Ugh, I took two days off for the initial Diablo III launch, I got to play like 2-4 hours the first day and like 6 hours the second day because of all the downtime. I should've known better after seeing so many World of Warcraft expansions launch, but I thought Diablo might be different.
NOPE.
Just wait for the weekend, or maybe take like Thur-Fri off just to be safe if you REALLY want a couple extra days to play. Two days should give them time to sort out the really major initial launch issues.
I cannot express how happy I am that CM is being completely removed.
CMWW builds were the worst thing to happen to any class in any game, ever... Quite literally the most effective way to play a Wizard was to drum your fingers on the skill buttons as quickly as possible... I used so much aspirin playing CMWW and it's a massive reason I was finally driven away from Diablo 3.
One of the other major builds, Archon, also relied heavily on CM... One class being built around a single skill was terribly unhealthy design.
At the risk of being 'that guy,' all I really saw in the original post was 'let's use game theory to exponentially increase the desire to farm for many, many more hours.'
The suggestions only serve to string along even more countless micro-rewards for spamming LMB-1-2-3-4-5-6.
Of course I don't have an answer for the problem, I just don't think 'INCREASE ALL THE THINGS!' is it.
Thanks for the discussion, guys - now to specific points!
First off... I agree with a lot of what you're saying. Diablo is the high speed smashfest of the action RPG market. Hell, it practically invented the action rpg market.
But there's just a couple of things... first off, I never mentioned adding cooldowns in any of my ideas. Granted, at first I did think some of the spells could use cooldowns, but you'll notice that for the most part that the cooldown heavy spells are in the defensive category. One could argue that armor is defensive, but let's face it, most wizards now cast armor spells for any incidental dps advantage they can get.
Anyway, I don't see how adding an effect to Armor spell casts removes from that. You're not really juggling resources and you're not juggling cooldowns at all. All I was talking about was some incentive to make you think about using it a little. Instead of casting the buff before a fight, there's a reason to cast it DURING the fight. And I did say to make its damage non-competitive with true AP spenders. It's not supposed to be part of a combo, it's just supposed to make recasting it a little more interesting than, well... pressing 4, in my case.
Yeah, the additional things I listed were just some other features I've seen around (for example, cooldowns being added late in the Diablo 2 production cycle). The other things like detailed resource management and spell rotations are mostly from my experience with World of Warcraft. Given Blizzard's increasing love of cross-contamination in their game development process, I am worried we'll eventually see Diablo 3 turning into 4-player WoW... which would be horrible. They're already (potentially) taking lessons from the WoW loot system with this talk about having certain bosses having a chance to drop specific legendaries... Soon, I'm afraid, we'll be logging on D3 just to farm the same boss for weeks at a time to get that ONE special drop... and then they're likely to add daily limits on the number of times a boss can be killed, or some similar restriction like WoW's weekly raid resets.
This is mostly what I worry about.
And to Zero(ps), I personally enjoyed playing Meteorb sorcs and Bone necros (both are basically just 1 button spam classes) more than anything else - Javazon, Summoner necros, various pally builds, Frenzy/WW barb... Just my preference.
Yeah... I'm totally fine with the way the conjuration spells work currently, with the exception that Energy Armor is a little 'too good' compared to the other options.
My only suggestion would be, perhaps, remove the 12% damage buff from sparkflint runed Familiars, It could be changed to set enemies on fire when struck by the Familiar's projectile, perhaps.
My reason for not wanting the OP's changes to be made is this - I don't *want* my Diablo gameplay to turn into some cooldown-juggling, resource micro-managing, spell-chaining, combo-building mathfest. Diablo has always been, and always should be, the button spamming 'FPS' of the action RPG market.
The typical sorceress build in Diablo 2 was a perfect example of what a Diablo character should play like - cast a couple buffs (mana shield and ice armor) then spam teleport and frozen orb like they're going out of style.
I don't see a problem with having some of your spells 'do nothing,' as you say. Buffs are pretty typical Wizard fare. Above all, they *certainly* don't need to be nerfed by having Max AP Reduced by X, or anything like that.
EDIT: Please don't read this and get the idea that I don't think the runes need work... most of them are completely unusable. I just personally don't think the spells we're discussing need some major overhaul, they just need more tweaking.
EDIT 2: Fixed the Energy Armor/Force Armor mix up @Bagstone's suggestion.
OP, I agree with you. I remember reading something on an old addon for WoW that would allow you to see what loot was going to drop when you went into an instance, so you could just reset the instance until you figured out what you wanted. Further study showed that differing the Party Leader in a group provided blatantly skewed loot rolls for each person. Something like that, I haven't played in years.
To the person who complained that the OP compared this game to WoW: Since you obviously didn't know, WoW and Diablo 3 are both made by Blizzard. Looking at all the cross-game idea-bleeding makes me nauseous.
To everyone else: Legendaries are still totally screwy and unreliable, but that's obviously the only way that different copies of the same legendary can maintain any resale value to make Blizzard more money.
I'm eagerly awaiting TL2 as well.
Blizzard's drastic alteration of their games is getting very old. Anyone who played WoW for any length of time should agree to that point, at least.
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NOPE.
Just wait for the weekend, or maybe take like Thur-Fri off just to be safe if you REALLY want a couple extra days to play. Two days should give them time to sort out the really major initial launch issues.
CMWW builds were the worst thing to happen to any class in any game, ever... Quite literally the most effective way to play a Wizard was to drum your fingers on the skill buttons as quickly as possible... I used so much aspirin playing CMWW and it's a massive reason I was finally driven away from Diablo 3.
One of the other major builds, Archon, also relied heavily on CM... One class being built around a single skill was terribly unhealthy design.
So, so, SO glad it's gone.
The suggestions only serve to string along even more countless micro-rewards for spamming LMB-1-2-3-4-5-6.
Of course I don't have an answer for the problem, I just don't think 'INCREASE ALL THE THINGS!' is it.
Yeah, the additional things I listed were just some other features I've seen around (for example, cooldowns being added late in the Diablo 2 production cycle). The other things like detailed resource management and spell rotations are mostly from my experience with World of Warcraft. Given Blizzard's increasing love of cross-contamination in their game development process, I am worried we'll eventually see Diablo 3 turning into 4-player WoW... which would be horrible. They're already (potentially) taking lessons from the WoW loot system with this talk about having certain bosses having a chance to drop specific legendaries... Soon, I'm afraid, we'll be logging on D3 just to farm the same boss for weeks at a time to get that ONE special drop... and then they're likely to add daily limits on the number of times a boss can be killed, or some similar restriction like WoW's weekly raid resets.
This is mostly what I worry about.
And to Zero(ps), I personally enjoyed playing Meteorb sorcs and Bone necros (both are basically just 1 button spam classes) more than anything else - Javazon, Summoner necros, various pally builds, Frenzy/WW barb... Just my preference.
My only suggestion would be, perhaps, remove the 12% damage buff from sparkflint runed Familiars, It could be changed to set enemies on fire when struck by the Familiar's projectile, perhaps.
My reason for not wanting the OP's changes to be made is this - I don't *want* my Diablo gameplay to turn into some cooldown-juggling, resource micro-managing, spell-chaining, combo-building mathfest. Diablo has always been, and always should be, the button spamming 'FPS' of the action RPG market.
The typical sorceress build in Diablo 2 was a perfect example of what a Diablo character should play like - cast a couple buffs (mana shield and ice armor) then spam teleport and frozen orb like they're going out of style.
I don't see a problem with having some of your spells 'do nothing,' as you say. Buffs are pretty typical Wizard fare. Above all, they *certainly* don't need to be nerfed by having Max AP Reduced by X, or anything like that.
EDIT: Please don't read this and get the idea that I don't think the runes need work... most of them are completely unusable. I just personally don't think the spells we're discussing need some major overhaul, they just need more tweaking.
EDIT 2: Fixed the Energy Armor/Force Armor mix up @Bagstone's suggestion.
To the person who complained that the OP compared this game to WoW: Since you obviously didn't know, WoW and Diablo 3 are both made by Blizzard. Looking at all the cross-game idea-bleeding makes me nauseous.
To everyone else: Legendaries are still totally screwy and unreliable, but that's obviously the only way that different copies of the same legendary can maintain any resale value to make Blizzard more money.
I'm eagerly awaiting TL2 as well.
Blizzard's drastic alteration of their games is getting very old. Anyone who played WoW for any length of time should agree to that point, at least.