Bashiok on Build Diversity
Posted 3 May 2012 by FluxThe most popular topic of late came up again today, with a fan detailing why the WoW-style of character design was inappropriate for Diablo III, where every build doesn’t have to be equivalent in value/power/ability to fit into the required roles in a raid. It’s the sort of thing we’ve heard before, but for once a complaining fan made some good points, as did Bashy in his reply.
The thread got off to a funny start when the fan made a short and sort of taunting complaint post, and Bashiok no doubt thought he’d shut him down with a quick “____ or GTFO!” response. To everyone’s surprise, he stood and delivered.
Your developers are very skilled and have learned a lot from WoW. All abilities are tuned based on level. All abilities are tuned against each other. Assuming a consistent skill level, there is no difference in DPS output as long as you pick generators and spenders. Obviously there are a billion bad builds consisting of all spenders and all generators. I think it’s fair to say we can dismiss those, but there is no possibility to create higher powered characters just by rearranging the generators and spenders. All abilities and runes are functionally equivalent from a purely mathematical standpoint.
On the off-chance there is even a hint of someone doing higher DPS or taking less damage than Blizzard would like, it will get nerfed back into the baseline expectation. The goal is for everyone to be the same. This is why everything potentially random is controlled to the maximum degree. Skills and given out on a schedule, points are assigned in a specific manner. Loot is given out tuned for your current level. This is so you could automate test Diablo in a way to ensure that there are almost no possibilities for statistical outliers. You have very smart people on your staff with statistics degrees who’s job is to ensure this.
This was not as big of a concern back when Diablo 2 was made, and there was no financial motivation to keep players from feeling bad about making a mistake and potentially losing out on RMAH customers.
Thank you for listening to your fans.
Wow I didn’t actually expect you to reply with anything of substance, so plus one for you! Of course you kind of 180′d on your original comment, but that’s ok I actually believe you were intentionally only commenting on the ‘obvious non-optimal builds’ in your critique.
So, a couple things, Diablo for a lot of people is about non-optimal builds. It’s about finding some crazy-!@# build that no one thinks should logically work, and using your knowledge and skill of the game to defy logic and make it successful. So just switching skills between direct parities is probably not going to be a monumental discovery that will win you an award in character building. But, that’s not where the real fun and challenge of character builds generally come in. It might be fun for you though because one skill is purple and one is yellow and you really love purple, and if that makes the game awesome, awesome. As you said there are plenty of bad choices to make, which means there are plenty of non-optimal – but still potentially viable – builds to attempt.
The issue that you’re taking though is actually one of customization. What you’re saying is that by having these close parities between skills there’s less choice, and in fact the exact opposite is true. If there are sharp distinctions (as you argue is superior) then there are sharp separations, and sharp separations means that very clear correct choices emerge. By having more parity it allows for more customization as it allows players greater freedom in choosing the skills they want to use, and not the skills they have to use because the math makes it so. Again though I’d argue that there’s plenty of gray area in character builds, and that’s where the true excitement and discovery comes from.
Does that make sense?
The Fan made a good point , but it only works if nobody publishes that spec , because as soon as an OP spec goes public , it will be the only good choice , if you wanted to succeed , then you have to take that spec otherwise you will be gimping yourself and just like Bashiok said that removes choice.
Keeping it this way is better. You will always discover a new fun spec and rediscover your class once again and have fun as if its the first time you are playing it.
:EDIT: I guess I read your post wrong. Still, I’ll keep what I wrote:
Think about this: if you have items that enhance your crit chance, you’ll want to use skills that take advantage of critical hits. If you have items that increase your speed, you’ll want to use skills that take advantage of that speed. If you have a weapon that’s very slow but very powerful, you’ll want to use skills that don’t take weapon speed into consideration. If you have loads of life points, you’ll probably be able to skip a couple of defensive skills…
THERE IS NO ONE VIABLE BUILD.
Can’t people realize that? It’s way WAY more complex than that. I’ve already started doing some maths, but without the final game it’s impossible. With just the info from the bet, though, I guess we’ll be looking to strike a balance between four different aspects (their importance WILL vary with playstyle AND combat situations):
- single target damage output (pure DPS)
- AOE capabilities
- defensive capabilities (mobility, debuffs, resistances, etc…)
- resource management
On top of that, you have a whole load of options and choices, like if you favor loot finding skills, or if you favor healing skills or whatnot. So a perfect build will deal the most damage possible to the enemies at hand (if they are slow and widespread, you want a certain kind of skill, if they are fast and thick, another, if their a single target, you want another, and so on and so forth) AND will keep you from running out of health AND mana for as long as possible. There is no one way to reach those goals.
Playstyle is often neglected as well. The way we interact with skills, and the way they interact with the game environment, etc, play a huge role in how people will treat skills. Therefore, if they are mathematically equivalent in terms of DPS (barring playstyle), then playstyle will have an enormous impact on which skills are most fun, most powerful, and thus which are chosen by individuals. Just because a person can do more DPS with X build than you do with your Y build, doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be better with X build, even with the same gear. It might be worse for you than Y build was!
People seem to forget that WoW was mostly a static game. You stood still and dealt and received damage. The faster you dealt damage the better you were. In Diablo3 you can avoid damage in many different ways as the game is less static.
I agree starrise, a player who got very rapid reflexes, can get away with a highly offensive build with minimal defensive skills. Someone else with slower reflexes will struggle with the same build due to not being able to avoid damage as well, and is better off with a few more defensive skills in his build etc.
Or maybe player 2 just dont like moving around like a mad man.
Bashiok answered the only way it could answered…
There should always be a combination of skills, stats and items that will “break” Blizzard’s perfect balancing. It shouldn’t be easy, and not break it totally, of course. But the possibilities should be there, to stand out from the crowd.
^ Yep there should always be a build or a handful of builds that are above the rest and a few that a weaker then the rest. The big thing is what the size of the difference between the most power and the lest powerful, as long as this gap isn’t to big the differences becomes less relevant in real terms.
I agree, the intent is to normalize the skill output so people can choose whatever they please and newbies won’t be left out picking inefficient stuff so they cover the casual base here and prevent them from making mistakes which will make them hate the game (remember the first few hours is what hooks people). The “optimization” of the build will come out of player skill and items. You can have 2 people using the exact same combination of skills, but the gear and how they play with the skills will be what differentiates both in terms of effective killing speed. This also leaves open the part where if you find a new item that greatly enhances skill X which wasn’t in your active skills, it lets you re-org your skills around this new power without having to start over a la D2 (because you suddenly found that super +6 blizzard wand for example but was using frozen orb all the time)
i love ****ing Diablo 3 :3
You also need to take into consideration that there are other factors than pure maths. Bashiok mentioned that if you prefer a skill because of its color, then good for you if that makes the game awesome. I’d add to that the fact that not all skills are used the same way. Sure, they can usually be classified as “single target” or “aoe” but when you are actually using them they all feel very different, especially when you add runes. Also, for that same reason, some skill combinations will be better or feel better in different situations, so at the end of the day I don’t think everybody will use the same skill set.
This.
If things are balanced properly, the choice won’t be about finding the skill combo that’s ridiculously OP and clears elites super fast, it will be about finding the skill combo that works with your playing style. I hope it works out.
I wish everyone wouldn’t end each post with ‘because you don’t want to lose $$$ from the RMAH! Aha!’ as if it somehow makes their point more valid – its getting really boring :/
Not everyone does that and the ones that do and make a compelling argument like the one above lay bare, in my opinion, some of the motivations behind the systems that shape the game.
Like the gentleman pointed out, a lot of what’s going on in D3 is by very intentional design and you can bet your ass if not for the RMAH a lot of design choices will be different. (Different doesn’t not imply better or worse)
Either way its a most wonderful premise. If we pare down the details, its a system that no matter what happens only 75% of the funds can be taken out. And people wonder why the AH came under scrutiny….
Wow. This is one of my favorite blue posts yet.. Well put Bashiok!
I think people are mostly confusing tactics and strategy. In Diablo 2, your skills were strategic choices because that’s all you could really use until you deleted or died (in HC). In Diablo 3, however, skill choice will be tactical and you could benefit from changing if you face a tough challenge with a tactically sub-optimal skill set up. It actually gives you an incentive to clear content rather than ignoring it. Imagine you are a static field/frozen orb sorceress from 1.07 or 8, you pretty much avoid anything that’s cold immune. In fact, I remember beta testers finding Frozenstein impossible to defeat. That will never be the case in Diablo 3; you just have to readjust and fire again. I think that’s more fun.
I’d rather just not have any immunes at all…
If i want to try and take out that boss with 90% cold resistance with frozen orb i should be allowed to…
Anyway, immunities where an attempt at stopping overspecialised builds that didn’t turn out that well imo…
You’re kind of making my point…
Game is going to be so good.
Also I love how the illusion of choice is champion as though its really a choice. Hey I can choose to die by torture, by injection, or by stoning! I can’t choose not to die, but hey I can choose how! YAY!
Seriously anyone trying to accept parity as choice isn’t quite getting it. But hey what do I know, people out there think if they can get the same thing in red, blue, or green that they are having a choice.
But it’s not the same thing. Every choice is mechanically different from every other choice. Sure some of the rune effects make certain skills overlap, but everything is significantly different from everything else… As for your death comparison, that is fallacy. That is like saying Diablo 3 should let people choose to not have any skills (which you can if you want) or that you should let people choose not to play (which obviously you can also choose). You can also choose to not have any movement skills or to not have any resource management skills or even to not have any damaging skills if you really want to… By the way, that choice is an illusion in and of itself as the vast majority of people would choose the least painful way (injection) every time so that’s basically going back to the Diablo 2 way of either choosing from a tiny set of viable skill/stat setups or slogging on with your character gimped… In other words, a non-choice (unless you are a masochist I guess).
If you want to make the Mass Effect ending argument (which is what I assume you are alluding to there with the colors, even though that is an odd analogy either way as people consider color options to be a very important cosmetic choice for many things they buy such as cars and clothes) I suppose, in the end, the goal is always the same (kill the monsters that have the loot), so, by your logic, we shouldn’t have skill choices at all since they all go towards the same end anyway. Might as well just give people a set of skills that is the same for every character (after all, why have different classes when they’re just parities of the same function) that adequately equips you to finish the whole game and that’s it… Might as well force people to only use a certain set of items as well as they are all just parities of eachother. Choosing between one with crit, attack speed, and flat damage is just a meaningless illusion of choice as they all go towards killing monsters more efficiently just like choosing one with dodge, armor, or resistances are all going towards surviving monster attacks better (which also leads to killing the monsters more effeciently)…
Is that really the sort of game you want to play? Yeah… I didn’t think so…
Nope haven’t played Mass Effect or know about its ending.
As usual that’s the problem with most analogies, they aren’t perfect and often people mistake your focus for something else. I won’t comment on D2 either, that’s not why I’m criticizing Bashiok (or D3). I don’t know how better at the moment to demonstrate that parity isn’t choice.
The best I can come up with is you come up to a fork in a road and can choose whether to go left or right. But here’s what you don’t know, either way the road ends up at the same place. You’ve made a choice but it is completely inconsequential. But then again maybe its all about the journey
To be honest with you I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the game at the moment. I’m not taking issue with D3. I’m taking issue with the philosophical underpinnings of Bashiok’s argument. In my experience his argument is that which is offered by people who really intend to control. If that’s the discussion you want to carry on, please indulge. I personally believe the poster got Bashiok right where he wanted him to be.
And this isn’t directed at you but a casual glance, in my opinion, indicates most people aren’t ready to engage in that discussion and for that matter aren’t aware of it.
Does that make sense?
Yes, yes it does- more options, each with less real meaning.
Um… how’s that? You would rather have your choices made obvious which is essentially the same as them being made for you? That is what kills the meaning… Having lots of equivalently powerful, but much differently functioning skills actually makes choice a real choice as you are not being compelled/influenced by outside factors in your skill/rune choices.
GAWD I hate this argument…mostly because Bashiok is WRONG in a subtle way each and every time. His last paragraph claims that individual skills are close in parity, and therefore there is more choice. This is only true when individual skills are considered in a vacuum.
Since there are six possible skills usable at a time, it is the combination of skills that is important. Skills combine in interesting ways so that even 2-3 subprime skills combined with a good skill actually perform better than expected. This is what made Diablo2 so much fun, taking sucky individual skills with one or two good skills and coming up with a better build. The combination of skills being the operator in that equation.
Now, with all skills being ”average” the combinations are average. No matter what, each individual skill alone isn’t going to suck, and it certainly isn’t going to suck less when combined with another skill.
Bashiok can sound convincing — but he is never quite logically sound.
I have spoken, so mote it be.
“No matter what, each individual skill alone isn’t going to suck, and it certainly isn’t going to suck less when combined with another skill.”
Hm? Why would you conclude that? Seems to me more than likely that with so many skills, there are going to be skill interactions where the whole equals much more than the sum of the parts. A particular type of snare with a particular attack, for instance. It would be really difficult to PREVENT that from happening, even if that were the intention.
Individual skills won’t suck, but they also won’t be overpowered. What’s the point in putting in skills that suck or skills that are markedly better than the rest? This balancing of skills means there will be less pigeonholing in terms of builds. I see this as a good thing because there should be many more viable build choices, and none of them should be so much better than the others that you’re not doing it right if you don’t have X build. This leaves you free to make a viable build that fits your play style.
Obviously there are going to be builds that excel in certain parts of the game. A Barbarian with Cleave and Leap will probably better suited to deal with a large pack than one with Bash and Ancient Spear, but not so much so that the Bash/Ancient Spear Barbarian will be at such a loss he has to change his build. I think this skill system is going to allow people to play the way they want to play, and ultimately one of the main factors that will differentiate the pros from the noobs will be skill.
Give me your examples of this from D2…
Raise Skeleton+Amplify Damage+Corpse Explosion
Now tell us how those 3 skills won’t interact the same way with the D3 system?
Yeah, synergies where bogus because most of the time you weren’t using the lower skill because it was great with the synergy, you where using it because you had 20+ in it anyway so why not, while you where still using one skill predominately…
As for not sucking less with another skill now… yeah, i’m sure a ADoT won’t work better with a skill that slows down monsters at all…