One major thing you are forgetting is the possibility of housing more items than D2. Ithe top items are bind on equip, you can still trade them. If you are playing as a barb but get a high end weapon for a wizard, then you can trade it to get a high end weapon for a barb. The amount of items you will actually equip compared to the amount of high end items you get are minimal. There will still be a booming trade system in D3 minus the few items people have already equipped.
and
Quote from "maka" »
what you're not understanding is that they're not gonna be soul-bound (that's a WoW term), they're gonna be BIND-ON-EQUIP! don't see the difference? if you're playing a barb, and you find an über-wand for the wiz, you can trade it for an über-weapon for the barb that you're playing with. unless you get greedy and give that wand to use with a wiz you might have in the same account....in which case it serves you right, you're now stuck with it.
I understand that perfectly, but there is a subtle point which you are not quite seeing.
Imagine you are a barbarian. Some of your other gear is the very top, but your 298% Enhanced damage "Breath of the Dying Etheral Berserker Axe" is really awesome. The envy of others. Your getting a bit bored of your class. You notice how much fun Druids and Pally pvp'ers are having. You decide you wanna make a paladin/druid. You ask around on the forums and channels until you find a paladin who himself is bored of his class, and wants to play pvp barbarian. He happens to be the proud owner of a very high % "Cruel mythical sword of Butchery".
He loves his sword, you love your axe. You ask around, and it turns out his sword is slightly more highly regarded by paladin pvp'ers than yours is by your fellow barbarians. So you throw in 10 high end runes and he agrees.
And you trade
You happily level up a paladin character, and for the next year you enter a whole new world of high end fun with paladins. Scheming and dealing on ways to improve
That scenario is not possible with bind on equip items (let alone god-forbid bind on pick up)
Think about it for a moment. With bind on pick up, you get poorer, not richer. It FORCES people to grind items otherwise you have nothing to trade for. Your own sexy items are worthless because they have no capital value now that you can't trade it. The 10 super rare runes to your name which you traded in exchange for that amazing bow you wanted, are gone. And the moment you equip that bow, it loses value instantly. Which means tommorow when you see a new amazing sword or high % defense breastplate, or high % life leech helmet, you cannot trade for it because you are poor
And to get "Un-Poor" you are forced to PVE in order to try and find as many rare items as you can to build your wealth back up. And as soon as you trade for that next item you want, you equip and your back to broke again.
It FORCES you to PVE. And like I mentioned, PVP is easily the biggest community in Diablo, bigger even than the hardcore mode crowd. Its not even arguable.
Diablo does not get constant quest/raid/boss/story updates like in an MMO. After you've played through a few times, a hack-and-slash's PVE enjoyment goes severely down.
Bind on EQUIP (like you advocated), will still butcher magic of the game for the reasons I explained above. At the end of the day, it will force people to literally go grind for weeks in order to build up their wealth.
It becomes an issue of who is living in their parents basement with all day to soul-lessley grind.
The entire hypnotic appeal of pvp in hack-and-slashes, what keeps people playing, is that you are constantly moving up. That is not the case in "bind on equip". Them moment you equip the item, you just lost all of the value you traded to get it. You are now poorer, not richer. It will now be exponentially harder to upgrade, not easier. And when you see some item being advertised for trade, you are going to have to grind PVE to get it. And games always balance themselves out. If that item is really rare, you are going to grind A LOT to find the items or gold needed to get it. And as soon as you get it and equip, your poor again.
Ponder what I said carefully about the notion of items losing value once they are equipped. Like I mentioned, these are not immidetely aparant problems. They seem fine on the outset. But they will simply steal so much of diablo's life blood
Whether it be bind on equip, or bind on pick up. Either of make the pure PVP community of diablo a pathetic shadow of itself. And like I said, go read the forums and whatnot remaining in diablo. The biggest and most popular of them are all ones being used by pvp'ers. PVP always becomes the end-game for a game which is not upgraded with new content.
And such pvp becomes painful and not fun when you introduce "bind on equip" or "bind on pick up".
Simply put, If I you have a sexy 255% Warspike which took you 300 hours to get, You want it to have future value for you.
So that the day you see a 280% warspike being sold, you can trade the 255% one to a player who desires it because his weapon is crappier, and lets say 50 runes payment, or 40,000 gold or whatever the currency is. And then you find a way to grind, or hustle the balance needed, and then use that to get a 280% warspike
And the day you see a 310% cruel mythical sword of quickness, you wan't that 280% warspike to have value for you, and to count towards payment for that mythical sword of quickness
SIMPLY PUT. In DIABLO 2's current open trading system, the hours you have put in previously while playing, retain their monetary value for you. You only lose if you make stupid trades.
With bind on equip, hours you have put in, in the past, VANISH THE MOMENT you equip that item. Those hours are in the rubbish bin. All you have left is whatever enjoyment your going to get from the item you just traded for. And when you see a better item you want to trade for, that current item you payed for holds ZERO value for you. It is useless and cannot help you in any way.
So at the end of the day, it comes back into a grind-fest. The PVE'ers will love this, because PVE is all they do. The huge Diablo PVP community which blizz respects greatly, will HATE IT. Sure PVP might still be fun, but it will be a painful kind of fun. A real life kind of fun where you need to go to the office and work for 8 hours in order to go on vacation, just as with bind on equip, you will need to grind many many hours in order to maintain value.
Drop rates are COMPLETELY irrelevant, because there will always be better items which demand you slave grind harder than others if you want to get it. And when you get it and equip, boom its value in the future is gone. (Unless blizzard caps out item stats and damage. At which point there will be no such thing as a pvp community because item differences is the name of the game in a hack and slash.)
Its good for the economy and we have respecs now so you wont need 5 barbs and 7 wizards so that balances it out. Simple as that.
And you can still do that. This is gonna happen. I dont see the problem. You think ppl wont trade? Like hell they wont. You seriously think Blizzard is taking 5 years to make a game where ppl wont trade when they specifically mentioned how important they think trading is to the game?
The problem with your whole theory is that you assume that drop rates will be the same as in D2.
You misunderstand my point. Of-course blizzard will allow some trading. But the problem is that restrictions completely change what diablo is.
It is a tough point to understand, and maybe you do, and I just didn't explain myself clearly.
Diablo is a slash and hack game. Its not like world of warcraft where PVP depends a huge amount on skill as well as items. Diablo comes down to items. And blizzard is proud of it, having stated that they want to make diablo 3 so that it can be played by mouse alone if one desires. (Thats fine by me. No problem)
When you have a hack and slash game. Items is everything. Everything.
The only class (arguably) which needed a bit of skill in pvp for diablo was sorc and amazon. But even then it was childs play to learn.
Imagine after Diablo 3 has been out for 1 or 2 years, and the consensus most desirable item for a Monk turns out to be an etheral 2 socket "Staff of nightmares" (imaginary item), and a 4 socket "Tainted Warspike"(imaginary item)
Now those two items come with some random fluctuating modifers. Two of these very rare "Tainted warspikes" will not be the same because one of them have slightly more Damage % boost, or more life leech, or more lethal strike %.
Now consider that these items are soul bound. And they have higher drop rates as you argued.
a) They will be very hard to find. Meaning you force players to waste months and months trying to farm an item that could elude them for years even perhaps. It will be easier to find, but people are STILL forced to farm them, and when they do get them, they will still not be that important because as you said "better drop rates"
Essentially what it comes down to is this. In diablo 2, after your few playthroughs (playthoughs which are intensely enjoyable because the game is still fresh at that point), you can amass enough items, runes, etc to start you off on a long and enjoyable Diablo career. Because from that point on, no item is beyond your reach. You dream of having the most awesomely geared amazon or druid, you can do it.
You do through trade. You make incremental increases to your characters item value by trading with others who want what you have, and slowly your purchasing power increases. And here is the kicker - It is an inherently fun process. Bargaining and haggling is practically a part what it means to be a human being. It is something we enjoy doing. Running around killing the same monsters for an unforseen amount of time hoping something you want drops is not fun. Its painful. Its a game-killer for a game like diablo which doesn't get constant content updates like World of Warcraft. It won't work. People will give up.
Like you said, the ability to repsec your skills/stats is a great move by blizzard. That will improve replayablity even further. But soul-bound items will destroy long-term hypnotically endearing part of the game. Sure you wil enjoy it for a few months, maybe even one or two years.
But you will never see hundreds of thousands of players still playing a non-MMO hack and slash game with elements of soul-bound items 10 years later. Let alone one which has been ravaged by cheats and dupes as hard as diablo, and which is still going as strong
I'm not bragging or trying to sound belettling/concieted. But like I said I played diablo for hours and hours on end for literally 6-7 years before I quit. And even when I quit it was extremely hard to do so, but forced myself to do so because it was affecting my university grades. I truly feel I was so deeply a part of the diablo experience for so long, that I understand some of the mysteries behind the game's success.
And i'm telling you that soul-bound items of nearly any type will snuff out that hidden ingredient of diablo 2. It is not enough to simply say "we understand trading is important to the economy" and then start introducing any types of soul bound items.
Its like saying "I understand that teenagers love underground car racing, so were going to give them a racing track away from the streets so that there is less danger to them."
It may sound like a good idea, the teenagers like racing, so why not give them an official track where they can race. Two birds with one stone right? Failing to realize that the very reason underground racing is seductive to so many kids, is because of of the mystique and rebellious aspect of it.
Similarly, you cannot maintain the magic of what diablos economy is, by trying to introduce any type of soul-bound items, in the attempt to stop the market building up in rare items.
It is a very hard thing for me to explain despite the last 3 giant posts I just made. But reading Jay talk about introducing "some aspects" of soul-binding was the worst news I'd heard about Diablo 3 since I learned it was being pushed back again to 2011
Go to the D2JSP forums, and speak with some of the players who have been around for years. Ask them about it and you will almost certainly get my point of view in response.
It's not quite that doom and gloom. Soulbound gear sounds like it'll just be the extreme high-end of loot. Maybe it'll just be reasonably high-end, no idea. Either way, everything a hair below that will be traded around like the super min-max stuff is now, and the soulbinding loot will be there for people who want to spend the time and effort to make their characters better than the other guy, as opposed to just hitting the corner market for a [Insert Super Item Here]. Sure, the PvP community will decide you suck if you don't have whatever super-rare completely perfect drop, but that's more a problem of the PvP community, honestly.
Theres two problems.
#1 - I would rather have the "stuff just below super high end" being soul-bind, and leave the super high end stuff trade able, because it is that super high end gear which fuels pvp. It would be disgustingly bad if you had to *grind* or *find* those super high end items yourself. You could play for 5 years straight and not find a single item worn by the majority pvp'ers in Diablo 2. They have those items because they traded for them. They might have had a really good amazon item, or druid item, or had found many precious runes, and then using those items, TRADED for the top pvp stuff they wanted. It simply would not work with soul bound items. Haggling and bargaining with people for deals. Wheelin and dealing. Deciding whether its worth it to give up your awesome etheral zod axe in order to get some high % rare sword. That is far more fun and what keeps pvp alive than grinding mobs for 2 years trying to get that item with a 0.01% chance of dropping from a boss.
#2 - Its not that easy to distinguish what great items are, and what are arent. It takes months if not years before people start realizing the perfect synergies for items in a game like diablo. Back in the day, you would see druids/paladins wearing a pair of life leech gloves which are far less rare than what blizzard deemed the best gloves are.
Visit D2JSP for example, and see the hundreds of thousands of threads and posts. Why is Diablo 2 still alive nearly a decade after it was released? And please don't say its the PVE aspect. Even the most shiny, beautiful high end graphic RPG or FPS game will get boring after a few months of playing especially if there are not constant raid/dungeon updates like you find in MMOS. The same basic 5 acts, the same monsters, same story line, and yet the Diablo community is still pulsing to this very day, 10 years later
Why? Simply put because of non-soul bound items which is the pillar on which the entire diablo economy stands on. Thats not to say there isn't room for improvement. Of-course there is. Better anti-hack, anti-dupe, anti-cheat methods. Things like higher costs for repair of items to act as a gold-sink, so that the game's gold stabilizes and becomes valuable.
In my opinion theres 3 possibilities.
1) A decent game
2) A really fun game, with limited replay value
3) A really fun game, with through the roof replay value
Diablo 2, for all those hundreds of thosuands still playing, falls into category 3. And that again is rooted in diablos trade based economy which cannot function if the most desirable items are soul-bound.
There are two approaches to making boosting a games "replay" value.
#1 is Diablo's method. Which is what i just mentioned.
#2 is the painful way. The way where you simply force people to grind forever if they wan't to get specific desirable items.
#3 is the way I hate the most. The hamster wheel way. The way of world of warcraft. Where virtually everything is soul bound, and every patch/season they purposely make all former items you worked so hard to get virtually obsolete, and players are forced to get back on the hamster wheeel
Please blizzard. Diablo 2 had a magical winning recipe that can be improved in obvious ways like tigher anti-cheat systems. Do not put a dagger in that system by introducing Soul bound items. No soul bound items at all. Not even if its only for "just below top level items", or "only top level items", because as I mentioned, blizzard has no idea what the diablo community will discover to be the most desirable items through the inevitable evolution of strategies over time.
The monk had me to wonder why he have a beard... like Shat said: Shaolin monks are bald. They are shaven. So why he have a beard, but no hair on top of his head? Who knows... Maybe he liked that way... maybe blizzard thought it's cool and they left it as it is now.
Looking at the face, indeed he looks like slav(that would be russian)
So let me get this straight.
People shooting fireballs out of their hands, and summoning zombie dogs, etc does not bother your sensibilities about realism
But a monk who decides to grow a beard is proposterous and unrealistic and your against it =)
Hi guys. A little about myself. Huge diablo fan. Played diablo 1, diablo 2, and diablo 2 lod
Avidly played diablo 2 lod for 5 years basically until slipping university grades forced me to quit. Was a huge paladin zealot pvper (shout out to palapk dueling community :cool:). I've played games all my life, and quite frankly, there is no facet of any game which I enjoyed more than Diablo 2 LOD's paladin dueling.
I've finally graduated from Univ, and avidly waiting for D3's release
However, as much as I love the diablo franchise, and am looking forward to it, one thing will ensure that I don't even bother with diablo 3
Namely if they decide to make the best items soul-bound (for those who don't know what soul bound means. It is when you equip an item, it is only usable by your character[or sometimes your account]. Only your character(s) can use it, and it can't be traded to anyone else)
I did a google search and read a few discussions on the topic in relation to Diablo 3. The best of which is the official statement made by Diablo's lead designer Jay Wilson
Some of the concerns Jay brings up are relevant, and indeed there is a temptation to introduce soul bound items into diablo 3 to eliminate build up of special items.
However, quite simply, to do this would destroy a huge part of that magic which Diablo 2 had. Quite literally, the only reason I kept playing for almost 6 years, years and years and years after I had finished the PVE stuff, is because items were not soul-bound. It would suit the PVE community, but make it absolutely brutal for the pvp community. When I was playing, all one had to do was go to the PVP trading channels, and pvp game organizing channels on battlenet to see how disproportionately popular PVP is to PVE. Only the hardcore mode community rivaled it.
And the life-blood, the beating heart, of that community was trading items. If I wanted to try some amazon PVP, and was thinking of making an amazon, I knew I could do it by trading one of my paladin high % weapons to an amazon who was similarly interested in making a paladin.
The thought of having to grind mobs for months and months and months trying to get that ludicrously low drop rate item just so I you can gear up a new character for pvp is nausea inducing
Although Jay was correct that many rare items simply accumulate over time in diablo, there is one crucial aspect about it which he seems to not realize(particularly with non-magic classes):
In Diablo, many of the best items have damage modifying percentages. "Rare" items may indeed be a dime a dozen, but paradoxically, the very cream of the crop (% damage wise) of those "rare" items are not
Why this is the case is a mystery to me. It would follow logic that as time goes by, more and more of them would exist in the world and their value would go down. But it simply is not the case.
Part of the reason for this more obvious. Namely that people who happen to have the very best and rarest items (damage % wise), simply do not trade them. They keep them. And if they do trade them, it will only be for an equally fantastic weapon coming the other way.
A classic example of this is a 3 socket Cruel Mythical Sworld of Quickness. It is made by combining a particular sword with 3 chipped gems inside the horadric cube, and basically gambling. All wacky kinds of items might pop ought, but the most desirable thing for a Fury druid was the cruel mythical sword of quickness. Extremely low chance of getting it.
Why? Because once socketed with 3 increased attack speed gems, it was the only weapon in the game with decent damage which would give a fury druid a 4-frame-attack-speed.
The druids who were lucky enough to have haggled for those items (b/c rolling one was near impossible), would never ever ever trade them, unless for equally spectacular items from another class. Contray to logic, for 6 years I never seen an increase in their abundance. The same 2 or 3 druids who were using them in 2003, were the same ones using them in 2008
The whole beauty of Diablo for me and most pvp'ers, was spending hours haggling, wheeling and dealing in trade channels, and forums, and games, trying to trade for better items.
To summarize and conclude.
Blizz should rack their brain and try to figure out a different way to get a hold on items flooding the market over time. But soul-bound items is the worst possible idea.
Sorry if it sounded like a rant. But blizz is playing with fire. The diablo economy will be fine if hacks/dupes/cheats are dealt with. No need to introduce soul-bound items in any manner whatsoever.
Just wanted to post something amusing I noticed lol.
2 of the 5 skills revealed by blizzard for the monk class were undoubtedly 100% ripped off from the anime Naruto. Specifically one of the anime's characters called Neji
Its not THAT big of a deal, since games are notorious for stealing ideas and skills from each other all the time. The new dragon age game has so many skills straight out of World of warcraft and often have the same name
But nevertheless, I just thought it would be an interesting thread for the diablo fan
One of the monks skills is called "Impenetrable defense", and its a taken from Neji's "Absolute defense" the Kaiten. Here is the monk using impenetrable defense. Notice the defensive wall of blue mana around him that blocks attacks from any direction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XwgW1xZXUs
Then Look at Neji using "Absolute defense" Kaiten. Notice the exact same blue sphere which also blocks attacks from any direction. In the anime they call mana "chakra". Of-course the anime came out years before the Monk was released http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rnih1YLeec
And the more obvious example comes in the monks other skill, the "seven sided strike" Notice the rapid attack movement, and the big giveaway being the pattern or design on the floor that occurs when the monk uses the skill. A big round circle pattern on the ground that appears when he uses the seven sided strike. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZmMvfELkO0
It's taken from Neji using his "64 strikes of devination" technique where he hits the opponent very rapidly at 64 points on their body. Notice before he uses the skill, a giant circular pattern appears beneath him just like the monks skill http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUh75maxRio
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and
I understand that perfectly, but there is a subtle point which you are not quite seeing.
Imagine you are a barbarian. Some of your other gear is the very top, but your 298% Enhanced damage "Breath of the Dying Etheral Berserker Axe" is really awesome. The envy of others. Your getting a bit bored of your class. You notice how much fun Druids and Pally pvp'ers are having. You decide you wanna make a paladin/druid. You ask around on the forums and channels until you find a paladin who himself is bored of his class, and wants to play pvp barbarian. He happens to be the proud owner of a very high % "Cruel mythical sword of Butchery".
He loves his sword, you love your axe. You ask around, and it turns out his sword is slightly more highly regarded by paladin pvp'ers than yours is by your fellow barbarians. So you throw in 10 high end runes and he agrees.
And you trade
You happily level up a paladin character, and for the next year you enter a whole new world of high end fun with paladins. Scheming and dealing on ways to improve
That scenario is not possible with bind on equip items (let alone god-forbid bind on pick up)
Think about it for a moment. With bind on pick up, you get poorer, not richer. It FORCES people to grind items otherwise you have nothing to trade for. Your own sexy items are worthless because they have no capital value now that you can't trade it. The 10 super rare runes to your name which you traded in exchange for that amazing bow you wanted, are gone. And the moment you equip that bow, it loses value instantly. Which means tommorow when you see a new amazing sword or high % defense breastplate, or high % life leech helmet, you cannot trade for it because you are poor
And to get "Un-Poor" you are forced to PVE in order to try and find as many rare items as you can to build your wealth back up. And as soon as you trade for that next item you want, you equip and your back to broke again.
It FORCES you to PVE. And like I mentioned, PVP is easily the biggest community in Diablo, bigger even than the hardcore mode crowd. Its not even arguable.
Diablo does not get constant quest/raid/boss/story updates like in an MMO. After you've played through a few times, a hack-and-slash's PVE enjoyment goes severely down.
Bind on EQUIP (like you advocated), will still butcher magic of the game for the reasons I explained above. At the end of the day, it will force people to literally go grind for weeks in order to build up their wealth.
It becomes an issue of who is living in their parents basement with all day to soul-lessley grind.
The entire hypnotic appeal of pvp in hack-and-slashes, what keeps people playing, is that you are constantly moving up. That is not the case in "bind on equip". Them moment you equip the item, you just lost all of the value you traded to get it. You are now poorer, not richer. It will now be exponentially harder to upgrade, not easier. And when you see some item being advertised for trade, you are going to have to grind PVE to get it. And games always balance themselves out. If that item is really rare, you are going to grind A LOT to find the items or gold needed to get it. And as soon as you get it and equip, your poor again.
Ponder what I said carefully about the notion of items losing value once they are equipped. Like I mentioned, these are not immidetely aparant problems. They seem fine on the outset. But they will simply steal so much of diablo's life blood
Whether it be bind on equip, or bind on pick up. Either of make the pure PVP community of diablo a pathetic shadow of itself. And like I said, go read the forums and whatnot remaining in diablo. The biggest and most popular of them are all ones being used by pvp'ers. PVP always becomes the end-game for a game which is not upgraded with new content.
And such pvp becomes painful and not fun when you introduce "bind on equip" or "bind on pick up".
Simply put, If I you have a sexy 255% Warspike which took you 300 hours to get, You want it to have future value for you.
So that the day you see a 280% warspike being sold, you can trade the 255% one to a player who desires it because his weapon is crappier, and lets say 50 runes payment, or 40,000 gold or whatever the currency is. And then you find a way to grind, or hustle the balance needed, and then use that to get a 280% warspike
And the day you see a 310% cruel mythical sword of quickness, you wan't that 280% warspike to have value for you, and to count towards payment for that mythical sword of quickness
SIMPLY PUT. In DIABLO 2's current open trading system, the hours you have put in previously while playing, retain their monetary value for you. You only lose if you make stupid trades.
With bind on equip, hours you have put in, in the past, VANISH THE MOMENT you equip that item. Those hours are in the rubbish bin. All you have left is whatever enjoyment your going to get from the item you just traded for. And when you see a better item you want to trade for, that current item you payed for holds ZERO value for you. It is useless and cannot help you in any way.
So at the end of the day, it comes back into a grind-fest. The PVE'ers will love this, because PVE is all they do. The huge Diablo PVP community which blizz respects greatly, will HATE IT. Sure PVP might still be fun, but it will be a painful kind of fun. A real life kind of fun where you need to go to the office and work for 8 hours in order to go on vacation, just as with bind on equip, you will need to grind many many hours in order to maintain value.
Drop rates are COMPLETELY irrelevant, because there will always be better items which demand you slave grind harder than others if you want to get it. And when you get it and equip, boom its value in the future is gone. (Unless blizzard caps out item stats and damage. At which point there will be no such thing as a pvp community because item differences is the name of the game in a hack and slash.)
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You misunderstand my point. Of-course blizzard will allow some trading. But the problem is that restrictions completely change what diablo is.
It is a tough point to understand, and maybe you do, and I just didn't explain myself clearly.
Diablo is a slash and hack game. Its not like world of warcraft where PVP depends a huge amount on skill as well as items. Diablo comes down to items. And blizzard is proud of it, having stated that they want to make diablo 3 so that it can be played by mouse alone if one desires. (Thats fine by me. No problem)
When you have a hack and slash game. Items is everything. Everything.
The only class (arguably) which needed a bit of skill in pvp for diablo was sorc and amazon. But even then it was childs play to learn.
Imagine after Diablo 3 has been out for 1 or 2 years, and the consensus most desirable item for a Monk turns out to be an etheral 2 socket "Staff of nightmares" (imaginary item), and a 4 socket "Tainted Warspike"(imaginary item)
Now those two items come with some random fluctuating modifers. Two of these very rare "Tainted warspikes" will not be the same because one of them have slightly more Damage % boost, or more life leech, or more lethal strike %.
Now consider that these items are soul bound. And they have higher drop rates as you argued.
a) They will be very hard to find. Meaning you force players to waste months and months trying to farm an item that could elude them for years even perhaps.
Essentially what it comes down to is this. In diablo 2, after your few playthroughs (playthoughs which are intensely enjoyable because the game is still fresh at that point), you can amass enough items, runes, etc to start you off on a long and enjoyable Diablo career. Because from that point on, no item is beyond your reach. You dream of having the most awesomely geared amazon or druid, you can do it.
You do through trade. You make incremental increases to your characters item value by trading with others who want what you have, and slowly your purchasing power increases. And here is the kicker - It is an inherently fun process. Bargaining and haggling is practically a part what it means to be a human being. It is something we enjoy doing. Running around killing the same monsters for an unforseen amount of time hoping something you want drops is not fun. Its painful. Its a game-killer for a game like diablo which doesn't get constant content updates like World of Warcraft. It won't work. People will give up.
Like you said, the ability to repsec your skills/stats is a great move by blizzard. That will improve replayablity even further. But soul-bound items will destroy long-term hypnotically endearing part of the game. Sure you wil enjoy it for a few months, maybe even one or two years.
But you will never see hundreds of thousands of players still playing a non-MMO hack and slash game with elements of soul-bound items 10 years later. Let alone one which has been ravaged by cheats and dupes as hard as diablo, and which is still going as strong
I'm not bragging or trying to sound belettling/concieted. But like I said I played diablo for hours and hours on end for literally 6-7 years before I quit. And even when I quit it was extremely hard to do so, but forced myself to do so because it was affecting my university grades. I truly feel I was so deeply a part of the diablo experience for so long, that I understand some of the mysteries behind the game's success.
And i'm telling you that soul-bound items of nearly any type will snuff out that hidden ingredient of diablo 2. It is not enough to simply say "we understand trading is important to the economy" and then start introducing any types of soul bound items.
Its like saying "I understand that teenagers love underground car racing, so were going to give them a racing track away from the streets so that there is less danger to them."
It may sound like a good idea, the teenagers like racing, so why not give them an official track where they can race. Two birds with one stone right? Failing to realize that the very reason underground racing is seductive to so many kids, is because of of the mystique and rebellious aspect of it.
Similarly, you cannot maintain the magic of what diablos economy is, by trying to introduce any type of soul-bound items, in the attempt to stop the market building up in rare items.
It is a very hard thing for me to explain despite the last 3 giant posts I just made. But reading Jay talk about introducing "some aspects" of soul-binding was the worst news I'd heard about Diablo 3 since I learned it was being pushed back again to 2011
Go to the D2JSP forums, and speak with some of the players who have been around for years. Ask them about it and you will almost certainly get my point of view in response.
Kinda tired. Peace!!
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Theres two problems.
#1 - I would rather have the "stuff just below super high end" being soul-bind, and leave the super high end stuff trade able, because it is that super high end gear which fuels pvp. It would be disgustingly bad if you had to *grind* or *find* those super high end items yourself. You could play for 5 years straight and not find a single item worn by the majority pvp'ers in Diablo 2. They have those items because they traded for them. They might have had a really good amazon item, or druid item, or had found many precious runes, and then using those items, TRADED for the top pvp stuff they wanted. It simply would not work with soul bound items. Haggling and bargaining with people for deals. Wheelin and dealing. Deciding whether its worth it to give up your awesome etheral zod axe in order to get some high % rare sword. That is far more fun and what keeps pvp alive than grinding mobs for 2 years trying to get that item with a 0.01% chance of dropping from a boss.
#2 - Its not that easy to distinguish what great items are, and what are arent. It takes months if not years before people start realizing the perfect synergies for items in a game like diablo. Back in the day, you would see druids/paladins wearing a pair of life leech gloves which are far less rare than what blizzard deemed the best gloves are.
Visit D2JSP for example, and see the hundreds of thousands of threads and posts. Why is Diablo 2 still alive nearly a decade after it was released? And please don't say its the PVE aspect. Even the most shiny, beautiful high end graphic RPG or FPS game will get boring after a few months of playing especially if there are not constant raid/dungeon updates like you find in MMOS. The same basic 5 acts, the same monsters, same story line, and yet the Diablo community is still pulsing to this very day, 10 years later
Why? Simply put because of non-soul bound items which is the pillar on which the entire diablo economy stands on. Thats not to say there isn't room for improvement. Of-course there is. Better anti-hack, anti-dupe, anti-cheat methods. Things like higher costs for repair of items to act as a gold-sink, so that the game's gold stabilizes and becomes valuable.
In my opinion theres 3 possibilities.
1) A decent game
2) A really fun game, with limited replay value
3) A really fun game, with through the roof replay value
Diablo 2, for all those hundreds of thosuands still playing, falls into category 3. And that again is rooted in diablos trade based economy which cannot function if the most desirable items are soul-bound.
There are two approaches to making boosting a games "replay" value.
#1 is Diablo's method. Which is what i just mentioned.
#2 is the painful way. The way where you simply force people to grind forever if they wan't to get specific desirable items.
#3 is the way I hate the most. The hamster wheel way. The way of world of warcraft. Where virtually everything is soul bound, and every patch/season they purposely make all former items you worked so hard to get virtually obsolete, and players are forced to get back on the hamster wheeel
Please blizzard. Diablo 2 had a magical winning recipe that can be improved in obvious ways like tigher anti-cheat systems. Do not put a dagger in that system by introducing Soul bound items. No soul bound items at all. Not even if its only for "just below top level items", or "only top level items", because as I mentioned, blizzard has no idea what the diablo community will discover to be the most desirable items through the inevitable evolution of strategies over time.
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So let me get this straight.
People shooting fireballs out of their hands, and summoning zombie dogs, etc does not bother your sensibilities about realism
But a monk who decides to grow a beard is proposterous and unrealistic and your against it =)
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Avidly played diablo 2 lod for 5 years basically until slipping university grades forced me to quit. Was a huge paladin zealot pvper (shout out to palapk dueling community :cool:). I've played games all my life, and quite frankly, there is no facet of any game which I enjoyed more than Diablo 2 LOD's paladin dueling.
I've finally graduated from Univ, and avidly waiting for D3's release
However, as much as I love the diablo franchise, and am looking forward to it, one thing will ensure that I don't even bother with diablo 3
Namely if they decide to make the best items soul-bound (for those who don't know what soul bound means. It is when you equip an item, it is only usable by your character[or sometimes your account]. Only your character(s) can use it, and it can't be traded to anyone else)
I did a google search and read a few discussions on the topic in relation to Diablo 3. The best of which is the official statement made by Diablo's lead designer Jay Wilson
If you haven't read it, you can check it out here
http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Hellforge/Diablo-III-On-Soulbound-and-Non-Transferable-Equipment
Some of the concerns Jay brings up are relevant, and indeed there is a temptation to introduce soul bound items into diablo 3 to eliminate build up of special items.
However, quite simply, to do this would destroy a huge part of that magic which Diablo 2 had. Quite literally, the only reason I kept playing for almost 6 years, years and years and years after I had finished the PVE stuff, is because items were not soul-bound. It would suit the PVE community, but make it absolutely brutal for the pvp community. When I was playing, all one had to do was go to the PVP trading channels, and pvp game organizing channels on battlenet to see how disproportionately popular PVP is to PVE. Only the hardcore mode community rivaled it.
And the life-blood, the beating heart, of that community was trading items. If I wanted to try some amazon PVP, and was thinking of making an amazon, I knew I could do it by trading one of my paladin high % weapons to an amazon who was similarly interested in making a paladin.
The thought of having to grind mobs for months and months and months trying to get that ludicrously low drop rate item just so I you can gear up a new character for pvp is nausea inducing
Although Jay was correct that many rare items simply accumulate over time in diablo, there is one crucial aspect about it which he seems to not realize(particularly with non-magic classes):
In Diablo, many of the best items have damage modifying percentages. "Rare" items may indeed be a dime a dozen, but paradoxically, the very cream of the crop (% damage wise) of those "rare" items are not
Why this is the case is a mystery to me. It would follow logic that as time goes by, more and more of them would exist in the world and their value would go down. But it simply is not the case.
Part of the reason for this more obvious. Namely that people who happen to have the very best and rarest items (damage % wise), simply do not trade them. They keep them. And if they do trade them, it will only be for an equally fantastic weapon coming the other way.
A classic example of this is a 3 socket Cruel Mythical Sworld of Quickness. It is made by combining a particular sword with 3 chipped gems inside the horadric cube, and basically gambling. All wacky kinds of items might pop ought, but the most desirable thing for a Fury druid was the cruel mythical sword of quickness. Extremely low chance of getting it.
Why? Because once socketed with 3 increased attack speed gems, it was the only weapon in the game with decent damage which would give a fury druid a 4-frame-attack-speed.
The druids who were lucky enough to have haggled for those items (b/c rolling one was near impossible), would never ever ever trade them, unless for equally spectacular items from another class. Contray to logic, for 6 years I never seen an increase in their abundance. The same 2 or 3 druids who were using them in 2003, were the same ones using them in 2008
The whole beauty of Diablo for me and most pvp'ers, was spending hours haggling, wheeling and dealing in trade channels, and forums, and games, trying to trade for better items.
To summarize and conclude.
Blizz should rack their brain and try to figure out a different way to get a hold on items flooding the market over time. But soul-bound items is the worst possible idea.
Sorry if it sounded like a rant. But blizz is playing with fire. The diablo economy will be fine if hacks/dupes/cheats are dealt with. No need to introduce soul-bound items in any manner whatsoever.
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Just wanted to post something amusing I noticed lol.
2 of the 5 skills revealed by blizzard for the monk class were undoubtedly 100% ripped off from the anime Naruto. Specifically one of the anime's characters called Neji
Its not THAT big of a deal, since games are notorious for stealing ideas and skills from each other all the time. The new dragon age game has so many skills straight out of World of warcraft and often have the same name
But nevertheless, I just thought it would be an interesting thread for the diablo fan
One of the monks skills is called "Impenetrable defense", and its a taken from Neji's "Absolute defense" the Kaiten. Here is the monk using impenetrable defense. Notice the defensive wall of blue mana around him that blocks attacks from any direction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XwgW1xZXUs
Then Look at Neji using "Absolute defense" Kaiten. Notice the exact same blue sphere which also blocks attacks from any direction. In the anime they call mana "chakra". Of-course the anime came out years before the Monk was released
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rnih1YLeec
And the more obvious example comes in the monks other skill, the "seven sided strike" Notice the rapid attack movement, and the big giveaway being the pattern or design on the floor that occurs when the monk uses the skill. A big round circle pattern on the ground that appears when he uses the seven sided strike.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZmMvfELkO0
It's taken from Neji using his "64 strikes of devination" technique where he hits the opponent very rapidly at 64 points on their body. Notice before he uses the skill, a giant circular pattern appears beneath him just like the monks skill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUh75maxRio