Changing itemization to make items higher quality does NOT make it more interesting or fun. Look at WoW. Every max-level DPS item is the equivalent of a D3 "Quadrafecta" - they all have Stamina, Primary Stat, and at least two of (Hit, Crit, Haste, Mastery). Itemization is very boring in WoW because every ilvl 496 epic is very similar in power to every other ilvl 496 epic. If every single item that dropped was awesome, then "awesome" very quickly becomes "boring".
What D3 needs is the opposite of super awesome items that appeal to everybody. What D3 needs is items that are more specialized and appeal to a very narrow niche.
As long as everyone wants exactly the same gear, everyone will compete for the same few stats. A relatively small difference in stats leads to an immense difference in sell price - just look at the sale prices for any Legendary. Even more importantly, there is nothing interesting you can do with gear. Unlike D2, you can't stack gear and turn an underpowered variant build into a decent farming build, or turn your class into a totally different class.
The best thing for Blizzard to do in an expansion pack would be to greatly nerf stats that benefit everyone (Primary stat, ASPD, CHC, CDB) and buff or add new stats that benefit specific skills, builds, or playstyles. (For example, "+% to Summoned Creature Damage", "+% to Single Target Melee Attacks", "+% to Bleed Damage", "+% to Damage over Time Spells", "+% to Ground Targeted Spells", "+% Damage to Enemies 30 yards or further", "+% Proc Damage", "+% Damage vs. Stunned")
...Would you read it if you knew it was fan fiction from the start? I many people will skip over it
I skipped over the whole thing knowing it was fake by your title.
No disclaimer implies that the author is naive. Most readers at Dfans have seen dozens of these fake "leaked" release notes. That approach was old before the game was released.
I liked most of this.. The only thing I absolutely hated was the addition of "daily quests"... Really? 7 years of my live sucked through my eyes through WoW dailies has pretty much solidified the fact that if I see even one daily quest appear in this game, I would drive to Blizzard HQ and set myself on fire.
i wouldnt want daily quests either, but for a force unknown id pay to see this!
Changing itemization to make items higher quality does NOT make it more interesting or fun. Look at WoW. Every max-level DPS item is the equivalent of a D3 "Quadrafecta" - they all have Stamina, Primary Stat, and at least two of (Hit, Crit, Haste, Mastery). Itemization is very boring in WoW because every ilvl 496 epic is very similar in power to every other ilvl 496 epic. If every single item that dropped was awesome, then "awesome" very quickly becomes "boring".
What D3 needs is the opposite of super awesome items that appeal to everybody. What D3 needs is items that are more specialized and appeal to a very narrow niche.
As long as everyone wants exactly the same gear, everyone will compete for the same few stats. A relatively small difference in stats leads to an immense difference in sell price - just look at the sale prices for any Legendary. Even more importantly, there is nothing interesting you can do with gear. Unlike D2, you can't stack gear and turn an underpowered variant build into a decent farming build, or turn your class into a totally different class.
The best thing for Blizzard to do in an expansion pack would be to greatly nerf stats that benefit everyone (Primary stat, ASPD, CHC, CDB) and buff or add new stats that benefit specific skills, builds, or playstyles. (For example, "+% to Summoned Creature Damage", "+% to Single Target Melee Attacks", "+% to Bleed Damage", "+% to Damage over Time Spells", "+% to Ground Targeted Spells", "+% Damage to Enemies 30 yards or further", "+% Proc Damage", "+% Damage vs. Stunned")
Really good point, agreed completely.
They need to step up their "affix" game in the expansion, because it has to beat two D2 features by itself: the manual stats, and the items.
Changing itemization to make items higher quality does NOT make it more interesting or fun. Look at WoW. Every max-level DPS item is the equivalent of a D3 "Quadrafecta" - they all have Stamina, Primary Stat, and at least two of (Hit, Crit, Haste, Mastery). Itemization is very boring in WoW because every ilvl 496 epic is very similar in power to every other ilvl 496 epic. If every single item that dropped was awesome, then "awesome" very quickly becomes "boring".
What D3 needs is the opposite of super awesome items that appeal to everybody. What D3 needs is items that are more specialized and appeal to a very narrow niche.
As long as everyone wants exactly the same gear, everyone will compete for the same few stats. A relatively small difference in stats leads to an immense difference in sell price - just look at the sale prices for any Legendary. Even more importantly, there is nothing interesting you can do with gear. Unlike D2, you can't stack gear and turn an underpowered variant build into a decent farming build, or turn your class into a totally different class.
The best thing for Blizzard to do in an expansion pack would be to greatly nerf stats that benefit everyone (Primary stat, ASPD, CHC, CDB) and buff or add new stats that benefit specific skills, builds, or playstyles. (For example, "+% to Summoned Creature Damage", "+% to Single Target Melee Attacks", "+% to Bleed Damage", "+% to Damage over Time Spells", "+% to Ground Targeted Spells", "+% Damage to Enemies 30 yards or further", "+% Proc Damage", "+% Damage vs. Stunned")
Right on target. +1
Agreed, Maka. Although I think I've said that a few too many times in the recent weeks.
I've been thinking about "itemization" a bit myself recently and I began to realize that D2 items simply had more flexibility because there weren't really a ton of damage-increasing affixes. You basically had attack speed, +skills, and a few other affixes which were not very prevalent. This ultimately led directly to things like faster hit recovery and cannot be frozen becoming popular stats (most people I knew wanted 40% FHR).
The system in D3 allows for 6 affixes on the best rares. But how many of those affixes have to roll into primary, IAS, crit, critdmg, or sockets for it to be a viable piece? After a long retrospective I think we have TOO MUCH offensive variety of stats. Movement speed is far too good of a stat to the point that I'd draw some comparisons between movement speed and Teleport in D2 (where Enigma was so good for the 6 classes who didn't get Teleport).
This reminds me a LOT of the consolidation and ultimate removal of the original talent trees in WoW. "Pick 5 of these 11 choices" is not a valid choice when 7 of those 11 choices are absolutely mandatory for better DPS. That's exactly how D3 items are right now - you have 6 possible "choices" for each rare... but 3, 4, and sometimes 5, of those choices have already been made for you.
What we need is fewer of those pre-made choices and more of the other stuff. I like having resist all on my gear. I like having vitality on my gear. I'm a WD and I like my pets and their survivability only helps me stand still and faceroll more. But if you add vitality and resist all onto the pieces that I've been talking about you're looking at rolling some exceptionally-rare items.
Conceptually, we're looking at the fact that items don't have enough "room" to include all the offensive things we know we want, but also the other, more-survivability-oriented things we know we'd like to have. Just look at Reflects Damage as a symptom. Reflects Damage only is an issue because our offense has scaled up so quickly compared to our defense. If they scaled up at roughly the same rate it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal. But most of our defenses right now are the same as they were 6 months ago... but our offensive capabilities are double, triple, quadrouple, hell in some cases possibly 10x, what they were 6 months ago.
* Notes are fan-created by Varox (Varox#2933), Astion @ Diablofans.com.
* Changes I would like to see to Diablo 3, simply because I love playing this game, and hopefully for long time to come!
-Varox
You should probably put this at the beginning of the post
I actually scrolled all the way down after reading the first few points and had to check if there was a disclaimer whether or not this was all fictional.
I did this, too. I found this post a bit misleading at first. All I kept thinking is, "where did they get this info from?" Admittedly, I was transfixed by the Paragon perks part...but yeah, this should be clearer that it's opinion and not actual leaked/datamined info, ya know? :-)
I know this is fake but even considering the Mystic in a paid expansion is insulting. She should have been added to the game at launch just like Arenas and all the other content that got cut.
Agreed, Maka. Although I think I've said that a few too many times in the recent weeks.
I've been thinking about "itemization" a bit myself recently and I began to realize that D2 items simply had more flexibility because there weren't really a ton of damage-increasing affixes. You basically had attack speed, +skills, and a few other affixes which were not very prevalent. This ultimately led directly to things like faster hit recovery and cannot be frozen becoming popular stats (most people I knew wanted 40% FHR).
The system in D3 allows for 6 affixes on the best rares. But how many of those affixes have to roll into primary, IAS, crit, critdmg, or sockets for it to be a viable piece? After a long retrospective I think we have TOO MUCH offensive variety of stats. Movement speed is far too good of a stat to the point that I'd draw some comparisons between movement speed and Teleport in D2 (where Enigma was so good for the 6 classes who didn't get Teleport).
This reminds me a LOT of the consolidation and ultimate removal of the original talent trees in WoW. "Pick 5 of these 11 choices" is not a valid choice when 7 of those 11 choices are absolutely mandatory for better DPS. That's exactly how D3 items are right now - you have 6 possible "choices" for each rare... but 3, 4, and sometimes 5, of those choices have already been made for you.
What we need is fewer of those pre-made choices and more of the other stuff. I like having resist all on my gear. I like having vitality on my gear. I'm a WD and I like my pets and their survivability only helps me stand still and faceroll more. But if you add vitality and resist all onto the pieces that I've been talking about you're looking at rolling some exceptionally-rare items.
Conceptually, we're looking at the fact that items don't have enough "room" to include all the offensive things we know we want, but also the other, more-survivability-oriented things we know we'd like to have. Just look at Reflects Damage as a symptom. Reflects Damage only is an issue because our offense has scaled up so quickly compared to our defense. If they scaled up at roughly the same rate it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal. But most of our defenses right now are the same as they were 6 months ago... but our offensive capabilities are double, triple, quadrouple, hell in some cases possibly 10x, what they were 6 months ago.
Pair that with the very hard task of creating a system with varied and multiple affixes and balancing that.
PoE supposedly has tons of variety in affixes, but when you look at the high-end stuff some of the streamers are showing, you can see it suffers exactly from the same symptoms as D3 - 4 or 5 always useful stats, and the rest kinda "meh".
In the end, it's quite hard to make "support" type affixes (like life-regen, pickup radius, etc.) be as useful as the "core stats" needed to get by content (which will ALWAYS be a number/gear check in the RPG genre).
I do agree D3 falls waaaay flat in terms of interesting Legendaries and affixes overall. There's absolutely no reason why we can't have a Legendary that gives "+35% damage bonus when below 30% life" or one that "teleports you randomly when surrounded by more than 6 enemies". The legendaries path was a beginning, but it's a shame they haven't touched that in so long. And PoE has plenty of those crazy effects (not sure how useful they are yet, but at least they're there).
D3's itemization system should have blown our minds out of the water with complexity and deep choices (specially since a lot of us were expecting good crafting AND the Mystic to help with that). I can't help but feel very disappointed with it as well.
I love your idea of Paragon perks and the thought of raising the cap all the way to 999. I assume the expansion will include expansion of the paragon system but I figured oh probably to 200. 999 is a great end place and a perk system would be awesome. I think they should probably space out perks every 15 levels or so. And have a special one at 666.
As far as a city hub though - do not like. As much fun as multiplayer can be I prefer solo play. I don't want people lagging me while in a "main city hub". And I don't need emote spam etc. This isn't an MMO where you show off your cool mounts and titles. I would however like the idea of a city hub that you can use for all acts.
I'm predicting the following features:
Raised level cap
New Follower
New crafter (possibly the return of the mystic)
Expansion of the paragon system (increased level cap and perks)
Some type of skill tree with means of character progression. People like trees. So this is going in.
Some type of skill tree with means of character progression. People like trees. So this is going in.
- Excuse me for necro'n, but seeminly someone posted my thread on battle.net and got some blue attention. So I thought we could get back into a discussion! -
The alpha version of Diablo3 had skill trees. However, they decided it would end up with cookie cutter builds, and skill with just 1 skill point to get to the next tier.
We've seen this development in WoW as well. In my opinion, the current system for both D3 and WoW is awesome but needs improving. I don't know how though, could use some ideas here!
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What D3 needs is the opposite of super awesome items that appeal to everybody. What D3 needs is items that are more specialized and appeal to a very narrow niche.
As long as everyone wants exactly the same gear, everyone will compete for the same few stats. A relatively small difference in stats leads to an immense difference in sell price - just look at the sale prices for any Legendary. Even more importantly, there is nothing interesting you can do with gear. Unlike D2, you can't stack gear and turn an underpowered variant build into a decent farming build, or turn your class into a totally different class.
The best thing for Blizzard to do in an expansion pack would be to greatly nerf stats that benefit everyone (Primary stat, ASPD, CHC, CDB) and buff or add new stats that benefit specific skills, builds, or playstyles. (For example, "+% to Summoned Creature Damage", "+% to Single Target Melee Attacks", "+% to Bleed Damage", "+% to Damage over Time Spells", "+% to Ground Targeted Spells", "+% Damage to Enemies 30 yards or further", "+% Proc Damage", "+% Damage vs. Stunned")
I skipped over the whole thing knowing it was fake by your title.
No disclaimer implies that the author is naive. Most readers at Dfans have seen dozens of these fake "leaked" release notes. That approach was old before the game was released.
i wouldnt want daily quests either, but for a force unknown id pay to see this!
They need to step up their "affix" game in the expansion, because it has to beat two D2 features by itself: the manual stats, and the items.
Agreed, Maka. Although I think I've said that a few too many times in the recent weeks.
I've been thinking about "itemization" a bit myself recently and I began to realize that D2 items simply had more flexibility because there weren't really a ton of damage-increasing affixes. You basically had attack speed, +skills, and a few other affixes which were not very prevalent. This ultimately led directly to things like faster hit recovery and cannot be frozen becoming popular stats (most people I knew wanted 40% FHR).
The system in D3 allows for 6 affixes on the best rares. But how many of those affixes have to roll into primary, IAS, crit, critdmg, or sockets for it to be a viable piece? After a long retrospective I think we have TOO MUCH offensive variety of stats. Movement speed is far too good of a stat to the point that I'd draw some comparisons between movement speed and Teleport in D2 (where Enigma was so good for the 6 classes who didn't get Teleport).
This reminds me a LOT of the consolidation and ultimate removal of the original talent trees in WoW. "Pick 5 of these 11 choices" is not a valid choice when 7 of those 11 choices are absolutely mandatory for better DPS. That's exactly how D3 items are right now - you have 6 possible "choices" for each rare... but 3, 4, and sometimes 5, of those choices have already been made for you.
What we need is fewer of those pre-made choices and more of the other stuff. I like having resist all on my gear. I like having vitality on my gear. I'm a WD and I like my pets and their survivability only helps me stand still and faceroll more. But if you add vitality and resist all onto the pieces that I've been talking about you're looking at rolling some exceptionally-rare items.
Conceptually, we're looking at the fact that items don't have enough "room" to include all the offensive things we know we want, but also the other, more-survivability-oriented things we know we'd like to have. Just look at Reflects Damage as a symptom. Reflects Damage only is an issue because our offense has scaled up so quickly compared to our defense. If they scaled up at roughly the same rate it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal. But most of our defenses right now are the same as they were 6 months ago... but our offensive capabilities are double, triple, quadrouple, hell in some cases possibly 10x, what they were 6 months ago.
Because this game is called Diablo 3 and not WoWablo (thankfully). We already have more than enough influences from this other Blizzard game.
I did this, too. I found this post a bit misleading at first. All I kept thinking is, "where did they get this info from?" Admittedly, I was transfixed by the Paragon perks part...but yeah, this should be clearer that it's opinion and not actual leaked/datamined info, ya know? :-)
PoE supposedly has tons of variety in affixes, but when you look at the high-end stuff some of the streamers are showing, you can see it suffers exactly from the same symptoms as D3 - 4 or 5 always useful stats, and the rest kinda "meh".
In the end, it's quite hard to make "support" type affixes (like life-regen, pickup radius, etc.) be as useful as the "core stats" needed to get by content (which will ALWAYS be a number/gear check in the RPG genre).
I do agree D3 falls waaaay flat in terms of interesting Legendaries and affixes overall. There's absolutely no reason why we can't have a Legendary that gives "+35% damage bonus when below 30% life" or one that "teleports you randomly when surrounded by more than 6 enemies". The legendaries path was a beginning, but it's a shame they haven't touched that in so long. And PoE has plenty of those crazy effects (not sure how useful they are yet, but at least they're there).
D3's itemization system should have blown our minds out of the water with complexity and deep choices (specially since a lot of us were expecting good crafting AND the Mystic to help with that). I can't help but feel very disappointed with it as well.
As far as a city hub though - do not like. As much fun as multiplayer can be I prefer solo play. I don't want people lagging me while in a "main city hub". And I don't need emote spam etc. This isn't an MMO where you show off your cool mounts and titles. I would however like the idea of a city hub that you can use for all acts.
I'm predicting the following features:
Raised level cap
New Follower
New crafter (possibly the return of the mystic)
Expansion of the paragon system (increased level cap and perks)
Some type of skill tree with means of character progression. People like trees. So this is going in.
- Excuse me for necro'n, but seeminly someone posted my thread on battle.net and got some blue attention. So I thought we could get back into a discussion! -
The alpha version of Diablo3 had skill trees. However, they decided it would end up with cookie cutter builds, and skill with just 1 skill point to get to the next tier.
We've seen this development in WoW as well. In my opinion, the current system for both D3 and WoW is awesome but needs improving. I don't know how though, could use some ideas here!