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Quote from Dawn

Okay I haven't played Beta so I'm not 100% on any of this, it's just what I've read off the internet. But here's just some stuff I've noticed. In Diablo 3, you can't add attributes (strength, vitality, intelligence etc). The attributes just get added automatically, correct?

Correct. But that's fine because there was no choice in where to put the attributes in D2. There was a right way and a wrong way. Any variation served only to weaken your character. STR to wear the gear you need and VIT.

Bottom line, there wasn't any real customization there, just the illusion.

Quote from Dawn

...And with skills, you can't level skills up (like level 20 skeletons in D2). You can only get the skill once, and then add runes if you want to make it stronger. After realizing all this, I realized that there is hardly ANY customization in D3 at all. It's really limited.

What's the difference between clicking a skill once to get it and clicking it 100 times? Nothing.

Adding skill points to a skill increased it's power by A TINY ammount each time. It's very underwhelming and a bunch of skills aren't worth shit until you get enough points into them, where's the fun in that?

It's a much better feeling to simply acquire a skill in all it's glory, immediately powerful and useful, giving you more CHOICES since you don't have to pool up skill points or wait for the "right skills" to become powerful.

Talent trees have the same "illusion" of choice that the attributes had. The choices are rarely difficult to make, unlike in D3 where it's tough to decide exactly how you want to play because every skill has a use and is powerful from the get go. That's not counting how runes can completely alter the usage of a skill to your needs (CUSTOMIZATION!).

Quote from Dawn

Someone said on another website that at level 13, practically everyone's wizards are exactly the same. Attributes the same, skills the same (because you can now just re-choose and swap skills whenever you want). The only way to customize your character is through items and runes. Doesn't all this kind of suck? I mean it makes the game way more boring. I'd really love to make a Melee Wizard or something, but if we can't control the attributes, it makes it much harder to have unique heroe builds.

First of all, controll over attributes has NO bearing on making a Melee Wizard if you choose. INT is your primary stat, it's your damage, whether you swing with an Axe or shoot a Magic Missile.

Also, playing in the Beta for 3 months now, I have seen SO many different builds (with overlapping skill choices of course) between players. I played with 5 different Monks in a matter of 2 hours one night and they ALL had 2 different skill/runes than each other.

This is in the beta, where we have EXTREMELY little to choose from and people are STILL choosing things differently. There is MUCH more diversity in builds in the beta of D3 than there was in D2 (I'm talking viable, not gimp variants).

The fact that you can access any skill doesn't take away the meaning of your choice. If you create a set of runes/skills tha allow you to kill faster and more efficiently, or to survive what kills most others, then YOUR CHOICES MATTERED.

People will have tons of different builds, it will be DIFFICULT to find people with the same skill/rune choices. THat's not taking gear into account yet either, which plays a huge role in what skills to use (crit, APS, etc...). I know this because it's already happening in the beta.

Bottom line:

THe POTENTIAL for everyone to be the same DOES NOT MEAN that everyone WILL be the same.

Quote from Dawn

What do you guys think? If I've got some stuff wrong, please explain how it all works (and how customization is in fact very good, if that's the case?)

I think you, and anyone else who thinks that way has stuff immensely wrong.

D3 customization trumps D2 in every way.

D3 replayability trumps D2 in every way (another complaint I hear).

Replay value won't come from FORCED REROLLS to experiement with new builds, it will come from the COMABT ITSELF.

The areas to farm are much larger now, the mobs to fight are more diverse. Hunting for large packs of rares/champs with 4 affixes making them incredibly different encounters with different strategies needed is awesome compared to D2 boss runs.

Then add in random events and Inferno monsters being higher level than players.

The combat is more strategic and challenging than ever in D3 compared to D2. You have more tools at your disposal (compared to D2's 2-3 skills maybe) and more things to fight against.

That's why you'll keep replaying.

Quote from johnnysd

Diablo III is not a Diablo game in my opinion. Basically all RPG elements have been completely removed. Stats auto level...

Auto-attributes is 100% the same thing as Diablo 2 since everyone did the same thing with their attributes anyway (there was the right way and then a bunch of wrong ways to allocate them). You had the illusion of choice.

Quote from johnnysd

...all skills open to the player and level automatically...[]...From what I can see, the only RPG element left is a choice of 3 total passive skills you get over the complete lifespan of you character...

You say the only choice is between 3 passives but what about choosing what 6 skills to use and then what Runes to put in them? The build choices are immense and blow away any "customization" (in quotations because there was almost none of that) in D2.

Quote from johnnysd

...You have to go to a completely ridiculous "shrine" to swap out skills...

The shrine solves a key problem. There are plenty of shrines along the way scattered throughout important parts of the world, not just towns.

Because of that, the shrine helps give you that dedicated to your build feeling (which you talk about later as a good thing about D2) without punishing people for experimenting with the immense amount of choices in builds.

Quote from johnnysd

For every choice you made you gave something up. Each character you played was ultimately unique, even if eventually there were so called "cookie-cuter" specs. You were a Furyzon, not a Bowazon and could never be. If you decided that you wanted a bow wielder you made one, and the roguelike features made it FUN to develop a new character. The horrible skill system that has basically infinite respecs kills that.

Completely getting rid of respecs is harsh in a game where there are SOOOO MANY CHOICES and builds. In D2 it KIND OF makes sense since there were like 3 builds for a class that were good so you knew before hand what you were getting into (wow, that sounds like a game with lots of choice and customization!!! <_<)

But with D3, the bulk of the game is experimenting and playing with tons of new combinations. That is the heart (the 2nd heart, the first is the loot game just like D2) of the game. Being able to switch is a basic fundamental to a system that allows so much diversity.

The shrine also helps you "lock in" to a build more so people will be more dedicated to their builds than you think (which is weird because you are against the shrine but it is in favor of what you like about D2). There will just be more diversity among those builds in D3 compared to D2, which is a GREAT thing.



TL:DR

Quote from johnnysd

Choice mattered in Diablo II.

But there were much, much, much, much, much less choices to make in D2 when compared to D3. Which makes the few that mattered not really matter enough to compare to D3 in any way. For specifics read the whole post.

Bottom line - I will take build diversity and experimentation and all kinds of awesome skill/rune combinations with the ability to respec (D3) over 3 cookie cutter builds per class without the ability to respec (D2).

Quote from Radacci

well alot of ppl are complaining that the game is to easy and such, and i tend to agree.
i know it's cause it's small part of act1 and all that.
but a lot of ppl might just play the game once for story or such, cause they cant and dont feel like repeating the same thing again, again, again. and not get a challenge until hell. i think it's gonna ruin the whole experience for them.
i know normal is kind of *tutorial* difficulty, but couldnt they just have had an optional tutorial difficulty?

The game is meant to be replayed. If people are playing it once for the story then the difficulty shouldn't bother them too much (Also, Normal WILL get harder in the later acts). If someone is playing for a challenge then that person will be replaying the game often. We're talking about 2 different people here. If a person happens to be playing for the story AND the challenge, he also won't mind replaying the game a bunch and plans to.

No one will be "expert" players on their first run, no matter how many hours of Diablo II you have under your belt. I welcome the Normal difficulty as a place to learn as much as possible since this is a new game, regardless of my skill in previous games.

Quote from Winged

...Another useful tidbit of knowledge is that you will not be able to swap skills in between matches. This makes it so a team can adapt their play style to counter an opposing team, making it so comebacks are very possible if a team can adapt efficiently.

This confused me. You mean that we will be able to swap skills in between matches, right?

Quote from Winged

Through a display of testimonials from in-house testers who have been put up against the Inferno difficulty, we're given an idea of how difficult endgame content will truly be.

Were these testimonials shown? I think it would be amusing to read what they had to say about getting their butts handed to them on Inferno, lol!!

Awesome write up, thank you very much.

It's a get out of jail card, but you don't get out for free. Since player/monster collisions exist in this game, if you get cornered by accident, this enables you to get out of that corner. The duration is only for a few seconds, so if those few seconds do cost you your life, then most likely would may have been dead regardless.

Also remember that some of the biggest part of spirit walk is the runes that it has to go in conjunction with it. Mana or health regen, one does damage to the enemies you walk through, others increase the duration of ability.
I'd also like to note, that while it hasn't been confirmed or mentioned since the spell's initial introduction, the spell was suppose to allow you to walk THROUGH walls. So if you wanted to take a quick short cut, then you could. We won't know if that functionality is still present until release though.

I've seen this exact thread about every class in the game.
And when it's based on almost no skills, no runes, having less than 6 abilities slotted, no gear, and only 1/4 of the way through act 1 on normal mode- it just comes off as completely fucking retarded.

Honestly, if Inferno is as hard as its supposed to be, I cant imagine Bots being anywheres near as efficient as they are in D2 if they manage to slip past Warden for a short time. Wouldnt it take an insane amount of coding to get a bot to know which spells to use and when against Mobs, and Champs that have changing variables? Its not like D2 that when you deck out a Bot in great gear he will be invincible. If Inferno is as hard as advertised, even with great gear its still going to be hard as crap, especially for a Bot. Maybe I am being Naive, but thats my hope.

I don't think level really factors into it at all. Being low level doesn't mean your character isn't already a badass. From act 1 you're taking on some pretty awesome monsters in large groups... the number next to your name doesn't change that. Having to wait until level 60 to use them is just a pointless delay, and wouldn't help anyways; the bad players who have them will still be bad.

There is a difference here. My numbers are not an estimate, they're correct. The OP is bullshit. Your point is completely meaningless in a world of easily swappable skills.

The important point being made here is that there are a significant number of builds to try in the game, and that it's non-trivial to determine the build to use. Compare to d2 where there were significantly *more* builds, but it was obvious what the best were, and your point wasn't meaningless because you *did* need to re-roll for *every minor difference.*

To the talk about the CE dyes not being super unique, I understand why they aren't. It wouldn't make any sense to have super rare, hard to find, gone in one use dyes (like crimson red and the such), and then have even cooler, infinite use special effects dye that a LOT of people will have. Personally? I'd love to have a cool extra visual effect for them, but it makes sense they there doesn't appear to be any.

Heck I'l be happy with the dyes as is; Infinite use =D

Quote from italofoca

In many ways D3 is an mmo. You don't play and make dungeons with many people and theres no central loby were many players met, true. But economicaly D3 is a mmo because everyone interact with million of people at the same time. D3 AH doesn't differ from any mmo AH.

And BoE/BoP system has nothing to do with mmo's. It's a system created with one porpus: preserve the social status of items in online games, since this system was being degenerated by realk money transactions.
In WoW if you have a tier 10 or wherever set it's because you raided, not because you buyed it from someone using your real money. BoE/BoP is the solo system that allows this to hold true.

Any item that is centered around getting items should use a BoE/BoP system or else it degenerates into illegal game were cheaters (buying item from third party IS cheat) freely rules.

I see D3 as a cousin of Guild Wars. They follow the same fundemental, instanced play system. You find groups and do battles together, play through the story together.

I don't think a BoE/BoP will work in DIablo. The reason it works in MMOs is the dungeon/raiding aspect. If you could trade the stronger items you find in instances, it would dissuade people from running certain battles. Espesially raids, where you are forced to do raid runs to up your gear. If you could just trade or auction it, it would throw the system on its head.
In Diablo, however, you don't have that system. They are actually taking the game in a direction of equal play, where every part of the game is 'farmable', there is no focused instances like raiding.

Need gold to increase stash size too!

Nice post.

First things first, you need to forget all you know about gold in Diablo. Gold doesn’t flow like an eternal fountain like it did in past games. Now gold matters; now you actually want gold. It’s not just a resource used for gambling, or a way to “punish” the players for dying. Gold has become the economic lifeline of Diablo. While item to item trading will also be a key element of the franchise, now you can actually trade an item for gold and not feel completely stupid for doing so. In fact, it may just be better to trade for the gold. But why? you ask. Or, at least, I’m guessing you did. But I can’t hear you. Stop talking to your computer.

There are three main reasons gold is good; the first is artisans. These crafters follow you throughout the game and make items for you as you progress. The blacksmith will smelt weapons and armor for you, the jeweler places and removes gems from your items, and the mystic binds magical effects to your loot. Together, they can create some gear that is pretty awesome. These items don’t come cheap though, and require a combination of salvaged materials and gold to make. Also, as you level up, you’ll want your artisans to level with you in their quality of items. In order for them to do this, you must pay to increase their overall ranking. By the time you reach Inferno difficulty and your artisans are the highest ranking they can go, Exalted, you will have dropped 173,800 gold altogether on them (63,900 gold for the blacksmith and mystic, 46,000 for the jeweler). That’s A LOT of gold, and it isn’t including how much you’ll spend when buying individual items from each crafter.

The second is the auction house. If you’ve played World of Warcraft, or have knowledge of the its economy, you understand that the auction house is pivotal to the game’s financial system. In WoW, as players find or craft items, they’re able to put whatever they want up for auction. Typically, as long as the item isn’t pure junk, it’s better to place the item on the auction house rather than sell it to a vendor (who will give you a fraction of what a player might). A similar system is being implemented in Diablo 3. You will be able to place whatever you find, and maybe craft—I haven’t been able to clarify this—up for auction to be bid on or bought by a fellow player.

While gold is obviously important because you use it to purchase auction housed items, one might argue that as the market becomes saturated, gold’s importance will diminish. Like-items will be bountiful and, as such, the prices for these items will be driven into the ground. Keep in mind, however, that while this can still happen, theoretically, the pace will be severely diminished due to players sometimes wanting “crafted items” rather than “found items”. In order to make a crafted items, players will need salvaged materials. To get these materials, players will need to break “found items” down. So as Item X becomes saturated on the market, players will realize they can’t make the money they once could off of it and, in some cases, will break Item X down into its crafting materials. This should, hypothetically, stabilize the market until an expansion is released.

Lastly, we have the fact that gold will be harder to come by. In past games, Blizzard rewarded players by “throwing buckets of gold at them. It felt great to do but the problem was that long term it didn’t really have any meaning.” (Jay Wilson, Blizzcon, 2010) Which is true. As a long-time player of Diablo 2, I can personally attest that gold was near-worthless after the first 20 or so levels. It could be used for gambling, and occasionally for repairs, but once you had a good chunk of change, it wasn’t important. It wasn’t an economic resource.

It would be similar, for instance, to if I had three apples. I can do a couple things with these apples: eat them, trade them, throw them at the homeless, etc. The main thing is each apple has value to me. I only have three so I need to “spend” them wisely. However, if I were given 10,000 apples, suddenly each individual apple becomes significantly less valuable. The point is, each apple would lose its significance, its importance. It’s a basic rule of economics: the more you have of something, the less valuable it becomes.

By restricting your incoming gold, and by offering more options to spend this resource, Blizzard has essentially made gold THE economy. I can see item-for-item trading still happening, but I don’t think it will happen nearly as much as item-for-gold trading. And why would it? When you trade an item for another, all you’re getting is access to that one item. When you trade an item for gold, you gain access to a plethora of items, from the loot on the auction house to all your crafted gear.

And that, my friend, is the power of gold.

I've posted this same response (well not this exact one I'm about to take a break from finals studying to type out but you get the point) on many other forums (d2jsp and bnet forums mainly) and glad to see similar responses.

Diablo 2 had hardly any customization. I would like to say none, but it's there just it isn't effective in game. In Diablo 2 you followed guides that said "put this many points into vitality, dexterity, and strength. MAKE SURE TO PUT NONE IN FOR MANA!". Then you would choose two spells that go well together and level up the synergies to make those two spells even better. Spam those two skills for kills and then look out for the same gear everyone else is going for.

I'm afraid that this isn't customization. This is reading off a guide holding your hand on how you should/need to play a character.

Diablo 3, yes they took out stats that COULD be good customization, but they didn't work in Diablo 2 and probably would inevitably not work for Diablo 3. They let every character get all skills, yeah that cuts into customization. However, you can only use seven of those skills and can't change them without a shrine. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is golden customization right there. Choosing seven out of however many skills each class has that can all be used to be successful (as opposed to Diablo 2 where not all the skills are worth while or plain stupid to level). Then you can't forget about the passive skills that each class can have. However, in my opinion, depending on how you're looking to play there character, you can easily pick out three passive skills to float your boat quite nicely.

And then they have a new and (in my opinion) updated item system. Yes you can get a legendary item that could be the best for your character, but the fact that Blizzard is now doing random properties on legendary items allows for even more customization and making it even harder for people to have the exact same gear, or even the ideal piece they want. Thus, also adding a lot of replayability. This isn't even looking at enhancements or gems.

This, I believe, is customization. No more bullshit handholding, anyone can make their own successful build. Some builds will provide for more damage/faster killing than other builds of course (IE going all defensive on a barbarian won't get you killed, but you sure as hell aren't going to kill faster than that wizard running by you as a glass cannon).

This is of course is all my opinion and quite a lengthy response which I assume will be looked over, but I like to point out there is a lot of customization but you have to look at it correctly. Blizzard took out a lot of things that make a "traditional" RPG, but the way they went about it will make for a much better Diablo experience.

TL;DR: Diablo 3 has customization.