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I'm still optimistic that pvp is going to be fun. All we can really take away from this quote is that hostility won't be a part of the game. That doesn't mean that you won't be able to create special pvp games, where everyone who joins is already automatically hostile to everyone else. That way we would still have open world pvp, where you could fight another player anywhere in the game, as opposed to in a special arena only.

Of course 99% of legit pvp in D2 happened in the blood moor. Heck, even a lot of the pks I did were in the blood moor. I don't really think theres a whole lot of cooperative play in D2 anymore. Most of the open games I remember were just lowbies hoping some high level dude would join their game and rush them out of the goodness of their heart and give them free gear. "Are you here to help me?" "Oh yeah dude, check it out I hid an soj out in the blood moor go find it..." You see where this is going I hope. What I'm trying to say is there's not much of a reason to have open world pvp when 99% of pvp happens in the blood moor just for the sake of having a place to happen. For you pks, if there is an arena where pvp takes place, I'm sure you'll be able to lure newbies in there all the same by telling them theres a rare piece of gear hiding in the middle of it. Trust me, it works every time, especially when theres more than one of them because then they think its a race. "How are we supposed to get the soj when you keep killing us???"

I know pks are good for a laugh, believe me, I know, but is it the ONLY fun way to pvp in D2? I don't mean to brag, but before synergies were added (was it 1.10?) I read the patch notes and I knew what was coming. I made an assassin, named trapassassin, creative I know, with all the points in traps (I got to lvl 93 before the patch, I think). At the time, traps really sucked and I can't tell you how many people told me how stupid I was for being trapassassin. I was so stupid I also pre-made an enigma before the runeword was added to the game for trapassassin to use. Even after the patch hit, I would join a duel game and most players lined up to fight me because they thought anyone named 'trapassassin' would be an easy win. Needless to say I killed a lot of people with my traps. I know pking is fun, but my point is that it can be just as fun to surprise and destroy someone who duels you voluntarily, even if it is more of a challenge.

We've already read that the D3 development team is comitted to treating pvp better this time around. Whatever that means, I'm very confident that pvp will still be violent, bloody, brutal, and in no way what I would call 'carebear.' There are lots of ways the development team can make pvp in D3 even more fun than it was in D2, and none of them are required to involve killing weak lowbies who couldn't hurt you if they tried.

If the ONLY sort of pvp you enjoy in D2 is attacking someone significantly weaker than yourself who isn't expecting it, then maybe you won't enjoy pvp in D3. You might want to ask yourself though, what is it about a fair fight that you don't like so much?

To some people 'free and open play' might mean free and open pvp. There are more perspectives here than just your own. You would do well to consider this because I guarantee blizzard is going to look at this from more than one angle.

Your problem here is not the pvp system, its the griefers. Even without the benefit of pvp, I still found effective ways of griefing in D2. Imagine you create an open game looking for partners to help you kill andariel. By the time your party gets to the bottom of the catacombs you realize that I've already been there with my 99 sorc. I didn't join your party and I've killed andariel. You are now unable to complete the quest in this game.

Seriously, I could probably grief you by simply joining your game and refusing to be a part of your group. That way you couldn't have a full party. If the goal is really to have 'free and open play' then there can be no rule preventing my freedom in your open game. That means I can join and choose not to participate in your quest, or that I can go and kill quest bosses on my own.

Some people might consider it griefing if I join your game and spam a bunch of nonsense or dirty language. Worse yet, I could join your brand new game titled "kill meph" and make your whole party leave simply by telling them that mephisto was already dead.

The only way to prevent ALL forms of griefing is to create a passworded game. If you don't like it then come up with a better way. If you insist on playing in an open game then you're just going to have to live with the fact that some players aren't going to do exactly what you want them to. That's free and open play!

Suggesting a system that restricts pvp isn't much of a solution. Pvp becomes less fun and we still have griefers. You've managed to make the game less fun without even solving your fundamental problem. Maybe they won't be able to pk you, but I think I've demonstrated a fair number of ways to ruin an open game without pvp.

So I invite you to enter some constructive conversation. There's really no need to tear down nightguy1, I really think he had a lot of interesting and cool ideas. If you think they'd be impossible to implement then why don't you suggest a way that they could be modified in order to make them achievable? If you really don't like that I suggested the use of passworded games, then why don't you suggest a better way to prevent griefing while improving pvp. It seems that you came here to talk about griefing (or pks), and not legitimate pvp, which is actually the topic of the thread.

I really enjoyed the guitar parts from the D2 music. In fact I felt that the SOUNDs from D2 were what kept me playing for so many years. The graphics have long been outdated, and the story was old after the first time you beat the game on normal difficulty with the first character you ever made like 10 years ago. But the sound it makes when you create a new barb, walk out into the blood moor, and club a zombie is still so satisfying! And at least as important was the music. I loved the D2 act 1 music.

I'd love to hear more about the music and sound design for D3, as I believe these components are MOST critical to creating a great game!

Some people are so stuck in the 90's it's unbelievable.

They would go to the ends of the earth just so Blizzard could give them a 3D version of the same game, D2. It's stupid and counter-progressive. Plus it just shows a general fear of failure and a lack of faith in the company that has given them games to play for the last 15 years.

PvM is awesome. But it gets old fast since monters never evolve or adapt to the player's skill level/ builds. Therefore when they start to optimize characters, the monster just get easier and easier.

PvP on the other hand is thrilling. Reminiscent to playing PvM on hardcore. Where the fear of death is ever present. Although dying in PvM hardcore results in loss of character (heartbraking, maybe) but a loss in PvP means a blow to your ego.(much more serious).

Noone likes to lose. Hence why the competition level is so high. PvP has always been an important part of D2 no matter which way you look at it. Even a PvM only player with half a brain would admit that alot of folks were doing it. Thus the reason why Blizzard is trying to improve on it and make it something more than a sideshow (as it was in D2).

They are trying to give it features, meaning, order. A properly developed ranking system would enable things such as internaitonal tournaments to take place and would make the Diablo world exponentially larger. Imagine th epossibilities, imainge the bragging rights of winning against all odds.

That's the kind of vision Blizzard has and the kind of spirit Diablo needs to remove itself from the ARPG (cheap story/clickfest) stigma that it has, and truly become a competitive/user friendly game it should of been a long time ago.

Let me make some suggestions and see if they would be feasable in DIII:

1.) Simply have an eable/disable PvP upon map creation. If people want the risk, they can have it. IF people DON'T want the risk, they won't. IMHO, why force someone to PvP that really doesn't? The only ones that complain about it most, that I have seen, have been the griefers. This function limits their "prey" to just the people who want that type of PvP excitement and most of the time they are often more challenge than the griefer wants.

2.) ADMIN FUNCTIONS: Whoever creates the game can make changes on the fly. If somebody griefs, then they can be kicked and/or banned. I know it could be abused. Say if somebody was kicked because the admin didn't like the fact he got a good drop and the ADMIN wanted to claim it, make it where either the player can recover that loot later or just make it disappear so that no one else can get it.


I've heard the suggestion of the PvP enable switch mentioned MANY times, but never about admin functions. IDK, some enjoy the open games. It adds extra challenge, but I just don't see why people would want to make everybody else play that way that DON'T enjoy having the risk of being PK'ed when the least expect it. PW locks only work for just people who want to play with friends they know, clan meetings, etc.. It's like locking the doors of your house to keep theives out. Makes one paranoid in the end.

To improve PvP we should first ask WHY we PvP, and then ask HOW to improve it.
Obviously people will have different reasons why they like PvP, some just like to fight a new/unpredictable opponent, some people like to prove to friends or strangers that they're better or more experienced players than most, some just do it because they're bored.
But if the developers want to create a PvP experience that is more accessible and appealing to a wider audience they need to create INCENTIVE.

For players who might want to try PvP but are put-off by godly characters bullying them or just the hassle of rude players, I imagine a system where battle.net can take the character info from every player online at a particular time and compare the character level, equipment level, and total play time of those characters and create relatively even match-ups. Then, b.net can find you one or more evenly matched players (who are online and in public games) and tell you that (if you're in the mood to duel), you should do it with them. This system could work in that "arena" idea that people are talking about, or across public games through automatic duel invites or whispering. Those players can obviously decline if they wish.

I also think that in D2, dueling didn't have much consequence. I think there should be a system that rewards players for beating a character that is a higher level than yours, or is around the same level but has much higher item levels, or is around the same character level but has logged more hours than yours. I also think that same system should PUNISH people who challenge lower level characters to duels and lose. Since dueling is optional, if you talk trash to a player and lose when you have the advantage, you should be punished beyond the shame of defeat. The reward or punishment could be tied to gold or whatever, I don't know.

Also, a player's dueling stats should be visible to anyone who scrolls over that player. Dueling stats should include information on how many duels they have won, how many they have lost, how many they have initiated, how many individual/unique players they have dueled, and the average level of the characters they dueled relative to their own. For example, something like if you only duel characters that are the same level as yours, then your average opponent level would be 0 but if you only fight opponents who are 5 levels below your level (at every character level you have participated in duels) then your average opponent level would be -5. I would suggest for the "average opponent level statistic", that the weight of the average should be put on the duels that occurred most recently, so duelers couldn't boost their stats in either direction at a very low level. Or something like that. Those dueling stats would give players an idea of what kind of dueler their potential opponent is, without knowing what skills they use or items they have.

Quote from "emilemil1" »

The Wizard is not going to have mana. The WD will have teh mana.

I think the Witch Doctor should use souls/spirits as his source of energy.

Quote from "emilemil1" »

I thought about this exact system for the Wizard too. And as your energy attribute (willpower?) increases, so does the amount gained (or reduced) from casting spells. So a high level character will be able to use many more devastating spells because its pool is bigger and the cost is less.

There is no point in getting a big resource pool if you can't generate enough resources to use devastating spells once you are depleted, so something must decrease/increase the spell cost/income.

Agree. I have an idea about 'chi' being associated with the monk, because of his eastern roots. But it has to work differently from fury. So I thought maybe he starts out full, and it doesn't deplete over time, so he can spam his best skills 1st. However, there will be no potions for him to refill, so he has to be careful how he uses his skills. The 'chi' orb will refill itself, slower at the bottom half and faster at the top half. This way, the player will be more willing to spend it on smaller skills than bigger ones, thus avoiding the spamming of higher level skills.

Though it does mean that if the player runs out of 'chi', he'll be having a tough time. So maybe he has to gain some with every kill, instead of every hit like the barbarian. I think while the barbarian is about mass damage, the monk is more about killing the enemies as fast as you can (since he's fast and fragile). So you'll be rewarded for killing the smaller fries, giving you the energy you need for larger skills to use on the bosses.

I would really be happy with the Wizard for D3 if it used not only its strong spells, but used its weaker spells as well in order to build up to the higher ones.

For example, the lowest rank spells don't cost any "energy" at all. Using them on a monster actually makes you generate some "energy". The next level up of spells could make you generate some energy, but not nearly as much. Assuming there is a fourth rank, that takes a way a little bit of "energy". And the highest ranking of spells takes away a lot of energy.

Just a really simple idea, I have no idea what it would be called or if it would work that well.

Comment on what you think of it