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From: Johnson, Jeffrey A <jajohnso@ugsolutions.com>
To: Mordeth@d2realm.com
Date: Wednesdayy, February 24, 1999
Subject: disturbing item in French Diablo2 article


In the translation of the French "Jouez!" Diablo2 article at
http://www.tristram.org/articles/frenchd2preview_translation.shtml,
the last sentence in the second-to-last paragraph seems to be
translated perfectly, and is very very worrisome to me:

During the fights, the monsters placed
behind the character won't be visible.

This is also mentioned in another translation of the same article
at http://d2castle.d2.bwdynasty.com/preview.shtml:

During the engagements, the monsters placed
behind the character will not be visible.

This will be a complete user-interface nightmare. We no longer
have to click-click-click-click to fight a monster to the death,
we just hold down the attack mouse button. However, now we have
to constantly turn our character in 360 circles every few seconds,
just to see if there's a monster sneaking up on us.

In a melee situation with more than one monster attacking, this is
going to be extremely confusing as monsters appear/disappear
into the "blind zone" behind the character.

I like the line-of-sight improvements in Diablo2, such as not
being able to see items/room layout through walls, but
if I wanted a first-person-viewpoint-3D-shooter, where I had to
worry about stuff behind me, I'd buy that kind of game. "Blind zones"
behind characters have no place in an ISOMORPHIC view-driven game.

I really love Diablo1, and I'm looking forward to Diablo2, but if
it has this game-killing feature in it, that alone would be enough
to make me not buy the darn thing. I can't stand badly done
user-interfaces, in any kind of product (software, hardware, or
consumer goods).

Please post this rant (or a similar one) as an actual news item
on your wonderful Diablo2 sites, to let fans know, so they
can petition Blizzard to remove this undesirable feature.

Thanks,

Jeffrey A. Johnson