I tried the Hardcore thing many times in D2 - 75% of the toons I started died to random lag spikes or disconnects. The other 25% died to asshole griefers ganking me with their high level toon. I think I only actually had 2 hardcore toons I got to a reasonable level actually killed legitimately during game play.
The waiting for the lag to clear or the disconnect to come, not knowing if my toon had been beaten silly while I couldn't do anything about it became unbearable. My sanity demands that I avoid hardcore. Deaths due to BS beyond my control kind of discourages me from even considering it this time around....
I actually think the whole idea is a mistake. I can only imagine how pissed I'm going to be when I've fought Boss X down to where he's next to death and then I get killed by some face-eating nuke right before my buddy finishes him off.
So now I'm dead just in time to miss out on all the loot and experience. I will soooooo totally go postal when that happens. If it happens more than once I will probably not group much, especially for boss kills.
So unless theres some timer where if the boss dies within a certain time of your death where you still get goodies, then your asking for angst. If it is the case where you can die just before the boss and lose out on drops/xp then I think you'll see this kill team play with random peeps. Lets face it, your buddies might hold off on the kill to res you, but the PUG peeps wouldn't give a shit 90% of the time.
Maybe there would be a special version of items that can only be obtain i inferno, would be cool
Kind of like heroic version of raid items in WoW.
If it had new or improved items then it would be just another difficulty level that everyone would feel they need to finish to beat the game. I'd prefer to have 'inferno' difficulty be insanely stooopid hard for serious Diablo nuts only, but the game technically 'ends' with Hell.
A insane difficulty level more for the challenge and the braggin rights than anything else. Like I said, maybe a higher drop rate/percentage for Hell diff items, but no new/improved items that would pretty much force people to do it.
I personally love the idea of a 4th difficulty that pretty much requires a geared 60 to have a chance to make it. In addition I hope they don't add any items better than what you get in Hell diff. Maybe improve the drop rate for better gear, but finishing Inferno mode takes serious gear and serious skill to finish. A little something to seperate the elites from the casuals. If nothing else just for the braggin rights!
It was an attempt to bring a little levity to this poor over-hashed post. This post has been beaten to death already, and I just felt it time to stop whipping the dead horse.
I think this post proves that we will all just have to agree to disagree and live what what Bizz hands us. Of course you could be one of the imperialist, capatalist pigs who only live to exploit the masses! In which case Viva the Revolution you yankee dog! That was a joke BTW for the comedically impaired.
I vote we go with the Democratic/Progressive method. Everybody send all their stuff to me and I will re-distribute it to the masses based on what I think is needed. This solves everyones problems...
Auction houses are merely a way for the rich to get richer and exploit the underperforming masses. Perhaps we could have a tax that if you have more than 200,000 gold you have to pay to help the less fortunate players...
Well I responded to Winged and his saying that direct item trading actually happened and was worth the time wasted.
To you I say that trading for runes/sojs/gems/rubber dogshit/whatever is just trading for a different type of currency than gold and once again just adds frustration to the trading process.
Might as well make gold valuable and worth trading for, so that way people actually use items like runes/sojs/etc instead of just stockpiling them. Currency is currency no matter what form it takes, why make it harder then it needs to be? I'd rather clear dungeons for hours and traade for minutes instead of the reverse.
Lets get real on the item-for-item trading. How many times did you find someone with the exact item you needed and you had the item he needed to get it from him? Most players spent many hours haggling and trying to convince the one guy with your uber-item that your bag full of 10 shitty items was equal to his one uber one. This face-to-face haggling only occured after a few hours spent spamming chat channels and bouncing games bothering people actually playing. Lets face it a gold based economy with an auction house would seriously free up alot of time to actually PLAY.
The problem with Runewords in D2 was that they were just sooooooo much better than anything pretty much comparable. A few uber-rare uniques could compete in certain slots but for the most part Runewords dominated.
Since they had pretty much set mods on them or mods in a percentage range you knew what to expect and with them being so uber you basically turned the game into an easter egg hunt for runes. No one even considered rares after a certain point and even uniques only filled in a few holes. The rest of the game de-volved into rune hunts.
Just for nostalgia I've been playing a bit of D2 again and its the same still. Nothing but Rushes and Baal/Chaos runs. Trading is still the brainless question of what rune is this item worth and to whom... Add in all the spam-bots and I play 99% of the time solo. I might as well play offline, except I like trading gear between characters.
Essentially I don't want to see D3 come close to the brainless de-evolution that D2 became. I say the more random and rare the item the more potential it should have to be powerful. Really high end rares with all their random mods should really be the best items in the game, even above uniques. The odds of getting such a great item with the right mods on it are astronomical so something with a standard set of mods that you can plan around and make up for weaknesses in should come in a distant 2nd.
But thats IMHO. At least you'll have to think about what your trading and compare one items value to another instead of the brain-dead question of 'what rune is this worth?'
Well I'm pretty sure I'm going with the Barbarian first (call me nostalgic). And after careful consideration and barring any major changes between now and release, I'm thinking of going with this build first. The main thing you will probably notice is the lack of Whirlwind. New game, new things...
1. Ignore Pain - My 'oh shit' button.
2. War Cry - Taking it because it generates rage. If the rage mechanic is similar to WoW's warrior this will be needed a lot to get you going. The buff is a nice after effect.
3.Frenzy - My main attack. I had both a WW bard and a frenzy barb in D2. I just enjoyed playing the frenzy barb more. WW while powerful is also pretty brainless and monotonous.
4. Leap Attack - My mobility skill with a payoff at the end. Also allows for crossing gaps which I'm not sure the charge skills do.
5. Ancient Spear - Like was pointed out above it prevents the whack-a-mole bullshit when the fallen run off. Also allows me to grab specific monsters if I need to get them off my wiz/dh/wd etc...
6. Seismic Slam - Nice focused AOE ability with knockback. I think this is a no brainer, especially if its even close to spammable.
7. Wrath of the Bezerker - Breaks monster immunities - nuff said! Well actually the buff sounds cool too so it will be worthwhile before Hell diff.
I will admit that picking only 7 skills and making sure your bases are covered makes you seriously weigh options and make tough choices. Hopefully the skills are well balanced so you won't have to be pigeonholed into always getting whirlwind.
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The waiting for the lag to clear or the disconnect to come, not knowing if my toon had been beaten silly while I couldn't do anything about it became unbearable. My sanity demands that I avoid hardcore. Deaths due to BS beyond my control kind of discourages me from even considering it this time around....
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So now I'm dead just in time to miss out on all the loot and experience. I will soooooo totally go postal when that happens. If it happens more than once I will probably not group much, especially for boss kills.
So unless theres some timer where if the boss dies within a certain time of your death where you still get goodies, then your asking for angst. If it is the case where you can die just before the boss and lose out on drops/xp then I think you'll see this kill team play with random peeps. Lets face it, your buddies might hold off on the kill to res you, but the PUG peeps wouldn't give a shit 90% of the time.
Just my 2 pesos worth...
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If it had new or improved items then it would be just another difficulty level that everyone would feel they need to finish to beat the game. I'd prefer to have 'inferno' difficulty be insanely stooopid hard for serious Diablo nuts only, but the game technically 'ends' with Hell.
A insane difficulty level more for the challenge and the braggin rights than anything else. Like I said, maybe a higher drop rate/percentage for Hell diff items, but no new/improved items that would pretty much force people to do it.
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I'll 2nd Syber's agreement....
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I think this post proves that we will all just have to agree to disagree and live what what Bizz hands us. Of course you could be one of the imperialist, capatalist pigs who only live to exploit the masses! In which case Viva the Revolution you yankee dog!
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Auction houses are merely a way for the rich to get richer and exploit the underperforming masses. Perhaps we could have a tax that if you have more than 200,000 gold you have to pay to help the less fortunate players...
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To you I say that trading for runes/sojs/gems/rubber dogshit/whatever is just trading for a different type of currency than gold and once again just adds frustration to the trading process.
Might as well make gold valuable and worth trading for, so that way people actually use items like runes/sojs/etc instead of just stockpiling them. Currency is currency no matter what form it takes, why make it harder then it needs to be? I'd rather clear dungeons for hours and traade for minutes instead of the reverse.
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Since they had pretty much set mods on them or mods in a percentage range you knew what to expect and with them being so uber you basically turned the game into an easter egg hunt for runes. No one even considered rares after a certain point and even uniques only filled in a few holes. The rest of the game de-volved into rune hunts.
Just for nostalgia I've been playing a bit of D2 again and its the same still. Nothing but Rushes and Baal/Chaos runs. Trading is still the brainless question of what rune is this item worth and to whom... Add in all the spam-bots and I play 99% of the time solo. I might as well play offline, except I like trading gear between characters.
Essentially I don't want to see D3 come close to the brainless de-evolution that D2 became. I say the more random and rare the item the more potential it should have to be powerful. Really high end rares with all their random mods should really be the best items in the game, even above uniques. The odds of getting such a great item with the right mods on it are astronomical so something with a standard set of mods that you can plan around and make up for weaknesses in should come in a distant 2nd.
But thats IMHO. At least you'll have to think about what your trading and compare one items value to another instead of the brain-dead question of 'what rune is this worth?'
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1. Ignore Pain - My 'oh shit' button.
2. War Cry - Taking it because it generates rage. If the rage mechanic is similar to WoW's warrior this will be needed a lot to get you going. The buff is a nice after effect.
3.Frenzy - My main attack. I had both a WW bard and a frenzy barb in D2. I just enjoyed playing the frenzy barb more. WW while powerful is also pretty brainless and monotonous.
4. Leap Attack - My mobility skill with a payoff at the end. Also allows for crossing gaps which I'm not sure the charge skills do.
5. Ancient Spear - Like was pointed out above it prevents the whack-a-mole bullshit when the fallen run off. Also allows me to grab specific monsters if I need to get them off my wiz/dh/wd etc...
6. Seismic Slam - Nice focused AOE ability with knockback. I think this is a no brainer, especially if its even close to spammable.
7. Wrath of the Bezerker - Breaks monster immunities - nuff said! Well actually the buff sounds cool too so it will be worthwhile before Hell diff.
I will admit that picking only 7 skills and making sure your bases are covered makes you seriously weigh options and make tough choices. Hopefully the skills are well balanced so you won't have to be pigeonholed into always getting whirlwind.
Peace