Not just because THEY like it, because they find it the best number after much testing probably. It's about creating the most optimal gaming experience for everyone in the game and if they want to back up their own philosophy of us having to use 6 skills up (instead of 1 or 2 in D2), we'd end up having 8 people on screen using 6 skills each all the time. That would just get messy to be honest.
So it isn't because "THEY like it", but because "THEY like it... after testing"? Lol.
I concede that sometimes devs need to make the call on features. At other times, they're just arbitrarily deciding what is fun at the expense of options for the rest of us.
And sorry, but no, people doesn't have different "wants and needs" regarding party size in Diablo. It's more of a privilege blah blah blah
And I'm sorry, yes, they do. Thanks for trying to take it out of context though.
While we're at it, why don't you tell me how this would affect you in any way should they decide to allow people to increase the cap?
You honestly think that's more arbitrary than the "I want 8 players in my game because I believe I should be able to do whatever I want" argument you're making?
They're taking what we're used to in D3's direct predecessor and making it smaller "just because that's what WE like". I'm asking for the option for players to set the limit higher OR lower because everyone has different wants and needs regarding party size. You may draw whatever conclusion you want from that. At the end of the day, I'm not asking for anything that would affect you and you're not persuasive enough to change my mind about it.
If your deficit in open-mindedness is that big, we don't have much else to discuss.
Well, he gets invited to press events... Flux, for example, has a more abrasive outlook (from Blizzard's point of view) and that's probably why he doesn't get invited to press events.
I'd probably say Blizzard's crap doesn't stink too, if it meant getting to go to these awesome events.
Yes, what does any of that have to do with making the conscious decision to prefer freedom over safety-- even in game design?
It's your use of terms that gives me pause (I'm not mad btw, just enjoying a good debate).
Your fundamental assumption, namely that Bliz is limiting the max party to 4 because it is somehow "safe", is wrong. They are choosing 4 because when they tested builds with more than 4, the feature (co-op play) simply became less fun. When they tested builds with less than 4, that also became less fun. They're designing features here. Designing software is all about making the best possible choices so that a particular feature can best suit its function.. not simply appeasing what people think they want. They're not trying to make it "safe", they're trying to make it fun. You may think you want 8-person co-op play, but really, we all just want awesome co-op play. You have to at least afford the possibility that in practice, 8 people will just plain suck ass.
My other issue is with your use of the term "freedom." You say "I want freedom" but what you're really saying is "I want it my way." You say you want options, I get that. But what you really want is to enjoy the game as fully as possible, and the reason I cited those quotes in my previous post was to reveal that often, in the face of change and the unknown, people don't actually know what they want, they just think they know what they want.
Giving people more freedom when designing technology often simply gives people more ways to have a bad experience with that technology.
I should note that I'm using "safe" as a way to describe how Blizzard is arbitrarily deciding what is "fun" by limiting choices that we can make. Such decisions are a slippery slope into exactly what I was referring to earlier. The reality is, if they want to make the default setting for games four players, that's fine. I think we should have the freedom to bring in more people if we want to. From a personal standpoint, one Diablo 3 game won't even hold half of the number of close friends I want to be playing with. Eight would pretty much be ideal.
I don't care to be patronized. To say that I'm asking for freedom because I don't know any better strikes me as more than a touch condescending and fallacious.
Sometimes freedoms need to be taken away to preserve the overall quality of something (Apples IOS products are a great example of this philosophy). It's not just about "messy" or "clean", it's about reliably, and correctly balancing game difficulty.
He who would sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither and will lose both.
True when talking about socio-political institutions. False when talking about software design.
Turns out, context actually is important.
Why is it false in the context of software design, exactly?
"The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring." Paul Rand (Design, Form, and Chaos)
"You need to 'listen deeply' - listen past what people say they want to hear what they need." - Jon Meads
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -Henry Ford
Any questions?
Yes, what does any of that have to do with making the conscious decision to prefer freedom over safety in game design?
Am I the only person who has thought of this solution:
Requires X amount of points in tier 1 to access tier 2.
Wouldn't that solve everything?
This way people have to keep skill points in lower skills in order to acquire the higher level tiers. When they respec, they need to again apply X amount of skill points into the lower skills to access the higher ones. This solution is simple and effective. What are the disadvantages?
[EDIT] This can be done for each tier. X amount of skill points required in tier 2 to access tier 3 and so on...
Off-topic: That Path of Exile thing in your sig looks pretty cool. It's got that really gritty look to it.
But tbh, the thing I hate the most about the current system is being able to choose ANY skills instead of choosing a couple to "unlock", and the biggest one, being able to swap them on the fly, whenever you want even between monster encounters.
Imo, that will REALLY slow down the dungeon progression, as people in the beginning will be "swapping" between skillsets (oh, ok, now I want an AoE only skillset, now a single target burst).
It should only be swappable a limited number of times (so you can experiment) before you start to pay for it and only in a specific place (like town).
I don't forsee many people doing this... however, for those select few who WANT to.... this will open up a whole new avenue of fun for them. Where's the harm? You're not being FORCED to do it, but the small handful that would love to get what they want too.
Blizzard really has struck the best balance of 'play however you want to play this game' with their current systems.
Naw, there's still too many people who like to manually customize their characters to consider this a "balance".
People focus too much energy in building characters and too little in how fun it will be to use then.
Building characters is a perfectly viable activity in an RPG, who are you to say it is in any way an inferior activity to persue than "how fun it will be to use them"?
Sometimes freedoms need to be taken away to preserve the overall quality of something (Apples IOS products are a great example of this philosophy). It's not just about "messy" or "clean", it's about reliably, and correctly balancing game difficulty.
He who would sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither and will lose both.
True when talking about socio-political institutions. False when talking about software design.
Turns out, context actually is important.
Why is it false in the context of software design, exactly?
it's a simple system on paper but it ends up leading to a more broad spectrum of useable decent builds which is what they're going for and i'm all for it
Of course it's broad, there's nothing to customize to make it specific.
Wondering if we will get to play around with some web-skill calculators after the beta comes out, im not sure what it would entail, pick your skills, tell it what your character level is, what runes you will be using, and look at the stats, for those who dont get into beta, and even those who do, gameplay vids, and skill calculators will be a good fix
and im not counting the out dated barbarian skill tree calculator either =/
theres nothing to calculate though... you just pick your skills and passives and then put runes into your skills and thats that
I'd rather have the freedom to choose how many people I want to play with. Then again, I'm not a sheep in the Blizzard flock.
I like it how people are called sheep when they support changes that makes sense. Then again, I'm not a whiney crybaby who throws a tantrum whenever things don't go exactly my way.
What I don't get is that to me, meaningful customization is choices that can't be solved mathematically. This is what the Diablo 3 skill system tries to achieve.
Stat point allocation is just a simple exercise of finding the optimal distribution mathematically. There's really no way to combat this. So there's really no real difference between automatically allocated and selected stat points.
Skill points inevitably lead to maxing a select few number of skills, since it creates effectiveness for the cost of variance in skills used. This has always been my major beef with games like Diablo 2, Titan Quest, Torchlight...
Since I haven't yet tried it in practice, I can't say for sure, but in theory the system adopted by Diablo 3 will eliminate this annoyance.
The only things that I don't like in theory are: 10 character limit and unlimited respecs.
Both are simple to change, however, and if practice proves to be the same as theory, I'll do my best to generate feedback for Blizzard regarding these two issues.
To say there is no difference between a system where you must think, even if only to find the optimal mathematical distribution, and a system that simply does it all for you... Seems a bit fallacious.
Not quite. I'm talking about many games. Diablo II being the beginning, I played Sacred and Sacred 2, Hellgate: London and Titan Quest. All of which had the same problems.
Under the pretense that those systems were inherently flawed, you'd probably be correct. Again, however, it comes down to preference.
Sometimes it's better to not try and "fix" a flawed mechanic, but change it completely. I just have the feeling that the majority of the "defenders" of the skill/stat allocation keep defending for nostalgia's sake. (Note I said the majority - you are not included if you don't want to be).
Well, again, what you may have seen as flawed I see as working properly. Blizzard was on my side once, now they're on yours. I'd venture to guess the tables will turn again eventually.
I won't address the nostalgia bit, other than to say I'm tired of it being used as a cop out when someone can't agree with another's difference of opinion when really it's just that. You're not included in that if you don't want to be
By looking at Diablo II and other similar games, I think it's safe to say that stat allocation only leads to cookie cutter builds. There's nothing original, exciting or really interesting on it. Except for some people who don't read guides and can end up screwing up their characters completely and have to start over - many of which won't.
If you're using Diablo 2 as a reference point, keep in mind you're looking back in time by 10 years.
Also seen in every game that had skill trees and skill point allocation is that the player skipped the bottom tiers to get only the higher lvl, stronger abilities which resulted in:
1. a variety of 1 point skills that never got used (thus skill points wasted)
2. people using only very few skills that were maxed out and one shot everything.
Again, that's not offering anything.
So because no one has done it properly yet (a debatable insinuation in and of itself), it is impossible?
So we'll agree to disagree, but I feel my point is quite strong and I'm quite happy Blizzard is of the same opinion.
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So it isn't because "THEY like it", but because "THEY like it... after testing"? Lol.
I concede that sometimes devs need to make the call on features. At other times, they're just arbitrarily deciding what is fun at the expense of options for the rest of us.
And I'm sorry, yes, they do. Thanks for trying to take it out of context though.
While we're at it, why don't you tell me how this would affect you in any way should they decide to allow people to increase the cap?
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Okay, bye.
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I'd probably say Blizzard's crap doesn't stink too, if it meant getting to go to these awesome events.
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I should note that I'm using "safe" as a way to describe how Blizzard is arbitrarily deciding what is "fun" by limiting choices that we can make. Such decisions are a slippery slope into exactly what I was referring to earlier. The reality is, if they want to make the default setting for games four players, that's fine. I think we should have the freedom to bring in more people if we want to. From a personal standpoint, one Diablo 3 game won't even hold half of the number of close friends I want to be playing with. Eight would pretty much be ideal.
I don't care to be patronized. To say that I'm asking for freedom because I don't know any better strikes me as more than a touch condescending and fallacious.
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Yes, what does any of that have to do with making the conscious decision to prefer freedom over safety in game design?
Edited for red!
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Off-topic: That Path of Exile thing in your sig looks pretty cool. It's got that really gritty look to it.
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Naw, there's still too many people who like to manually customize their characters to consider this a "balance".
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Building characters is a perfectly viable activity in an RPG, who are you to say it is in any way an inferior activity to persue than "how fun it will be to use them"?
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Why is it false in the context of software design, exactly?
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Of course it's broad, there's nothing to customize to make it specific.
In before lolRunes.
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It just hit me how pathetic this system is. LOL.
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Except for right there, right?
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To say there is no difference between a system where you must think, even if only to find the optimal mathematical distribution, and a system that simply does it all for you... Seems a bit fallacious.
Under the pretense that those systems were inherently flawed, you'd probably be correct. Again, however, it comes down to preference.
Well, again, what you may have seen as flawed I see as working properly. Blizzard was on my side once, now they're on yours. I'd venture to guess the tables will turn again eventually.
I won't address the nostalgia bit, other than to say I'm tired of it being used as a cop out when someone can't agree with another's difference of opinion when really it's just that. You're not included in that if you don't want to be
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If you're using Diablo 2 as a reference point, keep in mind you're looking back in time by 10 years.
So because no one has done it properly yet (a debatable insinuation in and of itself), it is impossible?
For now.