One thing that was not fun in D2 was having to do 300+ Baal runs just to get the one unique with the right mods suited for your build and another 300+ runs to the Countess for rune hunting. I think a better approach for D3 would be to improve the chances of getting good random mods in rare items and be able to customize them with a wide variety of crafting possibilities like adding new specific mods to the item, improving the mods it already had, or improving its basic damage/defense.
At first, it should be quite easy to craft low tier items and the improvement should be decent enough to encourage new players to gather the materials (dropped regularly from monsters, low level materials that is) and craft their items at a forge/anvil in town to get some cool mods and/or basic stat boost, rather than just replace them whenever they find another item with a little bit more stats. Later though, if you want to craft a rare sacred armor for example, you’d need to put on all the magic find you can and hunt for some rare high level materials, and you’d have to craft it at some special locations like an uberlevel Hellforge/Heavenforge or something like that.
Of course, this kind of crafting should have a certain limit to prevent item from getting godly too easily. However, since the main end game motivation of probably all Diablo players is to make their characters surpass even the gods, I think the most dedicated players should be permitted to create overgodly items. To make this possible, there should be some kind of unique material that, with the right combination of other rare materials, will let you improve indefinitely and without penalties any (probably some exceptions for balancing issues) mod you want by a low fixed amount, say 0,5% to crushing blow, 1% to deadly strike, 2% to fire resistance, 0,4% chance to cast amplify damage on striking, and so on. This unique material can only be used once per forging of course, so you would have to hunt several to make anything significant.
People reading this are probably thinking that the mechanics for hunting materials will be the same as hunting for uniques, well the difference is that when you hunt for uniques you are hunting for only one unique and all other uniques are useless to you, while the unique material is universal for all kind of mods and equipment, so every material you pick up you’ll be able to use it to improve your items. Also, when you do get your desired unique or uber runeword ethereal weapon the only thing left to do is to pvp (unless they put a bunch of uberquests in D3), while with the crafting system you can always keep on improving your character.
Another idea for the people who don’t think it should be possible to create overgodly items would be to put a fixed penalty for every fixed improvement made with the unique material, like forging +5% enhanced damage would also yield -2% attack rating, or +1% to all resistances would yield -3% defense. Another possibility would be to have no penalties but the fixed amount of improvement is replaced by diminishing returns (but everyone hates diminishing returns)
A note on balance, people will probably think that an infinite room for customization would imbalance the effectiveness of some classes in PVP since you are able to get almost any mod possible to very high proportions with this system. Well it is this exact feature that makes me think it would actually be perfectly balanced since you are able to get a counter to such mods to very high proportions too. For example, if you are some sort of caster class and are having lots of trouble fighting a Barbarian because he has insane enhanced damage + amplify damage on striking + a lot of resistance to all elements you have 2 options. Either you try to kill him faster by getting conviction aura + some spell damage booster or you make him kill himself by getting thorns aura + iron maiden. So many unique materials spent on specializing against melee characters will let you vulnerable in PVP against casters specializing in killing other casters though, but that’s part of the game. Of course, if someone at some point in time manages to get every posible mod to epic proportions and be able to own everyone then people will say the system is imbalanced, but I think that if someone spends so much time making his character into an immortal omnipotent bringer of death then he deserves to own everyone and feast on the whining and blood from the battle.net noobs.
Anyway, what do you guys think? (apologies for the long post)
"The comet carries a dark omen in its fiery being and it calls the heroes of Sanctuary To defend the mortal world against the rising powers of the Burning Hells – And even the failing luminaries of the High Heavens itself."
The problem was that rune words, especially the 1.11 ones, made all previous uniques, crafted and even runewords no longer worth the trouble of finding/making them.
Uniques were, at one point, really powerful and useful. Enigma basically killed that, as did BOTD.
I love uniques, but it needs to be more like Diablo 1. were they were truly powerful and you wanted to use them. You shouldn't be able to buy a magic item that is better than a Unique. And Rune Words really should be better than Uniques either. Sets are ok, as they do not get super powerful until you piece together part of, if not the whole set.
Crafted could be better than uniques in some cases, as it requires some work. But no more piss easy to put together rune words that make all previous items void.
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-Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's First Law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only, truth.
The major problem with diablo 2 was not that the enigma existed....the runes were rare as hell. The duping effectively tipped the balance between uniques and runewords the second people found out they could make infinite HR(High Runes) and put them into an item causing them to be "perm'd". I think as long as they take extra precautions to eliminate duping as a whole in d3 that having powerful runewords will not kill the effectiveness of uniques. Runes are supposed to be (atleast it seems in the books) extremely rare and extremely powerful if combined correctly...ancient magic if you will :P.
So yeah let us have the runewords, make them uber zomg rare ONLY if they can get rid of duping in Bnet
--EDIT-- forgot to add that I think that the runes for enigma should have been more rare runes instead of Jah Ith Ber...3 runes? one of them an Ith? cmon now... 5 sockets jah zod ist ber cham
Seth
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The problem was that rune words, especially the 1.11 ones, made all previous uniques, crafted and even runewords no longer worth the trouble of finding/making them.
Uniques were, at one point, really powerful and useful. Enigma basically killed that, as did BOTD.
I love uniques, but it needs to be more like Diablo 1. were they were truly powerful and you wanted to use them. You shouldn't be able to buy a magic item that is better than a Unique. And Rune Words really should be better than Uniques either. Sets are ok, as they do not get super powerful until you piece together part of, if not the whole set.
Crafted could be better than uniques in some cases, as it requires some work. But no more piss easy to put together rune words that make all previous items void.
I agree totally. The Diablo 1 Uniques were truly unique. And the nifty pop-up screen wasn't the thing that made them unique, it was the features like "unusual item damage" and really nice enchantments. Every item felt and looked like a truly unique weapon, whereas in Diablo 2 I mostly toss away uniques because most of them are useless or less powerful than rare or set or even magic items:(
if you did 300+ baal runs and got all the drops for yourself, you would be rich......
and with that you could trade for what you want, all other uniques arent useless...
anyway doing those runs were fun as hell, and you have to work to get good items it shouldent be easy. i wish they would just remake diablo 2 with 3d graphics
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DIABLO = DEVIL its not supposed to be a nice game autostats are rediclous lack of pots is not welcome if it aint broke dont fix it! (diablo2)
The problem was that rune words, especially the 1.11 ones, made all previous uniques, crafted and even runewords no longer worth the trouble of finding/making them.
Uniques were, at one point, really powerful and useful. Enigma basically killed that, as did BOTD.
That's another good reason of why I think they should just scrap runewords and uniques altogether and make D3 all about crafted items
I love uniques, but it needs to be more like Diablo 1. were they were truly powerful and you wanted to use them. You shouldn't be able to buy a magic item that is better than a Unique. And Rune Words really should be better than Uniques either. Sets are ok, as they do not get super powerful until you piece together part of, if not the whole set.
Crafted could be better than uniques in some cases, as it requires some work. But no more piss easy to put together rune words that make all previous items void.
Well it would be great if they made uniques more powerful and useful but the principle in getting them still remains: make a zillion boss runs and pray that the unique you need drops. Also uniques reduce variety since only a few are the really powerful ones and the rest suck in comparison. On the other hand, the system I propose would add huge variety since everyone will have a different opinion on what mods are best for their characters.
But now that I think about it, both powerful uniques and my crafting system could coexist in the game, of course no crafting would be possible on a unique and a crafted item could still become way more powerful with the proper amount of dedication.
Anyway, it seems like no one has actually read through my proposal yet. I know it's long but I think it's decently thought out so I'd very much appreciate if you guys could take the time to read it and leave comments on it. Thanks
The major problem with diablo 2 was not that the enigma existed....the runes were rare as hell. The duping effectively tipped the balance between uniques and runewords
This.
Even if they had made the runes not-so-rare, people still would have taken the time to dupe them just to make it that much easier. The one major problem, as you pointed out, is blizzard never came up with a way to stop runes from being perm'd once they're placed in an item; which they really can't. Once the runeword is made the item gains a new unique item ID and is therefore "void" of its dupe'd personalities.
As for what the OP was saying, I like the idea but I don't think its practical. As you said, someone who plays a lot could become all powerful and sneeze kill everyone else. There would have to be some sort of limit. I don't like the idea of diminishing returns just because when Blizzard thought of it for WoW it became a bandaid for every class. Something's overpowered? Diminishing returns. However, for this case I think diminishing returns is the only way to go. That way the people that play more would still feel more powerful than everyone else without becoming a god.
To Elfen, I sort of agree that Uniques should be more powerful than any other quality item; at the same time I think Runewords should be. Runewords were designed to be ancient magic, as stated before, and therefore, they really should be more powerful. Blizzard didn't account for all the duping that would occur once they were implemented. Thats the only reason uniques are seen as "good enough for now" as oppose to "I finally got it!" For credibility, yes I was there when the grandfather was the best sword in the game. My friend at school had one and believe me, I was way jealous.
The one major problem, as you pointed out, is blizzard never came up with a way to stop runes from being perm'd once they're placed in an item; which they really can't.
You are wrong, and wrong. Blizzard FOUND a way, it's called Hyper-ruststorm or something like that, they use that scan not so often because it's intensive. It detects duped runes in items and runewords.
As for what the OP was saying, I like the idea but I don't think its practical. As you said, someone who plays a lot could become all powerful and sneeze kill everyone else. There would have to be some sort of limit. I don't like the idea of diminishing returns just because when Blizzard thought of it for WoW it became a bandaid for every class. Something's overpowered? Diminishing returns. However, for this case I think diminishing returns is the only way to go. That way the people that play more would still feel more powerful than everyone else without becoming a god.
Yeah you are right about that but it's a matter of opinion. I am of the opinion that a player should be able to become godly if he chooses to invest the time in it so I think this would be a good system to give that possibility. If the mayority of the community disagrees then yeah, diminishing returns would be the way to go. Either way I'd be happy if Blizzard implements some sort of item customization sytem like this one.
"The comet carries a dark omen in its fiery being and it calls the heroes of Sanctuary To defend the mortal world against the rising powers of the Burning Hells – And even the failing luminaries of the High Heavens itself."
lol, the crafting system was in d2, but Blizz scrapped it pretty much... Nerfed it to hell really.
In my opinion, it should go back to how it was d2 Classic. Rares are 100% better than any unique you can find (only normal rares), with some exeptions (hotspurs come to mind.). FOr one, they can spawn more mods, and two each one was different. Much better really.
I remember in beta you were able to craft weapons with cruel mods.. this would have been fun in the actual game too.
I agree that rares should have possibility to be the best for the slot. But in some cases you don't need the rare mods there anymore(resists already max or something) and you could put a unique to some slot that would benefit you with some other mods like crushing blow, +skills, MF or whatever. This kind of system would bring a lot of variety.
In my opinion, it should go back to how it was d2 Classic. Rares are 100% better than any unique you can find (only normal rares), with some exeptions (hotspurs come to mind.). FOr one, they can spawn more mods, and two each one was different. Much better really.
Yea totally agree. Besides you were able to find good rares in normal and nightmare too so new players had a nice chance to get something good also and not only the ones running diablo in hell.
KEEP UNIQUES!!! what a horrible horrible HORRIBLE idea to scrap them. I do love crafting however...rares should be kept in but i am not a fan whatsoever.
I think they all played a very crucial role in how the game felt especially when you were doing that MF. Rare, unique, runeword if you had the resources to get the items whatever they may be you are going to use whats best. I feel that the crafting system indeed should be expanded upon. On the other hand I think that runewords, rares, and uniques should be expanded upon as well. They work wonderfully in unison IMO. Although blizzard should put in the effort to KILL any duping chances be it a bug in their program or issues with Bnet. This is by no means 100% but their backup to this should be to SEVERELY punish those who excessively abuse it and if they put in the proper countermeasures they will know who those particular people are. If they are linient with it the economy will be destroyed in a matter of a week or less. Not to mention the imbalance powerful items and runewords would bring much like our beloved enigma...
Seth
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I like the new ideas you have for crafting. Crafting an item up to make it a perfect rather than just praying you find one might be cool. They could have certain items needed for magic crafting like in D2 such as maybe adding in 3 ptops and a rune with your item to make it go up to the next mf or light damage level on the random level mod. Meaning that if your mask of lightning was the tier 1 suffix, the recipe would make it go up to tier 2 mask of thunder etc etc. Maybe it would work with uniques as well if they had a random modifier to have 20-25mf and you rolled a 20. Now each time you do the recipe it goes up 1, from 20 to 21 and so on.
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"The gaming public now has focus on Diablo again, and with it comes the modern-age of trolling and jackassery."
I don't do 300+ baal runs to find what I want. I find something of similar value then trade for what I want. You should try it, thats really what d2 on bnet is all about.
I like the element of chance that is currently in diablo 2, and I like having major jump in my character potency after finding an item.
You pretend farming for runewords and uniques is such a grind, but is it honestly fun to know "I need 100 topazes to get the modifier I want".
As for characters getting more and more and more powerful. That kind of kills the whole making several characters and experimenting with builds, that I enjoyed most out of the game. I can't divide my time if I want to have a chance to compete, and I wouldn't have any items for other characters anyways.
lol, the crafting system was in d2, but Blizz scrapped it pretty much... Nerfed it to hell really.
yeah but this crafting system is nothing like the current one.
Quote from "SNowfreak" »
KEEP UNIQUES!!! what a horrible horrible HORRIBLE idea to scrap them. I do love crafting however...rares should be kept in but i am not a fan whatsoever.
Quote from "Daemaro" »
I love uniques if they get rid of them I will be angry.
Yes, I already said that there was actually no reason to scrap uniques because there was no interference with this crafting system. Maybe next time you guys should read through the whole thread to avoid posting unnecessary comments.
Quote from "Mastertim" »
I don't do 300+ baal runs to find what I want. I find something of similar value then trade for what I want. You should try it, thats really what d2 on bnet is all about.
I like the element of chance that is currently in diablo 2, and I like having major jump in my character potency after finding an item.
Yeah you are probably right, I wasn't actually talking from experience so I didn't cross my mind (I play singleplayer mostly and almost always I get bored with my build and create another before I get to the end game). Also as I said before, there was actually no need to scrap uniques so you could still get a major jump in your character when you find one.
Quote from "Mastertim" »
As for characters getting more and more and more powerful. That kind of kills the whole making several characters and experimenting with builds, that I enjoyed most out of the game. I can't divide my time if I want to have a chance to compete, and I wouldn't have any items for other characters anyways.
Very good point, didn't think about that either. This actually completely kills my crafting idea lol, the only possibility for it to work is if you concentrate on adding mods that are beneficial for all your characters so you can swap the equipment, like +defense, +resistances, +attributes, +crushing blow for melee characters or +casting speed for casters, which would still be viable I think.
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At first, it should be quite easy to craft low tier items and the improvement should be decent enough to encourage new players to gather the materials (dropped regularly from monsters, low level materials that is) and craft their items at a forge/anvil in town to get some cool mods and/or basic stat boost, rather than just replace them whenever they find another item with a little bit more stats. Later though, if you want to craft a rare sacred armor for example, you’d need to put on all the magic find you can and hunt for some rare high level materials, and you’d have to craft it at some special locations like an uberlevel Hellforge/Heavenforge or something like that.
Of course, this kind of crafting should have a certain limit to prevent item from getting godly too easily. However, since the main end game motivation of probably all Diablo players is to make their characters surpass even the gods, I think the most dedicated players should be permitted to create overgodly items. To make this possible, there should be some kind of unique material that, with the right combination of other rare materials, will let you improve indefinitely and without penalties any (probably some exceptions for balancing issues) mod you want by a low fixed amount, say 0,5% to crushing blow, 1% to deadly strike, 2% to fire resistance, 0,4% chance to cast amplify damage on striking, and so on. This unique material can only be used once per forging of course, so you would have to hunt several to make anything significant.
People reading this are probably thinking that the mechanics for hunting materials will be the same as hunting for uniques, well the difference is that when you hunt for uniques you are hunting for only one unique and all other uniques are useless to you, while the unique material is universal for all kind of mods and equipment, so every material you pick up you’ll be able to use it to improve your items. Also, when you do get your desired unique or uber runeword ethereal weapon the only thing left to do is to pvp (unless they put a bunch of uberquests in D3), while with the crafting system you can always keep on improving your character.
Another idea for the people who don’t think it should be possible to create overgodly items would be to put a fixed penalty for every fixed improvement made with the unique material, like forging +5% enhanced damage would also yield -2% attack rating, or +1% to all resistances would yield -3% defense. Another possibility would be to have no penalties but the fixed amount of improvement is replaced by diminishing returns (but everyone hates diminishing returns)
A note on balance, people will probably think that an infinite room for customization would imbalance the effectiveness of some classes in PVP since you are able to get almost any mod possible to very high proportions with this system. Well it is this exact feature that makes me think it would actually be perfectly balanced since you are able to get a counter to such mods to very high proportions too. For example, if you are some sort of caster class and are having lots of trouble fighting a Barbarian because he has insane enhanced damage + amplify damage on striking + a lot of resistance to all elements you have 2 options. Either you try to kill him faster by getting conviction aura + some spell damage booster or you make him kill himself by getting thorns aura + iron maiden. So many unique materials spent on specializing against melee characters will let you vulnerable in PVP against casters specializing in killing other casters though, but that’s part of the game. Of course, if someone at some point in time manages to get every posible mod to epic proportions and be able to own everyone then people will say the system is imbalanced, but I think that if someone spends so much time making his character into an immortal omnipotent bringer of death then he deserves to own everyone and feast on the whining and blood from the battle.net noobs.
Anyway, what do you guys think? (apologies for the long post)
To defend the mortal world against the rising powers of the Burning Hells –
And even the failing luminaries of the High Heavens itself."
- Excerpt from the Prophecies of the Final Day
Uniques were, at one point, really powerful and useful. Enigma basically killed that, as did BOTD.
I love uniques, but it needs to be more like Diablo 1. were they were truly powerful and you wanted to use them. You shouldn't be able to buy a magic item that is better than a Unique. And Rune Words really should be better than Uniques either. Sets are ok, as they do not get super powerful until you piece together part of, if not the whole set.
Crafted could be better than uniques in some cases, as it requires some work. But no more piss easy to put together rune words that make all previous items void.
So yeah let us have the runewords, make them uber zomg rare ONLY if they can get rid of duping in Bnet
--EDIT-- forgot to add that I think that the runes for enigma should have been more rare runes instead of Jah Ith Ber...3 runes? one of them an Ith? cmon now... 5 sockets jah zod ist ber cham
Seth
I agree totally. The Diablo 1 Uniques were truly unique. And the nifty pop-up screen wasn't the thing that made them unique, it was the features like "unusual item damage" and really nice enchantments. Every item felt and looked like a truly unique weapon, whereas in Diablo 2 I mostly toss away uniques because most of them are useless or less powerful than rare or set or even magic items:(
and with that you could trade for what you want, all other uniques arent useless...
anyway doing those runs were fun as hell, and you have to work to get good items it shouldent be easy. i wish they would just remake diablo 2 with 3d graphics
its not supposed to be a nice game
autostats are rediclous
lack of pots is not welcome
if it aint broke dont fix it! (diablo2)
That's another good reason of why I think they should just scrap runewords and uniques altogether and make D3 all about crafted items
Well it would be great if they made uniques more powerful and useful but the principle in getting them still remains: make a zillion boss runs and pray that the unique you need drops. Also uniques reduce variety since only a few are the really powerful ones and the rest suck in comparison. On the other hand, the system I propose would add huge variety since everyone will have a different opinion on what mods are best for their characters.
But now that I think about it, both powerful uniques and my crafting system could coexist in the game, of course no crafting would be possible on a unique and a crafted item could still become way more powerful with the proper amount of dedication.
Anyway, it seems like no one has actually read through my proposal yet. I know it's long but I think it's decently thought out so I'd very much appreciate if you guys could take the time to read it and leave comments on it. Thanks
Even if they had made the runes not-so-rare, people still would have taken the time to dupe them just to make it that much easier. The one major problem, as you pointed out, is blizzard never came up with a way to stop runes from being perm'd once they're placed in an item; which they really can't. Once the runeword is made the item gains a new unique item ID and is therefore "void" of its dupe'd personalities.
As for what the OP was saying, I like the idea but I don't think its practical. As you said, someone who plays a lot could become all powerful and sneeze kill everyone else. There would have to be some sort of limit. I don't like the idea of diminishing returns just because when Blizzard thought of it for WoW it became a bandaid for every class. Something's overpowered? Diminishing returns. However, for this case I think diminishing returns is the only way to go. That way the people that play more would still feel more powerful than everyone else without becoming a god.
To Elfen, I sort of agree that Uniques should be more powerful than any other quality item; at the same time I think Runewords should be. Runewords were designed to be ancient magic, as stated before, and therefore, they really should be more powerful. Blizzard didn't account for all the duping that would occur once they were implemented. Thats the only reason uniques are seen as "good enough for now" as oppose to "I finally got it!" For credibility, yes I was there when the grandfather was the best sword in the game. My friend at school had one and believe me, I was way jealous.
You are wrong, and wrong. Blizzard FOUND a way, it's called Hyper-ruststorm or something like that, they use that scan not so often because it's intensive. It detects duped runes in items and runewords.
Yeah you are right about that but it's a matter of opinion. I am of the opinion that a player should be able to become godly if he chooses to invest the time in it so I think this would be a good system to give that possibility. If the mayority of the community disagrees then yeah, diminishing returns would be the way to go. Either way I'd be happy if Blizzard implements some sort of item customization sytem like this one.
To defend the mortal world against the rising powers of the Burning Hells –
And even the failing luminaries of the High Heavens itself."
- Excerpt from the Prophecies of the Final Day
In my opinion, it should go back to how it was d2 Classic. Rares are 100% better than any unique you can find (only normal rares), with some exeptions (hotspurs come to mind.). FOr one, they can spawn more mods, and two each one was different. Much better really.
I agree that rares should have possibility to be the best for the slot. But in some cases you don't need the rare mods there anymore(resists already max or something) and you could put a unique to some slot that would benefit you with some other mods like crushing blow, +skills, MF or whatever. This kind of system would bring a lot of variety.
Yea totally agree. Besides you were able to find good rares in normal and nightmare too so new players had a nice chance to get something good also and not only the ones running diablo in hell.
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
Seth
Bashiok - Blizzard Poster
I like the element of chance that is currently in diablo 2, and I like having major jump in my character potency after finding an item.
You pretend farming for runewords and uniques is such a grind, but is it honestly fun to know "I need 100 topazes to get the modifier I want".
As for characters getting more and more and more powerful. That kind of kills the whole making several characters and experimenting with builds, that I enjoyed most out of the game. I can't divide my time if I want to have a chance to compete, and I wouldn't have any items for other characters anyways.
yeah but this crafting system is nothing like the current one.
Yes, I already said that there was actually no reason to scrap uniques because there was no interference with this crafting system. Maybe next time you guys should read through the whole thread to avoid posting unnecessary comments.
Yeah you are probably right, I wasn't actually talking from experience so I didn't cross my mind (I play singleplayer mostly and almost always I get bored with my build and create another before I get to the end game). Also as I said before, there was actually no need to scrap uniques so you could still get a major jump in your character when you find one.
Very good point, didn't think about that either. This actually completely kills my crafting idea lol, the only possibility for it to work is if you concentrate on adding mods that are beneficial for all your characters so you can swap the equipment, like +defense, +resistances, +attributes, +crushing blow for melee characters or +casting speed for casters, which would still be viable I think.