edit: Also gratz on the 1000th post Moles... Molster!
Molster is the posting king! Remember when he was back on 500 posts... must have been like 2 days ago or something
On topic: I'm in favour of changing skills in town only. That way I won't have to worry about my jerk friends stopping and changing their skills after every battle(to some extent).
I think there are 2 areas where players will exploit the ability to swap their skills at any time:
- Instant-cast spells where the player wants access to more than their allotted 6 spells
- Long-cooldown spells which are powerful, but spend a large amount of time on cooldown.
The second problem (long-cooldown spells) is really the biggest problem in my opinion. You could swap in a spell like "Call of the Ancients" which is active for 15 seconds (default), but then its on cooldown for 105 seconds (default). There is a real benefit in swapping that skill out once it goes on cooldown so you can use another active skill for that 105 seconds, then swap it back in again.
I think it would be enough to allow spells to be swapped in combat, but trigger the cooldown on that spell immediately so it can't be used until the cooldown finishes. For example, if you swapped your spells to include "Call of the Ancients", you would have to wait 120 seconds until that spell could be used. This would prevent rapid swapping of long-cooldown spells.
This solution doesn't really help for spells with no cooldown, so a minimum could be set (something between 10 and 30 seconds) before a newly swapped in spell can be used. So if the spell has no cooldown or a cooldown shorter than 10 seconds, the player must wait 10 seconds before using the spell expires before it can be used. If the cooldown of the spell is longer than 10 seconds, they must wait the cooldown of the spell.
I think it would be enough to allow spells to be swapped in combat, but trigger the cooldown on that spell immediately so it can't be used until the cooldown finishes. For example, if you swapped your spells to include "Call of the Ancients", you would have to wait 120 seconds until that spell could be used. This would prevent rapid swapping of long-cooldown spells.
This solution doesn't really help for spells with no cooldown, so a minimum could be set (something between 10 and 30 seconds) before a newly swapped in spell can be used. So if the spell has no cooldown or a cooldown shorter than 10 seconds, the player must wait 10 seconds before using the spell expires before it can be used. If the cooldown of the spell is longer than 10 seconds, they must wait the cooldown of the spell.
Any of this make sense?
Yes, good ideas there. This would prevent macro abuse, too (I'm sure I could make a macro that switches a certain skill to another one very quickly, didn't try though).
mmm..."we are not sure"...."we may"..."it's not solid"....hope Blizz is just messing with us, otherwise this is worrying.
About skill swapping: remember when they reduced the number of slots to 6 and told us about that being the better choice because it would lead to a wider customization (also showed us some maths, if memory serves)? If you can freely swap skills (in town, in play, wherever you like) there are not just 6 available choices anymore, so all that reasoning falls apart.
Still "free swapping" let the player explore skills and builds quickly and being skillful at doing so may be a great advantage. Also, if I don't like this gamestyle (and I don't) I can just choose to not do so, so this is fine with me.
Customization by runestones: that is a great idea, but seems a bit troublesome to put in effect.
Be it colored or unattuned if you plan a build and can't find the right runestone you are sc...ed.
Gear works the same? Right!
But if gear and runestone works the same, why make two identical systems based on luck or money (read AH here)?
Both this systems are mostly based on luck, since you can just make a choice amongst things that dropped or you bought.
Items system could benefit a lot from crafting, this may be a great solution (also improvable by patches).
So I hope they are working on a similar approach on runestones (be it by crafting, transmuting, upgrading, whatever) that would let us get what we want and not not only rely on sheer luck.
Wow...so many people complaining about having to wait 10 seconds on a hearthstone to be able to change skills? Back in my day we spent our skill points carefuly and if we wanted to do something different we rolled a new toon! ;-)
In all seriousness, though, being able to change your build without leveling another character was a nice change when it was added to D2 and will be a great mechanic in D3. However, if its so easy that people are switching skills often then there's really no point in having "builds" and limited skill slots in the first place.
If people in the higher difficulties are changing skills more than maybe once per game then I just don't think the system is working properly. A build should define the way you play your character. So many of the hard choices and trade-offs become irrelevant if you can use a different specialty build for every situation. In order to prevent this, Blizzard needs to make switching skills and runes "difficult" enough that its more convenient to pick one build and stick with it than it is to swap around skills for each situation. On the other hand, it shouldn't be any more difficult than is absolutely necessary to keep people mostly with a single build. I think something along the lines of having to go to town and pay a hefty amount of gold to clear out your skills and let your select new ones would be about right (and another gold sink is always a good thing).
However, the early levels (what we are seeing in the beta) are a different beast entirely. As you gain new skills it makes sense to be able to switch them out more easily to test them and be able to figure out what you want your eventual build to be. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to allow skills swaps without restriction in normal difficulty only or until you reach level 30 (at which point you have all your skills and slots unlocked). After this point, the skill swapping restrictions kick in and you are expected to pick a build and stick with it for the most part. A cutoff point like this should also be fairly easy to code and allows experimentation early while still preserving the feeling of actually having to make meaningful build decisions in the later game which seems like the best of both worlds to me.
I think there are 2 areas where players will exploit the ability to swap their skills at any time:
- Instant-cast spells where the player wants access to more than their allotted 6 spells
- Long-cooldown spells which are powerful, but spend a large amount of time on cooldown.
The second problem (long-cooldown spells) is really the biggest problem in my opinion. You could swap in a spell like "Call of the Ancients" which is active for 15 seconds (default), but then its on cooldown for 105 seconds (default). There is a real benefit in swapping that skill out once it goes on cooldown so you can use another active skill for that 105 seconds, then swap it back in again.
I think it would be enough to allow spells to be swapped in combat, but trigger the cooldown on that spell immediately so it can't be used until the cooldown finishes. For example, if you swapped your spells to include "Call of the Ancients", you would have to wait 120 seconds until that spell could be used. This would prevent rapid swapping of long-cooldown spells.
This solution doesn't really help for spells with no cooldown, so a minimum could be set (something between 10 and 30 seconds) before a newly swapped in spell can be used. So if the spell has no cooldown or a cooldown shorter than 10 seconds, the player must wait 10 seconds before using the spell expires before it can be used. If the cooldown of the spell is longer than 10 seconds, they must wait the cooldown of the spell.
Any of this make sense?
Indeed, they need to find a way so long cooldown spells don't get exploited. Also some kind of restriction is needed for swaping skills. If people make macro's for skill swaping (and they will) nobody needs stuff like mobility/heal spells on their bar cause they can just press a button to swap to them whenever needed. The rest of the time they just go with full damage abilities. I would say having to go to town and pay an amount of money to change out skills will do.
I saw this suggestion on the main forums a while back about skill swapping, you can do it in town or within X amount of yards of a waypoint. I think that would keep the player in the action without having to go all the way back to town. I just think being able to switch skills while fighting is going to be abused if some kind of limit is not put on it.
As far as the runes go im not going to knock it until I have tried it. I wish they would just put them in the beta now for us to test out.
The problem is that, if it wasn't for online only, I'd be testing build offline. But I can't do that. There is no cheat mode, and there is no way for me to try stuff easily. I really like the system as it is for testing purposes. Knowing that there is no other way to test stuff up easily, then I kind of want it to stay as it is...
Im the "you have not been attacked for about 10 seconds max and no monsters in view".
but regardless a long CD or going back to town are both not part of their original design of "keeping with the action" (at least to me)
Why can't they just have Runes work like the SoJ? You cast for ten seconds, if anything interupts you, it drops you out, at the end of the cast it lets you swap skills anywhere. You could even make it a five second cast or something. That way there's enough of a delay to prevent you hot-swapping in combat, but it's fast and easy to change things as you go, but not SO fast that you'll want to do it every fight.
It's simple, easy to program and I think solves a good number of the problems. I know some hardcore people want skills locked, etc., but given their goal I think this could work.
Ok well the post mentions that it wouldn't be viable to go to the auction house and search for your runes. Yeah I mean I guess that's sort of true, if I went to the AH in WoW and just hit Search without any filtering at all I'd be overwhelmed. When you break it down into Class -> Skill -> Rank, you're only looking at 6 runes. You know what rune you're looking for and you're more than likely going to get the highest rank you can that you meet the level requirements for so I mean that's a silly complaint and I think this dude's just complaining for the sake of complaining.
The whole spirit of Diablo is the item grind, there is no "Oh I've gotten my tier 3 time to wait for new content". That's WoW, not Diablo. The dude's obviously a WoW player I mean he's posting from his warlock. If you're complaining about items dropping I mean that's kind of a useless argument. Everything in every diablo ever is random. All the complaining people did in WoW made it what it is today where it's losing nearly all of its subscribers. Yeah there will be a lot of different runes and it'll be difficult to get the ones you want but by no means is it impossible. Again the runes will drop in increment of ranks so it's not fair to say Ogod there's seven ranks how do you expect me to go through all of those?! Well if you're only getting like... 2 types of runes per difficulty, where 7 is in Hell, you are really never dealing with the ranks. Like I guess that's weird to say but I won't be finding Rank 1 runes in Nightmare so it's not like that is going to be hell to get the highest rank ones you want.
Honestly the Diablo community so far has just annoyed the hell out of me. No one seems to understand the game's spirit and how it is played. Maybe the lot of you have been spoiled on WoW where everyone gets what they want for nothing, which is of course the same reason it's losing popularity. Diablo is in essence an unfair game. It's a grindfest and the rewards are great when you show dedication. There's a real sense of accomplishment and a distinction between the good and the bad players. I know you're all mad because you couldn't beat Duriel or whatever but Blizzard is being adamant on making this game as true to the originals as possible, they are not going to spoon feed you anymore.
I also advocate town skill swapping. The 6 skill system will not even work without limiting your freedom to switch abilities STRICTLY. Of course I think you should be able to swap them out as much as you want in town, just when you set out to a dungeon you MEANT to have those skills and can't just quickly swap out skills to save your ass.
Lastly, it is in beta and you, myself, your neighbor who has been playing Diablo since 2 and your friend who likes anime video games and hentai are not professional game designers and shouldn't try to pretend you know more than the developers who haven't developed them yet
I know this idea has been mentioned a few times in various posts, but Id like to see the following :
All Runes, levels 1-7, drop in their normal colored format. All of them are exactly the same in regards to what you'd get if you put them into the skill of your choice. No surprises here.
In addition, Unattuned runes levels 1-7 can also drop. These are a gamble. You take a chance to put it into a skill of your choice, hoping that not only is it the color you want, but also to get a chance at a bonus mod that is not found on the normal colored counterpart. Pop it in and its not what you want ? No problem, just swap back to the original one you had in there, and sell the Unattuned one, which is now locked to that skill and the mods already determined.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Its a free shot at improving something your already happy with. Sell or trade it, get some gold, and move on.
town only skill shifting is what i would call MALAKIA(which means bullshit)
I realize this isnt exactly the same game as Diablo 2 but Diablo games and builds have focused on a class specializing in certain skills - lightning fury javazon as an example. You built toward those skills (wasting points along the way) and then pumped the hell out of those skills. I couldnt suddenly decide I would like to use max jab to beat Duriel and just "switch" - as a matter of fact if I wanted to actually functionally use another skill at Hell levels you actually needed to roll another character/level up and then use it.
They've removed the wasted skill points and simply said - "pick the 6 skills you want to use and go for it". The ability to respec on the fly, for free, at all times means you dont have 6 skills, you have them all.
I'd like the freedom to try new skills as they become available so respec up to level 29 being fairly painless (not free) in terms of cost/time makes a lot of sense - after Normal difficulty I would expect to respec no more often then perhaps every Act in the game - you're not trying stuff out at that point - respeccing for every single circumstance on the fly completely eliminates any build choice - and if that's what they wanted they would just give us a 20 skill hotbar.
I hate the town idea. *Ding* level two ! Awesome I unlocked a skill, time to hearth back to town to try it out a bit... 5 minutes later .. oh my level 2 skill isn't what I wanted, I guess I'll have to hearth again to switch it back. If they are going to do that might as well just make the skill swap on a 10s cast timer that is interruptable, at least take out the heart middle man every time you respec.
Sounds really lame, maybe on in town after normal mode or something ...
I hate the town idea. *Ding* level two ! Awesome I unlocked a skill, time to hearth back to town to try it out a bit... 5 minutes later .. oh my level 2 skill isn't what I wanted, I guess I'll have to hearth again to switch it back. If they are going to do that might as well just make the skill swap on a 10s cast timer that is interruptable, at least take out the heart middle man every time you respec.
Sounds really lame, maybe on in town after normal mode or something ...
The thing that bothers me is that Diablo has never been about skill locking. If you wanted you could easily swap skills to fit the situation at hand. The addition of having to go back to town or a cooldown, to me, would just be an annoyance. If I get a new skill I want to be able to test it out and see if it works with my setup, and if it doesn't I want to be able to swap back right then and there. By forcing me to return to town you are effectively removing me from combat, which they have said their main goal is "stay in combat". I'm COMPLETELY against any restriction on skill swapping EXCEPT in PVP. In PVP the skills you go in with, should be the skills you play with.
This seems to be the consensus though. There is a post here Clicky! on the Bnet forums about it, where people seem to be giving the +1 to the cast time idea instead of going to town.
This seems to be the consensus though. There is a post here Clicky! on the Bnet forums about it, where people seem to be giving the +1 to the cast time idea instead of going to town.
I'm very fond of YOUR idea personally. It's a very good idea. No going to town, but no using it in combat and no huge cost to change, just a short amount of time. You can't switch it instantly to deal with a new group and you can't switch around stuff in boss fights. I think it solves almost all the problems. Good plan!
Drop the sheep attitude. Don't expect a serious attitude. Its a big deal, and your only response is shut up QQ. You used QQ. I don't give a damn about you if you use QQ.
No really, trust me, you'll hear me again, and again, and again, and again.
Molster is the posting king! Remember when he was back on 500 posts... must have been like 2 days ago or something
On topic: I'm in favour of changing skills in town only. That way I won't have to worry about my jerk friends stopping and changing their skills after every battle(to some extent).
- Instant-cast spells where the player wants access to more than their allotted 6 spells
- Long-cooldown spells which are powerful, but spend a large amount of time on cooldown.
The second problem (long-cooldown spells) is really the biggest problem in my opinion. You could swap in a spell like "Call of the Ancients" which is active for 15 seconds (default), but then its on cooldown for 105 seconds (default). There is a real benefit in swapping that skill out once it goes on cooldown so you can use another active skill for that 105 seconds, then swap it back in again.
I think it would be enough to allow spells to be swapped in combat, but trigger the cooldown on that spell immediately so it can't be used until the cooldown finishes. For example, if you swapped your spells to include "Call of the Ancients", you would have to wait 120 seconds until that spell could be used. This would prevent rapid swapping of long-cooldown spells.
This solution doesn't really help for spells with no cooldown, so a minimum could be set (something between 10 and 30 seconds) before a newly swapped in spell can be used. So if the spell has no cooldown or a cooldown shorter than 10 seconds, the player must wait 10 seconds before using the spell expires before it can be used. If the cooldown of the spell is longer than 10 seconds, they must wait the cooldown of the spell.
Any of this make sense?
that swaps his skills out of town:
All damage is decreased by 50% percent for 30 sec,stacks up to 5 times.
And in addition we can make each skill swap cost 50% of character resource.
(for example 50% mana for witch doctor)
About skill swapping: remember when they reduced the number of slots to 6 and told us about that being the better choice because it would lead to a wider customization (also showed us some maths, if memory serves)? If you can freely swap skills (in town, in play, wherever you like) there are not just 6 available choices anymore, so all that reasoning falls apart.
Still "free swapping" let the player explore skills and builds quickly and being skillful at doing so may be a great advantage. Also, if I don't like this gamestyle (and I don't) I can just choose to not do so, so this is fine with me.
Customization by runestones: that is a great idea, but seems a bit troublesome to put in effect.
Be it colored or unattuned if you plan a build and can't find the right runestone you are sc...ed.
Gear works the same? Right!
But if gear and runestone works the same, why make two identical systems based on luck or money (read AH here)?
Both this systems are mostly based on luck, since you can just make a choice amongst things that dropped or you bought.
Items system could benefit a lot from crafting, this may be a great solution (also improvable by patches).
So I hope they are working on a similar approach on runestones (be it by crafting, transmuting, upgrading, whatever) that would let us get what we want and not not only rely on sheer luck.
In all seriousness, though, being able to change your build without leveling another character was a nice change when it was added to D2 and will be a great mechanic in D3. However, if its so easy that people are switching skills often then there's really no point in having "builds" and limited skill slots in the first place.
If people in the higher difficulties are changing skills more than maybe once per game then I just don't think the system is working properly. A build should define the way you play your character. So many of the hard choices and trade-offs become irrelevant if you can use a different specialty build for every situation. In order to prevent this, Blizzard needs to make switching skills and runes "difficult" enough that its more convenient to pick one build and stick with it than it is to swap around skills for each situation. On the other hand, it shouldn't be any more difficult than is absolutely necessary to keep people mostly with a single build. I think something along the lines of having to go to town and pay a hefty amount of gold to clear out your skills and let your select new ones would be about right (and another gold sink is always a good thing).
However, the early levels (what we are seeing in the beta) are a different beast entirely. As you gain new skills it makes sense to be able to switch them out more easily to test them and be able to figure out what you want your eventual build to be. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to allow skills swaps without restriction in normal difficulty only or until you reach level 30 (at which point you have all your skills and slots unlocked). After this point, the skill swapping restrictions kick in and you are expected to pick a build and stick with it for the most part. A cutoff point like this should also be fairly easy to code and allows experimentation early while still preserving the feeling of actually having to make meaningful build decisions in the later game which seems like the best of both worlds to me.
Indeed, they need to find a way so long cooldown spells don't get exploited. Also some kind of restriction is needed for swaping skills. If people make macro's for skill swaping (and they will) nobody needs stuff like mobility/heal spells on their bar cause they can just press a button to swap to them whenever needed. The rest of the time they just go with full damage abilities. I would say having to go to town and pay an amount of money to change out skills will do.
As far as the runes go im not going to knock it until I have tried it. I wish they would just put them in the beta now for us to test out.
Dude, drop the whole online only thing QQ. thx.
Why can't they just have Runes work like the SoJ? You cast for ten seconds, if anything interupts you, it drops you out, at the end of the cast it lets you swap skills anywhere. You could even make it a five second cast or something. That way there's enough of a delay to prevent you hot-swapping in combat, but it's fast and easy to change things as you go, but not SO fast that you'll want to do it every fight.
It's simple, easy to program and I think solves a good number of the problems. I know some hardcore people want skills locked, etc., but given their goal I think this could work.
Totally agree with this guy.
All Runes, levels 1-7, drop in their normal colored format. All of them are exactly the same in regards to what you'd get if you put them into the skill of your choice. No surprises here.
In addition, Unattuned runes levels 1-7 can also drop. These are a gamble. You take a chance to put it into a skill of your choice, hoping that not only is it the color you want, but also to get a chance at a bonus mod that is not found on the normal colored counterpart. Pop it in and its not what you want ? No problem, just swap back to the original one you had in there, and sell the Unattuned one, which is now locked to that skill and the mods already determined.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Its a free shot at improving something your already happy with. Sell or trade it, get some gold, and move on.
I realize this isnt exactly the same game as Diablo 2 but Diablo games and builds have focused on a class specializing in certain skills - lightning fury javazon as an example. You built toward those skills (wasting points along the way) and then pumped the hell out of those skills. I couldnt suddenly decide I would like to use max jab to beat Duriel and just "switch" - as a matter of fact if I wanted to actually functionally use another skill at Hell levels you actually needed to roll another character/level up and then use it.
They've removed the wasted skill points and simply said - "pick the 6 skills you want to use and go for it". The ability to respec on the fly, for free, at all times means you dont have 6 skills, you have them all.
I'd like the freedom to try new skills as they become available so respec up to level 29 being fairly painless (not free) in terms of cost/time makes a lot of sense - after Normal difficulty I would expect to respec no more often then perhaps every Act in the game - you're not trying stuff out at that point - respeccing for every single circumstance on the fly completely eliminates any build choice - and if that's what they wanted they would just give us a 20 skill hotbar.
Sounds really lame, maybe on in town after normal mode or something ...
You stole my idea from three posts ago!!
Hehe. Did not !! was mine first. =P
This seems to be the consensus though. There is a post here Clicky! on the Bnet forums about it, where people seem to be giving the +1 to the cast time idea instead of going to town.
I'm very fond of YOUR idea personally. It's a very good idea. No going to town, but no using it in combat and no huge cost to change, just a short amount of time. You can't switch it instantly to deal with a new group and you can't switch around stuff in boss fights. I think it solves almost all the problems. Good plan!
No really, trust me, you'll hear me again, and again, and again, and again.