Hello guys. I ask you to please read both JW's interview posted here because all info there is really important to understand whats going on. My speculations will only make sense if you have every little word he said in your head, so please read it! Thnx. Now we begin...
The recent changes (real money AH and the skill system reform) were stunning. Some people are pissed because an inexperienced amateur will be able to reach everything an a experienced player had acomplished by using his credit card. Others are mad because theres no more character builds in the game since skill point allocation were removed and players can freely swap between his skills.
Some people liked the changes and others didn't. But one thing we all must agree: the game, as it is now, looks short. Theres no need to build 128 characters to test all possible builds, you only need 5. Theres no point in farming gear and trying to be rich in the game because one's ingame wealth are actually the amount of RL money he/she is able to spend there, not the time invested in the game.
Besides making D3 your knew job (good luck with that btw) or playing HC (wich is insane time consuming challenge by itself), whats the point in playing it for the next years ?
I think most of us overlooked an feature that might be the answer to all those crazy things happening: The banner system. You may think it is just a bunch of achievements, but it's more then that. The banner is actually your true identity in D3, not your tons and the items they use. The banner is something you carry from all characters you make, it shows your achievements as a player and it is the only thing that theres no plan of being able to be traded. It's your D3 skill consolified.
It really depends on how D3 will be designed, but achievements and banner might be the feature that will bring back the longevity of the game. If challenges proposed by the banner are actually really fun, difficult and time consuming (in a good way) the game might suffer a drastical change of focus.
The Banner solves the item problem because it changes what an D3 player will typically strive for. Jw itself said that if people strive for something that might be bought (the wow raid/bop exemple) the game completly lose sense. He even said that microtransaction game are short lived because people buy everything and the game die fast. How a player based economy will change that? Normal players will be able to buy everything - since we will be buying stuff from professional farmers in the great majority of the time. It doesn't matter from who you buy your stuff, really. Farmers will be able to supply stuff for all of us, surely.
Now if people strive for achievements, items will be a secondary factor that you can look uppon. It's the same strategy Blizz used in WoW: gold trade for real money can't be stopped, but they isolate the focus of the game somewhere were gold doesn't mean everything.
And thats where the new skill system enters. With achievements being the focus, they really need freedom to design great PvE challenges and set pieces. If players had a fixed build, they would not be able to ask an certain specific strategy from the player. The more freedom their give to you in terms of character construction, less freedom they have in terms of PvE design. Without a lot of freedom in PvE design, achievments would be just farm a bunch of tank-spank bosses.
The skill system change opened a large hole, but this hole can be shutted if building character is not the damn focus. As long as theres anything else the players will strive for, their will keep playing the game with the same 5 toons.
This is just a personal speculation i have, but it really make sense to me. Theres some really odd things if what I said is correct: Why did they didn't hyped the banner system if it's going to be a large portion of our D3 life ? Will players really attach thenself to an achievements like they do with items and characters ?
I really want to known your guys opnion about this.
1)Being that you can still play a ton of builds from the ground up, for some us, there will still be a ton of replay value.
2) I play hardcore so I thankfully will not have to deal with it.
3) There was tons of item buying in d2 between d2jsp, e-bay, websites, or other means so I doubt that the AH will have that massive of an impact, it might get a few extra people to purchase items being they know it's 100% safe.
4) Achievement hunting for myself has never been something I've striven for unless I was completely lacking anything else to do, I still have the majority of achievements left on SC2 to obtain and never even tried on my xbox games.
Bottom line, between my own self imposed rules, hardcore mode itself, hardcore mode PvP god willing, and the fact I love running new characters of all types through the game, I'll be busy for a very long time.
Theres no need to build 128 characters to test all possible builds, you only need 5. Theres no point in farming gear and trying to be rich in the game because one's ingame wealth are actually the amount of RL money he/she is able to spend there, not the time invested in the game.
That in my opinion is a very narrow minded view. You can only test those builds at the level in which you choose to experiment with them and if all you're doing is checking the high end capabilities, you're probably better off just trying to PvP. The REAL experimentation is picking a build out of thin air and trying to run it from normal-hell(inferno level maybe? :D) without giving it gear along the way from other characters.
Also, I don't know about you, but even if I was a softcore player, I still wouldn't pay for my items with real money. The only way I might even consider it is if I could get the best gear in the game for like a $1 which it will be a long time before it reaches that point unless blizzard allows botting and duping to go unchecked.
I don't care that much about other people opinion about my achievents so Banners are not that great feature to me.
They seem to be nice, seems to work and will add to game enjoyement for people who likes that kind of things.
All of this without adding penalties to players like me, so I guess they are fine.
The biggest reason is probably because since the game isn't out, people want to talk about what they are most concerned with rather than worry about what is most likely, just the equivalent of an xbox banner or sc2 portrait with the added functionality of being able to find your friends faster. Hopefully they allow it to be EXTREMELY customizable to make it more worthwhile and as you said, could be a neat bonus feature if more freedom is allowed in it rather than unlocking the same things that other people can have.
I don't really care about achievements, the whole concept is kind of sily, i want to brag with my super elite gear and stomping noobs in the arena with my unique build, but now that seems meaningless.
Get real, folks, the diablo you all knew is dead, a few years ago i said right here in this forum that D3 had a pretty good chance of being blizzard first bust (i was flamed to death ofc), and what you know, its not even beta and its already looking that way.
Achievements can be fun but I don't normally go out of my way to get them all. I have only done this in a few games(god of war) I think Achievements will add to some replayability but I don't see it as a huge factor.
It's missing a ear rack, which will hold all the ears of my victims.
I like the fact that it will teleport you to your buddy, but I don't like the concept behind it. How does a banner teleport you? Unless when you choose to teleport, it opens a quick town portal next to the banner or something.
Hello guys. I ask you to please read both JW's interview posted here because all info there is really important to understand whats going on. My speculations will only make sense if you have every little word he said in your head, so please read it! Thnx. Now we begin...
The recent changes (real money AH and the skill system reform) were stunning. Some people are pissed because an inexperienced amateur will be able to reach everything an a experienced player had acomplished by using his credit card. Others are mad because theres no more character builds in the game since skill point allocation were removed and players can freely swap between his skills.
First of all I want to say this is a great write up and while I agree with everything you said I must point out that in this^ first section you say, "players can FREELY swap skills" I feel that is a premature assumption, bc I dont see anywhere where they have said skill swapping is going to be free and i think this is a huge overlook by the players.
if they make skill swapping something thats gonna come with some sort of penalty for swapping then I think this brings back the whole "creating new characters to try different builds"
just wanted to throw that out there, again great write up
There may be no real discussion about this system, because there´s no point to not like it as Leeodin says and because it didn´t get much attention in the interviews and on the news.
I think it´s a great way to show your skills, especially in hardcore mode, as you hopefully need guts to take the risk for some of the really crazy achievements.
It could also be useful in making some areas of the game more attractive.
D2 already had that in the form of titles - King/Guardian
Get real, folks, the diablo you all knew is dead, a few years ago i said right here in this forum that D3 had a pretty good chance of being blizzard first bust (i was flamed to death ofc), and what you know, its not even beta and its already looking that way.
There may be no real discussion about this system, because there´s no point to not like it as Leeodin says and because it didn´t get much attention in the interviews and on the news.
I think it´s a great way to show your skills, especially in hardcore mode, as you hopefully need guts to take the risk for some of the really crazy achievements.
It could also be useful in making some areas of the game more attractive.
D2 already had that in the form of titles - King/Guardian
There are a few differences. In D2 the title was something exclusive of your character. So while you play with your new toon noone knows you're actually a god (if u're one).
In D3 they cna make the banner show stuff like:
Finished Hell HC with Barb
Finished Hell HC with Wiz
Finished the game at Normal without trading any items and without uisng town portals (iron man) with class x.
Finished Hell without equiping any items (nake run)
Defeated 50 players in an row without dying once in PvP matchs
If you're a avid player, whenever someone see your banner, they will see the hardest acomplishments you did in the game. It doesn't really matter if you have bad ass gear or not, you might have bought it with you money anyway. But kill 50 people in an row? You surely can't buy that.
And to be honest, any of those achievements i created seens much more interesting then simply farm for many hours. Skill and effort in completing specific tasks it's a much better parameter to show whos the best player.
The only place banners will have any meaning is with hardcore players. A HC player that accomplished some extremely hard achievement probably deserves some recognition. Some guy that wiped 1000x to achieve it means nothing. And same goes for the fact that in HC there will be no "pay to win" players.
There may be no real discussion about this system, because there´s no point to not like it as Leeodin says and because it didn´t get much attention in the interviews and on the news.
I think it´s a great way to show your skills, especially in hardcore mode, as you hopefully need guts to take the risk for some of the really crazy achievements.
It could also be useful in making some areas of the game more attractive.
D2 already had that in the form of titles - King/Guardian
There are a few differences. In D2 the title was something exclusive of your character. So while you play with your new toon noone knows you're actually a god (if u're one).
In D3 they cna make the banner show stuff like:
Finished Hell HC with Barb
Finished Hell HC with Wiz
Finished the game at Normal without trading any items and without uisng town portals (iron man) with class x.
Finished Hell without equiping any items (nake run)
Defeated 50 players in an row without dying once in PvP matchs
If you're a avid player, whenever someone see your banner, they will see the hardest acomplishments you did in the game. It doesn't really matter if you have bad ass gear or not, you might have bought it with you money anyway. But kill 50 people in an row? You surely can't buy that.
And to be honest, any of those achievements i created seens much more interesting then simply farm for many hours. Skill and effort in completing specific tasks it's a much better parameter to show whos the best player.
Seems interesting, but i really can't see blizzard adding any of those, especially the pvp one.
Get real, folks, the diablo you all knew is dead, a few years ago i said right here in this forum that D3 had a pretty good chance of being blizzard first bust (i was flamed to death ofc), and what you know, its not even beta and its already looking that way.
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The recent changes (real money AH and the skill system reform) were stunning. Some people are pissed because an inexperienced amateur will be able to reach everything an a experienced player had acomplished by using his credit card. Others are mad because theres no more character builds in the game since skill point allocation were removed and players can freely swap between his skills.
Some people liked the changes and others didn't. But one thing we all must agree: the game, as it is now, looks short. Theres no need to build 128 characters to test all possible builds, you only need 5. Theres no point in farming gear and trying to be rich in the game because one's ingame wealth are actually the amount of RL money he/she is able to spend there, not the time invested in the game.
Besides making D3 your knew job (good luck with that btw) or playing HC (wich is insane time consuming challenge by itself), whats the point in playing it for the next years ?
I think most of us overlooked an feature that might be the answer to all those crazy things happening: The banner system. You may think it is just a bunch of achievements, but it's more then that. The banner is actually your true identity in D3, not your tons and the items they use. The banner is something you carry from all characters you make, it shows your achievements as a player and it is the only thing that theres no plan of being able to be traded. It's your D3 skill consolified.
It really depends on how D3 will be designed, but achievements and banner might be the feature that will bring back the longevity of the game. If challenges proposed by the banner are actually really fun, difficult and time consuming (in a good way) the game might suffer a drastical change of focus.
The Banner solves the item problem because it changes what an D3 player will typically strive for. Jw itself said that if people strive for something that might be bought (the wow raid/bop exemple) the game completly lose sense. He even said that microtransaction game are short lived because people buy everything and the game die fast. How a player based economy will change that? Normal players will be able to buy everything - since we will be buying stuff from professional farmers in the great majority of the time. It doesn't matter from who you buy your stuff, really. Farmers will be able to supply stuff for all of us, surely.
Now if people strive for achievements, items will be a secondary factor that you can look uppon. It's the same strategy Blizz used in WoW: gold trade for real money can't be stopped, but they isolate the focus of the game somewhere were gold doesn't mean everything.
And thats where the new skill system enters. With achievements being the focus, they really need freedom to design great PvE challenges and set pieces. If players had a fixed build, they would not be able to ask an certain specific strategy from the player. The more freedom their give to you in terms of character construction, less freedom they have in terms of PvE design. Without a lot of freedom in PvE design, achievments would be just farm a bunch of tank-spank bosses.
The skill system change opened a large hole, but this hole can be shutted if building character is not the damn focus. As long as theres anything else the players will strive for, their will keep playing the game with the same 5 toons.
This is just a personal speculation i have, but it really make sense to me. Theres some really odd things if what I said is correct: Why did they didn't hyped the banner system if it's going to be a large portion of our D3 life ? Will players really attach thenself to an achievements like they do with items and characters ?
I really want to known your guys opnion about this.
2) I play hardcore so I thankfully will not have to deal with it.
3) There was tons of item buying in d2 between d2jsp, e-bay, websites, or other means so I doubt that the AH will have that massive of an impact, it might get a few extra people to purchase items being they know it's 100% safe.
4) Achievement hunting for myself has never been something I've striven for unless I was completely lacking anything else to do, I still have the majority of achievements left on SC2 to obtain and never even tried on my xbox games.
Bottom line, between my own self imposed rules, hardcore mode itself, hardcore mode PvP god willing, and the fact I love running new characters of all types through the game, I'll be busy for a very long time.
That in my opinion is a very narrow minded view. You can only test those builds at the level in which you choose to experiment with them and if all you're doing is checking the high end capabilities, you're probably better off just trying to PvP. The REAL experimentation is picking a build out of thin air and trying to run it from normal-hell(inferno level maybe? :D) without giving it gear along the way from other characters.
Also, I don't know about you, but even if I was a softcore player, I still wouldn't pay for my items with real money. The only way I might even consider it is if I could get the best gear in the game for like a $1 which it will be a long time before it reaches that point unless blizzard allows botting and duping to go unchecked.
They seem to be nice, seems to work and will add to game enjoyement for people who likes that kind of things.
All of this without adding penalties to players like me, so I guess they are fine.
Probably because no one cares, tbh...
Good ridance, i guess.
I like the fact that it will teleport you to your buddy, but I don't like the concept behind it. How does a banner teleport you? Unless when you choose to teleport, it opens a quick town portal next to the banner or something.
First of all I want to say this is a great write up and while I agree with everything you said I must point out that in this^ first section you say, "players can FREELY swap skills" I feel that is a premature assumption, bc I dont see anywhere where they have said skill swapping is going to be free and i think this is a huge overlook by the players.
if they make skill swapping something thats gonna come with some sort of penalty for swapping then I think this brings back the whole "creating new characters to try different builds"
just wanted to throw that out there, again great write up
D2 already had that in the form of titles - King/Guardian
There are a few differences. In D2 the title was something exclusive of your character. So while you play with your new toon noone knows you're actually a god (if u're one).
In D3 they cna make the banner show stuff like:
Finished Hell HC with Barb
Finished Hell HC with Wiz
Finished the game at Normal without trading any items and without uisng town portals (iron man) with class x.
Finished Hell without equiping any items (nake run)
Defeated 50 players in an row without dying once in PvP matchs
If you're a avid player, whenever someone see your banner, they will see the hardest acomplishments you did in the game. It doesn't really matter if you have bad ass gear or not, you might have bought it with you money anyway. But kill 50 people in an row? You surely can't buy that.
And to be honest, any of those achievements i created seens much more interesting then simply farm for many hours. Skill and effort in completing specific tasks it's a much better parameter to show whos the best player.
[off]Shades_X и небеса содрогнутся, а не как у тебя в подписи, просто заметил=)[/off]
Hardcore is where the real game will be...
Seems interesting, but i really can't see blizzard adding any of those, especially the pvp one.