Diablo III Leveling Lacks Customization?
Posted 22 April 2012 by FluxAlong with the noob questions, the open beta weekend is bringing a lot of discussion and debate about issues we’ve kind of beaten to the glue factory, but which are fresh to new players. A prime example is this post, which goes into a lengthy and not very well argued complaint about the lack of character customization options or skill choices granted per level up in Diablo III.
I’ll excerpt from the OP, since it’s long and not very clear. We’ve heard Bashiok’s reply many times before, but the difficulty level element is kind of new, so maybe it’s worth a read on a slow Sunday. The full thread can be seen here.
…When you level up, you don’t even think or plan or do anything. Mercenaries have a more organic feel to leveling than your main. This is laughable. All I do in Diablo 3 is click click click, pick up items, and when I level it doesn’t feel like leveling at all – just another skill or rune I never planned for thrown at me. We’re really supposed to put up with this all the way to 60?
I think it’s a symptom of the beta where you’re in the part of the game where we’re very deliberately guiding players by handing out a skill here, a rune there. It’s really a crafted and linear experience to start (both in system introduction and environment) because the first couple hours are the most crucial to a successful and long term experience. We’re not in the mindset to drop all of the game systems on you and say “Good luck, sucker!”
To some the approach we’re taking is likely a turnoff because they want to feel like they’re part of an elite group able to figure out complex and obtuse game systems, and be challenged the second the game begins. I think if they stick with it they’ll find that there is a ton of depth and complexity to the game. We put the depth into the gameplay, skill, and decision making itself and not the requirement to overcome the UI or understand how the game even works.
If you’re one of those players you’re going to blaze through Normal, hit Nightmare, and things are going to start feeling really good for you. You just have to understand that not everyone is like you, and we’re making the game so a wide range of people can enjoy it.
I agree with everything here, except the whole “you’re going to scream through normal” thing kind of sucks, honestly. I want to enjoy the story the first time through and also feel challenged. But it seems like that’s not gonna happen until at least nightmare. But then I’ll already know the story and what’s going to happen.
Not sure what the solution could be, but it’s kind of a bummer.
Honestly many people here find the later acts of Normal very challenging (like they can’t beat the last boss for weeks on end challenging), but I don’t want encourage someone to pull up my words later and say “You said it would be difficult!” 
I’m not sure what additional balancing could happen before release.
If you’ve stopped laughing at the line about “turning away cerebral players,” consider that both the OP and Bashiok have a point. Yes, the early going is pretty brainless, without any real choices to make or strategy required, And there are never really any skill choices with even a semi-permanent impact in D3, since you can always respec in a matter of seconds. (Well, I guess if you died in HC due to stupid skill choice, that would count as a permanent effect.)
That said, by level 30, much less 50 or 60, every character will have literally hundreds of skills + rune effects to choose from, plus a couple of dozen passive skills which, if chosen wisely, will make a major difference on your skill choice and use. No, you don’t have any real character customization in Diablo III, but you do have vastly more skills than you can use at once, which functions as something along the same lines. Right?
I’m really not sure anymore if the people saying there is no customization in D3 are trolling or just stupid.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3811455085?page=1
Enjoy the read, end of discussion.
This, +1. There is still tons of customisation, just that Blizzard has done a lot to cut out the middle man or make them more accessible with the same amount of depth (such as base stats and crafting, respectively).
One of the best reads I’ve had about D3. Thanks for the link, I’ve been looking for it for a while.
It is really important to make sure this game is a “diablo” game before starting to discuss skills customizations and etc. Old school diablo players, newcomers, is this really how a diablo game should be?
I’ll put it in another way – Am *I* happy with the balance between new and old? Yes
by the time you reach 60 there will be an “infinite” number of skill, rune combinations, but at lvl 13 I’m finding most skills useless
as a witch doctor there is no need to do anything other than poison dart with splinters, grasp of the dead with unbreakable grasp and zombie dogs with rabid dogs and jungle fortitude
(and I am very happy with that)
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZY!Z!aaa
spiders, toads, bats, haunt, horrify are all useless
sure, its just normal difficulty, and a lvl 12 char has out leveled the content, but I can see the huge number of available skills has been whittled down to a core set that I will focus on
and sure, you could kill with bats and spiders,
but you could also use a blood golem with skeleton mages in D2,
but why would you when clay golem and skeleton warriors are so much better ?
(and I am very happy with that)
that is he character you envisioned, not the character everyone envisioned. i’m finding spiders much better than darts
Soul Harvest with Dire Bats kills faster than any other build I’ve seen in the beta. This is especially true in 4 players games, where a decently +INT WD can clear champion packs by himself with a single globe of mana.
So I’m not sure that your assessment of useless skills in the beta is accurate.
Of course, you can switch out your skills and test it, rather than start a whole new character; this is one of the advantages of Diablo 3.
though in D2 there was a perfect build with all characters there was freedom to experiment. I feel with D3 that freedom is lacking… they hand you the skills and you dont even get to pick your stats. I just feel like im playing a game made for completely inexperienced gamers. Granted the game plays and feels awesome, I just want more decisions to make in the path of my character.
Double post
Double post
I find it a bit weird that it does not matter much what kind of weapon you are using, only its DPS (and other attributes), for example it does not matter if I use a dagger or a javelin for a witch doctor as you always use skills. I have not so much problem with that a witch doctor or a wizard can have any weapon, that I am irritated about is that more or less all skills are connected to your weapons DPS. I would really have prefered to have skill points, just feel more natural that a jar of spiders is affected by how good you are at training those spiders (or whatever the witch doctor do with them) instead of how big your sword is…. Sure everyone with a particular skill would have maxed it out anyway so it would not have been that different but it would have felt more natural…
the price u pay is making the casters superior mfers since weapon dps can be sacrificed for mf, which means everyone will have the d3 equivalent of a light sorc to farm gear for a char that u’ll hardly use because u’re too busy trying to get that perfect item again
Good point, but is that so bad if there is one char that is a little bit better at MF than others (there will always be one that is the best anyhow)? And ranged chars will be less dependent on equipment than melee anyway so it is not like they have fixed it perfectly… I just find it a bit weird that the same weapon could be the best for all 5 classes (it will prob not be one that is absolutely best for all but I can definitively see a scenario where people is trading around a single weapon between several different chars through the shared stash.)
The scaling as well – I like knowing every upgrade will actually feel like an upgrade, as it affects virtually all abilities
One of these days, someone will be smart enough to make a great RPG game w/o a level system. Leveling mechanics are starting to wear thin. Progress should come from achievement, not repetition.
The term “leveling” refers to character progression but then abstracted into, you know, character levels.
Technically speaking an RPG doesn’t even require “progression”, imagine a game where you create your entire character at the beginning of the game, and then you play the game adhering to the rules of that character. Infact, i think it would be a more true roleplaying game, since you’d play the role of that character from beginning to end as opposed to building it while playing the game.
You can tell hes a noob because he states the Followers have more inherent choice than the classes themselves, saying that he had to make a decision as to what skill he wanted his Templar to have. This is of course clearly not the case as you can right click their portrait and respec them, though from what I’ve seen this is not as widely known nor made easily known to new players.
I think the point he was trying to get at was the lack of permanence in choice, which is quite true but I believe to be very unnecessary in a game where the choice is in the visual department. The best course is to then reward players for sticking to their builds, which Blizzard is trying to accomplish through the Nephalem Valor system. I say keep the permanent choices to features such as story choices, where it can have a big impact on the game, not the gameplay itself.
Also, I find it interesting how they’ve had internal debates as to how long it’ll take people to fully clear and be able to farm Inferno, and here Bashiok states many at HQ are taking quite a long time to kill the final boss in Normal.
I dont see him hating diablo 2 in his post but hes just bringing certain things to light. The stat allocation was NOT a strong customization option as most builds across all classes used the same ones. For example: str to wear amor, zero in energy and rest into vit. Or str to wear armor, dex to block, zero in energy, rest to vit. Or str to armor, dex to wear weapons, zero in energy and rest in vit. With that i described 95% of the builds in d2 as far as stat allocation. Oh and for hardcore boost vit as you go.
The real customization came from skills and equipment. Same as in d3. However runes are a far more useful tool for customization that stat allocation. Although in all honesty not all five runes for each skill will be useful. More like 3 or 4 runss per skill are actually useful.
I wouldnt say d3 has less or more customization than d2 since we havent played the full game yet. But lets be patient yet we get a rune, skill, or passive every level to 60. We only got couple new skills or passives every 6 in d2.
Sorry if bad spelling pr grammar types this on my phone.