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Weapon switch hotkey

1,917 bytes added, 00:25, 10 February 2010
Blizzard Comments
::Personally I just used it in Diablo II for extra item storage.
 
Bashiok posted another length defense of the feature removal in February, 2010. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/weapon-switch-hotkey-nah/]
 
::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.
It's apparent from these and other past comments that neither Jay or Bashiok (or anyone else on the D3 Team?) played a great deal of advanced Diablo 2, and expert D2 players have been known to despair at the inexperienced comments coming from the team making the sequel -- an unfortunate side effect of the almost complete team churn caused by delays, disagreements, and the closure of [[Blizzard North]] and ultimate restart of the project at Blizzard Irvine in 2005.
 
==Pros and Cons==