Seriously?! You just justified a major change in the mechanics of the skill system by embracing change and functionality but disregard the same type of changes from D2 to D3.
The skill system was not an improvement on the same mechanic. In D1, skills you obtained were all based on luck of drops. In D2, there was no luck, every player had access to the same skills per class. The whole principle of the mechanic was thrown out. Which is fine because it made the game better. That is what D3 is doing with the flaws of D2. You can simply justify the change in your own mind because you were ok with this change. Many were not and claimed the same issue for D2 that you are trying to claim for D3.
Nah its completely the same thing. Does it really matter if you have to play for an hour to get a skill point when you level or play for an hour to get one for a random drop? The only difference, like I previously stated, is that in D1 ever class had the same spellbook, where as D2 eac class had its own trees. Also in d1 everyone could get everything up to insane levels, but in d2 you only had so many points to spend. I'm not saying its the same exact system, but if you play d1, then play d2, you can definately see how the system evolved, but the core of your spells getting buffer as you leveled them stay in tact. I'd agree with you they completely removed the skill system from d1 going into d2 if every class had 1 attack that never changed, like a first person shooter where a shotgun is always a shotgun and an m16 is always an m16, but thats just not the case.
Its much along the lines of saying team play sucked in d1. Perm friendly fire and the game often amounting to watching one character hack everything at a door was lame, so they improved the system for d2. However they still have the hostile feature, so realistically if you still wanted to play friendly fire d1 style you could. Yet another change you could see the progression of, yet, in d3 they totally strip any sort of friendly fire/hostile feature. They aren't furthering the diablo series, they're just mainstreaming/lamestreaming the game.
But besides for that and back on topic. How on earth are health globes an improvement? If anyone feels otherwise feel free to pipe in, but by far the top 3 lame features of d2 pvp were hackers, potters, and mass sorbers, so what does blizzard do, they essentially add in an auto pot feature. Seriously this is the first time I've ever agreed with SFJake on a topic, this is just an awful, lame feature, you'd have to be a paid cheerleader for blizzard to even try to say this is a good idea.
Keep up the hard work blizzard
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Nah its completely the same thing. Does it really matter if you have to play for an hour to get a skill point when you level or play for an hour to get one for a random drop? The only difference, like I previously stated, is that in D1 ever class had the same spellbook, where as D2 eac class had its own trees. Also in d1 everyone could get everything up to insane levels, but in d2 you only had so many points to spend. I'm not saying its the same exact system, but if you play d1, then play d2, you can definately see how the system evolved, but the core of your spells getting buffer as you leveled them stay in tact. I'd agree with you they completely removed the skill system from d1 going into d2 if every class had 1 attack that never changed, like a first person shooter where a shotgun is always a shotgun and an m16 is always an m16, but thats just not the case.
Its much along the lines of saying team play sucked in d1. Perm friendly fire and the game often amounting to watching one character hack everything at a door was lame, so they improved the system for d2. However they still have the hostile feature, so realistically if you still wanted to play friendly fire d1 style you could. Yet another change you could see the progression of, yet, in d3 they totally strip any sort of friendly fire/hostile feature. They aren't furthering the diablo series, they're just mainstreaming/lamestreaming the game.
But besides for that and back on topic. How on earth are health globes an improvement? If anyone feels otherwise feel free to pipe in, but by far the top 3 lame features of d2 pvp were hackers, potters, and mass sorbers, so what does blizzard do, they essentially add in an auto pot feature. Seriously this is the first time I've ever agreed with SFJake on a topic, this is just an awful, lame feature, you'd have to be a paid cheerleader for blizzard to even try to say this is a good idea.
Keep up the hard work blizzard
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Yeah, they took the skill system from D1 and expanded it. Remember how everyone had the same spellbook. Even if you were warrior you just had your int set laying around town for reading books and casted the same crap as a mage if you wanted.
All they did for D2 was take the same basic setup and say hey you know what, it'd be cool if you only had a set amount of points to use for your skills, and classes had different skills rather then everyone having the same. They took a cool mechanic from D1 and expanded upon it and made it better in D2.
Now lets look at another diabloesque feature in both D1, and D2, the barter system. D1 you had to drop trade, D2 introduced trade windows. Seems like the natural progression that should follow suit in D3 should be ways to find trades your looking for other then spamming channels, going to third party websites, or sitting in games named xx for xx for hours. For example, this free game I've been playing lately has a cool system linking items to their website, so you can make transactions with other players via the website so you can trade even when you aren't logged in. You seal your items, or characters for that matter, post them, and they remain up for trade until you pull them down or someone trades you for them. Its just too bad Blizzard had to resort to the same lame gold based economy and auction house ripped right out of WoW.
At the end of the day its gonna be no different then your mindless grindfest mmo just lacking a persistent world. What do you get when you take d2, gut out every feature that set it apart from mmo's, replace them with the guts of an mmo, then say but the game is going to be instance based with 5 player maxes? You get d3 silly, duh.
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You took the words right out of my mouth. Best things about D2 pvp...its total randomness, so they strip it all out for D3, not to mention they stripped out pk entirely.
Its just one of those things though, people don't understand it so its broken. If people don't understand how d2 pvp works, and that some of what works in pvp is trash in pvm and vice versa, they just naturally say its broken and flawed rather then learn the game.
Its the same logic behind why stat allocating was removed, and a gold based currency introduced rather then improving the barter system used in d2, and respecs introduced in the last d2 patch. People shouldn't have to actually think to play an rpg you know, the simple formula for success should always be time spent grinding = success. Taking the time to learn the game and experiment with things shouldn't actually have benefits, that punishes people who don't want to think.
I just don't understand what blizzard is doing here. They come out with D1, that was revolutionary at the time. They then improved upon that formula with more revolutionary things to create D2. The games are really quite similar, just D2 character builds were a little more complex, team play a little more polished, and trade windows. They then release tidbits about D3, and its just not D2 with improvements. Its D2 mainstreamed. I don't want to see D2 blended with WoW to give me D3, I was hoping D3 would have been D2 with its original ideas and mechanics enhanced, polished, and added to, not stripped out to make the game just like the other 100 crappy mmo's out there.
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1. Male characters are more popular then female characters.
2. Amongst the female characters, the sexy look is far more popular then the butch dyke look.
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What makes these 2 the worst ladders ever? Well quite simply 2 things.
The first of which is hacks. Mainly the obvious portion of hacks are all the bots. Spam bots are just annoying, and mf/exp bots remove any incentive to play. If you do bot, you can run your bot 23 hours a day, and for the hour you feel like playing you maybe just do a few duels, pk attempts(on bots, go figure), or trades. Realistically why would you shut your mf bot off just to manually mf? Its more fun to just play solitaire and watch the bot run in a window. I'll admit it, I botted before, so I'm speaking from experience here. The only thing lamer then botting is playing a game where you can't ever get anything you need because 3/4 of the players bot and whatever you have to offer is garbage to them. Prior to botting I'd get excited if a Pul rune dropped. Post botting I set my bot to not even pick anything up lower then an Ist rune. Even if you don't bot, every time you get a sweet deal in a trade, chances are it came from someone who just popped on to check his bot and wanted to clear up some space. You have two choices, bot and be part of a flooded economy, or don't bot and be part of a flooded economy, but either way those who do bot screw the game up for everyone.
Also jumbled into the hacks category is all the lame pvp hacks people use. Auto aim isn't even the bad one. A skilled player has the upper hand over an auto aimer, so let the noobs auto aim away, but can you please get rid of that annoying speed hack people use. Seeing a max ias/fcr/fhr guided arrow bow sorc in every duel game for the last month I played was a contributing factor to not wanting to play anymore. They aren't annoying because they are hard to kill or anythings, its just people blatantly rubbing impossible builds in your face just because they can. There's no way to max your fcr and ias on a bowsorc, anyone who knows the game at all could tell you this.
Now that my rant on hacks is over, on to the second factor that made the last two ladder seasons the worst ever...respecs. Respecs obviously dovetail with the bot problem, and its not too complicated to see how.
Let's say you want an auradin. Prior to respecs you had to have your gear in advance, plan your character in advance, and level in a certain manner. Regardless of the pros and cons of having to do this, the fact is you had to do it manually. You couldn't ever just get to level 70 and say sweet, now I can bot my auradin up to 95+. However, with the respecs, you can do just that. All you have to do is level a hammerdin to level 70, turn on the bot, and 2 weeks later you have a level 95, which can then be respecced into an auradin. Suddenly seeing a level 95 auradin didn't go from "wow thats a sweet character, thats not something I see often" to "wow wonder what bot that guys uses."
Even without botting as a factor, respecs still give me every reason in the world to play the top pvm class for each character. Gone are the days of leveling up a hammerdin, a smite/foh hybrid, a pure smiter, and an auardin all for various purposes. Now I level 4 hammers and respec 3 of them. This makes the game much easier and much more bland, as I'm sure everyone figured this out.
Now my other gripe with respecs. Was it possible to mess up a character before by misclicking and wasting a few stat points or a wrong skill? Yup. Was it more then likely at some point you'd have to remake characters because you got annis/torches/better gear and wanted to maximize stats? Yup. Was it possible you'd just make a weak character or think of an idea on how to improve your current build and want a tweak? Yup. So, here you have 3 scenarios that encourage making a fresh alt and playing the game more. However, respecs remove them. Why on earth would I remake my level 80 I want to tweak when its gonna take me maybe 6-8 hours worth of playtime to get back to level 80 when I could respec in 60 seconds?
Respecs are baby sitting a little chubby kid and giving him a cookie whenever he asks if the developer is the babysitter, and the player is the little chubby kid. Little chubby kid says COOKIE, and you give him one, and he eats it and leaves you alone for 5 minutes, all is well in the world. He comes back after that 5 minutes and says COOKIE, so you give him another, and all is well in the world for another 5 minutes. Instant gratification is a great thing!
However, after 2 hours of this the little chubby kid pukes all over himself and all over you and makes a horrible disgusting stinky mess. This is exactly the effect respecs had on D2, only instead of a horrible disgusting stinky mess your left with a dead player base. Before when you spent a month planning a character, leveling, deciding to try something different, deleting, remaking, releveling, and you finally hit that point where you said AHA! That's what I want! You felt like you did something cool. Its like you ate box of cookies, over the course of a month. Respecs just force feeds you that box of cookies all at once.
Now, time for the old "If you don't like it don't use it" argument. That's all well and dandy, but it still kills the game. I can't level a noob in a group anymore because everyone else is respeccing. Its not like the good old prior to respec days when you could meet up with a few new people in norm tristram and run with them all the way to hell. Its just like saying if you don't want to pick up dog poop, don't own a dog, then letting your dog crap in my yard.
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Who said anything at all about leeching? Trist runs til 10ish, tombs til 20, cows til 24, ancients, norm baal runs til your high enough to kill nm ancients, then guy right to nm baal runs. You could do this with friends of the same level no problem, no leeching required, and all get up to hell baal runs with no rusher in probably 5-7 hours. Only exception might be if your all playing untwinked, but if you have some leveling gear set aside on an alt you should have no problems.
If you wanted to rush/leech you could just grush to hell chaos and get a new toon to level 80 in 2-3 hours.
Yes I see a difference. Like I already said twice, you can't farm high runes throughout the entire d2 game, but will be able to farm currency everywhere in d3. This leads to an environment where mass time spent gold grinding can compensate for learning the game, and going for quality over quantity.
There is no learning curve with currency based economies. If there is an auction house you simply search for your item, and see what the other 10 are going for. If there is no AH you simply google it, just like every other game with currency items are going to have a relatively set value that doesn't vary much from sale to sale. If you barter every trade you do also comes along with the notion of how bad do I want what he has, and how bad does he have what I want. Currency is just bleh I don't need this I'm just gonna sell it and horde more gold away, and when I get 30k saved up I can definately buy that armor I want, because there is currently 17 sets of it for sale for that much in the AH.
It doesn't matter if an item gives you 35000 gold or 3 gold when you sell it, the actually amount you get it going to be relative to the game. That aside, when you have to come up with sinks so people can't accumulate gold too fast, you already have a broken system. Gold is either going to be too hard to get to the point where the game is just an annoying grind fest, or is going to be massively accumulated over time, both of which are bad.
The only game I've ever played that came anywhere close to currency being useful without massive amounts of sinks, limited how much currency would spawn, and the more that was in game, the less you would get for things. The only real sink was you would get charged rent on your gear each day, with more expensive gear costing more to rent. The only reason it remained stable was because 10 million 1 month after the server went up, was still worth the same 10 million in terms of what you could do with it 5 years after the server was up. I've yet to see any other currency based game come anywhere close to being as stable. You'll end up thinking your rich with 500k a month after d3 starts, but 5 years down the road when people have 20billion saved up, and a noob gets on and plays for a month, he'll realize he's dirt poor and everyone else has years of currency horded away. The design is fail right from the start.
I guess if you win more then you lose on the game, and if your adult enough to just lose an accept the fact you just got pwned when you do lose, you look at pk, from both sides of the fence, as fun. If you just lose every time and can't handle losing to someone who knows the game better or just outsmarted/outplayed you in that instance, then yeah, I guess your right, it is nothing but grief.
However, there are plenty of ways around it regardless, so if you think it is nothing but grief yet do nothing to avoid it you deserve the aggravation. You want to do some Baal runs, you start a pub run, and soon as you get 8 people you start slapping a password on so no random people can join and mess things up for your run. If you make a few friends this way, or have a few friends already, its pretty easy to get 8 man runs going on a daily basis. That's why the password feature is there, for your protection, if you want to constantly pub and never private, its part of the game.
Also you always get plenty of warning when someone is going to pk you. Its not like a big message saying SAUSAGE HONKEY HAS HOSTILED YOU doesn't appear on your screen, and you have to wait for them to come find you and kill you. During this time you could just save and exit and go to a different game. Its actually the most annoying thing that can happen to a pk'er when everyone just leaves and you don't get any kills.
So you don't want to password your games, or leave your game. You could just kill the guy. Even if you want to say you can't with a pvm build and all that good stuff, that is just not true. If your running baal for example, and get pk'd, to put it bluntly, your a moron. Someone hostiles you, and your at the throne room. There is only one way in. Just send a couple guys to spam attacks on the entry point and its insta death the second the would be pk'er walks in. But there I go again, expecting people to actually learn little tips and tricks as they play the game, curse this evil learning curve thing I enjoy so much.
What's this pvp ladder you speak of?
Yeah so I'm just beating a dead horse now, but pk added enjoyment to the game, unless you were horrid at it. You keep insisting it was only fun for the attacker, but that is simply not true. I couldn't imagine going on and running 20-30 chaos/baal runs a night and never having anyone make a pk attempt at me. I could go run chaos 100 times and not die. Its just the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over. People trying to pk my runs was the only possible random event that would ever happen. Being able to get bored of it and go make a pk attempt at someone else was just an added bonus. But yeah I guess if you never wanted to learn how to get better at the game and come up with some tricks on how to pwn people, then its easier just to lump pk in the grief category and talk about how unfair it was, even though another player couldn't do anything you weren't capable of doing.
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Yeah its totally excessive to have to level a new character that you can hit level 80 with in a day easily if you know what your doing. Even if your a total first timer, and actually do manage to mess up a character so badly you just can't do anything with it, you know, like putting 1 point into everything, big deal, it probably only takes a couple days of trying to play that character before you realize its a total fail.
What do you consider an acceptable learning curve? One where you just say WHOOPS I MESSED UP and get to instantly undo it? Heck I'd even agree with a 5 minute timer to reset your last skill point, just in case someone happens to have a lag click or something. Yeah I'd also agree having to remake a character that you realized at some point totally stunk if it took 3 months to get to that point was excessive, but it only takes a matter of days even if your slow to get to that point. Considering if you play online you can also transfer over your items to a new character so its not even a total loss, this learning curve is not extreme at all.
So you think a learning curve for character building that might cost you a couple days worth of play time while your dabbling with a new idea on a character is excessive, and you don't want any learning curve on the economy.
I'd just go play a first person shooter where everyone has the same character and the same items if I wanted this. Character building and economy are two of the things that set rpg's apart from first person shooters, why would you want to neuter them down rather then amplify them? I don't want the game to hold my hand and walk me through so I don't ever have a chance to mess anything up or maybe do something foolish with my character, what fun is learning the game if you always know whatever choice your making is the right one. When it gets to that point there is NOTHING left to learn.
I guess you just want to ignore whatever I say, must go hand in hand with your extreme dislike for any learning curve at all in the game. You can farm gold right from the first monster you kill in the game. Allowing this with the currency would be the same as high runes dropping from zombies in the blood moor in d2. Wealth grinding then just becomes a game of who puts the most time in, rather then having quality of how well you grind as a factor.
I'd rather know that because I took the time to learn the game and make a good character that can kill fast and has a good mf set up, know where to farm for what if I'm looking for specific items(like torches), and knowing my items well enough so I'm only keeping items with value rather then picking up every piece of junk and wasting time trying to trade and mule garbage, I am going to consistently gather a large amount of wealth in a 2 hour period then someone who's clueless does in 10 hours. A gold economy does not allow for this to happen. It becomes much easier to overcome a game knowledge deficit by simply grinding for endless hours and hording currency. I can see why someone opposed to having to learn the game though, would be opposed to this type of design.
I can tell you've never actually defeated a would be pk'er in D2, because you immediately say if would get you killed on top of still not getting your chest/boss kill. My point was, if I can vote you out with a votekick system you have no chance to do anything at all. If there is pk and I try to do it via pk, you might actually just kill me, get your stuff, and laugh in my face, or you might flee and come back when we're gone, or you might just die. I'd rather have those three potential options then the undefendable grief of a votekick system.
Which is simply why you have to make sure you come across as stupid. Being stupid isn't a bannable offense. I was just saying, no matter what type of formal anti-grief systems you can conjure up people will find ways around them. From my personal experience being able to just pk such people is far more effective then any formal anti-griefing measure I've ever seen implemented. They either just don't work, make the game less interesting in other ways, or are easy to use to your own advantage if you want to grief people.
I don't mind pvp matches, and I don't mind a designated arena, as long as these aren't my only options. It'd be the equivalent of joining a duel game in D2. I spent plenty of time in duel games, it was pretty fun. Aesthetic rewards however, are utterly meaningless. Its like the ears in D2, nobody cared about them. They didn't mean anything at all, you couldn't do anything with them. Stripping out pk in favor of aesthetic rewards is completely and utterly stupid as far as I'm concerned. Blizzard would be better off just stripping PK if they really want to go that route, and rather then waste time on aesthetic rewards just everyone take a day or two off, rather then implement something entirely meaningless.
Separating it from pvp however, is lame. In d2 for example, the pvm was easy. Once you got good at it, it was just outright simple. PK added more spice to pvm then any pvm feature they could ever implement would. Your not just fighting some ai trash monsters, or some uber boss that once you learn the trick to beat it you can kill it with no problem over and over again. When you have to fend off a player its a more dangerous situation then dieing once in 300 runs because you hit a lag spike, but yet again, I could see how someone who has an extreme dislike for any meaningful type of learning curve would hate the most challenging portion of the game.
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Ok, so you don't consider it a learning curve if you can't get past parts of the game if you don't know what your doing. However, if you LEARN what you are doing, you can easily get past them. If this isn't a learning curve, what is it?
You do realize, a game that requires character building, but no matter what you do you can beat every part of the game without having to learn and adapt, has ZERO learning curve?
Gold economies actually damage areas of the game where learning curves are a factor. If you can only barter with your items, you have to learn what each item is worth in relation to each other. There's also an unmeasureable factor of how much each party involved in the deal wants/needs each others items. I've done plenty of trades in D2 where I didn't need any of the items involved, I just knew I was getting a good deal and could turn a profit by just trading, and trading again.
Gold economies you just say eh, I don't need this item, I'm gonna check the auction house. Oh look everyone's asking 10k gold for it, I guess I'll post mine for 10k. Yeah...that's a learning curve.
The other thing I don't like about a gold based economy is it becomes a game of hours spent grinding rather then quality of grind. If gold was actually a useful economy in D2 everyone would spend their time blasting through nm chaos as fast as possible and selling everything. How rich you are would depend upon how fast you could sell the most crap.
However with a barter system it is based upon quality over quantity. Running nm runs just to sell mass amounts of item would make you gold, but, running on hell would be the only chance for high runes, a potential godly rare, or some of the high end unique/set items. Knowing what items were worth picking up and not bothering selling every piece of trash that drops would net you far more profit, which is where a learning curve comes into play.
What do you mean, its impossible for me to grief you without pk? Believe me, I could come up with hundreds of ways to troll people and grief them without pk. As far as from the viewpoint of purely wanting to play the game to troll and grief people, I'd actually prefer no pk, because then you are completely defenseless against me. Any anti-trolling/griefing measures they put into the game can just as easily be used against you.
Let's examine a votekick system. I'm just gonna pretend max party is set in stone at 5, not really sure if that's true but just saying that to make a point. If I want to grief using this, I'm just going to make sure I'm in a party with 2 buddies. What would prevent us from votekicking the other 2 right before we approach an end chest or boss of a quest or some other point of significance? Sure you might not do it...but there's plenty of people who'd do it for a chuckle. You'd be completely defenseless against it. Actually now that I think about it, if any blizz reps read this...please include a votekick system for my enjoyment.
On the current mmo I've been playing, me and one of my friends actually sometimes actively set out to get people banned. Its simple. While grouped with people you say some cocky noobish crap that could easily be passed off as you just being an overall stupid person. When they defend themself you try to antagonize them into swearing, at which point you report them and they get banned. Bet they wish they could have just pk'd me after my initial comment instead. The point is, your not going to stop people from griefing and trolling, so why are you so against the option to just kill them?
As far as pvp goes, sure its fun and has its place, but its NOT pk. PVP doesn't give you the thrill of pwning some random unsuspecting people. PVP doesn't ever give you the thrill of having to defend yourself from a pk attempt. I always thought the best thing about baal runs in d2 was when some random pk'er joined your game and made an attempt to wipe your run. And really...what did you lose if you got pk'd, 30 seconds of time, some worthless gold, and a kick to your ego, big deal. For me, the enjoyment factor out of succesfully wiping out a baal run, or the randomness factor of people making pk attempts at you, added enough randomness and fun to the game to more then compensate for the almost non-existant penalties of getting pk'd.(unless you were hardcore)
I'm not really psyched at all about a ranking/record system. Its just a meaningless feature. When I played basketball when I was younger, I played it because I liked basketball, not so at the end of the season I could tell everyone I had 10 wins and 2 losses. Much the same way I play a game, I'd rather get some good laughs out of pk'ing a bunch of people, pwning a pk attempt that comes my way, or by having some fun arena matches. As long as all that fun is present, I'd be far more thrilled about the game then just having the designers say well, we stripped out pk, but to compensate we're going to keep your record for you now. Seems like a pretty crappy trade off, remove something that for many people was a large part of their d2 experience, and replace it with something utterly meaningless.
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Gold economy doesn't ruin economies...dream on. You mention it'll be better then not having high runes to trade with...but guess what, you won't have any gold either. Either that or you won't have nearly as much as someone who had been playing steady...especially with no type of ladder reset or anything. I'd rather be able to farm and get a high rune, and think cool, I have a high rune, then have to farm gold, when the price for w/e people may want to buy with gold that doesn't bind is going to be constantly going up as gold is going to be constantly accumulating in the game.
PK is a source of grief? You've got to be kidding. PK is the best way to deal with a griefer. For example, I was on DDO the other night, and there's 6 of us in a quest, and we get to a part where everyone has to stand in a certain area for the quest to continue. Suddenly one guy just says HAHAHA GL NOOBS and goes afk. We stand there and wait 10 minutes, and realize the guys just screwing with us and isn't coming back anytime soon. We then have to recall and restart the quest without him. Now just imagine...had DDO had some PK in it, rather then getting griefed by that idiot, we could have just PK'd him and had some street justice. Then again I'm not really that stunned someone who thinks a learning curve in a game is awful design, also doesn't like PK, since killing other players with any sort of winning record was the most difficult accomplishment(and thus required the most learning/thought) in the game.
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Just when I had myself convinced they couldn't possible screw up the franchise anymore, they go and prove me wrong again!
The best thing about Diablo 3 is its not gonna be one of those free to play designs where you get to play a portion of the game to check it out before you pay to unlock the rest of the game. If it were I'd probably actually waste some time giving it the benefit of the doubt and checking it out. Since they'd expect my money up front and the games revving up to be a giant turd sandwich, not only will I not waste money on it, but I won't even have to waste any time!
They managed to include a bunch of crap I admired D2 for not using, like binding gear, a gold based economy rather then barter based, and complete lack of console crossover that always leaves computer users feeling like the game got dumbed down to suit console players.
They also managed to neuter some of my favorite D2 features with crap like auto statting, respecs, and lack of PK.
Good job blizzard, I can't wait til you announce the rainbow dancer class. You know, the class that's gonna run around healing everyone with bursts of rainbow light and never doing any damage, because harming things is wrong. They're also going to be able to grow pretty flowers, bake delicious cakes and pies, and cast spells that do nothing but say random cute, funny things.
Well alright, maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but D2 was an epic game. For comparisons sake, lets compare it to Dungeons and Dragons Online. That was an extremely mediocre game. It pains me to see Diablo 3 adopting many of the core elements of a mediocre game like DDO and making it a mainstream lamestream game rather then building on the things that made D2 stand out.
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I'm really hoping pk carries over to d3. I also hope unbalanced teams carries over. I always enjoyed the duel games that turned into 2v2v3v1 or 3v5, or even an 8 man free for all.
Sure its fun playing against people close to your ability, but its also a great way to learn to play someone much better then you. Some people are cool enough to give you tips and answer questions, but you can learn even from the biggest jerk who does nothing but stomp you and taunt you simply by figuring how what he's doing. Also, I'm not gonna lie, sometimes its just downright fun to go 7v1 rape a game full of morons. I've wipe hell baal runs with a fire druid before...that gave me much more of a feeling of success then any pvm feat lol.
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Don't really know why you have that amount of strength either. Should just shoot for 156 and use a spirit shield. You could also make due with much less then 122 str and use a lidless wall for a shield if you want to go that route.
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I think its gonna end up more along the lines of how many times are you willing to wade through the same game to get a specific spec to end game with end game gear.
D2 style you'd just spend a day or two leveling, and mule over some gear and play around with w/e build you wanted. Didn't like it, no problem, trade or mule your gear to a new character and play around some more.
D3 style you can't really do this, since it seems like they are quite content on forcing you through the same content each alt you make before you can get them to an end game level, and your gear will bind. You'll probably have to spend months just to test a build out and if you don't like it end up with worthless gear if you decide to erase and make a new alt. Its not really a matter of who wants lots of uber characters, its a matter of how fun is it going to be to have to grind through the same content for hours and hours, just to get to end game, and grind another set of bound gear for hours and hours?
I like using dungeons and dragons online as an example as it seems a lot like what D3 is shaping into(and its free to play so you can check it out if you think I'm totally clueless). You could probably level a guy to max level in a month without bothering to grind much in terms of gear. You'd spend probably another year to deck your gear out. Theres a fair amount of players that get a level 20, or even a couple, but how many do you think play each class to level 20? Not very many...because each time you level a character your forced to grind through the same content, and run the same quests for binding gear. Making an alt actually makes you think, do I really want to invest this much time in this character that I might not even enjoy playing and have be a total and complete waste of time after I have leveled/geared? I never once thought that way while playing D2, it was always more just like eh, I don't mind wasting a couple days leveling, and worst case scenario the character blows, I xfer my gear away, and dabble with some other alt. Much more fun, and much more encouraging of alt making and experimenting D2 style.
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