since each skill have 7 ranks, blizzard can add a +1 rank bonus for a "favorite" build the player customized, while players are still able to switch between builds.
for example, a level 60 player with all rank 7 skills can customize a "favorite" build. when you select that build, all skills are given a bonus of +1 rank, and hence rank 8 skills.
the "favorite build" can be altered, but with a cooldown ( 1 day, 2 day, etc).
players can still switch to any other builds, but whether in combat or in town is up for discussion.
in conclusion, a "favorite" build have the potential to have rank 8 skills and hence be slightly more powerful than a "non-favorite" build with the same skills.
this allows players to try different builds but also maintain a sense of uniqueness.
this is just an idea to fix the skill swapping issue. it might be a bad idea but at least the intention is good, so please no flaming!
Or, perhaps, in stead of making an inhibition on skill swapping, that effectively debuffs or removes me from combat, just let us switch out skills on the fly.
since each skill have 7 ranks, blizzard can add a +1 rank bonus for a "favorite" build the player customized, while players are still able to switch between builds.
I don't think the skills have ranks, I believe you are thinking about rune ranks. Is this what you really meant?
Most skills are based off weapon damage and I assume otherwise they scale with the character's level.
since each skill have 7 ranks, blizzard can add a +1 rank bonus for a "favorite" build the player customized, while players are still able to switch between builds.
I don't think the skills have ranks, I believe you are thinking about rune ranks. Is this what you really meant?
Most skills are based off weapon damage and I assume otherwise they scale with the character's level.
Or, perhaps, in stead of making an inhibition on skill swapping, that effectively debuffs or removes me from combat, just let us switch out skills on the fly.
but wouldn't that take out the uniqueness of each character totally?
Or, perhaps, in stead of making an inhibition on skill swapping, that effectively debuffs or removes me from combat, just let us switch out skills on the fly.
This has been discussed ages ago before beta was released and a few problems with the ability to swap skills whenever you want was that you'd be doing so constantly during battle to counter whatever new demons you're about to fight.
Finally beta is released and then lo and behold, Blizzard announces that they're going to look into making it a town only skill swap because players would literally keep their skill page open all the time.
Or, perhaps, in stead of making an inhibition on skill swapping, that effectively debuffs or removes me from combat, just let us switch out skills on the fly.
This. I can live with the in town thing for a faster release, but then I expect an in combat feature added into the game that will enable me to swap out in the field.
Any feature that penalizes me for trying ONE out of BILLIONS of builds is not a good system to implement.
It makes no sense, and is detrimental to the current design.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Or, perhaps, in stead of making an inhibition on skill swapping, that effectively debuffs or removes me from combat, just let us switch out skills on the fly.
This has been discussed ages ago before beta was released and a few problems with the ability to swap skills whenever you want was that you'd be doing so constantly during battle to counter whatever new demons you're about to fight.
Finally beta is released and then lo and behold, Blizzard announces that they're going to look into making it a town only skill swap because players would literally keep their skill page open all the time.
Honestly if you can switch skills DURING a fight, then you deserve to. I know I would have to wait until I had a free moment to switch skills. Why is it such an atrocity that you can switch skills on the fly? Blizzard said that they want Diablo to be super immersion and constantly want you in combat, but all the sudden changing your skills has to be limited.
1)Honestly, if you can just switch skills on the fly then you would have to keep your skills page open all the time to try to make it as optimal as you can, which I'm sure it will get very annoying to people fast. If they keep it in, they might as well put a 10-15 skill bar down there if they were to keep swapping skills during combat in the game. But they said they wanted only a few skill bars to make builds feel unique to that person as much as they could, for whatever they choose.
2)Again if they implement said swapping, that makes "builds" and "uniqueness" kinda nonexistent cause everyone will use almost the exact same skill combination/swapping during certain fights or situations. Which in turn just makes the game boring cause people will want to do this exactly in order to kill Inferno Boss X with no problems, makes it less challenging.
For example: Hey look its the Azmodan lets do, A active skill then swap it with B active skill and repeat it the entire time, while all we have are passive and buff skills on our bar to max out dps.
3)You'll have to rune EVERY skill in your skill tree. Which again will kill the amount of runes you'll see in the AH and make it much more harder for people to decide if they want to waste their level 7 rune on Blizzard vs Meteor. Cause they have to swap it all the time for different mob packs Blizzard for slow and Meteor for dps. Why don't you just stick with, say, Meteor and rune it to add the slow? Why do I HAVE to swap it every time it just restricts me for any choice I have if I don't like the Blizzard skill at all.(I love it actually just and example)
To me thats just not fun; that you have to have a page blocking half your view and that you HAVE to swap to skills you don't want to use just for certain fights. It takes a lot of the customization out of the game cause in the later difficulties, especially Inferno, you'll become dependent on having the skill page out and swapping every other set of mobs you encounter. Then people will start complain about the need for it and ask for more skill bars which is already explained above. When in reality they should of farmed Hell more like Blizzard intended, and work through the mobs with better gear and your favorite build. I thought people complained the game was too easy anyways, letting you swap during runs really kills the difficulty to me. Whatever happened to using what is your favorite and having to make it challenging to play with what you chose. If you have an answer for every possible encounter instead of trying to figure it out, that just doesn't seem fun to me that you can just shortcut through something with Optimal-Build-X.
Maybe I'm just ranting again.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The righteous shall fall before the wicked, and all of Creation shall tremble before the burning standards of Hell."
To me thats just not fun; that you have to have a page blocking half your view and that you HAVE to swap to skills you don't want to use just for certain fights. It takes a lot of the customization out of the game cause in the later difficulties, especially Inferno, you'll become dependent on having the skill page out and swapping every other set of mobs you encounter. Then people will start complain about the need for it and ask for more skill bars which is already explained above. When in reality they should of farmed Hell more like Blizzard intended, and work through the mobs with better gear and your favorite build. I thought people complained the game was too easy anyways, letting you swap during runs really kills the difficulty to me. Whatever happened to using what is your favorite and having to make it challenging to play with what you chose. If you have an answer for every possible encounter instead of trying to figure it out, that just doesn't seem fun to me that you can just shortcut through something with Optimal-Build-X.
If you can swap freely you HAVE to be swapping skills constantly? That makes no sense at all to me. If you take the time during battle to keep that skill page open then that's your fault, it's not like you are in competition with someone to be the best/fastest at killing something. And to remove the ability of free swapping is, as I said, against their basic principle of keeping you in combat. There will eventually be an optimal build, and the only way to fight that is when they release expansions that add or effect skills, or add new classes. But until then by debuffing or forcing me to remove myself from combat is just going to be the most annoying thing in the game. Blizzard wanted to stop the returning to town to sell items to make sure you are immersed into the game, but for some reason people are trying to find ways to put me off my path and have to return to town when I reach a new level because it would make the game too "easy" if I could test out the skill.
#1 I agree that it would kind of suck. It would be an exploit to the system, even if it had a skill cap, its still an exploit.
#2 That is completely and utter speculation. Cookie cutter builds will exists, thats true, but there is no way to prevent that even if you do hinder ones ability to swap skills. Your uniqueness is not in any danger by me swapping skills. That makes no sense at all, and in fact the exact opposite would be true.
#3 Rank 7 runes will likely be rare, that is true. And it is also true that, it will take some time before you can get a good portion of your skills to Rank7. But this is not an argument against allowing skill swapping. As you have just proven, the requirement for high ranking runes is a punishment to the skill swappers.
If I want to try every Rank7 wizard skill I need at least 125 Rank7 runes, whilst you need 6 for your set build. I may even be forced to waste inventory space on runes, just so I can swap out later. I may also have to waste time porting back to town.
Isnt this more than enough punishment for skill swapping? Why is it also necessary to force us to also play with an arm tied behind our back?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
How about we keep the system as it is? I'm really having trouble understanding why people feel the need to change this, I mean just because it's a brand new system, it's like people are scared of it or something. If you have the urge to make a rule that you go to town to swap, do it. But don't make the rest of us suffer because you don't like it, when it in no way harms you.
I was going to close this as it has been thoroughly discussed, but the recent new info from Blizzcon makes it kinda legit, and it's about discussing your idea instead of gathering the general feeling of the community about this (http://www.diablofans.com/topic/29011-skill-swaping-vote-topic-now-with-more-option - like in this thread), so let's see where it goes.
Your idea is interesting, and it would probably solve the issue. But I feel the development team wants the least complicated solution to this problem, and your suggestion is maybe a little too complex (using their design philosophy so far as a judging guideline).
Sorry for the incoming wall of text, I need to put this out there.
I'm amazed at some people being mad for the restriction being implemented. We didn't have respeccing on Diablo 2. A TON of rpg-like games nowadays don't have any form of respec (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Witcher). Why must D3 have it? Being able to be a master-of-all-trades and change identity every 5 minutes isn't what makes an rpg-like game good.
We have free respecs already, not limited by quest progression, not limited by level, not limited by amount of gold (so that experimenting doesn't screw your ability to buy items), not limited by difficulty or anything like that - why is one small restriction a huge let down to some? It's like saying "I wanna play the game my way, give me all the items and access to all quests from minute 1, cause if I have fun like that, I should be able to do it. I'm not forcing anyone to do it, I just wanna do it myself." This isn't good game design, this is mainstream crap that kills a game in less than a month after it's released, cause the players who wanted that freedom so much are never going to experience all of it, it's just another mainstream trend.
The only reason the design team put respecs on Diablo is to allow experimentation (read: trying skills/builds) as you level up without having to put another 100 hours into that character (or searching an internet forum for a build that will work on Hell, like we did on D2), it is NOT to allow people to switch skills every 5 minutes and not have to commit to anything.
I've said this on the forums after the August 1st reveal (and got flamed/trolled hard by some posters), and Jay Wilson himself confirmed (on Blizzcon) that's one of their worries and one of the reasons for such restriction (commitment to a build). I'm glad to see the development team managed to see how bad that would've been gameplay-wise.
Honestly if you can switch skills DURING a fight, then you deserve to. I know I would have to wait until I had a free moment to switch skills. Why is it such an atrocity that you can switch skills on the fly? Blizzard said that they want Diablo to be super immersion and constantly want you in combat, but all the sudden changing your skills has to be limited.
I don't think that's their thought process, honestly. If I had to guess, it's about not forcing people into thinking the optimal way of playing the game is with an open menu, that's not how most people remember playing Diablo 2 (nor how they wanna play D3), with open menus all the time and only 1/3rd of the screen being dedicated to showing the action.
Honestly if you can switch skills DURING a fight, then you deserve to.
This is what I said in a similar thread created a while ago. However, people were quick to inform me that it would be no difficult task to create a bot or something to do this for you.
How about we keep the system as it is? I'm really having trouble understanding why people feel the need to change this, I mean just because it's a brand new system, it's like people are scared of it or something. If you have the urge to make a rule that you go to town to swap, do it. But don't make the rest of us suffer because you don't like it, when it in no way harms you.
You could exploit it in PvP, and make use of every CD.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
I agree with a lot of what everyone has said so far and I can see where you coming from. But remember as game developers they want the most optimal solution and having a skill page in the way for players to play isn't really a good idea, as complaints will certainly roll in sooner or later. And really can't add a ton of skill bars since it will kinda narrow the entire "your unique build" thing to just runes if you can just drop down all the skills on your hot bar.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The righteous shall fall before the wicked, and all of Creation shall tremble before the burning standards of Hell."
I'm amazed at some people being mad for the restriction being implemented. We didn't have respeccing on Diablo 2. A TON of rpg-like games nowadays don't have any form of respec (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Witcher). Why must D3 have it? Being able to be a master-of-all-trades and change identity every 5 minutes isn't what makes an rpg-like game good.
We have free respecs already, not limited by quest progression, not limited by level, not limited by amount of gold (so that experimenting doesn't screw your ability to buy items), not limited by difficulty or anything like that - why is one small restriction a huge let down to some? It's like saying "I wanna play the game my way, give me all the items and access to all quests from minute 1, cause if I have fun like that, I should be able to do it. I'm not forcing anyone to do it, I just wanna do it myself." This isn't good game design, this is mainstream crap that kills a game in less than a month after it's released, cause the players who wanted that freedom so much are never going to experience all of it, it's just another mainstream trend.
The only reason the design team put respecs on Diablo is to allow experimentation (read: trying skills/builds) as you level up without having to put another 100 hours into that character (or searching an internet forum for a build that will work on Hell, like we did on D2), it is NOT to allow people to switch skills every 5 minutes and not have to commit to anything.
I am not particularly mad about being forced to go back to town, though I do consider it a bit of an annoyance. But even, Blizz developers do not particularly like the idea. Its just the simplest, quickest fix that will not delay the game. What I find perplexing is how some player-base insist that the players who wish to experiment with different skills and builds should be treated as second class "citizens".
Because the majority of the playerbase want respecs. What is the point in designing and having billions of various builds if you cant really test any of them out? The design of the game forces skill swapping, at least during leveling.
One of the absolute worst parts of D2 was making new characters just to try out another build. Or even worse, if you messed a character up. Which we all did at first, I am sure. How many screwups did it take before you finally went online, or learned the hard way? Such a system is obviously not a good way to attract new players.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One is never hurt by being given additional choices, only by taking them away. A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
A) They don't WANT you to have all the skills at once, they've said so a dozen or more times.
They're balancing the game against characters with some nominally limited set of skills.
C) If its possible to switch on the fly it becomes macro/bot-able.
They want you to be able to try new builds (ala respec but easier) but NOT be able to use all skills at all times or even even on an encounter by encounter basis. In short going back to town is a pretty painless way to do this. I'm actually surprised that they havent made the skill swap cost gold - it would make a good gold sink for the game.
The logical way of solving this problem is quite simple if you ask me.
CASTTIME!
They already use on the stone of jorden so you cant just TP back to town when in danger. If you get hit while casting - too bad for you, you get interrupted.
So, as I see it, by applying casting time to skill swaping, we wont have to go back to town, we cant swap on the fly, like blizzard doesnt want us to, and they dont have to introduce a in/out of combat system.
My 2 cents
This idea actually seems pretty good to me, and seems to solve most the problems. Make it so the cast is always interrupted if anything hits you at all, so you can't just put some sort of shield up and do it. Though I do see a problem with this for certain abilities like the Monk's Inner Sanctuary that blocks anything from coming into the circle. They could easily fix that by making the cast time longer than the shield lasts, though. It could be designed so you pick all the new skills you want to switch to first, then you hit a button and then the cast time starts (so you aren't casting for each individual spell you change - that'd be really annoying). I know this might sound annoying to some people, but I think it would be a lot quicker than having to go back to town every time.
Then again, if you're in a group and not being attacked during a boss fight or some such, you'd be able to swap skills still, so maybe this idea wouldn't work as well as it originally sounded. :/
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for example, a level 60 player with all rank 7 skills can customize a "favorite" build. when you select that build, all skills are given a bonus of +1 rank, and hence rank 8 skills.
the "favorite build" can be altered, but with a cooldown ( 1 day, 2 day, etc).
players can still switch to any other builds, but whether in combat or in town is up for discussion.
in conclusion, a "favorite" build have the potential to have rank 8 skills and hence be slightly more powerful than a "non-favorite" build with the same skills.
this allows players to try different builds but also maintain a sense of uniqueness.
this is just an idea to fix the skill swapping issue. it might be a bad idea but at least the intention is good, so please no flaming!
I don't think the skills have ranks, I believe you are thinking about rune ranks. Is this what you really meant?
Most skills are based off weapon damage and I assume otherwise they scale with the character's level.
yea sorry, thats what i meant.
but wouldn't that take out the uniqueness of each character totally?
Finally beta is released and then lo and behold, Blizzard announces that they're going to look into making it a town only skill swap because players would literally keep their skill page open all the time.
This. I can live with the in town thing for a faster release, but then I expect an in combat feature added into the game that will enable me to swap out in the field.
Any feature that penalizes me for trying ONE out of BILLIONS of builds is not a good system to implement.
It makes no sense, and is detrimental to the current design.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Honestly if you can switch skills DURING a fight, then you deserve to. I know I would have to wait until I had a free moment to switch skills. Why is it such an atrocity that you can switch skills on the fly? Blizzard said that they want Diablo to be super immersion and constantly want you in combat, but all the sudden changing your skills has to be limited.
1)Honestly, if you can just switch skills on the fly then you would have to keep your skills page open all the time to try to make it as optimal as you can, which I'm sure it will get very annoying to people fast. If they keep it in, they might as well put a 10-15 skill bar down there if they were to keep swapping skills during combat in the game. But they said they wanted only a few skill bars to make builds feel unique to that person as much as they could, for whatever they choose.
2)Again if they implement said swapping, that makes "builds" and "uniqueness" kinda nonexistent cause everyone will use almost the exact same skill combination/swapping during certain fights or situations. Which in turn just makes the game boring cause people will want to do this exactly in order to kill Inferno Boss X with no problems, makes it less challenging.
For example: Hey look its the Azmodan lets do, A active skill then swap it with B active skill and repeat it the entire time, while all we have are passive and buff skills on our bar to max out dps.
3)You'll have to rune EVERY skill in your skill tree. Which again will kill the amount of runes you'll see in the AH and make it much more harder for people to decide if they want to waste their level 7 rune on Blizzard vs Meteor. Cause they have to swap it all the time for different mob packs Blizzard for slow and Meteor for dps. Why don't you just stick with, say, Meteor and rune it to add the slow? Why do I HAVE to swap it every time it just restricts me for any choice I have if I don't like the Blizzard skill at all.(I love it actually just and example)
To me thats just not fun; that you have to have a page blocking half your view and that you HAVE to swap to skills you don't want to use just for certain fights. It takes a lot of the customization out of the game cause in the later difficulties, especially Inferno, you'll become dependent on having the skill page out and swapping every other set of mobs you encounter. Then people will start complain about the need for it and ask for more skill bars which is already explained above. When in reality they should of farmed Hell more like Blizzard intended, and work through the mobs with better gear and your favorite build. I thought people complained the game was too easy anyways, letting you swap during runs really kills the difficulty to me. Whatever happened to using what is your favorite and having to make it challenging to play with what you chose. If you have an answer for every possible encounter instead of trying to figure it out, that just doesn't seem fun to me that you can just shortcut through something with Optimal-Build-X.
Maybe I'm just ranting again.
If you can swap freely you HAVE to be swapping skills constantly? That makes no sense at all to me. If you take the time during battle to keep that skill page open then that's your fault, it's not like you are in competition with someone to be the best/fastest at killing something. And to remove the ability of free swapping is, as I said, against their basic principle of keeping you in combat. There will eventually be an optimal build, and the only way to fight that is when they release expansions that add or effect skills, or add new classes. But until then by debuffing or forcing me to remove myself from combat is just going to be the most annoying thing in the game. Blizzard wanted to stop the returning to town to sell items to make sure you are immersed into the game, but for some reason people are trying to find ways to put me off my path and have to return to town when I reach a new level because it would make the game too "easy" if I could test out the skill.
#2 That is completely and utter speculation. Cookie cutter builds will exists, thats true, but there is no way to prevent that even if you do hinder ones ability to swap skills. Your uniqueness is not in any danger by me swapping skills. That makes no sense at all, and in fact the exact opposite would be true.
#3 Rank 7 runes will likely be rare, that is true. And it is also true that, it will take some time before you can get a good portion of your skills to Rank7. But this is not an argument against allowing skill swapping. As you have just proven, the requirement for high ranking runes is a punishment to the skill swappers.
If I want to try every Rank7 wizard skill I need at least 125 Rank7 runes, whilst you need 6 for your set build. I may even be forced to waste inventory space on runes, just so I can swap out later. I may also have to waste time porting back to town.
Isnt this more than enough punishment for skill swapping? Why is it also necessary to force us to also play with an arm tied behind our back?
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Your idea is interesting, and it would probably solve the issue. But I feel the development team wants the least complicated solution to this problem, and your suggestion is maybe a little too complex (using their design philosophy so far as a judging guideline).
Sorry for the incoming wall of text, I need to put this out there.
I'm amazed at some people being mad for the restriction being implemented. We didn't have respeccing on Diablo 2. A TON of rpg-like games nowadays don't have any form of respec (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Witcher). Why must D3 have it? Being able to be a master-of-all-trades and change identity every 5 minutes isn't what makes an rpg-like game good.
We have free respecs already, not limited by quest progression, not limited by level, not limited by amount of gold (so that experimenting doesn't screw your ability to buy items), not limited by difficulty or anything like that - why is one small restriction a huge let down to some? It's like saying "I wanna play the game my way, give me all the items and access to all quests from minute 1, cause if I have fun like that, I should be able to do it. I'm not forcing anyone to do it, I just wanna do it myself." This isn't good game design, this is mainstream crap that kills a game in less than a month after it's released, cause the players who wanted that freedom so much are never going to experience all of it, it's just another mainstream trend.
The only reason the design team put respecs on Diablo is to allow experimentation (read: trying skills/builds) as you level up without having to put another 100 hours into that character (or searching an internet forum for a build that will work on Hell, like we did on D2), it is NOT to allow people to switch skills every 5 minutes and not have to commit to anything.
I've said this on the forums after the August 1st reveal (and got flamed/trolled hard by some posters), and Jay Wilson himself confirmed (on Blizzcon) that's one of their worries and one of the reasons for such restriction (commitment to a build). I'm glad to see the development team managed to see how bad that would've been gameplay-wise.
I don't think that's their thought process, honestly. If I had to guess, it's about not forcing people into thinking the optimal way of playing the game is with an open menu, that's not how most people remember playing Diablo 2 (nor how they wanna play D3), with open menus all the time and only 1/3rd of the screen being dedicated to showing the action.
This is what I said in a similar thread created a while ago. However, people were quick to inform me that it would be no difficult task to create a bot or something to do this for you.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
I am not particularly mad about being forced to go back to town, though I do consider it a bit of an annoyance. But even, Blizz developers do not particularly like the idea. Its just the simplest, quickest fix that will not delay the game. What I find perplexing is how some player-base insist that the players who wish to experiment with different skills and builds should be treated as second class "citizens".
Because the majority of the playerbase want respecs. What is the point in designing and having billions of various builds if you cant really test any of them out? The design of the game forces skill swapping, at least during leveling.
One of the absolute worst parts of D2 was making new characters just to try out another build. Or even worse, if you messed a character up. Which we all did at first, I am sure. How many screwups did it take before you finally went online, or learned the hard way? Such a system is obviously not a good way to attract new players.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
They're balancing the game against characters with some nominally limited set of skills.
C) If its possible to switch on the fly it becomes macro/bot-able.
They want you to be able to try new builds (ala respec but easier) but NOT be able to use all skills at all times or even even on an encounter by encounter basis. In short going back to town is a pretty painless way to do this. I'm actually surprised that they havent made the skill swap cost gold - it would make a good gold sink for the game.
This idea actually seems pretty good to me, and seems to solve most the problems. Make it so the cast is always interrupted if anything hits you at all, so you can't just put some sort of shield up and do it. Though I do see a problem with this for certain abilities like the Monk's Inner Sanctuary that blocks anything from coming into the circle. They could easily fix that by making the cast time longer than the shield lasts, though. It could be designed so you pick all the new skills you want to switch to first, then you hit a button and then the cast time starts (so you aren't casting for each individual spell you change - that'd be really annoying). I know this might sound annoying to some people, but I think it would be a lot quicker than having to go back to town every time.
Then again, if you're in a group and not being attacked during a boss fight or some such, you'd be able to swap skills still, so maybe this idea wouldn't work as well as it originally sounded. :/