Changes

::Jay Wilson: Combat is as deep as the options the designers give themselves. Whenever you add a new capability to a [[monster ]] -- potentially something that feels unbeatable -- it's more of an opportunity to expand the depth of your characters so they can respond to those threats. A good example would be if you look at [[Diablo 2]]: There were a couple of problems with just the power of the characters and the way they were made powerful. A player could run faster than any [[monster]], so you could escape just about any threat. You had endless [[health ]] and [[resource pool|resource]] -- by resource, I mean [[mana ]] -- because of potions[[potion]]s. And you had the [[Town Portal]], which could instantly get you out of any problem. Those were incredibly powerful mechanics to escape danger and were not class-specific. So every kind of class really had no need for anything like an escape skill or reactionary ability. They simply needed to attack, and if they ever got in over their heads, they simply ran away or drank potions. And it's the same response across the board.

::So one of the things we focused on is that response -- 1) setting up scenarios where the players can't easily get out of danger without the use of class-specific skills[[skill]]s, and 2) giving them really simple controls to use a broader range of skills without making the game that much more complex to play. I really distinguish the difference between complexity and depth; to me, complexity is adding more buttons, while depth is making a single button more powerful and versatile. So that's always been our goal -- reducing the amount of controls while making each button mean more. So that's one of the reasons we added the Hotbar; it's one of the reasons why we avoided the potion-health system. And when people play the game, they may not notice this next point that much, but we leveled out the movement speed somewhat so that the player moves at a more reasonable rate compared to the monsters.