34 replies to this topic

[Jackzor]

With the release of the item page on the Diablo III official site, questions were raised about how the rune system will work once the game is released. The presence of unattuned runes on the item page seemed to suggest that the team was going ahead with the implementation of the system Jay Wilson explained at the late July press event (be sure to check out Force's video of the explanation, along with many questions on the system from our own Sixen here). However, in response to a thread on the Diablo III forums, Bashiok was sure to point out that the system is not fully implemented yet, and is still very much up in the air.

Official Blizzard Quote:

We have no idea how the unattuned system is going to work. Or if it'll end up working at all. We're trying out some different options, but we're not likely to reveal much until we're more certain. Maybe it'll be something we feel comfortable discussing at BlizzCon? ... maybe not.

So fingers crossed for a full on explanation at the upcoming BlizzCon. If there are any updates on the runestone system at Blizzard's annual convention you can be sure we'll let you know.

In the same post, Bashiok went on to explain a potential change to the skill swapping system currently in place that would prevent people from swapping skills in the middle of combat.

Official Blizzard Quote:

On a slightly related (?) note we're playing around with having skill swapping locked to being in-town only. We're definitely not sold on it, but it could appear at some time in a beta patch, so FYI. Just be aware it's only something we're trying, and not a permanent solution.

Obviously this town-only restriction, if implemented, would still allow people to switch skills before a boss fight, which has been a point of much contention. However, it would still force players to be bound to a certain build during their time in a dungeon, unless they wanted to go back and forth from town in order to switch skills.

The second half of Bashiok's post caused a shift in the discussion occurring in the topic towards Diablo III's skill swapping system. Many people asked why the team simply would make it impossible to switch skills in combat, which led to this response from Bashiok:

Official Blizzard Quote:

As a follow up, there's no concept of 'in combat' or 'out of combat' in the game, so that's not something we can just hook in to. There could be. We could take programming time dedicated to other features and design and build out a 'combat state' system, but that's programming time away from something else.

As a result, it seems as though restricting skill swapping to town may be the simplest option. However, this obviously leads to some problems with experimentation seeing as in order to test out a skill after leveling you'd have to go back to town, and if you don't like the skill you'd have to switch it back in town once more. However, some people may see this restriction on the current ease of skill swapping as a good thing, and I think we can all agree that there needs to be a solution to swapping skills while in combat.

[Molster]

Great article jack =D been waiting for this one.

[fastjan]

If they allow skill swappings like currently in beta, you could basically use all of your skills with a simple macro program. Open spellbook -> click in these coordinates -> click in these coordinates -> close spellbook, and you might not even notice that you had the book up. Even if they implemented "in combat", you could run away for couple seconds, then push macro and jump back in and slay everything, that wouldn't be fun for me atleast.

These programs won't interfere with gamefiles, so Warden won't be able to detect it as bad.

On a side note, give boss fights where you can't leave the area. Either you die or boss dies! Would be great for hardcore : )

[armyhutchings]

Personally, I don't see the point.  Restricting skill swapping to in-town only isn't going to deter anyone who thinks it's important enough that they need to switch out, it'll simply artifically inflate the effort required.  From what I've seen of Force's videos and beta testers on the forums, the combat is fast paced enough that it isn't very advantageous to switch skills mid-fight anyways.  I see this as nothing more than a mild annoyance for those interested in changing up their skills and counterintuitive to the other measures Blizzard has taken to keep players in the action.

[hoboman27]

in town only is probably not the best solution, I believe they just want to test an extreme option in the beta, maybe get some feedbacks. If they give an 'out in the field' skill switch every levelup, it would be less painful. Hopefully they come up with something different

But to Armyhutchings, this limitation is not intended to deter experimentation (though it does make it more time consuming), it is intended to deter players from skill swapping during combat, using more than 6 selected skills to gain an advantage in farming later in the game.

A limitation to mid-combat skill swapping is likely be instituted mainly because a lot of real money will be involved. People will be farming in inferno, and IF mid-combat skill swapping can be done Easily and Quickly (perhaps a program), people will try to abuse it.

And if certain classes can be more effective with this process, people will be driven to use those classes exclusively. Maybe the monk, either by himself or with a team, uses dash to get out of danger, and switches in and out of Breath of Heavens to heal. That practically gives the character 7 maxed skills if the player decide to do so. This scenario could increase survivability in inferno, other cases may increase damage output. All of this could impact the gameplay, as well as the virtual economy.

Developers don't like imbalances between characters, especially when its due to exploitation of a system mechanism and breaking blizzard's intended 6 skill limit. If this is the case down the road, they may have to rebalance that character, which makes a lot of people unhappy, especially those people who dont farm, or add restrictions.

The current beta content available is way too easy and short for telling what player behaviours will be later down the road. But the game developers need to think a step ahead, its better to introduce a limitation at the start of the game and loosen it, than to let players get used to no limitation and introduce one later on.

So even if another player's playing habit has nothing to do with the rest of the players, blizzard will likely be there to make sure everyone's playing the game as blizzard had intended (6 skills), especially now that they have to maintain the auction house's "fair competition."


Just my 2 cents (im a hobo its all i've got)

Edited by hoboman27, 03 October 2011 - 06:57 AM.

[MTops]

I hope they will implement a system that will prevent in combat skill swapping at higher levels, but puts no restriction on experimentation at lower levels.

My suggestion for such a system would be a cooldown on swapping skills. This cooldown will be 0 between levels 1-30 and will start at 1 minute at level 31, going all the way up to a 30 minute cooldown at level 60.

Or an even simpler solution would be to activate the in-town-only limitation in Inferno only. This will let people experiment while leveling, but not while farming.

Edited by MTops, 03 October 2011 - 07:20 AM.

[Darvil]

Given we can use only 6 skills out of 25-30, been free to swap skills is a must, else we would have to make 5-6 barbs just to be able to see all the skills.

As for the limitation I don’t really care. Only town swapping is ok for me.

What I would like to see would be a feature to save skill configuration so I can easily swap all my skills.
Of course people will have specific configuration for trash mobs, boss fights and arena, but why not?

To make this lease on the fly swapping, and protect the game from macro programs that swap skills for you, you can add a casting time to it which get interrupted if you are hit.

Basically, when you are in town you can make different skill configuration and save them.
When you are out of town you can’t change specific skills but you can load a saved configuration and the loading process would have a casting time that gets canceled if you get hit.

[TheDooft]

fastjan, on 03 October 2011 - 03:12 AM, said:

On a side note, give boss fights where you can't leave the area. Either you die or boss dies! Would be great for hardcore : )

It's the case for Leoric. My doorbell rang while I engaged into Leoric's fight, and I wasn't able to escape by any way : recall stone, entrance, logging out (I died   ).

[apwgameboy]

I think skill swapping in town will kill the feel of perpetual action that they are going for in PVE. However in PVP I feel if they have the option to change there skills whenever I think people will spend more time switching skills to counteract each other rather than actually playing the game. So it makes more sense for PVP.

[Instant]

Adding a ( one minute ? ) cooldown on skill swapping while 'out of town' should prevent any exploits

Changing skills on a fly is one of best features of D3 as for now, I hope it will stay.

Another option is to add a gold cost to every skill change, when out of town

Edited by Instant, 03 October 2011 - 06:40 PM.

[dousie]

Hey everybody,

I'm an avid Diablo fan and want to go into a cryo-sleep until d3 comes out ;).
Check out my game that I made based on inspiration from diablo and the diablo 1 sprites were used. I apologize to Blizzard in advance if they don't like this, but I would hope they would want to encourage people like myself to be more like them. I simply used their sprites because i suck at graphic art. I made this game with game maker 8 and is available for download here: http://sandbox.yoyog...anctum-survival

Thanks,

Dousie

[Venator Noctis]

Great article. Though I would prefer the in-town only skill swapping to force players to experience & play out the build they chose in the first place.
This would make the game playing & character building more meaningful, where a player would need to analyze what build they would like their character to have, so that they would have a goal to pursue (making full use of the Skill Calculator this way).

If they find that they lack something or need to change one or a couple of skills, then it would be just right that they go back to town to do this.
On this note, I would also suggest to Blizzard to make skill swapping a major gold dump.
For every time a player would want to swap skills in Normal difficulty, they would have to visit the Mystic & pay like 20,000 gold per skill that would be swapped.
This fee is not Nominal & should double in Nightmare & triple in Hell.

I also am for, for the unattuned skill runes, so people would go and play the game because they're still looking for the particular rune that has the skill effect they desire.
If players could just go to the Mystic to erase a particular attuned rune's effect, then there wont be much reason for players to go about play the game, exploring all the crooks & crannies of a randomized map & look for unattuned runes.


.

Edited by Venator Noctis, 03 October 2011 - 06:56 PM.

[Morbus]

MTops, on 03 October 2011 - 07:01 AM, said:

I hope they will implement a system that will prevent in combat skill swapping at higher levels, but puts no restriction on experimentation at lower levels.

My suggestion for such a system would be a cooldown on swapping skills. This cooldown will be 0 between levels 1-30 and will start at 1 minute at level 31, going all the way up to a 30 minute cooldown at level 60.

Or an even simpler solution would be to activate the in-town-only limitation in Inferno only. This will let people experiment while leveling, but not while farming.

A better curve would be to have it start right off level 1. Level 1 cooldown be like 1 second up to 30 seconds by level 30, and then from the on one minute for every new level, up to 30 minutes and 30 seconds at level 60 (or 60 minutes flat if you made level 31's cooldown 1 minute instead of 1 minute and 30 seconds, for smoothness' sake).

But it's a good idea. And I say that because I had the very same idea

TheDooft, on 03 October 2011 - 11:30 AM, said:

fastjan, on 03 October 2011 - 03:12 AM, said:

On a side note, give boss fights where you can't leave the area. Either you die or boss dies! Would be great for hardcore : )

It's the case for Leoric. My doorbell rang while I engaged into Leoric's fight, and I wasn't able to escape by any way : recall stone, entrance, logging out (I died   ).

Serves you right. Nothing is more important than Diablo 3. If I had a beta key, no amount of doorbell ringing would deter me from fighting a boss and getting my loot! You deserve to die. In-game, of course.

Darvil, on 03 October 2011 - 08:28 AM, said:

Given we can use only 6 skills out of 25-30, been free to swap skills is a must, else we would have to make 5-6 barbs just to be able to see all the skills.

Hum, it wouldn't be THAT bad of a thing, considering that's exactly what happened with Diablo 2.

apwgameboy, on 03 October 2011 - 06:23 PM, said:

I think skill swapping in town will kill the feel of perpetual action that they are going for in PVE.

Do no mind their goals, mind their deeds.

They say they're aiming for "perpetual action" but I don't buy it. I think it's [the cauldron and the cube] merely a byproduct of their original idea of having no town portals and only the waypoints which obviously failed and they started patching things up to fix the issues and whey they landed the obvious patch for the nightmare that waypoint-only transportation is - the town portal - they didn't remove all their semi-patches that were supposed to make up for the loss of the town portals, aka the cauldron and the cube. I think it's a good thing, but in my book, going back to the settlement was a fun part of gameplay. At least it makes me think a bit more than mindlessly picking up absolutely everything, because that's what happens with the cauldron and the cube, because when the pack is full I'll just sell it right there and then, even if it only nets me 3 gold.

apwgameboy, on 03 October 2011 - 06:23 PM, said:

So it makes more sense for PVP.

No it doesn't. It would be exploit/cheat-nightmare. Besides, Diablo II had the same exact system.

Edited by Morbus, 03 October 2011 - 06:57 PM.

[Hellmaister]

I have said it a million times before. What is the big deal with being able to switch skills (or even builds) on the fly? Nothing! It will even be to the games advantage and make better players out of all of us. Restrictions... bah... humbug!

[Morbus]

Hellmaister, on 03 October 2011 - 06:55 PM, said:

I have said it a million times before. What is the big deal with being able to switch skills (or even builds) on the fly?

Macro-cheaters will exploit it, non-macro-cheaters will exploit it, even if to a lesser extent. And by exploit I mean use the system to gain an advantage that is not supposed to be achievable, aka using many skills instead of just 6 max.

Hellmaister, on 03 October 2011 - 06:55 PM, said:

Nothing!

what

You did not read what I said.

:see what I did there?:

[Theory]

I noticed that everyone here wants to limit the skill swapping.

IMO, why not allow all the skills like WoW (WoW haters aside) and have an interface that lets the user scroll through sets of 6 skills?

Because of the Rune system, there isn't a need to restrict what skills you can use and what you can't.  I believe the whole point of the new skill system is to allow people to use every skill (without limitations from a skill-tree).

[Tomice]

If a skill was unusable in the first 2-3 seconds after choosing it from the skill menu, macros would be pretty pointless. It's just as simple IMO.

Example:
Long-cooldown high-power skills like the are a pretty though choice to take as one of your six active skills, IMO. It really is a strategic choice to forgo a less situational skill.
If Blizzard (understandably) fears that macros could eliminate this choice, a simple 2-3 (or maybe 10) second lock would help a lot. While it wouldn't interfere much with normal, manual out-of-combat skill swapping, it would be imposssible to use the given skill right when you need it (e.g. hitting a moving enemy).

Macros that just allow you to save a skill configuration wouldn't be much of an advantage except for the comfort gain. They might as well add it as feature.

[Fubar]

Restricting skill swapping to the town only would not be a wise move. It would completely contradict their current reasoning on the salvage cube in that it doesn't require you to constantly go back to town. They solved that problem and by implementing this they are just creating it again. Doesn't make sense to me.

[pNutsie]

Wouldn't a simple cast-time be somewhat like being in-combat? Let's say you open your skill-tab and as soom as you change at least one skill a button will become active that let's you change your current skills. Pushing this button will start a cast time of maybe 5 or 10 seconds.

This means there is no way of changing while you are fighting, as a hit on you will cancel the casting. But at the same time it will be very easy and fast to change around the skills "out of combat".

Maybe I'm missing something here, it was just a quick thought.

[jokeeeer]

My solution to the skillswapping issue would be to give the actual skills a cd when they are swapped equal to its own duration with a minimum cd of lets say 10 sec. So for example if you would swap in a skill with 2 minute cd like Volcano it would be on its cooldown when loaded to the bar and therefor unusable for 2 minutes and if you would swap in Cleave it would be on a 10 second cd before it could be used. This would remove all the macro abuses as well as extending your skillbar or using a situational skill like a heal when youre about to die. 2 minutes might even be to long you could have the cooldown be 10 sec minimum and 30 seconds maximum.