I won't go ahead and say "this rules" or "this sucks balls", but it's clearly a HUGE step away from the Diablo we all know and love. They're pretty much creating an entirely new and different game using the same raw materials used in Diablo 2, and even 1, and I'm not sure I like that very much.
I like being in control of my character. They're completely ruining this game as they progress through the development. I'm actually, and for the first time ever, giving serious thought as to whether I'm gonna buy this game or not. They're pretty much shitting on the hardcore fans of the series (Well, a vast proportion of them) and justifying it by saying "well, we thought the D2 version was shit, this will be way better". I mean, what the fuck?
I won't miss the tradition of playing a cookie-cutter build. Being able to use all skills available to your class at all times with just about the same amount of power, although with some major differences thanks to the runes, will make the game more interesting.
No, you fail to realize that cookie cutter builds will exist regardless, as long as skills are imbalanced.
Less choice is never better. We should have been given the option to use 4 or 7 skills (4, assuming that max skill cap was 15)
All the new skill system does is give us "infinite" re-spec at whim, without the real choice of choosing which skills to focus on. Instead it's like... here is your generic char, now go test whatever!
then again, i realize that by doing thing they probably would decrease server costs...it now makes sense that an account has max 10 chars! if we had a choice to make something like "an ice wizard" then "a melee wizard" etc etc... there would be more justification for having increase char per account, perhaps some "unreachable number"
What you seem to fail to realize is that instead of augmenting skills via a skill tree, we are doing it through the rune system. And since Blizzard wants to make top tier runes extremely rare, unique to the spell it is used on, and with random enchants, finding the perfect rune for your skill is not going to be easy. This means that you probably wont be swapping spells around "at a whim" end game, unless you have completely perfected all of your spells. Chances are, this will take quite some time. And with regards to the fact that runes will be a random drop, this will make the skill system a little closer to Diablo 1 where you had to collect books for your abilities.
One could argue that these runes are only variations of one spell but let me point out that these "variations" can take a base spell and make its use completely different. For instance, you take a skill like whirlwind and you give it a rune to knock back enemies, you have just turned it in to an escape mechanism. You modify it so that it applies a confusion effect on enemies, you have made it an aoe crowd control. How you choose to tailor your spells to your play style will determine what other spells will compliment it best. This is a huge step away from cookie cutter builds as it will be very hard to say that "effect a" is far superior to "effect b" since both effects will synergies with other spells in different ways. Sure you could try to maximize damage, but that simply means that that is where you put the most value... this doesn't mean it is the "best" option. Will this end cookie cutter builds? No. But then, nothing will. What it does do is make it so that these so-called "optimum" builds will be much less concrete.
On a final note, I think it is definitely a good thing for people to voice their opinions both for and against the system but I also think it is important that every one realize that we haven't really seen these systems in action yet. It is not good to immediately draw a conclusion and reject all other possibilities with out having the full picture in mind. And this goes for people who support the system as well; I remain optimistic, but I concede that it is possible it wont be all that great. If you have doubts, that is fine but at least be open to giving things a chance. If you really don't like it, just wait for reviews of the game to come out before making a purchase. Simple as that.
I like being in control of my character. They're completely ruining this game as they progress through the development. I'm actually, and for the first time ever, giving serious thought as to whether I'm gonna buy this game or not. They're pretty much shitting on the hardcore fans of the series (Well, a vast proportion of them) and justifying it by saying "well, we thought the D2 version was shit, this will be way better". I mean, what the fuck?
No... they are simply shitting on those people who fear change and don't have much imagination for what Blizzard's proposed system could be. Diablo 2 did many things different than Diablo 1. And before its release, there was just as much controversy as there is now in regards to skills ("What?! They don't have to find their abilities? WTF!!!!"). Did that make it a bad game? Hell no... it is still played today and has many loyal fans (myself included). Now, like its predecessor, Diablo 3 is changing things up. But that isn't a bad thing... it just means that it is a different game. Not simply an expansion pack to Diablo 2 with better graphics.
This doesn't mean that I feel Blizzard is infallible in their decision, but I am not going to freak out and froth at the mouth until I actually see how things pan out.
What you seem to fail to realize is that instead of augmenting skills via a skill tree, we are doing it through the rune system. And since Blizzard wants to make top tier runes extremely rare, unique to the spell it is used on, and with random enchants, finding the perfect rune for your skill is not going to be easy. This means that you probably wont be swapping spells around "at a whim" end game, unless you have completely perfected all of your spells. Chances are, this will take quite some time. And with regards to the fact that runes will be a random drop, this will make the skill system a little closer to Diablo 1 where you had to collect books for your abilities.
One could argue that these runes are only variations of one spell but let me point out that these "variations" can take a base spell and make its use completely different. For instance, you take a skill like whirlwind and you give it a rune to knock back enemies, you have just turned it in to an escape mechanism. You modify it so that it applies a confusion effect on enemies, you have made it an aoe crowd control. How you choose to tailor your spells to your play style will determine what other spells will compliment it best. This is a huge step away from cookie cutter builds as it will be very hard to say that "effect a" is far superior to "effect b" since both effects will synergies with other spells in different ways. Sure you could try to maximize damage, but that simply means that that is where you put the most value... this doesn't mean it is the "best" option. Will this end cookie cutter builds? No. But then, nothing will. What it does do is make it so that these so-called "optimum" builds will be much less concrete.
On a final note, I think it is definitely a good thing for people to voice their opinions both for and against the system but I also think it is important that every one realize that we haven't really seen these systems in action yet. It is not good to immediately draw a conclusion and reject all other possibilities with out having the full picture in mind. And this goes for people who support the system as well; I remain optimistic, but I concede that it is possible it wont be all that great. If you have doubts, that is fine but at least be open to giving things a chance. If you really don't like it, just wait for reviews of the game to come out before making a purchase. Simple as that.
actually, no, i do realize that blizzard chooses the path of character customization purely on items, but that's aside from the point. i know that diablo has traditionally been a game that's fundamentally item based and with diablo 3 they just made a character COMPLETELY based off of items.
Instead of allowing people to choose what "kind" of character they're going to make, they give you a generic character.
To be honest, someone should be answering this question: what would be better, tweaking JUST skills with rune items OR tweaking skills with BOTH runes and points. To me, diversity is always better.
and auto-stats... if it was broken in d2, aim for a better one in d3... but they choose to take the easier path... but i digress.
I do criticize them for choosing this path because I have played games that pretty much give you a generic character. and compared to other games that give you more choices, they pale in comparison.
By the way, i also realize that may be high, and that if blizzard were to spend their time balancing stats, skills etc in pve and pvp environments (to an extent) they probably won't make 2011 release.
EDIT: what.. skill tree? i'm not even talking about that... they got rid of the tree way back and i was glad.
Out of curiosity, are you going to respec on a whim since you can?
i didn't see this question before so i'll answer it now. No, i won't. i'll likely choose something, use it for a while, decide that it's not for me then try out a modified version or another skill. to be honest, i was thinking respecing would have been a perfect gold sink. they can even make it based on level... the value of gold as a currency will only be valuable if there are valuable gold sinks that will pull gold out of the market hopefully in a progressive way. (something like higher level respecs cost more, higher level runes cost more to remove etc. so that the newer people aren't forced to spend too much of whatever small amounts of gold they may have acquired.) and right now i'm seriously wondering if they even plan on making gold a valuable currency, now that gold has to compete with the real world currency.
i didn't see this question before so i'll answer it now. No, i won't. i'll likely choose something, use it for a while, decide that it's not for me then try out a modified version or another skill. to be honest, i was thinking respecing would have been a perfect gold sink. they can even make it based on level... the value of gold as a currency will only be valuable if there are valuable gold sinks that will pull gold out of the market hopefully in a progressive way. (something like higher level respecs cost more, higher level runes cost more to remove etc. so that the newer people aren't forced to spend too much of whatever small amounts of gold they may have acquired.) and right now i'm seriously wondering if they even plan on making gold a valuable currency, now that gold has to compete with the real world currency.
If you don't plan on respeccing willy-nilly, why is there a big assumption that a lot of other people will?
Also, I think that people will find the merchants to serve as very viable gold sinks. Of course, who knows? They might wear out their usefulness in the late game. But they have a lot more potential than Blizzard has let on, I think, and I find it extremely likely that making skills a gold sink, while perhaps viable in a gameplay sort of way, would have just felt out of place. It wouldn't have contributed to the feel or personality of the game. It doesn't logically follow that money can influence your talents, and I think that on a very back-of-the-mind level, that would have bothered the players who want to feel immersed in Sanctuary.
If you don't plan on respeccing willy-nilly, why is there a big assumption that a lot of other people will?
Also, I think that people will find the merchants to serve as very viable gold sinks. Of course, who knows? They might wear out their usefulness in the late game. But they have a lot more potential than Blizzard has let on, I think, and I find it extremely likely that making skills a gold sink, while perhaps viable in a gameplay sort of way, would have just felt out of place. It wouldn't have contributed to the feel or personality of the game. It doesn't logically follow that money can influence your talents, and I think that on a very back-of-the-mind level, that would have bothered the players who want to feel immersed in Sanctuary.
I'm not assuming that other people will, I'm just saying that it "works" that way. Instead of going to town or where ever to try out a new skill, you can change skills on the fly.
As for feeling "immersed" in sanctuary, i'm not really one of those people anyway. I do agree that the merchants have potential, but as I was saying, instead of "making" good equips via merchants, if you introduce RMAH, people can bypass upgrading merchants and just buy the gear, thus there should be another viable gold sink.
EDIT: as a side note, if they had like an item called "bottle of memory" or whatever that allows you to respec in field i wouldn't really care. i don't mind the respecing at whim so much, it's the fact that they removed the choice for upgrading one skill over another that doesn't sit well with me.
The D2 system wasn't really crop of the cream in terms of "illusions choice". Any skill system that involves points will lead to point-dumping, and when people know they got 60 points, they'll look for the highest sustainable damage output and place them accordingly. For every 1000 builds that people will come up with, only a handful would make sense. The rest would be shooting themselves in the foot while the others will post guides about how awesome their choices are, and suddenly 99% of the playerbase will be following those guides.
Yep, I agree wholeheartedly that d2 skill/stat system was crap. Whenever people talk about d3, they make comparisons either to d2 and WoW, seriously there are other games out there that implement skill/stat systems better than d2 (i didn't play wow so i can't say). Highest sustainable output usually will have different implications. Some skills are better than others for bosses; sometimes you want AoE dmg, sometimes AoE support(like curses and high single target damage, defense piercing based etc. There are many variations of "highest sustainable output" and even more so because of the complex rune system.
People give the proposed rune system less credit than it deserves in my eyes. If you dump all runes into one skill until you get the affixes that you want, you're gonna have plenty of other skills that will have horrible runes. A player who spreads their runes out will probably find that they have a better selection of skills available. Forget following a guide as well, because even though you can use a template, if the runes just don't roll in favor of the guide, you'll be using other skills to "supplement" shortcomings of the recommended template.
I love runes, and their interactions with skills. I truly believed that blizzard really did a great job for this one. I never use guides for character builds, never have, never will. I always believed in testing, seeing what worked for me, seeing what worked for others, then build accordingly. This obviously requires a lot of respecing but that's half the fun. Also, if there are skills with crappy rune affixes, i do hope that blizzard will address it somehow.
As far as the stats go, I don't really see how it could be reworked to be "better" Hardly anyone makes mentionable suggestions, and lets face it - once the best stat for your class is picked, you'll only ever place stats in other slots until you reach certain softcaps. If you don't implement softcaps, balancing becomes an issue.
Perhaps with the current mechanics it may be tricky, and to implement it now would require a lot of work, because stats are really just one of those mechanics that need to be done in the beginning. I would go through the mechanics of this non-blizzard game that successfully(in my opinion) implemented a stat system where there really were a variety of stats. But i think it requires another great wall of text, and it'll digress too far from the original topic.
While i do agree that diablo 3 does have very good and innovative features, integral character customization removal is not one of them.
I don't understand the issue here. Why would anyone want to play a single player game (or co-op against AI), that encourages experimentation in it's gameplay, with cookie cutter builds.
It makes no sense.
I want to defeat Diablo the way I want to defeat him, not the way others think is the "best way" to defeat him. This really is a non issue, and there are enough combinations and permutations to keep people happy here. In fact, this systems favours more variation in builds that work, than the old system, simply because most builds will, in fact work, whereas before, you would favour point dumps into big skills, and because there were few of them, most people would end up doing the same thing.
... there are enough combinations and permutations to keep people happy here. In fact, this systems favours more variation in builds that work, than the old system...
let me give you a very broad timeline so you *might* comprehend.
d2 systems - limited
d3 before 8/1 announcements - a lot of combination
d3 after 8/1 announcements - more limited than before 8/1 announcements but more variety compared to d2.
people are complaining that after 8/1 annoucements, d3=more limited than before 8/1 announcements
... there are enough combinations and permutations to keep people happy here. In fact, this systems favours more variation in builds that work, than the old system...
let me give you a very broad timeline so you *might* comprehend.
d2 systems - limited
d3 before 8/1 announcements - a lot of combination
d3 after 8/1 announcements - more limited than before 8/1 announcements but more variety compared to d2.
people are complaining that after 8/1 annoucements, d3=more limited than before 8/1 announcements
I understand that, but pre 8/1 announcement was still more variety than D2, however, it still focuses on pumping many points into a few skills, whereas post 8/1 you're encouraged to use everything from your skillset rather than just spamming a couple of uber maxed out ones.
to be honest, people who pumped max points into few, likely are lemmings still attached to d2 system and when people make this assumption, they're over simplifying the point system. d2 only did this because skills were inherently unbalanced and they did not want to fix it.
For example, maybe i only want 1 point into hydra(runed so that it's 'arcane hydra') because i plan on using an arcane support build combined with temporal flux. I have a choice and get to decide that i only need one point cause i want to use the hydra as a support spell for slowing down enemies. and maybe i'll decide to put 10 pts into slow time because i want to have enough points to allocate to get 10 arcane torrent for AoE slowing support, and 15 disintegrate for main dmg, 15 diamond skin, 1 pt into teleport, and i can pump the rest into mirror image for pve purposes
It really annoys me when player whinge over change.
You haven't played the game yet.
Neither have you. Therefore, you can't say anything about people thinking it's shit. Therefore, you're just as accountable to be held "annoying" because you think change is good. It's a two-way road, my friend.
I think that this is so much better the Diablo 2 and looking at the gameplay I think "meh", but thinking about actually playing it makes me think "fun"
I reserve judgement until beta, but so far I can't really fault them for anything I've heard about so far.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B."
It really annoys me when player whinge over change.
You haven't played the game yet.
Neither have you. Therefore, you can't say anything about people thinking it's shit. Therefore, you're just as accountable to be held "annoying" because you think change is good. It's a two-way road, my friend.
I see your logic and it's sound. Although proving something false imo requires more facts or argument. Like that post a few pages back saying "This is no longer a diable game" requires way more to back up than saying "I think this change is good for this game"
Also being positive or at least openminded about change does not make for as bad atmosphere on the forums. Raging out, calling blizzard names, insulting other forum members on the other hand does. Although I'm happy it does not occur that much on these forums
This is not a Diablo game because it has abandoned almost everything that made Diablo II what it was. That's more proof than is require to prove my statement.
I'm not raging out, and I'm not insulting members. What on God's green Earth are you talking about?
What game doesn't have ANY flaws? I play D2 SP. I still play it to this day. Bar maybe immunities, I think the game is perfect.
You're acting like someone would have to try shoving a stereo up his ass whilst simultaneously listening to Lady Gaga music and watching a Ben Stiller porno to know that it would be annoying and unpleasant. I don't like the changes because I know what they are. I don't particularly like this game because I've seen how the changes translate in-game and I'm not an utter dumbass who can't predict how things will be like with enough information beforehand.
Diablo II was an utterly revamped version of Diablo I, which didn't have the same amount of production and effort go into it. Games were WAY different back then at the time of Diablo I, much different than they were during the development of Diablo II. They're not nearly that different now from how things were with Diablo II. You can also argue that Diablo 2 has a shitload of added things. Diablo III, thus far, has taken things from Diablo II, then went on to utterly ruin them. What have they added that's new besides the Artisans and the Auction House, both concepts that I don't particularly wet my pants over?
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
What you seem to fail to realize is that instead of augmenting skills via a skill tree, we are doing it through the rune system. And since Blizzard wants to make top tier runes extremely rare, unique to the spell it is used on, and with random enchants, finding the perfect rune for your skill is not going to be easy. This means that you probably wont be swapping spells around "at a whim" end game, unless you have completely perfected all of your spells. Chances are, this will take quite some time. And with regards to the fact that runes will be a random drop, this will make the skill system a little closer to Diablo 1 where you had to collect books for your abilities.
One could argue that these runes are only variations of one spell but let me point out that these "variations" can take a base spell and make its use completely different. For instance, you take a skill like whirlwind and you give it a rune to knock back enemies, you have just turned it in to an escape mechanism. You modify it so that it applies a confusion effect on enemies, you have made it an aoe crowd control. How you choose to tailor your spells to your play style will determine what other spells will compliment it best. This is a huge step away from cookie cutter builds as it will be very hard to say that "effect a" is far superior to "effect b" since both effects will synergies with other spells in different ways. Sure you could try to maximize damage, but that simply means that that is where you put the most value... this doesn't mean it is the "best" option. Will this end cookie cutter builds? No. But then, nothing will. What it does do is make it so that these so-called "optimum" builds will be much less concrete.
On a final note, I think it is definitely a good thing for people to voice their opinions both for and against the system but I also think it is important that every one realize that we haven't really seen these systems in action yet. It is not good to immediately draw a conclusion and reject all other possibilities with out having the full picture in mind. And this goes for people who support the system as well; I remain optimistic, but I concede that it is possible it wont be all that great. If you have doubts, that is fine but at least be open to giving things a chance. If you really don't like it, just wait for reviews of the game to come out before making a purchase. Simple as that.
No... they are simply shitting on those people who fear change and don't have much imagination for what Blizzard's proposed system could be. Diablo 2 did many things different than Diablo 1. And before its release, there was just as much controversy as there is now in regards to skills ("What?! They don't have to find their abilities? WTF!!!!"). Did that make it a bad game? Hell no... it is still played today and has many loyal fans (myself included). Now, like its predecessor, Diablo 3 is changing things up. But that isn't a bad thing... it just means that it is a different game. Not simply an expansion pack to Diablo 2 with better graphics.
This doesn't mean that I feel Blizzard is infallible in their decision, but I am not going to freak out and froth at the mouth until I actually see how things pan out.
Instead of allowing people to choose what "kind" of character they're going to make, they give you a generic character.
To be honest, someone should be answering this question: what would be better, tweaking JUST skills with rune items OR tweaking skills with BOTH runes and points. To me, diversity is always better.
and auto-stats... if it was broken in d2, aim for a better one in d3... but they choose to take the easier path... but i digress.
I do criticize them for choosing this path because I have played games that pretty much give you a generic character. and compared to other games that give you more choices, they pale in comparison.
By the way, i also realize that may be high, and that if blizzard were to spend their time balancing stats, skills etc in pve and pvp environments (to an extent) they probably won't make 2011 release.
EDIT: what.. skill tree? i'm not even talking about that... they got rid of the tree way back and i was glad.
i didn't see this question before so i'll answer it now. No, i won't. i'll likely choose something, use it for a while, decide that it's not for me then try out a modified version or another skill. to be honest, i was thinking respecing would have been a perfect gold sink. they can even make it based on level... the value of gold as a currency will only be valuable if there are valuable gold sinks that will pull gold out of the market hopefully in a progressive way. (something like higher level respecs cost more, higher level runes cost more to remove etc. so that the newer people aren't forced to spend too much of whatever small amounts of gold they may have acquired.) and right now i'm seriously wondering if they even plan on making gold a valuable currency, now that gold has to compete with the real world currency.
If you don't plan on respeccing willy-nilly, why is there a big assumption that a lot of other people will?
Also, I think that people will find the merchants to serve as very viable gold sinks. Of course, who knows? They might wear out their usefulness in the late game. But they have a lot more potential than Blizzard has let on, I think, and I find it extremely likely that making skills a gold sink, while perhaps viable in a gameplay sort of way, would have just felt out of place. It wouldn't have contributed to the feel or personality of the game. It doesn't logically follow that money can influence your talents, and I think that on a very back-of-the-mind level, that would have bothered the players who want to feel immersed in Sanctuary.
As for feeling "immersed" in sanctuary, i'm not really one of those people anyway. I do agree that the merchants have potential, but as I was saying, instead of "making" good equips via merchants, if you introduce RMAH, people can bypass upgrading merchants and just buy the gear, thus there should be another viable gold sink.
EDIT: as a side note, if they had like an item called "bottle of memory" or whatever that allows you to respec in field i wouldn't really care. i don't mind the respecing at whim so much, it's the fact that they removed the choice for upgrading one skill over another that doesn't sit well with me.
I love runes, and their interactions with skills. I truly believed that blizzard really did a great job for this one. I never use guides for character builds, never have, never will. I always believed in testing, seeing what worked for me, seeing what worked for others, then build accordingly. This obviously requires a lot of respecing but that's half the fun. Also, if there are skills with crappy rune affixes, i do hope that blizzard will address it somehow.
Perhaps with the current mechanics it may be tricky, and to implement it now would require a lot of work, because stats are really just one of those mechanics that need to be done in the beginning. I would go through the mechanics of this non-blizzard game that successfully(in my opinion) implemented a stat system where there really were a variety of stats. But i think it requires another great wall of text, and it'll digress too far from the original topic.
While i do agree that diablo 3 does have very good and innovative features, integral character customization removal is not one of them.
It makes no sense.
I want to defeat Diablo the way I want to defeat him, not the way others think is the "best way" to defeat him. This really is a non issue, and there are enough combinations and permutations to keep people happy here. In fact, this systems favours more variation in builds that work, than the old system, simply because most builds will, in fact work, whereas before, you would favour point dumps into big skills, and because there were few of them, most people would end up doing the same thing.
let me give you a very broad timeline so you *might* comprehend.
d2 systems - limited
d3 before 8/1 announcements - a lot of combination
d3 after 8/1 announcements - more limited than before 8/1 announcements but more variety compared to d2.
people are complaining that after 8/1 annoucements, d3=more limited than before 8/1 announcements
I understand that, but pre 8/1 announcement was still more variety than D2, however, it still focuses on pumping many points into a few skills, whereas post 8/1 you're encouraged to use everything from your skillset rather than just spamming a couple of uber maxed out ones.
For example, maybe i only want 1 point into hydra(runed so that it's 'arcane hydra') because i plan on using an arcane support build combined with temporal flux. I have a choice and get to decide that i only need one point cause i want to use the hydra as a support spell for slowing down enemies. and maybe i'll decide to put 10 pts into slow time because i want to have enough points to allocate to get 10 arcane torrent for AoE slowing support, and 15 disintegrate for main dmg, 15 diamond skin, 1 pt into teleport, and i can pump the rest into mirror image for pve purposes
i sure as hell will be using all of these.
edit: for clarification
Neither have you. Therefore, you can't say anything about people thinking it's shit. Therefore, you're just as accountable to be held "annoying" because you think change is good. It's a two-way road, my friend.
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
I reserve judgement until beta, but so far I can't really fault them for anything I've heard about so far.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This is not a Diablo game because it has abandoned almost everything that made Diablo II what it was. That's more proof than is require to prove my statement.
I'm not raging out, and I'm not insulting members. What on God's green Earth are you talking about?
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
You're acting like someone would have to try shoving a stereo up his ass whilst simultaneously listening to Lady Gaga music and watching a Ben Stiller porno to know that it would be annoying and unpleasant. I don't like the changes because I know what they are. I don't particularly like this game because I've seen how the changes translate in-game and I'm not an utter dumbass who can't predict how things will be like with enough information beforehand.
Diablo II was an utterly revamped version of Diablo I, which didn't have the same amount of production and effort go into it. Games were WAY different back then at the time of Diablo I, much different than they were during the development of Diablo II. They're not nearly that different now from how things were with Diablo II. You can also argue that Diablo 2 has a shitload of added things. Diablo III, thus far, has taken things from Diablo II, then went on to utterly ruin them. What have they added that's new besides the Artisans and the Auction House, both concepts that I don't particularly wet my pants over?
Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions