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But D3 is D3 right? So people will still buy the game anytime of the year and through any means possible

Exactly that, I'd find a way to get it even if I had to pick up an extra shift.

Other members of the party might get randomized magical item drops, but the one who killed the boss is surely guaranteed a legendary or magical gear/weapon dropping.

Really? So party for most of the places then solo the bosses?(If questing of course)

I think it would be cool if you could give an item a skills effect from a rune that you socketed it into... lets say, the wizards arcane orb skill. On hit, 5% chance to cause an arcane explosion. Or perhaps from the Witch Doctors horrify, on hit fears enemy. Imagine the barb plowing through his enemies with whirlwind, having a bunch of arcane orbs proc along the way. That would add alot more customization to the game as well, having cross classed skills in your weapons. Or cross classed skills in your skills, if that makes sense...

Cool idea, could be hard to balance tho. Also, who knows what gems/jewels/crafting etc are gonna be able to do.

Mains supplying them items? Nah. I don't see that happening. Items aren't exactly in abundance in hardcore mode. I don't see many people dueling tbh, if death is permanent. It will remain a very very limited audience to be able to pvp in hardcore, and thus, they should remove it entirely, or instate the sparring program also together with real death pvp..

Really? Anyone who actually wants to PvP in hardcore will make a seperate character for dueling. The gear you should be using and the skills are usually completely different. There's TONS of items available in d2 HC, hell, you can find most of the items for capable low-mid level duelers rather easily. The +max jewels and lower level charms weren't that expensive either unless you were trading for all of it at once and even then, MFing for it wasn't that bad, which if you are a "casual PvE player", shouldn't you be finding items since you aren't spending all of your time in PvP?

If PVP in D3 was balanced, then sure! If not, then we already know that everyone will just roll the FOTM OP char so if it was for example the Barbarian, then I'm betting 90% of HC arena players will be Barbs, and those who have other classes will most likely avoid arenas, because they know they'll just lose anyway. Not something that Blizzard would like or intend.

The thing is diablo 2 wasn't balanced around pvp either but yet there were many viable dueling builds, especially for low -mid level dueling and there was quite a lot of viable builds for high end as well.

IF you got a 50/50 chance to survive, I don't see how that would suppress any excitement present to the current way. You don't know if u survive or not if you got 50 / 50 % chance..

That's why I think sparring could work. When you go 1on1 sparring with a guy, and you are both winning 50 / 50... and then... you duel for real.. so everybody has the fairest of chances to win..

Who wants to trust the matchmaking system? ;D It can be dangerous.

If I wanna throw my character away on PvP, I at least wanna know that the fight was as FAIR as it could have been, or it would have been wasted.. you get me? I think alot of people would agree with me

Ok, so what stops a person from fake sparring. Also known as, purposely losing to you or holding back. When the real duel comes, he stomps your ass and lols. That would be more demoralizing for casual gamers than straight up getting your ass kicked and again you're left without having a clue. Also, if you played HC pvp, you'd know there was plenty of cowards amongst the ranks. Tons of people used chicken hack and plenty of others wouldn't duel known players or they would use their maphacks to view their opponents gear before deciding to duel. The majority wanted better than a 50% chance to win.

3)

What this does is, give confidence to HC players to PvP for death, if they can try it out in PvP sparring mode first...

I can assure you, that nobody with half a brain is gonna want to PvP to death with their fully maxed out lvl 60 HC char they spent money, time and such in.. nobody really... maybe 0.5 %

BUT...

If they were allowed to test their maxed chars out, and feel good about it in a sparring match, they might want to go do REAL PVP after.. for permanent death.'



The point is, why even HAVE PvP in hardcore mode, if nobody uses it ?

There isn't one. So instate both a sparring system and a permanent death one
4)

Lastly, what sparring also does is, it matches your opponent against you.

So let's say you wanna duel a barb, and you're a wizzy. You're unsure they you are both evenly matched and the fight will be fair... so sparr with the barb first.. to see if the battle is one-sided or actually exiciting.. so it can go both ways..

What's exiciting about a PVP match, if u alrdy know who wins?

So you sparr, and find out you have equal skill, items and settings, and THEN

YOU DUEL TO THE DEATH !! ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN !! BOOM.

The problem with that logic is when does a player who's already scared to duel going to actually feel confident enough to go play against someone that he might not be prepared for or are you saying to spar first like your running a dueling scouting program to make sure you aren't against someone better than you. Part of the thrill of hardcore dueling was not knowing if you were going to survive the battle and in my opinion, it should stay that way. Softcore is already set up for those who aren't willing to put in the time and effort into making a truly good dueler.

In addition to that, if the game is supposed to have a matchmaking system in it, then you should technically be positioned against those of an equal level to yourself. That way you should feel safe to duel if the system is actually designed well.

Hopefully instead of just adding a bunch of items to be completely better than the old items, they release items that are "fun"/interesting. For example, I thought making a Trang'Oul Necromancer with lower resist/skeleton mage/poison nova was a blast due to turning into a "vampire" along with getting firewall/meteor/fireball. Basically add items to create variety/make "weak" builds more powerful. Have items that allow some auras, summons, who knows what. Maybe make a wand called "the necromancers wand(for lack of taking the time to make a better name) which allows you to raise skeletons like in diablo2. Hopefully you get the idea.

Quote from Roger

Why don't they put a to-the-death arena and another not-to-the-death arena?

You could have both. If you want a fight to the death, you can have it! If you want to just punch your friend, you can also have it!

Because a good dueler will never get a duel if people can dodge out of it easily. I don't think you could have a good match system like softcore could because of the obvious reasons, death. Not to mention hardcore should stay as it is, hardcore.

Hopefully they bring this feature back. Hopefully an said before, an artisan will for a price, be able to name items and remove item names as mentioned before.

Personally I hope they keep death permanent. I loved the thrill of it and will continue PvP well into d3. Lack of real death takes away what PvP is for me. That mentioned, if people don't have a choice, more people will actually give it a try and find that it can be really really fun. HC PvP separates the good from the bad.

How can you say your going to have many characters with many different builds when you can simply swap out skills? theres no ''builds'' anymore, your 'build' is the last skills you whimsically decided to swap in your build may not be the same tomorrow.

The reason I say that is for a couple of reasons.
My idea of a "build" is picking a skill set and playing it from start to finish. Being able to "swap freely" will not affect those who want to play the game in a SPECIFIC manner. If you're searching for the most optimal build, then yes, this new system will help you quickly. I hate the idea of being able to switch freely at any time but just because it's available, doesn't mean I'm going to use it. I wouldn't have made as many different characters on diablo2 if I didn't like to play a build/skill set from start to finish.

but stop kidding your self FFS, there is less .... investment in character =/, and less need to play same class more than once, you need to stop lying to yourself.

There is a bit less investment(punishment from choosing wrong stats/skills) but you obviously aren't getting the point. I don't care about the END game capability of a character/making the perfect build or swapping skills as you level to beat a certain point in the game. The reason I would make many characters is because I want to see if I can get a SPECIFIC SKILL SET THROUGH THE GAME. For example, can I get a pure melee wizard from lvl 1 to lvl 60 and through the game without dieing(being that I play hardcore only). Or can I get a bow barb through the game. Just because you can't add the skill point and just because other people can't look at your character and say "oh man, he beat hell difficulty with just a Arctic Blast druid, he's so bad ass" doesn't mean you still can't play a "build" through the game. You just have to limit yourself, which in many ways is no different than those who choose to make noncookie cutter builds in diablo 2.

Yep, I understood that point very clearly already though. The difference is there are people who are already satisfied with that level of customization and there are some who are not. I'm going to first bring in stats, even if this is referring to skills, because it makes the argument more clear.

Not all boxers have the same level of speed, stamina, and strength. In fact some boxers train specifically for certain things depending on their style and body-type. The fact that a boxer chooses build up their speed over their other attributes is almost like us customizing our characters. In blizzard's system, all of these said boxers have the same traits.

I'll continue a bit further on my earlier post to go along with this.
1) Stat points being the same help towards game balance AND can coincide with lore. For example, lets take the Wizard. The wizard spent their life studying/using magic and you're taking over at the point where he has "finished school". Now lets say that their school was strict and kept them busy, so it's safe to say that running and weight lifting wasn't part of his daily life. Hence all wizards would be in similar shape.(remember that this is NOT baldurs gate, you aren't making up the history/persona of your character) He's now free of instructors/parents and can make his own choices. He(you) decides he loves the thrill of melee and begins hitting the weights. Now this leads to my earlier point in this thread. They hopefully/need to have stat points gained via quests or even "skill selection" that adds to points that drive those skills. That way you can have somewhat of a special feel to your character without breaking game balance. That would allow for customization that would be meaningful and make sense lore wise. Again for example, I imagine the life of a wizard compared to that of a barbarian would be drastically different and would produce 2 extremely different physical outcomes. It would NOT make sense for a wizard to have higher strength than a barbarian lore wise.

2) Skills will be A LOT more balanced with scaled skills. I again don't really feel that you're missing out on *much* customization by this. The fact is if you're out to make a orb sorc, it's probably gonna be very similar to a different orb sorc. Also like said, if you truly want to play "oddball" builds, you wont be using the skill swapping. The only people that this helps is those who want to use END LEVEL PvP or PvM(and newbs from screwing up and having to remake) and those people probably are not the types who are going to make many characters anyways. It'll save them time on making their cookie cutter characters. IF YOU TRULY LOVE TO TEST AND PLAY MANY DIFFERENT BUILDS, THIS WILL NOT AFFECT YOU AND YOU ARE LYING IF YOU SAY IT WILL. I for one know I will have roughly 30 characters of varying builds/functions assuming I have the room for it.

Finally, do you really care if someone else can save themselves some time if they so choose? Again, anyone who truly wants to play a build through, will do it. Even with walking through d2, I was able to get from normal-hell no rush/no maphack with 14 hours of solid play, was level 83. Was one of my ladder runs. Either way, I still support *some* customization in these areas but it should be more focused on *smart* ways. You can even take my stat point idea and take it as far as skills. For example, you might get SKILL POINTS for certain quests, books, every 3 levels you gain a point to add orw/e along the way that could add slight specialty within the other classes without breaking balance of the game too much in anyway. You should be looking at these as a great way to balance and how you can augment personality INTO the existing system.

I guess my question for everyone is...Why not get the best of both worlds?

Playing hardcore would solve your fears of this. The new fear that has been given to me is the idea of a 1 hit random monster nuke. Hopefully it's rather noticeable and dodgeable if you aren't surrounded by a ton of monsters.

I suppose if you HAVE to play softcore tho....this would be a good mechanic to make play less annoying. I'm pretty sure they said there would be a bit of time that it would take to resurrect the person but I do agree with the loss of loot being extremely annoying. As said, most "public unknown players" probably wont wait to resurrect you unless they absolutely need you.

In every game with stat/skill choice you will have to plan your character. Auto-stat and pretty much "auto-skill" eliminates this.

You still have to pick the skills you plan to use with the build. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the skills you don't pick are still locked and only become available via respecs. The difficulty of respecs still hasn't been released correct? Also for those that hate it, you don't have to use it. I personally will be one of the people not using respecs. I love the level of difficulty increase by potentially not making the most "optimal" choice.

Stat points I don't really care about, I think a "set" stat point will make the game more balanced/remove a ton of headache. Even tho items not having reqs would remove most of the headache. I do however hope that d3 has SOME stat points that can be added. Would be nice to add a little more "specialized" feeling to my character. That way a melee wizard wouldn't have the exact same stats as a caster wizard.

It only took 30 minutes if you abused the game system. If you actually played the game, it takes a hell of a lot longer than 30 minutes to get to lvl 30.

You don't know that hell, or even nightmare will be easy.

Just because you think that the skilling process has been "dumbed down" doesn't mean the gameplay has. In fact, I'm pretty certain that you'll need to think more about killing a group of monsters in d3 than you ever did in d2.

Exactly right, not having a maphack also makes a big difference in game length.

Honestly after level 30 in D2 you didn't really make any decisions on your skill tree--you just slowly skillcapped the ones you wanted for your build. Not really any choice in that.

Exactly right, aside from mostly minor details.

Orb Sorc
Hit lvl 30-50, All orb
50+ Max Synergy or Cold mastery with aid of skill quests or go fire/lightning skill if you want to kill all monsters

Difference is now you just pick the skill and it handles clicking the point for you. That and all of your skills will technically max faster being that they scale.(Don't know if they will have higher max levels for skills) For example, perhaps a lvl 1 skill caps at lvl 50 or something like that.