That is patently false. The only reason anyone played Diablo 2 through more than a few times was to build perfect pvp characters. Really, what the hell is the point of getting better gear and optimizing your stats/skills/charms? To kill baal and his minions faster? I hope that last sentence conveyed my incredulity..
Edit to Italfoca:
To be good at any worthwhile game one must study it, understand how it works, how to take advantage of every possible opportunity and maximize every parameter of excellence. It isn't a question of time spent; plenty of the perpetual noobs I often refer to (players who play the game for years without ever comprehending game mechanics) play much more than me. The difference is that I spend more time thinking carefully about how best to play the game. Fools like yourself don't want to have to do this, and are tired of being owned by more thoughtful players like myself. Removing aspects of customization, and thus parameters of excellence, makes the careful thought and preparation that should go into making a perfect character less important. That is a tragedy to all the real gamers out there.
To your first point, I think that's a load of crap. Every single person I personally knew who played barely did any PvP. The PvP system in Diablo II was crap, and it got boring/frustrating after about 15 minutes (in my opinion). Not to say that my friends and I are representative of the population, but I bet a very large group of people played for the PvM aspect. Why do people spend hours and hours in MMOs raiding/farming bosses? Not so much to be able to kill better bosses faster, but because of the satisfaction in finding a new, awesome weapon or replacing that piece of crap chest piece you've had since 10 levels back. I loved finding items in Diablo II for the joy of finding items, not for PvP.
To your second point, of course it's a matter of time spent. You can study the game all you want, but if you don't spend a good amount of time putting it into practice, it doesn't meant squat. Moreover, I can't believe you're making such an argument over the attribute system. The attribute didn't add one iota of strategy to that game. You either did one of two or three things or your character blew and got owned by everyone else, it was that simple. The stat system was not a parameter of excellence, nor did it make any of the time spent planning less important, because you didn't spend that much time on stats. You pumped dex to max block (subtracting item stat points), pumped strength to match your gear requirements, and the rest into vit (or no block and all vit).
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"Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will." -Thomas Carlyle
That is patently false. The only reason anyone played Diablo 2 through more than a few times was to build perfect pvp characters. Really, what the hell is the point of getting better gear and optimizing your stats/skills/charms? To kill baal and his minions faster? I hope that last sentence conveyed my incredulity..
Edit to Italfoca:
To be good at any worthwhile game one must study it, understand how it works, how to take advantage of every possible opportunity and maximize every parameter of excellence. It isn't a question of time spent; plenty of the perpetual noobs I often refer to (players who play the game for years without ever comprehending game mechanics) play much more than me. The difference is that I spend more time thinking carefully about how best to play the game. Fools like yourself don't want to have to do this, and are tired of being owned by more thoughtful players like myself. Removing aspects of customization, and thus parameters of excellence, makes the careful thought and preparation that should go into making a perfect character less important. That is a tragedy to all the real gamers out there.
Fools like myself ? Tired of been owned by someone like you ?
HEUheuEHUehUEHuehUEHuehUEHuehUEHuehUEHuehuEHUehuE wtfh i never ever heard about you in D2 PvP
Careful thought and preparation are NOT read 220 guides in the internet. And know how best to play the game are not something that must be learned by frustrating experience of remaking a character. It must be learned by loosing a PVP then have to think about why I lost, and then i can change my strategy by respecing and change my gear. You're the fool if you think that read a FAQ and put your points right in a build is strategy or preparation.
You didn't even have played a game with those elements in your life if you think that.
The most competitive RPG games are all adepts of respecing. WoW, WAR and Guild Wars.
Blizz learn that respec is something good, something that gives chances to new players and unlimited strategys to the veterans. But i understand why you don't understand that. It's because you're stucked in time, in the ages were D2 were any reference of online pvp.
And if you are truelly better then someone, just prove it with your SKILL, not by using other ppl's lack of time and patience to reroll their chars, ok ?
To your first point, I think that's a load of crap. Every single person I personally knew who played barely did any PvP. The PvP system in Diablo II was crap, and it got boring/frustrating after about 15 minutes (in my opinion). Not to say that my friends and I are representative of the population, but I bet a very large group of people played for the PvM aspect. Why do people spend hours and hours in MMOs raiding/farming bosses? Not so much to be able to kill better bosses faster, but because of the satisfaction in finding a new, awesome weapon or replacing that piece of crap chest piece you've had since 10 levels back. I loved finding items in Diablo II for the joy of finding items, not for PvP.
I'm actually shocked. My jaw literally dropped when I read that. How long did it take you to get rich enough to trade for whatever item you wanted? It took me maybe 2 months after I got the hang of trading. After that, by your logic, I would have just wanted to quit. The ONLY thing that kept me playing for YEARS afterwards was the epic duels that I had with some of the best barbarians on UsWest. That, and owning countless (perpetual) noobs in pub duel games. The only reason I spent any time on WoW was the competition for the top of the damage meter, and the satisfaction of being on top more times than not. Getting new and awesome weapons was fun, but putting them to use in competition was the main (and non-transitory) benefit to having them.
Quote from "Sildrugtanni »
To your second point, of [B]course[/B] it's a matter of time spent. You can study the game all you want, but if you don't spend a good amount of time putting it into practice, it doesn't meant squat. Moreover, I can't believe you're making such an argument over the attribute system. The attribute didn't add one iota of strategy to that game. You either did one of two or three things or your character blew and got owned by everyone else, it was that simple. The stat system was [B]not[/B'] a parameter of excellence, nor did it make any of the time spent planning less important, because you didn't spend that much time on stats. You pumped dex to max block (subtracting item stat points), pumped strength to match your gear requirements, and the rest into vit (or no block and all vit).
Obviously some time is required to put all that careful thought into practice. My point (which you totally failed to adress) was that time input past a certain, [B]low[/B], minimum should not be very important. What should be important is the careful thought that goes into planning a perfect character. My time input, as I said, was significantly less than many other players; the reason I destroyed them was planning and an understanding of game mechanics, not time spent.
The stat system [B]was[/B] a parameter of excellence. Everyone always says "oh all players just pumped vit and that was it". I respond that some players tried to do a reasonable stat distribution, and of those most failed at it. In all my public duel games, over the course of maybe 4 years, not once did I come by a barb with more than 5k health. [B]Not once[/B]. Tell me how if everyone was doing perfect stat distributions, nobody had my 7k? By giving everyone a perfect stat distribution, blizzard not only puts players who tried reasonable stat distributions on the level of the best planners; they put players who didn't even bother trying at that level.
Edit to italo:
Quote from "italofoca" »
And if you are truelly better then someone, just prove it with your SKILL, not by using other ppl's lack of time and patience to reroll their chars, ok ?
That's why I play smash bros, and I prove it all the god damn time. Don't lecture me about skill based games. Diablo 2 isn't one of them. Neither is the abomination WoW, for that matter. It's a game of planning and reasoned analysis.
By the way, the [B]reason[/B] I'm good at smash bros (an entirely skill based game) is because I have studied it carefully, watched the best play, etc. I didn't expect to be good effortlessly, which is what you've suggested.
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zsfh-maz of UsWest, 95 BvB king
"Because "half-assed" is not a "style"." - DragoonWraith, champion of character customization and legimitate art direction in D3
I'm actually shocked. My jaw literally dropped when I read that. How long did it take you to get rich enough to trade for whatever item you wanted? It took me maybe 2 months after I got the hang of trading. After that, by your logic, I would have just wanted to quit. The ONLY thing that kept me playing for YEARS afterwards was the epic duels that I had with some of the best barbarians on UsWest. That, and owning countless (perpetual) noobs in pub duel games. The only reason I spent any time on WoW was the competition for the top of the damage meter, and the satisfaction of being on top more times than not. Getting new and awesome weapons was fun, but putting them to use in competition was the main (and non-transitory) benefit to having them.
First off, I never mentioned trading in the section you were responding to, so that has nothing to do with this (and so I also don't really know what you're so shocked about). I did forget to mention this, but I didn't really do any trading. I almost exclusively gathered items on my own. Also, if I had an excess of items, sometimes I would just make a new character that needed the stuff. To each his own, however. You liked PvP, I didn't, and that's fine. As far as WoW goes, again, you sought to deal out as much damage as you could in PvP or raiding, while I just enjoyed the process of killing bosses with my friends. While I liked getting new items in WoW, I was pretty content with what I had (mostly Tier 1, my playing was by and large before BC). I got a ton of satisfaction from downing that boss. I did not like PvP very much in WoW, but again to each his own.
Quote from "angelmaz" »
Obviously some time is required to put all that careful thought into practice. My point (which you totally failed to adress) was that time input past a certain, low, minimum should not be very important. What should be important is the careful thought that goes into planning a perfect character. My time input, as I said, was significantly less than many other players; the reason I destroyed them was planning and an understanding of game mechanics, not time spent.
I will address your point here then. It is my opinion that while a minimum amount of time is all that should be needed to grasp the core of the game and to be able to play it fairly competently, I think more time is necessary to master it to the point of being a great player. A point you failed to notice/address that I made was this: Let's not kid ourselves, there was so little planning time involved in Diablo II it was sad. You just looked up a build and BAM, you were done. Also, as I said, you can't really understand the game mechanics in an applicable manner unless you spend a chunk of time practicing them. Granted, in Diablo II, that didn't necessarily take a long time either, but that's not true of a lot of games out there.
Quote from "angelmaz" »
The stat system was a parameter of excellence. Everyone always says "oh all players just pumped vit and that was it". I respond that some players tried to do a reasonable stat distribution, and of those most failed at it. In all my public duel games, over the course of maybe 4 years, not once did I come by a barb with more than 5k health. Not once. Tell me how if everyone was doing perfect stat distributions anyone, nobody had my 7k? By giving everyone a perfect stat distribution, blizzard not only puts players who tried reasonable stat distributions on the level of the best planners; they put players who didn't even bother trying at that level.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree because I could never call the attribute system in Diablo II anything but a nuisance. That's not to say stats had no effect, because they obviously did, but as much as you'd like to argue that your careful planning was what got you so much health, you are not representative of the population. I've seen plenty of people with over 5k health: the barbs and druids who pumped a lot more vit over dex; life in lue of block. It was also those with insane gear. For you to reach 7k health, you would need top gear and a lot of vit, and that is that. Besides, what do you defined as a reasonable stat distribution. The reason people say everyone just pumps this or pumps that is because that is what works. You want max block? You gotta pump dex. You want high life? You have to pump vit. No one pumped into energy because it was worthless, and there was pretty much no point in pumping strength beyond what your gear needed (I think any knowledgable player would agree that the benefit to getting more life outweight the benefit of a bit more damage from higher strength).
Quote from "angelmaz" »
That's why I play smash bros, and I prove it all the god damn time. Don't lecture me about skill based games. Diablo 2 isn't one of them. Neither is the abomination WoW, for that matter. It's a game of planning and reasoned analysis.
By the way, the reason I'm good at smash bros (an entirely skill based game) is because I have studied it carefully, watched the best play, etc. I didn't expect to be good effortlessly, which is what you've suggested.
Diablo was a game of items and practice. What do you mean by reasoned analysis? Don't try and make the game sound more in depth or complicated than it was, because it wasn't. You got good items, did some research into how to counter such and such build and what to do when something arose, then practiced until you could effectively use it in actual combat. It's not enough to simply know that you need to do something to counter something else. You have to put in some work to develop the reaction time and practical know-how needed to use it. This is a simple example, but when I first started doing magic find runs off Mephisto, I knew that the best way to do it was to stand across the river and keep out of range of his spells while simultaneously making sure you can still hit him. I died a decent number of times until I was able to figure out what those ranges were, regardless of the fact that I did research ahead of time. As far as PvP goes, you could spend a bunch of time reading the kind of damage other peoples' skills do, what works against those skills, how to deal with pets and what not, but that doesn't mean you'll necessarily be able to recall it and put it into action quick enough unless you give it some practice. As far as Smash goes, I know plenty of very good players, and every single one of them would say that the biggest thing you need to become skilled at the game is practice. I know how the mechanics of Smash works, I know what sort of counters or attacks I should be using against certain characters, but I'm still mediocre at the game because I don't play very often.
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"Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will." -Thomas Carlyle
Diablo was a game of items and practice. What do you mean by reasoned analysis? Don't try and make the game sound more in depth or complicated than it was, because it wasn't. You got good items, did some research into how to counter such and such build and what to do when something arose, then practiced until you could effectively use it in actual combat. It's not enough to simply know that you need to do something to counter something else. You have to put in some work to develop the reaction time and practical know-how needed to use it. This is a simple example, but when I first started doing magic find runs off Mephisto, I knew that the best way to do it was to stand across the river and keep out of range of his spells while simultaneously making sure you can still hit him. I died a decent number of times until I was able to figure out what those ranges were, regardless of the fact that I did research ahead of time. As far as PvP goes, you could spend a bunch of time reading the kind of damage other peoples' skills do, what works against those skills, how to deal with pets and what not, but that doesn't mean you'll necessarily be able to recall it and put it into action quick enough unless you give it some practice. As far as Smash goes, I know plenty of very good players, and every single one of them would say that the biggest thing you need to become skilled at the game is practice. I know how the mechanics of Smash works, I know what sort of counters or attacks I should be using against certain characters, but I'm still mediocre at the game because I don't play very often.
Honestly I'd love to adress the rest of your post but I have two midterms this week and should be getting to studying. I will say that it's refreshing to argue with someone who isn't an idiot.
What I mean by reasoned analysis is this: choosing items/charms/skills/stat distributions based on your OWN understanding of the game, and not some guide's. For example, I was most active in 1.09-1.10, and quit just before 1.11 or whatever came out. After 09, every barbarian out there, every barbarian guide, was telling people to use steelrends for gloves. These gloves had some high strength bonus and some ED% or something. I didn't take those guides at face value; I went through every unique glove on the arreat summit site looking for something better. I stumbled on Dracul's grasp, with 25% open wounds and a lesser strength bonus. Because I actually understood the meaning of 25% open wounds versus 40 str and 20% ED (or whatever those numbers were), I was able to do some math and see which glove would make me the more effective BvBer. The clear winner was Dracul's, yet whatever forum I posted on or person I told, no one agreed, because no one had taken the time to do a [B]reasoned analysis [/B]of the item properties involved.
Fast forward to now, where every BvB guide tells the player to use Dracul's. Time has proven me right. Another example: angelic set amulet and rings. Everybody was so focused on damage, damage, damage. All the guides were advocating Mara's amulet for the plus skills, and a raven frost, and another ring I can't remember. I recognized that the angelic set amulet and rings gave a huge bonus to AR at high levels, weighed that bonus mathematically against the damage bonus from all other possible amulet/ring setups, and decided that the angelics were far superior. Again, time has proven me right.
The point is that these sorts of analyses are the thing that should separate great players from the masses. Diminishing the various parameters that players can tinker with, by definition, does just that.
As for smash bros: I'm not speaking from a casual perspective. I'm the undisputed 64 smash champion of my school (no, it isn't in south dakota). I can tell you that yes, practice is very, very important. But I got where I am from watching Isai the master play, seeing how he reacts to different situations, seeing how he combos people. There's the practice of just playing the game a lot, which is relatively useless after a point. Then there's the practice of deliberately studying the weights of every character, understanding exactly how each moves through the air at what damage %. There's doing combos over and over in different situations until they're perfect. And then there's putting all that into an actual battle and tweaking it to fit your opponent's style. Practice helps--but it can only do so much without some very focused analysis. You say that you understand game mechanics, but I doubt you know how to properly space a forward air fastfall jump forward air with pikachu, for example.
Quote from "slidrugtrani »
I guess we will have to agree to disagree because I could never call the attribute system in Diablo II anything but a nuisance. That's not to say stats had no effect, because they obviously did, but as much as you'd like to argue that your careful planning was what got you so much health, you are not representative of the population.[B] I've seen plenty of people with over 5k health: the barbs and druids who pumped a lot more vit over dex; life in lue of block. It was also those with insane gear.[/B'] For you to reach 7k health, you would need top gear and a lot of vit, and that is that. Besides, what do you defined as a reasonable stat distribution. The reason people say everyone just pumps this or pumps that is because that is what works. You want max block? You gotta pump dex. You want high life? You have to pump vit. No one pumped into energy because it was worthless, and there was pretty much no point in pumping strength beyond what your gear needed (I think any knowledgable player would agree that the benefit to getting more life outweight the benefit of a bit more damage from higher strength).
I do have to respond to this though. I hope you don't mean to suggest that I was bragging about 7k life without 75% block, because that is ridiculous. I didn't think I had to say that my barb had max block; what kind of idiot melee pvper didn't? About the insane gear...insane gear means a 415 botd instead of a 385. The difference is tiny. I never went for those "insane" items because of their absurd cost; I had a 15% DR dungo's with only 39 vit instead of 40, big deal. The build was what mattered. Also, I never said anything about druids, who can easily get over 10k health with oak sage and a proper build.
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zsfh-maz of UsWest, 95 BvB king
"Because "half-assed" is not a "style"." - DragoonWraith, champion of character customization and legimitate art direction in D3
yeah but the druid is one of those prime examples of where people obsess over the wrong numbers. hes supposed to be able to do a lot of damage and have a lot of life. in reality, even with top gear he does relatively low damage and although he has a lot of life, loses it quickly.
get max resists on hell, get 50% damage prevention, get max block, then start thinking about health. thats how i looked at it.
I don't like the complaints of 'no customization' because really, there isn't any in free stat allocation. I haven't made a character in YEARS that didn't follow the same formula: base energy, 65 str, dex for max block if you're going that route, rest in vitality. Explain how that is 'customization' and not repetition. Name the last time you pumped a stat that wasn't to meet item requirements or vitality.
This new system also has the added benefit of keeping the game more balanced. A barbarian in d2 could pump str and get some dex charms, and wear full angelic and full deaths with a hotspur and could clear the game all the way to the end of Nightmare difficulty, all starting at level 12.
There will be tons of character customization with the equippable runes alone. I know it will happen to me, I will see a crazy combination and ask 'how the hell did you do that?' and then try to top it. I can just imagine competitions to come up with the most badass and flashy combination of runes to spec a skill. Plus, the way you spec your skills will determine what kind of different items you wear.
Example: a Wizard specced to use a crazy magic missile will be wearing very different gear than one specced to use teleport as an offensive spell and different again to a disintegrator.
In diablo 2, your items are more or less limited to your skills. Hammerdins wear Enigma, Shako, Hoto HoZ. These are the optimal items for the build. A swordbarb uses Botd. A javazon uses Titans. Explain how that's variety when all characters are exact clones at varying levels?
I think it's brilliant and you'd have to be some sort of idiot to not realize this. Personally, i want to see the mature rating strictly enforced (preferably by death squads) because 'kids these days don't know shit.'
Honestly I'd love to adress the rest of your post but I have two midterms this week and should be getting to studying. I will say that it's refreshing to argue with someone who isn't an idiot.
Thank you sir, and the same to you.
Quote from "angelmaz" »
What I mean by reasoned analysis is this: choosing items/charms/skills/stat distributions based on your OWN understanding of the game, and not some guide's. For example, I was most active in 1.09-1.10, and quit just before 1.11 or whatever came out. After 09, every barbarian out there, every barbarian guide, was telling people to use steelrends for gloves. These gloves had some high strength bonus and some ED% or something. I didn't take those guides at face value; I went through every unique glove on the arreat summit site looking for something better. I stumbled on Dracul's grasp, with 25% open wounds and a lesser strength bonus. Because I actually understood the meaning of 25% open wounds versus 40 str and 20% ED (or whatever those numbers were), I was able to do some math and see which glove would make me the more effective BvBer. The clear winner was Dracul's, yet whatever forum I posted on or person I told, no one agreed, because no one had taken the time to do a reasoned analysis of the item properties involved.
Fast forward to now, where every BvB guide tells the player to use Dracul's. Time has proven me right. Another example: angelic set amulet and rings. Everybody was so focused on damage, damage, damage. All the guides were advocating Mara's amulet for the plus skills, and a raven frost, and another ring I can't remember. I recognized that the angelic set amulet and rings gave a huge bonus to AR at high levels, weighed that bonus mathematically against the damage bonus from all other possible amulet/ring setups, and decided that the angelics were far superior. Again, time has proven me right.
Unfortunately, even though this may have originally been the case when the game first came out, it quickly devolved into everyone using the same attribute and equipment build. I think a large part of this problem is the attribute system itself (not entirely, but a lot of it). Now, I don't mean to say that I think the new system will entirely fix this, and perhaps not at all, but I think that now that customization is based even more heavily on the items, which you now will depend entirely on for attribute differences, we should at least see more variation in the items people carry on their person. True enough, your studying did bring you to the conclusions everyone now reaches with a guide, but alas, time crippled the attribute system to being little more than a formality.
Quote from "angelmaz" »
The point is that these sorts of analyses are the thing that should separate great players from the masses. Diminishing the various parameters that players can tinker with, by definition, does just that.
Well, I'm not sure I will agree with this point, but I'm going to reserve this kind of judgment until I see the game itself. I still think there will be plenty of ways to distinguish oneself from the lesser masses (for one thing, I think this will require more skill in the actual combat).
Quote from "angelmaz" »
As for smash bros: I'm not speaking from a casual perspective. I'm the undisputed 64 smash champion of my school (no, it isn't in south dakota). I can tell you that yes, practice is very, very important. But I got where I am from watching Isai the master play, seeing how he reacts to different situations, seeing how he combos people. There's the practice of just playing the game a lot, which is relatively useless after a point. Then there's the practice of deliberately studying the weights of every character, understanding exactly how each moves through the air at what damage %. There's doing combos over and over in different situations until they're perfect. And then there's putting all that into an actual battle and tweaking it to fit your opponent's style. Practice helps--but it can only do so much without some very focused analysis. You say that you understand game mechanics, but I doubt you know how to properly space a forward air fastfall jump forward air with pikachu, for example.
See, but you just proved my point. You're studying of the mechanics was not just sitting there reading a block of text online. From what it sounds like, you had to actually go into the game and study this in real time. Perhaps just in practice mode, but even if you're not battling another, you're still in the game gaining actual experience through playing.
Quote from "angelmaz" »
I do have to respond to this though. I hope you don't mean to suggest that I was bragging about 7k life without 75% block, because that is ridiculous. I didn't think I had to say that my barb had max block; what kind of idiot melee pvper didn't? About the insane gear...insane gear means a 415 botd instead of a 385. The difference is tiny. I never went for those "insane" items because of their absurd cost; I had a 15% DR dungo's with only 39 vit instead of 40, big deal. The build was what mattered. Also, I never said anything about druids, who can easily get over 10k health with oak sage and a proper build.
The build mattered yes, but not as much as the gear. Everyone can have the same build; not everyone can have the same gear. I can have the exact same stats as you, exact same skills, know all the mechanics of the game, but if my gear isn't up to par, my ass will more often than not get handed to me. True, up to a point the difference is minimal, but if the players are of the same skill and build, that minimal difference is what will mean who wins and who dies. As to your point about the life, again, your build can only do so much and then the gear has to do the rest. Anyone else could have had all the same stats and skills, but the gear makes it.
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"Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will." -Thomas Carlyle
By the way, the reason I'm good at smash bros (an entirely skill based game) is because I have studied it carefully, watched the best play, etc. I didn't expect to be good effortlessly, which is what you've suggested.
I did not suggested that. I suggested that been good based at other ppl failure in the character building and in the lack of opportunity of those ppl fix their characters without have to restart from the begnning (wich is frustrating for most) makes you look like a coward u.u
Just think: What bad thing a respec can bring ?
Noobs getting the chance of become good without have to reroll ? How this can be bad if you gonna have more good persons with decent builds around - so more challenging pvp ?
And don't try to act cool telling you rock in game x boy =3 thats sounds pathetic
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"In time the hissing of her sanity
Faded out her voice and soiled her name
And like marked pages in a diary
Everything seemed clean that is unstained
The incoherent talk of ordinary days
Why would we really need to live?
Decide what is clear and what's within a haze
What you should take and what to give" - Opeth
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To your first point, I think that's a load of crap. Every single person I personally knew who played barely did any PvP. The PvP system in Diablo II was crap, and it got boring/frustrating after about 15 minutes (in my opinion). Not to say that my friends and I are representative of the population, but I bet a very large group of people played for the PvM aspect. Why do people spend hours and hours in MMOs raiding/farming bosses? Not so much to be able to kill better bosses faster, but because of the satisfaction in finding a new, awesome weapon or replacing that piece of crap chest piece you've had since 10 levels back. I loved finding items in Diablo II for the joy of finding items, not for PvP.
To your second point, of course it's a matter of time spent. You can study the game all you want, but if you don't spend a good amount of time putting it into practice, it doesn't meant squat. Moreover, I can't believe you're making such an argument over the attribute system. The attribute didn't add one iota of strategy to that game. You either did one of two or three things or your character blew and got owned by everyone else, it was that simple. The stat system was not a parameter of excellence, nor did it make any of the time spent planning less important, because you didn't spend that much time on stats. You pumped dex to max block (subtracting item stat points), pumped strength to match your gear requirements, and the rest into vit (or no block and all vit).
"Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will."
-Thomas Carlyle
Fools like myself ? Tired of been owned by someone like you ?
HEUheuEHUehUEHuehUEHuehUEHuehUEHuehUEHuehuEHUehuE wtfh i never ever heard about you in D2 PvP
Careful thought and preparation are NOT read 220 guides in the internet. And know how best to play the game are not something that must be learned by frustrating experience of remaking a character. It must be learned by loosing a PVP then have to think about why I lost, and then i can change my strategy by respecing and change my gear. You're the fool if you think that read a FAQ and put your points right in a build is strategy or preparation.
You didn't even have played a game with those elements in your life if you think that.
The most competitive RPG games are all adepts of respecing. WoW, WAR and Guild Wars.
Blizz learn that respec is something good, something that gives chances to new players and unlimited strategys to the veterans. But i understand why you don't understand that. It's because you're stucked in time, in the ages were D2 were any reference of online pvp.
And if you are truelly better then someone, just prove it with your SKILL, not by using other ppl's lack of time and patience to reroll their chars, ok ?
I'm actually shocked. My jaw literally dropped when I read that. How long did it take you to get rich enough to trade for whatever item you wanted? It took me maybe 2 months after I got the hang of trading. After that, by your logic, I would have just wanted to quit. The ONLY thing that kept me playing for YEARS afterwards was the epic duels that I had with some of the best barbarians on UsWest. That, and owning countless (perpetual) noobs in pub duel games. The only reason I spent any time on WoW was the competition for the top of the damage meter, and the satisfaction of being on top more times than not. Getting new and awesome weapons was fun, but putting them to use in competition was the main (and non-transitory) benefit to having them.
Obviously some time is required to put all that careful thought into practice. My point (which you totally failed to adress) was that time input past a certain, [B]low[/B], minimum should not be very important. What should be important is the careful thought that goes into planning a perfect character. My time input, as I said, was significantly less than many other players; the reason I destroyed them was planning and an understanding of game mechanics, not time spent.
The stat system [B]was[/B] a parameter of excellence. Everyone always says "oh all players just pumped vit and that was it". I respond that some players tried to do a reasonable stat distribution, and of those most failed at it. In all my public duel games, over the course of maybe 4 years, not once did I come by a barb with more than 5k health. [B]Not once[/B]. Tell me how if everyone was doing perfect stat distributions, nobody had my 7k? By giving everyone a perfect stat distribution, blizzard not only puts players who tried reasonable stat distributions on the level of the best planners; they put players who didn't even bother trying at that level.
Edit to italo:
That's why I play smash bros, and I prove it all the god damn time. Don't lecture me about skill based games. Diablo 2 isn't one of them. Neither is the abomination WoW, for that matter. It's a game of planning and reasoned analysis.
By the way, the [B]reason[/B] I'm good at smash bros (an entirely skill based game) is because I have studied it carefully, watched the best play, etc. I didn't expect to be good effortlessly, which is what you've suggested.
"Because "half-assed" is not a "style"." - DragoonWraith, champion of character customization and legimitate art direction in D3
First off, I never mentioned trading in the section you were responding to, so that has nothing to do with this (and so I also don't really know what you're so shocked about). I did forget to mention this, but I didn't really do any trading. I almost exclusively gathered items on my own. Also, if I had an excess of items, sometimes I would just make a new character that needed the stuff. To each his own, however. You liked PvP, I didn't, and that's fine. As far as WoW goes, again, you sought to deal out as much damage as you could in PvP or raiding, while I just enjoyed the process of killing bosses with my friends. While I liked getting new items in WoW, I was pretty content with what I had (mostly Tier 1, my playing was by and large before BC). I got a ton of satisfaction from downing that boss. I did not like PvP very much in WoW, but again to each his own.
I will address your point here then. It is my opinion that while a minimum amount of time is all that should be needed to grasp the core of the game and to be able to play it fairly competently, I think more time is necessary to master it to the point of being a great player. A point you failed to notice/address that I made was this: Let's not kid ourselves, there was so little planning time involved in Diablo II it was sad. You just looked up a build and BAM, you were done. Also, as I said, you can't really understand the game mechanics in an applicable manner unless you spend a chunk of time practicing them. Granted, in Diablo II, that didn't necessarily take a long time either, but that's not true of a lot of games out there.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree because I could never call the attribute system in Diablo II anything but a nuisance. That's not to say stats had no effect, because they obviously did, but as much as you'd like to argue that your careful planning was what got you so much health, you are not representative of the population. I've seen plenty of people with over 5k health: the barbs and druids who pumped a lot more vit over dex; life in lue of block. It was also those with insane gear. For you to reach 7k health, you would need top gear and a lot of vit, and that is that. Besides, what do you defined as a reasonable stat distribution. The reason people say everyone just pumps this or pumps that is because that is what works. You want max block? You gotta pump dex. You want high life? You have to pump vit. No one pumped into energy because it was worthless, and there was pretty much no point in pumping strength beyond what your gear needed (I think any knowledgable player would agree that the benefit to getting more life outweight the benefit of a bit more damage from higher strength).
Diablo was a game of items and practice. What do you mean by reasoned analysis? Don't try and make the game sound more in depth or complicated than it was, because it wasn't. You got good items, did some research into how to counter such and such build and what to do when something arose, then practiced until you could effectively use it in actual combat. It's not enough to simply know that you need to do something to counter something else. You have to put in some work to develop the reaction time and practical know-how needed to use it. This is a simple example, but when I first started doing magic find runs off Mephisto, I knew that the best way to do it was to stand across the river and keep out of range of his spells while simultaneously making sure you can still hit him. I died a decent number of times until I was able to figure out what those ranges were, regardless of the fact that I did research ahead of time. As far as PvP goes, you could spend a bunch of time reading the kind of damage other peoples' skills do, what works against those skills, how to deal with pets and what not, but that doesn't mean you'll necessarily be able to recall it and put it into action quick enough unless you give it some practice. As far as Smash goes, I know plenty of very good players, and every single one of them would say that the biggest thing you need to become skilled at the game is practice. I know how the mechanics of Smash works, I know what sort of counters or attacks I should be using against certain characters, but I'm still mediocre at the game because I don't play very often.
"Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will."
-Thomas Carlyle
Honestly I'd love to adress the rest of your post but I have two midterms this week and should be getting to studying. I will say that it's refreshing to argue with someone who isn't an idiot.
What I mean by reasoned analysis is this: choosing items/charms/skills/stat distributions based on your OWN understanding of the game, and not some guide's. For example, I was most active in 1.09-1.10, and quit just before 1.11 or whatever came out. After 09, every barbarian out there, every barbarian guide, was telling people to use steelrends for gloves. These gloves had some high strength bonus and some ED% or something. I didn't take those guides at face value; I went through every unique glove on the arreat summit site looking for something better. I stumbled on Dracul's grasp, with 25% open wounds and a lesser strength bonus. Because I actually understood the meaning of 25% open wounds versus 40 str and 20% ED (or whatever those numbers were), I was able to do some math and see which glove would make me the more effective BvBer. The clear winner was Dracul's, yet whatever forum I posted on or person I told, no one agreed, because no one had taken the time to do a [B]reasoned analysis [/B]of the item properties involved.
Fast forward to now, where every BvB guide tells the player to use Dracul's. Time has proven me right. Another example: angelic set amulet and rings. Everybody was so focused on damage, damage, damage. All the guides were advocating Mara's amulet for the plus skills, and a raven frost, and another ring I can't remember. I recognized that the angelic set amulet and rings gave a huge bonus to AR at high levels, weighed that bonus mathematically against the damage bonus from all other possible amulet/ring setups, and decided that the angelics were far superior. Again, time has proven me right.
The point is that these sorts of analyses are the thing that should separate great players from the masses. Diminishing the various parameters that players can tinker with, by definition, does just that.
As for smash bros: I'm not speaking from a casual perspective. I'm the undisputed 64 smash champion of my school (no, it isn't in south dakota). I can tell you that yes, practice is very, very important. But I got where I am from watching Isai the master play, seeing how he reacts to different situations, seeing how he combos people. There's the practice of just playing the game a lot, which is relatively useless after a point. Then there's the practice of deliberately studying the weights of every character, understanding exactly how each moves through the air at what damage %. There's doing combos over and over in different situations until they're perfect. And then there's putting all that into an actual battle and tweaking it to fit your opponent's style. Practice helps--but it can only do so much without some very focused analysis. You say that you understand game mechanics, but I doubt you know how to properly space a forward air fastfall jump forward air with pikachu, for example.
I do have to respond to this though. I hope you don't mean to suggest that I was bragging about 7k life without 75% block, because that is ridiculous. I didn't think I had to say that my barb had max block; what kind of idiot melee pvper didn't? About the insane gear...insane gear means a 415 botd instead of a 385. The difference is tiny. I never went for those "insane" items because of their absurd cost; I had a 15% DR dungo's with only 39 vit instead of 40, big deal. The build was what mattered. Also, I never said anything about druids, who can easily get over 10k health with oak sage and a proper build.
"Because "half-assed" is not a "style"." - DragoonWraith, champion of character customization and legimitate art direction in D3
get max resists on hell, get 50% damage prevention, get max block, then start thinking about health. thats how i looked at it.
This new system also has the added benefit of keeping the game more balanced. A barbarian in d2 could pump str and get some dex charms, and wear full angelic and full deaths with a hotspur and could clear the game all the way to the end of Nightmare difficulty, all starting at level 12.
There will be tons of character customization with the equippable runes alone. I know it will happen to me, I will see a crazy combination and ask 'how the hell did you do that?' and then try to top it. I can just imagine competitions to come up with the most badass and flashy combination of runes to spec a skill. Plus, the way you spec your skills will determine what kind of different items you wear.
Example: a Wizard specced to use a crazy magic missile will be wearing very different gear than one specced to use teleport as an offensive spell and different again to a disintegrator.
In diablo 2, your items are more or less limited to your skills. Hammerdins wear Enigma, Shako, Hoto HoZ. These are the optimal items for the build. A swordbarb uses Botd. A javazon uses Titans. Explain how that's variety when all characters are exact clones at varying levels?
I think it's brilliant and you'd have to be some sort of idiot to not realize this. Personally, i want to see the mature rating strictly enforced (preferably by death squads) because 'kids these days don't know shit.'
Blatently is the word you want. No biggie, you'll get it next time.
Vote:
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17929
Thank you sir, and the same to you.
Unfortunately, even though this may have originally been the case when the game first came out, it quickly devolved into everyone using the same attribute and equipment build. I think a large part of this problem is the attribute system itself (not entirely, but a lot of it). Now, I don't mean to say that I think the new system will entirely fix this, and perhaps not at all, but I think that now that customization is based even more heavily on the items, which you now will depend entirely on for attribute differences, we should at least see more variation in the items people carry on their person. True enough, your studying did bring you to the conclusions everyone now reaches with a guide, but alas, time crippled the attribute system to being little more than a formality.
Well, I'm not sure I will agree with this point, but I'm going to reserve this kind of judgment until I see the game itself. I still think there will be plenty of ways to distinguish oneself from the lesser masses (for one thing, I think this will require more skill in the actual combat).
See, but you just proved my point. You're studying of the mechanics was not just sitting there reading a block of text online. From what it sounds like, you had to actually go into the game and study this in real time. Perhaps just in practice mode, but even if you're not battling another, you're still in the game gaining actual experience through playing.
The build mattered yes, but not as much as the gear. Everyone can have the same build; not everyone can have the same gear. I can have the exact same stats as you, exact same skills, know all the mechanics of the game, but if my gear isn't up to par, my ass will more often than not get handed to me. True, up to a point the difference is minimal, but if the players are of the same skill and build, that minimal difference is what will mean who wins and who dies. As to your point about the life, again, your build can only do so much and then the gear has to do the rest. Anyone else could have had all the same stats and skills, but the gear makes it.
"Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will."
-Thomas Carlyle
Look it up before you flame over word choice next time, jackass. Spelling your replacement word correctly might be helpful too, rofl.
I'll get back to ya later sil, just had to respond to the twerp.
"Because "half-assed" is not a "style"." - DragoonWraith, champion of character customization and legimitate art direction in D3
I did not suggested that. I suggested that been good based at other ppl failure in the character building and in the lack of opportunity of those ppl fix their characters without have to restart from the begnning (wich is frustrating for most) makes you look like a coward u.u
Just think: What bad thing a respec can bring ?
Noobs getting the chance of become good without have to reroll ? How this can be bad if you gonna have more good persons with decent builds around - so more challenging pvp ?
And don't try to act cool telling you rock in game x boy =3 thats sounds pathetic