I remember reading an article that quoted Jay mentioning that the highly versatile weapon swap key that allows you to quickly alternate your equipped weapons won't be in Diablo 3... And that the reasons for its removal were essentially because they didn't want moron's smashing their keyboard randomly and accidently swapping weapons when in the heat of battle...

I hope this is not set in stone... I have faith in Jay but some of his decisions make me worry and question exactly what they're trying to accomplish for Diablo 3... Are they're trying to cater this game to the most dumb as rock incompetent gamers? if your going to remove a hot-key that allows you to quick change weapons simply because your worried that players are going to push this key be accident and result in their demise, it really makes me wonder how dumbed down this game is going to be... You could really make the same argument for ANY hot key... or any key that may interrupt play... windows key or escape for example? That just seems like poor logic and short sightedness... The item swap key was a very versatile and customizable aspect of Diablo 2 and should not be removed simply because some players are incoherently spamming random keys on their keyboard or being foolish.

At the moment it is. The confusion it creates for players is a good point really in my opinion. From my time in tech support it was a common enough issue that we had pre-written responses to send to people to help inform them of where their weapons went. BUT that said it's not a problem that's completely without a solution, so while it's a decent argument it's sort of weak because it could probably be addressed somehow.

One good reason why it's not a feature we like the idea of is that it adds a new type of play complexity that we don't want to layer on top of those that we already have. We're creating the game, the skills, the movement speed, kill rates, skill runes, and all other combat related mechanics and features to fit as tightly together as possible. Throwing in weapon swapping forces that tightening/balancing to take it into account. Only thing is that it's not a clear cut feature. You either know how to game it - or you don't. So it creates a separation of players that isn't based on use of the character and skills but doing this weird little trick and swapping back and forth between weapons at specific times. It becomes a necessity to remain effective or as a strong opponent, and we believe the combat has enough going for it that it doesn't need difficult to explain and understand features like weapon swapping.

I know this is probably the wrong audience to try to make that argument to, because most of you are on the winning end. But trust us that there will be plenty of separation between you and the noobs to show how awesome you are without weapon swapping.

You also have the issues of it just being used for storage, which feels super cheesy. Or as a means to game MF by swapping in weapons to get 0mgz uber dropz.

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Q u o t e:
Just give us back the weapon switch button.

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Nah.

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Q u o t e:
Weapon swap will be there with or without a magic button. People will just get good at doing it manually. And then there will be a rift between those who can swap out fast manually, and those who don't swap out fast enough, and those who don't swap out at all.

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If that appears to be an advantageous way to play the game then we'll break the ability to do so.