Restrictions. Not penalties. Which is not the same.
A restriction in a game is meant to open up the game, to steer the player away from behavior which goes against the intend of the game, to prevent behavior which is not considered fun gameplay for the player (in the subjective view of the games creator), and last but not least to define the rules in which the game has to be played.
Just like you are limited by 6 skills at a time, 4 players in a game, only being able to play 1 class at a time or having a resource systems for your class, which are restrictions made because they define and enrich the gameplay in various ways.
Without restrictions you really can't have a game.
It isn't really about the game being easier or harder due to restrictions. Since those are a matter of balance. If a restriction "unintentionally" makes the game harder, then you can balance it so it isn't harder after all.
From all this follows; the reason people (a lot of them anyway) want restrictions is not to "prove they are better" or whichever straw-man you want to attack. They want a better, more interesting game, where certain restrictions ensures that the game does not start to break down under its own weight.
In this case by unintended respeccing to counter whatever the game throws at you.
Now you might argue that it isn't unintended if Blizzard want you to respec to counter the stuff you meet. And you would be right.
Then the people who are against this are simply trying to tell Blizzard that they are making a mistake if that is their intend (in our personal, subjective opinion yada yada yada).
And not because we want a more difficult game, just one where skill selections are made with the intend of being able to handle everything the game throws at you (which is not the same as disallowing respecs, mind you).
I like the current system, because leveling a new char will be less boring, I'll be able to try more stuff while leveling the same character.
And I like the fact you can swap your skills, it means I may be able to use my character for PvE and PvP.
Because games are defined by rules if there is no rules there is no game, will you still play it if you know you cant die in game anymore ? this is a item hunting trading game after all, dieing is just in the way, just one rule and the game feels stupid all the sudden, not like its smart now.
To you and Shadout who used superior language skills to mine:
Rules are fine as long as the experience is fun. In Diablo 2 I didn't want to create a Barbarian and then just sit in town for hours and figure out a great and possibly unique way while staring mindlessly into the Skill trees and their synergies. And I only had 3 chances of screwing up. That is not fun for me. In fact it has killed the fun of the game a lot of times, specially on my Druid.
You can't have mobs immune to entire Skill trees of some classes, or almost entire classes with the immune to physical case. That is stupid and pointless. I know this is mainly the fault of the Skill tree itself but letting me respec, even for 5 minutes, is all it needed to sustain the fun.
Right now in Inferno I may have difficulty with some unique mob and instead of bashing at it for 15 minutes dealing 0.2% of damage with each hit as it regenerates is just not considered fun for me. I want to play with the skills I choose as I find them interesting but when such a mob appears I want to switch to a skill that is actually more useful for it, just for that encounter, and beat it to pulp. Then switch back to what was fun again. Or after hundreds of hours playing with a certain skill set I want to explore the class further and choose something else - NOT create a new character and level him all the way up and gear him up and use different skills just to be sure that now that one mob may not be so immune to me.
You can't have mobs immune to entire Skill trees of some classes, or almost entire classes with the immune to physical case. That is stupid and pointless. I know this is mainly the fault of the Skill tree itself but letting me respec, even for 5 minutes, is all it needed to sustain the fun.
The solution to that is not to have immune mobs, rather than telling people to respec for it. It is not super fun to respec for immune mobs anyway. Not in my opinion at least.
Also, if there are mobs with resistances in D3, then you can often switch weapon instead of skills, as quite a few skills are based on the weapons damage type.
@overneathe: do you see anyone here asking to return to the D2 system? No, you don't. So stop referring to it, it derails the discussion and it's disingenuous. Personally, what I want is a system that makes you think twice (or thrice) about respeccing; that makes you think "Aw, shit, I screwed up with this skill, shouldn't have picked it. Is it worth the 50k gold?". It might be a forkload of gold, it might be rare materials that you find, I don't know.....something. Just not free and unlimited.
Dayum. Sorry for being disingenuous then. Even so, my point stands. I don't see a reason for restricting this. The point of view from Blizzard is obvious: "We've worked on these skills for 5 years and we want players to see them all and see how they feel with them and if they don't like - they can switch to other skills". Sorry if it ruins your experience.
In WoW there's a 50 gold penalty and these days you can earn 50 gold by doing 2 quests. I'm fine with that. But not 50 000 gold. Not sure how Inferno will go in terms of economy, but I assume 50k is still a pretty major number. WoW on the other hand has 20+ active skills that you have for the skill tree of your choosing and on top of that a secondary build you can switch to instantly. If that was the case in Diablo 3 then sure - make such a restriction. But you only have so many skills in Diablo 3 and you'll likely want to switch just one to make sure you've made the right choice the first time around. Or maybe just a single rune of a skill to see if your strategies wont improve using that instead. And you want to spend thousands of gold/wait 1 hour/sacrifice a goat to be able to do that? No thanks.
There is a middle ground for this, in my opinion, and that would be - respeccing with the penalties/restrictions you've mentioned but have a 10 or even 5 minute window to try and toggle things around and get a feel for it. And then at the end of those minutes the build goes "permanent" until the next time you want to respec.
Or after hundreds of hours playing with a certain skill set I want to explore the class further and choose something else - NOT create a new character and level him all the way up and gear him up and use different skills just to be sure that now that one mob may not be so immune to me.
That should be possible yes.
And it would be possible if the game for example had a 30 min respec cooldown in Inferno (and just the current 15 sec in Normal, NM, Hell).
In turn the game should be balanced so you would never feel the need to respec for certain mobs (unless you made an unviable build, but then you would probably have learned that lesson before Inferno).
A respec timer simply makes sure that you can't ruin the balance of the game, by switching to a more advantageous setup whenever that is possible (and imo this thread has shown how that can be possible sometimes).
The people who wanted to respec for experimentation and fun (which seems to be what most people say they want) would not be restricted in any way, by a reasonably short respec cooldown.
A gold cost could work as well, but I actually think that is way more restrictive, as that also affects those who just want to try something new after 10 hours. Which is not the purpose.
Beside, that could really suck for people who ran out of gold and still needed a respec.
You are being encouraged to swap if that leads you down the path of least resistance.
That is not the case. If you have some evidence that it is, please present it.
The proof is common sense. My barb's fury generator is cleave, which clears out multiple enemies at a time. This is a solid skill choice for running through a dungeon. Once I reach the SK, I switch over to bash because it's a single target spell that does extra damage. Is this in itself not a proof? Not to mention the runes for bash and cleave separate these skills even further between the single target and aoe line of effectiveness.
You would likely be running into rare/champion packs that would benefit from having bash on your bars anyways. People love to refer to how they'll skill swap for bosses, simply because you know where they are and what they do, but for the other 95% of what you'll be doing (running entire areas) you'll have no idea how the next champion/rare pack will challenge you. Because of this you're being encouraged to develop a well-rounded build that can handle whatever randomness is thrown at you, not to skill swap. In addition, pointing to the SK currently is a flawed example - the SK on normal is using a fraction of the abilities he'll have on Inferno. Inferno SK is going to throw a lot more at you to handle.
You can skill swap, if you want to. But since you say you prefer permanence, I would assume you'd rather find a well-rounded build you enjoy and stick to that. If you find yourself swapping skills out frequently, then maybe you don't like permanence as much as you pretend to?
Regardless, there's no good reason for forcing permanence on people, or instituting arbitrary gold/time sinks. People love to trot out the, "Builds should require thought!" argument - and they do. When you first make them. You know what doesn't require thought? Paying gold or waiting out a timer. The thinking is in coming up with a build, realizing it's not viable, and then analyzing what to do to fix it and actually fixing it via experimentation. No part of that process requires implementing arbitrary time sinks in the middle. To that end, Blizzard has intelligently cut out the middle man and let you get directly to the part that actually involves thinking - correcting your build's deficiencies, and doing so quickly and getting it out of the way, instead of having to first do things that require no thought whatsoever - such as paying a fine or waiting out a timer.
Ok first of all reroling same class is dead now, your not getting anything else that you didnt get last time its same shit all over again at least in D2 you were trying different build, not anymore thanks to this amazing skill system.
Burzghash is right, there is no good reason for forcing permanence on people, its ok to change class, skills, name, gender in monsters face, this permanent thing is so outdated common guys don`t you feeling me ?
If you enjoy re-rolling, then re-roll. Nobody has taken away your ability to do so. If you can't think of a good reason for re-rolling now, then maybe you don't enjoy it as much as you pretend to.
The rest of your post is incomprehensible nonsense, as usual.
I really don't understand why people are so resistant to this system. Just goes to show how a nostalgic mindset can close people of to exciting new possibilities.
Got to admit, I have NO clue how to play cricket so your analogy elludes me, but i see your point. I think the old RPG system of do it once, right, or delete and try try again is outdated, and of a small cult fanbase.
think if in Call of Duty you picked ONE weapon to prestige with, and if you found out it sucked at level 70, you just wasted your time.
Especially in an Action-RPG it makes sense to move toward a hot swappable skillset versus permanent skilltree system.
I think the old RPG system of do it once, right, or delete and try try again is outdated, and of a small cult fanbase.
You are right. That is probably why nearly nobody wants it back
But why are people always dealing in these dichotomies. Either it is "delete your char and start over" or "hot-swappable" skills, when there are plenty of better options in between.
I think the old RPG system of do it once, right, or delete and try try again is outdated, and of a small cult fanbase.
You are right. That is probably why nearly nobody wants it back
But why are people always dealing in these dichotomies. Either it is "delete your char and start over" or "hot-swappable" skills, when there are plenty of better options in between.
Youre right, there are definitely some compromises, i do prefer the hotswappable myself, but ive always thought about the length/kills with a skill used.
for instance, you choose meteor, and for every monster killed with it (without being swapped) it adds 1% damage, to an upper limit of course.
The current implementation of the skill and rune systems is perfect for me. I won't have nearly as much time to play this game as I'd like, but want to get as much out of it as I can. The swappable skill system will give me a chance to fully explore 2-3 of the classes.
Putting any kind of restriction on skill swapping (beyond the current minimal time restriction) would ultimately slow down the process of seeing all a class has to offer. For the time-restricted gamer, I imagine that has one of two outcomes: you either play fewer classes or you limit yourself to only seeing part of what each class brings to the table.
At this point it's fairly obvious that the current system won't change before release. If there are problems with it that cause people to skill-swap as a metagame, it'll be addressed the same way Blizzard addressed problems with frequent skill swapping in the beta. At this point I'd say let's actually wait and see what the outcome will be, instead of potentially needlessly worrying about scenarios that might not come to pass.
The reality is that Blizzard now has tons of testers playing Inferno. If it actually were an issue, something would likely be done about it already. Or, they might not think that skill swapping is a problem at all, and think that the advantages to be gained from it are perfectly acceptable (which directly falls in line with their previous assessment of only wanting minimal performance gains from an 'optimized' build).
They have more info and resources at their disposal than any of the random conjecture on these boards. Wait until you have the product in your hands before jumping to conclusions.
Ok first of all reroling same class is dead now, your not getting anything else that you didnt get last time its same shit all over again at least in D2 you were trying different build, not anymore thanks to this amazing skill system.
Burzghash is right, there is no good reason for forcing permanence on people, its ok to change class, skills, name, gender in monsters face, this permanent thing is so outdated common guys don`t you feeling me ?
I'm sorry but are we still talking about the same game. Doing the same shit over and over again? What does that remind me of.. baal runes, Mephisto .. Diablo .. Cows .. Diablo 2. You are literally referring to an incredibly repetitive game saying 'I don't want repetition it should be more like this extremely repetitive game.'
Trying a different build? Did you play D2? You mean getting pissed off because your build didn't work, and having to start again, likely to come to a grinding halt again at some point because you literally cannot make progress. Or copying a build from the internet.
The thing you don't realize is, you can still still try another build, while doing a new playthrough of the game, exactly as you said, you'll just be level 60 trying to do inferno (or hell) again, instead of normal. You're still playing the game of diablo over again, whether it be a new character, or an existing one with a new skillset, this game is all about repeating the same four acts over and over, getting gear.
You are the one giving no argument, I've provided multiple very detailed explanations to attempt to back up my points and convince you why I think the system is good, and allows for diversity and, having played the beta, is a lot of fun, at least up to level 13. I realize it's one opinion, but I've 'betamaxed' (all 5 classes level 13) both patch 12 and 13, and I felt patch 13 was just a lot more enjoyable, the rune system feels really good.
You have chosen to not respond to any of my arguments, instead you have make bold claims with no argument or evidence to support it, like 'Call of Duty and D3 have so much in common' .. what, I don't even .. ?
Fanboism? I can be a harsh critic, and am very stubborn, for several of the announcements, I was at first very dismayed (real money AH, no attributes, you name it) but once I'd gotten over the initial shock of complete change, I actually allowed myself to really listen to, and absorb the arguments given for the opposing side, and eventually realized that they were in fact quite logical, and what I was holding onto wasn't necessarily what I thought it was, but just an illusion. ie customization = skill points .. that just isn't true, this system not only offers more customization, but is more robust.
You are the one giving no argument, I've provided multiple very detailed explanations to attempt to back up my points and convince you why I think the system is good, and allows for diversity and, having played the beta, is a lot of fun, at least up to level 13. I realize it's one opinion, but I've 'betamaxed' (all 5 classes level 13) both patch 12 and 13, and I felt patch 13 was just a lot more enjoyable, the rune system feels really good.
You have chosen to not respond to any of my arguments, instead you have make bold claims with no argument or evidence to support it, like 'Call of Duty and D3 have so much in common' .. what, I don't even .. ?
Fanboism? I can be a harsh critic, and am very stubborn, for several of the announcements, I was at first very dismayed (real money AH, no attributes, you name it) but once I'd gotten over the initial shock of complete change, I actually allowed myself to really listen to, and absorb the arguments given for the opposing side, and eventually realized that they were in fact quite logical, and what I was holding onto wasn't necessarily what I thought it was, but just an illusion. ie customization = skill points .. that just isn't true, this system not only offers more customization, but is more robust.
Frame, the only way to lose in an argument with Crysto is to engage in one with him in the first place. Look at the quality of his posts. It's nothing but unsubstantiated, windowlicking ignorant drivel. At every opportunity.
You don't need to prove anything to someone who can't support his claims and writes like an autistic toddler with palsy.
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A restriction in a game is meant to open up the game, to steer the player away from behavior which goes against the intend of the game, to prevent behavior which is not considered fun gameplay for the player (in the subjective view of the games creator), and last but not least to define the rules in which the game has to be played.
Just like you are limited by 6 skills at a time, 4 players in a game, only being able to play 1 class at a time or having a resource systems for your class, which are restrictions made because they define and enrich the gameplay in various ways.
Without restrictions you really can't have a game.
It isn't really about the game being easier or harder due to restrictions. Since those are a matter of balance. If a restriction "unintentionally" makes the game harder, then you can balance it so it isn't harder after all.
From all this follows; the reason people (a lot of them anyway) want restrictions is not to "prove they are better" or whichever straw-man you want to attack. They want a better, more interesting game, where certain restrictions ensures that the game does not start to break down under its own weight.
In this case by unintended respeccing to counter whatever the game throws at you.
Now you might argue that it isn't unintended if Blizzard want you to respec to counter the stuff you meet. And you would be right.
Then the people who are against this are simply trying to tell Blizzard that they are making a mistake if that is their intend (in our personal, subjective opinion yada yada yada).
And not because we want a more difficult game, just one where skill selections are made with the intend of being able to handle everything the game throws at you (which is not the same as disallowing respecs, mind you).
If it isn't what they were used to for 10 years of obsessive playing, then they are skeptical.
And I like the fact you can swap your skills, it means I may be able to use my character for PvE and PvP.
Rules are fine as long as the experience is fun. In Diablo 2 I didn't want to create a Barbarian and then just sit in town for hours and figure out a great and possibly unique way while staring mindlessly into the Skill trees and their synergies. And I only had 3 chances of screwing up. That is not fun for me. In fact it has killed the fun of the game a lot of times, specially on my Druid.
You can't have mobs immune to entire Skill trees of some classes, or almost entire classes with the immune to physical case. That is stupid and pointless. I know this is mainly the fault of the Skill tree itself but letting me respec, even for 5 minutes, is all it needed to sustain the fun.
Right now in Inferno I may have difficulty with some unique mob and instead of bashing at it for 15 minutes dealing 0.2% of damage with each hit as it regenerates is just not considered fun for me. I want to play with the skills I choose as I find them interesting but when such a mob appears I want to switch to a skill that is actually more useful for it, just for that encounter, and beat it to pulp. Then switch back to what was fun again. Or after hundreds of hours playing with a certain skill set I want to explore the class further and choose something else - NOT create a new character and level him all the way up and gear him up and use different skills just to be sure that now that one mob may not be so immune to me.
Ha. Bagstone.
Also, if there are mobs with resistances in D3, then you can often switch weapon instead of skills, as quite a few skills are based on the weapons damage type.
In WoW there's a 50 gold penalty and these days you can earn 50 gold by doing 2 quests. I'm fine with that. But not 50 000 gold. Not sure how Inferno will go in terms of economy, but I assume 50k is still a pretty major number. WoW on the other hand has 20+ active skills that you have for the skill tree of your choosing and on top of that a secondary build you can switch to instantly. If that was the case in Diablo 3 then sure - make such a restriction. But you only have so many skills in Diablo 3 and you'll likely want to switch just one to make sure you've made the right choice the first time around. Or maybe just a single rune of a skill to see if your strategies wont improve using that instead. And you want to spend thousands of gold/wait 1 hour/sacrifice a goat to be able to do that? No thanks.
There is a middle ground for this, in my opinion, and that would be - respeccing with the penalties/restrictions you've mentioned but have a 10 or even 5 minute window to try and toggle things around and get a feel for it. And then at the end of those minutes the build goes "permanent" until the next time you want to respec.
Ha. Bagstone.
And it would be possible if the game for example had a 30 min respec cooldown in Inferno (and just the current 15 sec in Normal, NM, Hell).
In turn the game should be balanced so you would never feel the need to respec for certain mobs (unless you made an unviable build, but then you would probably have learned that lesson before Inferno).
A respec timer simply makes sure that you can't ruin the balance of the game, by switching to a more advantageous setup whenever that is possible (and imo this thread has shown how that can be possible sometimes).
The people who wanted to respec for experimentation and fun (which seems to be what most people say they want) would not be restricted in any way, by a reasonably short respec cooldown.
A gold cost could work as well, but I actually think that is way more restrictive, as that also affects those who just want to try something new after 10 hours. Which is not the purpose.
Beside, that could really suck for people who ran out of gold and still needed a respec.
You would likely be running into rare/champion packs that would benefit from having bash on your bars anyways. People love to refer to how they'll skill swap for bosses, simply because you know where they are and what they do, but for the other 95% of what you'll be doing (running entire areas) you'll have no idea how the next champion/rare pack will challenge you. Because of this you're being encouraged to develop a well-rounded build that can handle whatever randomness is thrown at you, not to skill swap. In addition, pointing to the SK currently is a flawed example - the SK on normal is using a fraction of the abilities he'll have on Inferno. Inferno SK is going to throw a lot more at you to handle.
You can skill swap, if you want to. But since you say you prefer permanence, I would assume you'd rather find a well-rounded build you enjoy and stick to that. If you find yourself swapping skills out frequently, then maybe you don't like permanence as much as you pretend to?
Regardless, there's no good reason for forcing permanence on people, or instituting arbitrary gold/time sinks. People love to trot out the, "Builds should require thought!" argument - and they do. When you first make them. You know what doesn't require thought? Paying gold or waiting out a timer. The thinking is in coming up with a build, realizing it's not viable, and then analyzing what to do to fix it and actually fixing it via experimentation. No part of that process requires implementing arbitrary time sinks in the middle. To that end, Blizzard has intelligently cut out the middle man and let you get directly to the part that actually involves thinking - correcting your build's deficiencies, and doing so quickly and getting it out of the way, instead of having to first do things that require no thought whatsoever - such as paying a fine or waiting out a timer.
If you enjoy re-rolling, then re-roll. Nobody has taken away your ability to do so. If you can't think of a good reason for re-rolling now, then maybe you don't enjoy it as much as you pretend to.
The rest of your post is incomprehensible nonsense, as usual.
Thanks, I figure with as much nonsense as you post it will be good that at least a little bit of reality shows up in them once in a while.
Well said sir. I agree.
think if in Call of Duty you picked ONE weapon to prestige with, and if you found out it sucked at level 70, you just wasted your time.
Especially in an Action-RPG it makes sense to move toward a hot swappable skillset versus permanent skilltree system.
But why are people always dealing in these dichotomies. Either it is "delete your char and start over" or "hot-swappable" skills, when there are plenty of better options in between.
Youre right, there are definitely some compromises, i do prefer the hotswappable myself, but ive always thought about the length/kills with a skill used.
for instance, you choose meteor, and for every monster killed with it (without being swapped) it adds 1% damage, to an upper limit of course.
Putting any kind of restriction on skill swapping (beyond the current minimal time restriction) would ultimately slow down the process of seeing all a class has to offer. For the time-restricted gamer, I imagine that has one of two outcomes: you either play fewer classes or you limit yourself to only seeing part of what each class brings to the table.
The reality is that Blizzard now has tons of testers playing Inferno. If it actually were an issue, something would likely be done about it already. Or, they might not think that skill swapping is a problem at all, and think that the advantages to be gained from it are perfectly acceptable (which directly falls in line with their previous assessment of only wanting minimal performance gains from an 'optimized' build).
They have more info and resources at their disposal than any of the random conjecture on these boards. Wait until you have the product in your hands before jumping to conclusions.
I'm sorry but are we still talking about the same game. Doing the same shit over and over again? What does that remind me of.. baal runes, Mephisto .. Diablo .. Cows .. Diablo 2. You are literally referring to an incredibly repetitive game saying 'I don't want repetition it should be more like this extremely repetitive game.'
Trying a different build? Did you play D2? You mean getting pissed off because your build didn't work, and having to start again, likely to come to a grinding halt again at some point because you literally cannot make progress. Or copying a build from the internet.
The thing you don't realize is, you can still still try another build, while doing a new playthrough of the game, exactly as you said, you'll just be level 60 trying to do inferno (or hell) again, instead of normal. You're still playing the game of diablo over again, whether it be a new character, or an existing one with a new skillset, this game is all about repeating the same four acts over and over, getting gear.
Guy is a moron, post the same shit everyday in every thread don't worry about it.
You have chosen to not respond to any of my arguments, instead you have make bold claims with no argument or evidence to support it, like 'Call of Duty and D3 have so much in common' .. what, I don't even .. ?
Fanboism? I can be a harsh critic, and am very stubborn, for several of the announcements, I was at first very dismayed (real money AH, no attributes, you name it) but once I'd gotten over the initial shock of complete change, I actually allowed myself to really listen to, and absorb the arguments given for the opposing side, and eventually realized that they were in fact quite logical, and what I was holding onto wasn't necessarily what I thought it was, but just an illusion. ie customization = skill points .. that just isn't true, this system not only offers more customization, but is more robust.
Frame, the only way to lose in an argument with Crysto is to engage in one with him in the first place. Look at the quality of his posts. It's nothing but unsubstantiated, windowlicking ignorant drivel. At every opportunity.
You don't need to prove anything to someone who can't support his claims and writes like an autistic toddler with palsy.