Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

[cloak]

Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

Hi guys. I wanted to post this on the battle.net forums, but I need a Diablo II account, which I don't have at the current moment. So, pressing on the issue so many times talked about in these boards: the health and mana orbs.

I think these are good solutions to keep the game fast paced (check http://www.blizzblues.com/us/mana-regen-for-sorc-16474162425.html), but I don't think it's good having only this mechanism to heal (apart from other characters skills - but even so, it's not good to rely on a skill from another class to heal).

So - Guild Wars has approached this problem in a different way. A few seconds after a battle, the players gain health regeneration that increases after each second, up to a certain limit. It stops, obviously, when the player fully heals or is attacked/attacks.

With mana, it's a bit different, players have around 30 points of energy and a constant natural regeneration of 2 points per second (warriors, paragons and rangers have less, 1 and 1.5, respectively), and each class has it's own form of mana/energy management.

It would be great if Blizzard adopted a similar system to health recovery and played a bit with the mana regeneration of the classes - so waiting 2 minutes+ to regenerate it would not be needed (if no points are spent in some sort of mana orb spawning skill).

What you guys think?

 

[SlechtWeerBeer]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

There's still Potions.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

To be perfectly honest, I never understood the problem with pot spamming and why this seems to be an issue to so many people. But that is fine.

In any case, Diablo 2 addressed the issue with a timed mechanism to health regeneration once you drank a potion. I remember being amazed at the simplicity of the solution at the time. But then I saw rejuvs and... I think it was rejuv potions that really rendered a great idea completely useless.

I'm slightly critic of health orbs myself. Not that I don't trust Blizzard on this. Simply that I feel this creates one huge hot potato on their hands,in that i seems to me a very difficult mechanism to balance depending on number of players, difficulty level, etc. On the other hand, it gives rise to the ability of the game designers to control the difficulty of a monster (boss, superunique, act boss) by simply increasing or decreasing orb generation... which I find lame, if that turns out to be the case.

My solution to this (if it indeed needed a solution. It doesn't. Orbs are going to stay) is to go back to Diablo 2 but without Rejuvs.

As for Mana... I'm still waiting for the game that uses magic without mana. I'm 40 years old. You think I'll see it in my lifetime? Can we please go back to AD&D and forget all this mana nonsense?

 

[cloak]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

To be perfectly honest, I never understood the problem with pot spamming and why this seems to be an issue to so many people. But that is fine.

Simply put: the pots allowed infinite health/mana, thus balancing the game and making it challenging was really hard. Jay Wilson even said it, they had to make monsters that kill the players in one hit to make the gameplay challenging, back in D2.

As for Mana... I'm still waiting for the game that uses magic without mana. I'm 40 years old. You think I'll see it in my lifetime? Can we please go back to AD&D and forget all this mana nonsense?

And go back to casting spells and using skills a number of times per day? You also bring up an interesting point: similar to a RTS game that uses TIME as only resource, I wonder what would happen to a game like Diablo 3 if the skills didn't cost a thing and had only cooldowns holding you from spamming stuff.

The cooldown could even go down as the skill level goes up.

 

[SlechtWeerBeer]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

To be perfectly honest, I never understood the problem with pot spamming and why this seems to be an issue to so many people. But that is fine.

In any case, Diablo 2 addressed the issue with a timed mechanism to health regeneration once you drank a potion. I remember being amazed at the simplicity of the solution at the time. But then I saw rejuvs and... I think it was rejuv potions that really rendered a great idea completely useless.

I'm slightly critic of health orbs myself. Not that I don't trust Blizzard on this. Simply that I feel this creates one huge hot potato on their hands,in that i seems to me a very difficult mechanism to balance depending on number of players, difficulty level, etc. On the other hand, it gives rise to the ability of the game designers to control the difficulty of a monster (boss, superunique, act boss) by simply increasing or decreasing orb generation... which I find lame, if that turns out to be the case.

My solution to this (if it indeed needed a solution. It doesn't. Orbs are going to stay) is to go back to Diablo 2 but without Rejuvs.

As for Mana... I'm still waiting for the game that uses magic without mana. I'm 40 years old. You think I'll see it in my lifetime? Can we please go back to AD&D and forget all this mana nonsense?

The pot spamming imbaness was, simply put, rejuvs. The regen didn't keep you alive if monsters struck you for 33% max HP. I guess it could work, kinda.

As for Mana, or the lack thereof; I once downloaded a Warcraft III map that used runes to cast spells, rather than mana (Mana indicated the amount of runes you could sustain, which was the only limit to your power). I think it was Spellcraft, but I lost it when I got a new computer (unlike most of my other maps, oddly). It's a really cool system, but the map was too short to make proper use of it, which was a major bummer.
Apart from that one map, I cannot recall other games that had mechanisms beyond Mana (well, GW has Energy, but it fuctions the same) to cast spells and the likes with.

 

[raveharu]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

Pointless thread, they won't remove the orbs, because it's confirmed to be in the game.

 

[LucianDK]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

As for Mana... I'm still waiting for the game that uses magic without mana. I'm 40 years old. You think I'll see it in my lifetime? Can we please go back to AD&D and forget all this mana nonsense?

Spellcasters in Warhammer online doesnt use mana. They have an energy pool that functions much like Rogue energy in WoW. If you pace yourself you can pretty much keep going forever.

 

[Akse]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

yh AD&D spellcasting.. you mean channeling all spells and then you sleep so you can use them again? hehe

Dunno I think mana belongs to fast paced RPG's. You spam a lot of spells and there has to be some way to limit the spamming a bit.

 

[dawgma]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

Pointless thread, they won't remove the orbs, because it's confirmed to be in the game.

Ignorant much? Blizzard would remove the orbs if ultimately they could figure out a better system or a way to work with potions. Sure we saw the orbs in the game, and sure there is a good chance they will be in the final product, but the orbs are by no means "confirmed" for the final product

How easily you forget Blizzard's mantra "nothing is final".

 

[Butchertoy]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

First of all, excuse my english! I´m not a native speaker!

I think that the orb system is good for fast gameplay. But there should be a solution for the case that you don´t find any orb, but you really need to heal your character. Especially in a bossfight! I try to explain the way how i would think of potions to be used. Maybe someone reads this and has some more ideas how to implement potions in D3 without making a step back to the D2 system! :scratchchin:

My idea:
There will be potions for mana(/fury) and health, as officially said. IMO, the potion regenerates i.e. 25 % health/mana over a time of 3 seconds. The other effect is a greater rate of regeneration for like 1 minute (+2 + x life/ second) If the player uses a potion, there should be a cooldown-time. The cooldown is not ment to make it impossible taking one potion after another. Cooldown just makes the 2nd, 3rd and so on potions be less effective in some way. The player gets for the 2nd potion like +20% life over 4 seconds and + 2 + x + y (i.e. y is smaller than x and can also make x=0, if you take 5 potions y=0, at 10 potions x = -y) in- or decreased regeneration rate during the next minute. The cooldown time also increases after taking the 2nd potion, so that the player has to wait longer to get the 100% effect of a single/first potion again.

I think, this is a way to make potions less powerfull but still usefull in a fight! One will have to play more tactically, i could imagine... :thumbsup:

Greetz from the Butcher

 

[LucianDK]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

I think people is just not used to the idea of the orb system. Both the Barbarian and the Wizard will have skills that increases life and mana orb drops respectively.

Here is a Blue poster answering exactly those questions:
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=16474162666&pageNo=1&sid=3000#15

Yeah the idea of picking up health globes while at already full health and having them still provide some type of benefit has been an idea bouncing around these halls for quite a while. If I were a bettin' man, and I'm not because I'm horrible at it, I'd reckon that there might be something we do with that.

I play a decent amount of TF2 so I'm sort of partial to the medic-style overheal that then slowly ticks down over time. It could work. It may also be completely unnecessary.

Anyway, the barbarian has to concern himself with health quite a bit more than the witch doctor or wizard being melee and he has skills in his tree that both increase the chance of health globe drops and their 'benefit'. So, right there you can see there are ways to increase orb drops, and that's outside of other leeching type skills, regen skills, etc.

Again, we're not trying to create an aggravating experience. If it's a common issue that you have to run around nearly dead hoping and praying for an orb drop, then we probably messed up somewhere. Or maybe you're terribad at the game. We'll have to wait and see.

 

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

Potions wouldn't be that much an issue if they exploited the environment more, like in D1.. In D2 everyone just runs into a big clump, and start hacking away. Pretty boring anyway.

 

[gerbele]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

How about this:

If Blizzard plans on really making gold the currency, why not make potions available but price them accordingly so that people won't want to waste them but they will be there if need be.

I don't see a bad side of this. If they price them right, then they will only be used in critical situations. On the other hand, they shouldn't be spammed like in D2.

 

[Daedrith]

Re: Alternative solutions to Mana and Health orbs

How about this:

If Blizzard plans on really making gold the currency, why not make potions available but price them accordingly so that people won't want to waste them but they will be there if need be.

I don't see a bad side of this. If they price them right, then they will only be used in critical situations. On the other hand, they shouldn't be spammed like in D2.

I also agree that potions should be priced differently. I'm sure Blizzard will work it out though.

I'm just glad that they still have the potions even with the orbs considering you might run into a tricky situation with no orbs and your only opponent is too tough to fight in your given condition. I'm not sure how its going to balance out though - I sort of don't want orbs to be covering 95% of your regen, potions should still have an important role. It's just that potions were so easy to build up and spam back in D2, that, as stated by the devs (and others), the only way to make D2 challenging at some points was to have the opponents practically 1-hit your char. IMO potions should be much more expensive, and not drop nearly as often. But I might be totally off, we'll see...