Monk and Party Issues (Balance/Competitve Gameplay)

**Bad Ash** · 02-09-2009, 17:17

Yo all,

Just watched the extended monk gameplay trailer for the first time, and i thought I would share some thoughts that I saw and to get some thoughts from you guys.

First off, I thought it was incredibly hard to follow action on the screen. I know this has been talked about a lot, and that the final outcome will probably be different, but thank god 8 chars arent allowed into one game. I think it is safe to assume you can follow it better if you were actually helming a char, but from a watchers standpoint, screen was extremely busy

2nd is competitve gameplay. From my personal experience, whenever playing a char usually before lvl 30, a big part of the game was being "the" killer and not just standing around leeching experience. It was frustrating to be playing with a buddy and having him raping with a civerb/sig barb while im using firebolt with a sorc is very frustrating and it looked like the monk was just dominating.

I tried to follow the action around and the monk was just raping everything. Obviously the char was just announced and they wanted to show off his stuff and it can be finetuned in balancing, but does anyone else think from the gameplay video that if you play with a monk you will be 2nd fiddle in the battle?

and this is where the competitive gameplay comes in. Last thing we all want is B.net being overcrowded monkville because people cant compete with them and have fun killing alongside em.

(Disclaimer: this is not a crying i hate blizz and d3 post, just curious to see what you guys think about competitive gameplay)

**Putz** · 02-09-2009, 17:29

One thing about Blizzard's games is that they always address balance issues.

What we saw in the game play videos was a character more than likely higher level than those of that area, along with the stats to match. Thus seeming like it was dominating everything.

**Lcypher** · 02-09-2009, 17:54

I totally agree with both point you made. However, whereas in the long run I am not worried about the monk raping everything , I do worry about the chaos the skills create in 4-players game (since apparently now every skill needs not only to be a skill, but to alos be 'epic') despite assertions from the dev that they keep this issue in mind.
I watched the HD videos of co-op on youtube and I was like WTF, couldn't see s*** with all the body explosions and really crazy fast actions. And I thought 8-player baal runs were a mess in D2...
not to mention hardware req this implies, I cant believe some people actually believe they'll be able to play this game on cards like Nvidia 9600 or whatever...

but hey, since the game's not gonna see the daylight at least for another 2 years (optimistically), why bother!?

**Sass** · 02-09-2009, 17:57

Once you immerse yourself, following the gameplay won't be an issue.

it's like seeing the 8 party s/s on d2 before it's released and it's super bright and colorful. Once you know what's going on, you can follow easily.

**Deckard Cain** · 02-09-2009, 18:49

I think a huge part of this is that the characters were all much too strong for the area they were playing in. I beleive they said somewhere that the monks "seven sided strike" move cost nearly half of his mana pool. However, in the trailer everyone was using whatever moves as much as they wanted. Also, they did just announce the class and they really wanted to showcase what it would be capable of doing.

**Bad Ash** · 02-09-2009, 20:04

Originally Posted by Sass

Once you immerse yourself, following the gameplay won't be an issue.

it's like seeing the 8 party s/s on d2 before it's released and it's super bright and colorful. Once you know what's going on, you can follow easily.

I think this is a big answer to the problem and mentioned it in my original post. also agree with what cain said is that it wasnt realistic to the gameplay.

**a black kid** · 02-09-2009, 20:08

WAY too early to be discussing gameplay imbalances, especially as seen in a pre setup demo at blizzcon. i think once a beta starts will be when those issues will start to be pertinent.

**sunkenfaith** · 02-09-2009, 20:18

I am pretty confident about Blizz fixing any so called balanced issues. What we saw is too early to put a judgement based on a demo video.

**Bad Ash** · 02-09-2009, 22:27

did you guys see someone on the official forums today ranted hardcore and insulted the whole art team pretty much about this exact thing?

Bash gaves some awesome responses. I am not sure how to blue quote in these forums so if someone can that would be cool

**CCCenturion** · 02-09-2009, 22:34

Also, one of the Jay Wilson interviews I read recently said that the Monk's skills are overpowered now, and they're going to tone them down to be more balanced before the game is released.