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In recent posts on the Diablo III forums community manager Bashiok has revealed new information about the game. This time the discussion covered the topics of displaying damage output, and handling automatic loot-snatching. Diablo III is Blizzard Entertainment's long awaited return to the popular action RPG franchise.

On displaying damage output:
Well good news then, this has been part of the character sheet for a long time now. I don't foresee any reason why we'd remove it, but in any case just the normal disclaimer of this being a work in progress.

An example!

I have a barbarian with a halberd that adds 1-9 lightning damage in addition to its other stats. I mouse over his attack in the character sheet and it breaks down the damage for me in a tooltip:

Total Damage - "54.2 - 164.6"
- -
Physical Damage - "27.0 - 79.0"
- Physical Damage Bonus - "26.2 - 76.6"
Lightning Damage - "1.0 - 9.0"

Oh and the physical damage bonus is from Strength.

On automatic loot-snatching:
Inventory management and the systems that surround it are something we're obviously interested in, but not something that can really be tuned until we have more of the item game fleshed out and tuned itself. It's hard to know exactly the best way to handle inventory management when the items, types, pickup frequency, and removal frequency can't really be measured with any real accuracy.

Gold is picked up automagically, and it's because it's one of those things that you always want to pick up. You'd never not pick up gold, unless you're playing Diablo II maybe. PAH-ZING! If there are other item types we feel fall into that category they may be automatically picked up when you walk over them too.

We want inventory management to include player choice and interaction, and so while we're definitely not opposed to new ideas and while we're certainly drawing inspiration from many places, we want to maintain that inventory management doesn't become an automated process.

GameBanshee: Bashiok Diablo III Comments

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