Diablo III is up for some major gameplay changes. In fact, if one is to judge according to Jay Wilson's battle.net blog, "major" will be a critical understatement.
Starting from the smaller changes and crawling up, Identify Scrolls will no longer be present in the game. This does not mean that all items will drop with all their characteristics revealed, it's just that Diablo characters won't need to carry a particular item to do the job. The new act of identifying will entail a short click-and-channel action which is to take the place of the old scrolls. The other minor change to Diablo 3 is the fifth keyboard button being moved around and becoming a dedicated potion button. This changes will not come with patch 10 but will be implemented into later builds of the beta.
One of the larger changes is the removal of the Mystic. According to Wilson, the Mystic was not adding too much of a customization options to the game play and the "Enhancement" option was just a variety of the socketing system and the Diablo 3 team have decided to cut this artisan out entirely. This will also shorten the wait time for the game release since Wilson states that tuning her to fit the game's needs would have consumed much longer than removing her altogether.
While on the topic of gameplay elements biting the dust, one should mention the abolition of the Cauldron of Jordan and the Nephalen Cube. The reasoning behind this decision is that the two relics were taking away the need for return to the city and making use of its features. With the options of selling and salvaging items as well as the impossibility of changing your skill build at any given time (this was removed with a previous patch), the players will have much more stimuli to portal back to the city, where they must visit a vendor to sell their loot or talk to the Blacksmith if they want to salvage something. And yes, that's "portal" as the Stone of Recall has been renamed and moved down down to the skillbar UI as a "Town Portal" button.
With all those relics gone, there will is some space opening up in the inventory window. Blizzard are using this for listing the core stats with an option of a detailed break down of everything numerical connected with the character. The core stats themselves are brought down to just four: Strength, Vitality, Dexterity and Intelligence as Defense, Attack and Precision are edged out. The core stats will affect the game in the following way:
+ Barbarian damage
+ Armor
Dexterity
+ Demon Hunter damage
+ Monk damage
+ Dodge
Intellect
+ Wizard damage
+ Witch Doctor damage
+ Health from globes
Vitality
+ Health
- "We're dropping Defense, Attack, and Precision as attributes, Armor is taking over for what Defense used to provide, +Physical Resist will take over for Armor, and +Chance to Crit will fill in for Precision. Obviously these stat changes are one of the bigger systems changes we're currently working on as they have far reaching requirements to re-itemize and balance the game."
Read the full blog of Jay Wilson at Battle.net
Links
Battle.net - Source
