I am not afraid of revolutions in gaming. I have played more than enough games in my day to realize that things you wouldn’t think possible are actually quite fun. However, after milling over the beta footage and various bits of info, it seems silly not to have some sort of point distribution to further the connection between your character and yourself. Customization is so key in a game like this, and user-end customization is something the game cannot choose for you (like loot, runes, armor, and so forth). This is the only thing in the game you can decide, and in a game like this, it needs to be front and center. The way characters were built in Diablo II, while flawed, were still unique. The reason some builds were more prevalent was easily because of the band-aid fixes applied to the game several years after launch. Enigma, Ubers, high-end runewords. The builds that many complained about could have been solved by actual balance. Unfortunately, the Diablo II team was all but nonexistent, and such a feat was impossible.
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Unfortunately I can only mostly respond with theory when it comes to why certain customization was removed. Perhaps gear is where all the customization was poured into and perhaps not. You just have to remember when you have multiple avenues for a player to give themselves power it has a cascading effect and it can become nearly impossible to balance. It's my opinion that the customization of stat distribution was put elsewhere but in a more controlled form.
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[*]Access to all skills
To me, this is a problem. This entirely defeats the replayability of this game. The Sorceress was my favorite class in Diablo II. I had many, (Fire, Lightning, Blizzard, Frozen Orb, Energy, etc.)and each was fun to play in their own way. Nothing really came close to the fun that running Ancient Tunnels, Mephisto, and various other places with your powerful Blizzard that you invested the research and time to build properly. If you have access to all skills of a class and there are no skill points, then all of the skills are intended to be equal. Unfortunately, this means the differentiation of each character is based solely on items, runes, etc. Virtually all user-end decision is eliminated. The REASON why this is a problem (as many will say: "But instead of having 5 sorcs, you can have one that all serve the same purpose!") is that if I wanted a new sorc, I had to work for it. I was excited about having a second high level character that I would have a connection to. With these Wizards being all-in-ones, you aren't dedicated to looking for build-specific gear and tearing the game up with your unique character. Instead, you're just looking for good...gear. Anything will do, if that makes sense.
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Maybe you are weren't looking hard enough and have not seen the difference between one skill and another, take another look. Then there's the 6 skill limit ya know :D. Also, nothing's stopping you from building another Wizard from scratch and I certainly won't be stopping myself when I do it.
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[*]Skill swapping with no penalty
This one isn't as important, because no doubt it will be addressed in SOME manner. Right now, any character can change to any skill they've unlocked at any time. Why the developers thought this would be smart is beyond me. Macros can easily be made to have characters press a few keys and be outfitted with the perfect skill set to face the demons ahead. It has been shown numerous times in many beta streams that this is the case. The overall problem with this skill system is that it is inherently flawed. You cannot give someone the freedom of having every skill. It negates the want to build more than one character of the same class. It erases "builds" entirely, and what builds DO exist due to certain items and runes (which is an incredibly watered down way to differentiate players) can be mimicked and easily attained thanks to the accessibility of items to the player (RMAH, personal drops, shared stash). It ruins differentiation between characters.
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This won't be a problem later on down the line. Players will settle into something they like or have wanted eventually. If some idiot is still trying to constantly switch out skill & runes in the field, make fun of em then kick em out of the game.
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[*]Lack of connection with your character
This is one of the most important aspects for me. You hardly look at your character screen because you don't really need to from what I've seen from all the D3 footage. Why would you? Stats are chosen for you, skills are unlocked for you. There doesn't seem to be a real DRAW to pull yourself toward your character. These factors are preventing IMMERSION, which is what video games are all about. A small analogy for you...Resident Evil. 1 and 2 specifically were survival horrors. They were scary. They were difficult, and you could get so screwed that you wasted your goddamned ink ribbons and couldn't save (thus heightening the tension and making you mad, both good things). Resident Evil 4 and 5 were great games, but they weren't quite the same. They took the "horror" out of survival horror by making it a shooting action game. Diablo 3 is doing the same thing to the origins of the series by making it less RPG, more action. No doubt it will be fun, but in the RPG world, this is absolutely unacceptable. You NEED to be tied to your character and not feel like you're playing Gauntlet at an arcade machine.
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Hey I've seen co-workers at a past job take their champ in Gauntlet Legends to very high levels and gearing them up. Obviously they were attached in some way :P.
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"Runes will provide the customization and differentiation, as well as the setback to swapping skills."[/color]
I don't buy into this. I've seen from the datamines, various panels, videos, so forth the general idea behind runes. While this will provide customization, it doesn't seem at this point that it would provide enough to have someone say "Yes, I'm a Hydra Wiz" or "Yes, I'm an Archon Wiz". Why is it so difficult to let the player decide what skills he wants to be powerful?
Your logic is off here. You won't be saying "Yes, I'm a Hydra Wiz" not because there isn't as much customization but because one skill that you use does not define your character but rather all of them do. It would be by bad design if in this game you narrowed your characters down to one ability you use. While the idea is sound that you will probably find synergies with certain skill combinations that make for a unique playstyle, those few skills won't be the end all to your character's definition.
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"The skill system just had players respec their character and dump all the points into the skill they just unlocked."[/color]
This is a paraphrased Blizzard quote that we are all very familiar with. This was part of the reasoning that Jay Wilson thought the skill point idea was a bad one, hence the creation of this new (and in my opinion, wrong) system. Respecs are well and good, but they saw when players had the freedom to re-allocate their skill points, they would. Players choosing the most powerful skill is going to happen regardless. When you give them more freedom, they will take whatever skill has the most damaging numbers. So instead of restricting the freedom (respecs) they give total freedom (no skill points). This makes absolutely no sense to me. Sure, everyone gets to try every skill, but here's the problem. Even in a game with all skills available to you, there will still be the most powerful skill or set of skills. What they've done here is stripped what THEY thought was the problem (skill points) instead of wanting to deal with the real demon (constant balance). It makes me think they don't know enough about the series to be able to make these kind of judgment calls. Note: In Diablo II, you have a powerful Charged Boltress or Teeth Necro. You are cool and unique. In Diablo 3, you have a Magic Missile Wizard. You're an outcast and should be ashamed.
While there may be a hands down 'most powerful' skill for every class, it will not be without drawbacks and may have situational use. The way the devs are balancing this game, they want you to have a lineup of 6 full power abilities and if they've done their job correctly you'll need every last one of them. I have a lot of experience in the balancing of character abilities in various action games/rpg's. For instance in Avencast, the easiest way to put a powerful spell in line is to give it some kind of draw-back such as a cooldown, wind-up time, interruptability. This also has the neat side effect of giving that spell more personality. The devs have incorporated some kind of drawback into every skill. While Magic Missiles may be low damage, it also has low AP cost, is spammable and is an 'Academic Spell' which are especially lucrative to possess if you picked the Arcane Dynamo passive.
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"This skill system is awesome! I love not having to make two Wizards, three Barbs, and so forth."[/color]
Some people like this new skill system. I'm okay with that. But, that does not mean having a character with every skill possible is a good thing. The only reason you had to make multiple characters of the same class in Diablo II was due to lack of respecs. I don't mind giving some of the punishment for screwing up my skills, but I don't want to give all of it up. Yes I was frustrated when I put 5 points in Shiver Armor way back in the day where they could have been put somewhere else. Does that matter to most people? No. Does it mean you are stuck and can't beat the game and that you have to make a new character? Absolutely not. I believe that the developers of Diablo 3 saw this as a huge obstacle, and instead of solving the problem by removing restriction and punishment, they tipped the scale in the opposite direction. Now the fun of building your character how you want to is just about gone because of how easy it is to change what he/she is. I'm not saying the system in Diablo II was perfect, so I will try and provide what I think would be an optimal system for Diablo 3 below...
So play how YOU want to. I'll be meta-gaming myself as I always do in these kind of games. In my mind the only thing that's changed is if I feel like going outside the set idea that I have for a character I can.
[*]Reconsider synergies
I realize that synergies were changed to add life to a dying game, but the idea is brilliant. Skills that somehow power your other skills? With how many different iterations of skills there can be thanks to runes, this idea could REALLY take off in Diablo 3.
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Synergy is still in the game but in it's most natural form. This is a good thing. Diablo 2 synergies would just be another way for power to cascade by making certain skills better than others and THAT would kill customization.
Overall, I think you are worried about what you have miscomprehended. We need to play the full game before we can really cry wolf here. Thanks for the time you took to write all that though!
Why is it a problem if some people choose to play that way? How does it negatively effect your game at all?
Edit:
They never said that they don't want people switchnig actually. They said they don't EXPECT people to and they're not balancing around that but that if some people want to, and it makes the game more fun for them, that's great.
well i've explained that above, because real money is involved. Blizzard need to provide an equal ground for all those who would like to compete (farming)
If skill switching could be done easily and quickly, then those who farm professionally will try to gather the advantages of it. Try to exploit the system even you can say. And since real money is involved, players have more incentive to optimize their build, and very soon we will have cookie cutter builds (since they are optimized to the fullest to farm). All that while, the regular casual gamers (blizzard's main market) will either be put at an disadvantage when trading, or they have to conform as well.
They may not EXPECT people to switch skills, but once money is involved, and there's an advantage to switch, people will do it. (btw can you show me the exact quote? I dont remember when they said something like that? bad memory)
That being said, if blizzard want everyone to be able to use more skills, why put the 6 skills limit in the first place. Bashiok's story about the 6 skill limit was the marbles story, choosing 6 from 20 is tougher and gives more "choices" If they dont do something to reinforce it, then the 6 skill limit seems pointless.
I'm sorry but there is literally no discussing this with you. You're completely stuck in a rut. You refuse to accept that 95% of people play just for fun. And for those 95% of people, it doesn't matter if someone else has a 2% advantage over them. They'll play for fun and enjoy it. And the addition of the choice to swap skills as you choose will increase the number of people playing by a notable amount. The remaining 5% of people play for money. And those people will be there and will have an advantage no matter how you look at it. Whether it be more time, more access to items, people behind them min-maxing the ideal, or whatever... they'll always be at the top just because it IS a job for them. There's no reason to remove fun choices and options just because they'll use them to get an advantage... by that right we might as well just give everyone only one skill and make it do the same damage with the same cooldown and the same scaling so everyone can be on the same scale.
So to my understanding that there's a couple people whining that being able to switch skills is an advantage...... over who? If everyone can do it, there's NO advantage. what the HELL are you people flipping over? It's a great system, its (amg scary) a NEW system. It will work gloriously, so just wait to play it.
Looking at the skill tree and runestone effects for just barbarian I could see people taking the character in multiple entirely different directions and they would all work. Considering you have to actually pick and choose skills/runestones you're still specializing your character, and the game being an RPG you're going to be further customized by gear selection/item find luck.
You could base your character around being mediocre but ridiculously powerful around major cooldowns, or you could have consistently high single target, or aoe dps. You could buff the crap out of yourself and (*edit DEBUFF) enemies and spam life leeching attacks like rend and revenge (a tank build). You could get some mobility + utility skills with a single reliant spam attack and a fury dump attack. And beyond that, your passives will be determined by your actives. For Example, if you go for a crit build, you *probably* will choose dual wield, because there is a passive that increases crit builds like crazy for dual wield. You'd probably pick up other crit skills (unless you felt you had already reached critical mass) and then get whatever utility/snare and group dps skills you have room for. If you want to just deal as much area dps as possible you'd grab a good fury generater with good +additional fury runes and spam the crap outa ridiculously hard hitting skills like earthquake or whirlwind or something, and maybe not get skills like overpower that you'd need for other builds.
If you're going to pvp needless to say you will not need as many AOE abilities and you can streamline your build there too.
Not trying to defend it, just saying it's still a customization system in the end and it's way too early to really judge a system that hasn't been tested.
I do think it's a little silly that you can change skills *in combat*. I don't think gold respecs is something the devs want to add because people are scared to fcking death (apparently) that diablo will become wow, but I think if they just limited skill swapping to out of combat it'd be ok.
Making more chars doesn't make it more fulfilling, it is only a tedious process that leads to creating more accts. Seems like this could be a way to trim the fat off the servers.
Why is it a problem if some people choose to play that way? How does it negatively effect your game at all?
Edit:
They never said that they don't want people switchnig actually. They said they don't EXPECT people to and they're not balancing around that but that if some people want to, and it makes the game more fun for them, that's great.
well i've explained that above, because real money is involved. Blizzard need to provide an equal ground for all those who would like to compete (farming)
If skill switching could be done easily and quickly, then those who farm professionally will try to gather the advantages of it. Try to exploit the system even you can say. And since real money is involved, players have more incentive to optimize their build, and very soon we will have cookie cutter builds (since they are optimized to the fullest to farm). All that while, the regular casual gamers (blizzard's main market) will either be put at an disadvantage when trading, or they have to conform as well.
They may not EXPECT people to switch skills, but once money is involved, and there's an advantage to switch, people will do it. (btw can you show me the exact quote? I dont remember when they said something like that? bad memory)
That being said, if blizzard want everyone to be able to use more skills, why put the 6 skills limit in the first place. Bashiok's story about the 6 skill limit was the marbles story, choosing 6 from 20 is tougher and gives more "choices" If they dont do something to reinforce it, then the 6 skill limit seems pointless.
I'm sorry but there is literally no discussing this with you. You're completely stuck in a rut. You refuse to accept that 95% of people play just for fun. And for those 95% of people, it doesn't matter if someone else has a 2% advantage over them. They'll play for fun and enjoy it. And the addition of the choice to swap skills as you choose will increase the number of people playing by a notable amount. The remaining 5% of people play for money. And those people will be there and will have an advantage no matter how you look at it. Whether it be more time, more access to items, people behind them min-maxing the ideal, or whatever... they'll always be at the top just because it IS a job for them. There's no reason to remove fun choices and options just because they'll use them to get an advantage... by that right we might as well just give everyone only one skill and make it do the same damage with the same cooldown and the same scaling so everyone can be on the same scale.
Im sorry that you wont talk with me anymore... i thought we had a good discussion coming on.
But let me just be a bad guy one last time, and i'm off.
You are right that large majority of the people play the game for fun. But I believe you are wrong about how it doesn't matter what the other people do in the game.
I believe it matters, and matters greatly, from a developer, and from a business' perspective. The industry is looking towards Blizzard's real money auction house, and how it turns out. Their investors are as well. Blizzard is required to make a sound system where every player are able to "compete" fairly, and at every level.
To one extreme, we have hacks and bots, where Blizzard will try to extinguish as much as possible, since they give those "small percentage of people" a sort of an advantage (to exploit the system). If they were allowed to roam free, the game impacts aside, the Blizzard's real money auction house would fail.
Now with skill swapping, I am merely noting the possibilities of advantages to be had to "have" more than 6 skills, if skill swapping can be done easily and quickly. Because first many utility skills only required 1 skill pt back in d2, and now every skill in d3 is maxed (also my monk healing skill swap example earlier). I believe classes will be affected differently, with some that will likely use more than 6 skills (especially castors), thus an imbalance between classes may exist as well. And 2, it goes against blizzard's original philosophy of 6 out of 20.
It is something we are not sure yet, but as the OP posted the thread, I just wanted to share my thoughts and question why Bashiok and the others havent made a official statement on this. This issue is very hot on Blizzard's beta feedback and general forum already, with people who played the beta, and with people who've watched streams.
Thanks for reading Seluhir if you are still around, or SeluSIR may I.
Your opinion is the minority among the playerbase. Aaaaaand the current system has tested really well. Aaaaaaand the actual experts (see below) have repeatedly shot down all your arguments. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's not gonna change now, not only because it shouldn't but because it would be impossible before release at this point even if they were crazy enough to think it's a good idea.
You see, you're not a game designer. Blizzard has a team of them, all of whom have tons of experience and who collectively have access to a huge number of playtesters. You're not qualified for this. It's like when they grab people off the street to comment on the latest political or scientific debate on network TV news. It has no bearing on anything, I might as well ask my dog for his view. The facts aren't affected by opinions, and you are not in a position to discover the facts yourself.
Questioning people on the streets for random data isn't really comparable to questioning someone you *know* has been involved in the questions you're asking them about and can offer at least half decent insight or opinion. I don't like this "the players are stupid, suck it up cause blizzard is smarter" stuff. I agree that people shouldn't be complaining about this particular issue but in the end blizzard is a company that depends on us to buy their junk to make money, if enough people requested something they'd almost certainly include it in their game.
Your opinion is the minority among the playerbase. Aaaaaand the current system has tested really well. Aaaaaaand the actual experts (see below) have repeatedly shot down all your arguments. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's not gonna change now, not only because it shouldn't but because it would be impossible before release at this point even if they were crazy enough to think it's a good idea.
You see, you're not a game designer. Blizzard has a team of them, all of whom have tons of experience and who collectively have access to a huge number of playtesters. You're not qualified for this. It's like when they grab people off the street to comment on the latest political or scientific debate on network TV news. It has no bearing on anything, I might as well ask my dog for his view. The facts aren't affected by opinions, and you are not in a position to discover the facts yourself.
Don't like it? Go play something else.
PANDA OUT.
Hi Panda, I am assuming you are asian? and you must know that to compare someone to a dog is very very very demeaning... sigh...
But you can not disagree with me about the impact of hacks?
Would you be kind enough to give me the links? you said "see below" on the actual expert views, but probably forgot to link those interviews. It would be great to read those, more official information is what the community need.
Lastly, we all love the franchise, and want the game to be polished and as great as it gets. We are merely discussing some of the information currently available (blizzard staying quiet).
It seems that some people are incapable of having a debate without becoming inflammatory and childish. You know who you are, and this is why I never post on forums. Always someone trying to get their ego boosted by shooting you down regardless of whatever logical argument you put forth.
Anyway, the beta is here without NDA to provide us with an opportunity to give feedback. This is my feedback and many others. Many of the people who want a skill system like I do can't post on the official D3 forums because most of them are true hack n' slash RPG fans. You have to understand the feedback is skewed towards that type of player base, hence where this false "minority" statistic comes from. I guarantee once closed beta starts for everyone, that you'll start seeing this thread pop up a hundred times more if the issues haven't been resolved.
You can't put forth an argument such as: "They can't change it now." That simply isn't true. Up until fairly recently they've HAD a system very similar to what I wanted. This new system isn't that old, to be honest, and since most of the game has been developed with a skill point system in mind, it wouldn't be hard to change back.
I don't need to defend my knowledge of the Diablo series in this thread. I've been playing it probably longer than most of the inflammatory posters have. That's irrelevant. What we are here to discuss is the fallacy of the new system and how to fix it. If you're unable to differentiate opinion from fact, or incapable of having a civilized conversation over said subject, then please just refrain from posting, as it will be ignored by me and hopefully others.
To close, I'll say that THIS is precisely the time where feedback will be taken into consideration. It would be a lot easier for me to express my point if there were more people in beta to discuss this with rather than a bunch of theorycrafting based on beta footage and hours of streamed beta content. I know the better of two systems. I don't want the same fallout that the Diablo II system had, but I don't want this system which grants you anything you want whenever you want. Where are the people who enjoyed a challenge in their game? If all end game skills are actually balanced for end game (which they weren't in Diablo II), then you'll see much greater variety end-game. No matter what system is used, the end result is the same. I just want to have fun getting there, and actually have a reason to play through the game more than 5 times.
I'm with the OP. Severely disappointed with the lack of skill points, and the automatic stat points. In my opinion they are attempting to push the drive of the game from leveling builds ( like d2 was ) to end game content ( like wow). I much prefer making specialized characters and having more input into my character..
lvl 30+ is going to be extremely boring. Oh way, another lvl... 30 levels with no new skills, and no input into the skills you already have. Ding.. Woo...
I'll still play the game but im extremely sad with their choices here. I think limited respecs would have addressed the problems of customization and still maintained the feel of diablo. Unfortunately i feel this is a different game of the same name
I don't see your logic here. Diablo 2 didn't have any new skills after level 30 and people played through the game two more times after that, so it can't be the level 30 thing that causes it to be boring. The only benefit of manually doing skill points is to increase effectiveness of the skill and that automatically happens for you...to all of your skills.
I mean, did you play the game because you were allowed to manually place points in skills or because you wanted to go beat down some demons? If figuring out the best build is your thing, then this system helps you out more than the point system. Automatically leveling your skills and attributes allows you to just keep killing demons, which is the whole point of the game, rather than stopping action for a few minutes to figure out which skill to level.
Im sorry that you wont talk with me anymore... i thought we had a good discussion coming on.
But let me just be a bad guy one last time, and i'm off.
You are right that large majority of the people play the game for fun. But I believe you are wrong about how it doesn't matter what the other people do in the game.
I believe it matters, and matters greatly, from a developer, and from a business' perspective. The industry is looking towards Blizzard's real money auction house, and how it turns out. Their investors are as well. Blizzard is required to make a sound system where every player are able to "compete" fairly, and at every level.
To one extreme, we have hacks and bots, where Blizzard will try to extinguish as much as possible, since they give those "small percentage of people" a sort of an advantage (to exploit the system). If they were allowed to roam free, the game impacts aside, the Blizzard's real money auction house would fail.
Now with skill swapping, I am merely noting the possibilities of advantages to be had to "have" more than 6 skills, if skill swapping can be done easily and quickly. Because first many utility skills only required 1 skill pt back in d2, and now every skill in d3 is maxed (also my monk healing skill swap example earlier). I believe classes will be affected differently, with some that will likely use more than 6 skills (especially castors), thus an imbalance between classes may exist as well. And 2, it goes against blizzard's original philosophy of 6 out of 20.
It is something we are not sure yet, but as the OP posted the thread, I just wanted to share my thoughts and question why Bashiok and the others havent made a official statement on this. This issue is very hot on Blizzard's beta feedback and general forum already, with people who played the beta, and with people who've watched streams.
Thanks for reading Seluhir if you are still around, or SeluSIR may I.
I am absolutely still reading, and I won't argue much here, but I have to say that you're comparing apples to oranges. One allows a person to delay themselves from engaging enemies in order to kill them a bit quicker(the time difference will most likely equal itself out btw especially when you count changing gear, readding runes, and the reduced amount of your inventory you have available due to the extra gear - thus forcing you to open your inventory to salvage/sell things more often), the other allows a person to literally have a 24 hour day of gaming, even when they're sleeping or at work - nearly tripling their available gametime, and if you add multiple computers it goes way beyond that. They're completely different scenarios. I appreciate that you're strong in your belief on this and while I cannot fathom how this bothers you so much, I respect that it does, but please try to use comparisons that actually make sense.
Also... anyone who considers another person's choice of gameplay to effect them in a game that they've eliminated most forms of harassment(no more hostile yay!) is really gaming for the wrong reasons in my honest opinion.
I don't like this "the players are stupid, suck it up cause blizzard is smarter" stuff. I agree that people shouldn't be complaining about this particular issue but in the end blizzard is a company that depends on us to buy their junk to make money, if enough people requested something they'd almost certainly include it in their game.
But not liking it doesn't make it untrue.
Playing games, however extensively, does not make you a designer. It's barely even related. Just like eating doesn't make you a chef, watching movies doesn't make you a filmmaker, etc.
And from the Designer's perspective, sometimes you have to pretend you're the player's mum and make them try something they think they won't like. Otherwise the medium would never move forward. Creators don't ask permission for what they create if they want to make something new.
Even if Blizz would actually listen to a large portion of the fanbase disliking something,even though that's absolutely not the case here, it would be detrimental to the game as a whole.
Would you be kind enough to give me the links? you said "see below" on the actual expert views, but probably forgot to link those interviews. It would be great to read those, more official information is what the community need.
I assumed you'd actually read any press releases about the game for the past... ever.
This, honestly, has just about everything though. I will refer to it repeatedly.
OP:
Here are my problems with the current skill system...
No skill trees
Access to all skills
Skill swapping with no penalty
All of these are answered in one QA question:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Q: I’m sure there’s a lot that went into it, but could you just kind of give a cliff notes version of what brought about the decision to fully remove skill points? I know one of the great benefits of it is it’s very easy to interchange and you’re not dedicated to one set path. And obviously with that, I guess there’s no more skill reset with no skill points?
A: When we put the game out into internal alpha, we had the system that we’ve shown previously at Blizzcon which is where you had 7 slots, you put skills in those slots and assigned skill points (mumble mumble). What we found was, the UI was essentially telling people “you should have 7 skills.” But the skill point system says to players, “if you really want to be optimum, you should dump everything into 1 skill or 2 skills.” We tried to fight that a little by having escalating caps on skills, but it didn’t really work. So the two things were fighting with one another and the result of what we were getting was not what we wanted, which was more skills than people generally had in D2. Our combat system is really based around having somewhere between 4-6 skills. The other side of it was, by popular demand, we put in respec. What we saw happening was players would get their starter attack skill and they’d put points into it, which was great because they didn’t do that in D2. Once they figured out the system, they said, “ooh, I shouldn’t put any points in these skills,” which is terrible. But what happened was that they’d level up and get to that next skill they want - they’d have Magic Missiles and they’d get to Arcane Orb and decide “I don’t want Magic Missiles anymore, I want Arcane Orb.” So they’d respec that early skill, take 5-6 points out of it, and mass dump them into Arcane Orb. And one, that’s a balancing nightmare, but more importantly, it felt really bad. It felt even moreso like the character was trivialized, because these points could be just massively pulled from one place to the other. So those things kind of warred against one another, so we thought, “what happens if we just take skill points out and just say, choose your skills, that’s what’s most important.” And that actually worked really well. What it revealed was kind of a further truth about how people play Diablo, and I kind of referenced it earlier, it’s not a game like WoW where you start with Fireball at level 1 and at level 85, you’re still using it. It’s possible to do that, to take a starter skill and make it viable end-game, especially with runes, but it’s not the instinct of what players do. Players want to level up to get to more powerful skills because they have that very finite window of skills, they want to respec and get into that big skill. A game like Borderlands actually has a great model, because their attacks are tied into items and you’re used to items cycling out all the time, so it feels really natural. But for Diablo, it felt really unnatural to be doing the activity that you wanted to do the most(??). So we altered the skill system to provide that to players: “you know what, you actually can switch out skills as much as you want. That’s the way you naturally want to play, so we’re going to let you do that.” However, a system still needs restrictions to make it compelling. The restrictions we put in was to cap that total number of skills, both as you level up, but also we even pulled the cap down a bit to six skills because 7 actually felt like people could kind of get everything they wanted, but at 6, they start having to make really hard choices about what to get. It seems like just a one skill difference, but it actually made a really big impact. So you combine that with having to choose from one of several different rune effects per skill and you start getting a lot of diversity in builds. And building those characters becomes really compelling, and that’s what we were going for. A system that has a really compelling build process to it. I realize this is not the cliff notes. The last thing I would throw out about this, and this is something that we always kind of had a pipe dream about that I think this last revision of the system actually might be the first skill system that we’ve ever done where the player’s first instinct is not going to be to go to a website and check out what their build is, and that’s wonderful. That’s what we want. We want players to discover within the playspace, make choices based on information, not just based on “well, this sounds good, I hope it works, but I never got a chance to try it out.” So that’s one of the advantages of the system.
For those of you with short attention spans:
-Skill points = mass dump into minimum number of skills. Most powerful skills, least fun gameplay due to lack of variety and interesting combos and synergies.
-Skill trees aren't really that different, except you are forced to spend single points in prerequisites first. Interest and fun added: 0.
-Respecs aren't nailed down yet, it's possible (and indeed looking likely) that after a certain level respeccing will require a regeant of some sort. But especially for low levels, free swaps are ideal for experimentation, which is fun with this many skill/passive/rune combos!
Lack of connection with your character
This is one of the most important aspects for me. You hardly look at your character screen because you don't really need to from what I've seen from all the D3 footage. Why would you? Stats are chosen for you, skills are unlocked for you. There doesn't seem to be a real DRAW to pull yourself toward your character. These factors are preventing IMMERSION, which is what video games are all about. A small analogy for you...Resident Evil. 1 and 2 specifically were survival horrors. They were scary. They were difficult, and you could get so screwed that you wasted your goddamned ink ribbons and couldn't save (thus heightening the tension and making you mad, both good things). Resident Evil 4 and 5 were great games, but they weren't quite the same. They took the "horror" out of survival horror by making it a shooting action game. Diablo 3 is doing the same thing to the origins of the series by making it less RPG, more action. No doubt it will be fun, but in the RPG world, this is absolutely unacceptable. You NEED to be tied to your character and not feel like you're playing Gauntlet at an arcade machine.
This is all bullshit. I've watched plenty of these streams, people obsess over stats/gear/skills and switch things out and figure out numbers all the time. Just because you can't add points to things doesn't mean they aren't important. Gear modifies everything, skill choices are imperative, and everyone pays attention to this still.
Some common rebuttals to these complaints of the new skill system:
"If I screwed up in Diablo II, I had to make a new character."
While this was true until respecs arrived, it isn't like it was difficult or "unfun" to make a new character. If you didn't know how to build a character (which is NO different from ANY other game with optimal builds), then you most likely wouldn't care if your blizzard did 80% the damage compared to the guy next to you.
Character attachment, the thing the OP is so obsessed with, is the reason for respeccing. D2 characters were throwaway. Some people were OK with that significant of a time investment being tossed in the bin because of a misclick. The majority were not.
"Runes will provide the customization and differentiation, as well as the setback to swapping skills."
I don't buy into this. I've seen from the datamines, various panels, videos, so forth the general idea behind runes. While this will provide customization, it doesn't seem at this point that it would provide enough to have someone say "Yes, I'm a Hydra Wiz" or "Yes, I'm an Archon Wiz". Why is it so difficult to let the player decide what skills he wants to be powerful?
This doesn't make sense. With skillpoints, you pick 2 abilities you want to be powerful. With the current system, you pick 6. Same deal, more versatility. Your skill loadout is very important, and does indeed distinguish you as a hydra wiz/whatever. Because you picked that skill, and skills that compliment it.
It makes me think they don't know enough about the series to be able to make these kind of judgment calls. Note: In Diablo II, you have a powerful Charged Boltress or Teeth Necro. You are cool and unique. In Diablo 3, you have a Magic Missile Wizard. You're an outcast and should be ashamed.
There are so many things wrong with this.
1.) The creator knows more about the series than the player. This is not up for debate.
2.) In D2 if you played those kind of classes you were playing a suboptimal build that wasn't really viable because of the nature of skill trees. Low tier skills are flat out worse.
3.) What the hell are you basing your D3 comparison on? At least in D3 those kinds of weird builds are numerically viable because of proper scaling. The rest is smoke blown out of your ass.
Some ideas for improvement...
Re-introduce skill points at the very least, and give the option to allocate your stats manually.
Allow the option for respecs.
Allow skills to be powered past max level, as in Diablo II.
Reconsider synergies
1.) Terrible idea, for all the reasons everywhere.
2.) There are probably going to be respecs of some sort, this isn't nailed down regardless, please actually read articles and releases.
3.) That would require skill points, which are terrible.
4.) Numerical synergies are boring. Actual skill synergies caused by the skills being good in combination with eachother are present and interesting.
I am absolutely still reading, and I won't argue much here,
I appreciate that you're strong in your belief on this and while I cannot fathom how this bothers you so much, I respect that it does,
Thanks, and Im really done with this as well, with the lack of official information, there's really no point to go on, so lets start this again when the open beta starts?? If you do get into the beta, give me a shout.
To OmniNom:
I think you misunderstood me, I was discussing why there should be some sort of a restriction on the swapping (such as only swap in town, cooldown, goldsink etc etc). NOT if skill trees and skill points are better than the current system, that ship has sailed.
and I was explaining that if skill swapping could be easily and quickly done, then it could effect the virtual econmy, which blizzard will be very very careful on.
When you said you disagree with all my points (including hacking's impact), and all my points on the auction house were "shot down" by experts, I was asking if you had links to expert views on how blizzard is maintaining a stable and healthy auction house economy, and how they will be implementing a balanced system (especially involving the skills system) to support the economy.
lastly I do read press coverages, and to my recent memory, there has been nothing on such.
But thank you for posting the blue quote. This section from that interview is what I am talking about.
Official Blizzard Quote:
...
However, a system still needs restrictions to make it compelling. The restrictions we put in was to cap that total number of skills, both as you level up, but also we even pulled the cap down a bit to six skills because 7 actually felt like people could kind of get everything they wanted, but at 6, they start having to make really hard choices about what to get. It seems like just a one skill difference, but it actually made a really big impact.
...
And that is why, if skill swapping can be done quickly and easily, with no consequence, blizzard's original philosophy and intention would have failed.
(Dont disregard someone's opinion so bluntly, and please dont title someone's thoughts as of a dog. "The clash of ideas brings forth the spark of truth")
Except that skill swapping may be easy but it's still inconvenient. Inconvenience is something people dislike when playing a game, so most people will avoid doing it, except the people who find it truly fun.
Yeah panda, but both a chef and someone who's never cooked before know a delicious meal when they eat one, so it's not that players don't have good suggestions or that they're stupid. We've all had good and bad experiences when it comes to gaming so we know what works and what doesn't work.
If players could program and if players were getting paid there is no doubt in my mind they could make games like diablo 3, considering how most of the people involved with creating blizzard games were/are gamers who also have skills converting what they are picturing into a playable system. Sure, it would take more trial and error for a while seeing as they have no experience implementing junk, but I think while there are bound to be millions of sheeple there are also those who are motivated and innovative among the player base who can bring forth good debate, suggestions, and ideas.
With that said, I don't see the flaw in the current system even after having read the arguments against it. I'm already having many ideas for character builds picking and choosing from the current system. I think players are just scared having lost literal "skill trees" that they've almost always had in the past, and are not willing to give a new system the benefit of a doubt until they've exhausted all options and end up buying the game anyways, cause let's face it D3 is gonna kick ass.
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Unfortunately I can only mostly respond with theory when it comes to why certain customization was removed. Perhaps gear is where all the customization was poured into and perhaps not. You just have to remember when you have multiple avenues for a player to give themselves power it has a cascading effect and it can become nearly impossible to balance. It's my opinion that the customization of stat distribution was put elsewhere but in a more controlled form.
[list]
Maybe you are weren't looking hard enough and have not seen the difference between one skill and another, take another look. Then there's the 6 skill limit ya know :D. Also, nothing's stopping you from building another Wizard from scratch and I certainly won't be stopping myself when I do it.
This won't be a problem later on down the line. Players will settle into something they like or have wanted eventually. If some idiot is still trying to constantly switch out skill & runes in the field, make fun of em then kick em out of the game.
Hey I've seen co-workers at a past job take their champ in Gauntlet Legends to very high levels and gearing them up. Obviously they were attached in some way :P.
Your logic is off here. You won't be saying "Yes, I'm a Hydra Wiz" not because there isn't as much customization but because one skill that you use does not define your character but rather all of them do. It would be by bad design if in this game you narrowed your characters down to one ability you use. While the idea is sound that you will probably find synergies with certain skill combinations that make for a unique playstyle, those few skills won't be the end all to your character's definition.
While there may be a hands down 'most powerful' skill for every class, it will not be without drawbacks and may have situational use. The way the devs are balancing this game, they want you to have a lineup of 6 full power abilities and if they've done their job correctly you'll need every last one of them. I have a lot of experience in the balancing of character abilities in various action games/rpg's. For instance in Avencast, the easiest way to put a powerful spell in line is to give it some kind of draw-back such as a cooldown, wind-up time, interruptability. This also has the neat side effect of giving that spell more personality. The devs have incorporated some kind of drawback into every skill. While Magic Missiles may be low damage, it also has low AP cost, is spammable and is an 'Academic Spell' which are especially lucrative to possess if you picked the Arcane Dynamo passive.
So play how YOU want to. I'll be meta-gaming myself as I always do in these kind of games. In my mind the only thing that's changed is if I feel like going outside the set idea that I have for a character I can.
Synergy is still in the game but in it's most natural form. This is a good thing. Diablo 2 synergies would just be another way for power to cascade by making certain skills better than others and THAT would kill customization.
Overall, I think you are worried about what you have miscomprehended. We need to play the full game before we can really cry wolf here. Thanks for the time you took to write all that though!
List tags are malformed.
I'm sorry but there is literally no discussing this with you. You're completely stuck in a rut. You refuse to accept that 95% of people play just for fun. And for those 95% of people, it doesn't matter if someone else has a 2% advantage over them. They'll play for fun and enjoy it. And the addition of the choice to swap skills as you choose will increase the number of people playing by a notable amount. The remaining 5% of people play for money. And those people will be there and will have an advantage no matter how you look at it. Whether it be more time, more access to items, people behind them min-maxing the ideal, or whatever... they'll always be at the top just because it IS a job for them. There's no reason to remove fun choices and options just because they'll use them to get an advantage... by that right we might as well just give everyone only one skill and make it do the same damage with the same cooldown and the same scaling so everyone can be on the same scale.
You could base your character around being mediocre but ridiculously powerful around major cooldowns, or you could have consistently high single target, or aoe dps. You could buff the crap out of yourself and (*edit DEBUFF) enemies and spam life leeching attacks like rend and revenge (a tank build). You could get some mobility + utility skills with a single reliant spam attack and a fury dump attack. And beyond that, your passives will be determined by your actives. For Example, if you go for a crit build, you *probably* will choose dual wield, because there is a passive that increases crit builds like crazy for dual wield. You'd probably pick up other crit skills (unless you felt you had already reached critical mass) and then get whatever utility/snare and group dps skills you have room for. If you want to just deal as much area dps as possible you'd grab a good fury generater with good +additional fury runes and spam the crap outa ridiculously hard hitting skills like earthquake or whirlwind or something, and maybe not get skills like overpower that you'd need for other builds.
If you're going to pvp needless to say you will not need as many AOE abilities and you can streamline your build there too.
Not trying to defend it, just saying it's still a customization system in the end and it's way too early to really judge a system that hasn't been tested.
I do think it's a little silly that you can change skills *in combat*. I don't think gold respecs is something the devs want to add because people are scared to fcking death (apparently) that diablo will become wow, but I think if they just limited skill swapping to out of combat it'd be ok.
Im sorry that you wont talk with me anymore... i thought we had a good discussion coming on.
But let me just be a bad guy one last time, and i'm off.
You are right that large majority of the people play the game for fun. But I believe you are wrong about how it doesn't matter what the other people do in the game.
I believe it matters, and matters greatly, from a developer, and from a business' perspective. The industry is looking towards Blizzard's real money auction house, and how it turns out. Their investors are as well. Blizzard is required to make a sound system where every player are able to "compete" fairly, and at every level.
To one extreme, we have hacks and bots, where Blizzard will try to extinguish as much as possible, since they give those "small percentage of people" a sort of an advantage (to exploit the system). If they were allowed to roam free, the game impacts aside, the Blizzard's real money auction house would fail.
Now with skill swapping, I am merely noting the possibilities of advantages to be had to "have" more than 6 skills, if skill swapping can be done easily and quickly. Because first many utility skills only required 1 skill pt back in d2, and now every skill in d3 is maxed (also my monk healing skill swap example earlier). I believe classes will be affected differently, with some that will likely use more than 6 skills (especially castors), thus an imbalance between classes may exist as well. And 2, it goes against blizzard's original philosophy of 6 out of 20.
It is something we are not sure yet, but as the OP posted the thread, I just wanted to share my thoughts and question why Bashiok and the others havent made a official statement on this. This issue is very hot on Blizzard's beta feedback and general forum already, with people who played the beta, and with people who've watched streams.
Thanks for reading Seluhir if you are still around, or SeluSIR may I.
Why?
Your opinion is the minority among the playerbase. Aaaaaand the current system has tested really well. Aaaaaaand the actual experts (see below) have repeatedly shot down all your arguments. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's not gonna change now, not only because it shouldn't but because it would be impossible before release at this point even if they were crazy enough to think it's a good idea.
You see, you're not a game designer. Blizzard has a team of them, all of whom have tons of experience and who collectively have access to a huge number of playtesters. You're not qualified for this. It's like when they grab people off the street to comment on the latest political or scientific debate on network TV news. It has no bearing on anything, I might as well ask my dog for his view. The facts aren't affected by opinions, and you are not in a position to discover the facts yourself.
Don't like it? Go play something else.
PANDA OUT.
Hi Panda, I am assuming you are asian? and you must know that to compare someone to a dog is very very very demeaning... sigh...
But you can not disagree with me about the impact of hacks?
Would you be kind enough to give me the links? you said "see below" on the actual expert views, but probably forgot to link those interviews. It would be great to read those, more official information is what the community need.
Lastly, we all love the franchise, and want the game to be polished and as great as it gets. We are merely discussing some of the information currently available (blizzard staying quiet).
And to Kodachii, thanks.
Anyway, the beta is here without NDA to provide us with an opportunity to give feedback. This is my feedback and many others. Many of the people who want a skill system like I do can't post on the official D3 forums because most of them are true hack n' slash RPG fans. You have to understand the feedback is skewed towards that type of player base, hence where this false "minority" statistic comes from. I guarantee once closed beta starts for everyone, that you'll start seeing this thread pop up a hundred times more if the issues haven't been resolved.
You can't put forth an argument such as: "They can't change it now." That simply isn't true. Up until fairly recently they've HAD a system very similar to what I wanted. This new system isn't that old, to be honest, and since most of the game has been developed with a skill point system in mind, it wouldn't be hard to change back.
I don't need to defend my knowledge of the Diablo series in this thread. I've been playing it probably longer than most of the inflammatory posters have. That's irrelevant. What we are here to discuss is the fallacy of the new system and how to fix it. If you're unable to differentiate opinion from fact, or incapable of having a civilized conversation over said subject, then please just refrain from posting, as it will be ignored by me and hopefully others.
To close, I'll say that THIS is precisely the time where feedback will be taken into consideration. It would be a lot easier for me to express my point if there were more people in beta to discuss this with rather than a bunch of theorycrafting based on beta footage and hours of streamed beta content. I know the better of two systems. I don't want the same fallout that the Diablo II system had, but I don't want this system which grants you anything you want whenever you want. Where are the people who enjoyed a challenge in their game? If all end game skills are actually balanced for end game (which they weren't in Diablo II), then you'll see much greater variety end-game. No matter what system is used, the end result is the same. I just want to have fun getting there, and actually have a reason to play through the game more than 5 times.
I don't see your logic here. Diablo 2 didn't have any new skills after level 30 and people played through the game two more times after that, so it can't be the level 30 thing that causes it to be boring. The only benefit of manually doing skill points is to increase effectiveness of the skill and that automatically happens for you...to all of your skills.
I mean, did you play the game because you were allowed to manually place points in skills or because you wanted to go beat down some demons? If figuring out the best build is your thing, then this system helps you out more than the point system. Automatically leveling your skills and attributes allows you to just keep killing demons, which is the whole point of the game, rather than stopping action for a few minutes to figure out which skill to level.
I am absolutely still reading, and I won't argue much here, but I have to say that you're comparing apples to oranges. One allows a person to delay themselves from engaging enemies in order to kill them a bit quicker(the time difference will most likely equal itself out btw especially when you count changing gear, readding runes, and the reduced amount of your inventory you have available due to the extra gear - thus forcing you to open your inventory to salvage/sell things more often), the other allows a person to literally have a 24 hour day of gaming, even when they're sleeping or at work - nearly tripling their available gametime, and if you add multiple computers it goes way beyond that. They're completely different scenarios. I appreciate that you're strong in your belief on this and while I cannot fathom how this bothers you so much, I respect that it does, but please try to use comparisons that actually make sense.
Also... anyone who considers another person's choice of gameplay to effect them in a game that they've eliminated most forms of harassment(no more hostile yay!) is really gaming for the wrong reasons in my honest opinion.
But not liking it doesn't make it untrue.
Playing games, however extensively, does not make you a designer. It's barely even related. Just like eating doesn't make you a chef, watching movies doesn't make you a filmmaker, etc.
And from the Designer's perspective, sometimes you have to pretend you're the player's mum and make them try something they think they won't like. Otherwise the medium would never move forward. Creators don't ask permission for what they create if they want to make something new.
Even if Blizz would actually listen to a large portion of the fanbase disliking something,even though that's absolutely not the case here, it would be detrimental to the game as a whole.
Unless you work in the industry, your design knowledge and my dog's are pretty comparable. Also, don't hate on Captain Buggles please
Is that a question?
I assumed you'd actually read any press releases about the game for the past... ever.
This could take a while.
Diablo Beta Press Event
This, honestly, has just about everything though. I will refer to it repeatedly.
OP:
All of these are answered in one QA question:
Official Blizzard Quote:
Q: I’m sure there’s a lot that went into it, but could you just kind of give a cliff notes version of what brought about the decision to fully remove skill points? I know one of the great benefits of it is it’s very easy to interchange and you’re not dedicated to one set path. And obviously with that, I guess there’s no more skill reset with no skill points?
A: When we put the game out into internal alpha, we had the system that we’ve shown previously at Blizzcon which is where you had 7 slots, you put skills in those slots and assigned skill points (mumble mumble). What we found was, the UI was essentially telling people “you should have 7 skills.” But the skill point system says to players, “if you really want to be optimum, you should dump everything into 1 skill or 2 skills.” We tried to fight that a little by having escalating caps on skills, but it didn’t really work. So the two things were fighting with one another and the result of what we were getting was not what we wanted, which was more skills than people generally had in D2. Our combat system is really based around having somewhere between 4-6 skills. The other side of it was, by popular demand, we put in respec. What we saw happening was players would get their starter attack skill and they’d put points into it, which was great because they didn’t do that in D2. Once they figured out the system, they said, “ooh, I shouldn’t put any points in these skills,” which is terrible. But what happened was that they’d level up and get to that next skill they want - they’d have Magic Missiles and they’d get to Arcane Orb and decide “I don’t want Magic Missiles anymore, I want Arcane Orb.” So they’d respec that early skill, take 5-6 points out of it, and mass dump them into Arcane Orb. And one, that’s a balancing nightmare, but more importantly, it felt really bad. It felt even moreso like the character was trivialized, because these points could be just massively pulled from one place to the other. So those things kind of warred against one another, so we thought, “what happens if we just take skill points out and just say, choose your skills, that’s what’s most important.” And that actually worked really well. What it revealed was kind of a further truth about how people play Diablo, and I kind of referenced it earlier, it’s not a game like WoW where you start with Fireball at level 1 and at level 85, you’re still using it. It’s possible to do that, to take a starter skill and make it viable end-game, especially with runes, but it’s not the instinct of what players do. Players want to level up to get to more powerful skills because they have that very finite window of skills, they want to respec and get into that big skill. A game like Borderlands actually has a great model, because their attacks are tied into items and you’re used to items cycling out all the time, so it feels really natural. But for Diablo, it felt really unnatural to be doing the activity that you wanted to do the most(??). So we altered the skill system to provide that to players: “you know what, you actually can switch out skills as much as you want. That’s the way you naturally want to play, so we’re going to let you do that.” However, a system still needs restrictions to make it compelling. The restrictions we put in was to cap that total number of skills, both as you level up, but also we even pulled the cap down a bit to six skills because 7 actually felt like people could kind of get everything they wanted, but at 6, they start having to make really hard choices about what to get. It seems like just a one skill difference, but it actually made a really big impact. So you combine that with having to choose from one of several different rune effects per skill and you start getting a lot of diversity in builds. And building those characters becomes really compelling, and that’s what we were going for. A system that has a really compelling build process to it. I realize this is not the cliff notes. The last thing I would throw out about this, and this is something that we always kind of had a pipe dream about that I think this last revision of the system actually might be the first skill system that we’ve ever done where the player’s first instinct is not going to be to go to a website and check out what their build is, and that’s wonderful. That’s what we want. We want players to discover within the playspace, make choices based on information, not just based on “well, this sounds good, I hope it works, but I never got a chance to try it out.” So that’s one of the advantages of the system.
For those of you with short attention spans:
-Skill points = mass dump into minimum number of skills. Most powerful skills, least fun gameplay due to lack of variety and interesting combos and synergies.
-Skill trees aren't really that different, except you are forced to spend single points in prerequisites first. Interest and fun added: 0.
-Respecs aren't nailed down yet, it's possible (and indeed looking likely) that after a certain level respeccing will require a regeant of some sort. But especially for low levels, free swaps are ideal for experimentation, which is fun with this many skill/passive/rune combos!
This is all bullshit. I've watched plenty of these streams, people obsess over stats/gear/skills and switch things out and figure out numbers all the time. Just because you can't add points to things doesn't mean they aren't important. Gear modifies everything, skill choices are imperative, and everyone pays attention to this still.
Character attachment, the thing the OP is so obsessed with, is the reason for respeccing. D2 characters were throwaway. Some people were OK with that significant of a time investment being tossed in the bin because of a misclick. The majority were not.
This doesn't make sense. With skillpoints, you pick 2 abilities you want to be powerful. With the current system, you pick 6. Same deal, more versatility. Your skill loadout is very important, and does indeed distinguish you as a hydra wiz/whatever. Because you picked that skill, and skills that compliment it.
There are so many things wrong with this.
1.) The creator knows more about the series than the player. This is not up for debate.
2.) In D2 if you played those kind of classes you were playing a suboptimal build that wasn't really viable because of the nature of skill trees. Low tier skills are flat out worse.
3.) What the hell are you basing your D3 comparison on? At least in D3 those kinds of weird builds are numerically viable because of proper scaling. The rest is smoke blown out of your ass.
1.) Terrible idea, for all the reasons everywhere.
2.) There are probably going to be respecs of some sort, this isn't nailed down regardless, please actually read articles and releases.
3.) That would require skill points, which are terrible.
4.) Numerical synergies are boring. Actual skill synergies caused by the skills being good in combination with eachother are present and interesting.
Thanks, and Im really done with this as well, with the lack of official information, there's really no point to go on, so lets start this again when the open beta starts?? If you do get into the beta, give me a shout.
To OmniNom:
I think you misunderstood me, I was discussing why there should be some sort of a restriction on the swapping (such as only swap in town, cooldown, goldsink etc etc). NOT if skill trees and skill points are better than the current system, that ship has sailed.
and I was explaining that if skill swapping could be easily and quickly done, then it could effect the virtual econmy, which blizzard will be very very careful on.
When you said you disagree with all my points (including hacking's impact), and all my points on the auction house were "shot down" by experts, I was asking if you had links to expert views on how blizzard is maintaining a stable and healthy auction house economy, and how they will be implementing a balanced system (especially involving the skills system) to support the economy.
lastly I do read press coverages, and to my recent memory, there has been nothing on such.
But thank you for posting the blue quote. This section from that interview is what I am talking about.
Official Blizzard Quote:
...
However, a system still needs restrictions to make it compelling. The restrictions we put in was to cap that total number of skills, both as you level up, but also we even pulled the cap down a bit to six skills because 7 actually felt like people could kind of get everything they wanted, but at 6, they start having to make really hard choices about what to get. It seems like just a one skill difference, but it actually made a really big impact.
...
And that is why, if skill swapping can be done quickly and easily, with no consequence, blizzard's original philosophy and intention would have failed.
(Dont disregard someone's opinion so bluntly, and please dont title someone's thoughts as of a dog. "The clash of ideas brings forth the spark of truth")
If players could program and if players were getting paid there is no doubt in my mind they could make games like diablo 3, considering how most of the people involved with creating blizzard games were/are gamers who also have skills converting what they are picturing into a playable system. Sure, it would take more trial and error for a while seeing as they have no experience implementing junk, but I think while there are bound to be millions of sheeple there are also those who are motivated and innovative among the player base who can bring forth good debate, suggestions, and ideas.
With that said, I don't see the flaw in the current system even after having read the arguments against it. I'm already having many ideas for character builds picking and choosing from the current system. I think players are just scared having lost literal "skill trees" that they've almost always had in the past, and are not willing to give a new system the benefit of a doubt until they've exhausted all options and end up buying the game anyways, cause let's face it D3 is gonna kick ass.