I think their concept is basic, a direct damage + delayed area damage. It's just how they wished to portray it.
If they had better animation/effect on the pillar it'll probably be better. Like rather than a actual stone thing, a spiritual-ish white/blue energy pillar comes out of the ground with a quick thrust and sends whoever standing on it flying (moon physics style), and then explodes with a quick white flash (rather than crumbling stone) dealing area damage or even convert some enemy to your side (religious conversion).
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- hoboman27
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Member for 15 years, 9 months, and 18 days
Last active Tue, Nov, 6 2012 20:29:30
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Oct 1, 2011hoboman27 posted a message on DiabloCast: Episode XXVIIIDuring the diablocast, Kevin (I believe) shared his opinion on the skill swap.Posted in: News
I got to agree on the gold dump and back in town being a waste of time. But a limit will probably still be instituted.
Mainly because a lot of money will be involved. People will be farming in inferno, and it wont be long that some of them will figure out the class that can benefit from a easy/quick skill swap, perhaps even using a program to swap.
That will drive a lot of people to use those classes exclusively, and developers don't like that (as well as the 6 skill limit being broken), having one class making more money out of a system by exploiting a system mechanism. They may have to rebalance that character, which makes a lot of people unhappy, especially those people who dont farm.
So even if another player's playing habit has nothing to do with the rest of the players, blizzard will likely be there to make sure everyone's playing the game as they had intended, since the auction houses.
The current beta content available is way too easy and short for telling what player behaviours will be later down the road. But the game developers need to think a step ahead, its better to introduce a limitation at the start of the game and loosen it, than to let players get used to no limitation and introduce one later on.
Just a possible scenario, if a monk, either by himself or with a team, uses dash to get out of danger, and switches in and out of breath of heavens to heal. That practically gives the character 7 maxed skills if they decide to do so.
Just my 2 cents (im a hobo its all i've got) and please lets not start that debate here please. -
Oct 1, 2011hoboman27 posted a message on DiabloCast: Episode XXVIIIDuring the diablocast, Kevin (I believe) shared his opinion on the skill swap.Posted in: News
I got to agree on the gold dump and back in town being a waste of time. But a limit will probably still be instituted.
Mainly because a lot of money will be involved. People will be farming in inferno, and it wont be long that some of them will figure out the class that can benefit from a easy/quick skill swap, perhaps even using a program to swap.
That will drive a lot of people to use those classes exclusively, and developers don't like that (as well as the 6 skill limit be broken), having one class making more money out of a system by exploiting a system mechanism. They may have to rebalance that character, which makes a lot of people unhappy, especially those people who dont farm.
The current beta content available is way too easy and short for telling what player behaviours will be later down the road. But the game developers need to think a step ahead, its better to introduce a limitation at the start of the game and loosen it, than to let players get used to no limitation and introduce one later on.
Just a possible scenario, if a monk, either by himself or with a team, uses dash to get out of danger, and switches in and out of breath of heavens to heal. That practically gives the character 7 maxed skills if they decide to do so. -
Aug 29, 2011hoboman27 posted a message on Diablo 3 Beta: What to Expectvery nice plan, and excited to see all the details.Posted in: News
Scyber, is it possible that you guys do a benchmark testing, show us the graphics options, resolutions available.
I know you personally have a crazy rig, but if you have any old videocards lying around. that would be great to test it out.
I just built a 2500k z68 system, with no videocard, since i wont be playing anything until diablo 3 comes out. And your tests will definitely help me, and the others who question their computer systems, decide on good and efficient hardwares.
Thanks -
Aug 25, 2011hoboman27 posted a message on New Class Skill Videosthe monk using the polearm was a little odd, starting from 0:35 and on, when the female monk wields the weapon around you still see the polearm clearly behind her back, stationary. Dont know if its a glitch of some kind or what.Posted in: News
Did anyone else find that weird? -
Aug 3, 2011hoboman27 posted a message on Skill Points Removal Fuels Game ControversyPosted in: NewsQuote from MasterFischer
Quote from Roger
Quote from MasterFischer
1. If you want to make a new character and stick with specific skills, then do that? What is the problem? Why do you need to make 50000 new characters? That's stupid. But it's there for u if u want. You can make 10 characters right now, so do that. You can always delete your char if u dont like it and start over, or u can strip all your skills. Start a new character and do another build if u want.. do that.
2. Levelning up, you gain, more powerful spells, powerful rune effects and new items, new powerful spells, just cos u dont have a little button to click, doesn't mean anything..
All your stuff increases when u level-up. That's nice and powerful. Just go look in your inv.
1. There is really no need at all to make a new character since you could only make a lvl 60 character and switch skills. This is not about stupidity or need to make 50000 chars, it is about relevant choices and about the developing of a character to try a build. Now you can try a build simply changing the lvl 60 character skills. It's easier, as using a trainer and making a level 99 character and choosing the skill point allocation also was, but is not as fun as starting over and FEELING the build in every part of the game. I always loved the first 20-30 levels far more than the last ones.
2. I don't know, does that feel relevant to you? A completely automatic level-up? The level-up is the climax of every RPG, it can't go like "Oh, another level, what can I do now? Oh, i am stronger, that's all.".
I am not trolling nor am saying that the system will be bad. I am just trying to grasp how this system deals with the aspects I've risen, that are very important to me.
Tell me then.
1. There is no need? Who says that? YOU create your OWN needs. That statement from you is weird. You do what you want. Why you do WANT to have a restriction to HAVE to make a new character everytime you wanna try something new or just a little different? That's insanely stupid and not fun.
If you WANT to make a new character and start fresh.. then do it ? What's stopping you? Nobody. Just never respec or change skills and start fresh 1-60.. same build.. try it.. what is wrong with that?
Just cos blizzard doesn't MAKE you do it anymore, doesn't mean it wrong or bad.
2. So clicking 5 times on a little button is very important to you? In diablo 2, raising vitality 5 points didn't matter AT ALL really... the small attribute points was skewed, and it was just plain a stupid design. Besides, it wasnt even every level that u got to spend attribute points and get new skills... in diablo 2, you just "rose" in level as well.. but u unlocked new stuff sometimes.. it was good.
In diablo 3, you fight and when u get new lvl.. ding.. u know u got alot of new stuff... newer spells, more attributes, more stuff to explore and gather.. if u want to feel powerful, then just click randomly on your scree nand imagine your stats rising lols
1. I believe roger is talking about incentive, as with the new system, there is less incentive to create a new character with a different focus. Since your original character have already been built, quests done, geared up, and can change its skills (which are maxed) easily. Even though a lot of us, like to create new character and play for the experience. there are many constraints in life, and if there's less incentive for gamers to do it, then people would rather not do it at all.
2. Fighting monsters is a major part of D3, but why do we fight monsters, to level up, to find items. And it is this progression of your character that is the key to these games.
Customization debate aside, The following is what i posted in another post earlier:
"...what i am concerned about this choice is its affect on the playthrough experience, as well as the player's 'attachment' towards the character. Back a while ago when blizzard announced their level 60 cap, their explanation was to make every level feel significant. And i feel that skill points is a part of this 'significance,' a reward you receive for leveling up. even though just a psychological thing, but it does make you feel more weight on each skill point's distribution, and feel that you are more 'involved' in your character's progression.
Now with the skills scaling to your level or weapon dmg, once you have tried all the skills and selected the 6 skills you want, you are kind of done with it from level 30 (or 24) and beyond, since all you need to do now is to level up, and your skills would be stronger. which i think kind of 'detaches' you from your character and gameplay experience. I know people can say that "well with people following a specific build, skill choices arent really a big part of ongoing experience." well yes, but for one that is caused by DII's old system that we were hoping Blizzard introduce a new mechanism to fix, and second you still get to decide your skill point every level and probably decide on a specific path you would like to follow.
People can approach a build differently, for example you may want to orient or max skill X before skill Y. if you know the area have some high dmg monsters, you may want to put more skills in your defensive skills for now, and catch up your attack skills later on. Or when you play in a team, you may want to focus on certain skills that will compliment other team members depending on their current skill choices. this type of strategic thinking and constant balancing of your character to current needs i say is part of the experience with action RPGs." - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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hah probably, I just feel that those D3 quest objectives update like "do this, now do this, now do this..." handholding the player every step of the way... and I find that kind of annoying.
I've recently been playing d2, and it was just "Search for this at there." Granted, that wasn't a good way to go either, but D3 seems to have jumped on the other extreme, and that's why I readily notice it.
For that particular quest, all you need is probably:
Search Adria's Hunt and Explore the hidden cellar
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I actually said I wouldn't call their actions as "catering to casuals" in my original post. I simply pointed some of the signs showing their effort of making a guided gameplay experience, (the step by step quest objective, the simplified tool tips, and now the locked skill categories). I believe they are overly done, and they've put too much emphasis on it, and wasting their resources. Because anyone that spends 60 dollars is going to want to learn about the game, and once they learn it, those guiding features will become an annoyance to them (and you agree with me with the tool-tips).
And to Engagequadlaser, not all of us are like that. I for one am just concerned that these many many guiding features (who knows what else they have in store) are going to get in the way of our regular gameplay. Currently the skill UI is a good example of how they have to spend time to create an Elective Mode that creates a hassle for regular players, just so that they can have a system that tells new players which skill to put on which button. In addition to that, those 'new' players will become experienced players and despise this system later down the road.
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I wouldn't particularly say "catering to casuals" but one of their goal is to make the game accessible to new players, and from Bashiok's grandma story, simplified tool tips, now the new skill UI with guided categories. It is pretty clear of their intentions.
Another thing I noticed was the Quest Objectives,
New Objective: Find Adria's Hunt
Objective Complete!
New Objective: Search Adria's Hunt
Objective Complete!
New Objective: Enter the hidden cellar
Objective Complete!
New Objective: Explore the hidden cellar
I mean is that all necessary? These little guidance features really feel quite a bit redundant
Many of us just feel that Blizzard is making too much of a deal out of this "accessibility" direction, spending manpower and time on it. For any one that spends 60 dollars on a game, he/she should be at least somewhat interested in the features that he/she would be willing to learn about it. And to be honest, D3 is not a complex game at all compared to other rpgs out there.
For a newbie, some of the features may help, but those features would quickly turn into annoyance as soon as they have learned the basics of the game, and would serve no purpose.
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It doesnt allow you to quickly and easily compare between skills. With all these skills, we'll be spending a lot of time comparing one skill against another (including the runed ones) and currently it makes that very difficult. It's also tedious and time consuming to switch skills around between your 2 mouse buttons and keys.
There's currently a lot of negative response on the official forum right now, and some people are claiming that it's done to suit consoles... I'm not sure if I would go to that extreme, I see this and the decision of the simple tool-tips (which no one uses) as Blizzard taking their "easy to play" philosophy beyond reasonable means.
Sure they want players to easily understand the game, but for anyone who's willing to spend 60 dollars on a game would be somewhat interested in Diablo, and would either have some gaming experience or be willing to spend time to figure some of the mechanics out themselves.
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It's a really good deal too, with a free game and free shipping. My friend got his 6850 last Jan, and it was 190 i believe.
Edit: I should've said maxing graphics intensive games would be very difficult, but if you are willing to play on medium or lower resolutions, its still doable
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First off, a 550ti in no way outperforms a 470 gtx performance wise. It only outperforms a 470 gtx in terms of temp and noise (or underperform i should say), and that's because Nvidia stumbled releasing the first Fermi generation and rushed it so damn hot and power hungry. In terms of performance, 470 gtx is basically at the 560ti level.
http://www.hardwarec...b-review-9.html
Secondly, the power supply, for a single card system (not those 6990 or 590s of course) with overclocking, 650w plenty, a 550w will probably be enough. I dont know what the geek squad dude is running, but something doesn't add up. A good 650w can run 6850 in crossfire.
But of course more is better for future upgrade, if you see sli/crossfire as an option, then get 850w. If not, then 750w and 650w is really a struggle with budget and what other fancy stuff you got in the case.
this powersupply calculator is quite handy, but powersupplies do deteriorate over time, but you can account for that in the calculator too
http://extreme.outer...culatorlite.jsp
Lastly AMD vs Intel... it's one of those complicated questions that I dont like to get into, but since its Siaynoq getting the pc, and he is looking for an Upgrade. i'll offer my opinion on that.
Get Sandy Bridge if you dont need multi threading, the 2500k is of great value and performance, uses very little power, and overclocks great because it runs really cool.
If you do need multi-threading, then it's a matter of how much, and the budget, because 2600k is a little bit pricey for your budget, but it's still a very good chip
To be honest, Bulldozer is really bad at single thread applications (which are pretty much all games) since AMD focused all their effort on the multithread.
http://www.anandtech...fx8150-tested/8
They use a lot of power too compared to SB
http://www.hardwarec...-review-19.html
So while AMD is cheaper, a 150 AMD chip won't offer Siaynoq much improvement from his old i5, so I think the 2500k and above is the only choice he's got.
Oh to Siaynoq, that mobo you have is micro-atx, so definitely not something you want. I will give you some suggestions through messaging, and don't use hwcompare to compare videocards, it rarely gives you the full picture. Search for reviews or use Anandtech's GPU benchmark
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A lot of people are looking forward to Ivy Bridge, and from how prices for Sandy Bridge has changed (which is not much if at all), most of the price declining over the past year has come from the motherboards.
I believe Ivy Bridge will be using a new socket, and the new motherboards will also have PCI 3.0 (though it's not like we need it for another few years). So I can see it's motherboards being a little bit pricey, but the CPUs will be reasonably priced.
There's also the issue with motherboard levels. Back last year when SB first launched, there were only the P67 and H67 series, and a half a year later they released the Z68 series, which was a combination of the previous 2. So hopefully Intel can release the complete line-up of motherboards this time.
On the other hand, Nivida's kepler won't offer you much options since they will probably only have 1 or 2 video card out (in the 300 range), so it's very likely that you'll still be looking at the 500s.
Last but not least, lets see your rig!
(I'll be off to bed tonight but will check this thread tomorrow and see if i can help you find some deals)
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The 550Ti won't be a good idea since it'll be more like a downgrade than your 460, from what I see it is consistently below 460 by about 10%. Even though you are not looking for a significant upgrade, I think you should at least get a 560 ti to make the move somewhat worthwhile
Is there a budget for your PC? and is it something you want to do right away?
The reason why I ask that is if you are willing to wait another 2 months (a long time i know) you would be able to get Ivy Bridge from Intel, and possibly Kepler from Nvidia. But of course your budget will go up.
So if your goal is to build the best damn budget gaming machine, Sandy Bridge is plenty of power, and there's lots of good deals on the market. Heck if you are not playing much games, you can just use SB's internal graphics and hold on until you find a good videocard deal (just make sure your motherboard supports SB's internal graphics)
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Because to be honest, I dont see how a 560 will be worth it, you won't notice any improvements, and you have to go through the trouble of selling your 460 for much less and putting in extra money to get a new card.
If you are set on getting a new video card, I see 4 options:
1. if your motherboard and psu allows you, maybe get another 460.
2. It is rumoured that AMD is releasing their 7800s early march. They will still be out of your price range, but the performance may be able to justify the extra cost. It is also likely that prices of other cards will drop. If nothing is stressing your card, maybe wait a bit more.
3. Currently the cheapest for a 560ti I can find in Canada is 199.99 after mail in rebate, if you are in the US, i'm sure you can find very good deals on it, and might be able to get a 560ti within your budget.
4. 2nd hand cards... I dont like them just because sometimes warranty don't carry over, and you dont know what the owner did to the card. But there's a nice 2nd hand market at this time since AMD's new 7970 and 7950 just came out, and many are upgrading and selling off their old card, so you might find some good stuff.
Personally, performance wise, I would go at least 570 gtx level to make the upgrade worthwhile
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But I think they should at least keep 1 of those alters in town or some other type of mechanism, that allows you to change skills back and forth continuously without the 30s cool down and restriction.
This way you can easily cycle through your skills and runes very quickly in town to have a feel of what those skills look like
"Switch skill, put in rune, click on the ground... hmm wish the radius of effect was bigger... change change change"
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For the argument about the blues, I was pointing out that making whites worthless is not the way to go, because it does not solve the problem of people behaving like garbage trucks. Once you are in higher difficulties, blues will take over, and people will still behave that way for those reasons I listed. That's why instead of making items worthless, blizzard removed the cubes.
Lastly, for their "forced decision making" There are forced restrictions everywhere in the game. Any game has them, tetris, chess... It's based on those restrictions that you get a game, you either do this or that, but you can't have the best of both worlds.
I don't really see deciding what to pickup shooting myself in the leg or arm or head... leaving things of value behind is not a punishment, every other rpg does it... you just have to find the right balance for you, picking up only items that are valuable enough for you...
I think we had enough of this, if you are going to pick on every bit of game design, if its smart or not, you'll probably go crazy. The skills, the stats, enhancements, crafting....
Busy week coming up
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It is Not simply "10-15s vs 1-2 min"
I'm making numbers up here but, it could be (15s every 20min) vs (1 min every hour minus X seconds that you are in town anyway for quests/craft/skills)
Or any other number, depending on play style, area, difficulty, etc etc...
You have to see that players have to go back to town anyway, for quests and so forth. If you are in town already, how many extra seconds does it take to walk to the blacksmith?
Comparing to D2 with the D3 content we currently have, they intentionally make you go back to town a lot more.
So that is why I said it is debatable.
Also about making whites useless, what about blues? when you enter Hell, and Inferno, what are you going to do with blues? I'm sure they'll drop quite a lot too right? But they will still be worth something. With the cubes, the time sacrificed is so minimal that people will pick them up. So do we make blues useless?
The thing blizzard is trying to strike for is to force players make that decision, whether to be a garbage truck, and whether or not the items on the ground is worth the player's time and inventory space.
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They still want the whites to be worth something, but is it worth Enough of the player's time and inventory space, the player will have to decide.
I believe that is what they are shooting for. They want the better items be like a present, identification be the opening of the box, then i would assume that the white items are like those tissue paper you stuff the gift bags with. They still have some value no?
Simply making whites worthless, would make it meaningless and pointless. As designers I'm pretty sure they want to make sure every mechanic, item, npc, skill, quest to have a little bit of meaning, or worth.
That's why originally they made whites to be salvagable and etc, but found that in the beta (and probably in internal testing too) players are wasting too much time running in circles picking up everything, and salvaging it, in order to craft.
This will for sure happen because salvaging lower level items still have a chance to be get higher level materials. Plus materials can be upgraded when you enter a new difficulty and after your blacksmith reach a certain skill level.
As for comparing the time spent going back to town vs how often to salvage a whole inventory, that is quite debatable. But one thing you did not take into account is the time players spent going around in circles picking up everything instead of running to the next area. I know its quite small, but it adds up. Back in D2 when you are in a group rushing from one place to another, there is no time to pick up anything. "grab the damn wp and lets go go go"
To be honest i see this as the skill-swapping issue, they first give us ultimate freedom, and people get used to it, and then change their mind and restricts it. Of course people wont be happy, but people still get used to it after a while.
Anyway, let's put this to rest for now how about it, wait for the new patch next week.