HC in the BlizzCon demo

[Flux]

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.

[MoUsE_WiZ]

Nice write up =)
Have seen so very few writeups relating to HC play.

That would be lame.

The issue is if you give an HC player a way to heal, the player will potentially go through very tedious/unfun series of actions to do so.

I mean even if you take away the ability to heal in town, the player could go through the fun of going back to easier areas and clearing them out for health globes. Maybe not all the time, but quite likely before more dangerous fights.

Or one idea I've been playing with in my head is to make players join the next game unhealed at the last check point they hit when exiting outside of town... well, if that's the case, I could very well see the strategy being to always clear the entire way there, then if you need to heal, even if there's no quick way back to town, at least there is a way back to town... so much fun and action!

In Mythos I found myself playing that way at low levels because at low levels in HCE the gold didn't always keep up with the potion consumption. Just running out into the starting area, killing a few things till my HP was gone, then running all the way back to town. Just for ~2-3 levels, but man what a tedious ~2-3 levels those were.

Out of combat regen mechanics (eg regen in GW, food in WoW) is virtually the same effect, only with a controllable amount of downtime. Blizzard wants to force players to go into combat without full HP pools in order to make the orbs interesting, but if there's a way to get the HP pool full, HC players will go through a lot of tedium to pull it off.



That said, I'm sure I'm making the problem out to be worse than it'll end up being.
As players get better at the gameplay they'll be able to stretch their bulbs further.
As players learn which monsters deal how much damage they'll be able to better judge if they should maybe try to find a few orbs before taking those particular monsters on or not.
And besides, the tedium is there in D2 too and there aren't too many complaints... people either risk their characters without the proper gear, or they MF earlier areas to get the proper gear.


As such, I'm less worried about S&E being used as a heal and more worried about it being used as god mode... if absolutely nothing can kill you before you can S&E, that's when it's a problem.

So... how much damage did you find yourself taking while kiting? I figure it's an early area so probably not as much as you would later, but could you out run all the monsters/projectiles?

[Angel_of_Wrath]

Originally Posted by Flux

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.

Thanks for this info, nice to get some HC perspective. Do you think it took away from the previous HC style of gameplay, or is it just different? In D2 with pots, you might have more control over requirements to instantly pop a rejuv when you suddenly get cornered or block-locked. Or you could retreat and slam a health pot. I understand potions are still around, but it sounds like it's vastly different.

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.

This business of drawing out monsters one by one trying to get a globe to pop seems like it would be annoying. It might be amusing the first few times but later on... hmmm. What's your opinion, having played it?

I can only guess that, since there's the auto-stats, +life or +vit items will be the most sought after. Sure, they usually are priority, but perhaps even now a necessity.

[stillman]

Flux, did you have time to ask any of those gameplay questions from that post on the d3 general discussion forums? Or, was everyone too caught up in the playing (which is understandable) or is it still being worked on to present later?