I can't say that I will like or dislike any of the new systems until I play the game. I just reeeeaallly hope that they get it right. D2 had some issues, but overall, they got it right. The attributes of D2 that I loved were MFing, character building, and leveling (which admittedly was kind of broken). In D3 it seems as thought they have effectively removed the character building (no attribute or skill assignments) and leveling (60 cap will be fairly easy to reach), so I hope that MFing can make up for that.
I think that increasing the quality of Champ/Uniq monster drops is a good idea because of all the points that have already been made. But, should boss drops be reduced to the point that they are no longer worthwhile? The downside of bosses dropping the best gear is that people farm them repeatedly, but that problem has at least partially been addressed by the fact that no character will be able to spam teleport. In order to get to the bosses people will have to walk, and will be killing monsters along the way. But, if I have to walk all the way to a boss, and the boss is sufficiently difficult to kill, then I expect the potential of being well rewarded. I'm not saying that boss drops should be scaled the way they are in D2, but a boss should at least drop a little better than Champ/Uniq monsters.
Another concern that I have about D3 is that, without runewords, will normal white, socketed, or ethereal items have any value? One of the things that I enjoyed doing in D2 was killing monsters all over hell looking for that superior arcon plate or ethereal colossus voulge. It's just another facet of the game that seemingly will be eliminated (along with character building, leveling, etc, etc). I just fear that D3 will lack the variety that was present in D2. And therefore lack the endgame playability.
Cherd this is really an argument for another place... but Diablo 3 will have a million times more variety in terms of actual MEANINGFUL variety but a lot less of 'well I want to put 100 into str and everything else into vit' type variety.
Darkphenom... most of the examples you give of 'rares' that were harder than bosses WERE bosses. People like Lord DeSeis are bosses.
Well, at least with this example I can point out how you are exactly wrong.
there were a lot more than one or two sets in D2. Diablo and Baal were both huge pushovers in D2, hell lister, gloams and dolls were all more challenging than Baal while Obliv Knights, Iron Maiden, De Seis and Lower Resist were all more challenging than Diablo. Did that make those bosses VERY VERY anticlimatic for you?
Of 7 examples only 2 were bosses, I guess when you think 2 of 7 is most I can see why you think the things you think.
I was simply trying to point out things that were more difficult than act bosses (And all of my examples still hold true for that).
Bottom line, if Bosses have equal or better chance to drop loot boss runs *will* become the best source of loot (because dungeon + boss kill > dungeon without boss kill). Then you've just forced people to Boss runs for loot and that's bad.
Iron maiden was removed - because it wasn't just hard it was a bad mechanic(and as a caster it meant nothing to you). Lower resist on casters and MSLE I give you credit for. Dolls were annoying but nobody killed them anyways so they weren't really a concern. Gloams were only annoying if they were either MSLE or lower resist....
But no, they won't. If bosses have an equivalent chance-per-kill-time based off the boss itself(remember Blizzard CAN adjust droprates and loot tables independently) they won't be 'the only way' they'll be 'an option'. Your way means that bosses won't even BE an option. At all. I want to have the OPTION to sometimes go and kill a boss for more than just the glowy effect. I think it's RIDICULOUS that people are so against having that be an option. INCREDIBLY selfish just because THEY don't want to farm bosses at ALL for them to say that NOBODY should be able to is positively ridiculous.
Yes, I agree that if one boss is REALLY easy he shouldn't drop better than a champion, but a boss should drop loot relative to the time it takes to kill it. So Skeleton king right now on average takes about 5-10 times longer on normal to kill than a champ, so his loot should be about say 6 times higher droprate. On inferno if Skeleton King takes 1.2-1.4 times as long as a champ to kill then he should drop say 1.25 times higher droprate than a champ. If, say, the end boss of act 1 ends up being really easy and taking about the same time to kill as a champ on inferno - then he should drop about the same loot. The same rules should be applied accros the board. EVERY BOSS should drop loot proportional to champions based off of the average kill time for that boss.
And again I don't think there is really ANY chance of finding 'zero champs' when farming. I've played a bunch more and I still can't even think of one ACTUAL dungeon that didn't have at least 2. And most of the time 3-4.
I have NEVER done a single floor of ANY dungeon where I didn't see at least AT LEAST two sets of champions or rares in the beta. Not ONCE. Not a single even FLOOR much less dungeon. In fact the one time I only ran into two I was shocked because I normally see 4 or more per floor.
In Diablo 2 the hardest mobs typically were the bosses. Mobs like Lord DeSeis, Duriel, the guy at the Hellforge, etc.
Bosses don't just refer to the one guy at the end of each act, they refer to any harder-than-average mob who is always there.
I can't think of anyone harder than that one superunique in the fake tombs of Tal Rasha - if you got the wrong modifiers on him he was immune to nearly everything and highly highly resistent to anything he wasn't immune to.
And the only set of modifiers that killed me quicker than Diablo was MSLE. Some of the others were tough, but only MSLE really EVER gave me pause. Or casters who had the -resist aura. Those two were the only ones that were tough for me - and I played PURIST so I didn't trade AT ALL only used the items I found myself. Meaning I had none of those rare runewords. My sorc was in entirely mf gear - and while she couldn't kill lightning immunes - she never had troubles with dying to most champions unless they were one of the above. Neither did my smite paladin who used the +resist shield runeword(you kno0w the one using like ral ort and tal or whatever it was) btw, my hammerdin(again no runewords), my necro, or my amazon. None of whom had 'the best gear ever'. They were all in decent gear, but none were decked out in top level runewords or perfect items. They were all just using the random stuff I found on meph runs.
I don't know what game YOU were playing really. Now I quit back when uber-diablo was the only 'uber'. So perhaps things changed after that. But back in those days the bosses were harder than all but the most difficult rares.
And champions in D2 were RIDICULOUS pushovers. So I edon't know what you're on.
The balance to it is that you can find 4-5 groups of rares/champs per floor so if you just RUSH to one boss you're only getting one where as if you just clear an area you're getting 4-5 per floor.
Hunter... what's the point of making it so that you CAN'T choose to farm bosses for a day and still get loot?
I'm not against making uniques meaningful, I'm against making bosses meaningless. I want to be able to get value-for-time no matter where I choose to play. I don't want to be going through say Azmodan's dungeon looking for rares, get to the door behind which he is and go 'well this is as far as it's worth it for me to go'.
I want to get to that door, go through it, kill him and have an equivalent reward based off of the time. If X boss takes 25 seconds, the average champion takes 50 seconds, and z boss takes 100 seconds then I want X boss to have half the droprate of a champion while Z boss has double the droprate. The rewards for bosses should not just be a blanket 'lower than champions' like it seems to be currently according to recent statements. The rewards should be equivalent based off of average time to kill. That's all.
This build is also a few weeks old already. They may have added that, then realized 'oh crap that adds up to ridiculous' and then the next day modified it, but the build was already sent off to be released for the beta so it just went live because it has no impact ON the beta since it involves high level stuff.
I'm pretty sure they upped the rare drop rate somewhat now that they've implemented a few more of the affixes into the game. No point having too many rares if less than half of the affixes are active, right?
And I'm convinced you haven't read a single word in a single post I've made. You make comments that are saying things that are the complete opposite of what I've posted and making it sound like you got those ideas from me... which I can't fathom at all.
What I'm describing is a philosophy designed by logic. You go through a dungeon and get to the end, and what you want is an epic encounter that really pushes you to the limit. That is how it SHOULD be in an RPG. Anything else just leaves you disappointed.
I've played hundreds of RPGs and action-RPGs. The ones that felt the best were always the ones where the major enemies(ie. bosses) were epic and somewhat challenging. Things like Final Fantasy games - the final Kefka fight or Zeromus. Things like Diablo 1 - Diablo was harder than almost anything in the game, so was the Butcher. Things like Ninja Gaiden where the end bosses have abilities that one-shot you. Those are the ones where you feel the most satisfied playing them.
Games where you get to the boss like War in the North and the boss is a pushover just leave you disappointed.
If Blizzard makes the bosses in this game less than epic I GUARANTEE you the game will score poorly in reviews and will lose a lot of long-term players over it. GUARANTEE.
Oh, and I technically HAVE spent hours in the game. The beta is part of the game. A small part, but it's a lot more than '1 minute'.
Edit: NM I give up, I really do think he just read the last sentence of my last post rather then the actual discussion part and made his post as insultingly oversimplified as possible. Tek, I hope this makes you happy - I really do, I can't argue with your stubborn unwillingness to address an entire post - it's just not winnable. Grats, selective arguments win again.
Tek... champs - minimum 4-5 per floor of every dungeon - have distinct random modifiers that can come in varieties of ridiculously easy to ridiculously hard but you can see which it is and easily avoid the latter - also, as per current content and EVERY SINGLE KNOWN game in the genre, have much much much lower health so even if they have difficult modifiers are still generally quicker to kill. Have no scripting at all save at the most basic level which makes them VERY predictable once you know which modifiers they have.
Bosses - require clearing at least 2-3 dungeon floors to get to even one, have way inflated health, have distinct scripts and epic effects that make them more interesting to fight. And bosses being 'predictable' is entirely dependent upon the quality of the AI. If the AI is well designed, the mobs may have say 10 abilities they can use but you can't be sure which they'll use when.
I'm sorry, but except for the most RARE sets of modifiers, I don't forsee champions being slower OR harder than bosses on inferno. Even with the 'predictability' of the boss, if it's well designed it can still be a challenge. Look at the Ninja Gaiden series. Once you'd fought a boss once yuou knew what it was going to do. But that didn't mean you could kill it every time because things were designed well.
Not only that but if they DO design it so that you run into 15-20 sets of mobs who are SIGNIFICANTLY harder than the boss BEFORE the boss I'll be highly - HIGHLY disappointed. In fact that might be enough to seriously reduce the fun value of the game. If there is ONE or TWO sets of modifiers that can spawn randomly that make the mobs insane, that's different, but if the AVERAGE champion is harder than a boss it will make the game very anti-climactic. VERY VERY anticlimactic.
It's like War in the North - which just came out so the reference is relevent. About 20 minutes before you fight the final boss you have to fight two trolls and like 4-5 other enemies in a sort of time sensitive situation. All normal enemies. They were VASTLY more difficult than the boss. DRAMATICALLY more difficult. And it almost completely ruined the satisfaction of finishing the game. Because the boss was such a pushover.
Bosses are SUPPOSED to be the most difficult - that is why they're the boss. If the boss is a pushover and some random enemy who just wanders his halls aimlessly is so much stronger than him - WHY IS HE STILL THE BOSS?
Do I miss the concept of 'runewords'? Absolutely. Turning a normal item into something awesome is just a really cool idea. Am I going to miss D2 runewords? No.
Making Physical and Magic damage scale different presents a few problems even though it’s viable if done properly. Actually *having* these two separate types of damage scales are what causes the problem.
So you have one pool of statistics to support character progression and this pool of statistics has to support multiple damage scales. There are two ways to support multiple damage scales within the pool of modifiers. The first way is to make concessions on modifiers to ensure they function and scale properly for every damage scale you are supporting. The downside to this is that you are limited in what you can do with each damage affecting modifier because said modifier has to properly support the balance of multiple damage scales. The second method of supporting multiple damage scales is creating specific modifiers for each damage scale. This allows you a lot more freedom with each damage modifier because it only has to maintain balance with a single damage scale. The downside to this is that you have multiple modifiers that are literally useless to half of the player base.
Using the same damage scale for all characters makes it a lot easier to balance and also ensures all damage affecting modifiers are relevant to every single person. For this reason (despite it maybe not being the best lore fit), I support the decision.
they don't scale differently now, so why would they scale differently if you split the modifier? currently a staff and a maul at top tier ought to each have 500 dps (random number). If you chnge it so the maul has 500 physical dps and the staff has 500 magical dps then you have not changed these weapons at all except to make them less desirable for a class who wouldn't reasonably use it in the first place. The trick is when you start working on hybrid gear weather it be Daibo, ceremonial knife, or sword. For this you may want to use the higher of the two from any given item (and making the number identical for the items that are hybrid by design) and exact numbers would have to be found through testing.
As for mods that are useless to some characters, those already exist in abundance; from resource mods to damage mods (% bonus to X only) and even attribute mods as characters specialize in how they want to build. sure some of these mods tend to show up on class specific items, but they can show up on many things, and this happened in D2 as well (ex +1 to Druid skills) but you don't even have to deal with that as you could make it a bonus to attack which would increase both, or a bonus to untyped damage.
The idea is not to produce different damage scales, but to make weapons more divers. For example of generic items; maces and axes could be more physical oriented while swords and spears could fall anywhere and daggers are more magical. But this doesn't have to be a hard rule, just trends.
I know it would be a challenge to pull off but they have already approached some pretty ambitious stuff in the game and I think if they had the time they could do this right as well.
Which is actually 100% the OPPOSITE of what Blizzard wants for Diablo. Blizzard wants to encourage people to try odd-ball setups, not make them impossible.
Cherd this is really an argument for another place... but Diablo 3 will have a million times more variety in terms of actual MEANINGFUL variety but a lot less of 'well I want to put 100 into str and everything else into vit' type variety.
Iron maiden was removed - because it wasn't just hard it was a bad mechanic(and as a caster it meant nothing to you). Lower resist on casters and MSLE I give you credit for. Dolls were annoying but nobody killed them anyways so they weren't really a concern. Gloams were only annoying if they were either MSLE or lower resist....
But no, they won't. If bosses have an equivalent chance-per-kill-time based off the boss itself(remember Blizzard CAN adjust droprates and loot tables independently) they won't be 'the only way' they'll be 'an option'. Your way means that bosses won't even BE an option. At all. I want to have the OPTION to sometimes go and kill a boss for more than just the glowy effect. I think it's RIDICULOUS that people are so against having that be an option. INCREDIBLY selfish just because THEY don't want to farm bosses at ALL for them to say that NOBODY should be able to is positively ridiculous.
Yes, I agree that if one boss is REALLY easy he shouldn't drop better than a champion, but a boss should drop loot relative to the time it takes to kill it. So Skeleton king right now on average takes about 5-10 times longer on normal to kill than a champ, so his loot should be about say 6 times higher droprate. On inferno if Skeleton King takes 1.2-1.4 times as long as a champ to kill then he should drop say 1.25 times higher droprate than a champ. If, say, the end boss of act 1 ends up being really easy and taking about the same time to kill as a champ on inferno - then he should drop about the same loot. The same rules should be applied accros the board. EVERY BOSS should drop loot proportional to champions based off of the average kill time for that boss.
And again I don't think there is really ANY chance of finding 'zero champs' when farming. I've played a bunch more and I still can't even think of one ACTUAL dungeon that didn't have at least 2. And most of the time 3-4.
In Diablo 2 the hardest mobs typically were the bosses. Mobs like Lord DeSeis, Duriel, the guy at the Hellforge, etc.
Bosses don't just refer to the one guy at the end of each act, they refer to any harder-than-average mob who is always there.
I can't think of anyone harder than that one superunique in the fake tombs of Tal Rasha - if you got the wrong modifiers on him he was immune to nearly everything and highly highly resistent to anything he wasn't immune to.
And the only set of modifiers that killed me quicker than Diablo was MSLE. Some of the others were tough, but only MSLE really EVER gave me pause. Or casters who had the -resist aura. Those two were the only ones that were tough for me - and I played PURIST so I didn't trade AT ALL only used the items I found myself. Meaning I had none of those rare runewords. My sorc was in entirely mf gear - and while she couldn't kill lightning immunes - she never had troubles with dying to most champions unless they were one of the above. Neither did my smite paladin who used the +resist shield runeword(you kno0w the one using like ral ort and tal or whatever it was) btw, my hammerdin(again no runewords), my necro, or my amazon. None of whom had 'the best gear ever'. They were all in decent gear, but none were decked out in top level runewords or perfect items. They were all just using the random stuff I found on meph runs.
I don't know what game YOU were playing really. Now I quit back when uber-diablo was the only 'uber'. So perhaps things changed after that. But back in those days the bosses were harder than all but the most difficult rares.
And champions in D2 were RIDICULOUS pushovers. So I edon't know what you're on.
I'm not against making uniques meaningful, I'm against making bosses meaningless. I want to be able to get value-for-time no matter where I choose to play. I don't want to be going through say Azmodan's dungeon looking for rares, get to the door behind which he is and go 'well this is as far as it's worth it for me to go'.
I want to get to that door, go through it, kill him and have an equivalent reward based off of the time. If X boss takes 25 seconds, the average champion takes 50 seconds, and z boss takes 100 seconds then I want X boss to have half the droprate of a champion while Z boss has double the droprate. The rewards for bosses should not just be a blanket 'lower than champions' like it seems to be currently according to recent statements. The rewards should be equivalent based off of average time to kill. That's all.
The fact is we just really don't know.
But ya, I'm very glad to see it.
And I'm convinced you haven't read a single word in a single post I've made. You make comments that are saying things that are the complete opposite of what I've posted and making it sound like you got those ideas from me... which I can't fathom at all.
What I'm describing is a philosophy designed by logic. You go through a dungeon and get to the end, and what you want is an epic encounter that really pushes you to the limit. That is how it SHOULD be in an RPG. Anything else just leaves you disappointed.
I've played hundreds of RPGs and action-RPGs. The ones that felt the best were always the ones where the major enemies(ie. bosses) were epic and somewhat challenging. Things like Final Fantasy games - the final Kefka fight or Zeromus. Things like Diablo 1 - Diablo was harder than almost anything in the game, so was the Butcher. Things like Ninja Gaiden where the end bosses have abilities that one-shot you. Those are the ones where you feel the most satisfied playing them.
Games where you get to the boss like War in the North and the boss is a pushover just leave you disappointed.
If Blizzard makes the bosses in this game less than epic I GUARANTEE you the game will score poorly in reviews and will lose a lot of long-term players over it. GUARANTEE.
Oh, and I technically HAVE spent hours in the game. The beta is part of the game. A small part, but it's a lot more than '1 minute'.
Edit: NM I give up, I really do think he just read the last sentence of my last post rather then the actual discussion part and made his post as insultingly oversimplified as possible. Tek, I hope this makes you happy - I really do, I can't argue with your stubborn unwillingness to address an entire post - it's just not winnable. Grats, selective arguments win again.
Bosses - require clearing at least 2-3 dungeon floors to get to even one, have way inflated health, have distinct scripts and epic effects that make them more interesting to fight. And bosses being 'predictable' is entirely dependent upon the quality of the AI. If the AI is well designed, the mobs may have say 10 abilities they can use but you can't be sure which they'll use when.
I'm sorry, but except for the most RARE sets of modifiers, I don't forsee champions being slower OR harder than bosses on inferno. Even with the 'predictability' of the boss, if it's well designed it can still be a challenge. Look at the Ninja Gaiden series. Once you'd fought a boss once yuou knew what it was going to do. But that didn't mean you could kill it every time because things were designed well.
Not only that but if they DO design it so that you run into 15-20 sets of mobs who are SIGNIFICANTLY harder than the boss BEFORE the boss I'll be highly - HIGHLY disappointed. In fact that might be enough to seriously reduce the fun value of the game. If there is ONE or TWO sets of modifiers that can spawn randomly that make the mobs insane, that's different, but if the AVERAGE champion is harder than a boss it will make the game very anti-climactic. VERY VERY anticlimactic.
It's like War in the North - which just came out so the reference is relevent. About 20 minutes before you fight the final boss you have to fight two trolls and like 4-5 other enemies in a sort of time sensitive situation. All normal enemies. They were VASTLY more difficult than the boss. DRAMATICALLY more difficult. And it almost completely ruined the satisfaction of finishing the game. Because the boss was such a pushover.
Bosses are SUPPOSED to be the most difficult - that is why they're the boss. If the boss is a pushover and some random enemy who just wanders his halls aimlessly is so much stronger than him - WHY IS HE STILL THE BOSS?
Which is actually 100% the OPPOSITE of what Blizzard wants for Diablo. Blizzard wants to encourage people to try odd-ball setups, not make them impossible.