith that their AI will be vastly improved from the way mercs worked in D2. Even then I rarely had them die stupid deaths – all you needed to know was how to manipulate their “leash” and have reasonably good equipment on them.
I just don’t like that you can be heedless of their welfare now. I like the idea of interacting with them on some level during the fight, not just outside of combat when speccing them out.
I never had gold as water. I was spending !@#$loads at reviving him because I didn’t have X superpowerfull runeword on him.
You didn’t need amazing gear to keep mercs alive in D2. Elite runewords could make them really powerful killers, but they could thrive quite well on easily attainable gear. Most of my Act 2 mercs wore something like Shaftstop, Vampire Gaze, and Reaper’s Toll (none of those hard to acquire) and could hold their own against any Hell monster, even Baal if I tossed some potions their way.
Teh cost wasn’t the problem, having to go back to town after his/her dumb ass every time until his gear was good enough was the annoying part…
But maybe instead of the Skyrim essential NPC way it would work better like DoW2, Gears or GW2 is doing it… they fall down and stay there until you spend a second or two to get them up…
I just don’t want followers to be a necessity for inferno when soloing. I mean, it should still be doable without one, if a little harder. But if it’s just a little easier, then there is little point in taking them anyway.
So for them to be helpful, they have to be actually helpful, thus becoming almost a necessity for inferno, or at least a no-brainer, instead of a choice.
So yes, I agree that you have to keep looking out for them – while they would provide a good bonus, keeping them in shape would require you to actually do something to prevent their deaths – and that is incentive enough to actually evaluate whether you want the additional pain in the ass for the benefit – or not. IMO.
As i suggested before, maybe make them count as 0.3-0.5 of a player and have the monster adjust accordingly…
That way you could even make the game harder on yourself by keeping them naked so they won’t be much help if you want…
At least they finally admitted they’re balancing monsters around the inclusion of followers. To compensate, they should have no-follower achievements. The banner pattern could be the Forever Alone head.
From the Templar footage i’ve seen i don’t think you can play the game without using the followers at all… the Templar at least is part of the main story when you 1st meet him.
During that quest, Kormac isn’t actually a follower. You can’t change his gear or do anything but talk to him. Once the quest is done, a pop-up window comes up asking if you want him to come with you, or to dismiss him to town.
I’m very happy to see followers being viable in end-game.
Now they are pretty much exactly how I wished them to be when D3 was announced. More skills to pick for them and more item slots would be nice, but that is a small thing.
Hopefully the ‘kneel down’ time while ‘dead’ will be long enough for people to care about their follower staying alive, if nothing else because their downtime endangers your own characters life.
Good to see updates like this. Makes the delay a bit more bearable
Ah, this is great news. Not simply for the point at hand, but it is most likely the “large game system change” that Bashiok was referring to here:
“It’s making sure everything is perfect. We’re not really in a strictly polishing phase yet though, although certainly that’s true for some areas of the game. Still, we’re in the process of working on some rather large game system changes, some of which we’ll be sharing shortly before or with the next beta patch”
Knowing that the large change is something that does not seem to require an immense period of time means that we might not see this game pushed back as far as we reluctantly assumed.
Except that we already knew about this so I doubt that this is the stuff he was referring to that they were going to share with us along with the next beta patch…
I want followers to be viable in all difficulties besides inferno. I do not want to be forced to use a follower in inferno. When playing in Inferno I will use every advantage I get, so yes I will force myself to use followers in inferno even though I would prefer to not use them in that difficulty. I like being a lone wolf when I play single player at the highest levels. I will lower my fun factor by forcing myself to use mercs for the benefits provided while playing in inferno since it is the hardest difficulty.
The followers can simply say, “I am skilled, but demons of this ferocity will only have me slow you down. I wish you good luck.”
Another option would be for you to get a buff such as an extra passive or a small bonus to all stats instead of bringing a merc along that is only available when playing alone on inferno difficulty.
To answer the question: i would be playing single player 99% of the time, and would much love a companion beside me all thru the game.