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I am really glad to hear that low level skills will scale to be equal to high levels or at least usable. I hated that low level skills in D2 became useless past normal.

As for the MF, I am really interested on how this will work. Assuming that the fix the economy, gold may become more valuable with crafting because then you have control over the items you are getting where MF could still drop you items you can't use. EXP boost may be worth the trade off too to help you get to higher levels sooner giving you access to more skills/traits earlier.

Most of them. There's Smite, which is one of the easiest ways to kill bosses/ubers. I guess synergies were a way they tried to fix not spending points in lower-tier skills, but then, like you said, most of them wouldn't be used later, anyway.

Now that they're redoing gold, I think that the market, in general, will be more accessible to people who aren't just MFers. Crafters will be able to purchase supplies in bulk, if they want, and gather a net profit. They won't be forced to trade wares for, say expensive items and then trade those. The gold is the happy, warm, fuzzy medium Very excited about gold!

you will likely come to a point where you have to choose between finding more gems, magic items, runes or gold when killing monsters. Something that gives your loot runs a bit of a customizable feel. You can increase your chances to get something based on your personal needs at the time.

Although adjusting your gear to give you better changes to drop certain stuff in D2 was possible, it was a pain and very hard to get right. I mean, if you wanted to, you could skimp all MF to get a higher chance to drop runes or white items, but beyond that, you couldn't really choose.

This could evolve into more defined markets for items that allow you to find specific types of items. Like, "oh, I need to look in to gear to find legendary/runes/gold" and there will be people specializing in crafting or finding/storing those specific items.

Well 30 is around when you finish normal, which is what liquor was comparing it to.

Now that they're redoing gold, I think that the market, in general, will be more accessible to people who aren't just MFers. Crafters will be able to purchase supplies in bulk, if they want, and gather a net profit. They won't be forced to trade wares for, say expensive items and then trade those. The gold is the happy, warm, fuzzy medium Very excited about gold!

Oh yea. And its considerably easier when theres a base commodity to begin with, instead of having to have something turn into one (ie SoJ).

Also, and this is pure speculation, traits could favor lower level skills (ie a trait will at 15% damage to cleave while a different one only gives 10% damage to ww) in order to make lower level skills more viable. And higher level runes could be more of an increase for lower level skills.

Very interesting, he said that there will be very small amounts of MF but when I played the 15 minute demos at Blizzcon I picked up a couple pieces of MF gear. They must have changed it around a bit.

All gear drops rates from the demo should not be taken into account for actual gameplay. They were altered highly to maximize the fun in the limited time frame.

Maybe for stating the obvious of what he means by not being frustrated at early stages.

It is also being thought out for how wizard can utilize first formed spell lines for survival. Allowing Wizard and other casters not force to bash around with a wooden bat through early dungeons up till the first boss.

Quote from ScyberDragon

All gear drops rates from the demo should not be taken into account for actual gameplay. They were altered highly to maximize the fun in the limited time frame.

Yeah, that.

I think we'll have to wait for beta to come along before making any assumptions about how commonly and in what way MF will appear. And even then Blizzard is likely to make adjustments before deciding on something. I'm liking the way they think about MF though. Although it was part of the MF-game in Diablo II that you in some cases had to weigh killing power vs MF on your gear. And that in itself does have its charm I still think what they are aiming for now is the right way to go. This way they keep the feel of control over your gear without diminishing your power/fun.

I'd personally rather not have MF in the game. I liked it and it's fun, but after playing a heavily MF stacked summonmancer, it's almost a pain switching to a character that has to mind his gear and can't just stack on MF. I think it's too abusable in MP and puts you in terrible dilemmas ingame. Resists/survival or MF? I think it'd be better if there were just MF shrines and MF scaled with character level.

Well if it was just something like what Bashiok describes, where its one type of gem in the helmet slot, it could be good if they end up pulling it off well like he describes, where its a decision between multiple special bonuses.

I cannot believe I'll say this, but it's kind of a happy ending for the matter surrounding what constitute a good magic find logic.

It really makes me juice up for everything that's coming out of D3.

Quote from Jackzor

Well if it was just something like what Bashiok describes, where its one type of gem in the helmet slot, it could be good if they end up pulling it off well like he describes, where its a decision between multiple special bonuses.

True, the switchable effects might be good, but a great deal of balancing has to be done there. If we take the example Bashiok gave: "things like bonus XP, bonus gold, etc." There are very specific occasions when one or the other might be useful.

For example, the extra gold would have to be a VERY(!!!) substantial bonus because with the prices magical items, especially armors usually have attached to them, the little extra gold you got out of monsters could not possibly balance the amount you got out of selling the stuff you found with MF. Overall, extra gold is inferior because MF gives you the chance to find good stuff for your toon, good stuff to sell for extra money or good stuff to break down. Extra gold gives you only the extra money, i.e. 1/3 of what possibilities MF can provide you with, though it does so more often.

Extra XP is a nice bonus (though I don't like the extra XP bonus for killing several monsters quickly). However, we know that characters will end the game at (or around) lvl 60, so extra XP will only make you flatline sooner, but will not provide your character with more power by the end of the game. Most likely, when you face the final boss at the end of Hell, XP bonus or not, you'll end up on the same level. Meaning effective benefit is only that you'll reach those levels a little bit sooner. Again, MF dominates here because it can actually make a difference on your end character.

Bottom line is, I personally find MF just too damn powerful even outside multiplayer. With multiplayer, it's an even bigger issue.

Well you're thinking of it in D2 terms, where the amount of MF was pretty substantial. From what I understand it seems like the percentages will be much lower in D3. In the end, this system makes it so that instead of MF being a choice between player power and finding better items, its instead a choice between extra xp or gold and the like compared to extra MF. Even if MF ends up being the best out of those bonuses, its not like you'll be running into all kinds of characters who just have pure MF gear. It'll just be one gem choice, which also makes it easier to buff the other, limited, options instead of having to revamp all kinds of drop rates.

Also, it seems as though MF won't be that much more powerful in multiplayer as it will only help the drops of one person in the group. Obviously if you're playing with friends you can make it so that more drops for one, or a few people becomes more drops for the group as a whole if you share your loot, but it will still increase drops by the same amount as it would in singleplayer.

Extra XP is a nice bonus (though I don't like the extra XP bonus for killing several monsters quickly). However, we know that characters will end the game at (or around) lvl 60, so extra XP will only make you flatline sooner, but will not provide your character with more power by the end of the game. Most likely, when you face the final boss at the end of Hell, XP bonus or not, you'll end up on the same level. Meaning effective benefit is only that you'll reach those levels a little bit sooner. Again, MF dominates here because it can actually make a difference on your end character.

I personally like the extra XP bonuses as it encourages better and more efficient play as long as the bonuses are attached to good actions. But as I said before, MF won't neccessarily be the most powerful, and even if it is there will be a limited amount of tweaking required in order to balance it out. Compared to an XP bonus obviously MF will be more powerful in the endgame, but you could also use something like an XP bonus to make it so that you can skip a lot of content and still end on the same level, for example. Obviously thats speculation, as they could very well make it so that every quest requires the last one to be completed or something like that, but you get the point. Not to mention that MF doesn't seem to cover gem and rune drops, which are also very valuable, so if there was something that increased those percentages it could end up being just as powerful.

Quote from Jackzor

I personally like the extra XP bonuses as it encourages better and more efficient play as long as the bonuses are attached to good actions.

I like the idea as well, but I'm not so sure about the implications of it. Obviously, a more powerful/better trained character will be able to kill monsters quickly and most likely en masse, earning him ever more experience bonuses and giving him even more of a boost in power as he will jump in levels quickly, especially through Normal and beginning of Nightmare. A character that e.g. gets his most lethal skills by level 30 or is simply too much of a hybrid to be as effective as other builds will on the other hand lag behind. The result will be that strong characters will keep getting even stronger, while characters that lag behind will lag behind even more. This will keep creating more and more of a gap between the builds and will result in great differences in percieved difficulty. This promotes rushing through the game with cookie cutter builds and somewhat discourages innovative hybrid characters that sacrifice effectiveness for originality and unorthodox gaming style. Though hybrid char players usually do it for the challenge, you don't need the game mechanics to make the game potentially even harder for you (the game won't get harder, but in comparison, it will be getting easier for the strong chars thanks to the extra XP).

Well thats really just a problem with any game. afaik the bonuses aren't huge to begin with, and you can't really avoid better players going through the game faster than slower players.

As far as discouraging innovation, I don't think that will be the case. The point of innovation is to find a good build that no one has thought of, but you can't really avoid there being some trial and error where sometimes you're using a bad build.

One thing that really makes me happy to hear is that low tier skills won't be garbage anymore. In Diablo II, I loved some of those low level spells. But after a while, their effectiveness ran out, no matter how many points you stuck into them or their synergies. I'm glad to see things in Diablo III will be different.

And did I mention that Skill Runes make it even better?

:pinch:

Quote from lMarcusl

Quote from Jackzor

Well if it was just something like what Bashiok describes, where its one type of gem in the helmet slot, it could be good if they end up pulling it off well like he describes, where its a decision between multiple special bonuses.

True, the switchable effects might be good, but a great deal of balancing has to be done there. If we take the example Bashiok gave: "things like bonus XP, bonus gold, etc." There are very specific occasions when one or the other might be useful.

For example, the extra gold would have to be a VERY(!!!) substantial bonus because with the prices magical items, especially armors usually have attached to them, the little extra gold you got out of monsters could not possibly balance the amount you got out of selling the stuff you found with MF. Overall, extra gold is inferior because MF gives you the chance to find good stuff for your toon, good stuff to sell for extra money or good stuff to break down. Extra gold gives you only the extra money, i.e. 1/3 of what possibilities MF can provide you with, though it does so more often.

Extra XP is a nice bonus (though I don't like the extra XP bonus for killing several monsters quickly). However, we know that characters will end the game at (or around) lvl 60, so extra XP will only make you flatline sooner, but will not provide your character with more power by the end of the game. Most likely, when you face the final boss at the end of Hell, XP bonus or not, you'll end up on the same level. Meaning effective benefit is only that you'll reach those levels a little bit sooner. Again, MF dominates here because it can actually make a difference on your end character.

Bottom line is, I personally find MF just too damn powerful even outside multiplayer. With multiplayer, it's an even bigger issue.

The gold you get from a magic or better item might be very low. The drops of gold might be higher to make up for this and with the increased percentage it may make a large impact. One mod I play for D2 Gold Find has a huge factor in the game much more than MF. In Zy-El I have gotten million gold drops from a monster and bought the need items for recipes to make better gear. A million gold in Zy-El is not very much since most things in that mod are very expensive. I would not necessary say that D3 should have an extreme amount of gold but it should be more than normal D2 especially if they want to base the economy on it.