I think we would all agree that gold can fluctuate, but it's easy to understand. As Daemaro said, you can just say "Oh, this staff is worth around 500 gold now" and that's simple. I don't have an issue with fluctuation per se, but when it involves an economy based on items, it is impossible to intuitively figure out what is worth what.
Aside from that, while I am not for simplifying the game into the ground, gold is more intuitive than an item-based economy. I have played the Diablo series off and on for long periods since it began, and yet every time I return to the game, I haven't the faintest clue of what is worth what and how I get this and that. It's such a pain in the ass.
I don't think gold is dropped by chance. I would guess that pretty much all monsters would drop gold, or a set group of monsters would drop gold (perhaps beasts wouldn't). What would vary would be the amount of gold dropped.
Players will still grind for items, but by eliminating an item-for-item system, it standardizes the economy. Runes were sort of the standard, but again, they were dropped totally by chance which I think is a poor way of running the economy.
EDIT: As far as control goes, there is just as much control as with runes. Players will decide how much gold an item is worth, relative to how many or how few of that particular piece of equipment is on the auction house combined with how useful/desirable it is.
I personally found D2's economy to be one of the shittiest of any game I played. Anyone who thinks that the item economy didn't just come down a grindfest like a gold economy is fooling themselves. How did you get the items to trade? You got magic find items (by grinding), and then you did hundreds of magic find runs until you found some good stuff to start trading with. You pretty much have to perpetually do magic find runs in order to trade in D2, and it was a waste of time. Not saying grinding for gold is far superior, but I think an economy based on chance is ridiculous. At least with gold, it's a fair playing field because everyone can get it just as easily as the next guy. I found it extremely obnoxious that I had to get gear to trade to get gear. What the hell kind of system is that?
I think there needs to be both optional and required gold sinks to make gold useful. More importantly, however, I am totally for an auction house. I could care less that it was in WoW, and I think anyone who bitches about such an idea because it was in another game is being childish. I think it is a great system. The only way for an auction house to work, obviously, is A.There are required gold sinks or B. You can't trade item for item and can ONLY get items with gold on the auction house. I'm not entirely convinced that B isn't such a bad choice. In fact, why not go for C.All of the above. Give some gold sinks like skill resets, heavy repairs, etc., and make it so you can only trade for items with gold.
This statement is illogical, and in fact an oxymoron. An oxymoron is a statement that contradicts itself. You state that big selling games imply that they have to listen to fan feedback. This would only be true if listening to fan feedback were the only way to make a big selling game.
Thus, you are implying that listening to fan feedback is the only way to make a big selling game. This would mean it is impossible to make big profits on a game that was released with a closed beta with no community feedback. Diablo 1 was one such game and it clearly proves your point wrong.
You may say that I am nitpicking -- that they did get some feedback, and I'm sure they did...from friends, co-workers, or a closed beta group...but this topic was specifically referring to "fan feedback" (that means people on forums, etc, not beta testers) and you answered my question "do they listen to fan feedback" as "yes, to some degree."
I apologize for my mechanical nature to be precise in correcting you, but you should be more precise about what you say..
Mahamoti, I applaud your attempt to make yourself look intelligent, but an oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two contradictory terms. What he said cannot be considered oxymoronic in the least. Depending on what we're talking about, inaccurate perhaps, but not oxymoronic. What he statement often does apply to (to a large extent I would say), is sequals, which is what we're talking about here.
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.
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.
As far as I'm concerned, the Wizard is a new character. Of course they are going to put in a caster class of some sort, that's a given. Sure, some of the skills might be similar to Diablo II (chain lightning, teleport, etc.) but if you consider the lore of the game, that makes sense. What we have here is essentially a rogue caster who learned some of the skills of the sorceress we saw in Diablo II, but was not satisfied with what that magical path could offer, and so moved over to more dangerous and risky magics. From what I've seen of the Wizard, it's a different enough class to make me happy.
I'm very happy with what I've seen. I didn't have any problem with the bright colors and environments that we saw originally, and now that we have seen some of the dark stuff we will encounter later, I like it even more. There is such a huge contrast between the two environments that, for me at least, it will be far more effective at creating a dark, moody feel and immersing me in the game.
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).
This doesn't change the fact that every maxed Wizard will be using the same gear because it's the best and all of them can.
They should have focused on making the stats more important instead of removing the ability to choose. I think they will be sadly disappointed when they find out they haven't done anything to improve the uniqueness of characters from player to player.
I actually laughed when I read this. It was the exact same way in Diablo II. Everyone who shared your build pretty much shared the exact same gear if they could afford it. The attribute didn't work at all towards preventing this. Basically, the only difference between Diablo II's system and the new one is that I no longer have to spend the energy to physically click on that strength button when I level up. Besides, I think this system will allow for far more unique characters, especially with the runes. As far as I'm concerned, having 20 more strength then another Wizard of the same build is not really unique (or at least not at a meaningful level).
Someone suggested, as an answer to one of my previous posts, that they ought to fix the system instead of removing it. How the heck would you even do that? You really can't because the system is inherently broken. It's not a bad system necessarily because Blizzard designed it poorly, but rather as a side effect of it being an attribute system. If you have an attribute system in conjunction with a skill system like in Diablo II, you will always run into the same problems: Everyone will use the same few builds for each character, and each build will always have the exact same stats, skills, and gear (so long as it can be afforded).
I didn't bother reading all the posts here, but I'll just give my 2 cents:
The attribute system in Diablo II was a joke. For any build, you pretty much had to do stats the exact same way (accounting for certain pieces of gear giving +to stats of course) or else you sucked. By and large, most builds had the exact same stat distribution: Enough strength for gear, nothing in energy, and either high enough dex for max block and the rest in vit, or just pump vit. There were a few builds here and there that diverted from this a little bit, but not very much. I've been playing the Diablo franchise almost since the very beginning (I think I started Diablo about a year after it came out), and I couldn't care less about the removal of attribute points. As far as I'm concerned, they were little more than a nuisance. I much prefer the idea of character customization being more heavily based on items, rune combinations, etc. Like it was said, attribute points gave the illusion of customization; everyone pretty much had the same stats.
Also, as far as not having stat requirements for items, that's going to be fixed with level requirements (for the most part). If we're going to talk on more realistic terms, even a level one barbarian should be strong enough for a large axe. As long as level one characters aren't wielding a bunch of powerful uniques, it doesn't bother me.
Perhaps I missed it, but i don't think it said there would be no MF besides shrines. I would presume you still can get it from gear, but perhaps you also can get a shrine that...I don't know, doubles it for a short time or something.
The only thing I liked about the old tetris system was that the items were in higher detail than other mmos that used the one-item-one-square system. Otherwise, I found it to be little more than a nuisance, having to constantly re-adjust crap to get more items in. Now, if they put in some sort of auto-arrange button (I've played a few games with tetris inventories that had such a button), that would be nice.
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EDIT: As far as control goes, there is just as much control as with runes. Players will decide how much gold an item is worth, relative to how many or how few of that particular piece of equipment is on the auction house combined with how useful/desirable it is.
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I think there needs to be both optional and required gold sinks to make gold useful. More importantly, however, I am totally for an auction house. I could care less that it was in WoW, and I think anyone who bitches about such an idea because it was in another game is being childish. I think it is a great system. The only way for an auction house to work, obviously, is A. There are required gold sinks or B. You can't trade item for item and can ONLY get items with gold on the auction house. I'm not entirely convinced that B isn't such a bad choice. In fact, why not go for C. All of the above. Give some gold sinks like skill resets, heavy repairs, etc., and make it so you can only trade for items with gold.
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Mahamoti, I applaud your attempt to make yourself look intelligent, but an oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two contradictory terms. What he said cannot be considered oxymoronic in the least. Depending on what we're talking about, inaccurate perhaps, but not oxymoronic. What he statement often does apply to (to a large extent I would say), is sequals, which is what we're talking about here.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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I actually laughed when I read this. It was the exact same way in Diablo II. Everyone who shared your build pretty much shared the exact same gear if they could afford it. The attribute didn't work at all towards preventing this. Basically, the only difference between Diablo II's system and the new one is that I no longer have to spend the energy to physically click on that strength button when I level up. Besides, I think this system will allow for far more unique characters, especially with the runes. As far as I'm concerned, having 20 more strength then another Wizard of the same build is not really unique (or at least not at a meaningful level).
Someone suggested, as an answer to one of my previous posts, that they ought to fix the system instead of removing it. How the heck would you even do that? You really can't because the system is inherently broken. It's not a bad system necessarily because Blizzard designed it poorly, but rather as a side effect of it being an attribute system. If you have an attribute system in conjunction with a skill system like in Diablo II, you will always run into the same problems: Everyone will use the same few builds for each character, and each build will always have the exact same stats, skills, and gear (so long as it can be afforded).
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The attribute system in Diablo II was a joke. For any build, you pretty much had to do stats the exact same way (accounting for certain pieces of gear giving +to stats of course) or else you sucked. By and large, most builds had the exact same stat distribution: Enough strength for gear, nothing in energy, and either high enough dex for max block and the rest in vit, or just pump vit. There were a few builds here and there that diverted from this a little bit, but not very much. I've been playing the Diablo franchise almost since the very beginning (I think I started Diablo about a year after it came out), and I couldn't care less about the removal of attribute points. As far as I'm concerned, they were little more than a nuisance. I much prefer the idea of character customization being more heavily based on items, rune combinations, etc. Like it was said, attribute points gave the illusion of customization; everyone pretty much had the same stats.
Also, as far as not having stat requirements for items, that's going to be fixed with level requirements (for the most part). If we're going to talk on more realistic terms, even a level one barbarian should be strong enough for a large axe. As long as level one characters aren't wielding a bunch of powerful uniques, it doesn't bother me.
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