There is a fundamental flaw with your entire post.
Diablo is and has always been an ActionRPG (ARPG) game. It is in no way shape or form a true RPG. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG which is a whole other kettle of fish I won't get into here.
There is a fundamental difference between RPG and ARPG. RPG's tell a story you actually care about, they have decision points. They have characters who matter to you and you grow attached to.
Excellent examples of true RPG's are Ultima 4/5/6/7 , Baldur's Gate Series, Planescape Torment, Dragon Age Origins, The Witcher, Mass Effect 1&2. All these games had one thing in common, after playing the game, everyone remembers the story, they remember the super interesting array of sidekicks.
Combat was vastly different in all the games as were items collected. And it made total sense to start at level 1 with nothing and end up at level XXX with super items and kill the boss, and while combat was important it was always 2nd to the character development and the story.
In ARPG's combat, combat is king. In fact many don't really care about the story, or if they do its only on the first play through. After that its all about getting better items and being more powerful. Don't get me wrong, I love the Diablo series. But please don't lump it together with RPG's.
Don't get me wrong. The absolute best RPG of all time, would have the combat and never ending end game of the Diablo series, the Plot and story of Mass Effect, the super memorable sidekicks of Baldur's Gate/Dragon's Age, and the world building of Skyrim and heart of the Ultima series. But until we get to that perfect nervana (If we ever do) please don't lump Diablo into the RPG genre, it is an ARPG.
I love idea of runes but hate that they took away the ability to distribute Stat points! because what if i wanted to make a Sorc that could easly tank monster but do weaker damage! what if i wanted to buff on something other then the job my chars was good for to make it work better for me! THAT IS CUSTOMIZATION!
Diablo 2 definitely had the "action" part of "action-RPG", but it also had the "RPG" part in terms of having to make meaningful decisions that determined how you would play your character. Even in your example, there was the decision to be a cold sorceress and the additional decision to specialize into Frozen Orb and Cold Mastery. There were probably additional decisions about what types of weapons and armor you wanted to use as you leveled up and, thus, how many points you would put into which stats.
There is still the possibility that items can fill this role of decision making and focusing on a certain aspect of your character. If you like Arcane skills, you can focus on Arcane-enhancing gear for a while on your Wizard. Bashiok even said that people are dismissing the importance of itemization too quickly in these discussions.
To a certain extent this is true. Currently, though, +Skill affixes only appear on class specific gear, so that's 3 out of 13 items at best. Stacking crit for certain procs vs not caring about it is another possible stat that could push you toward using specific skills and away from others, and there are minor trade-offs with things like weapon speed and dual wield vs 2h vs 1h+shield with various skills. In any case, these aren't quite the same kind of decisions. In the case of Diablo 3 you might plan out what stats you want to shoot for and perhaps even figure out some relative values for them so you can objectively determine if item A is an upgrade over item B. You can't really come up with a set of gear to aim for, though, since everything is random--you'll just be making incremental upgrades to your gear over time that may or may not be focused toward a specific set of skills. As for skill swapping, even if you focus your gear choices toward a very specific set of skills, I don't think it will make such a huge difference that it wouldn't be worth swapping to other skills if the situation called for it.
As for the Bashiok reference, he's talking about character customization and claiming that people won't be alike in Diablo 3 even though they all have the same base attributes and access to the same skills. He's definitely got a point here--with all the item randomization, its unlikely that any 2 people would have the same item, let alone a full set of the same gear. I'm not sure how much this really counts as "customization", though, if people end up with similar totals for their stats after averaging the randomness between all their item slots. Sure there will be differences, but I'm not sold on the fact that they will really be meaningful differences for the most part and I just don't see it having a huge impact on skill choices no matter what your gear is.
Though i really liked the talent system in diablo 2 and making new characters (thinking up funny names, swapping out gear), im quite intrigued by this new and simple system.
Im hoping that quote "endgame PvP (while not balanced) will be fun" you speak truth here cause i really disliked how WoW pvp was always about the balance. Keeping up to date with annoying patch notes and such.
Maybe by not balanced blizzard means that depending of what player you come to face in arena if his skills are luckily designed to cut through your defences there will be a little balance in that particular fight. You will die instantly But on the other side another player may die from your attacks instantly as his skillls/items won't be cut to defend against your attacks. So not balanced per figth but in avarage there may be some balance which you may see after many fights. And ofc it will be fun to see either you or your opponents beeing killed instantly sometimes. In WoW for example you are usually killed because your oponnent have much better gear. In Diablo he may still die if he is not prepared for your skill set. All just IMO.
I love idea of runes but hate that they took away the ability to distribute Stat points! because what if i wanted to make a Sorc that could easly tank monster but do weaker damage! what if i wanted to buff on something other then the job my chars was good for to make it work better for me! THAT IS CUSTOMIZATION!
They probably could do it if you were willing to wait another 5 years to balance the game.
I believe that really good thing about D3 is that we will be able to select skills depending of gear we wear. Never again when you find a great armor you'll have to leave it in your stash as your in stone skill set does not work well with it. You will just adjust your skills! At least until you find armor you want for your preferred skills choice which may never happen depending of your luck. Looks like some of us would rather create a new character to be able to wear this new armor or not wear it at all and look for another year for their perfect choice, lol. Well, I'm just happy I'm not that close minded and pity others who are.
I agree almost entirely with the OP. However, to be honest, Diablo 3's "free respec" system isn't revolutionary, it is the next step in a gradual trend that has been happening for some time.
The fact is that "set in stone" character builds limit gameplay options. Take a game like Skyrim. If you spend 80 hours building your character as a sword/shield warrior, you've sunk 80 hours into sword/shield gameplay. If you want to try a different style of gameplay, like summoning skeletons, you have to start from scratch with a new character. (or download mods / use console commands, which is either cheating or changing the game)
This poses a major problem for game designers. They spend months of their time testing and balancing different gameplay styles (specs and builds), and ideally they would like the players to be able to experience several different styles. However, there is a direct conflict between accessibility and reward-setting. If you get all of your core game mechanics at a low level, leveling up becomes rather boring and uninteresting. However, if you don't get your core game mechanics until max level then it becomes a HUGE time investment to try another style of gameplay.
More and more modern RPGs are adding in respec systems. If you look at Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2, there were very affordable ways to respec your character in game. Skill tree respeccing does nothing to hurt a heavily story-driven RPG. Your character's origin story, gender, race and class cannot be respecced. Only the gameplay elements, a change that gives you the flexibility to play a game the way you want to play it.
I am flabbergasted by the arguement that taking AWAY gameplay choices (by limiting skill re-picking) somehow increases character customization. Given the billions of possible skill combinations, the only way in which "every level 60 monk will be the same" is that they are equally free to choose a totally different build. Take any two Monks and they will likely have quite different skills. Yes, I have the freedom to respec my monk to have the same build as your monk, but I also have the freedom to respec my monk in 16,200,000,000 other ways (or whatever the number is). If my new spec sucks, guess what, there are still 16,199,999,999 specs that I haven't tried.
You were WAY more likely to see multiple characters with identical cookie-cutter builds in D2. Trying out a new build took such a gargantuan time investment that most players never came up with their own builds, they just used stuff published on websites.
...i for one have not been able to play the beta, unfortunately...so my opinion is missing that experience...however, this post is one of the better ideas that have been discussed lately...i played diablo 1 (and hellfire) and diablo 2 (and LoD) for many many hours...never online and only solo save for a sad attempt to latch a few friends, whom i frightened off with my high level necromancer...i never engaged in item trading or any boss runs...i just played and played because i loved the hell out of those games...all of my items and runewords came from solo, random playing and it was great...i ran three characters to lvl 90+ (lost one to a corrupted file)...the only things that stopped me from playing was the harsh penalty for death (experience lost)...re-rolling a character has no incentive for me at all and i am glad that the new system is more flexible...i loved that D2 was not D1, and so far i'm looking forward to D3 not being D2...
The original poster outlined a detailed and thoughtful argument that I totally agree with. It may seem like players who are actually looking forward to these changes are in the minority when you read some of these boards, but I think we'll see that when the game launches, we are in the majority. I, for one, am super-excited about the fact that I can have a legitimate shot at getting each class to the level cap; this was a near-impossibility for almost anyone playing D2. Imagine how many times you had to tinker with a build before you knew that you could take it past level 50 or so and not run into terrible problems with stat/skill point allocation down the road. Now, not only has that problem been solved, but it's been solved in a way that we will have access to all the skills and be able to test out various play styles and synergies at will. This, to me, seems like more time spent in the game having fun, and less time doing the "work" it used to take to theorize, build, test, tear down, and repeat the process of creating a character.
In conclusion, more fun for more people = better.
Well put.
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True, +1
To a certain extent this is true. Currently, though, +Skill affixes only appear on class specific gear, so that's 3 out of 13 items at best. Stacking crit for certain procs vs not caring about it is another possible stat that could push you toward using specific skills and away from others, and there are minor trade-offs with things like weapon speed and dual wield vs 2h vs 1h+shield with various skills. In any case, these aren't quite the same kind of decisions. In the case of Diablo 3 you might plan out what stats you want to shoot for and perhaps even figure out some relative values for them so you can objectively determine if item A is an upgrade over item B. You can't really come up with a set of gear to aim for, though, since everything is random--you'll just be making incremental upgrades to your gear over time that may or may not be focused toward a specific set of skills. As for skill swapping, even if you focus your gear choices toward a very specific set of skills, I don't think it will make such a huge difference that it wouldn't be worth swapping to other skills if the situation called for it.
As for the Bashiok reference, he's talking about character customization and claiming that people won't be alike in Diablo 3 even though they all have the same base attributes and access to the same skills. He's definitely got a point here--with all the item randomization, its unlikely that any 2 people would have the same item, let alone a full set of the same gear. I'm not sure how much this really counts as "customization", though, if people end up with similar totals for their stats after averaging the randomness between all their item slots. Sure there will be differences, but I'm not sold on the fact that they will really be meaningful differences for the most part and I just don't see it having a huge impact on skill choices no matter what your gear is.
Maybe by not balanced blizzard means that depending of what player you come to face in arena if his skills are luckily designed to cut through your defences there will be a little balance in that particular fight. You will die instantly But on the other side another player may die from your attacks instantly as his skillls/items won't be cut to defend against your attacks. So not balanced per figth but in avarage there may be some balance which you may see after many fights. And ofc it will be fun to see either you or your opponents beeing killed instantly sometimes. In WoW for example you are usually killed because your oponnent have much better gear. In Diablo he may still die if he is not prepared for your skill set. All just IMO.
They probably could do it if you were willing to wait another 5 years to balance the game.
The fact is that "set in stone" character builds limit gameplay options. Take a game like Skyrim. If you spend 80 hours building your character as a sword/shield warrior, you've sunk 80 hours into sword/shield gameplay. If you want to try a different style of gameplay, like summoning skeletons, you have to start from scratch with a new character. (or download mods / use console commands, which is either cheating or changing the game)
This poses a major problem for game designers. They spend months of their time testing and balancing different gameplay styles (specs and builds), and ideally they would like the players to be able to experience several different styles. However, there is a direct conflict between accessibility and reward-setting. If you get all of your core game mechanics at a low level, leveling up becomes rather boring and uninteresting. However, if you don't get your core game mechanics until max level then it becomes a HUGE time investment to try another style of gameplay.
More and more modern RPGs are adding in respec systems. If you look at Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2, there were very affordable ways to respec your character in game. Skill tree respeccing does nothing to hurt a heavily story-driven RPG. Your character's origin story, gender, race and class cannot be respecced. Only the gameplay elements, a change that gives you the flexibility to play a game the way you want to play it.
I am flabbergasted by the arguement that taking AWAY gameplay choices (by limiting skill re-picking) somehow increases character customization. Given the billions of possible skill combinations, the only way in which "every level 60 monk will be the same" is that they are equally free to choose a totally different build. Take any two Monks and they will likely have quite different skills. Yes, I have the freedom to respec my monk to have the same build as your monk, but I also have the freedom to respec my monk in 16,200,000,000 other ways (or whatever the number is). If my new spec sucks, guess what, there are still 16,199,999,999 specs that I haven't tried.
You were WAY more likely to see multiple characters with identical cookie-cutter builds in D2. Trying out a new build took such a gargantuan time investment that most players never came up with their own builds, they just used stuff published on websites.
Well put.