In D2, you had to theorycraft in order to be successful. You could not beat it trough hell with a broken character.
In D3, you don't have to theorycraft to beat it on hell. But that does not mean you can't to optimize a class or build. They just took away the necessity, not the ability.
So is that to say in Diablo 3, you might faceroll a character until it's not viable anymore, then switch out the build a bit on the fly and become successful again whereas Diablo 2 success came specifically from carefully placing every stat and skill point as well as specifically searching for gear with specific stats to be viable in completing all of D2-Hell?
Off topic slightly, but I always find it funny when people compare one sport being able to be achieved by a trained animal, yet another is something so deep and complex that only human levels of intelligence can pull off the mechanics of the sport.
Towards the general topic of this thread, I do love to theorycraft and I think Blizzard's attempt to actively try to remove it as much as possible from the game is more harmful than helpful.
Even if you misinterpret what he said and you play Diablo, or play games in general, for the theory side, what's stopping you from doing that?
You can still plan out your character in Diablo 3 and there is merit to doing it. You just don't have to start all over again if your plan didn't come together. You could port back to town, give your build some thought and tweak it and jump right back in again.
THAT is I think what Jay is referring to. It's not fun to fail on your build, log out and for some people literally go back to the drawing board.
Isn't it far more fun to just stay in game, tweak, and get back to it? Ultimately a game is to be played. Otherwise you might as well just purely theorycraft and dream, never actually playing the game. Probably kind of how a lot of people have been 'playing' D3 ever since they launched the skill calculator =p
Okay, so lots of people have called you out on taking the quote out of context, and talking about something that Jay wasn't refering to (once again, he was specifically talking about the skill UI, not theorycrafting).
That said, there is nothing wrong with theorycrafting. It can be quite fun, and a lot of people enjoy it. The problem comes, as it did with Diablo 2, when it becomes mandatory. For the game to be playable by the middle of nightmare and above, you had to have a pretty good build. Sure, you could learn by experimenting, but in that case you probably aren't getting rushed; and it takes, what, 10 hours, at least, to get that far (again, sans rush)? The majority of people would see that as wasted time, which is one of the reasons why they introduced respecs.
I just can't agree with this statement. Not that playing itself isn't or shouldn't be fun, of course it is/should. But this sounds like theorycrafting isn't supposed to be fun, while the opposite is true.
I mean, spending time at the "drawing board", doing research, figuring things out and then seeing them work out ingame ("work out" as in being noticeably stronger than before, just by virtue of having made the right -well thought out- choices) is so much more rewarding and complex as a game system than a game, in which you can only decide between doing red or yellow combat animations.
It's a night and day difference, like American Football vs 100m sprints. In the latter you can't improve via the use of your brain. There is no tactics, no nothing, trained animals can do this, in fact they do. AF on the other hand, well, most of you know the game better than I do, there is so much strategy and tactics involved, so much potential to outsmart the competition.
To me, a game that doesn't have this, is rather boring. And not to insult anyone, but such games are made for kids, seriously. They lack a whole dimension of fun.
Discuss
Well I agree with him 100%.
I have no desire any more to sit like an idiot for hours on end just working out the proper way to play things, then finding out that oh ya, the skill I did the math on? Its still gimped.
I just can't agree with this statement. Not that playing itself isn't or shouldn't be fun, of course it is/should. But this sounds like theorycrafting isn't supposed to be fun, while the opposite is true.
That's not what he meant, so anything you think/feel/typed about that quote is just way off.
There is a HUGE difference between theorycrafting (figuring out how skills/strategy can work optimally in particular circumstances) and figuring out how the basics of the game are supposed to work.
All the Skill UI is doing is saying "Hey, we built this game on the basis that you'll dabble in skills from all of these categories, taking 5 skills from 1 of them is not what we had in mind when we made the game". It has nothing to do with theorycrafting.
If you had to search around for 2 hours to figure out how to start a quest (for some reason you didn't know), would you call that theorycrafting? No, so they'll show you how to right click on the NPC and put a mark on the mini-map, the FUN is in the quest itself.
These are the types of things he was talking about. Mostly fundamental game systems that you should have an idea of how they work in order to play reasonably well (tooltips to tell you how to identify a rare, skill UI categories, etc...).
It's like you picking up a new game and someone explaining the controls to you, not explaining the ins and outs of the moves/skills/whatever, because there's a difference. That's what he's getting at with "having fun figuring out how to play" VS "having fun playing".
Funny how many defend this quote for being out of context, like in, well he said so, but he didn't mean it. Ignoring that I specifically said so in my very first phrase to make clear this thread is about a general statement concerning game designing philosophies. He could have found many other wordings for a statement regarding the beginner- and console-friendly ui for which they ditched the classic mouse-friendly ui, but he used very generic words. And that's where I spotted a potential problem for us avid gamers.
Funny how many defend this quote for being out of context, like in, well he said so, but he didn't mean it. Ignoring that I specifically said so in my very first phrase to make clear this thread is about a general statement concerning game designing philosophies. He could have found many other wordings for a statement regarding the beginner- and console-friendly ui for which they ditched the classic mouse-friendly ui, but he used very generic words. And that's where I spotted a potential problem for us avid gamers.
"Classic mouse friendly UI"? Which one is that exactly? The Diablo 2 one where everything gets hotkeyed and you only use the mouse for moving and aiming? Or do you mean the Diablo 1 UI where...uhhh...everything gets hotkeyed and you only use the mouse for moving and aiming?
This seems to just be general sentiment against the skills UI in particular. Companies have far more to gain by making the UI as friendly and easy to use as possible.
"Classic mouse friendly UI"? Which one is that exactly?
The D3 skills ui before you had to toggle through multiple pages to get to the skill you wanted. It's a console system, like in Skyrim. In that game, even the inventory doesn't let you use your mouse, instead of a big grid with all your items, where you just have to mouse over and click on the one, that you want (like Diablo), you have to hit a button multiple times toggling through items one at a time.
And this is where they went with the D3 skills ui.
edit: Diktat, yes, that's a good post. We seem to get many choices and there will be a lot of theorycrafting going on over them anyway, but it won't have the impact it used to have, thus be less rewarding. But we'll play it anyway, it's from Blizz after all and the rest of what JW said in this specific interview sounded very tempting
You can't take a quote out of context, say so, and then rail against it in relation to something that he wasn't talking about. He was talking about the skill UI. Have you looked at all the skills/runes? They are very open to calculation and debate.
The following are the rune variants for Wrath of the Berserker:
- Activating Wrath of the Berserker knocks back all enemies within 12 yards and deals 430% weapon damage to themActivating Wrath of the Berserker knocks back all enemies within 12 yards and deals 430% weapon damage to them
-While active your damage is also increased by 100%.
-While Wrath of the Berserker is active, Critical Hits have a chance to cause an eruption of blood dealing 155% weapon damage to enemies within 15 yards.
-Increases bonus to Dodge Chance to 60%.
-Every 25 Fury gained while Wrath of the Berserker is active adds 1 second to the duration of the effect.
That's not "red laser" vs. "blue laser". If you are asserting that choosing between the dodge version and the 100% damage increase makes no difference, then, well, that's just a guess because you haven't played the game yet.
Dudes, I know the game, maybe better than you do. Maybe stop insulting me for things I didn't say
This was not supposed to be about D3 as is, but about a generic statement. Get it, lol.
In D2, you had to theorycraft in order to be successful. You could not beat it trough hell with a broken character.
In D3, you don't have to theorycraft to beat it on hell. But that does not mean you can't to optimize a class or build. They just took away the necessity, not the ability.
Exactly! That was one of the worst parts of D2. The attributes were a waste of time, since you had to build it a certain way, no matter what class you played. The skills were badly designed, some were terrible, others were mandatory, while only a few were good in a limited number of builds.
Theorycrafting was vital if you wanted to get anywhere in D2. You had to have your entire character mapped out when you started playing, however, playing the way you want wouldn't get you very far and only lead to a lot of frustration.
D3 has a very open system, which doesn't necessarily mean easy, mind you. You can craft as you play, test the way you want to play and see what works for you, get a feel as to what fits well together. This is a far more promising system, and I can't wait to get my hands on it.
I was explaining various aspects of the game to my brother over the phone, and one of the things he said (he isn't a hardcore D3 Dev follower like me) was that by looking at the way the skills and runes unlocked, he got the feeling that using the skill calculator to figure out the exact build he wanted was a moot point - because he could just figure it out in game.
When he first said that, I was thinking.. well - that doesn't mean its not hell a fun to do it! - but then I thought about what he said more.. and I realzied he's on to somthing.. while yes, people like me are spending hours and hours planning different builds before the game is even out, you'll also be able to just play the game, and figure it out as you go -
I think of games like Titan Quest for example: I played ALOT of that game, but I never tried every combination I wanted to, I never even tried all of the skills and certainly not all the class combinations.
Diablo 3 is going to offer somthing thius genre hasn't seen yet - the ability to decide on a build based on testing it your self (with out spending millions of hours leveling every builds).
So - I think Jay's comment is correct, the fun is in the playing - it just so happens you can play and theory craft at the same time though
I was explaining various aspects of the game to my brother over the phone, and one of the things he said (he isn't a hardcore D3 Dev follower like me) was that by looking at the way the skills and runes unlocked, he got the feeling that using the skill calculator to figure out the exact build he wanted was a moot point - because he could just figure it out in game.
When he first said that, I was thinking.. well - that doesn't mean its not hell a fun to do it! - but then I thought about what he said more.. and I realzied he's on to somthing.. while yes, people like me are spending hours and hours planning different builds before the game is even out, you'll also be able to just play the game, and figure it out as you go -
I think of games like Titan Quest for example: I played ALOT of that game, but I never tried every combination I wanted to, I never even tried all of the skills and certainly not all the class combinations.
Diablo 3 is going to offer somthing thius genre hasn't seen yet - the ability to decide on a build based on testing it your self (with out spending millions of hours leveling every builds).
So - I think Jay's comment is correct, the fun is in the playing - it just so happens you can play and theory craft at the same time though
I think in order to make a great build, you'll need to do a little bit more than, "figure it out in game". That's a very casual way of thinking and will lead to many mediocre builds that work.... but not very well. Great builds have great synergy.... good builds are a collection of skills that you enjoy (or are the most powerful). I love the builds in D3 because you really need to use your brain to come up with one that will work GREAT.
In D2, you had to theorycraft in order to be successful. You could not beat it trough hell with a broken character.
In D3, you don't have to theorycraft to beat it on hell. But that does not mean you can't to optimize a class or build. They just took away the necessity, not the ability.
A thousand times this
Well i don't know if you'll beat hell without trying to optimize your build, but you will definetly end normal. Im assuming this from Jay's comments on dificulties on the AtomicPC interview.In any case once you hit nightmare you'll see you need more armor, life, damgae, mobility, cc, etc. and modify your build accordingly.
So in escence theorycrafting have become more empiric. You design a build test it and modify it until it works, Its a little more like "practicecrafting", lol.
I am infinitely amazed by how stupid some people can be. Really. You complain about them "removing the possibility to theorycraft". Really? Try opening up the skill calculator for any class, make a build, do some math and logic to back it up, then make 3 more builds like that. Easily possible. Are they all equally good then? Nope, not at all. I honestly dont understand how you can think theorycrafting is gone.
I am disappoint.
Edit: Plus, he says "Ithink the fun is in playing the game", which means it is his OPINION, which he is entitled to have. What can you learn from this? Don't quote out of context, don't read too much into what a guy says in an interview, and for gods sake, think for yourself for once!!!
That is an opinion but i think i need to clarify its not his (or at least not entirely his). Its blizzards opinion. He goes into that interview as blizzard's employee and he cannot say "i like theorycrafting but blizzard said no". What i'm trying to say is that this is more than an opinion, its a game design decision. So this is an opinion which is suppose to be a fact for this game.
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So is that to say in Diablo 3, you might faceroll a character until it's not viable anymore, then switch out the build a bit on the fly and become successful again whereas Diablo 2 success came specifically from carefully placing every stat and skill point as well as specifically searching for gear with specific stats to be viable in completing all of D2-Hell?
Signature by Aranoch
While not american football, I do present my case that in relation to sports, any job can be done by a trained animal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI_wIgianZ4
Towards the general topic of this thread, I do love to theorycraft and I think Blizzard's attempt to actively try to remove it as much as possible from the game is more harmful than helpful.
Thanks for sharing I just had some spaghetti.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
You can still plan out your character in Diablo 3 and there is merit to doing it. You just don't have to start all over again if your plan didn't come together. You could port back to town, give your build some thought and tweak it and jump right back in again.
THAT is I think what Jay is referring to. It's not fun to fail on your build, log out and for some people literally go back to the drawing board.
Isn't it far more fun to just stay in game, tweak, and get back to it? Ultimately a game is to be played. Otherwise you might as well just purely theorycraft and dream, never actually playing the game. Probably kind of how a lot of people have been 'playing' D3 ever since they launched the skill calculator =p
It's not really theorycrafting when you go to a website like elitistjerks and read their conclusions and copy their suggested builds.
Or are you claiming that you bust out some spreadsheets and crunch numbers and run models to determine optimal builds?
That said, there is nothing wrong with theorycrafting. It can be quite fun, and a lot of people enjoy it. The problem comes, as it did with Diablo 2, when it becomes mandatory. For the game to be playable by the middle of nightmare and above, you had to have a pretty good build. Sure, you could learn by experimenting, but in that case you probably aren't getting rushed; and it takes, what, 10 hours, at least, to get that far (again, sans rush)? The majority of people would see that as wasted time, which is one of the reasons why they introduced respecs.
Well I agree with him 100%.
I have no desire any more to sit like an idiot for hours on end just working out the proper way to play things, then finding out that oh ya, the skill I did the math on? Its still gimped.
Nah, thats stupid. been there and done that.
http://www.wowhq.com
That's not what he meant, so anything you think/feel/typed about that quote is just way off.
There is a HUGE difference between theorycrafting (figuring out how skills/strategy can work optimally in particular circumstances) and figuring out how the basics of the game are supposed to work.
All the Skill UI is doing is saying "Hey, we built this game on the basis that you'll dabble in skills from all of these categories, taking 5 skills from 1 of them is not what we had in mind when we made the game". It has nothing to do with theorycrafting.
If you had to search around for 2 hours to figure out how to start a quest (for some reason you didn't know), would you call that theorycrafting? No, so they'll show you how to right click on the NPC and put a mark on the mini-map, the FUN is in the quest itself.
These are the types of things he was talking about. Mostly fundamental game systems that you should have an idea of how they work in order to play reasonably well (tooltips to tell you how to identify a rare, skill UI categories, etc...).
It's like you picking up a new game and someone explaining the controls to you, not explaining the ins and outs of the moves/skills/whatever, because there's a difference. That's what he's getting at with "having fun figuring out how to play" VS "having fun playing".
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
"Classic mouse friendly UI"? Which one is that exactly? The Diablo 2 one where everything gets hotkeyed and you only use the mouse for moving and aiming? Or do you mean the Diablo 1 UI where...uhhh...everything gets hotkeyed and you only use the mouse for moving and aiming?
This seems to just be general sentiment against the skills UI in particular. Companies have far more to gain by making the UI as friendly and easy to use as possible.
Play the game, not the interface.
The D3 skills ui before you had to toggle through multiple pages to get to the skill you wanted. It's a console system, like in Skyrim. In that game, even the inventory doesn't let you use your mouse, instead of a big grid with all your items, where you just have to mouse over and click on the one, that you want (like Diablo), you have to hit a button multiple times toggling through items one at a time.
And this is where they went with the D3 skills ui.
edit: Diktat, yes, that's a good post. We seem to get many choices and there will be a lot of theorycrafting going on over them anyway, but it won't have the impact it used to have, thus be less rewarding. But we'll play it anyway, it's from Blizz after all and the rest of what JW said in this specific interview sounded very tempting
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
The following are the rune variants for Wrath of the Berserker:
That's not "red laser" vs. "blue laser". If you are asserting that choosing between the dodge version and the 100% damage increase makes no difference, then, well, that's just a guess because you haven't played the game yet.
This was not supposed to be about D3 as is, but about a generic statement. Get it, lol.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Theorycrafting was vital if you wanted to get anywhere in D2. You had to have your entire character mapped out when you started playing, however, playing the way you want wouldn't get you very far and only lead to a lot of frustration.
D3 has a very open system, which doesn't necessarily mean easy, mind you. You can craft as you play, test the way you want to play and see what works for you, get a feel as to what fits well together. This is a far more promising system, and I can't wait to get my hands on it.
When he first said that, I was thinking.. well - that doesn't mean its not hell a fun to do it! - but then I thought about what he said more.. and I realzied he's on to somthing.. while yes, people like me are spending hours and hours planning different builds before the game is even out, you'll also be able to just play the game, and figure it out as you go -
I think of games like Titan Quest for example: I played ALOT of that game, but I never tried every combination I wanted to, I never even tried all of the skills and certainly not all the class combinations.
Diablo 3 is going to offer somthing thius genre hasn't seen yet - the ability to decide on a build based on testing it your self (with out spending millions of hours leveling every builds).
So - I think Jay's comment is correct, the fun is in the playing - it just so happens you can play and theory craft at the same time though
I think in order to make a great build, you'll need to do a little bit more than, "figure it out in game". That's a very casual way of thinking and will lead to many mediocre builds that work.... but not very well. Great builds have great synergy.... good builds are a collection of skills that you enjoy (or are the most powerful). I love the builds in D3 because you really need to use your brain to come up with one that will work GREAT.
Quoting this out of context from a a forum post.
I just can't agree with this statement, I'm very good at checkers.
I think the fun is in playing the game [with theorycrafting], not [just] working out how to play it.
So in escence theorycrafting have become more empiric. You design a build test it and modify it until it works, Its a little more like "practicecrafting", lol.
That is an opinion but i think i need to clarify its not his (or at least not entirely his). Its blizzards opinion. He goes into that interview as blizzard's employee and he cannot say "i like theorycrafting but blizzard said no". What i'm trying to say is that this is more than an opinion, its a game design decision. So this is an opinion which is suppose to be a fact for this game.