Tone the Items down

[BlackBlade]

Hi all,

I am very exited about D3 being released so many years after D2. I thought I could get one of of my major gripes with (the otherwise excellent)D2 off my chest. So that the devs can tune the game more towards my tastes(hey, we are all selfish that way)

The Items contributed way too much to your characters overall strength. The devs balanced items with godly stats with extreme rarity. The problem with this approach is that the game disproportionately rewards challengless grinds. It also made it impossible to compete with players with more time on their hands. The difference between the char with merely good items(ie. good enough to beat Hell solo) and top of the line Items was too wide. I never understood how balancing so that people who did endless boss runs could make the rest of the game a cakewalk was reasonable.

Yes the randomized Item generation was a major part of the game and added interesting decisions but this was all negated when only handful of Items were worth having in a given slot. This works against what random item generation tries to achieve(or at least what I thought it tries to achieve), give you different experience every time you play the game. Instead the Uber Item syndrome made the game into a digital slot machine with blood and gore on top.

The solution to this problem(again its only my perception that it is a problem you might disagree) is to make the Items an overall smaller determinant of your overall power and don't balance godly stats with extreme rarity just eliminate godly stats altogether.

Thanks for reading through such a long rant.

[visom]

Well items are suppose to make a huge part of your character's overall strength (even more if in the case of melee fighters).

But yes items do contribute too much power but that's what makes the Diablo2 experience very unique from other games. Most other games its based on grinding or limitless levels, in diablo 2 its all about if you have the dedication and smarts to find items.

[CrimsonBishop]

I love having most of your power come from your items. I think this is a big part of what defines the Diablo series. I have tried other rpgs and mmos but I always come back to Diablo 2 because of the way items work in the game. It makes the game more fun and rewarding to get better items and actually see a huge difference in the power of your character.

I really hope that D3 keeps the items similar to the other Diablo games.

[mugana]

unless you want d3 to be like guildwars, which is garbage in my opinion, you would want items to have a huge impact on characters. That is what diablo is all about.. the uber powerful items. Imagine if they made all items generic like guildwars.... I would not play

[5zigen]

some of the things I agree with of the OP, however I Think that items should be about half of your character. The other half should be from build.

One of the things I agree with though, is that godly items shouldn't be balanced against rarity. It's just a poor system that invites badness and really doesn't do much for the game (other than making finding a shako feel like winning the lottery).

Items should all be balanced against each other, not around rarity. Hell Difficulty uniques, for example, should all be useful and all be roughly equally useful, from the shako to the corona. That doesn't mean they have to be the same, but some care should be taken when introducing certain items, simply to make sure that they are comparable with the other items at the same level (steelshade... ugh).

It would also keep the runewords in check too, no more botd's, infinity's or the like, please.

One other thing, if a weapon is going to be super powerful a nice way to balance that would be to have some negative modifier on it, and a meaningful negative, not like the -20% fire res on andariels visage.

[Sein Schatten]

Most other games its based on grinding or limitless levels, in diablo 2 its all about if you have the dedication and smarts to find items.

"Most other games its based on grinding or limitless levels, in diablo 2 its all about grinding items."

Fixed for you. ;)

In D2LoD the items are way out of whack, imo. They are too powerfull and break the game. I hope D3 will not go the same route.

[BlackBlade]

Its not that I want items to be generic, I want them to be random and interesting but I also want to be able to play normal through hell in SP without repeating the same area or boss twice. After D2 patch V1.09 Hell difficulty became tedious^* for people who like to play through the game without repetision of an area or boss with the same charecter. It was clearly balanced for people who do boss runs to get uber items. The game practicaly *expected* you to do boss runs to beat it. A game that expects you to repeat content in the same playthrough is IMHO badly designed.

If the game has uber items which can only be reliably aquired by grinding, then you can balance the game with the assumption that the player has them and punish the people who dont grind, or you can balance under the assuption that they don't have them and risk making the game a cakewalk for those who do grind. The best solution is to reduce the diffrence between the uber and good items so the game is balanced and chalenging for both.

In retrospect, I revise my proposed solution. The problem is not how much power items in general contribute as a percentage of total char power, it is *maximum* percentage an item can contribute. If the Blizzard design team can balance it so that the maximum power item usable at a given point in the game is not too far away from the minimum expected item power at that point, I will be happy.

*I am not saying it is immposible to beat without repetition just tedious and *boring* cause you were so weak compared to the opposition(especially for meele chars)

[stillman]

I think this all comes down to Blizzard pampering the players and giving them everything they want. This, IMO ruins the game. I don't want the challenges of the game taken away because a bunch of panzies want to have enigma introduced so they can do w/e they want.

I tihnk a good solution is as follows: have limited, well balanced end game powerful items as discussed above, but have those end game items spawn with very wide ranges of mods. For example, a crown of ages (end game helm) should have 200 varying units of defense, maybe 10-35 units of res all, and just for this example I'll add AR, which should have huge variation like 1-300. That way, it would be almost impossible for a perfect one to spawn. This would allow the perfectionists who want to make their chr godly and perfect to have a hard goal to complete. The mods can't be too overpowered, but there should be huge variation so perfect godlies can still stand out.

[jscore]

Its not that I want items to be generic, I want them to be random and interesting but I also want to be able to play normal through hell in SP without repeating the same area or boss twice. After D2 patch V1.09 Hell difficulty became tedious^* for people who like to play through the game without repetision of an area or boss with the same charecter. It was clearly balanced for people who do boss runs to get uber items. The game practicaly *expected* you to do boss runs to beat it. A game that expects you to repeat content in the same playthrough is IMHO badly designed.

If the game has uber items which can only be reliably aquired by grinding, then you can balance the game with the assumption that the player has them and punish the people who dont grind, or you can balance under the assuption that they don't have them and risk making the game a cakewalk for those who do grind. The best solution is to reduce the diffrence between the uber and good items so the game is balanced and chalenging for both.

In retrospect, I revise my proposed solution. The problem is not how much power items in general contribute as a percentage of total char power, it is *maximum* percentage an item can contribute. If the Blizzard design team can balance it so that the maximum power item usable at a given point in the game is not too far away from the minimum expected item power at that point, I will be happy.

*I am not saying it is immposible to beat without repetition just tedious and *boring* cause you were so weak compared to the opposition(especially for meele chars)

This may be true - but D2 didn't really become "unbalanced" or whatever, with godly rune words, etc., until like 5+ years after its release (IIRC) - so I mean, it was something to keep the game fresh, even if it caused some dissension in the community.

Otherwise we would all play Whirlwind barbs with rare lances like in D2Classic 1.01

edit: and as such, I assume that D3 will start out more "balanced" - or lacking uber quality stuff, and through expansions or patches in several years is when we will have to worry.

[mince pies]

I've voted for 20% - 40% as I believe that stats should give the majority of your power and items should just give the extra edge. However, when the Barb in the demo opened the rigged chest the voice-over said, "Not all chests in DIII will drop entire sets of armor but we rigged this one so we can show off the most important part of the game - the loot."

This makes me think that they're going to contribute as much power to your character as they did in DII

[Mcwhopper]

Do not tune them down! I want to feel like a god when I finally got my 10-part set complete. No WOW ish thing please, with just .05% damage increases.


I just hope we won't have the everyone-wears-enigma issue again. That might have been good for keeping a lot of people playing, but it just feels wrong. And so does a mage-adin using damned hammers!

[MooCQ]

LOOT LOOT LOOT!!! Screw skills.. its all about the items, always has! KICK IT UP A NOTCH TOO!! BAAM! If I wanted a skill based game- I'd play Starcrack..

[Awperator]

Anyone remember when the white rings first came out? Years ago... It was amazing, you could run at the speed of light and you had MAX resist which was amazing at that time and all you needed was 2 rings and you could do anything.

[Awperator]

Do not tune them down! I want to feel like a god when I finally got my 10-part set complete. No WOW ish thing please, with just .05% damage increases.


I just hope we won't have the everyone-wears-enigma issue again. That might have been good for keeping a lot of people playing, but it just feels wrong. And so does a mage-adin using damned hammers!

Ha ha i remember that, that was the best class

[5zigen]

Anyone remember when the white rings first came out? Years ago... It was amazing, you could run at the speed of light and you had MAX resist which was amazing at that time and all you needed was 2 rings and you could do anything.

Talking about how awesome it was to use hacked items is cool...

[Siniz]

More than 60%. This is what makes the games replayability far bigger in my eyes. If they only contribute about 20%, why would you want to keep getting a lot better items if you reach endgame?

However, I am not 100% about my answer. The reason is I'd really have to try it out ingame to see what the difference would be between a 20% and 60% increase in character strenght. Maybe the 20% is noticeable enough, it all depends on how the game is at the later levels and difficulties.

[Grawner]

i want fast killing, mass killing etc.. 60% i say!!

[Brother Laz]

This poll is misleading.










It doesn't matter what the % effect is that items have on your character. What matters is the power gap between regular and 'uber' gear and the frequency at which it drops.

We all want fast killing. What we don't want is slow killing until we acquire the uber gear, then not even noticing the monsters anymore. The power gap in D2 is too wide, not between weak and good gear, but between good and godly gear.

I mean, does anyone use unique bows anymore? Or unique armor? Or unique axes? No, because the runeword is insanely better. Does it really have to be that much better, considering the unique bows are already way ahead of rares?

If this were my game I'd make rares best again like in classic D2 before LoD, because only rares are truly 'unique'. But people want easy solutions (ala 'I want to farm for item X'), so uniques will again be the best. But at least have several 'best' options instead of one item that is miles ahead of everything else.

[5zigen]

This poll is misleading.


It doesn't matter what the % effect is that items have on your character. What matters is the power gap between regular and 'uber' gear and the frequency at which it drops.

So, a level 50 and 90 with the same gear should have roughly the same power level? The % contribution from items is pretty important.

The gap is important too, but so is the contribution from items. The most important thing they could do though for having a more balanced game is to not increase the power of gear linearly along with the rarity of the item. The power curve relative to rarity curve should be the derivative of the rarity curve.

[Brother Laz]

A level 90 is already stronger than a level 50 because he is level 90. Items are stronger, too, but so is the character itself. This is the case whether items add 1% to your power or 500%.

[5zigen]

A level 90 is already stronger than a level 50 because he is level 90. Items are stronger, too, but so is the character itself. This is the case whether items add 1% to your power or 500%.

Uh, are you bad at math? If items are 100% of the contribution to character power, then a lvl 50 with the same items will be just as strong as level 90. That's why the poll isn't misleading.

[NKlint]

Uh, are you bad at math? If items are 100% of the contribution to character power, then a lvl 50 with the same items will be just as strong as level 90. That's why the poll isn't misleading.

There is more than one way to interpret 100% contribution to the character's power.

Items = 100% meaning level 50 and 90 are equal except for skills.

...or an exponential increase based on the character's level. 90* vs 50*

...or x=item contribution y=character level - xy=z

etc... Which one does this poll refer to?

[nicro tower]

Whatever, I say keep the over powered items, but have more variety. Like say, you can choose between uber damage and acceptable fcr, or acceptable fcr and uber damage, or something like that.

Do not tune them down! I want to feel like a god when I finally got my 10-part set complete. No WOW ish thing please, with just .05% damage increases.


And D2 sets provided a much bigger set bonus than the WoW sets, especially the class sets.

[Brother Laz]

Uh, are you bad at math? If items are 100% of the contribution to character power, then a lvl 50 with the same items will be just as strong as level 90. That's why the poll isn't misleading.

The poll was about how much items should contribute to character power, not how much of a character's power should come from items. To = 'adding'.

......

Whatever, I say keep the over powered items, but have more variety. Like say, you can choose between uber damage and acceptable fcr, or acceptable fcr and uber damage, or something like that.

...even if the two options weren't identical, people would just pick the one that does the most dps...

[deadbeater]

I want the power, but I also want them more specialized. I don't want to see 'Bride of Enigma' armor recommended for every character build.

[5zigen]

The poll was about how much items should contribute to character power, not how much of a character's power should come from items. To = 'adding'.

......


When you're talking about PERCENTS that means your talking about portion of the whole. The only way to interpret the question that makes any sense whatsoever is the interpretation of "items are xx% of character power" per option.

"how much should Items contribute to overall character power?"

You cant substitute add for to and retain the same meaning. Putting add in for "contribute to" changes the meaning of the question entirely.

[DThreeIVever]

Im sure its been stated several times in this thread already, but my 2 cents can always be tossed on top of the pile. Diablo is all about items, powerful items. Its lent heavily to the replayability of the game. Do you think people would go on boss runs continually if they knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt that were was no point in it? I think not. MF runs, boss runs, rune runs, ect. These were what made Diablo 2:LoD so popular. Everyone is always in a constant uphill struggle to be the biggest and baddest joe around. If they dumbed the items down so theres less distinguishment between people, it would eliminate that sense of competition to be the best. And i know blizzard knows this. So expect to see those powerful, godly items in D3.

[Brother Laz]

The point is not that items cannot be overpowered. The point is that there are uniques, there are sets, there are runewords, hell there are lucky rares and the best and rarest of all four categories should be about equal. Otherwise most of the item types are just useless.

In D2:

Rares < sets <<<<< uniques <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< runewords.

This means rares and sets are entirely useless, and most uniques are useless. Considering it is harder to compile a set than find a single unique, and ideal rares are even harder to find, this is perhaps not the best order.

[plpop]

why shouldn't someone with more time than you be more powerful? I never got this whole "people have more time to find better items than me, it's no fair!" mentality.

[Brother Laz]

Because:

- if I put a lot of time into farming for sets, and someone else puts the same amount of time into farming for uniques, he'll be more powerful;
- it's not about being 'more powerful', it's about being 'ridiculously more powerful to the point of making the game impossible to balance'. Duh.
- it's also about having only 1 'best' item in every slot, which makes the other items a bit useless.

[nicro tower]

Of course Blizzard is going to make more choices for us to use, they should be learning from Diablo 2's mistakes.

Oh and try playing with a full unique sorc while I play with my Tals sorc :D

And isnt ridiculously overpowered the point of the game?