I personally would enjoy the original summoning experience in D2 over the one we have now in D3. However, I do understand that this concept wouldn't work in D3, but that's only because D3 wasn't built with this type of thing in mind.
Now, it is true that our summons now are far more powerful than what our summons were capable of before, but the trade-off has been far less to summon, and less variety in our summons. So, really it's not such a bad trade-off, but I personally would perfer the original creature types in summons (skeletons) compared to what we have now (fetishes, dogs).
Speaking of which, Indimix, I think you should check this out.
It's a forum featuring a WD helmet that turns you into a skeleton and summons two illusionary ones. They don't do any damage, but they can snare things with grasp of the dead + break jail effects from jailers, and the effect supposebly procs about 100% of the time. Apparently with the right set up, you can have a reletively large army of creatures when you combine this helm with a few other things and specific skills. Apparently, it's pretty fun and a little OP.
I come across a WD using it in Brawling once, and it was extremely cool, and very effective.
*Edit: Apparently, the helm is also really cheap, another bonus.
I haven't necessarily read in-depth on everything posted here, so what I say may or may not have been already mentioned. With that being said, I will try to explain what I present.
Here are a list of ideas I have for expansion:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Not New Classes, New Abilities (Passives/Items Included)
The game seriously needs some new play styles to help keep it fresh, but when they made this game, they pretty much combined many aspects of old characters. Because of this, it's difficult to really find a new character idea that none of the other characters explore very well. So rather than trying to find a new class idea, it would be far more effective to instead give these characters a wider range of abilities that allow them to diverge into even greater play styles.
For example, giving the Barbarian or Monk shield related abilities (Smite!), or giving the Wizard more elemental spell options for fire based attacks, such as fire that shoots from her hands; or some more direct melee related ones. We could give the Witch Doctor more available creatures to summon, such as skeletons (warrior or wizard types!), or introduce the concept of Hexs again or various bone-like spells. As for the Demon Hunter, they could give her a wider range of elemental arrow abilities, or introduce the use of other long range weapons to her, such as throwing knives, throwing axes, javalins, etc. With that being said, there are other weapons that we could introduce as well, even if they are just added for having a certain look to them (glass swords, scythes, other polearm weapons, etc).
These new skills and ideas will give us a wider range of abilities and items to make our characters with, and can actually allow us to have some real differences between our characters. That is really what people want is to be unique, and new skills, items, and mechanics can achieve that despite our inability to allocate our stats. Also, including new skills and items can help us meet the different ends of certain aspects of our characters. Some people want the necromancer back, but all they really want is just a character that focuses on summons, so just give the WD more summons, and so on so forth.
I know it seems like a good idea to have different classes, but we just have so many aspects included in the ones that we do have that it would be very hard to make a character that isn't similar to any of the others. I'm sure it's possible to make one that is very different, and if so, do it; but I just think that we should add on to what we have to give the characters that do exist far more build diversity and effectiveness in PvP (The Wizard is severely lacking in PvP, you see).
2. Charm Talisman
I'm fairly certian this idea is probably already in the works, but I just wanted to mention it.
Charms, despite being an inventory filler, are great ways to augment our characters. The one thing we really don't see in our items anymore is special, unique abilities unless you're wearing set or legendary armor. Charms can fill that gap and give us special things like fire at our feet, certain glows, auras, access to special abilities only obtainable through the charm, special resistances/immunities, etc. They can also give us a great opportunity to augment the skills that our characters severely lack that would normally keep us from certain play styles. It's hard to toss armor that gives you your main stat in trade for one that gives you something off-the-wall, but it's easy to pick up a charm instead. Less of a penalty and will help gives us better access to experimenting without making our characters totally blow. Really, the point is just to give us a level of customization that armor cannot give us.
3. Runewords
As mentioned from the OP, runewords definitely need to come back. They gave us the wonderful abilitiy to augment our weapons and armor in ways that is simply impossible in the current state of the game. Also, it would give us something to search for other than gold and legendaries. WIth that being said though, I think a new type of socketing mechanic would have to be made, such as rune-specific sockets that are separate from the jewel sockets. Runes should also be able to give weapons unique traits similar to charms, but only to the weapon itself obviously.
4. Far More Dynamic PvP
My biggest urk is the fact that this game has a very watered down and boring PvP system. I believe that we should have various mini-games with PvP in it, I believe we should have different levels, and I think that we should introduce a sort of "open-world" PvP location that allows for more than four players to enter. Here are some ideas:
Capture the World Stone Fragment (CTF)
Juggernaut (Really strong guy, everyone has to team up)
Team Based Games
Open World PvP
The Open World PvP would have some very different things about it. For example:
More than 4 player games
Characters start naked, and must find gear at various locations
Various safepoints
People can create teams (hostile/friendly system)
Various side quest in the area to obtain good gear
Lots of instances
HC style of playing, but instead of losing your character, you lose your items from that world
Items reset once you leave
Capturable/Controllable locations
Special vendors, artisans in safe locations
Basically, it would just be one big playground for people, and would give people that older feel of the D2 style dueling. Also, the area could have a similar color palete to D2 and reflect the old style gothic feel, a very dark and evil medieval feel like some straight-up Hexen shit. This would get people who are die-hard D2 fans and die-hard D3 hater's to play and get their feel of nostalgia.
5. Allow Mods
Give us the ability to integrate mods into the game. We should be able to have player made maps, skills, items, mobs/creatures, quest, and so forth that are only usable in offline play or in special lobbies dedicated to the use of those specific game mods. To avoid exploitation, we should only allow certain characters to be able to access mods, such as how only certain characters can do HC. You could keep characters using mods from accessing achievements and not let their actions reflect their online profile. Just some ideas.
6. Allow Offline Play
Self explainitory.
7. New Acts
I think we could use some new acts, but I have nothing really to include on this, seeing as how it's obviously going to happen if they release an expansion. My only idea for an act is that I'd like to see a place that perhaps focuses more on a sea-like setting, such as on an island and there are dungeons underwater and what have you. Also
8. Kill The Story Mode
This has also been addressed by the OP. I agree that we need to just get rid of this whole staged gameplay we are constantly forced into. Maybe give us an option in our settings to allow or not allow storyboard mode. We should have all of our access points available at all times, and freely move between acts and areas without having to go through the story to do so or do it from the main menu.
9. In-game Auction House
This has been mentioned before I believe in other threads. We should have the ability to use the AH in-game, with it's own area similar to how artisans have their own areas in the game.
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Well, that's about all the ideas I have. Feel free to add to or augment them.
I agree that most of the bosses in the game are pretty straightforward as far as their skill-sets go. They only focus damage, CC effects, and some have some movement abilities, but that's it. I would like to see boss characters get more dynamic in ways similar to elite mobs on Inferno mode. I was particularly disappointed in the fight with Diablo, I'd have liked to have seen him be a little more creative in how he fights.
The idea of random abilities is pretty sound, but I don't just want to see the typical ones from elite mobs being added on, but rather a special set of affixes that only apply to boss-esque enemies, like act-bosses or mini-bosses. Also, I miss bosses being totally surrounded with mobs of enemies. The boss fights feel very staged in this game, so I'd definitely like to see some change to their abilities and I'd like to see some monsters (other than what they summon) come around during fights.
HC multiplayer will always pose some sort of threat to you in some fashion or another, whether the threat was intentional or not. You will generally rely on your team-mates to help you in HC, so if any of them are weak, that's already a problem. Alternatively, you might end up with people that won't fight for the benefit of the team and might just leave you alone with elite packs to head somewhere else.
My personal recommendation is that you analyze your team and their effectiveness/reliability before taking on any dangerous task with them that could lead to your death. Check their gear, see how they communicate, see how they fight and take that into consideration if you want to stay with them or not. The best and safest teams are ones you make with friends, and will usually dwarf a team from random public games.
I wouldn't say that PoE is a better game, but I would say that it is far more complex in it's game mechanics than Diablo III is. With that being said, it becomes a matter of preference in which you would enjoy better. Do you want to play a game that is far more simple, with better graphics, and more fluid combat; or play a game that is far more complex, with greater character build options, and has a higher learning curve? Let's also not forget that PoE found part of itself on the grounding of what Blizzard built with the older editions of Diablo.
Both games inherently have their pro's and con's, while both focus on the same sort of ARPG game genre. I would say that alone, Diablo III is a good game for the right person, and the same can be said for PoE. I think PoE has a great amount of potential, and I also think Blizzard is just having a rough time trying to integrate their games into the younger gaming community without ticking off their old-gen gamers. The actual problem here is that people grow up, get older, and have less time for their hobbies. All the while, more kids are being born and their taste reflect the new years to come, and big game companies like Blizzard have to adapt to that with constant changes.
I personally, think we as an older generation of gamers (I assume a fair majority of us are old enough to remember D1 and 2), need to stop assuming that what we enjoy in games is superior to what the younger generation of gamers enjoy in video games (assuming that the younger generation as a whole tends to enjoy a game better that we alternatively tend to hate due to our past experiences with games). I might be rambling a bit, but I think it's imparitive that people realize that a game is built to be enjoyed, and if someone, anyone enjoys that game to any degree, a level of success has been achieved, even if miniscule in nature. A lot of us may be disappointed with D3, but alternatively, there is also a good deal of people who aren't, and most of them are kids from what I've come to observe.
Self-found, technically means just what it implies. You found it yourself, without the aide of another individual. In the most basic sense, a character running on self-found has no items that have been obtained through any sort of trading, whether that be through the AH or in-game trading through either players or NPC merchants.
However, when I run a character based off self-found, I add the exception of trading in-game with both players and NPC merchants because my goal is really to ignore the AH, and try to keep the aspects that I enjoyed about D2 intact (basically in-game trading). The reason I'm okay with trading with players in-game is because it's a whole different ballpark. Items that you want are harder to find, but it allows you to be versatile by being able to trade items, haggle, and actually talk to the individual. As far as NPC merchants go, I see no issue with them because they only sell things that are (sometimes) useful if you are down on your luck or just rolling a new character.
Really, I guess I would describe my "self-found" characters as "none of that AH shit" characters.
I love the Diablo franchise, but I'm a very naive gamer. I pre-ordered D3, and woke up at 3:00 am only to be disappointed with several other thousand gamers. But have still played throughout the many up's and down's.
I have a DH Paragon 35, and a Monk at Paragon 2.
I haven't spent a dime of my money at the auction house, and my strong point isn't hawking items on the AH just sell them for more later. I do feel that I'm good at this game, if that can really be said, I love going through each skill and finding little niche fighting styles with the different builds.I didn't stay away from the AH, I used it for gold and selling items that I wouldn't use, but I never found anything extravagant. But I don't feel that my lack of economic skills at moving items should hold me back from progressing the best character that I can.
I feel that I've gotten my value from the amount of time I've put into the game, but it hit me today why I feel I won't play again. I was playing with a friend of mine who finally leveled his DH to 60, and purchased items for about $10 which made his DH SO much better than mine. Of course it might feel fake but it really took away the gaming experience that I was looking for away.
After about 350 hours into this game, I must be silly to want that time to mean something that $10 can't beat out.
Thoughts? Lyger20#1446
This sort of thing is not un-common in many of today's online games. Yea, I suppose it is pretty disappointing that all of your efforts can be dwarfed by $10, but buying your way out of a game also comes with disappointment as well.
To start, think about all the experience and "fun times" you've had with the game by playing it out for your rewards rather than buying your way to victory. Your efforts don't only reward you with good gear, but also with experience and the pleasure of being able to say that you worked your ass off for what you do have, and had a good time doing it. The guy who whipped out his wallet cannot say the same, and buying your way to victory is an easy way to get bored of a game very quickly.
Some people forget the very point of playing ARPG games like Diablo, and the point is the loot. It's like a hit of a drug once your efforts reward you with that badass gear that few can say they have obtained. You are playing the game to get better gear, not necessarily to be better than everyone else. Sure, it helps with PvP to have awesome shit, but that is kinda moot since PvP in Diablo III blows at the moment. What I'm trying to say is that your friend just payed $10 to beat the game, in a sort of way. He has nothing left to do other than display his e-dick to others via his gear and in PvP, which he will eventually find to be something that nobody is going to give a shit about.
You could argue that his buying better gear will help with going up in paragon levels, but the whole point of paragon levels in the first place was to help with magic/gold find so that you could get better gear, so it really defies the point.
PS. For me the worst thing in the "classic" trading system found in D2 and PoE is that trading takes so much time. I realize that it forces the player to really think what he should try to sell and what to scrap but still it just takes away too much of your time which really should be spent playing the game instead of browsing the forums.
That's the point, though. You don't NEED to trade. If the game rewards you when you play it (i.e., you get the drops you need), why do you need to trade?
I think what everyone wants to see here is a better way to trade on the game, but it's clear that the AH in it's current form is not the answer to that. Trading is and should always be a good option whether they need it nor not. In this case, I assume that you just don't need to trade, but for the people who do, they want a better way to do it without the hassles of the current AH system or the hassles of the original D2 system.
We need a way to trade that gives us versatility between giving someone gold or items, while simultaneously eliminating the need to be with that person in game. We also don't want this system to affect our loot tables or effect the economy of the game in drastic ways and not force future updates of the game to revolve around it. We need to find a middle ground between the convenience of the AH house and the more difficult, but versatile way of the original D2 trading system.
The Semi-Automatic AH ideal mentioned above is a good start for this, but I want to add some of my own ideas. To start, I don't think it should even be called an AH, I think we should just call it a market or a trading post and have an area in-game where we can access it. The following mechanics for this are what were mentioned in the Semi-Automatic AH:
The semi-automatic "Auction House";
- A seller puts an item up and writes what he would want for it (gold/items/etc.) and the item would be "reserved" (or transferred) to the "Auction House" so the seller can't use it while it is posted
- A buyer can then send an offer to the seller and the game automatically "reserves" the offered items/gold from the buyers stash so they can't be used while the trade is still "open"
- The seller goes through all the offers he has got and if he accepts one, the trade is done automatically and all the other items offered by other players are freed. This would remove the hassle of having to agree on a certain time to be online with somebody.
- The seller and the buyers could "free" their items at any time if they later decide they didn't want to trade and the trade is still "open".
I voted to remove both, but only under the condition that traditional trading remains intact and that loot tables are vastly improved upon. While it's certainly a drastic change, the game has yet to be out for an entire year, and I would rather see it happen now rather than later. With the removal of the AH system now, it will open up entire new possibilities for improvement on the game itself, rather than having to worry so much about the game's economy and forcing future game updates to have to revolve around the system.
In around 1000 played hours Diablo3 i found 2-3 Loots worth around 200 Million Gold each...thats it.
Only 1 piece i could use on my Mainchar as a big upgrade.
So 1000 Hours for 1 good piece...i call that pretty lame to be honest.
If you talking about being able to "somehow" manage the content with the stuff you find, then you are right.
Fun/Good Loots however you wont find yourself for your chars, you find those only in the AH, or with actual trading.
That being said, I assume you used the AH at some point during those 1000 hours of gameplay. The AH is going to give you direct access to the best items available at your level, often with your choice of affixes, often at cheap prices if you look hard. So of course you won't find a damn upgrade after that.
Did you expect to buy the best shit on AH and then find better while farming with the items you bought? A lot of people have BiS items and are bitching because they cant find better while actually killing monsters, but what they fail to understand is that the reason you cant find anything better is because you skipped everything and just bought the best item for you!
If you play this game AH free (and for effect, just start out on hardcore if you haven't already), you will find upgrades fairly often because now you are no longer getting sweet items so easily and so quickly. And don't tell me that you don't use the AH often either because the only person who would bitch about only finding a few 200+ mill items is someone who runs the AH VERY VERY OFTEN.
I won't deny the issues with the AH, but people also need to understand that not using it is a very real and very fun option. If they fixed the loot-tables, it would make it even funner.
What a lot of people managed to forget was that Diablo III was suppose to be an ARPG that focused on the most important thing, the loot drops. I'd rather not post this argument all over again, so I will just quote myself from this thread.
Diablo III became a game that focused entirely on the gear of your character and their skill/passive build. The issue with that however is that good gear is far harder to farm in this game, and most people end up finding a lot of trash even after MP10 Inferno Act 3 runs, even with a decent amount of MF from paragon levels. Since trying to farm on large difficulties is hard enough as it is, it encouraged everyone to run the AH to the bones, having characters completely forged out of gear purchased at the AH. This caused us to have no reason to even farm items, but instead farm areas that gave us the most gold.
...
There was actually a heck of a lot more to that post, but I left out those points. The problem is that the core game-play mechanic of Diablo III, which is loot drops that you worked hard to obtain, is completely overshadowed by the shortcut that is the AH. The AH is actually part of a whole array of problems that exist in the design of Diablo III, but it is one of the more significant ones.
Now, I admit that I am no game designer and I am certainly no business expert either, but from a gaming stand point, I think that there is some sort of potential in a Diablo 3.5, so to speak. Make the game over again, without all the mistakes, take away the AH, give us ladders, offline play, better loot tables, all that good stuff, and put it into a brand new game that won't affect the current one in any way and make people start over again. It can easily be made into a digital download that is free to anyone who has purchased Diablo III. Allow people to have access to the map making tools, allow us to make custom maps, events, and allow the game to be compatible with mods made by the community.
Call me psycho, but I think it could work if done right.
As for the ccs: Did anyone try to stack cc reduction on gear yet? This could be a highly valuable stat in a pvp situation (obviously only for complete player choice gear). Also, certain passives could be quite strong, for example Pacifism with its 75% damage reduction while cc-ed or Juggernaut with a chance of a good amount of heal. Not to mention that each class has 1-2 spells to break or ignore ccs.
Don't get me wrong, stuff like Hex might still be horribly imbalanced. But maybe its not that bad on a Monk with maybe 60+% cc reduction (I assume thats a reasonable amount if you stack it on a couple of items), pacifism and serenity. Instead of being perma-hexed, he is only hexed 40% of the time, takes only 1/4 damage while being hexed (assuming Pacifism works on Hex) and can break free from every 3rd hex, doesn't sound all that imbalanced on paper.
Pardon me while everyone specs out their characters to specifically deal with Witch Doctors Hex. That's not broken at all, right?
I say they just make a Diablo 3.5 with no auction house, ladders, offline compatible, and countless other things that should have been done. Rather than making drastic changes to the current game, they could just, in theory, make a new one and provide it as a free download to anyone who has purchased Diablo 3
The bigger issue here is that Diablo III has very little replay-ability value. With all character classes being fundamentally the same in terms of stats and skills at end-game, there is no reason to start a new character of that class to "re-roll" them.
Diablo III became a game that focused entirely on the gear of your character and their skill/passive build. The issue with that however is that good gear is far harder to farm in this game, and most people end up finding a lot of trash even after MP10 Inferno Act 3 runs, even with a decent amount of MF from paragon levels. Since trying to farm on large difficulties is hard enough as it is, it encouraged everyone to run the AH to the bones, having characters completely forged out of gear purchased at the AH. This caused us to have no reason to even farm items, but instead farm areas that gave us the most gold.
With one of the core character build mechanics now easily bought out from the AH, it simply left us with two things. Farming gold, and running different character builds. Another issue though is that despite our vast number of skill/rune/passive combinations, only few of them are viable and some entirely useless. When they told us that they had thousands of possible builds, they left out two problems with that. While mathematically true, it didn't take into account the viability of those builds in the game. This is why we have plenty of build guides, but with only few viable ones to choose from for each class.
In the end, we are left with little to actually try and accomplish in this game. Our only true goals are to beat inferno mode for normal and hardcore, go to pony town (which is a waste of time some might say), do the infernal machine event to try and get a Hellfire Ring, and get to paragon level 100, and obtain as much gold as possible. While that is a fair deal of things to do, there is little incentive to do it at all if the game's core game-play mechanic is easily overshadowed by shortcuts.
The true end-game of Diablo III should have been a very robust PvP system and plenty of very challenging PvE events to do with others, and it should have had the potential for lots of community involvement, such as player made maps/events/mods and so on. An even funner end-game result would have been to allow us to control our stat allocation with the paragon levels, and in turn give us access to new abilities, runes, and passives that would have given us more viable and more diverse build options. Finally, they should have just allowed the game to be offline-compatible and gave us the traditional open and closed ladders. Even if people found a way to cheat in their offline mode, it wouldn't have mattered to anyone else, it wouldn't even affect them unless they played open ladder, and if they were bothered by it they could have easily played closed. People have still found ways to dupe, people have found ways to hack, and in the end, the only thing online only did was prevent us from having a fun offline experience. If we wanted a fair and balanced online system, we would have played closed ladder as we did before.
I'm not against change and new ideas, I support them, but that doesn't mean that we should completely ignore what has worked in the past and has faced the test of time. We should incorporate these new ideas and evolve things on the foundation of what has worked in the past.
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Now, it is true that our summons now are far more powerful than what our summons were capable of before, but the trade-off has been far less to summon, and less variety in our summons. So, really it's not such a bad trade-off, but I personally would perfer the original creature types in summons (skeletons) compared to what we have now (fetishes, dogs).
Speaking of which, Indimix, I think you should check this out.
http://www.diablofan...-in-my-opinion/
It's a forum featuring a WD helmet that turns you into a skeleton and summons two illusionary ones. They don't do any damage, but they can snare things with grasp of the dead + break jail effects from jailers, and the effect supposebly procs about 100% of the time. Apparently with the right set up, you can have a reletively large army of creatures when you combine this helm with a few other things and specific skills. Apparently, it's pretty fun and a little OP.
I come across a WD using it in Brawling once, and it was extremely cool, and very effective.
*Edit: Apparently, the helm is also really cheap, another bonus.
Here are a list of ideas I have for expansion:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Not New Classes, New Abilities (Passives/Items Included)
The game seriously needs some new play styles to help keep it fresh, but when they made this game, they pretty much combined many aspects of old characters. Because of this, it's difficult to really find a new character idea that none of the other characters explore very well. So rather than trying to find a new class idea, it would be far more effective to instead give these characters a wider range of abilities that allow them to diverge into even greater play styles.
For example, giving the Barbarian or Monk shield related abilities (Smite!), or giving the Wizard more elemental spell options for fire based attacks, such as fire that shoots from her hands; or some more direct melee related ones. We could give the Witch Doctor more available creatures to summon, such as skeletons (warrior or wizard types!), or introduce the concept of Hexs again or various bone-like spells. As for the Demon Hunter, they could give her a wider range of elemental arrow abilities, or introduce the use of other long range weapons to her, such as throwing knives, throwing axes, javalins, etc. With that being said, there are other weapons that we could introduce as well, even if they are just added for having a certain look to them (glass swords, scythes, other polearm weapons, etc).
These new skills and ideas will give us a wider range of abilities and items to make our characters with, and can actually allow us to have some real differences between our characters. That is really what people want is to be unique, and new skills, items, and mechanics can achieve that despite our inability to allocate our stats. Also, including new skills and items can help us meet the different ends of certain aspects of our characters. Some people want the necromancer back, but all they really want is just a character that focuses on summons, so just give the WD more summons, and so on so forth.
I know it seems like a good idea to have different classes, but we just have so many aspects included in the ones that we do have that it would be very hard to make a character that isn't similar to any of the others. I'm sure it's possible to make one that is very different, and if so, do it; but I just think that we should add on to what we have to give the characters that do exist far more build diversity and effectiveness in PvP (The Wizard is severely lacking in PvP, you see).
2. Charm Talisman
I'm fairly certian this idea is probably already in the works, but I just wanted to mention it.
Charms, despite being an inventory filler, are great ways to augment our characters. The one thing we really don't see in our items anymore is special, unique abilities unless you're wearing set or legendary armor. Charms can fill that gap and give us special things like fire at our feet, certain glows, auras, access to special abilities only obtainable through the charm, special resistances/immunities, etc. They can also give us a great opportunity to augment the skills that our characters severely lack that would normally keep us from certain play styles. It's hard to toss armor that gives you your main stat in trade for one that gives you something off-the-wall, but it's easy to pick up a charm instead. Less of a penalty and will help gives us better access to experimenting without making our characters totally blow. Really, the point is just to give us a level of customization that armor cannot give us.
3. Runewords
As mentioned from the OP, runewords definitely need to come back. They gave us the wonderful abilitiy to augment our weapons and armor in ways that is simply impossible in the current state of the game. Also, it would give us something to search for other than gold and legendaries. WIth that being said though, I think a new type of socketing mechanic would have to be made, such as rune-specific sockets that are separate from the jewel sockets. Runes should also be able to give weapons unique traits similar to charms, but only to the weapon itself obviously.
4. Far More Dynamic PvP
My biggest urk is the fact that this game has a very watered down and boring PvP system. I believe that we should have various mini-games with PvP in it, I believe we should have different levels, and I think that we should introduce a sort of "open-world" PvP location that allows for more than four players to enter. Here are some ideas:
- Capture the World Stone Fragment (CTF)
- Juggernaut (Really strong guy, everyone has to team up)
- Team Based Games
- Open World PvP
The Open World PvP would have some very different things about it. For example:- More than 4 player games
- Characters start naked, and must find gear at various locations
- Various safepoints
- People can create teams (hostile/friendly system)
- Various side quest in the area to obtain good gear
- Lots of instances
- HC style of playing, but instead of losing your character, you lose your items from that world
- Items reset once you leave
- Capturable/Controllable locations
- Special vendors, artisans in safe locations
Basically, it would just be one big playground for people, and would give people that older feel of the D2 style dueling. Also, the area could have a similar color palete to D2 and reflect the old style gothic feel, a very dark and evil medieval feel like some straight-up Hexen shit. This would get people who are die-hard D2 fans and die-hard D3 hater's to play and get their feel of nostalgia.5. Allow Mods
Give us the ability to integrate mods into the game. We should be able to have player made maps, skills, items, mobs/creatures, quest, and so forth that are only usable in offline play or in special lobbies dedicated to the use of those specific game mods. To avoid exploitation, we should only allow certain characters to be able to access mods, such as how only certain characters can do HC. You could keep characters using mods from accessing achievements and not let their actions reflect their online profile. Just some ideas.
6. Allow Offline Play
Self explainitory.
7. New Acts
I think we could use some new acts, but I have nothing really to include on this, seeing as how it's obviously going to happen if they release an expansion. My only idea for an act is that I'd like to see a place that perhaps focuses more on a sea-like setting, such as on an island and there are dungeons underwater and what have you. Also
8. Kill The Story Mode
This has also been addressed by the OP. I agree that we need to just get rid of this whole staged gameplay we are constantly forced into. Maybe give us an option in our settings to allow or not allow storyboard mode. We should have all of our access points available at all times, and freely move between acts and areas without having to go through the story to do so or do it from the main menu.
9. In-game Auction House
This has been mentioned before I believe in other threads. We should have the ability to use the AH in-game, with it's own area similar to how artisans have their own areas in the game.
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Well, that's about all the ideas I have. Feel free to add to or augment them.
The idea of random abilities is pretty sound, but I don't just want to see the typical ones from elite mobs being added on, but rather a special set of affixes that only apply to boss-esque enemies, like act-bosses or mini-bosses. Also, I miss bosses being totally surrounded with mobs of enemies. The boss fights feel very staged in this game, so I'd definitely like to see some change to their abilities and I'd like to see some monsters (other than what they summon) come around during fights.
My personal recommendation is that you analyze your team and their effectiveness/reliability before taking on any dangerous task with them that could lead to your death. Check their gear, see how they communicate, see how they fight and take that into consideration if you want to stay with them or not. The best and safest teams are ones you make with friends, and will usually dwarf a team from random public games.
Both games inherently have their pro's and con's, while both focus on the same sort of ARPG game genre. I would say that alone, Diablo III is a good game for the right person, and the same can be said for PoE. I think PoE has a great amount of potential, and I also think Blizzard is just having a rough time trying to integrate their games into the younger gaming community without ticking off their old-gen gamers. The actual problem here is that people grow up, get older, and have less time for their hobbies. All the while, more kids are being born and their taste reflect the new years to come, and big game companies like Blizzard have to adapt to that with constant changes.
I personally, think we as an older generation of gamers (I assume a fair majority of us are old enough to remember D1 and 2), need to stop assuming that what we enjoy in games is superior to what the younger generation of gamers enjoy in video games (assuming that the younger generation as a whole tends to enjoy a game better that we alternatively tend to hate due to our past experiences with games). I might be rambling a bit, but I think it's imparitive that people realize that a game is built to be enjoyed, and if someone, anyone enjoys that game to any degree, a level of success has been achieved, even if miniscule in nature. A lot of us may be disappointed with D3, but alternatively, there is also a good deal of people who aren't, and most of them are kids from what I've come to observe.
However, when I run a character based off self-found, I add the exception of trading in-game with both players and NPC merchants because my goal is really to ignore the AH, and try to keep the aspects that I enjoyed about D2 intact (basically in-game trading). The reason I'm okay with trading with players in-game is because it's a whole different ballpark. Items that you want are harder to find, but it allows you to be versatile by being able to trade items, haggle, and actually talk to the individual. As far as NPC merchants go, I see no issue with them because they only sell things that are (sometimes) useful if you are down on your luck or just rolling a new character.
Really, I guess I would describe my "self-found" characters as "none of that AH shit" characters.
This sort of thing is not un-common in many of today's online games. Yea, I suppose it is pretty disappointing that all of your efforts can be dwarfed by $10, but buying your way out of a game also comes with disappointment as well.
To start, think about all the experience and "fun times" you've had with the game by playing it out for your rewards rather than buying your way to victory. Your efforts don't only reward you with good gear, but also with experience and the pleasure of being able to say that you worked your ass off for what you do have, and had a good time doing it. The guy who whipped out his wallet cannot say the same, and buying your way to victory is an easy way to get bored of a game very quickly.
Some people forget the very point of playing ARPG games like Diablo, and the point is the loot. It's like a hit of a drug once your efforts reward you with that badass gear that few can say they have obtained. You are playing the game to get better gear, not necessarily to be better than everyone else. Sure, it helps with PvP to have awesome shit, but that is kinda moot since PvP in Diablo III blows at the moment. What I'm trying to say is that your friend just payed $10 to beat the game, in a sort of way. He has nothing left to do other than display his e-dick to others via his gear and in PvP, which he will eventually find to be something that nobody is going to give a shit about.
You could argue that his buying better gear will help with going up in paragon levels, but the whole point of paragon levels in the first place was to help with magic/gold find so that you could get better gear, so it really defies the point.
I think what everyone wants to see here is a better way to trade on the game, but it's clear that the AH in it's current form is not the answer to that. Trading is and should always be a good option whether they need it nor not. In this case, I assume that you just don't need to trade, but for the people who do, they want a better way to do it without the hassles of the current AH system or the hassles of the original D2 system.
We need a way to trade that gives us versatility between giving someone gold or items, while simultaneously eliminating the need to be with that person in game. We also don't want this system to affect our loot tables or effect the economy of the game in drastic ways and not force future updates of the game to revolve around it. We need to find a middle ground between the convenience of the AH house and the more difficult, but versatile way of the original D2 trading system.
The Semi-Automatic AH ideal mentioned above is a good start for this, but I want to add some of my own ideas. To start, I don't think it should even be called an AH, I think we should just call it a market or a trading post and have an area in-game where we can access it. The following mechanics for this are what were mentioned in the Semi-Automatic AH:
That being said, I assume you used the AH at some point during those 1000 hours of gameplay. The AH is going to give you direct access to the best items available at your level, often with your choice of affixes, often at cheap prices if you look hard. So of course you won't find a damn upgrade after that.
Did you expect to buy the best shit on AH and then find better while farming with the items you bought? A lot of people have BiS items and are bitching because they cant find better while actually killing monsters, but what they fail to understand is that the reason you cant find anything better is because you skipped everything and just bought the best item for you!
If you play this game AH free (and for effect, just start out on hardcore if you haven't already), you will find upgrades fairly often because now you are no longer getting sweet items so easily and so quickly. And don't tell me that you don't use the AH often either because the only person who would bitch about only finding a few 200+ mill items is someone who runs the AH VERY VERY OFTEN.
I won't deny the issues with the AH, but people also need to understand that not using it is a very real and very fun option. If they fixed the loot-tables, it would make it even funner.
There was actually a heck of a lot more to that post, but I left out those points. The problem is that the core game-play mechanic of Diablo III, which is loot drops that you worked hard to obtain, is completely overshadowed by the shortcut that is the AH. The AH is actually part of a whole array of problems that exist in the design of Diablo III, but it is one of the more significant ones.
Now, I admit that I am no game designer and I am certainly no business expert either, but from a gaming stand point, I think that there is some sort of potential in a Diablo 3.5, so to speak. Make the game over again, without all the mistakes, take away the AH, give us ladders, offline play, better loot tables, all that good stuff, and put it into a brand new game that won't affect the current one in any way and make people start over again. It can easily be made into a digital download that is free to anyone who has purchased Diablo III. Allow people to have access to the map making tools, allow us to make custom maps, events, and allow the game to be compatible with mods made by the community.
Call me psycho, but I think it could work if done right.
Pardon me while everyone specs out their characters to specifically deal with Witch Doctors Hex. That's not broken at all, right?
Diablo III became a game that focused entirely on the gear of your character and their skill/passive build. The issue with that however is that good gear is far harder to farm in this game, and most people end up finding a lot of trash even after MP10 Inferno Act 3 runs, even with a decent amount of MF from paragon levels. Since trying to farm on large difficulties is hard enough as it is, it encouraged everyone to run the AH to the bones, having characters completely forged out of gear purchased at the AH. This caused us to have no reason to even farm items, but instead farm areas that gave us the most gold.
With one of the core character build mechanics now easily bought out from the AH, it simply left us with two things. Farming gold, and running different character builds. Another issue though is that despite our vast number of skill/rune/passive combinations, only few of them are viable and some entirely useless. When they told us that they had thousands of possible builds, they left out two problems with that. While mathematically true, it didn't take into account the viability of those builds in the game. This is why we have plenty of build guides, but with only few viable ones to choose from for each class.
In the end, we are left with little to actually try and accomplish in this game. Our only true goals are to beat inferno mode for normal and hardcore, go to pony town (which is a waste of time some might say), do the infernal machine event to try and get a Hellfire Ring, and get to paragon level 100, and obtain as much gold as possible. While that is a fair deal of things to do, there is little incentive to do it at all if the game's core game-play mechanic is easily overshadowed by shortcuts.
The true end-game of Diablo III should have been a very robust PvP system and plenty of very challenging PvE events to do with others, and it should have had the potential for lots of community involvement, such as player made maps/events/mods and so on. An even funner end-game result would have been to allow us to control our stat allocation with the paragon levels, and in turn give us access to new abilities, runes, and passives that would have given us more viable and more diverse build options. Finally, they should have just allowed the game to be offline-compatible and gave us the traditional open and closed ladders. Even if people found a way to cheat in their offline mode, it wouldn't have mattered to anyone else, it wouldn't even affect them unless they played open ladder, and if they were bothered by it they could have easily played closed. People have still found ways to dupe, people have found ways to hack, and in the end, the only thing online only did was prevent us from having a fun offline experience. If we wanted a fair and balanced online system, we would have played closed ladder as we did before.
I'm not against change and new ideas, I support them, but that doesn't mean that we should completely ignore what has worked in the past and has faced the test of time. We should incorporate these new ideas and evolve things on the foundation of what has worked in the past.