Does Diablo III Need Variants?
Posted 21 April 2012 by FluxVia his twitter, Bashiok replied in literal fashion to a fan who was (I think) asking a more metaphorical question about play styles and variant options. At any rate, I’m going to assume the fan was asking it in the larger sense, since that leads right into an issue I’ve been meaning to write up for you guys to debate. First, here’s the twittercourse:
Right click the weapon to equip it, or drag and drop. DHs can equip most 1h melee weapons. –Bashiok
As we’ve seen skills and runes change during Diablo III’s development, the issue of variants has been kicked around by the fans. Diablo 2 was notorious for supporting a wide-variety of variant builds, many of which weren’t exactly end game masters, but most of which at least provided some interesting variety for fans after a different play experience.
Thanks to the tremendous variety of items, weapons with +skills, customizable attributes, and the numerous skill options, every class in D2 could be played in “battle” style, with heavy armor and some sort of melee weapon. The reverse was also possible with Hammerdins and more creative options like “Singer” Barbs who used Warcries and equipped wands, and most classes could specialize in ranged weapons or throwing weapons as well, if they wanted an additional challenge.
Most of those options are not going to be available in D3, at least not at launch. Melee classes can’t use bows, there are no throwing weapons, no items have +skills or “oskill” bonuses (granting skills from another class), stats can’t be customized to make high strength Wizards or high Intelligence Barbs, etc. That said, D3 does have a wide variety of rune effects that grant some unusual effects to skills, and there are some passive skills that can enable some alternative builds.
Do you care, though? Do you think it should be possible to kick ass as a Battlemage, or a melee Demon Hunter (without infinite patience), or a Barb who relies on ranged attacks, etc? Or do you think those types of builds, ones that run counter to the central theme of the class archetypes, are out of place and/or unnecessary?
On the Other Hand…
When you look in any of our class forums and see the huge variety of quite sophisticated builds players have planned out in advance, you might conclude that D3 will actually have more variety of builds than D2 did. No, there probably won’t be so many odd variants that completely change the play style, but there should be a huge number of variations on common themes. Most wizards will be ranged spell casters, but while D2′s Sorc skill combos gave about half a dozen options for that type of build, D3′s skills and runes should give dozens more than that.
Also, there will be hundreds of narrowly-focused builds that do one or two things very well, while giving up other abilities. For instance, you can make a Wizard that’s invincible, or a stealth ninja Demon Hunter who can’t be caught (but can’t kill), or a dog-killer Witch Doctor, or a ranged Monk (maybe), or an Axe-Throwing Barbarian.
All of these builds are quite precise, demanding multiple skills and passives to create, but isn’t that the whole point, for players who are looking for an odd variant?
So I guess this article asks two questions, ultimately. 1) Do you want/need/care about variant builds, and 2) do you think Diablo III delivers them adequately, as they’re almost entirely from skills and passives, without requiring/allowing much difference in equipment, which is where most of D2′s variants got their ultimate power.
[quote]stats can’t be customized to make high strength Wizards or high Intelligence Barbs, etc[/quote]
You mean people can’t stack stats from gear and gems to get the amounts they want?
lol
The demon hunter can’t use other weapons effectively because there is no meele specific skills for a demon hunter so why would you make a class that can use meele weapons but yet have no skills to support that ? This is why you fail, the logic is all ass backwards. Can we please rehire Blizzard North employees and have a do-over ?
If we talk about builds – i would kill for possiblity to just save my builds and switch/exchange with other players by 1 mouse click – it would be so convenient. Setting it every time becouse i want to use diffrent build for diffrent encounter is just annoying ;f
Why, Flux, do you so often rip this game with out due cause? We KNOW there will be skill related item affixes in late game, also, when you say how many viable builds there were in D2 you say half a dozen – which in generous – and then say in D3 there may be Dozens – From my OWN expirience on the calculators I can tell you there are not Dozens of variations of Wizard builds – there are Hundreds. And I’m not talking with slight tweaks – if you go there, there are thousands and thousands – I’m talking distinctly different feeling builds – there are hundreds.
And mele oriented DHs and Wizards seem very possible / if not optimal – just like they should be. Why always with the hate? Ah ya.. for hits.
I just read the article again…. did you only read the first couple of paragraphs and then TLDR scroll to comment?
D2′s variants were largely enabled through equipment and custom stats. D3 doesn’t have those options, as an intentional design choice. How is documenting that fact “ripping the game without due cause?”
What D3 has (and it might be a much better system, which is what this article was suggesting debate over) are vastly more skills, active and passive, which allow fans to plan out very idiosyncratic and specialized builds. I actually think I prefer the D3 system; most odd variants in D2 were intentionally self-gimping, and meant more for fun than end game domination.
D3′s varieties of skills and runes should mean that we’ll see dozens of viable end game builds per class, and hopefully not just cookie cutter overlaps, (D2s were different skills w/o changing the play style much, such as sorcs using firewall vs. meteor vs. blizzard) as the passives are different enough to require specialization.
You clearly missed diablo2 didnt have many things u mentioned in your article.. LOD added the most varies u were talking about. Remember Flux, i know u can
So stop the crying Flux and write better articles than this fail
Hey Flux, you really need to read this Bnet thread: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3811455085
I share this guy’s opinion at the moment, and would love to hear your counterpoints. Sure he doesn’t address melee specifically, but I would argue that it’s always been something of a gimp build – just a matter of whether it’s a VIABLE one or not. As long as it’s still viable in D3, all should be well.
Diablo 3 Need Servers
We can’t jump to conclusion that D2 has more variation from items than D3. Base on only thing we have now which is datamined info D3 problably has more than D2. If you count silly build then I think I can create much more silly builds in D3 than D2 too.
Ah yes. Where is the opportunity to create unique builds in D3? Where are the o-skills that create for zealing Barbarians? Where are the interesting chance to cast items that create for frozen orb spawning Assassins? Where is the opportunity to create a titan bear Sorc? Where is the opportunity to synergise a dream Paladin? Nowhere since D3 is a stale dumbed down and streamlined version of a Diablo game. Hell, the current game is even a stale version of D3 from a year ago.
Without the prevalent hacking and duping possibilities in D2, the high end Runewords would be extremely difficult to obtain, as in you would probably never see one. That was their intent. It was not intended that virtually any player could build any Runeword with relatively little effort. So your point is moot.
Your point is moot seeing that plenty of people, including me, selfmade these runewords without any hacking or duping, by playing the game for years, which is something people do when the game is interesting and captivating. (I see how that might be a problem with Diablo 3 though
)
If your point is that the rarity of these interesting builds made them somehow irrelevant to the quality of the game (which they don’t, but “IF” for arguments sake, just to give someone as moot as you a fighting chance), then the obvious solution is to decrease their rarity, and not to strip the game away from anything more then remotely interesting. Weird how that works huh, logic?
the extremely rare items that gave what many thought to be game BREAKING skills to other classes are not what made diablo 2 EXPANSION a diablo game. you couldnt do that in diablo 1, and you couldnt do that in diablo 2 pre LOD.
there are plenty of strange variants, a melee wizard is still possible. plus i dont know if you noticed, the game has not been released yet. could you see a ton of interesting and unique builds in diablo 2 before it was released? no you most certainly could not.
compared to when diablo 2 was first released, diablo 3 has a TON more variants and playstyles. if you can’t see that, then you’re just nitpicking and being short sighted.
I’ll reserve judgment on this until after we’ve played D3 for awhile. What I can say is that oddball variant builds were my favorite part of D2. They fueled my item-hunting with my MF characters, and provided all of my fun the last few years I played. I will miss it if we can’t create truly off-the-wall stuff due to the restrictions they have in place, but I’m willing to be open minded that in the systems they have created there are corners and angles to find similar fun. We’ll see!
Ya I think it’s impossible to complain about build variety in a game that hasn’t come out yet.
It is kinda lame that classes can’t use certain types of weapons. Either blizzard made them that way for design reasons, or they decided not to because of the extra art & animation that would be involved in drawing every class using every possible weapon. They probably will add some more in the expansion.
It does suck that basic attack takes up a skill slot, that’s like a whole extra handicap for trying to play battlemage. But at least every class does seem to have a couple of skills and (especially) passives that are designed for off-builds.
If you think it would be tedious to play melee demon hunter because of having to use nothing but basic attack, umm…. ever played a warrior in D1? ah the rose-colored lenses
I think Flux is just starting a topic. There are too many people giving him a hard time for bringing up a topic to talk about.
That being said after playing the demo for the first time since blizzcon, I am a little saddened by how they have done the skills. You have to pick 1 primary and 1 secondary, and 1 from each other section to use. I loved how beforehand you could pick any 7-8 skills (cant remember) and be able to play with any of those. It made for many more choices. Because what if I want to use 2 secondary skills and no primary skill, or 1 primary 2 secondary and none of the other sets. Just seems like I am missing out on choices :/
Lastly, I am sad that it does seem even since earlier builds to really take away from choices, autoattack is almost useless, skills are all given and lvl up with you so you don’t have to invest in skills, whether to pick fewer skills and make them stronger or pick more skills and them be more weak( Diablo 2) and no putting points to stats, Bye bye caster barb
The game was extremely fun, but From the first time I played the game in 2010, it has actually seemed to gone a little downhill
with less choices and customization. But hey I will reserve my final judgement until I play through the whole game.
p.s. Hopefully they dont continue the trend of lowering customization and dumbing down the game. That was the downfall of WOW that eventually turned it from an ok game to unplayable.
p.p.s. Just so everyone knows, I am being critical of Diablo 3 because I love the game, and I will be playing it and want it to be the best it can be. See you all in game.
if you take a peek at gameplay options you can change that 1 skill from section. At the moment im playing a monk with two spirit generators one on each mouse button
yeah, there’s an “Elite” or something option to arrange skills however you want.
Elective Mode :p