Environmental Threats

[ADest]

Watching the Wizard video on the front page today, I see the fire dungeon now has environmental threats in the form of giant hatchets the player has to time their progression to pass through. I'm assuming if hit by them, you'll either instantly die, or take a massive amount of damage. This sort of thing was in Torchlight, and it didn't really seem to contribute much. This isn't Megaman or Mario, I think it just kind of gets in the way of the PvE, plus your summons/hirelings etc are too stupid to safely make it through traps like this. But I don't mind as long as they don't overdue it. Maybe 1 or 2 traps of this sort limited to 1 or 2 dungeons, but if they throw these sorts of things everywhere it's gonna be annoying.

[Neinball]

They did a fair amount of damage to the player but seemed to do a lot more damage to the enemies. We'll probably see more stuff like that thrown around here and there, but they are far from spelling your doom if you accidentally misclick and get hit by them... On normal mode at least. Gloves come off on Inferno though.

[ClockworkBeast]

They did a fair amount of damage to the player but seemed to do a lot more damage to the enemies. We'll probably see more stuff like that thrown around here and there, but they are far from spelling your doom if you accidentally misclick and get hit by them... On normal mode at least. Gloves come off on Inferno though.

Good point. Is it possible that one of their main intentions with these environmental threats is to frustrate bots in Inferno?

[Ryjin]

Good point. Is it possible that one of their main intentions with these environmental threats is to frustrate bots in Inferno?

Bot traps. What a brilliant solution!

[Raesene]

Well it is an Action RPG, so I think things that add more dodging and timing and moving are welcome additions. I don't want to simply play 'click on the monsters and hope my numbers are bigger than their numbers." I want reasons to have to move around and re-position my character.

These types of traps are certainly more interesting than the "touch the chest or barrel and randomly take damage" variety.

[kestegs]

That might work pretty well on bots, good thought!

It seems they also just want to slow down the play a bit, and make the game less about getting to a certain spot really fast, but about the entire game.

[Exile]

In the blizzcon 2009 build it got to a point that the cave we were in was about to collapse and a timer popped up showing how much time you had left to escape.

[elganame]

I like the idea of environment threats, and i hope to see more of thous in the game.
They did a great job with the environment being able to use it to our advantage like colliding stones and stuff.


In the blizzcon 2009 build it got to a point that the cave we were in was about to collapse and a timer popped up showing how much time you had left to escape.
I would like to see the cave actually collapse while escaping, being able to get hit by falling stones and stuff!

GIMME DYNAMICSSS!

[jaykworks]

or when you openj the botom chest of the "Cave" it dings "you have 2.223 min to escape"

[jaykworks]

Perhaps you only have "soo " long to clear instanced areas, maybe they give say "20:00 "Min to clear the "cave" and when 20 min is up you get 5 min to escape or it collapses
impossble to clear noaw fine. impossab;le to clear in 3 months! no, way

[Bridgeburners]

I love environmental threats; I think it's a welcome addition. I would like to see a lot more.

I think one example of a great thing they can do is, for some small levels (caves like the Underground Passage in D2, for example, where it's a small quick passageway through which you traverse, and not a big chunk of the act), is give certain locations a hazardous form of air, such as really hot air, or toxic air, which slowly drains your life. That way, you really have to get yourself focused before entering the level, and then you have to do things quickly once you get in, while still being careful not to over commit, and get yourself killed by monsters.

[yovargas]

The giant hatchets are awesome. I want MOAR.

[Neinball]

I love environmental threats; I think it's a welcome addition. I would like to see a lot more.

I think one example of a great thing they can do is, for some small levels (caves like the Underground Passage in D2, for example, where it's a small quick passageway through which you traverse, and not a big chunk of the act), is give certain locations a hazardous form of air, such as really hot air, or toxic air, which slowly drains your life. That way, you really have to get yourself focused before entering the level, and then you have to do things quickly once you get in, while still being careful not to over commit, and get yourself killed by monsters.

There was a level like this in a favorite game of mine, Armored Core (where my namesake comes from fyi.) Closed, cramped corridors filled with an acidic gas that was constantly chipping away at your life total in addition to having to deal with the enemies in this claustrophobic place that made it nigh impossible to dodge their shots...

**** THAT LEVEL!! **** IT TO HELL!

Sorry... Bad memories.

[ael]

I thought this was gonna be about trees and squirls and stuff. :scratchchin:

I don't (or wouldn't) mind them being in the game, I think it helps for more diversity, that is if they are punishing enough. If they are like in d2, for ex. fire in houses in tristram, people will soon forget about it and thats that.