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Definitely agree with these points. People will always keep complaining that 'this isn't WoW', but the bottom line is that if you find a solution in WoW to a problem you were having with another game (D2), it would be downright stupid not to learn from that. Both are RPGs, there will always be some kind of overlap. I really can't see the point of people complaning about low level cap as a WoW thing. Some people apparently fail to realise that this isn't D2.5. And for those claiming that Diablo always had level cap 99 and now suddenly they go for this, D1 had level cap somewhere around 50 and nobody seems to mention that.

The only thing that worries me about this news is the achievements, because most likely, that will mean you'd always have to be online in order to get them as it is in SC2. People with unstable connection will not be happy about this.

@Scyber - It all depends on the balance of the bonuses and stuff. Though my system looks like it pushes the idea of "when you find one, you have to find the rest" it all depends on how influential the system would be.

For example, the power of the set items vs unique/rare items has to be balanced of course. If you make set items too powerful, when collected it would own the game and no matter what you find, you wouldn't want to break the set for any single item. But the way it was in D2, set items were generally so pathetic, it wasn't worth even keeping them. Half of them were weaker than some regular magic items. By making the gap between set and rare/unique smaller, you would make set items viable, which is Blizzard's goal. Let's not forget that when you complete a set, you deserve to be damn powerful. Completing a set is an achievement, and as such should give you proper reward. If you complete a medium set, you'll get nice bonuses that can greatly help you mid-game...but say on Hell difficulty, you'll most likely want to get rid of it because it isn't strong enough anymore. If you complete an end-game set, you more than deserve to kick ass wearing it, so power level above what the majority of unique/rare items can provide is to be expected.

By increasing the set item find, you'd of course push back other items types which is bad. Therefore the bonus should not be so dramatic as to make every second set item you find the one you are looking for. Say a 10% increase would be sufficient. It is enough to make a difference in the long run, but not so much as to negate any other drops in the process. The bonus should be fixed, so the number of pieces you are wearing wouldn't increase this number and create problem in the MF system.

Also, I didn't say that I wanted to reduce the chance of finding low level items and increase the chance for high level items. When you progress through the game, lower level items naturally don't drop so much. But if you are wearing a few pieces of a low level set, you don't want to keep finding other pieces of that set when you are like 20 levels above that. Therefore, past a certain level difference, wearing a low level set piece could increase your chance of finding a set piece from a higher level set that has similar bonuses (say, if you have a caster set that increases Arcane damage, it could increase your chances of finding a higher level caster set that boosts Wizard's arcane skills). That way, wearing a lower level set piece wouldn't automatically "lock" you into finding worthless crap set items when you are looking for something better. Of course, you would be finding other stuff, but you don't want to be punished for wearing a lower level set piece.

In the end, I'm not a designer and have given this system relatively little thought, but it makes me wonder whether the devs have thought about a similar system and scrapped it because of some problems with balance, or something like this hasn't occured to them. I'm sure this could be balanced properly for it to work the intended way. Bliz doesn't seem to have problems creating complicated systems for e.g. calculating character damage. I wouldn't be against a more complex item system, especially when it comes to set items because that was one of the biggest flaws that D2 loot system had IMO. I don't think set items can be solved in a simple way like item scaling because that just exchanges one problem for a slew of others, far worse. If the main problem of set items was that they were weak, found when they were not viable anymore, and found too rarely to complete a set, I think all of these problems have to be addressed together.

I voted other because neither of the proposed options appeals to me at all. I think it could be sloved with a combination of several changes to the original system:

1) Make set items themselves viable. The main problem in D2 was that the single pieces of equipment from a set were generally not worth a crap without set bonuses. Even if you found it relatively early in the game, you could just open a portal and go sell that thing. Who in their right mind would use Isenhart's Case for example? Any, even the most basic unique or rare armor was better than that thing. Making set items only slightly less powerful than rare or unique items but adding in the bonuses from finding more would be more of an incentive to actually use set items even when you have only one of them.

2) Following from the first system, once you keep the set item, whether in stash or inventory, your chance to find other items from that set should increase. More when you carry it, a little less when it's in the stash. The sets could also be linked, so once you have one set, you don't get it dropped all the time. After a certain level, if there is a better set with similar bonuses available, there will be an increased chance that that set will drop. Also, items inside one set could be linked, so that if you find a chest piece, next thing you are most likely to find would be gloves. The gloves then increase the chance of finding a helmet from the set etc. Therefore, it would be a kind of a chain of items, it would prevent you from finding the same piece again and again and would give a good feeling of completion.

3) Set items should drop sooner. Usually the problem was that you found a piece from a set long after it lost viability. The solution could be that set items would have a chance to drop sooner than other items. If you were say lvl 18, it would already be possible that a lvl 21 set item can drop for you. That way, once you hit the requirements for the item (whatever those will be), you could already have it at your disposal. Imagine what it does for your game when you find Arctic Furs in the Cold Plains for example. Immediately you have a very solid armor that can take you through half of the act. And with the aforementioned system, through the first act you could quite possibly find other pieces of the set and have some quite solid gear already that can take you some way before you find a better set, rare item, unique item.

I think these changes should do it though I have a few more ideas that could be implemented. Since there will be shared stashes, completing a set shouldn't be that difficult really. Also there could be some system that would temporarily boost the chance to find or simple gives you a set item. Say, when you gain a level, for the next 10 minutes, your chance of finding set items could be increased by 50-100%. That way you can really go for a set item hunt and once you find a single piece of the most current set available, the other systems would kick in, making sure you find at least something from that set other than this one piece. Bliz wants to push is into action all the time with globes and shrines and XP bonuses from multi-kills and stuff, why not add set items into the mix?

Quote from Jackzor

I personally like the extra XP bonuses as it encourages better and more efficient play as long as the bonuses are attached to good actions.

I like the idea as well, but I'm not so sure about the implications of it. Obviously, a more powerful/better trained character will be able to kill monsters quickly and most likely en masse, earning him ever more experience bonuses and giving him even more of a boost in power as he will jump in levels quickly, especially through Normal and beginning of Nightmare. A character that e.g. gets his most lethal skills by level 30 or is simply too much of a hybrid to be as effective as other builds will on the other hand lag behind. The result will be that strong characters will keep getting even stronger, while characters that lag behind will lag behind even more. This will keep creating more and more of a gap between the builds and will result in great differences in percieved difficulty. This promotes rushing through the game with cookie cutter builds and somewhat discourages innovative hybrid characters that sacrifice effectiveness for originality and unorthodox gaming style. Though hybrid char players usually do it for the challenge, you don't need the game mechanics to make the game potentially even harder for you (the game won't get harder, but in comparison, it will be getting easier for the strong chars thanks to the extra XP).

Quote from Jackzor

Well if it was just something like what Bashiok describes, where its one type of gem in the helmet slot, it could be good if they end up pulling it off well like he describes, where its a decision between multiple special bonuses.

True, the switchable effects might be good, but a great deal of balancing has to be done there. If we take the example Bashiok gave: "things like bonus XP, bonus gold, etc." There are very specific occasions when one or the other might be useful.

For example, the extra gold would have to be a VERY(!!!) substantial bonus because with the prices magical items, especially armors usually have attached to them, the little extra gold you got out of monsters could not possibly balance the amount you got out of selling the stuff you found with MF. Overall, extra gold is inferior because MF gives you the chance to find good stuff for your toon, good stuff to sell for extra money or good stuff to break down. Extra gold gives you only the extra money, i.e. 1/3 of what possibilities MF can provide you with, though it does so more often.

Extra XP is a nice bonus (though I don't like the extra XP bonus for killing several monsters quickly). However, we know that characters will end the game at (or around) lvl 60, so extra XP will only make you flatline sooner, but will not provide your character with more power by the end of the game. Most likely, when you face the final boss at the end of Hell, XP bonus or not, you'll end up on the same level. Meaning effective benefit is only that you'll reach those levels a little bit sooner. Again, MF dominates here because it can actually make a difference on your end character.

Bottom line is, I personally find MF just too damn powerful even outside multiplayer. With multiplayer, it's an even bigger issue.

I'd personally rather not have MF in the game. I liked it and it's fun, but after playing a heavily MF stacked summonmancer, it's almost a pain switching to a character that has to mind his gear and can't just stack on MF. I think it's too abusable in MP and puts you in terrible dilemmas ingame. Resists/survival or MF? I think it'd be better if there were just MF shrines and MF scaled with character level.

Yeah, that's what I think too. Which gets me thinking...why in the world would you rebuild the Cathedral afterwards, and reopen the entrance to the dungeons? Not to mention that you rebuild it only to see it broken down and almost in ruins after 20 years? Tss...Sanctuary's architects these days. It would be worth pointing out to the Blizz people to see if they got some explanation to this.

Holy smokes! Now I don't really care where that Cathedral picture came from but it looks AMAZING! Imagine that as a kind of loading screen like we had in D1. It looks incredible.

BTW, I tought that the Tristram Cathedral WAS there in D2. That burned down area in the northern corner of tristram, with just the walls and the impaled rogue to the right...that wasn't the remains of the Cathedral?

Yeah, um, so...these are just a few tidbits to show us that D3 will simply be awesomesauce through and through. Ok, I can live with that :whistling:

Well said, Pure Physics! I don't get why anyone should be angry about this. I for one am happy because now we have something to look towards, not just a "when it's done" and room for speculation. We already assumed Q4 2011 - Q1 2012 and we got our confirmation that both is very much possible. I for one have a lot of games I wanted to finish before D3 and now I have a certainty that there will be enough time for that...not to mention that Q1 2012 equals exams time and free time after that. If the game came out Q4 2011, I personally couldn't afford to play it anyway because of school.
You can feel bummed if you really want to but I don't see a reason. Patience is a virtue. If every time something doesn't go your way you throw a temper tantrum then I guess you should work on that because things rarely go as planned. This is just a game...a successor to a brilliant ARPG on which I myself have spent the last 10 years...but a game nontheless. Is it going to change your life terribly if it doesn't come in time? I don't think so.
I'm with that damn Hamster on this one...release Q1 2012.

I hope we find Geglash fighting somewhere in the deserts around Caldeum. He was all talk and people vouched that he really was a good fighter but was driven to drinking by the events around Lut Gholein...it'd be great to see him bashing some skulls for real.

Well, as for the jewel/gem discussion, I have personally used neither to any good effect since runewords took all the spotlight. When you find a decent socketable weapon, stick some runeword in it and it will do much more good than anything else you can put in there. As for socketing other items (magicals) that can't have runewords in them, still, putting a high level rune usually got you more benefit than waiting endlessly for that one rare jewel to drop or combining dozens of chipped diamonds only so you get your boost in resistances in your shield (which you will replace like 30 minutes later anyway with better shield and lose your hard earned diamond). I believe in D3, this will be whole other matter since pretty much anything you have can now be socketed by artisans. So though after getting all gems lvl 14 there is nothing really new waiting for you, seeing as you can stick those gems into everything you can possibly find, plus the fact that you can't alter your primary stats adds up to the fact that if I get a lvl 14 ruby and +50 to my vitality (thus effectively increasing it by half) I will be screaming "Yes please I want to find MOAR!!!" Gems though maybe not the most exciting aspect of the loot system might in the end make the difference between a build that struggles to survive and a build that owns the game.

As for the stash, I personally think it would be better if the both stashes were added up together. You'd have one stash with one whole section for your personal items for the character and another whole section for shared stuff (you'd have simply switchable tabs just like with vendors in D2). That way you don't have to remember where which stash is supposed to be/what it looks like every time you get from one city to another (as we won't be stuck the whole act in one city anymore).

The sentry might pretty much be anything, but I'd imagine it as kind of a high level trap, otherwise it wouldn't be hyped all that much. Seeing as in my opinion the main problem about traps was that if you had to fall back or the enemies scattered, the trap just stood where it was cast and had nothing to shoot at...it could this time be a mechanism that you'd launch at your enemy, it would deploy, and then like a regular assassin sentry fire arrows or explosive projectiles...while it's attached to one of the enemies. So it'd be moving along with the pack of monsters, shooting everything around with whatever projectile you can imagine. Once it's duration runs out, it could explode, dealing massive damage to the host monster (perhaps damage somehow related to the amount of damage the sentry dished out during its existance). Wouldn't it be sweet to attach this thing to a fallen shaman and watch as he unwillingly shoots every fallen and fallen shaman there is around him in the camp then "selfdestructs"?
Think of the possibilities with runes now. You could have the sentry function as normal by shooting projectiles while also converting the monster it's attached to to your side of the fight for a duration. You could shoot multiple sentries at once on multiple enemies that instead of inflicting damage all around would focus on killing their host monster. Once host monster is dead, they would attach themselves to another...and so on and so on until the sentry's duration runs out. At least...that would be my take on the ability. It's quite possible it will just be a summonable like Shadow Master. Ranged classes can make good use of those.

Quote from cas89_6080271

(sort of off topic)
It was my thought that the Hell's never commanded undead. The dead were rising from their graves by themselves because of the effect that evil has on its surroundings. So they were just a side-effect of the demonic presence...
Not a part of the Hell's army...

Don't remember where I read this though...

Well, there was a slew of hellish minions that were undead in e.g. the River of Flame who were definitely under Diablo's command. Mephisto was also I believe called the Lord of the Undead or something like that since undead minions were his specialty. As far as the regular undead like zombies and skeletons are concerned, however, I find it interesting that Bashiok only mentions Tristram as the place where the undead are not raised by Hell. One has to ask what is in Tristram that could make the undead rise from the grave? I think he's hinting at King Leoric (about whom we already know). Leoric is, true, controlled by Hell to some extent (...prepare yourself, mortal, to serve my MASTER for eternity) but it is in fact he who can make undead rise from the grave. So even though Hell (or one of the Prime/Lesser Evils to be exact) is responsible for Leoric's presence in New Tristram, it is Leoric who raises the undead from the grave. Ooor...I'm completely missing the point and there is another story about all this which we still have to hear. If that's the case, you can merrily disregard everything I just said as nothing but ramblings of a new poster :biggrin: