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 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 6-8 active skills on each character. There are many more skills than that, but specializing in a half dozen or so with each character build is the route to success. Therefore, rather than throwing in 16 hotkeys, as in Diablo II, there are just half that many in Diablo III, and skills are being designed to be more useful. The team doesn't want characters to be "one-skill wonders" as so many were in Diablo II, where most skills were either overpowered or useless.
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 they were 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. The D3 Team wants to open up that function, and it appears that they have, from what we can see of the interface in screenshots.
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. Play testing during the beta test should answer this question.
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.
Belt Interface, 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
The six icons seen to the far right are various game controls, though it's not yet known exactly what function each provides. Comparing them to the mini-panel icons from Diablo II is illustrative.
D2 Mini-Panel.
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 III, enlarged and brightened for easier comparison. These interpretations were confirmed by Bashiok a few days after the original imgaes went online. [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.)
WWI Interface
The belt interface was first seen in the WWI 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.
