The wacky three point fury system

[stillman]

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/full-barbarian-skill-trees-and-stats1/

It looks like skills cost 1-3 fury orbs, and there are three orbs, so...

Does this seem a little like preschool? If you can count to three you are a smart barbarian. Apparently there are some runes which light up too, but 3 seems like such a small number I figure you are going to be constantly looking down at your fury orb to check if it's at 1, 2 or 3. Otherwise, you can't use your skills, the cheapest of which cost 1 thrid of your entire orb.

And with the thing shooting up rapidly whenever you hit something, then shooting back down whenever you....hit something....then it's going to be constantly emtpy, full, one third full, two thirds full and jumping around in these mega chuncks ridiculously. And with mobs are you going to have any clue at all what your orb is doing and what you expect your orb to be at the end of a mob?

Then you've got skills that hugely manipulate it...but only some of the time....and, am I missing something? Why not just have a nice stable looking orb similar to a mana orb but called something more appropriate than mana? Why do skills have to cost entire thirds of it?

[Moonfrost]

Does this seem a little like preschool? If you can count to three you are a smart barbarian. And with the thing shooting up rapidly whenever you hit something, then shooting back down whenever you....hit something....then it's going to be constantly emtpy, full, one third full, two thirds full and jumping around in these mega chuncks ridiculously. And with mobs are you going to have any clue at all what your orb is doing and what you expect your orb to be at the end of a mob?
In other words, the barbarian's resource system will require planning and management. I don't know about you, I'm pretty sure that's the effect the developers wanted to achieve.

WoW warriors work pretty much exactly the same way and having played that class for almost 4 years, I can tell you it's a great system once you get used to it. It changes your playstyle and the game's pacing, constantly pushing you to throw yourself into the next battle, as your fury is decaying all the time and the only way to increase it is either to deal damage or take damage.

Then you've got skills that hugely manipulate it...but only some of the time....and, am I missing something? Why not just have a nice stable looking orb similar to a mana orb but called something more appropriate than mana? Why do skills have to cost entire thirds of it?
Because then you'd end up with mana, not fury. The barbarian is supposed to have a unique resource system and every resource system has its pros and cons. Skills cost entire thirds of it because you can generate fury fast, so losing fury fast isn't a problem. However, it does limit the amount of skills you can use in quick succession and forces you to prioritize, which rewards players with good fury management skills.

That said, I find it ironic that you first see the fury system as "pre-school" and then try to simplify it further by converting it into a mana system because you don't seem to understand how the fury system actually works.

[stillman]

But there is still this problem of the orbs shooting all over the place all the time. It's hectic and chaotic. One second your orb is one third full, then completely full, then empty, then 2 thirds full all in two seconds. What the hell is going on and how do you keep track of these giant steps?

And, attacking something with you skills causes a huge increase AND a huge decrease in your fury. That seems like a very strange foundation for such an important mechanic.

[SEANBCOOL]

I really don't think it's going to be a problem. A very similar system has worked in WoW for years and, to be honest, it makes much more sense for a Barbarian than does mana.

Keep in mind that the current system could change drastically by the time the game is released. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Blizzard will do whatever makes the Barbarian fun to play.

[Moonfrost]

As I understand it, fury generation is tied to damage dealt and damage taken. This means that while you're spending fury on abilities, the damage dealt by those abilities will generate fury in return, in addition to the fury you generate when taking damage. The result is that as long as you're dealing enough damage - either tons of it on a single target or less but on multiple - you'll have enough fury use your skills frequently. We can assume that skills cost more fury to use than they generate and we know that fury slowly decays (degenerates) over time.

Before I simplify that, let's just say that this is one of those things that sound more complicated than they really are. Anyway, for the sake of argument, let's say that one hit grants one orb. Skill A costs two orbs to use, but its damage grants one orb. Now, say you rush into combat with no fury. You hit your enemy twice and get two orbs. You then use Skill A which depletes two orbs but its damage grants one. Now you only need to hit your enemy once to be able to use Skill A. In other words, you've successfully built up momentum.

Basically, once you get enough momentum, it becomes easier to sustain skill use for longer periods of time. However, this also means that the player is encouraged to move on to the next pack of enemies quickly, because the more time spent between combat, the less fury the player will have (due to fury decay). The less fury they start the fight with, the more momentum they'll need to build before reaching the point of sustained skill usage.

The "stoplight" orb design is there to, in an easy way, give the player visual indication of how much fury they have, so the system doesn't get too mathy. Better yet, after a while the player tends to get a "feel" for it and can play efficiently without thinking about it too much.

[Knight_Wolf]

Stillman, i think you need to read the latest news article posted here on the site regarding the Barb tree and skills, it has notes on each skill and gameplay feedback, and from what i read the system works just great.

[Deckard Cain]

But there is still this problem of the orbs shooting all over the place all the time. It's hectic and chaotic. One second your orb is one third full, then completely full, then empty, then 2 thirds full all in two seconds. What the hell is going on and how do you keep track of these giant steps?

And, attacking something with you skills causes a huge increase AND a huge decrease in your fury. That seems like a very strange foundation for such an important mechanic.

I'm also wondering how this will work with such constant drastic changes in fury. However, even if it was a single globe, much like mana, the same thing would happen. Your fury will diminish to zero then pop up when you fight and go back down when you use skills.

One benefit i see from using the current system is that it is easy to see how much you have. You can look down and see "oh i have 1 globe" etc. Instead of looking down to a partially filled orb and wondering "how much exactly is that?"

[Knight_Wolf]

Stillman, It seems you didn't play the new Blizzcon demo.

Well, i think you need to read the latest news article posted here on the site regarding the Barb tree and skills, it has notes on each skill and actual gameplay feedback, and from what i read the fury system works just great.

[Jedouard]

I think you are making too much of it. You will not always be looking down at your UI, trying to figure out how much Fury you have. In the beginning you will, but as time passes you will get a good idea of what skills are worth (i.e., what their fury cost-to-regeneration ratio is), and pretty soon after that you will get a good idea of what are more natural sequences for skills so as to build up Fury and sustain/replenish it while doing good damage.

It is kind of like driving - after you get a little experience, you no longer need to look at the speedometer every two seconds.

[casadeERIC]

It seems like the system will work similarly to Mana leech or +mana after each kill in that you're spending mana while gaining it back. Mana didn't decay though so I guess they are different. I'm sure Blizzard is going to make it work. I trust them.

[Runestar]

But there is still this problem of the orbs shooting all over the place all the time. It's hectic and chaotic. One second your orb is one third full, then completely full, then empty, then 2 thirds full all in two seconds. What the hell is going on and how do you keep track of these giant steps?

And, attacking something with you skills causes a huge increase AND a huge decrease in your fury. That seems like a very strange foundation for such an important mechanic.

I am hoping this is the sort of mechanic which sounds extremely complex and unwieldy on paper, but turns out to be quite intuitive in actual gameplay. I guess that after some practice, you should be fairly adept at keeping track of your fury.

In other words, the barb plays better than it reads.:thumbup:

[Echod16]

You gained fury from the damage you dealt to enemies from a fury-consuming attack

i.e. I would spend 1 orb on a cleaving attack of 8 skeletons in my arc, and get 3 full orbs after the attack because he hit all 8 skeletons, each giving him about 1/2 of an orb

so basically, the barbarian will have no problem developing fury against masses, and he really didn't have any problem developing fury 1v1 against strong monsters either, though obviously it took longer (relatively) and I had to actually THINK about what moves I wanted to use against this foe.

Also, I never had my fury orbs vanish, though I didn't stay out of battle for more than 20 seconds.

[stillman]

Stillman, i think you need to read the latest news article posted here on the site regarding the Barb tree and skills, it has notes on each skill and gameplay feedback, and from what i read the system works just great.

I read it, I just don't like the concepts. Well, the concept of getting angry to generate more fury does make sense, but I also like the older method of having a limit on how much of this combo spamming you can do. For instance, it appears you can just keep using your combos described in an above post to generate fury forever in a hypothetical case where enemies keep coming into the screen. So you could just keep keep taking them down forever and it would make more sense if you got tired out eventually, imo. In d2, if the damage inflation problem didn't exist then the leech would not be so high and I think you would get tired out eventually.

Also, I would prefer a system that was not based on three chuncks, which simply seems too little. Why not 5 or something more just on principle? The skill costs don't sound all that diverse with "Well, this one costs one and this one costs two."

[Moonfrost]

I read it, I just don't like the concepts. Well, the concept of getting angry to generate more fury does make sense, but I also like the older method of having a limit on how much of this combo spamming you can do. [...] In d2, if the damage inflation problem didn't exist then the leech would not be so high and I think you would get tired out eventually.
In D2, mana leech was pretty crucial to physical damage classes. By giving the barbarian, and probably both the monk and the unannounced ranged class as well, a resource system that doesn't involve mana, they can completely remove the mana leech stat from the game because it won't be needed by anyone. It's a bad stat anyway because it trivializes resource management when that should be an integral part of a class. Instead, they balanced D2 around it.

In D3, they'll likely put more of an effort into making the classes feel truly different from each other and a class' resource system is a big part of how it plays. The WD will be using mana, the barbarian fury, the wizard something else, the monk something else as well, which means the unannounced class is highly likely to have its unique system too.

Also, I would prefer a system that was not based on three chuncks, which simply seems too little. Why not 5 or something more just on principle? The skill costs don't sound all that diverse with "Well, this one costs one and this one costs two."
Speaking purely from a design point of view: fewer orbs are easier to manage. Once you have five orbs and many skills that all cost one-five orbs, it becomes difficult to keep track of all that. The system gets too mathy, too complicated. Moreover, increasing the number of orbs would likely result in a change of fury generation rate, as keeping the same rate of generation wouldn't have a noticable impact on gameplay anyway. You'd have more orbs but they'd still fill up and empty at the same rate as previously, so why change it? Reducing the generation rate would on the other hand promote slower gameplay because filling the orbs up would take longer and the player would get to execute less skills in return.

To remove such unnecessary complexity in favor of better gameplay, a low number of orbs is better. With fewer orbs that fill up and empty fast, the player is discouraged from hoarding the resource and encouraged to keep spending it, speeding up the game's pacing. I'd say they've chosen the right number of orbs because it strikes a good balance between too many and too few.

[tyren]

I myself have no problem with the fury-system in itself, altho I haven't played the demo the fury-management from the Warrior in WoW was a good thing. It's just the visual implementation in D3 that looks confusing, haveing it represented by a globe or bar (like in WoW) wouldn't work or what?

[Moonfrost]

I myself have no problem with the fury-system in itself, altho I haven't played the demo the fury-management from the Warrior in WoW was a good thing. It's just the visual implementation in D3 that looks confusing, haveing it represented by a globe or bar (like in WoW) wouldn't work or what?
It would probably work, but a single globe/bar would be more difficult to read than the current stop light system. Imagine that you want to use a skill that costs 60 fury. With an globe/bar, you can't really tell if you have 55 or 65 fury. Telling the difference between one or two lit orbs is much easier (assuming one lit orb equals 30 fury for the sake of argument).

Fury gain in D3 will be faster than rage gain in WoW, so you'll be given less time to do the math. In WoW you can enable a numeric display (http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/MeadowsEU/ui.jpg) that tells you exactly how much rage you have. That's very useful and all, but in D3 you wouldn't have much time to use such a feature in combat.

[tyren]

It would probably work, but a single globe/bar would be more difficult to read than the current stop light system. Imagine that you want to use a skill that costs 60 fury. With an globe/bar, you can't really tell if you have 55 or 65 fury. Telling the difference between one or two lit orbs is much easier (assuming one lit orb equals 30 fury for the sake of argument).

Fury gain in D3 will be faster than rage gain in WoW, so you'll be given less time to do the math. In WoW you can enable a numeric display (http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh54/MeadowsEU/ui.jpg) that tells you exactly how much rage you have. That's very useful and all, but in D3 you wouldn't have much time to use such a feature in combat.

I get your point but don't agree completely, the current system in D3 has the runes aswell as the globes, I don't know if you can draw fury from the runes aswell or when you max the runes it fills a globe and starts over on the runes. And it's quite "estimateable" how much mana/life you have in D2 for example even without numeric representation since you know your max hp/mana, and if you don't have enough the default attack will be used in a lot of cases. Yes D3 will/should have a greatly boosted version of the WoW fury-system I realize this, and it should also have the option of showing the amounts you have in numbers and thus no need for multiple globes, atleast I think so...

[Moonfrost]

I get your point but don't agree completely, the current system in D3 has the runes aswell as the globes, I don't know if you can draw fury from the runes aswell or when you max the runes it fills a globe and starts over on the runes. And it's quite "estimateable" how much mana/life you have in D2 for example even without numeric representation since you know your max hp/mana, and if you don't have enough the default attack will be used in a lot of cases.
I don't think the runes matter as an individual resource, they are likely there to just give you an idea of how close you are to filling up the next orb, or perhaps purely as decoration. It's the amount of lit orbs that matter when it comes to using your skills.

I'm not arguing that a WoW style globe/bar system would be unusable or anything, you could probably just spam skills and hope you have enough fury to execute them. Just saying that with a simple 3-orb system you either have enough orbs, or you don't, and it's easy to tell the difference. I don't think a system where you estimate how much fury you have is more user friendly.

[stillman]

Wow, I found the perfect video to demonstrate my slight frustration with this stoplight system:

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(Hopefully the people in the video don't do anything nasty because I only listened to the 1st few lyrics, then I felt a bit ill.)

But yeah, ABC. Easy as one two three. The barb is from grade primary! I agree that using the WoW system may be the better mechanic over d2, but I think it's the appearance and the over simplified, REALLY dumbed down aspect of just three blobs to worry about. They still may change it they said. To me, idk, I just don't want to look at a three block system for a whole weekend. I'm a grown man here, lol. I can count past three.

Edit: I know what you're going to say. The d2 orb system was more "dumbed down" than the new d3 system which makes you think and plan your moves. True, true. But I'm saying the new system looks really preschoolish, and looks are important too!

[Deckard Cain]

Though it sounds simple, im not sure how simple it really is. In all honesty, its much more complex than the D2 mechanic.

Sure there are only 3 globes, but that means each skill costs a minimum of 1/3rd your max fury. Just imagine if this was true for D2. Fury does sort of act like mana leech, but either way it will require much more planning than the simple pot spam / mana leech from D2.

[StrikexForce]

i just hope that i can still spam whirlwind :)

[Detheroc]

To me, it sounds like a fine mixture of "simple" and "complex". Yah, there are only three orbs to worry about, but you're constantly on the clock(!) and you have to think carefully about what skills you want to use to get the best result. And you don't have the time to carefully consider whether e.g. cleave or leap would be the better skill to use in your current situation.

Not too mathy, but it does require careful planning and thinking.

I honestly don't get why you can't see this Stillman (it seems to me that you keep retreading the same argument, which is quickly getting tiresome, but ignoring several rebuttals offered), though I'm sure that if the Blizz guys figure out through careful testing that the Barb is too much of an "ABC Warrior" (pardon the pun ;) ), I'm sure they'll change the system to be "smarter".

They already said that the stoplight system was a "work in progress", so it's quite possible it'll change to appeal more to the math geniuses, who feel like they're unwillingly being placed in kindergarden class.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I hope the fury doesn't decay too fast. It is bad to be penalized for stopping to pick up the goodies that you fought for.

[Moonfrost]

I don't really see how anyone can complain about the system being too simple when it's far more intricate than any resource system found in the previous Diablo games. I guess some people like to say crazy things.

[Ebonikizle]

I don't really see how anyone can complain about the system being too simple when it's far more intricate than any resource system found in the previous Diablo games. I guess some people like to say crazy things.

I registered just to remind you Moonfrost, of what your first post was:


That said, I find it ironic that you first see the fury system as "pre-school" and then try to simplify it further by converting it into a mana system because you don't seem to understand how the fury system actually works.

I'm glad you picked up on what was going on with the OP, but you seemed to have forgotten it about halfway through the thread.

OP, you have been flip flopping this whole time "wah it's too simple, wah it's too complex I don't understand it"

Every time someone refutes you for your simplification argument, you go back to arguing that it's too complex.

The fact that you can complain about those two aspects at the same time is the beauty of how it is currently set up, easy to understand, hard to master.
The current fury system is going to be easy for new players to grasp, while at the same time rewarding those who think about what they're doing.

I can sort of understand how you'd be complaining about it being complicated, but that just gives it a high skill ceiling.

But when you complain about how it's "abc" simple, you're actually having a problem with an easy to grasp UI as Moonfrost pointed out.

[GuardianHadriel]

i'm actually gonna say it should be like in WoW, the opposite of mana...