Interface
The belt interface in Diablo III is an evolutionary improvement on the versions seen in Diablo I and Diablo II. The form and function will be familiar to players experienced in the other games, but there are a few major changes in Diablo III that make the controls easier to use, but also guide players to operate the game as the D3 Team intends.
- See the Interface Category for articles on the game controls, menus, inventory, and more.
Contents
Function
The way the controls work has been modified somewhat in Diablo 3. As of August 2009, the belt shows 4 skill icons, a potion slot, the left and right mouse buttons, and the Tab key.
The usual control method is to put active skills, ones your character will be using constantly, on the mouse buttons.
- The left mouse button (LMB) skill remains there all the time, unless/until you drag another skill down to replace it.
- The right mouse button (RMB) has two skills; you switch between them by clicking the Tab button, or by rolling the mouse wheel. These are usually the secondary skills, but ones you wish to use almost constantly.
- The 1234 buttons cast whichever skills are mapped to those buttons. These are generally
- You may also map potions, elixirs, or scrolls to the 1234 buttons.
- The 5 button is reserved for a potion; healing by default. If you use up all of whatever type of healing potion is mapped to the 5 button, another quality of healing potion (from your inventory) will be automatically mapped to 5, for your convenience.
Casting a spell or skill from the 1234 buttons works just like casting it from the mouse button. You could, in theory, play entirely with the 1234 keys, only using the mouse to target. Generally, players put support skills on the 1234 buttons. Summoning spells, buffs, debuffs, and so forth. Direct attack skills can be mapped there as well; it just takes some practice to get used to casting these with keyboard buttons, instead of (in addition to) the mouse buttons.
There are no skills in D3 (yet revealed) that work simply by being active on the RMB, as the Paladin's Auras did in Diablo 2. It would seem that such skills won't be supported in Diablo 3, since with just 2 skills to cycle through on the RMB, the whole control system conspires against that game mechanic. (True, many Paladins in D2 keep the same aura active all the time, but with the effort the D3 team is putting into adding variety and strategy to gameplay, it seems unlikely that they would repeat that control system when only two auras could be conveniently cycled between.)
Controlling the Skills
Mapping skills to the controls is very easy in Diablo 3. You just open the skill tree and drag skills down to the buttons you wish them assigned to. To change around skills, you drag a new one to an occupied slot (RMB, LMB, Tab, or 1234) and drop it. This puts the previous skill on your cursor, where you can drag it to a new spot or drop it anywhere else to discard it.
Active Skills Window
In addition to the skill tree, there's an icon that opens the "active skills window." This is a small pop up window that appears just above the belt interface, which displays the icons for the active skills your character can use. Only the active skills; no passives, no skills without points in them yet, etc. This makes it very easy to see which skills can be assigned to the 7 skill places on the belt.
Skill Hotkey Theory
The appearance and function of the belt interface are two sides of the same coin. The appearance serves the function, and both mesh with the various skill and play style changes made in Diablo III. The D3 Team is designing Diablo III to be played with 5-7 active skills per character. There are many more skills than that, but specializing in a half dozen or so active skills is the intended route to success. Therefore, rather than throwing in 16 hotkeys, as in D2, there are only half that many in D3, with the design theory being that characters will have maxed out their points in a handful of skills which they will use constantly. (And respecing will allow changes, if necessary.)
They want the controls to support the half dozen skills characters use a lot, rather than allowing the unbalanced one-skill wonders we see in D2, or requiring D3 players to juggle a dozen or more skills for some builds, as is the case in D2.
The other main goal of the Diablo III interface is to be easier to use and more visual. Hotkeys were easy to use in Diablo II once a player knew how, but to a new user their technique was not immediately evident. There was no way to see which custom keys were set as hotkeys without opening a different interface, and only the active skills could be seen on the left and right mouse button icons, which forced players to memorize their skill setup. The D3 Team wants the skill menu to be much more visual and visible during play.
There's some debate about this approach amongst experienced Diablo II players. Some fans are skeptical, wondering if the D3 Team is going too far to make it easy for beginners, and watering down the controls and over-simplifying things in the process. Early play testing at BlizzCon and other gaming shows has yielded positive feedback, and the guys on the D3 team play the game every day and they like the new design. It won't be until the beta test that gamers get a chance to spend enough time at the controls to form an educated opinion.
Appearance
The look of the belt interface is similar to what we saw in Diablo II, with a few changes. Realize that this form is subject to further change during the ongoing development process.
The most recent version of the belt interface was revealed in April 2009.
This screenshot, of a Barbarian's belt interface, shows the key features.
There are 5 hotkey slots, into which skill icons or potions can be dragged. Hitting that button will immediately activate that skill or drink that potion. This is something of a change from Diablo II, where skills were always mapped to the mouse buttons, and could only be activated by clicking the hot key to move them to the mouse click. The 1-5 hotkeys in Diablo III work like the belt slots in Diablo II; for example Identify or Town Portal scrolls could be placed there and cast by clicking the number.
The left click and right click slots are marked by an appropriate little mouse icon. The "Tab" key (and the mouse wheel) switches between two active skills on the right click. Skills are added to these controls by clicking them in the skill tree, and they can then be cast immediately with a left or right click.
There were slight changes made by August 2009, when this photo was taken of the screen at the Gamescon event. This is the same demo build that was shown at BlizzCon 2009 and the PAX 2009 show as well.
The ! over the belt means that the players has accomplished some portion of a quest, and if the quest window is opened updated information will be displayed. The only other change is the addition of two icons to the quick controls on the far right. If anyone investigated these buttons and reported on it from BlizzCon, that information has not gone public.
Control Icons
Here are the minibar icons in Diablo 2, for the sake of comparison. In order, from left to right:
- Character window
- Inventory
- Skill Tree
- Party Menu
- Message Log
- Quest Log
- Game Menu
Here are the equivalent icons from Diablo 3's belt interface, enlarged and brightened for easier comparison. After some speculation, the following descriptions were confirmed by Bashiok a few days after the image was released. [1]
- Character window
- Skilltree menu
- Inventory window
- Quest menu
- Social menu (it's grayed out in the image because it is not implemented yet)
- Options
The Skilltree Menu icon can be seen atop the skill tree in various screenshots). The Quest icon is a chalice, presumably meant to represent the perpetually quested after mythical Holy Grail. It's not entirely clear what the party menu does, since there is no friendly/neutral/hostile setting in Diablo III, with the removal of non-consensual PvP. Perhaps it exists to show where other players are, or to allow whispering or squelching.
The only functional change from Diablo II appears to be the removal of an icon for the message log in Diablo III. Also note the earlier version of these icons in Diablo III: they were in color and above the belt interface (same location as they had in Diablo II) as of June 2008. (Screenshot below.)
Updated Icons: August 2009
Here's the updated display as of August, 2009. Unfortunately, Blizzard has not released a full quality view of this, so we must make due with a blurry photo someone took of the game on a monitor. The image you see here has been enlarged and the color has been slightly corrected.
The same six buttons remain, but two new ones have been added, on the lower left and lower right. It's not known what function they have, and it's hard to see enough in the blurry photo to hazard a guess.
It's possible that one of them opens the active skills window, and the lower left icon is a possible match. The lower right one shows a scroll, but we've already got a quest icon, so perhaps it's the return of the message log? That button existed in Diablo 2, but was not previously shown in Diablo 3. This button looks nothing like the D2 version, though.
Development
The belt interface was first seen in the WWI 2008 gameplay movie, released with the game's announcement in June 2008. It can be seen below.
Changes from this one to the most recent version aren't major, but they are visible. There were initially 1-6 hotkeys, but 5 and 6 could only be used for potions or scrolls. The RMB, LMB, and Tab worked the same, but were not yet labeled on the interface. The game option controls for trading, multiplayer options, and more were previously on top, as they were in Diablo II. In more recent versions they've been moved to a small rectangle on the far right.
