Their argument about charms making people feel its necessary is a moot point i think. Look at paragon levels. People now feel the need to farm xp to get to 100 to min/max their character. Yeah some might not do it super quickly but the intention is there. People WANT to min/max their character which is why people use the RMAH. Charms provide another opportunity for people to do so.
Charms are garbage that demolish your already limited inventory space and send you packing to town that much more often. You want more items, make more item slots, a la talismans. Do not force a tradeoff of sanity for power; that's why them feeling remotely "mandatory" is so horrible.
Paladin: We need another strength class and a Paladin seems to fit since its an Iconic Diablo class. Druid: A shapeshifter... Caster, Melee, pets... YES PLEASE!!!! Necromancer: We need a true Minion master class in D3!
More Skills, Runes and Passives for existing classes.
Content:
New Acts, New Events, Monster Types, Dungeons, New Ubers, new item tiers and some type of Never ending Endgame mechanic (Maps, Endless Dungeon, User created content with the Arcade maybe?).
Crafts:
More Crafting recipes including full BoA sets (not all need to roll BiS), New crafter that allows us to socket gear, reroll stats, transmog gear and enchant gear.
The return of the Gambler.
More Gems types, The return of Runes, Runewords and the Horodric Cube.
Competitive PVP & PVE:
Ladder Seasons that last 3-6 months with unique item sets, Gems & Runes only available in Ladder.
Open Public PVP games.
4v4 Arena & 4,8 & 12 player PVP game modes (CTF, Domination, King of the Hill and more...)
Dueling with the Option to Bet gold and Items.
Addtional:
Cosmetic Perks for leveling paragon (Auras around character, Pets, Titles.
Perks for Achievements (cosmetics, unique dyes, Pets, Emotes)
A overhaul of the banner system Let it become an evolution of the Charm system.
Let us socket 1 large and 2 small charms into banners that give 30 minute buffs to the group when we go to town.
Make Super Uniques (the purple named monsters) Much more difficult, harder to find and give them loot comparable to Res chest.
Let us completely gear up Followers to make them more than Buff and CC bots.
Bring some Old bosses and Monster types from Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 into D3 through a Caverns of time mechanic... let us relive our past glories in the Diablo 3 engine.
I think i went a little crazy with this one... sorry!
Paladin: We need another strength class and a Paladin seems to fit since its an Iconic Diablo class. Druid: A shapeshifter... Caster, Melee, pets... YES PLEASE!!!! Necromancer: We need a true Minion master class in D3!
More Skills, Runes and Passives for existing classes.
Content:
New Acts, New Events, Monster Types, Dungeons, New Ubers, new item tiers and some type of Never ending Endgame mechanic (Maps, Endless Dungeon, User created content with the Arcade maybe?).
Crafts:
More Crafting recipes including full BoA sets (not all need to roll BiS), New crafter that allows us to socket gear, reroll stats, transmog gear and enchant gear.
The return of the Gambler.
More Gems types, The return of Runes, Runewords and the Horodric Cube.
Competitive PVP & PVE:
Ladder Seasons that last 3-6 months with unique item sets, Gems & Runes only available in Ladder.
Open Public PVP games.
4v4 Arena & 4,8 & 12 player PVP game modes (CTF, Domination, King of the Hill and more...)
Dueling with the Option to Bet gold and Items.
Addtional:
Cosmetic Perks for leveling paragon (Auras around character, Pets, Titles.
Perks for Achievements (cosmetics, unique dyes, Pets, Emotes)
A overhaul of the banner system Let it become an evolution of the Charm system.
Let us socket 1 large and 2 small charms into banners that give 30 minute buffs to the group when we go to town.
Make Super Uniques (the purple named monsters) Much more difficult, harder to find and give them loot comparable to Res chest.
Let us completely gear up Followers to make them more than Buff and CC bots.
Bring some Old bosses and Monster types from Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 into D3 through a Caverns of time mechanic... let us relive our past glories in the Diablo 3 engine.
I think i went a little crazy with this one... sorry!
You pretty much just had Diablo and WoW have sex and make a new game. Why in gods name would the diablo universe have time travel?!!
You pretty much just had Diablo and WoW have sex and make a new game. Why in gods name would the diablo universe have time travel?!!
Oh it could be done... they could bring cain back or some other elder and have us talk to him ... he could go over the history of Tristram and suddenly you and a party are sent back flashback style to The original Dungeon in Diablo 1 for 10 levels... or Ported to the old mephisto fight, or the siege of arret... Honestly i think Diablo fans would eat it up!
I'll give you props for the Caverns of Time idea only because it's never been suggested before (that I know about).
I, personally, think it's an atrocious idea that sucks on every level imaginable.... but originality is important, moreso than what I think of the actual idea.
You pretty much just had Diablo and WoW have sex and make a new game. Why in gods name would the diablo universe have time travel?!!
Oh it could be done... they could bring cain back or some other elder and have us talk to him ... he could go over the history of Tristram and suddenly you and a party are sent back flashback style to The original Dungeon in Diablo 1 for 10 levels... or Ported to the old mephisto fight, or the siege of arret... Honestly i think Diablo fans would eat it up!
- Some kind of endless dungeon.
- Good PvP system. Arena seems like an awesome system if it would have 4x4, 3x3, 2x2, 1x1 modes in it.
- Ladder resets. It's the most important thing if you want people returning to your game every X months. There is nothing more exciting than starting fresh character with everyone else.
- Improved itemization. Because now most rares are again quite worthless, and at lof ot uniques are OP in comparison. Not to mention a lot of uniques are BIS.
an endless dungeon or ones that are significantly longer would be nice.
The PVP system needs to allow for public flagged PVP and better matching systems.
Ladder resets are an 'OK' idea. I guess this would stimulate the economy and drive their sales every so often. However keep in mind D2's initial ladder was in order to combat against duping..it really did nothing in terms of a 'competition'.
Improved itemization- I'd say this is needed..but your problem with it is the reverse of what everyone initially had. Rares were much better than legendaries. Rares at least now if their the BoA can be better..and a lot of rare rings are still better than legendary ones. I don't think you should look at this problem from such as broad perspective.
(I fully understand that the following suggestions have no hope of seeing the light of day, but what ever...)
I personally would like to see pre-expansion packs along with a act 5 or 6 for D3.
Update the events of Diablo I and let those 100 floors to diablo be the "endless" dungeon. Every ten floors is a boss and a story board style lore fest. more findable lore/books/journals.
Update the events of Diablo II and bring back the paladin/necro/druid, etc. that I desperately want, rebalanced D2 followers too. add in charms and rune words with it too. more findable lore/books/journals, story boards after mini bosses.
Diablo is a randomly generated game. a lot of the assets in D3 can easily be used for the purpose's of redoing DI and D2. and use the opportunity to officially retcon events so D3 makes more sense(something they tried to do with king leoric's ghosts but then gave up immediately after...).
the character could easily lived during all 3 time periods(hero of D1 is Diablo of D2, barb of D2 is same barb in D3). so having all of it in one game is not so far fetched.
this would make the game far more "epic" in nature. though one of the difficulties would have to get cut, cause doing all that crap 4 times would take ages.
if all that is too much hassle, they could be optional side challenges not tied to normal progression, only available at lvl cap/inferno by clicking on cain's journal or some such.
Charms add diversity to the item hunt by implimenting a new type of item to search for that empowers your character....you know, that thing that makes diablo games fun. What the game needs in an expansion is a way to make finding stuff fun again.
I would like to see the expansion start with the main character waking up and realizing D3 was a bad dream, and then play Diablo 2.5. Almost every change Blizzard has made from the D2 model has been inferior and met with /rage (except health globes). In D2, every single item that dropped had a chance to be useful to you (except arrows and bolts-another good change to d3). D3 needs to make item finding fun. Period.
I haven't necessarily read in-depth on everything posted here, so what I say may or may not have been already mentioned. With that being said, I will try to explain what I present.
Here are a list of ideas I have for expansion:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Not New Classes, New Abilities (Passives/Items Included)
The game seriously needs some new play styles to help keep it fresh, but when they made this game, they pretty much combined many aspects of old characters. Because of this, it's difficult to really find a new character idea that none of the other characters explore very well. So rather than trying to find a new class idea, it would be far more effective to instead give these characters a wider range of abilities that allow them to diverge into even greater play styles.
For example, giving the Barbarian or Monk shield related abilities (Smite!), or giving the Wizard more elemental spell options for fire based attacks, such as fire that shoots from her hands; or some more direct melee related ones. We could give the Witch Doctor more available creatures to summon, such as skeletons (warrior or wizard types!), or introduce the concept of Hexs again or various bone-like spells. As for the Demon Hunter, they could give her a wider range of elemental arrow abilities, or introduce the use of other long range weapons to her, such as throwing knives, throwing axes, javalins, etc. With that being said, there are other weapons that we could introduce as well, even if they are just added for having a certain look to them (glass swords, scythes, other polearm weapons, etc).
These new skills and ideas will give us a wider range of abilities and items to make our characters with, and can actually allow us to have some real differences between our characters. That is really what people want is to be unique, and new skills, items, and mechanics can achieve that despite our inability to allocate our stats. Also, including new skills and items can help us meet the different ends of certain aspects of our characters. Some people want the necromancer back, but all they really want is just a character that focuses on summons, so just give the WD more summons, and so on so forth.
I know it seems like a good idea to have different classes, but we just have so many aspects included in the ones that we do have that it would be very hard to make a character that isn't similar to any of the others. I'm sure it's possible to make one that is very different, and if so, do it; but I just think that we should add on to what we have to give the characters that do exist far more build diversity and effectiveness in PvP (The Wizard is severely lacking in PvP, you see).
2. Charm Talisman
I'm fairly certian this idea is probably already in the works, but I just wanted to mention it.
Charms, despite being an inventory filler, are great ways to augment our characters. The one thing we really don't see in our items anymore is special, unique abilities unless you're wearing set or legendary armor. Charms can fill that gap and give us special things like fire at our feet, certain glows, auras, access to special abilities only obtainable through the charm, special resistances/immunities, etc. They can also give us a great opportunity to augment the skills that our characters severely lack that would normally keep us from certain play styles. It's hard to toss armor that gives you your main stat in trade for one that gives you something off-the-wall, but it's easy to pick up a charm instead. Less of a penalty and will help gives us better access to experimenting without making our characters totally blow. Really, the point is just to give us a level of customization that armor cannot give us.
3. Runewords
As mentioned from the OP, runewords definitely need to come back. They gave us the wonderful abilitiy to augment our weapons and armor in ways that is simply impossible in the current state of the game. Also, it would give us something to search for other than gold and legendaries. WIth that being said though, I think a new type of socketing mechanic would have to be made, such as rune-specific sockets that are separate from the jewel sockets. Runes should also be able to give weapons unique traits similar to charms, but only to the weapon itself obviously.
4. Far More Dynamic PvP
My biggest urk is the fact that this game has a very watered down and boring PvP system. I believe that we should have various mini-games with PvP in it, I believe we should have different levels, and I think that we should introduce a sort of "open-world" PvP location that allows for more than four players to enter. Here are some ideas:
Capture the World Stone Fragment (CTF)
Juggernaut (Really strong guy, everyone has to team up)
Team Based Games
Open World PvP
The Open World PvP would have some very different things about it. For example:
More than 4 player games
Characters start naked, and must find gear at various locations
Various safepoints
People can create teams (hostile/friendly system)
Various side quest in the area to obtain good gear
Lots of instances
HC style of playing, but instead of losing your character, you lose your items from that world
Items reset once you leave
Capturable/Controllable locations
Special vendors, artisans in safe locations
Basically, it would just be one big playground for people, and would give people that older feel of the D2 style dueling. Also, the area could have a similar color palete to D2 and reflect the old style gothic feel, a very dark and evil medieval feel like some straight-up Hexen shit. This would get people who are die-hard D2 fans and die-hard D3 hater's to play and get their feel of nostalgia.
5. Allow Mods
Give us the ability to integrate mods into the game. We should be able to have player made maps, skills, items, mobs/creatures, quest, and so forth that are only usable in offline play or in special lobbies dedicated to the use of those specific game mods. To avoid exploitation, we should only allow certain characters to be able to access mods, such as how only certain characters can do HC. You could keep characters using mods from accessing achievements and not let their actions reflect their online profile. Just some ideas.
6. Allow Offline Play
Self explainitory.
7. New Acts
I think we could use some new acts, but I have nothing really to include on this, seeing as how it's obviously going to happen if they release an expansion. My only idea for an act is that I'd like to see a place that perhaps focuses more on a sea-like setting, such as on an island and there are dungeons underwater and what have you. Also
8. Kill The Story Mode
This has also been addressed by the OP. I agree that we need to just get rid of this whole staged gameplay we are constantly forced into. Maybe give us an option in our settings to allow or not allow storyboard mode. We should have all of our access points available at all times, and freely move between acts and areas without having to go through the story to do so or do it from the main menu.
9. In-game Auction House
This has been mentioned before I believe in other threads. We should have the ability to use the AH in-game, with it's own area similar to how artisans have their own areas in the game.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, that's about all the ideas I have. Feel free to add to or augment them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Not New Classes, New Abilities (Passives/Items Included)
2. Charm Talisman
3. Runewords
4. Far More Dynamic PvP
5. Allow Mods
6. Allow Offline Play
7. New Acts
8. Kill The Story Mode
9. In-game Auction House
I agree with pretty much everything. I do think they have caused some problems integrating additional classes at least in the traditional sense of including a paladin. I'd very much enjoy making a zealer again..probably one of the best dueling builds out there. (smite build was cheap!)
An in game auction house would be wonderful, I imagine they could get this done for the gold auction house, but I have a feeling that it wouldn't work for real $ transactions.
Offline play would be nice, but with real money involved, I don't see them caving in.
Mods I don't think will happen again due to having real $ transactions being involved. It would be nice to see some better UI options however.
So what about making Charms act as Links do in PoE? For those not familiar, in PoE if you have a spell - fireball - and you link it to another spell like lesser multiple projectiles, you now shoot 3 fireballs instead of 1.
So in D3 have charms link two runes together to syngerize their abilities. Sweeping Winds with the Cyclone rune - charmed - to Inner Storm so you gain spirit regen. Or Frost Nova with Bone Chill and Cold Snap.
Obviously some tweaking of each runes base damage or support stats would be in order - the price you pay to link them together. I'd gladly go on the hunt for charms if they gave us that ability.
So what about making Charms act as Links do in PoE? For those not familiar, in PoE if you have a spell - fireball - and you link it to another spell like lesser multiple projectiles, you now shoot 3 fireballs instead of 1.
So in D3 have charms link two runes together to syngerize their abilities. Sweeping Winds with the Cyclone rune - charmed - to Inner Storm so you gain spirit regen. Or Frost Nova with Bone Chill and Cold Snap.
Obviously some tweaking of each runes base damage or support stats would be in order - the price you pay to link them together. I'd gladly go on the hunt for charms if they gave us that ability.
Discuss:
I think just having charms ala D2 would suffice, only place a hard cap on the amount your char can carry (similar to D2~ Not being able to have more than 1 ID'ed Gheeds charm in inv at once).
All Resistance, Attack Speed, Armor, Move Speed, Average Damage, Main Stat, Vita, Magic Find..etc etc.
With a limit of maybe 4 to 6 charms, people would have a hard choice placed before them as to what charms to bring. Different situations require different charms, break open the stash and equip as needed for the situation. Being able to gleam attributes and stats from charms would alleviate feeling as if so many specific items were mandatory.
Combined with a thorough itemization patch, the emergence of charms would present the player with a far more dynamic experience in character building than we have now.
How about combining the talisman idea, the charms and the runewords.
Everyone gets a new special inventory area. You put runes in there. These runes can form runewords.
So in one sense, it would be like runes in D2.. except they wouldn't be slotted into items, they'd be slotted into your character. And like the talisman idea, it would be a separate inventory area thus avoiding the extremely un-fun "charms or inventory space?" decisions from D2.
Knight: A character that makes use of the shield. STR as primary attribute.
Necromancer: Just bring him back seriously the WD is more like the Druid than the Necromancer. Curses would be cool especially in group play. Corpse explosion was so much fun back in the day.
New Skills:
Wizards desperately need this imo. So far there's 2 popular builds and that's it. CM and Archon. Both are getting nerfed. To me it feels that the Wizard's spells aren't intersting enough. I wouldn't mind frozen orb style spell and the rune variants can change the elemental damage it does; fire orb, poison orb, lightning orb. Except for Arcane of course since that one already exists, just make some variation to the cold one, how about instead of travelling it stays in one spot and fires shards from there or something like that.
There's a passive called conflagration but how many fire skills does the Wizard have? Just Meteor (even with that 2 of the runes change the elemental damage it does) and the fire variation to shock pulse (which no one uses) and Hydra (another spell which no one uses the fire runes). How about some sort of fireball spells that can back this up because the passive along with paralysis is nowhere near as useful as cold blooded.
Some melee skills would be good too. they said before release that melee wizards would be viable. They're not, they receive 30% extra damage than Barbs and Monks and have no melee style skills at all. The only way they can tank damage is with really high lifesteal or spamming DS from CM which as we know is getting nerfed.
I mostly play as a Wizard and haven't tried a DH or Monk yet so I'm not sure what extra skills they could use or even if they require some additional skills tbh. WD seems ok and so does Barb, but I'm sure most of you will be able to find ideas for extra skills for them to use. We were told there would be something like 2 billion different build variations per class, obviously that was never going to be the case in reality. With the Wizard you can only take one armor skill at a time for example, but not only that, almost all of their builds are not as efficient or effective as archon or CM.
A lot of rune variations are useless and feel like they're there only to serve the purpose of having 5 variations to a particular skill and that's it.
Talisman:
I like the idea of having a talisman with runes that you can find. Have a limit to the number of runes you can use, have the Talisman with it's own inventory space and give us the chance to create rune words again. Make a cost requirement each time you want to pull a rune out.
New Act:
Obviously there needs to be a new act for our heroes to venture through.
Mystic:
Needs to be in the game. We need a way to alter stats in our items because finding what you want is near impossible for all 13 slots. The only way to acheive a character that's good enough to deal with high MP levels in Inferno is to use the AH. This should never be the case. Make us work for our item upgrades, it becomes a great gold sink and gives us something to work for and reason to keep playing the game rather than trying to flip items or even worse use a credit card. Of course, upgrades need to be limited and costly but worth it in the end. For example to change an item like a Wizard hat from having STR to INT you need to use 3 Marquise Topaz gems, X amount of demonic essences, X amount of gold cost (all depending on item lvl of course, early on the cost could be something like 3 flawed topaz gems, subtle essences and small amount of gold etc.). Give it the chance to roll 150-200 INT. Then to upgrade that INT stat, you have to pay more gold and more marquise topaz gems. Upgrading and stat changing is limited, so you can't change every stat on an item and you can't keep upgrading to get ridiculous amount of primary stat. That or something similar which allows us to work for our items I think would be a good addition.
Endless Dungeon:
A lot of people have been talking about this idea and how to incorporate it without making it so that players would only enter the dungeon and not play the acts after they finish the game. One way would be to use the same idea they have for the keys. Make it so that you need to collect something from each act to enter the dungeon. That way, players will be playing through the acts and also playing the dungeon. Make a limit on the amount of times you can enter the dungeon before you need to collect the required items again. So maybe 5 attempts at the endless dungeon and then you need to collect to enter again.
How about combining the talisman idea, the charms and the runewords.
Everyone gets a new special inventory area. You put runes in there. These runes can form runewords.
So in one sense, it would be like runes in D2.. except they wouldn't be slotted into items, they'd be slotted into your character. And like the talisman idea, it would be a separate inventory area thus avoiding the extremely un-fun "charms or inventory space?" decisions from D2.
Love it, dude. That's a system I really could get into, actually. If I could give you 10 or 20 +1s for that, I very much would. It's great to see someone take D2 ideas but twist them around so they're fresh. I think that's the best inspiration the game can possibly draw from D2. The last thing I want is for D3 to regress to a bunch of rehashed D2 ideas with nothing new. What you've proposed is a great compromise of old and new.
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New Classes:
Paladin: We need another strength class and a Paladin seems to fit since its an Iconic Diablo class.
Druid: A shapeshifter... Caster, Melee, pets... YES PLEASE!!!!
Necromancer: We need a true Minion master class in D3!
More Skills, Runes and Passives for existing classes.
Content:
New Acts, New Events, Monster Types, Dungeons, New Ubers, new item tiers and some type of Never ending Endgame mechanic (Maps, Endless Dungeon, User created content with the Arcade maybe?).
Crafts:
More Crafting recipes including full BoA sets (not all need to roll BiS), New crafter that allows us to socket gear, reroll stats, transmog gear and enchant gear.
The return of the Gambler.
More Gems types, The return of Runes, Runewords and the Horodric Cube.
Competitive PVP & PVE:
Ladder Seasons that last 3-6 months with unique item sets, Gems & Runes only available in Ladder.
Open Public PVP games.
4v4 Arena & 4,8 & 12 player PVP game modes (CTF, Domination, King of the Hill and more...)
Dueling with the Option to Bet gold and Items.
Addtional:
Cosmetic Perks for leveling paragon (Auras around character, Pets, Titles.
Perks for Achievements (cosmetics, unique dyes, Pets, Emotes)
A overhaul of the banner system Let it become an evolution of the Charm system.
Let us socket 1 large and 2 small charms into banners that give 30 minute buffs to the group when we go to town.
Make Super Uniques (the purple named monsters) Much more difficult, harder to find and give them loot comparable to Res chest.
Let us completely gear up Followers to make them more than Buff and CC bots.
Bring some Old bosses and Monster types from Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 into D3 through a Caverns of time mechanic... let us relive our past glories in the Diablo 3 engine.
I think i went a little crazy with this one... sorry!
You pretty much just had Diablo and WoW have sex and make a new game. Why in gods name would the diablo universe have time travel?!!
Oh it could be done... they could bring cain back or some other elder and have us talk to him ... he could go over the history of Tristram and suddenly you and a party are sent back flashback style to The original Dungeon in Diablo 1 for 10 levels... or Ported to the old mephisto fight, or the siege of arret... Honestly i think Diablo fans would eat it up!
I, personally, think it's an atrocious idea that sucks on every level imaginable.... but originality is important, moreso than what I think of the actual idea.
I'll give you points for creativity, but hell no.
an endless dungeon or ones that are significantly longer would be nice.
The PVP system needs to allow for public flagged PVP and better matching systems.
Ladder resets are an 'OK' idea. I guess this would stimulate the economy and drive their sales every so often. However keep in mind D2's initial ladder was in order to combat against duping..it really did nothing in terms of a 'competition'.
Improved itemization- I'd say this is needed..but your problem with it is the reverse of what everyone initially had. Rares were much better than legendaries. Rares at least now if their the BoA can be better..and a lot of rare rings are still better than legendary ones. I don't think you should look at this problem from such as broad perspective.
I personally would like to see pre-expansion packs along with a act 5 or 6 for D3.
Update the events of Diablo I and let those 100 floors to diablo be the "endless" dungeon. Every ten floors is a boss and a story board style lore fest. more findable lore/books/journals.
Update the events of Diablo II and bring back the paladin/necro/druid, etc. that I desperately want, rebalanced D2 followers too. add in charms and rune words with it too. more findable lore/books/journals, story boards after mini bosses.
Diablo is a randomly generated game. a lot of the assets in D3 can easily be used for the purpose's of redoing DI and D2. and use the opportunity to officially retcon events so D3 makes more sense(something they tried to do with king leoric's ghosts but then gave up immediately after...).
the character could easily lived during all 3 time periods(hero of D1 is Diablo of D2, barb of D2 is same barb in D3). so having all of it in one game is not so far fetched.
this would make the game far more "epic" in nature. though one of the difficulties would have to get cut, cause doing all that crap 4 times would take ages.
if all that is too much hassle, they could be optional side challenges not tied to normal progression, only available at lvl cap/inferno by clicking on cain's journal or some such.
And may the odds be ever in your favour.
Emmo#2406
Charms add diversity to the item hunt by implimenting a new type of item to search for that empowers your character....you know, that thing that makes diablo games fun. What the game needs in an expansion is a way to make finding stuff fun again.
I would like to see the expansion start with the main character waking up and realizing D3 was a bad dream, and then play Diablo 2.5. Almost every change Blizzard has made from the D2 model has been inferior and met with /rage (except health globes). In D2, every single item that dropped had a chance to be useful to you (except arrows and bolts-another good change to d3). D3 needs to make item finding fun. Period.
Here are a list of ideas I have for expansion:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Not New Classes, New Abilities (Passives/Items Included)
The game seriously needs some new play styles to help keep it fresh, but when they made this game, they pretty much combined many aspects of old characters. Because of this, it's difficult to really find a new character idea that none of the other characters explore very well. So rather than trying to find a new class idea, it would be far more effective to instead give these characters a wider range of abilities that allow them to diverge into even greater play styles.
For example, giving the Barbarian or Monk shield related abilities (Smite!), or giving the Wizard more elemental spell options for fire based attacks, such as fire that shoots from her hands; or some more direct melee related ones. We could give the Witch Doctor more available creatures to summon, such as skeletons (warrior or wizard types!), or introduce the concept of Hexs again or various bone-like spells. As for the Demon Hunter, they could give her a wider range of elemental arrow abilities, or introduce the use of other long range weapons to her, such as throwing knives, throwing axes, javalins, etc. With that being said, there are other weapons that we could introduce as well, even if they are just added for having a certain look to them (glass swords, scythes, other polearm weapons, etc).
These new skills and ideas will give us a wider range of abilities and items to make our characters with, and can actually allow us to have some real differences between our characters. That is really what people want is to be unique, and new skills, items, and mechanics can achieve that despite our inability to allocate our stats. Also, including new skills and items can help us meet the different ends of certain aspects of our characters. Some people want the necromancer back, but all they really want is just a character that focuses on summons, so just give the WD more summons, and so on so forth.
I know it seems like a good idea to have different classes, but we just have so many aspects included in the ones that we do have that it would be very hard to make a character that isn't similar to any of the others. I'm sure it's possible to make one that is very different, and if so, do it; but I just think that we should add on to what we have to give the characters that do exist far more build diversity and effectiveness in PvP (The Wizard is severely lacking in PvP, you see).
2. Charm Talisman
I'm fairly certian this idea is probably already in the works, but I just wanted to mention it.
Charms, despite being an inventory filler, are great ways to augment our characters. The one thing we really don't see in our items anymore is special, unique abilities unless you're wearing set or legendary armor. Charms can fill that gap and give us special things like fire at our feet, certain glows, auras, access to special abilities only obtainable through the charm, special resistances/immunities, etc. They can also give us a great opportunity to augment the skills that our characters severely lack that would normally keep us from certain play styles. It's hard to toss armor that gives you your main stat in trade for one that gives you something off-the-wall, but it's easy to pick up a charm instead. Less of a penalty and will help gives us better access to experimenting without making our characters totally blow. Really, the point is just to give us a level of customization that armor cannot give us.
3. Runewords
As mentioned from the OP, runewords definitely need to come back. They gave us the wonderful abilitiy to augment our weapons and armor in ways that is simply impossible in the current state of the game. Also, it would give us something to search for other than gold and legendaries. WIth that being said though, I think a new type of socketing mechanic would have to be made, such as rune-specific sockets that are separate from the jewel sockets. Runes should also be able to give weapons unique traits similar to charms, but only to the weapon itself obviously.
4. Far More Dynamic PvP
My biggest urk is the fact that this game has a very watered down and boring PvP system. I believe that we should have various mini-games with PvP in it, I believe we should have different levels, and I think that we should introduce a sort of "open-world" PvP location that allows for more than four players to enter. Here are some ideas:
5. Allow Mods
Give us the ability to integrate mods into the game. We should be able to have player made maps, skills, items, mobs/creatures, quest, and so forth that are only usable in offline play or in special lobbies dedicated to the use of those specific game mods. To avoid exploitation, we should only allow certain characters to be able to access mods, such as how only certain characters can do HC. You could keep characters using mods from accessing achievements and not let their actions reflect their online profile. Just some ideas.
6. Allow Offline Play
Self explainitory.
7. New Acts
I think we could use some new acts, but I have nothing really to include on this, seeing as how it's obviously going to happen if they release an expansion. My only idea for an act is that I'd like to see a place that perhaps focuses more on a sea-like setting, such as on an island and there are dungeons underwater and what have you. Also
8. Kill The Story Mode
This has also been addressed by the OP. I agree that we need to just get rid of this whole staged gameplay we are constantly forced into. Maybe give us an option in our settings to allow or not allow storyboard mode. We should have all of our access points available at all times, and freely move between acts and areas without having to go through the story to do so or do it from the main menu.
9. In-game Auction House
This has been mentioned before I believe in other threads. We should have the ability to use the AH in-game, with it's own area similar to how artisans have their own areas in the game.
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Well, that's about all the ideas I have. Feel free to add to or augment them.
I agree with pretty much everything. I do think they have caused some problems integrating additional classes at least in the traditional sense of including a paladin. I'd very much enjoy making a zealer again..probably one of the best dueling builds out there. (smite build was cheap!)
An in game auction house would be wonderful, I imagine they could get this done for the gold auction house, but I have a feeling that it wouldn't work for real $ transactions.
Offline play would be nice, but with real money involved, I don't see them caving in.
Mods I don't think will happen again due to having real $ transactions being involved. It would be nice to see some better UI options however.
So in D3 have charms link two runes together to syngerize their abilities. Sweeping Winds with the Cyclone rune - charmed - to Inner Storm so you gain spirit regen. Or Frost Nova with Bone Chill and Cold Snap.
Obviously some tweaking of each runes base damage or support stats would be in order - the price you pay to link them together. I'd gladly go on the hunt for charms if they gave us that ability.
Discuss:
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
I think just having charms ala D2 would suffice, only place a hard cap on the amount your char can carry (similar to D2~ Not being able to have more than 1 ID'ed Gheeds charm in inv at once).
All Resistance, Attack Speed, Armor, Move Speed, Average Damage, Main Stat, Vita, Magic Find..etc etc.
With a limit of maybe 4 to 6 charms, people would have a hard choice placed before them as to what charms to bring. Different situations require different charms, break open the stash and equip as needed for the situation. Being able to gleam attributes and stats from charms would alleviate feeling as if so many specific items were mandatory.
Combined with a thorough itemization patch, the emergence of charms would present the player with a far more dynamic experience in character building than we have now.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Everyone gets a new special inventory area. You put runes in there. These runes can form runewords.
So in one sense, it would be like runes in D2.. except they wouldn't be slotted into items, they'd be slotted into your character. And like the talisman idea, it would be a separate inventory area thus avoiding the extremely un-fun "charms or inventory space?" decisions from D2.
Knight: A character that makes use of the shield. STR as primary attribute.
Necromancer: Just bring him back seriously the WD is more like the Druid than the Necromancer. Curses would be cool especially in group play. Corpse explosion was so much fun back in the day.
New Skills:
Wizards desperately need this imo. So far there's 2 popular builds and that's it. CM and Archon. Both are getting nerfed. To me it feels that the Wizard's spells aren't intersting enough. I wouldn't mind frozen orb style spell and the rune variants can change the elemental damage it does; fire orb, poison orb, lightning orb. Except for Arcane of course since that one already exists, just make some variation to the cold one, how about instead of travelling it stays in one spot and fires shards from there or something like that.
There's a passive called conflagration but how many fire skills does the Wizard have? Just Meteor (even with that 2 of the runes change the elemental damage it does) and the fire variation to shock pulse (which no one uses) and Hydra (another spell which no one uses the fire runes). How about some sort of fireball spells that can back this up because the passive along with paralysis is nowhere near as useful as cold blooded.
Some melee skills would be good too. they said before release that melee wizards would be viable. They're not, they receive 30% extra damage than Barbs and Monks and have no melee style skills at all. The only way they can tank damage is with really high lifesteal or spamming DS from CM which as we know is getting nerfed.
I mostly play as a Wizard and haven't tried a DH or Monk yet so I'm not sure what extra skills they could use or even if they require some additional skills tbh. WD seems ok and so does Barb, but I'm sure most of you will be able to find ideas for extra skills for them to use. We were told there would be something like 2 billion different build variations per class, obviously that was never going to be the case in reality. With the Wizard you can only take one armor skill at a time for example, but not only that, almost all of their builds are not as efficient or effective as archon or CM.
A lot of rune variations are useless and feel like they're there only to serve the purpose of having 5 variations to a particular skill and that's it.
Talisman:
I like the idea of having a talisman with runes that you can find. Have a limit to the number of runes you can use, have the Talisman with it's own inventory space and give us the chance to create rune words again. Make a cost requirement each time you want to pull a rune out.
New Act:
Obviously there needs to be a new act for our heroes to venture through.
Mystic:
Needs to be in the game. We need a way to alter stats in our items because finding what you want is near impossible for all 13 slots. The only way to acheive a character that's good enough to deal with high MP levels in Inferno is to use the AH. This should never be the case. Make us work for our item upgrades, it becomes a great gold sink and gives us something to work for and reason to keep playing the game rather than trying to flip items or even worse use a credit card. Of course, upgrades need to be limited and costly but worth it in the end. For example to change an item like a Wizard hat from having STR to INT you need to use 3 Marquise Topaz gems, X amount of demonic essences, X amount of gold cost (all depending on item lvl of course, early on the cost could be something like 3 flawed topaz gems, subtle essences and small amount of gold etc.). Give it the chance to roll 150-200 INT. Then to upgrade that INT stat, you have to pay more gold and more marquise topaz gems. Upgrading and stat changing is limited, so you can't change every stat on an item and you can't keep upgrading to get ridiculous amount of primary stat. That or something similar which allows us to work for our items I think would be a good addition.
Endless Dungeon:
A lot of people have been talking about this idea and how to incorporate it without making it so that players would only enter the dungeon and not play the acts after they finish the game. One way would be to use the same idea they have for the keys. Make it so that you need to collect something from each act to enter the dungeon. That way, players will be playing through the acts and also playing the dungeon. Make a limit on the amount of times you can enter the dungeon before you need to collect the required items again. So maybe 5 attempts at the endless dungeon and then you need to collect to enter again.
Love it, dude. That's a system I really could get into, actually. If I could give you 10 or 20 +1s for that, I very much would. It's great to see someone take D2 ideas but twist them around so they're fresh. I think that's the best inspiration the game can possibly draw from D2. The last thing I want is for D3 to regress to a bunch of rehashed D2 ideas with nothing new. What you've proposed is a great compromise of old and new.