Flux
18-10-2008, 03:11
There wasn't HC in the demo, since it's not in the game (yet) but while playing I kept in mind the potential imminence of death. And it was close. Much closer than in D2 with a new character.
I had little trouble with a barb or WD, but I nearly died several times with a wiz, and would not have pressed on as I did if I'd had just one life to give. The lack of healing pots (there were no NPCs to buy anything from in the demo) and town portals and NPC healers made for an interesting decision when I was down to maybe 1/4 (or less) of my hit points and had no health orbs around. It was something like Jay Wilson has said in past interviews; you're forced to be a bit strategic and careful, and there's far more tension than in D2.
I figured I would get a health globe in the next few monsters I killed, but I still had to kill them. Not so dangerous with a Wizard and ranged spells, but if I'd had to go melee it would have been very hairy. So I found myself falling back and hurling spells, stringing out the zombies, trying to get a health globe to pop.
Even when you do, they're not auto pick up. You have to run through them, and without any movement skills in the demo, that means you had to clear out the monsters. Enemies come in large packs in d3 and they stand quite close together, so you really can't run through a mob during combat. (Maybe in the full game, with movement skills. Barb WW or charge, for instance.) I often would be fighting a mob, losing health while killing, and some orbs would drop, but I couldn't get to them since there were tons of other monsters standing where they'd fallen.
It's a bit like the poison clouds from some zombies in D2; you can see them when they spread up, but you won't get poisoned if you don't move into them. Same with health globes. they can be an inch in front of you, but you can't reach them if you're still battling a horde of enemies.
I can imagine some very amusing dragging of monsters, stringing them out, hit and run battles, etc, for HC players in the final game.
The other alternative is that pepole will just be overly cautious, and if there's no easy way to pop back to town all the time for heals, players will find themselves leaving games when they get low on health, and don't have any mechanism to heal. That would be lame.
There were potions in the bliizzcon build, but they dropped rarely, and they worked like low hit point rejuvenation. They'd heal something like 40 hps instantly. Level 6-9 chars had around 100 hps. Maybe 130 for the barb.
It's also very odd to play a char when you can't assign your own attribute points. I think the cookie cutter build SC chars don't need it as much, since they tend to ignore vit and just power up str/dex or more damage, but vit is a big consideration when building a HC char. I'd probably have been pumping vit with some willpower on a new wiz in the blizzcon build, since str and dex were doing nothing for me and I needed more red and blue. But I didn't have that option.
I'll write much more on this in some game play reports on the main page in the days to come; I just wanted to give my fellow HC fans something to chew over.
I had little trouble with a barb or WD, but I nearly died several times with a wiz, and would not have pressed on as I did if I'd had just one life to give. The lack of healing pots (there were no NPCs to buy anything from in the demo) and town portals and NPC healers made for an interesting decision when I was down to maybe 1/4 (or less) of my hit points and had no health orbs around. It was something like Jay Wilson has said in past interviews; you're forced to be a bit strategic and careful, and there's far more tension than in D2.
I figured I would get a health globe in the next few monsters I killed, but I still had to kill them. Not so dangerous with a Wizard and ranged spells, but if I'd had to go melee it would have been very hairy. So I found myself falling back and hurling spells, stringing out the zombies, trying to get a health globe to pop.
Even when you do, they're not auto pick up. You have to run through them, and without any movement skills in the demo, that means you had to clear out the monsters. Enemies come in large packs in d3 and they stand quite close together, so you really can't run through a mob during combat. (Maybe in the full game, with movement skills. Barb WW or charge, for instance.) I often would be fighting a mob, losing health while killing, and some orbs would drop, but I couldn't get to them since there were tons of other monsters standing where they'd fallen.
It's a bit like the poison clouds from some zombies in D2; you can see them when they spread up, but you won't get poisoned if you don't move into them. Same with health globes. they can be an inch in front of you, but you can't reach them if you're still battling a horde of enemies.
I can imagine some very amusing dragging of monsters, stringing them out, hit and run battles, etc, for HC players in the final game.
The other alternative is that pepole will just be overly cautious, and if there's no easy way to pop back to town all the time for heals, players will find themselves leaving games when they get low on health, and don't have any mechanism to heal. That would be lame.
There were potions in the bliizzcon build, but they dropped rarely, and they worked like low hit point rejuvenation. They'd heal something like 40 hps instantly. Level 6-9 chars had around 100 hps. Maybe 130 for the barb.
It's also very odd to play a char when you can't assign your own attribute points. I think the cookie cutter build SC chars don't need it as much, since they tend to ignore vit and just power up str/dex or more damage, but vit is a big consideration when building a HC char. I'd probably have been pumping vit with some willpower on a new wiz in the blizzcon build, since str and dex were doing nothing for me and I needed more red and blue. But I didn't have that option.
I'll write much more on this in some game play reports on the main page in the days to come; I just wanted to give my fellow HC fans something to chew over.