I have been doing a lot of researching into D3 recently, and I wanted to find out if attirbute points are still being spent automatically. I read or heard from a podcast somewhere that as part of the attribute system change, that characters will automatically have their attribute points spent for them, supposedly in a way that should be good for them.
Is this still the way attribute points are being handled as far as we know?
I realize that things can always change during development, but I would really not like my attribute points to be spent without me deciding where they go. Traits, skills and runes do offer quite a lot of room for diversity, but I think there would be cases like leveling two of the same hero class where you would want even more emphasis on character differentiation (for example making a crit/attackspeed Barb for pve and also a defense/tanky/cc Barb for team pvp).
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Bashiok - "How are the tests on feature XXX going?"
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
Other than skill choice, traits will greatly impact the niche you are trying to fill with your character. With very few trait points but many traits, I am sure this will help build diversity amongst each character within the same class. Not to mention they said each trait will be large stat increases and not just. +10% but more like +50%
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Another form of stat customization will be gems and charms. That's enough variety without the risks to make useless builds by assigning wrong stats to your character.
At first I was alittle upset by this but after thinking about it this will probably be for the better. Who knows what will happen though once the game actually goes live.
The idea behind it is that people are stupid, and unless you've played the game 500 times like we all have in Diablo II, then you won't know the best stats to put in you're character until you screw up 50 times.
So they decided to make the stats automatically be places based on your level, this will limit the equipment you can use. But remember, the customization in Diablo II wasn't mostly your stats, it was the items you wear. On top of that, you might not be able to customize the stats, but they added runes and skill customizations, and some other stuff we don't know about.
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"Not Even Death Can Save You From Me" ~ Diablo (II)
This has been debated to death and I'm in agreement with what the others here are saying; within a couple of months the 'perfect' allotment will be discovered and everyone will just allocate everything more or less exactly the same way, so it becomes automatic and makes for a very dated and dull customization experience that is ostensibly a misnomer, you're not customizing at all by that point, you're doing what everyone is doing.
Taking it out of the equation lets them more easily balance the more complex and fun options people have already mentioned; things that actually let you self apart and play to your personal style.
+1 in Blizzard's column on this one, it was definitely a bold choice to break such a convention, and I think that in the end is why we love Blizzard to begin with.
Thank you for the replies, especially from those who actually read my post. I do understand that it isn't the end of the world for customization; like others and myself know, there are still lots of areas in the game that allow customization and even attribute boots and what not.
I guess my primary gripe is how it seems like Blizz is holding our hands on this one. The philosophy seems sound initially - don't LET the players screw up their attributes
(seems good), everyone will figure out a "best" that makes attributes sort of pushed into automatic builds anyways (seems reasonable), etc. However, I still am against it.
I'm gonna play a little devil's advocate here, but bear with me. Does this mean that Blizz should ask you if you are playing a DPS monk or Support monk, and then automatically level traits, stats, and auto-sell items that it doesn't deem necessary? Should the game take note that you are a Wizard with Staff Specialization and then automatically sell/salvage Wizard wands that you find, because it doesn't want you to "screw up"? Obvsiouly, most people would say no, that's a terrible idea, and they would be right.
Anywho, I feel like I'm a one man army against Blizzard and Diablo 3 fans, so I won't keep this thread alive any longer. Still, it sort of irks me seeing one of the traditional systems of Diablo being taken out, even though it's probably not as impactful as I think it looks right now.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Bashiok - "How are the tests on feature XXX going?"
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
Don't feel to put off here, when this first became known almost everyone went crazy against it, and it's just that most have settled into the idea (in my opinion, obviously, rightly so).
To use your own metaphor, I'd think of like this: Blizzard is holding our hand on this topic, but only to better swing us into the chaos of a thousand crazier, more complicated modes of customization. Removing one mechanic that allows them to better implement a dozen others; a support monk alone might have a hundred different rune / equipment / skill combos. I think once D3 gets more playtime people will look back and see that stat allocation is one small drop removed from a rather large bucket, only from our current pre-beta even perspective, it's hard to really have a confident feel for how big that bucket is.
I believe this is a great way to sort of force you to get certain items you wouldn't normally wear, just because they boost the core attributes you want for your build. This means they will have to add a TON of items for all the different possibilities. Also, the charms within the Talisman will add primarily to core attribute points (but that's probably not the only thing they are limited to boosting).
The problem with choosing how you spend them was people just put 80% into vitality, and I think that made for pretty boring gameplay.
No, that's not the problem. The only reason why people spend 90% of their stats with vitality in D2 is because the atribute system is not balanced. Would you make a base energy sorc if energy had a 0,5% extra spell damage per point? (Like it was in D3 in the beggining)
The only reason why I like auto stats is because i dont have to waste my time brainstorming with the "fine tuning" of the atributes. I can do that with talisman and gems that will most likely result in big stat changes.
One thing that people forget is that game developers CREATE the rules for a game. They create literally EVERYTHING that happens (aside from glitches).
You can't even imagine how much detail is necessary to implement this stuff let alone make it playable to such an extent. Honestly, I've only recently started programming and developing games and I can't even imagine the level of detail involved .
The point to this statement is that people (in general) are dumb, and it is their job as game developers to both make the game accessible to allow new players and complex enough to interest veteran players like us. People hate change and it can only be cured with time. When D3 was first announced I couldn't imagine how many complaints there were in the forums because of the announcement gameplay trailer. Like the other guy said, they removed one mechanic to implement a dozen others that work together. If you look at Diablo II, its an extremely flawed game...
You, as well as hundreds of other gamers are used to using attribute systems for customization, but when you are told that it will be changed, you can't understand why/how they would do this, and what other possibilities are there. To end this, i'm just saying that once you actually play it and get used to the other new advanced methods of customization, I can guarentee you won't be worried about customizing your character.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Not Even Death Can Save You From Me" ~ Diablo (II)
Is this still the way attribute points are being handled as far as we know?
I realize that things can always change during development, but I would really not like my attribute points to be spent without me deciding where they go. Traits, skills and runes do offer quite a lot of room for diversity, but I think there would be cases like leveling two of the same hero class where you would want even more emphasis on character differentiation (for example making a crit/attackspeed Barb for pve and also a defense/tanky/cc Barb for team pvp).
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
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Traits, equipment, talisman, possibly gems.
So they decided to make the stats automatically be places based on your level, this will limit the equipment you can use. But remember, the customization in Diablo II wasn't mostly your stats, it was the items you wear. On top of that, you might not be able to customize the stats, but they added runes and skill customizations, and some other stuff we don't know about.
Taking it out of the equation lets them more easily balance the more complex and fun options people have already mentioned; things that actually let you self apart and play to your personal style.
+1 in Blizzard's column on this one, it was definitely a bold choice to break such a convention, and I think that in the end is why we love Blizzard to begin with.
I guess my primary gripe is how it seems like Blizz is holding our hands on this one. The philosophy seems sound initially - don't LET the players screw up their attributes
(seems good), everyone will figure out a "best" that makes attributes sort of pushed into automatic builds anyways (seems reasonable), etc. However, I still am against it.
I'm gonna play a little devil's advocate here, but bear with me. Does this mean that Blizz should ask you if you are playing a DPS monk or Support monk, and then automatically level traits, stats, and auto-sell items that it doesn't deem necessary? Should the game take note that you are a Wizard with Staff Specialization and then automatically sell/salvage Wizard wands that you find, because it doesn't want you to "screw up"? Obvsiouly, most people would say no, that's a terrible idea, and they would be right.
Anywho, I feel like I'm a one man army against Blizzard and Diablo 3 fans, so I won't keep this thread alive any longer. Still, it sort of irks me seeing one of the traditional systems of Diablo being taken out, even though it's probably not as impactful as I think it looks right now.
D3 Dev - "Well, our test chimpanzee was not able to understand feature XXX, but he is not a smart chimp."
Jay W - "WHAT?! Have it incinerated! Them simplify, no, REMOVE feature XXX!"
Players - "Wow that was close! I could not understand XXX feature, as I am legally retarded/in the Diablo 3 target audience!"
To use your own metaphor, I'd think of like this: Blizzard is holding our hand on this topic, but only to better swing us into the chaos of a thousand crazier, more complicated modes of customization. Removing one mechanic that allows them to better implement a dozen others; a support monk alone might have a hundred different rune / equipment / skill combos. I think once D3 gets more playtime people will look back and see that stat allocation is one small drop removed from a rather large bucket, only from our current pre-beta even perspective, it's hard to really have a confident feel for how big that bucket is.
No, that's not the problem. The only reason why people spend 90% of their stats with vitality in D2 is because the atribute system is not balanced. Would you make a base energy sorc if energy had a 0,5% extra spell damage per point? (Like it was in D3 in the beggining)
The only reason why I like auto stats is because i dont have to waste my time brainstorming with the "fine tuning" of the atributes. I can do that with talisman and gems that will most likely result in big stat changes.
You can't even imagine how much detail is necessary to implement this stuff let alone make it playable to such an extent. Honestly, I've only recently started programming and developing games and I can't even imagine the level of detail involved .
The point to this statement is that people (in general) are dumb, and it is their job as game developers to both make the game accessible to allow new players and complex enough to interest veteran players like us. People hate change and it can only be cured with time. When D3 was first announced I couldn't imagine how many complaints there were in the forums because of the announcement gameplay trailer. Like the other guy said, they removed one mechanic to implement a dozen others that work together. If you look at Diablo II, its an extremely flawed game...
You, as well as hundreds of other gamers are used to using attribute systems for customization, but when you are told that it will be changed, you can't understand why/how they would do this, and what other possibilities are there. To end this, i'm just saying that once you actually play it and get used to the other new advanced methods of customization, I can guarentee you won't be worried about customizing your character.