SPF's Thoughts on D3

[Kitteh]

Holy ****. It is him!

[pharphis]

He's posted on other D3 related stuff somewhat recently, hasn't he? or was that back in september that I'm thinking about lol

[silospen]

I'll go post in the daily, to prevent further thread de-railing :P

Also, hey

[Codoh]

D3....I'll get it once my dissertation is over and done. My brother got into the open this weekend, he said...something like "it's not that sexy" whateva da **** that meens. Idk...I haven't had time to think about all this, 10 chars altogether...i'll moan on their forums when all slots are taken. That's it for now...

[hasuprotoss]

I won't be getting it. From what it seems, the way to be different with your character is your gear choices. I haven't delved too much into the skill system, so maybe I'm entirely wrong, but it seems as though you get every skill as soon as you hit the appropriate level. Compare this to D2, where I guess you could feasibly get every skill, it just certainly wouldn't be strong enough. Therefore, you have to specialize, and specializing takes choices. If you don't have that choice of what to specialize in, then everything starts becoming bland.

Maybe I should give it more time, and maybe I'll get it later on. But for right now, the skilling system is enough to push me off Diablo 3 entirely. If someone has a good defense of how characters can still be diverse inside of one class (i.e., hammerdins vs. tesladins vs avengers in Diablo 2), then please tell me!

[Apolon]

I will stay here.
Don`t want to be connected all time.I have a lot of things to do in D2.
Btw. is there any poll about how many people will stay here (this SPF and D2) ?

[spearv]

If someone has a good defense of how characters can still be diverse inside of one class

There's been much discussion about the skill system on the official forums (I haven't participated, but I've seen blue tracker posts on the topic). I think the breakdown is something like...

- As you can only pick 6 skills at any time, you do have to make choices about what you actually use.
- The advantage of being able to freely change the 6 skills you have active (and rune combinations/passives) is that you only have to level one Barbarian instead of levelling a new one every time you want to try something very/slightly different. (In theory, yes, you'll be able to change many skills rapidly, in practice you won't - maybe you'll change a skill or two for a particular area or boss, or you'll change everything for a week to try a different style).
- Because there are gazillions of combinations, it will take a lot of play time to really decide what you like most (vs D2 where your time is spent levelling up over and over again).

Understanable that D2 players aren't entirely comfortable with the system because it is rather different. It makes me think back to D1, where every character class had the exact same abilities and could use whatever the wanted, whenever they wanted. That definitely didn't impact replayability, but it did lead to the birth of variants which are basically what almost every tournament character is on this forum!

I've talked off and on with someone else in the D3 beta and while we've both played through the content many times, we've tended to use a very different selection of skills in order to get things done. That is a fairly positive thing to come out of just 13 levels and a tiny fraction of the possible options.

[VoltageR]

I'm real glad that the forum will not die in D3's release. Keep it going guys! I've just joined in and it would be a pity if everyone quit d2 for d3. I will not be buying it.

[Nightfish]

I've already said this on several occasions, and nothing has changed about that: No D3 for me. Reasons are mainly zaphod's 1-4. I can no longer play the game the way I want to so I'm not buying it. It's all way too much geared towards casual play, as is almost every game these days. Add the DRM bs which just gives me the vibe of "We're not trusting you to actually buy our game unless we monitor you 24/7" plus "We are trying oh so very very hard to make you use our RMAH by forcing you to be online". No thanks.

In addition to all of that, I really don't care for the skill system. I liked how my chars in D2 had individuality. Reskilling is all fine and good in MMOs where it takes ages to build a char (and even there I chose an MMO where reskilling isn't something you can easily do). But in a diablo style game, I don't really want reskills to be a major part of the game. Definetly not in the way of "you know all those skills but we're only giving you 6 of them now".

And yea. Lack of ATMA alone would probably have done it for me. I actually do care about collecting items and figuring out a neat build to do with a combination of underused uniques / sets. Because that's how I roll.

Funny enough, I don't actually mind D3 not being a game for me anymore. I got other things to occupy me and if I get really nostalgic I can always fire up D2 again.

[spearv]

I don't actually mind D3 not being a game for me anymore.

I can definitely understand that... in a nutshell, you want to play a game exactly like D2 and, fortunately, it exists already! I suppose I'm game to try something new, so the fact that D3 is radically different in a few ways isn't going to stop me from giving it a go, rather, encourage me to test the water. If it turns out that the new systems aren't to my liking I expect I'll still probably get $60 value from it and then I can head back to D1/D2 if I get the itch (or TL2 / POE).