I enjoy the Inna's look and I keep them on with the full set. But if you could dye the color of them would it be better? Rather than light blue you could have other colors. And if there ever was a unique color like Inna's seems to be blue, they should at least be somehow illuminating with magnificence and be able to look fitting in a unique way on their own in combation with other items.
You're wrong man, with my adjustments to the system, unique shoulders you could tell their special ability, they cannot be changed visually. While regular shoulders from level 1-70 could be changed to any tier's set look, allowing matching outfits while wearing regular non-unique gear. No one cares if there's nothing actually unique about the item, so yes, why not change it to a tier set that looks cooler or more fitting with the rest of your regular items.
That's the beauty of imaginative abilities and actual balancing of the worthiness of all items that are unique. If they can strike that balance finely then players will be as diverse as they are allowed with variant builds of all sorts that all work wonderfully and can easily compete as the best of the best builds. Then there shouldn't be a need to change their looks demeaning the point of unique visuals, everyone would be in different sets and uniques that all look amazing with any other unique piece.
What if you could only change their colors thus preserving their, though lacking, distinctness? It is also key and something that needs to be addressed is that actual unique compellingness of these unique items, they cannot look lame or even ugly.
Currently many items lack any reasonable sense of magnificence. If all uniques looked great on their own and even better with one another then there wouldn't be this issue. They should be focused on that rather than taking the cheap route of allowing everyone to change to anything without any distinction between the dignity of each unique, just throwing them all together into a pile and say they can all look the same, it doesn't matter.
I happen to think it is one of the coolest items in the game, but since every item will be useful then you are free to choose others rather than only it. You should not however be able to change the item to something that you think looks better because now every item has it's own worthiness and you're cutting out a part of that by allowing every unique to look like another. If every unique has it's own unique ability it is ideal that every item has it's own distinguishability along with their specific ability. There's no more complaint that everyone is forced to wear a certain type of item therefore everyone looks the same, preserving that vital distinguishability is essential to the dignity of the game itself.
What it serves to be is devaluing all actual uniqueness of every item
How in the world could you develop an emotional attachment to the "actual uniqueness of every item" enough to get so offended by this system? Seriously... you're whining that SOME PEOPLE might not find the graphic of an item appealling and they might make it look like something that's more appealling to them. What a travesty! How will we ever cope with people's differing tastes on visual aspects of the game?
I have acknowledged that you can still make Transmog useful to change regular items so they can have specific tier set looks that make it look more appealing, however, the main issue resides with devaluing the visual dignity of unique items that have special abilities. These items should not be Transmogable, they should stand out on their own that each one is unique on it's own and extremely compelling to the user creating a distinctive variance of unique item combinations each of them being awesome and diverse.
Take on the point once again that once all uniques are useful there should be not a need and should not be a possibility to transfer their unique looks to one another. The argument that there are too many repetitive looks currently is completely invalid because all uniques are said to be valuable and worthy to wear therefore no one will be wearing the same sets not like now where everyone does.
So it is completely unnecessary once they are all useful and they all have a unique and compelling look. What it serves to be is devaluing all actual uniqueness of every item, every item should have it's abilities and a unique visual combined to it, not whatever look you want on your item with said ability, then every item can have any ability essentially.
Transmog should only work for regular items where you switch your armor visual through the 1-70 tiers of armors, but not swap visuals of legendaries/uniques. That way before you own a "unique" item, you can customize your armor to be more set-like tier to tier. But once you hit unique items they should all actually look unique.
See you guys are all in the old stage of the game, thinking everyone will look the same if there wasn't transmog, what you don't realize is they stated that all legendary/uniques will have their valuable abilities and usefulness that makes every item usable and worthy. That means it naturally won't be everyone running around with the same look. You are completely disregarding that fact.
You can do it in a better way without it by adding individuality to each item. Then they can be mixed and matched with all sorts of unique appearances, and if all items were valuable like they describe it then each item will have it's own niche and groups of people who wear them, with an equal balance you will see awesome variations while keeping their specific asthetic.
Two things:
1. I don't care about the variations I see on other people, or being able to tell what their build is at a glance. I want my character to look cool at all times. And that isn't going to happen if I have a "mixed and matched" set of gear that I chose for gameplay reasons. It's just going to look ridiculous, exactly like today.
2. You will see far, far more visual variety as a result of transmog, that I guarantee you. There are far more appearances to choose from than there are viable legendaries to equip. Different people have different tastes in aesthetics, but everyone wants the best items.
The fact is each unique item should already stand on it's own, paired with any other useful unique they should create yet another unique visual, since all legendaries will be value and useful, each items look should be valued and unique to itself. The reason why items currently look awful with paired together is because they all have a default visual with different coloring and some minor changes, this makes sets look more appealing, but if all unique items had individuality and stood on its own looking "legendary", then it is both going to have unique combinations since all are useful, then the look will actually matter and not just be a fake swappable skin to the actual item.
Transmog could still fit into all of this if it was more like this. Maybe rare armors you acquire through to 70 you can unlock and change to the style you prefer the most (with a revamp of many of them to all look visually pleasing in some way, even the simplified versions for lower tier, and perhaps add more variants to higher tiers). But anything above that the items unique visual should be bound to it.
You can do it in a better way without it by adding individuality to each item. Then they can be mixed and matched with all sorts of unique appearances, and if all items were valuable like they describe it then each item will have it's own niche and groups of people who wear them, with an equal balance you will see awesome variations while keeping their specific asthetic.
This isn't a dress up game, it's a game to display power, and your gear represents that, their values should be bound to it specifically. There's also a significance of recognizing the type of armor they are wearing and the powers they possess, if every item can be any other item then you could never tell what they were really wearing except by inspecting them, and then its like every item is just any other item until you see what they really are.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this skill was: Kulle's rocks drop. Who can forget how annoying it is for him to cast that on you while you are time warped?
So Kulle is a barbarian then.
Also, I thought how much they advertised Crusader as the ranged-melee class and they also add a ranged attack casted by Barbarian the Wizard? Now it looks like a range-melee class like Crusader. Crusader casts lightning and Barb can now drop rocks on enemies.
I was hoping for a sick melee skill, avalanche seems lame. I mean it's okay, maybe if they made it seem more powerful from the caster's end. Aside from it being cast with a shout, there needs to be some kind of echoing effect that makes it seem like the shout was so loud that it caused an avalanche... right now it's just too light. But what we saw was the alpha build so maybe they will make additions.
The way I imagined it would be a huge shock wave around the Barb that shows the power of the sound that it knocks away projectiles and monsters near him, and then the screen shakes and rocks pour from above. The rocks they got down pretty nicely, but I think the cast animation should be more than the default shout animation.
Here's what I imagined would fit the Barbarian better:
I think a more dramatic skill instead of avalanche that comes from the ground itself and makes it more like the Barb is making use of the ground, than just spawning rocks from the sky or assuming they somehow came from a mountain above, is a Volcanic Eruption (or just Eruption) maybe, have rocks and lava erupt from under after he stomps the ground creating a split in the ground.
It's sort of like Earthquake because the graphics on that look like a volcanic fissures somewhat, but Earthquake is only AoE under you, while a long volcanic fissure can actually be a ranged attack. You can do that for a long-ranged attack even, making a huge rift in front of you spewing lava, doing damage in a line that stays like a wall. This even gives it a tactical usage, you can run around the wall to avoid enemies or bait them into it.
A second way to do it, the Barb stomps the ground so hard it cracks the ground around him, one of the cracks where you cast it starts to actually spawn a volcano from underground, not under you, but somewhere in front of you unlike Earthquake. You see the ground rise like a growing volcano from flat ground, the earth rises and you can see smoke and fumes coming from underneath, and then the tip explodes creating rocks, ash, and lava falling from the sky burning and melting everything around. Who wouldn't like to fight under raining lava and rocks? This one since it's delayed you can cast it and lure monsters to it.
And another way is, rather than a volcano growing out of the ground as I first imagined it, just a plain eruption of lava from the ground in front of you that casts radius AoE damage rather than a line, a much more explosive method. How you can make this look completely melee rather than cast, you can make him slam his weapon into the ground so hard, you see a crack to where you cast it, and then the eruption at the point. It's kind of like the Barbarian version of all the ranged AoE spells like Meteor or the lightning of the Crusader, but using a melee style to create it.
These could be the variations for the different runes possible.
One of Blizzard's core values for Diablo is "rarity = power", and it represents the core element of uniqueness that displays power and rarity, due to how "legendary" the item is. This is why Transmog works against that core value.
To me the approach of Transmog just sounds like some people are too impatient to wait and allow rarity to display power/uniqueness, they'd rather get what they want without any work, just like a spoiled child.
If you let players freely change unique's looks to other uniques they've found, you can easily have players just swapping their preferred look by unlocking the one they want at a lower level if the item is dropped before the max level, then transfer the look over to their unique that they have at their current level with better stats. That would be the lazy way to do it. While it would be far more rewarding if players could just wait until they have found the item at their desired level and then use it when they have it then. And there wouldn't be a reason they wouldn't use it since all uniques are effective, especially when there's Enchanting to make affixes even more effective.
And so usually the consequence of this is destroying rarity and uniqueness itself through that, like when they demanded more loot and ended up with too much useless loot, when what they really wanted was rarity = power, less loot but more uniqueness and power to rare loot, exactly what I said in my Itemization post (http://us.battle.net...09861367).
The catch is also though, previously there wasn't enough useful loot either, so simple-minds deduce that you must add more loot as a solution, they were dead wrong. It's the same situation here, right now there's no look variety because there's not enough worthy unique items to wear without sacrificing your power, not enough power to the unique items, like not enough loot, you see? So they deduce that they must solve this issue by adding variety, by allowing every item to take on the look of another item. But they're dead wrong, again.
Once all uniques are powerful, there's no lacking of diversity of different powerful items anyway. And by making every item able to look like any unique and powerful items, it nullifies that power by making the look non-unique. It's essentially the same thing as adding too much useless loot because you think "more is better", by adding more customization and allowing every item to have the look of any unique items, you are reducing the rarity/uniqueness of said actually unique items.
"More, more, more customization!", always just reminds me of, "More, more, more loot!"
You get what you ask for, when you don't know what you're asking for. But naive children don't know better than to beg and cry until they get what they want without working or waiting, only to realize later it's not what they wanted. So I very much like my approach more, because you have to work hard and get paid for it, not get spoonfed whatever you want.
And it's not like it's impossible to end up with what you want either, if you listened to Blizzcon panel you'd know: #EndGameForEveryone. And you can also trade your soulbound "legendary" uniques with your friends that you played with, so if they have a piece you like and you have one they like, trade.
Effectively what Transmog does to your items is make them look like anything you want it to look like, underneath are still the items you really have. This removes the distinction between different items. If that's the case can't the monsters have their distinctions removed as well? After all, they are just for looks, and underneath is still the original monster, and you can see it's name is the original name so you just make it look like a different monster on the outside like your gear.
That's like what transmoging acts like to me when I see other players who've used it, so when I start playing after Transmog I see them wearing armor they are not really wearing just because they wanted to look like that. Do you see? It's the same thing if you changed monsters. It's like having to see a different monster rather than the actual monster. Just gear wise instead. To me it's not right to allow items to have their looks changed from what they really are, as then I would see them wearing another item, which they shouldn't have the plain ability to completely look like something else they aren't.
I wouldn't mind however, if they made variants to some items that aren't unique to look better or in a set, but unique items should remain 'unique to it's name'. As monsters with special abilities you would like to look the same so you knew what it was without looking at the name. It's outward appearance should appear with their name. But if it's a rare item you could transmog it to be any of the set tier looks because they are all among the same non-unique sets, and that would be fine. Just like monsters if they didn't have any unique effect I wouldn't mind if they changed to something else as much because there is no special effect or uniqueness to it.
And something something completely neglected is that when all these said uniques become useful and always worthy to wear, who's to say there's a problem with switching to that peiece specifically because you like the way it looks? No problem because it's just as good. You see? There's no reason to remove the novelty of unique bound to unique names/abilities. If you like a certain look since all uniques are useful unlike currently, only a few are, which is the original problem, but once all uniques are balanced it shouldn't be the case. They said they are making all uniques useful/worthy, I saw the panel of them talking about the primary and secondary stats, all the rollable ranges written on the affix list, etc, their goal is to make all uniques "legendary" and actually make them "unique" and "game-changing". All uniques are able to roll at level 70. All uniques have comparable max-roll attributes.
Now why would you void that uniqueness by making every unique able to look like another one?
It's kind of like a brain thing, you don't realize that you've fixed the problem by doing something, then you try and refix the problem with a method that ruins another part of the game. If you just made every unique worth of wearing, then there's no reason for people NOT to be able to choose a specific unique item with said unique appearance since it's just as viable as any other unique?
Transmog Removes Unique Item's Visual Uniqueness/Value, Unique Appearance Should Be Bound to Items With Special Effects/Powers.
Every item is basically every other item look wise. Nothing is actually that specific look because anything can be changed into it. So all the legendary and set items have no actual uniqueness to them except from the stats. Weapons with special powers can look like any other weapon. A topped out player can change their gear to level 1 gear and look like a complete noob.
The complaint was that currently there is no diversity in visual queues as everyone wore the same types of gear with the same look as they are the only ones that are useful. But they completely disregarded the fact that in Loot 2.0 all unique and legendary items will be useful and worthy, that means no one would wear the same thing.
So innately you have diversity but in a valuable sense where item's are individual. It is completely unnecessary to allow looks to be transferable when they are unique items because it completely devalues their distinctive looks. This argument that Transmog would make looks more diverse is completely invalid as it will be that way anyway as long as all uniques are useful and worthy to wear.
They stated that all uniques have unique special abilities and effects, this should be bound to it's unique visual element/design. Who cares if you can't change a cool looking useful unique item? It's not like everyone wears the same ones because every unique is worthy of wearing. You can change your standard items fine, but do not destroy the unique item's dignity of special legendary value.
The problem with a customizable wardrobe is that it basically acts like a disposable skin, every item can look like everything else, there's no value or meaning to it, you just change it back and forth and no one cares.
Take an FPS game for example, you have all sorts of guns with different features and unique attributes, what would be the point of these unique guns aside from their different functionality if one could look like the other? An AK could look like an M4, an M4 can look like a P90, a P90 could look like an AK? A Glock can look like a Desert Eagle, a Desert Eagle can look like an M9? That's just outrageous.
There's a simple and important reason not every gun can look like any other gun, so people could tell when someone is using a specific gun for a specific reason, there is value to the distinct visuals of the different types of guns, if everything was mixed, there would be no real indication of any gun being used, they are just randomly chosen, or chosen for their visual appeal rather than their functional significance which is more important.
If the item has no special ability fine, change it's look to another one that's the same. You have an axe with no ability? Change it to a sword, fine. But you have a Skorn that does X and makes a unique effect you should not be able to change it to another 2hand axe that does Y and makes a different unique effect. Take note that every other item would ideally be used just as equally so in this case the Skorn would not be an overused item unlike it is now.
The game is changed, uniques have unique abilities, it's no longer just a game of stats and rolls, they dish out additional powers. This gives incentive to keep their definitive visual queue.
Transmog should only work for regular items where you switch your armor visual through the 1-70 tiers of armors, but not swap visuals of legendaries/uniques. While dyes should be able to change the colors of the unique items to match in tone. That way before you own a "unique" item, you can customize your armor to be more set-like tier to tier. But once you hit unique items they should all actually look unique whilst you can have different colors.
I think the way it should be is that every unique item is true to it's value and uniqueness. The unique picture that depict the item should directly translate in-game as well. I know a lot of legendaries that have a default design to them on every character that looks nothing like what it looks like in the picture of the item. There needs to be signature designs for each of the signifying items.
Also, many of the low tiered items should get a redesign because they just took absolutely worthless. Even if they are low tiered pieces they should look respectable and decent. High end items should look 10x more powerful and complex, like mentioned, unique visual components to every unique item that define it to it's name. This way you can Transmog your regular gear to all the different tiers unique set look, while the unique items are always distinctive on it's own for it to unique to it.
Little do people realize how important the design of items are on a whole scale.
If every item can be changed to the look of every other item then it is pointless to have a certain item except for it's abilities. That means it's like the same item can be every other type of item.
And when items in the low tier are as crap as they look, it is very unattractive to the new players. If you can make both the low tier items look awesome but the highest tiered items look absolutely stunning and magnificent to look at, like some kind of heavenly or hellish artistic portrayal of supreme imagination created it, then it will have the new players loving the armor they are already in and dream about getting unique collections and sets of armors that all look vastly different from one another, rather than all of them amounting to the same look because every one can look the same as another one.
I think Transmog will turn out to be a failure once people realize this.
Good thing it's a simple fix by just disabling Transmoging unique items.
The true way to design a game with merit and create a intricate synchronicity would be to make the tree of item tier designs come to life with unimaginable item/character elements that branch together naturally and not allowing each significance to be replaceable or reiterated by other unique aspects of elements. So the standard items sets tiered from 1-70 can still have their looks Transmoged, but unique items stay true to their unique visual with color differences.
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I enjoy the Inna's look and I keep them on with the full set. But if you could dye the color of them would it be better? Rather than light blue you could have other colors. And if there ever was a unique color like Inna's seems to be blue, they should at least be somehow illuminating with magnificence and be able to look fitting in a unique way on their own in combation with other items.
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Currently many items lack any reasonable sense of magnificence. If all uniques looked great on their own and even better with one another then there wouldn't be this issue. They should be focused on that rather than taking the cheap route of allowing everyone to change to anything without any distinction between the dignity of each unique, just throwing them all together into a pile and say they can all look the same, it doesn't matter.
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I have acknowledged that you can still make Transmog useful to change regular items so they can have specific tier set looks that make it look more appealing, however, the main issue resides with devaluing the visual dignity of unique items that have special abilities. These items should not be Transmogable, they should stand out on their own that each one is unique on it's own and extremely compelling to the user creating a distinctive variance of unique item combinations each of them being awesome and diverse.
Take on the point once again that once all uniques are useful there should be not a need and should not be a possibility to transfer their unique looks to one another. The argument that there are too many repetitive looks currently is completely invalid because all uniques are said to be valuable and worthy to wear therefore no one will be wearing the same sets not like now where everyone does.
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Transmog should only work for regular items where you switch your armor visual through the 1-70 tiers of armors, but not swap visuals of legendaries/uniques. That way before you own a "unique" item, you can customize your armor to be more set-like tier to tier. But once you hit unique items they should all actually look unique.
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The fact is each unique item should already stand on it's own, paired with any other useful unique they should create yet another unique visual, since all legendaries will be value and useful, each items look should be valued and unique to itself. The reason why items currently look awful with paired together is because they all have a default visual with different coloring and some minor changes, this makes sets look more appealing, but if all unique items had individuality and stood on its own looking "legendary", then it is both going to have unique combinations since all are useful, then the look will actually matter and not just be a fake swappable skin to the actual item.
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So Kulle is a barbarian then.
Also, I thought how much they advertised Crusader as the ranged-melee class and they also add a ranged attack casted by Barbarian the Wizard? Now it looks like a range-melee class like Crusader. Crusader casts lightning and Barb can now drop rocks on enemies.
I was hoping for a sick melee skill, avalanche seems lame. I mean it's okay, maybe if they made it seem more powerful from the caster's end. Aside from it being cast with a shout, there needs to be some kind of echoing effect that makes it seem like the shout was so loud that it caused an avalanche... right now it's just too light. But what we saw was the alpha build so maybe they will make additions.
The way I imagined it would be a huge shock wave around the Barb that shows the power of the sound that it knocks away projectiles and monsters near him, and then the screen shakes and rocks pour from above. The rocks they got down pretty nicely, but I think the cast animation should be more than the default shout animation.
Here's what I imagined would fit the Barbarian better:
I think a more dramatic skill instead of avalanche that comes from the ground itself and makes it more like the Barb is making use of the ground, than just spawning rocks from the sky or assuming they somehow came from a mountain above, is a Volcanic Eruption (or just Eruption) maybe, have rocks and lava erupt from under after he stomps the ground creating a split in the ground.
It's sort of like Earthquake because the graphics on that look like a volcanic fissures somewhat, but Earthquake is only AoE under you, while a long volcanic fissure can actually be a ranged attack. You can do that for a long-ranged attack even, making a huge rift in front of you spewing lava, doing damage in a line that stays like a wall. This even gives it a tactical usage, you can run around the wall to avoid enemies or bait them into it.
For example. http://upload.wikime...4/Volcano_q.jpg
A second way to do it, the Barb stomps the ground so hard it cracks the ground around him, one of the cracks where you cast it starts to actually spawn a volcano from underground, not under you, but somewhere in front of you unlike Earthquake. You see the ground rise like a growing volcano from flat ground, the earth rises and you can see smoke and fumes coming from underneath, and then the tip explodes creating rocks, ash, and lava falling from the sky burning and melting everything around. Who wouldn't like to fight under raining lava and rocks? This one since it's delayed you can cast it and lure monsters to it.
And another way is, rather than a volcano growing out of the ground as I first imagined it, just a plain eruption of lava from the ground in front of you that casts radius AoE damage rather than a line, a much more explosive method. How you can make this look completely melee rather than cast, you can make him slam his weapon into the ground so hard, you see a crack to where you cast it, and then the eruption at the point. It's kind of like the Barbarian version of all the ranged AoE spells like Meteor or the lightning of the Crusader, but using a melee style to create it.
These could be the variations for the different runes possible.
http://us.battle.net...pic/10573407345
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- It's kind of like a brain thing, you don't realize that you've fixed the problem by doing something, then you try and refix the problem with a method that ruins another part of the game. If you just made every unique worth of wearing, then there's no reason for people NOT to be able to choose a specific unique item with said unique appearance since it's just as viable as any other unique?
Transmog Removes Unique Item's Visual Uniqueness/Value, Unique Appearance Should Be Bound to Items With Special Effects/Powers.- The problem with a customizable wardrobe is that it basically acts like a disposable skin, every item can look like everything else, there's no value or meaning to it, you just change it back and forth and no one cares.
Take an FPS game for example, you have all sorts of guns with different features and unique attributes, what would be the point of these unique guns aside from their different functionality if one could look like the other? An AK could look like an M4, an M4 can look like a P90, a P90 could look like an AK? A Glock can look like a Desert Eagle, a Desert Eagle can look like an M9? That's just outrageous.There's a simple and important reason not every gun can look like any other gun, so people could tell when someone is using a specific gun for a specific reason, there is value to the distinct visuals of the different types of guns, if everything was mixed, there would be no real indication of any gun being used, they are just randomly chosen, or chosen for their visual appeal rather than their functional significance which is more important.
If the item has no special ability fine, change it's look to another one that's the same. You have an axe with no ability? Change it to a sword, fine. But you have a Skorn that does X and makes a unique effect you should not be able to change it to another 2hand axe that does Y and makes a different unique effect. Take note that every other item would ideally be used just as equally so in this case the Skorn would not be an overused item unlike it is now.
The game is changed, uniques have unique abilities, it's no longer just a game of stats and rolls, they dish out additional powers. This gives incentive to keep their definitive visual queue.
- Also, many of the low tiered items should get a redesign because they just took absolutely worthless. Even if they are low tiered pieces they should look respectable and decent. High end items should look 10x more powerful and complex, like mentioned, unique visual components to every unique item that define it to it's name. This way you can Transmog your regular gear to all the different tiers unique set look, while the unique items are always distinctive on it's own for it to unique to it.
Little do people realize how important the design of items are on a whole scale.- And when items in the low tier are as crap as they look, it is very unattractive to the new players. If you can make both the low tier items look awesome but the highest tiered items look absolutely stunning and magnificent to look at, like some kind of heavenly or hellish artistic portrayal of supreme imagination created it, then it will have the new players loving the armor they are already in and dream about getting unique collections and sets of armors that all look vastly different from one another, rather than all of them amounting to the same look because every one can look the same as another one.
I think Transmog will turn out to be a failure once people realize this.Good thing it's a simple fix by just disabling Transmoging unique items.
The true way to design a game with merit and create a intricate synchronicity would be to make the tree of item tier designs come to life with unimaginable item/character elements that branch together naturally and not allowing each significance to be replaceable or reiterated by other unique aspects of elements. So the standard items sets tiered from 1-70 can still have their looks Transmoged, but unique items stay true to their unique visual with color differences.
http://us.battle.net...pic/10586418574
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