04-11-2012, 07:31 PM
Hi,
playing the D3 beta for me brought back a lot of memories from D1, which is a good thing; especially the dark atmosphere and the event system comes to mind. But there's one other feature in D3 that reminds me of D1, but in a twisted, malformed way: Friendly fire.
Remember how D1 had friendly fire? Together with the tile-based, slower combat system it made for a really fun tactical game which I thoroughly enjoyed. I really disliked how D2 removed friendly fire altogether, although I can see the reasoning behind it. The faster, tile-less combat, the higher number of players and monsters and the higher amount of AoE spells probably made it unusable and unfun in practice. Still, I weeped.
Now in the D3 beta, I noticed friendly fire is back - although in a really unexpected way: Not for the players, but for the monsters!
If you kill a grotesque for example, that fat monster that explodes into eels, the explosion damages monsters around it, too. Which in my last game created a chain of exploisons when a mob of elite (is this the correct terminology? A mob of "blue") grotesques attacked me, and killing the first resulted in killing the others which in turn resulted in killing the eels which then resulted in the "Massacre!" message. Which was kind of funny, but also kind of silly.
So the evolution of friendly fire in the Diablo series goes from friendly fire suffered by the players in D1, to no friendly fire in D2, to friendly fire suffered by the monsters in D3...huh, not sure what Blizzard's reasoning is here.
-Kylearan
playing the D3 beta for me brought back a lot of memories from D1, which is a good thing; especially the dark atmosphere and the event system comes to mind. But there's one other feature in D3 that reminds me of D1, but in a twisted, malformed way: Friendly fire.
Remember how D1 had friendly fire? Together with the tile-based, slower combat system it made for a really fun tactical game which I thoroughly enjoyed. I really disliked how D2 removed friendly fire altogether, although I can see the reasoning behind it. The faster, tile-less combat, the higher number of players and monsters and the higher amount of AoE spells probably made it unusable and unfun in practice. Still, I weeped.
Now in the D3 beta, I noticed friendly fire is back - although in a really unexpected way: Not for the players, but for the monsters!
If you kill a grotesque for example, that fat monster that explodes into eels, the explosion damages monsters around it, too. Which in my last game created a chain of exploisons when a mob of elite (is this the correct terminology? A mob of "blue") grotesques attacked me, and killing the first resulted in killing the others which in turn resulted in killing the eels which then resulted in the "Massacre!" message. Which was kind of funny, but also kind of silly.So the evolution of friendly fire in the Diablo series goes from friendly fire suffered by the players in D1, to no friendly fire in D2, to friendly fire suffered by the monsters in D3...huh, not sure what Blizzard's reasoning is here.
-Kylearan
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider