"Artists can't render that many animations" is a bogus excuse. As if there wasn't already a very talented art team at work with lots of time, theres the simple moddability of a replaceable animation; you can have swinging, stabbing, etc and attach the weapon models in there. Thats basic stuff.


From a design standpoint, its foolish an restrictive. Its an instance of flavor clearing getting in the way of gameplay. Much of the emergent gameplay in D2 was from things you didn't expect, well actually thats pretty much the definition. And it was being able to do things like wear Buriza Crossbow on a Wolf Druid or make a big bad PvP barbarian using an archon staff; these cool builds are what add so much depth to the game.

Diablo 2 was a very poor game that nobody enjoyed, because each class was forced to use a single item / skill combination. Notice how this is not true. I wish I could say the same of D3, but artificially restricting our choices with things like "monks can't have shield, barbs can't have staves" makes me lose hope

---

Q u o t e:
"Artists can't render that many animations" is a bogus excuse.

---

I don't think we've ever put that forward as the main excuse, but... well, it is the main excuse. It's not bogus though it's absolutely a true and real situation. Animation takes time. There are schedules and we have to try to set realistic goals for what we can achieve so we can try to get this game out sometime before we die of old age.

---

Q u o t e:
As if there wasn't already a very talented art team at work with lots of time, theres the simple moddability of a replaceable animation; you can have swinging, stabbing, etc and attach the weapon models in there. Thats basic stuff.

---

You're dismissively downplaying the amount of work needed to animate every weapon type. It's important to note that we aren't going to just slap on animations. We'll do it right or we won't do it. There is some overlap in weapon animations, but generally every weapon needs a full range of adaptation to the character. We can't animate a 1h sword and then equip a 1h axe and be happy with it being wielded in the same manner. In addition we don't want weapons disappearing whenever the hero does anything but a basic attack, so they have to be animated into emotes, idles, and a lot of skills and abilities. Every weapon. Some people noticed weapons disappear during some of the monk abilities. We don't like that. Most of that was due to time constraints to get that demo finished. Again there is some overlap - staves share a lot of the same animation with the other 2h weapons, but to dismiss it as "just animate it and slap it on and it works!" is seriously oversimplifying our processes. Maybe some other games do it that way.

Good news is that animation seems to be ahead of schedule, so we're working on a new definition of restrictions that's based more on class flavor than anything else. (Didn't I just post about this?) For instance we don't want anyone but the barbarian or monk dual-wielding, we don't want anyone but the witch doctor or wizard using wands, we don't want anyone but the wizard to wield orbs, fist weapons will probably only be usable by the monk, etc. etc. but other than for flavor reasons most of the restrictions are being removed.

All subject to change of course.

---

Q u o t e:
Thanks for your reply and attempting to explain things. Forgive me, though, but I'm not seeing your point. This would have made sense back in the days of D1 and D2 where they had to pre-render sprite combinations. But D3 uses 3D characters. You've got a 3D model for a sword, and a 3D model for a character...and the character is driven by bones and/or hierarchical transforms...so the only thing needed to make a character wield a weapon is the animation keys. Using modern tools such as MotionBuilder, defining a custom animation like this could be done quickly in minutes/hours...especially if you already have a base to work with, such as mocap data, or a previously made animation for a different character which just needs to be tweaked. So I really cannot buy this as a legitimate excuse. Not in this day and age.

---

There are approximately 30 animations for every weapon type, for every class, for both genders. Now granted again there is some overlap but not to a degree that makes animation inconsequential.

And to reiterate, we're not going to slap things on and call it done. It's true that we could take a stave animation for the wizard and make some minor tweaks and tah-dah, 2h swords work now. But there's a process to each weapon. The animation team meets and determines how the class would wield a specific weapon, what their character imparts to the feeling and tone of the animations, and that the tone is consistent through the character. The animations tell a story about who this person is and what they're capable of.

---

Q u o t e:
Like, whoa...whoa...whoa....a shield is not a class specific item. A shield is something that any sane person would carry into battle, regardless of gender or class...and it's quite an unreasonable restriction if you ask me.

---

Bruce Lee would not use a shield, and neither would the monk.

---

Q u o t e:
lol, really? I thought this is Blizzard.

---

Being willing to take as much time as necessary is not the same as working without a plan.

I think it's jumping to an extreme conclusion to say that a few weapon restrictions will ruin build and experimentation variety (ok being fair I know you're not quite claiming "ruin" but...). If it ruins build experimentation and variety then we'll fix it. But I think it is accurate to say that weapon restrictions will encourage trading, but more accurately to the reasons we present - build a sense of immersion with who these heroes are and the character that shows through every aspect of the way they're presented and behave.

I'm not sure barbs running around dual wielding wands is emergent gameplay we want to stomach. Or that makes anyone playing think "That's awesome! This game is awesome!" no, you're going to see a 9-foot tall behemoth running around shooting magic out of little sticks. That's not what a barbarian should be doing, build potential or not.

You say it will lower the amount of possibilities of outfitting a character, and that's obviously true, but we don't feel that the possibilities lost are so vast and substantial as to hurt character customization. If it does, we'll fix it.

We're not going to put out a game that has poor character customization because we don't like the idea of wizards running around dual wielding axes. If that makes character build potential severely limited, that's fine, we were wrong and we'll fix it. I don't think we'll be wrong though.

---

Q u o t e:
I just been realising and i think all characters should have the option to defend themselves with a shield without using any skills... so they are still equall... and let the skills build power... pvp shields is diablo 2 tho

---

I don't understand what you just said, but I love your name.

---

Q u o t e:
im just dropping my thoughts ......

---

No worries, I have a roomba. It's hungry.

---

Q u o t e:


"universal items" is not the issue. It makes no sense for a wizard to wear "fist weapons" just like it makes no sense for anyone but an assassin to have claws. Class-only items are OK. These fall into the category of class perks, rather than class penalties.

What is not ok is basic items being restricted from classes. IE 4/5 classes being able to wield a shield, but not a monk. This makes no sense. As I explained earlier in the thread, giving classes unique items like in D2 can spawn more variety, whereas taking away items from classes loses variety

---

That's cool. Well selectively quoting the parts of my posts that allow you to continue your point is wearing a little thin, so, I'm done here.

---

Q u o t e:
Bashiok has the handwaving that "if something is wrong, we'll test it and find it and fix it". But thats an improper outlook. The role of the designers, people like Jay Wilson, is to weed these things out before you have to enter a playtesting cycle. You can't make all your design decisions by playtesting, or you'd never have anything to start with. If your skills are imbalanced you might discover that in the testing phase and correct it, but where did you get the idea for those skills in the first place? Somewhere down the line, you have to make the design decisions on items like this: Will a monk be able to wield a shield? How will this impact the design space of my game? What items will I need to rebalance if we allow this? What impacts will it have on the player if we forbid it? Will this push our project off the critical path? Its not something that should be done a priori, especially not with the need on the animators.

---

You're right, it would be silly to say that we're going to do it this way with no idea of what the impact could be. But we're not. We know what the impact will be, and we don't feel it's an issue.

If it becomes an issue then we can fix it. I'm sure in your game designs everything works first try because you've planned so well, but here at Blizzard I guess we just have bad luck and in some cases things don't work and we have to try a few different solutions once we get things into practice. Maybe we'll get a game right first shot one of these days. We're still just hoping for our big break!

---

Q u o t e:


That goes right alongside your PR department's manifesto on use of sarcasm and being abusive towards your users, right? Or not. But maybe, just maybe you could consider that we're giving feedback on the game design, not the playtesting, and be more accommodating towards that. Some of us users question the logic behind dubious design choices, and are perfectly well aware of how a modern design cycle works. You guys aren't in the heavy playtesting and tweaking stage of development, and we are all aware of that, too. So our feedback is directed at the decision making process. Some of us questioned the use of colors and vibrancy in the art direction; its up to the developers and artists to settle on an art direction, and then produce the results, and see how it turned up. And thats exactly what they did. And most people's questions were answered, some were not.

Nobody here is saying "I've played Diablo 3 and the restrictions on items are fine". Not even the development team can say that. And we as users can give as much feedback as conjectures onto how this will impact the game; the same process your development team goes through when they acknowledge the benefits and drawbacks of each design decision. If we come to divergent solutions, the response is to acknowledge the logic behind it or deconstruct it, not to wave your hands and say "we'll play test it, its fine". Thats not how game design works- I'm sure you're aware that you guys certainly use an iterative model of development and are constantly bringing things like this back to the table and deciding how strengths and weaknesses of approaches before implementation phases.

If Blizzard's decision is to completely ignore consumer feedback and proceed with "making the game they want to" with no regards to us, then bravo to them- but you'd probably be better off not posting in or acknowledging threads like these.

---

Give me a break. You were directly attacking our design process with an tone of "I know better". Let's not pretend that you haven't been pushing your exclamation of design expertise into every post.

I'm perfectly willing to discuss decisions and philosophy, that's why I'm here. But when the reasoning is ignored to instead focus on single sentences or partial quotes that's when the conversation stops and I just back away and let you talk to the wall.

I have your feedback, you don't think there should be any item restrictions. Got it. Thank you.

---

Q u o t e:


I think you missed the points entirely.
I was saying that nobody here is trying to tell the D3 team how to do their job, they are giving advice; and we pretty much all respect the job they are doing and their abilities. But that does not mean we have to agree with every choice they make. And the "art direction" bit is an example of this: the Blizzard team made a decision on art direction, giving it more vibrant colors and less of a muted palette than people were asking for- which in turn ended up being the best of their attempts, and they flew with it. And frankly, I very much liked the line of thought behind it-D2 for example had lots of varied colors, and it worked out well; players often just don't notice the things that are right under their face.

Some of us respectfully disagree with decisions

---

You're absolutely right. You can and should respectfully disagree with decisions, question our direction, etc. and I wholly encourage it. Anyone on here that doesn't think that should be allowed is wrong. Now, of course the way it's carried out is paramount.

My point is though that if you look at my replies and then yours, you picked out the sections or sentences that you wanted to reply to, and ignored the everything else. That isn't a conversation and I'm not going to keep running in circles to try to get my points across in their entirety. I've said everything I can say, so... I don't know, that's just about all I'm willing to put into it at the moment.