will diablo3...suck?

[Bandreus]

I'll say this, and sorry if I'm repeating stuff someone else wrote before.
I think Blizz is going the right way with skills. I do think the whole skilltree system is starting to get boring, but people is accostumed to it and it's pretty easy to understand and use. Also I like the idea of choosing some signature skills and maxing them out which the devs have been talking for quite a lot of time. This, coupled with respecs makes for a very simple and effective system which suits both newbies/casuals and hardcore players.

So basicly, while you're early in the game (until the 30ish) you can spend around your points, try out many skills. Then at some point you're able to respec and put your points into the actives/passives you find most usefull/suit best your playstyle and let go the other ones.
What the system needs is some kind of limit, so it scales the price for respec-ing with your level/# of respecs done, to a point you have to play for a long time before being able to respec again. This way you won't be able to change build every other day and it could possibly make it more likely for someone to roll more than one char with the same class. Note that the lack of a proper limit to respec would be a serious issue only if competitive play plays out a majore role in the game (which I do hope).

Also skill runes are a very clever way to cutomize/refine your playstyle without forcing you to make a "once and for all" choice. Also, swapping out runes does not present the same issues as changing your skillset entirelly.

Synergies had bad luck with D2 implementation, yet the concept was very nice and made a lot of sense. The problem is in D2 you usually want to max out a few skills only depending on your build, and synergies quickly became a way to pump up those skills even more, so they actually failed to resolve any problem for most players. They would simply wait for the skill they need to be available, anyway, and yes, D2 skills presented little variation, but hey! it was AD 2000, you know, the stone age :P

Different resource systems for every class. I like that too. It hads more flavour to the classes, and that's good to me. Moreover, if that diversify playstyles among classes it'll be even better. In D2 all you had to do was assuring you've got a sufficient amount of mana leach/+mana on kill/+mana on hit/carry mana pots along. Also that could be interesting, item-wise. Since equipment don't have stat requirements anymore, it makes a lot of sense to chose your gear based on what it does for you, rather than having to skip some good piece because you don't have enought dexterity.

Which leads to the auto stats assignment (poor me). I was pretty astonished by this change at first, but I'm becoming more confident as time passes. Although loosing all that micro management everyone is crying about, I wonder if maybe the unannounced system they're talking of can be something more interesting.
What if, ie, every X-levels we can go to a mentor/NPC and choose to progress our char further through a specific sub-class path rather than another, influencing how your stats are allocated when you levelup. That kind of approach would be more interesting to me than, say, pondering where to put those tiny 5 points and wonder if I'll ever regret not investing enought in vit, or simply go search for a build-guide which tells you "put x here, y there, the rest into vitality". That's the first thing which comes into my mind, but the point is achieving the same result (customization and build variety) while having a system which feels more rewarding than pressing a button in the char screen.

That won't mean the death of strategy guides, of course, but it makes a lot more sense to click on "I wanna crush skulls" (+3 str, +1 vit on lvl up, +5% crits) or on "I'll fry you with my oh-so-awesome-magic" (+5 will, +1% mdmg), than "add enought str to wear gear".

Also on the "carebear" side of things, I'd like all the ones who think D3 will be hand-holding you too much, to go and play some serious roguelike and return to the roots of the genre. No softcore mode baby, have fun.

[Doppel]

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Sorry but it is impossible. Non-consensual PK has no place in a game focused on COOP PVM. Its way too much of a grieving feature for a game that wants players to join together and slay monsters. Its simple as that. Want to duel? Fine, lets duel, If I want, you just cant force it on players that just want to do what the game was designed for: to slay monsters.

Run around, tell all the cool and exciting stories about PKs, about the thrill of being hunted and being the hunter, in the end you are just forcing a feature on people that dont want to play like that. Even if there was no exploits, no wp killing, no hack, nothing of that, only legit pk. It would still be an out-of-place feature. Just accept its death, its over, its a result of a game designed 10 years ago.

Its not impossible; whats wrong with for example being able to choose to play a PK-enabled game or not, the same as you do with hardcore? /end of discussion and end of Blizzard forcing carebear on everyone because some people can't handle PK.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

The skills of the classes themselves are already pidegeonholing enough, If I play a barb I expect to be brute and smash monsters. I dont expect to be a spellcaster when I play a barbarian, the skill tree of the barbarian reflects that, even on Diablo 2, same for everyother class, it doesnt need a resource system to make that, the new resource system just make every class play diferently which in my book means more replayability as it is different to master each resource system.

Exactly, you expect different characters to master different skills, so why eliminate the possibility to equip a barbarian with a staff or eliminate a resource found on items (mana) which doesn't fit exactly your character? If not to force each character to have their specific set of items?

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

And what are those cross-skills? Are you talking about the things like Enigma/CTA? They should be left buried in the design failure that was patch 1.10. I dont want cross-skills at all, make everyone unique please.

Please, you only use the example of CTA and Enigma because those specific items were HUGELY overpowered and pretty much essential if you wanted to be top of the line. Of course i don't want any Enigma's in Diablo 3. But i was more talking about characters that (passively) benefit from other class skills, the meditation aura from the paladin for example. (without it having to spawn on items)

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Whats so evil about itemization? Diablo is a loot based game and again you are ignoring the fact that skills receive a % of extra damage automatically as you level up, why would we need synergies with other filler skills?

Nothing is evil about itemization, i love itemization, but that doesn't mean reducing customization to be replaced with even more itemization which is just boring.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

The last option, no its not a good idea. On the others, it depends on what actually creates good different builds and what pidgeonholes what the skills will be used. The problems with the concept of synergies is that they follow a certain path, within the synergies there is a pre-created build that you will have to follow if you want to maximize your skills, you talk about forcing players to following a path being a bad thing but thats what synergies do, even a well-designed one.

You only believe that because pretty much all synergies did in D2 was "moar power", therefor pretty much forcing you to max it all as to not loose out on the potential power of using one skill (for example, Blizzard)
I asked you to use your imagination a little and even gave some examples (which could be beneficial to some instead of all builds) and you failed. An other synergy example could be that double swing gave an inherent IAS bonus to some other skills instead of merely "moar power" to one skill, depending on what items you'll use and what skills you'll use you could maximize your (unique) build with exactly 0 or 1 or 2,.... 20 points into double swing (and maybe based on that you'll choose to use double swing now). Its the exact same concept of synergy skills D2 used, except not limited to "moar boneskills powering moar boneskills powering moar boneskills" and undeniably more interesting then passives.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Lets say, If a skill increases another's radius and at the same time the skill which got its radius increased also augments the other skill damage, im saying to the player "If you dont take that other skill, even if you dont like using it, you are not getting full potential of this skill" its a system that purporsely gimps the skill taking out some feature and add in another skill, why not just make every skill well-designed and useful to being with? Instead of fragmenting their uses through the skill trees? Because it makes everything more deep and complex? At first it looks so, but every player will want to just follow the path that the synergies state as nobody will feel confortable playing with a skill that has a lot more potential to unlock.

I'm getting the impression you just don't understand the first thing about balancing a game. In our example of radius, who says every build will benefit from a maximized one? Who says that whatever skill increases the radius also happens to merely "moar power" another skill? Where does it say that without fully synergizing skills in such a way they become unviable and useless? Just try to look past the way D2 did it, because the ideas and concepts of for example synergies were brilliant, but extremely poorly executed and implemented.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

So far the passives I have seen in the skill tree are harmless, its just nothing that I would scream "Oh no I need to get this otherwise my skill wont be too powerful!", all the passives have seen to be something more global, like increasing critical spell damage, resource management or of defensive nature. Its a plus but not something that keeps thinking you are using a gimped skill because you are not following the synergies' rules.

You're just contradicting yourself, on the one hand you state that with synergies you FORCE the player to maximize them, on the other hand you state that with passives the player feels free to use them or not. Maybe you don't understand that the concept of passives powering active skills is the exact same thing as synergies powering active skills, except that you might actually use said synergy skills (if you want to) therefor complexifying the gameplay (as opposed to simply pouring more skillpoints into skills you can't even use, which is simply said boring).

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

But runes are far more interesting than anything Diablo 2 ever had. You will once again scream "ITEMIZATON!" but again whats so bad about that? You are afraid that people can switch how their character skills work through items?

I'm not disputing the fact skillrunes are very interesting, personally i love the concept and can't wait to try it out. But maybe the fact that pretty much everything D2 did ten years ago became the standard for virtually all other hack & slash games made you forgot just what new concepts it had to offer:
-Skilltrees
-Socketed items
-Set items
-All sorts of new item mods (IAS, FCR, FHR, FBR, etc, etc, etc,...)
-Horadric cube
-Weaponswitch
-Oskills
-Synergies
-Runewords
Against that the concept of skillrunes alone is peanuts.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

When in Diablo 2 there is this anarchy that allowed you to get other classes skills to themselves? When most of this customization you talk about, like creating a singing barbarian that uses trang-ouls to cast fireballs, is pretty much build upon itemization? Or a melee sorc that uses passion to use zeal? With Diablo 2 oskills you could create those abominations (that never quite worked, it was just a quirky character, never really rised to be an effective build). To a necromancer or a sorceress, +100 hp from a shako or from an amulet of the whale is worth 50 points of vit. An insight equals infinite mana. What is this fear of items dictating the power of the character? That is how it always been!

Hmm ok, you're argument simply revolves around summing up badly balanced items instead of the concept behind them and seeing that i can't do the same with D3 (as we know next to nothing about specific items in D3) you win. Happy?

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Itemization is already a huge part of the game, much more than stats (many items have insane stat values, Hellslayer alone is worth almost 40 lvls of stats) almost as effective as the skills. Recognizing that Itemization is the key to diablo's customization isnt something outlandish, its just how the game has always worked.

I said it again and i'll keep saying it, but where is it carved in stone items should have direct statbonusses like that? It never made sense to me and it never will. Where are the items that boost the actual amount of statpoints you spend for example? But anyways.
Just because statcustomization wasn't that big of a part in D2 (mainly because of those items giving you huge statbonusses) doesn't mean it has to be next to meaningless in D3 because guess what, skillcustomization wasn't a big part of D1 either. Its something called progress.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Faster gameplay doesnt mean more exploitable gameplay. Diablo 2's multiplayer is based around exploits to get what everyone want faster. Surely some people will find the quickest way but remember that for a long time, diablo 2 was played like this: Rush, get in cowlevel on lv 1, stay idle (you could leech xp from anywhere inside the level, you didnt even need to follow the ones killing the cows) get to lv 80+ in one hour just by leeching from the javazons/nova sorcs. It didnt require friends or a well-coordinated party, rushing games were all over the place, it was ridiculously easy to find one. Even Bill Roper said that the game was never meant to be played like this.

I completely agree.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Whatever "powerlvling" there is in Diablo 3, it just cant be worse than the cowlvl era, Blizzard's game design mentality is 10 years more mature and Billions of dollars richer, its hard to expect that something as blatant as the cowlvl will return given the time and effort they seem to be adding into Diablo 3.

Lets hope, unfortunately "respecs" has that connotation of "do and/or screw up whatever you like and fix it later".
Truth be told that it largely depends on what sort of respec system the game will have to offer, but if its merely based on it being a simple goldsink then expect this kind of behavior of players sooner or later, i can guarantee that.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Ah I get it, you are one of these "carebear this " "carebear that" crowd. Well just suck it up, respecs are here to stay.

Whatever, this casual fad will die down sooner or later. (and then revive and then die down and then revive, etc,... its the same with everything else, be it music, movies, television, art, etc,...) A second golden age of gaming will come (the first being the '90).

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

And let me ask you this: Do you believe Diablo 2 is "hardcore-to-the-extreme"? That the diablo 2 is the ultimate antithesis of "carebear"? No. Diablo 2 is simply badly designed. Its an old game from another generation, ffs the game is almost a decade old. Game design and the gamer audience wasnt even that much of a science as it has matured nowdays, ask the same old Diablo 2 team if they would develop a game with PK and no respecs nowdays. I doubt they would, not even Hellgate had PK and quickly introduced respecs through patches.

No i don't think D2 is hardcore-to-the-extreme, also Torchlight doesn't have respecs as far as i remember and it does have stat allocation. But i'm kinda lost on what your point is.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

If someone made a mistake or the build that they created so far in the game isnt cattering to their playstyle anymore, so what? Let them respec instead of creating a new character.

That's fine, unless respecs become a "i just started out so i can't pay to respec" and a "i have enough wealth to respec whenever and wherever i want, rushing a char with the best skills at any point of the game to 90 to then respec to whatever build i wanted to play as to begin with" system. Which i doubt (and hope) it won't.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Gamers now work and have families and cant spend too much time just rebuilding characters, I could do that in Diablo 2 because I wasnt working and specially because Diablo 2 was always ridiculously easy to exploit powerlvling, might as well give us a lv 85 character right away instead of going through the (simple) hassle of powerlvling.

**** that ****, if you don't have the time to play games then don't, **** junkfood.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

The only thing I miss from the hardcore era of game, are difficult and complex games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment. But diablo 2 isnt a result of a game with bold and harsh rules, its infact, quite casual in its form and has always been like that.

Meh, there's no reason to compair Diablo to Planescape Torment as they are totally different kind of games. (love Planescape Torment btw)
When i use the word "casual" in Diablo's context then i mean that the game doesn't forgive you if you screw up. (I agree though that the game shouldn't screw you up by being inconsistent and senselessly balanced, something of a problem in D2)

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

Shock horror: Diablo was always a casual game. If you are fearing the new era of casual games like what the wii is doing, you should never like diablo because compared to true RPG games, diablo falls short in terms of depth and punishment. Diablo's has always been bringing a more casual/simplier approach to RPGs.

I never compaired Diablo to any roleplaying game, in fact i purposely do not call Diablo an RPG, people that do are idiots. That doesn't mean Diablo is supposed to be a casual game though.

Originally Posted by Kiroptus

The things you are defending like PK and no respecs were always of little consequence because nobody cares that much about PK (easy to avoid when done legitmaly) and the game was always very open to obscene powerlvling. If Diablo 3's design is being "carebear", Diablo 2's design was just "careless" and not the almighty-stalwart-vanguard of a harsh, complex and hardcore game that some people believe it to be.

I don't understand your line of thought.
If Diablo 2 was careless (and lets say it was to some extend) and you see to it Diablo 3 isn't careless, then why do you still need to carebear people in being able to respec their characters if they just don't know what the **** they're doing? In fact, the impression i get from respecs IS that Blizzard is careless and just figured "oh well, lets give them respecs if we screw them up with our carelessness then".