Please no "soooooo hard" difficulties, that's an automatic fail. Nobody is going to play that unless they can cheat to beat that area. Most of success in Diablo games is what level you are and what gear you have, there's a very limited area a player can play in until it becomes pointless, and, trust me, Blizzard know where that area is.
And as I've said before, don't make it difficult by making monsters hard to kill, make it difficult by it being hard to survive without a wide array of skills and tricks. So no immunes or monsters that take hours.
They've already said the game could be played solo. This means they are not aiming at limiting it to teamwork. Also means SP is still viable.
They should make hell difficulty finish on level 99. No need for a 4th at all. I'm quite against that idea, why would I want to repeat the whole game the 4th time? Just make the in-between bigger.
I totally agree most of the time i didnt even bother with nightmare and hell in D2 i just made another char, seriously why would i want to redo the game all over again with nothing new in it.
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[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]"The lord of murder shall perish, but in his death he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown in their footsteps"
-So sayeth the wise Alaundo
Please no "soooooo hard" difficulties, that's an automatic fail. Nobody is going to play that unless they can cheat to beat that area.
I disagree. Blizz wants to cater to all types of players, and I think they should make Hell, as hard as Hell for guys that wants a challenge. And, sorry but you state your assumptions as a fact, but in my opinion, if you're well geared, high-levelled, where else can you go?
But I agree, no 4th level just make 3 diverse levels if possible AND NO IMMUNES!
I think 3 is enough. I played through D2 with a Barbarian completely solo offline multilayer with no editors. I went through ALL of the quests and most of the random dungeons. When I beat Baal, I was lvl 32. I don't think that was a coincidence.
There is not a single challenge for a high leveled and good geared character.
Take off your gear and you'll have a challenge. Or play SP. Or play Hardcore. Or don't use cookie cutter builds. It'll create such a challenge you have no idea what happened.
A "soooo hard" difficulty implies to me that even with gear it's basically undoable, not that it's challenging in relation to... what? Which makes it not challenging in relation to gear characters. This can easily be remedied by making gear less bloated, btw... There's no need for a 4th difficulty. If all 3 were elongated you'd get your challenging part right in Hell.
Quote from "emilemil1;493315 »
The reward for playing a fourth difficulty would most likely be better gear or better gear drop chance. Like most people are saying, it is a level for end-game characters. There are many more ways to reward a player than experience.
Which would mean everyone would have to play in that difficulty to compete with the rest of battle.net, been there, done that...
Quote from "ZharTheMad"" »
but in my opinion, if you're well geared, high-levelled, where else can you go?
Probably start a new character? This is not WoW and there is no "end game".
There is not a single challenge for a high leveled and good geared character.
You also have to keep in mind that cheats and duping had a lot to do with creating this situation. We were not all supposed to be running around with botd, enigma, CoH, and CtA. Hell, there probably shouldn't have been a single Last Wish in existence even at this point (kinda makes you wonder what blizzard was thinking-expecting?) Hopefully blizzard will put the utmost effort into preventing cheats. This will prevent players from becoming spoiled, and continuously provide goals to strive for.
I know about that, but it is still possible to become so strong that nothing is a challenge.
If the game is built right is not possible. It's very easy for a developer to create something you can't handle, trust me. The reason it's not done is because most people do not want it. If someone wants to PvP but they need to do these uber levels they don't want to do there are going to be quite a few unhappy people out there.
As many people said, elimination of duping would make the game much harder, passing the weight from items onto skills/player skill. Perhaps we won't need a super hard difficulty (whatever that means) anyway.
I really don't see what you mean by "pro" in a hack&slash game. There's very little room for control in Diablo games outside of predefined things such as stats, skills, and gear. You'll just end up either with something incredibly boring or something undoable except some instances of insane luck. I don't want to see that.
If you want to prevent Baal runs, make repeated killing of bosses unfeasible and killing of intermediate mobs... feasible. If you make Baal the best thing to kill that's what player will do, that's just the simple truth and it's not really about maphack...
I have already said that it would be optional. Many games have insanely hard difficulties for ppl that wants them.
If it's optional it can't have gear that players will carry into other games... that makes it... unoptional.
Quote from "emilemil1" »
D3 will involve more control than D2.
And you know that how? The very genre of the game and the way it is built is taking control away from the player. Control is when a player with bad gear can beat a player with good gear without extensive trouble.
Partial immunes aren't exactly immunes per se, are they?
Quote from "emilemil1" »
There ya go.
It doesn't say anything that's going to give control to the player except keyboard casting (which should have been present in DII, to be honest, or at least added later). Did they change the movement system? No. It's still left click post-move. Did they remove the whole casting-stops-the-player or zealing-puts-player-into-unbreakable-sequence-loop? Well, we'll probably not have zeal anymore, but generally I doubt they'll stop freezing the player every time he casts something. This would make sense if 1 spell had some devastating effect but more often than not it really doesn't, 15 spells do. Combat would be much more interesting if we didn't have to freeze every time. Then we could move freely and utilize spells as needed instead of calculating the spots we can stand at for 1 second to cast a weak spell.
If you put a newb against someone that have been playing D2 for a long time in a PvP duel eith the exact same gear, who wins? The more experienced player. Just because the game is easy to learn doesn't mean that there is no difference in skill between players.
In a game with a learning curves as small as Diablo's there really isn't much of a difference. A newb will always lose to a long-time player, that honestly has nothing to do with skill or the game. Newness is a certain condition, and it's less about skill more about not knowing some details, exploits, etc. This phase is passed quickly. After that, all players are skillwise essentially the same. You don't spend a few months learning how to headshot or aim or w/e in Diablo games. It's not really designed for PvP which is why I am against the whole "super hard difficulty" idea because that doesn't fit in a game which relies mostly on gear and skills.
Try to play through the game with a thorns/vengeance pally. If the game was about control that wouldn't be a problem in a PvE situation.
On the other hand, guy with uber gear > guy with meh gear almost 99% of the time. Whereas in FPS, or control-geared Hack&Slashes like Nox, the opposite can happen pretty often. Take, for instance, FPS Huxley. There is gear in there and stuff but new people with bad gear beat older people with level 30 gear all the time.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]"The lord of murder shall perish, but in his death he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown in their footsteps"
-So sayeth the wise Alaundo
Interesting.....
But, I still say Do away with immunes.
Or at least make them highly resistant but not Immortal against any specific attack.
I really look forward to see'ing what Blizzard will do.
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There are many other ways to offer challenges than just adding more difficulties.
The quest system Blizz seem to focus on in D3 could be one such option.
Imagine a quest involving a specific demon boss. You get to it, kill it... but it respawns instantly, stronger than before. Kill it again, same thing happens. This keeps on until either 1) you die 2) you run away from the fight.
The longer you survived the better reward (which could either be chance for better items dropped or simply more items dropped - depends on temperament, having a higher chance to get the same drops as everyone else, but not better gear than everyone else could be a viable option for very hard content - although in a game where trading is a major part its probably not an issue in the first place to offer better rewards for harder challenges).
Thats just one possible option, but with some imagination they should be able to offer challenges for everyone without resorting to having 4, 5 or 6 difficulties which would just represent mindless repeated content (even if Diablo is all about mindless repeated content :D).
Or to build upon Uber Diablo from D2, maybe the chance to get random quests versions of all the bosses in the game, this time just as an 'uber' version with higher stats, new abilities etc. By making it random it would be less farmable and also send people do different bosses instead of doing the same over and over.
That would be nice with the random bosses but it wouldent fit into the story too well.
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[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]"The lord of murder shall perish, but in his death he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown in their footsteps"
-So sayeth the wise Alaundo
Wouldnt see it as part of the storyline, but rather 'end game' after you got through the campaign. Not like killing Meph 10000 times fit the storyline either
It would be pretty sweet if they added a new difficulty level (4th level), but did something to really distinguish it from the others. The changes could make it such that completing the 4th level became sort of like the ultimate quest accomplishment. For instance:
-The 4th level would be insanely difficult, and completing it would require insanely godly equipment (4th level items). -The insanely godly equipment can drop in Hell difficulty and in the 4th level, however, it can only be used in the 4th level. (Cannot be equipped in normal, NM, Hell). -The insanely godly equipment is bound to the account when picked up. -The 4th level is single player only.
This would make it so that in order for a player to complete the 4th level, he/she would have to be equipped with 4th level items that they found themselves (prevent a person from buying their way through it), and making it single player would eliminate rushing. It would be interesting because, unless you got lucky, the types of 4th level items that you found would dictate which type of character you had to create to attempt 4th level. They could have a secondary ladder system indicating how far along various people are in 4th level difficulty. And once you complete 4th level, you get the title "God" or "Goddess".
Its a good idea but why single player only? Ok, the 4th level items have to be self found and they are bound when picked up... But why not make this a Battle.net feature also?
In a game with a learning curves as small as Diablo's there really isn't much of a difference. A newb will always lose to a long-time player, that honestly has nothing to do with skill or the game. Newness is a certain condition, and it's less about skill more about not knowing some details, exploits, etc.
I totally disagree with you this time :/
Knowing details/explots IS a skill. What you can read in ANY guides, what you can find in ANY FAQs are not even close to what one really must know to master D2's PvP. Play PvP with cookie cuters are only viable if you only pvp with noob-avarage players.
Also I've so many times beated full builds characters when i was using magic/rares just for the sake of the challenge. Also I've lost so many times to ppl with equal or worse gear then me...
And Diablo 2 totally lacks a good challenge in PvE/MP. Every game needs a good challenge or it will die really fast (at least for me).
Lets not start about what makes skill in D2 PvP, because if any games got the most broken and stupid PvP, its D2, but thats my opinion. I don't doubt it takes a certain level of skills, but anyway.
PvE in a game like D2 can only take so much challenge. Because what is challenge? They are already making it so the characters can use multiple different skills more easily, and without abundant use of potions we can already expect a certain challenge.
But what else? In the end, you can get through something, or you can't. If I can't, it will most likely be a gear issue. Of course, skill can overcome a certain lack of gear, even in PvE, so there is always that.
So what can really provide a challenge in PvE in a game like Diablo? I'm open here, I just don't really know what.
In the end, you can get through something, or you can't. If I can't, it will most likely be a gear issue.
Don't make crazy gear.
I know, insane idea, Blizzard will never adopt it, etc. But it works pretty well in games that keep the gear in check. Don't put insanely powerful gear into the game. Don't make the uber rare gear 10 times better than the common stuff. Keep the lvl 75 (or whatever the max level req is) stuff all very similar in power. Then it's going to come down to your build, execution, and teamwork where relevant to get past something rather than having done a million boss runs.
I don't think it's even so much just challenge in Diablo III that would make PvE fun. It's making it interesting to go through that would, too. I mean, running through the Spider Forest, Black Marsh, and Flayer Jungle, about a third of Act III in Diablo II, most of it was identical in scenery and monsters, bland in color, and unrewarding as far as drops and experience, so I hardly ever go through there, anymore.
Challenges, well... From my own standpoint, a major challenge from PvM isn't so much the monsters as having item goals to reach, things I want to find. Yes, I can get them through trading, but it's more often than not more expensive that route, which isn't economically feasible for me. Now, I'm not saying that this should be identical in Diablo III, but if a good challenge is not here, especially in the end game, then I don't know how I would enjoy item collecting. There were things they could have done better with it in Diablo II, but I still enjoyed the hunt.
(For instance, I see a lot of people saying that end-game gear should essentially just be handed to you as you advance through the game- this would, I believe, mostly erase any need to go item hunting in the end-game, and then we'd need other goals... Since items are a large part of the Diablo franchise, I don't completely agree with that notion.)
Don't make crazy gear.
I know, insane idea, Blizzard will never adopt it, etc. But it works pretty well in games that keep the gear in check. Don't put insanely powerful gear into the game. Don't make the uber rare gear 10 times better than the common stuff. Keep the lvl 75 (or whatever the max level req is) stuff all very similar in power. Then it's going to come down to your build, execution, and teamwork where relevant to get past something rather than having done a million boss runs.
I disagree. Keep making the uber gear, it's fun to get and fun to use. Just make it actually rare and hard to get. Take a proactive attitude against external sites selling gear and devaluing it in in-game economies, bots milking everything for endless hours, hacks that allow things to be done infinity faster than intended, and make it so that there are many kinds of uber gear that is not universal for all, say, casters (like Shako's in Diablo II- basically everyone used them for casters because of what they were and how common, although I use rare circlets from time to time if they're the right stats.)
-So sayeth the wise Alaundo
I disagree. Blizz wants to cater to all types of players, and I think they should make Hell, as hard as Hell for guys that wants a challenge. And, sorry but you state your assumptions as a fact, but in my opinion, if you're well geared, high-levelled, where else can you go?
But I agree, no 4th level just make 3 diverse levels if possible AND NO IMMUNES!
Since 3x33=99
And there are 3 difficulties...
A "soooo hard" difficulty implies to me that even with gear it's basically undoable, not that it's challenging in relation to... what? Which makes it not challenging in relation to gear characters. This can easily be remedied by making gear less bloated, btw... There's no need for a 4th difficulty. If all 3 were elongated you'd get your challenging part right in Hell.
Which would mean everyone would have to play in that difficulty to compete with the rest of battle.net, been there, done that... Probably start a new character? This is not WoW and there is no "end game".
Hopefully blizzard will put the utmost effort into preventing cheats. This will prevent players from becoming spoiled, and continuously provide goals to strive for.
As many people said, elimination of duping would make the game much harder, passing the weight from items onto skills/player skill. Perhaps we won't need a super hard difficulty (whatever that means) anyway.
I really don't see what you mean by "pro" in a hack&slash game. There's very little room for control in Diablo games outside of predefined things such as stats, skills, and gear. You'll just end up either with something incredibly boring or something undoable except some instances of insane luck. I don't want to see that.
If you want to prevent Baal runs, make repeated killing of bosses unfeasible and killing of intermediate mobs... feasible. If you make Baal the best thing to kill that's what player will do, that's just the simple truth and it's not really about maphack...
Battle not with monsters lest you become one.
And you know that how? The very genre of the game and the way it is built is taking control away from the player. Control is when a player with bad gear can beat a player with good gear without extensive trouble.
It doesn't say anything that's going to give control to the player except keyboard casting (which should have been present in DII, to be honest, or at least added later). Did they change the movement system? No. It's still left click post-move. Did they remove the whole casting-stops-the-player or zealing-puts-player-into-unbreakable-sequence-loop? Well, we'll probably not have zeal anymore, but generally I doubt they'll stop freezing the player every time he casts something. This would make sense if 1 spell had some devastating effect but more often than not it really doesn't, 15 spells do. Combat would be much more interesting if we didn't have to freeze every time. Then we could move freely and utilize spells as needed instead of calculating the spots we can stand at for 1 second to cast a weak spell.
Try to play through the game with a thorns/vengeance pally. If the game was about control that wouldn't be a problem in a PvE situation.
On the other hand, guy with uber gear > guy with meh gear almost 99% of the time. Whereas in FPS, or control-geared Hack&Slashes like Nox, the opposite can happen pretty often. Take, for instance, FPS Huxley. There is gear in there and stuff but new people with bad gear beat older people with level 30 gear all the time.
-So sayeth the wise Alaundo
But, I still say Do away with immunes.
Or at least make them highly resistant but not Immortal against any specific attack.
I really look forward to see'ing what Blizzard will do.
Or else!!! ̿ ̿̿’̿’\̵͇̿̿\з==(•̪●)==ε/̵͇̿̿/’̿’̿ ̿ ̿̿
The quest system Blizz seem to focus on in D3 could be one such option.
Imagine a quest involving a specific demon boss. You get to it, kill it... but it respawns instantly, stronger than before. Kill it again, same thing happens. This keeps on until either 1) you die 2) you run away from the fight.
The longer you survived the better reward (which could either be chance for better items dropped or simply more items dropped - depends on temperament, having a higher chance to get the same drops as everyone else, but not better gear than everyone else could be a viable option for very hard content - although in a game where trading is a major part its probably not an issue in the first place to offer better rewards for harder challenges).
Thats just one possible option, but with some imagination they should be able to offer challenges for everyone without resorting to having 4, 5 or 6 difficulties which would just represent mindless repeated content (even if Diablo is all about mindless repeated content :D).
Or to build upon Uber Diablo from D2, maybe the chance to get random quests versions of all the bosses in the game, this time just as an 'uber' version with higher stats, new abilities etc. By making it random it would be less farmable and also send people do different bosses instead of doing the same over and over.
-So sayeth the wise Alaundo
Its a good idea but why single player only? Ok, the 4th level items have to be self found and they are bound when picked up... But why not make this a Battle.net feature also?
I totally disagree with you this time :/
Knowing details/explots IS a skill. What you can read in ANY guides, what you can find in ANY FAQs are not even close to what one really must know to master D2's PvP. Play PvP with cookie cuters are only viable if you only pvp with noob-avarage players.
Also I've so many times beated full builds characters when i was using magic/rares just for the sake of the challenge. Also I've lost so many times to ppl with equal or worse gear then me...
And Diablo 2 totally lacks a good challenge in PvE/MP. Every game needs a good challenge or it will die really fast (at least for me).
PvE in a game like D2 can only take so much challenge. Because what is challenge? They are already making it so the characters can use multiple different skills more easily, and without abundant use of potions we can already expect a certain challenge.
But what else? In the end, you can get through something, or you can't. If I can't, it will most likely be a gear issue. Of course, skill can overcome a certain lack of gear, even in PvE, so there is always that.
So what can really provide a challenge in PvE in a game like Diablo? I'm open here, I just don't really know what.
Don't make crazy gear.
I know, insane idea, Blizzard will never adopt it, etc. But it works pretty well in games that keep the gear in check. Don't put insanely powerful gear into the game. Don't make the uber rare gear 10 times better than the common stuff. Keep the lvl 75 (or whatever the max level req is) stuff all very similar in power. Then it's going to come down to your build, execution, and teamwork where relevant to get past something rather than having done a million boss runs.
Challenges, well... From my own standpoint, a major challenge from PvM isn't so much the monsters as having item goals to reach, things I want to find. Yes, I can get them through trading, but it's more often than not more expensive that route, which isn't economically feasible for me. Now, I'm not saying that this should be identical in Diablo III, but if a good challenge is not here, especially in the end game, then I don't know how I would enjoy item collecting. There were things they could have done better with it in Diablo II, but I still enjoyed the hunt.
(For instance, I see a lot of people saying that end-game gear should essentially just be handed to you as you advance through the game- this would, I believe, mostly erase any need to go item hunting in the end-game, and then we'd need other goals... Since items are a large part of the Diablo franchise, I don't completely agree with that notion.)
I disagree. Keep making the uber gear, it's fun to get and fun to use. Just make it actually rare and hard to get. Take a proactive attitude against external sites selling gear and devaluing it in in-game economies, bots milking everything for endless hours, hacks that allow things to be done infinity faster than intended, and make it so that there are many kinds of uber gear that is not universal for all, say, casters (like Shako's in Diablo II- basically everyone used them for casters because of what they were and how common, although I use rare circlets from time to time if they're the right stats.)