Please bring back weapon switch, it’s one of the most awesome features of D2. Only real noobs in Act1 don’t know where their weapons are…
Barbarians with 2 hander and 1 hander + shield, Amazon with javelin/shield and bow, paladins with charge/cast setups, builds with wands on switch etc..

I guess they tried fixing the horrendous control response in Diablo 1 and 2 and when failing to accomplish that decided to severely dumb down the control set.

Makes it a lot easier to make for a responsive game.

The times I tapped a skill hotkey and it did not work, or how you often have to stop swinging a weapon before you can switch weapons instead of queuing the command and switching after finishing the current attack are abysmal imho.

I’m just venting here, but overall the controls in the game really feel sluggish. I seriously hope they pay some attention to very tight, responsive controls. They can check released Quake source code if they need an example

You seem mad about the removal of the weapon switch hotkey

About the issue itself:
It was commonly used, mostly to switch to +BO weapons I guess, in that case it was quite visible which weaponslot you’re currently using.
But I have to admit that when playing as a Javazon with mosers in both slots and Titans (for crowds) and those +4 javaskills javelins (for baal and other bosses) I got sometimes confused because they looked more or less identical. In an 8 player baalrun with all of the ongoing actionspam on the screen it’s pretty impossible to tell which slot you’re using without opening the inventory to check.

That being said I don’t mind its removal, though I wouldn’t mind it staying as well if its weaknesses are handled better somehow. It could be annoying to be “forced” to only 1 weaponset in Diablo3 because the better AI etc might be better competable if your own character is more flexible (via weaponslots).

PS: Thanks for taking in a few of my questions overall!

Jay: “Mostly we took it out because the only examples we could come up with of how people used it were somewhat exploitative.”

The be fair, Flux, I consider most of the examples you listed as exploitative.

Most of the reasons you gave are used to exploit the game, or not needed anymore in Diablo 3.

More mf before a kill = You will get nice items in other ways too, boss farming will be much less the way to farm good stuff.

Warcries = Exploiting other class skills, but getting skills from other classes won’t be in Diablo 3 anyway.

Ranged and melee weapons = This one is a very good reason. IF the next class is going to be a ranged one, it could be a problem.

2handed and 1handed + shield = You won’t get insta killed in Diablo 3 like in Diablo 2 anymore. And every class will have good escape abilities.

Using skills on weapons you don’t have = If you need skills that you don’t have you could either respec so you can handle the situations better. Or if that is impossible, it means your class lacks something. Which won’t be the case in Diablo 3.

Carrying a weapon in it you can’t use yet = Exploiting. And you don’t need strenght for items anyway in Diablo 3. And quest items you can wear like the Hellforge Hammer or Khalim’s Flail will be put in the quest items bag.

So in my opinion it’s fine they took it out. Diablo 3 can easily live without it.

Taking out weapon switch doesn’t make any sense to me. There was a train of thought a while ago that said “just because it was in D2 doesn’t mean it was a good idea,” but Blizzard now seems to think, “if it was in D2, it was too confusing.”

And Apple’s mouse has one button, but it registers up to 4 “hot zones” (right side, left side, side buttons, click wheel push) that can be assigned to any command.

All righty, I’ll have a go at Flux’ rant for no other reason than wanting a break from my thesis report:

Yes, I can definitely see the concern about the number of hotkeys being limited. I expect there will be some way to increase the number of hotkey-able skills, perhaps the tab key will swap hotbars too? Totally valid concern.

As for the weapon swap feature, both Jay and Flux bring up good points:

A few uses: +magic find for boss kills, +skills for casting warcries and summonings, alternating ranged and melee weapons, alternating 2H with 1H/shield for dangerous situations, to cast oskills found only on special weapons, to hold a weapon your character couldn’t use yet, or simply for extra item space

Let’s be honest: who really enjoys swapping to your secondary weapon set for MF and (o)skill purposes? Once you’re used to it, you don’t see it as a bonus, you see it as something mandatory. You feel gimped when you don’t use it and that’s an important psychological effect that replaces the initial feeling being rewarded for your cleverness with frustration. If you’re ever had a failed set/unique drop only to realize you forgot to swap to your MF combo, you know how annoying that situation is.

The same goes for +skills affecting spells post-cast and consequently allowing the use of +skill items on weapon swap for buffs (and other items as well). Skills should *really* use the skill level your currently equipped gear grants you, otherwise players will stack up on +skills pre-cast (e.g. weapon swap) and feel gimped when they don’t. I hate equipping my +3 magic/passive skill amulet when casting Valkyrie, but I do it anyway because it’s a big bonus. Oskills? Well, they’ll be gone in D3, so not a reason to keep the feature.

Bottom line is, when given the choice, players will use a feature in the manner that provides the biggest benefit, even if doing so is not fun. As both Jay and Flux point out, that is the case here. I’m assuming the feature was mostly designed to be used “normally”, e.g. melee/ranged or 2h/1h+shield swapping - proper, functional uses - but ended up being used for other purposes because players didn’t need to use the feature in the intended manner. The game was easy enough without it.

It is not the players’ fault, obviously: it is the responsibility of the designers to make the feature useful and “fun”, which is probably why they removed it. They felt the risk of it being turned into an unfun feature was bigger than the chance of it being put to good use, and that is IMO a good reason to scrap it.

You know, making use of the game controls in an intelligent, skillful manner. It’s almost as if the game provided tools to reward skillful play.

But pretty much all exploits boil down to that: clever, “skillful” people using/abusing features in a manner that the developers either did not foresee or did not want. Again, it’s not the players’ fault for doing so (other than when exploiting harms other players). That definitely applies to the next quote as well:

You’ll note that these brilliant control *simplifications* are coming from a company whose MMORPG is the most popular game ever despite shipping with a control system that’s universally considered unusable. There’s a reason every knowledgeable player makes use of numerous 3rd party UI mods to overcome the utterly inadequate level of control the actual game provides.

What you’re referring to is something of an arms race between the UI people and the WoW developers. The basic UI is fully functional but not popular. Why? Because given the custom UI support WoW provides, smart players are constantly looking for ways to make the game easier, either through mods that improve your control or mods that give you more information than you should reasonably know. When a greater amount of players start using these kinds of mods, it creates a balance problem where the developers need to take those mods into account and re-balance the game accordingly. This, in turn, makes those mods near mandatory despite not being part of the default UI. Even if the developers have integrated a lot of the more popular mods into WoW, they will always be a step behind the UI modders because there’s simply far more of the latter than there are developers.

In their pursuit of quick rewards, players are short-sighted and do not realize that in making the game easier for themselves short-term, they make it more complicated and UI-reliant long-term. That’s what happened in WoW and perhaps this is one of the reasons D3 will not support any third party mods.

Lets not dumb up the controls too much.  Remember we are using a mouse and a few keys on a key board.  Things we’ve been using since birth.  Blizzard, sometimes complicated is good. I myself would prefer to figure things out.

Diii.net: Are there going to be different character titles for completing difficulty levels or quests or other such things.

Jay Wilson: Wow, that’s a cool idea. *sincerely* Uh… I don’t know?

This alone tells me that JW never in his life has really played d2 past normal difficulty. And he is the lead designer of d3?

And my god, they keep dumbmifying this game more and more! Not stats? No hotkeys? now no weapon switch? Who the f is so retarded that can’t figure out weapon switch anyways?
I’m beginning to think that all d3 builds will be cookie cutters and there will be 0 room for different builds. :(

This alone tells me that JW never in his life has really played d2 past normal difficulty. And he is the lead designer of d3?

Come on, seriously? It’s beyond ironic that you don’t get the obvious sarcasm in his statement and then complain about how the game is getting dumber. :/