Character specialization

[Approon]

Hey everyone, long time since i last posted here

There have been alot of rpgs produced over the years but i cant seem to stick with any of them, simply because there is no room for unique builds or setup. Usually there are three skills you can concentrate on, but there are not much room for creative thinking.

Diablo II did hook me for ages and i still play it just because you can create your character in so many ways and still be successfull. Streamlined characters are the worst thing, i want unique characters and not only equipment wise. I feel good when my character really is unique in a party.

Now there was some very common characters i d2 simply because they was OP like hammerdin or some sorceress builds and thats a bad thing i think.

I just want Diablo III to extend this unique character building even more. Make all skills count and make it so skills really benefit each other in many different ways.

Iknow its hard to explain but ill try simple.

I dont wanna see the same character build with the same equipment in every second game i join.

hope anyone got my point.

BTW. Diablo III looks awesome, and i would´nt blame the detail level becase of this early view of the game.

[Cwicseolfor]

I have a theory that one of the reasons Diablo 2 was so good was exactly because it was unbalanced; you had to discover what was good and what was crap. You could stare in awe as your cookie cutter friend cut past you and think "that's it, I want to be like that" and you'd obsessively make a new char. The patches didn't balance things at all; they just changed shifted the balance around to keep things fresh.

If Diablo 3 doesn't do this, I imagine it'll be disappointing.

[Jek]

Yeah, however - it's kinda of disappointing if there's a class that can just rely on ONE skill again aka hammerdins.

I'm all for streamlined builds, but I'd love to see multiple versions on each class. :-)

[Approon]

Originally Posted by Cwicseolfor

I have a theory that one of the reasons Diablo 2 was so good was exactly because it was unbalanced; you had to discover what was good and what was crap. You could stare in awe as your cookie cutter friend cut past you and think "that's it, I want to be like that" and you'd obsessively make a new char. The patches didn't balance things at all; they just changed shifted the balance around to keep things fresh.

If Diablo 3 doesn't do this, I imagine it'll be disappointing.

Yea yea i did not meant that every character needed to be perfectly balanced since "if there are no evil there can be no god", im the one that hate cookie cutter builds. I just want it be many ways to create a character that can handle itself more or less.

I remember when i tryed spearazons and meele sorceress on D2 and i got far with them, i want to see more stuff like this and not limit characters to their specialized task.

[stillman]

I believe the key is to have more skills/spells available in the first place. I explained this in another thread but I'll say it again here because I despise the cookie cutter builds.

If you look at the cold sorc skill tree, you have 3 defensive cold armor-type skills which can't be used as your main punch. Of course, cold mastery is passive and doesn't do anything on the screen. Then there's ice bolt which is only there to quickly become obsolete. So that leaves you with a mere five offensive spells to chose from. This is sick and unforgivable. No wonder there are so many blizzard sorc's. Blizzard does the most damage and has relatively good area affect out of the tiny little 5 you have to chose from.

My next example was the paladin: he has 2 whole pages of auras, of which you may only use one at a time. So that leaves just one skill tree of 10 skills which have offensive attacks, shield skills, and spells crammed in there. So there is room for 3 of each skill plus one more extra. When you have so very few options, you're left with no choice but to have the same old build as everyone else.

So all I ask is that D3 has a huge number of skills/spells per class. Then, with careful ballancing on Blizzard's part, we can actually have very unique chrs.

[Hrus]

In games like this, there will allways be some builds that works better than other (or at least in some areas). So there will be allways some "cookie-cutter builds", or "best for Diablo runs" builds.
But I hope they will still make a lot of other builds viable. D2 has a lot of possible build layouts, but it has also lot of wasted builds/skills because of bugs - I think it would be nice to have Inferno sorcs, Fendazons, skelemages focused necros, working Sanctuary etc.
Why do they bother to include the nice looking skill when it is bugged/insanely weak?

edit: yeah, similar thinking as stillman. I Totally forgot about those useless sorc armor skills.

[Approon]

yea, many skills is good but it can ruin a game also if the skills then get washed and mean overall less.

Just make it so the skill points are well worth it. While still talking and how character used to be very much the same with all these runewords and very seldom could be replaced by rare items.

Rare items is what should be the most powerful, I mean fixed stats just make every character the same. So to get more diversity on your characters, we must get more powerful mods on random generated items etc Rare items. An items that could turn an otherwise useless skill into a killer for example.

[Spinns]

I think a good idea would be not just single skilled orientated classes eg hammerdins use mostly hammers so dueling needs some effort not just hammer and tele or charge smite real skill

[5zigen]

Originally Posted by Cwicseolfor

I have a theory that one of the reasons Diablo 2 was so good was exactly because it was unbalanced; you had to discover what was good and what was crap. You could stare in awe as your cookie cutter friend cut past you and think "that's it, I want to be like that" and you'd obsessively make a new char. The patches didn't balance things at all; they just changed shifted the balance around to keep things fresh.

If Diablo 3 doesn't do this, I imagine it'll be disappointing.

This might be sort of true, but I think the way your character performs should be about your skill combinations, and not so much about just picking the uber skill and using it.

[Fegon]

Originally Posted by 5zigen

This might be sort of true, but I think the way your character performs should be about your skill combinations, and not so much about just picking the uber skill and using it.

second that