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From everything we have heard about the game, it really sounds like Blizzard is removing the aspect of pvp that I know many of us enjoyed the most, the part that happens before combat: building your character.
Blizzard is going to be adopting the wow talent system in a big way: capping how many points can be invested in each skill (less customization, I don't see what good comes out of this), and forcing players to spend their points in lower skills (less customization, could be ok depending on what they put at the top of the tree). If you thought pvp chars were "cookie-cutter" in LoD, wait until every player has their 5/5 points in Add Crit and 1/1 point in Good Combat Skill and no place to put the other 94 points but in skills about health globes and post critical hit bonuses. Is that supposed to be "customized?" Because all of these changes are for people who want to raid with their friends. I agree that the party system and team play sucked in D2. But I don't see why they have to ruin pvp just to fix that.
Eliminating stat customization and stat requirements is a huge blow to pvp, since you will NOT be optimizing your stats to carry your best items and complement the skills you will be using. Every barb is going to have the same str and vit and a bunch of energy sitting around doing little to nothing since Fury is irrelevant in pvp battles (useless). Every wizard is going to have a bunch of dex so she can "dodge" all the attacks she has to TP away from anyway (useless).
Forcing players to spend their stats and skill points in pvm skills is going to make pvp pointless and unfun.
This is because if both players have 100 points and 500 attributes to spend, we can pick our own items (since its impossible to get that eth breath, I have to pick something else and change my stats), put our 40 points into our main skills, and then decide how to optimize our passives, resistances, synergies, etc., for the equipment we have for pvp. If I don't even have to think about str and dex allocation, and there are only 3 pvp skills and we're both maxed out on those, the only thing that differentiates us is our equipment.
Now, let me ask you: In LoD, you were required to make a MF character and do runs just to get the equipment you needed to build optimal pvp chars. Most of the time drops were near-impossible, and the trading system was unreliable (spam your have list all night instead of actually playing the game), full of poofy items, and time consuming.
Character builds in LoD were too item-centric, because the best items were so much better and nearly impossible to get. After all the time you spent playing other characters just to get the right items for your main character, do you really want to play a game where you have no freedom to customize your character besides getting better items?
It sounds like pvp is going to be about two things: getting lucky and finding better items then your opponent, and being able to cycle through 10 different combat skills faster than they can. Which doesn't sound anything to me like an RPG.
I agree for the most part. I knew Diablo 3 coming after World of Warcraft could only mean bad things. I played D2 classic for about 6 years, and WoW for about 4. I really hope they don't try to turn D3 into an MMORPG like WoW, where everyone wears basically the same gear, has the same talent builds, life, and mana.
What made D2 great was you not only had skills to customize, but attributes as well. You could be a 400 dex amazon or a more balanced one with 275 vitality to complement your dex. Hopefully they at least keep that aspect of it. Hopefully there won't be any bullcrap questing for leveling either. Let's keep it hack-and-slash, please.
The WoW talent system is great...for WoW. The reason being you need all of those low level, forced talent points because it takes wayyyyy more time to level. In D2, you can go from level 19 to 30 before you even know where to put your attributes yet. They're different games, and it should stay that way.
Blizzard is going to be adopting the wow talent system in a big way: capping how many points can be invested in each skill (less customization, I don't see what good comes out of this), and forcing players to spend their points in lower skills (less customization, could be ok depending on what they put at the top of the tree).
Umm D2 also had a skill cap. It was 20. Now its 15 for passives and maybe 5 or more for active skills. The passives add a lot of benefits and make your character stronger, many of them affect multiple skills. So you're actually using 1 point to effect more than one skill, seems better to me. And I guess having to put points into skills you wouldn't use in D2 to move up the tree wasn't "forcing players to spend their points in lower skills"? At least now you can just put points into a passive that will help the entire game instead of having a bunch of 1 point skills.
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Originally Posted by machinus
If you thought pvp chars were "cookie-cutter" in LoD, wait until every player has their 5/5 points in Add Crit and 1/1 point in Good Combat Skill and no place to put the other 94 points but in skills about health globes and post critical hit bonuses. Is that supposed to be "customized?" Because all of these changes are for people who want to raid with their friends. I agree that the party system and team play sucked in D2. But I don't see why they have to ruin pvp just to fix that.).
I don't really see how 36+ passives per character to chose from to build your character is reducing customization. And plenty of those passives would be good for a pvp build.
Quote:
Originally Posted by machinus
Eliminating stat customization and stat requirements is a huge blow to pvp, since you will NOT be optimizing your stats to carry your best items and complement the skills you will be using. Every barb is going to have the same str and vit and a bunch of energy sitting around doing little to nothing since Fury is irrelevant in pvp battles (useless). Every wizard is going to have a bunch of dex so she can "dodge" all the attacks she has to TP away from anyway (useless).
Forcing players to spend their stats and skill points in pvm skills is going to make pvp pointless and unfun..
Don't even know what you are trying to say here. Players will not have the same stats. All of the same class will have the same base stats, but with items everyone will have a different total of each stat. And depending on what skills you pick, you will want items that give different amounts of each stat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by machinus
This is because if both players have 100 points and 500 attributes to spend, we can pick our own items (since its impossible to get that eth breath, I have to pick something else and change my stats), put our 40 points into our main skills, and then decide how to optimize our passives, resistances, synergies, etc., for the equipment we have for pvp. If I don't even have to think about str and dex allocation, and there are only 3 pvp skills and we're both maxed out on those, the only thing that differentiates us is our equipment.
Not sure what you're going for here either. But wouldn't it be great to not have to pick your final items before building your class? Not having stat requirements on items gives more options to players. Pretty simple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by machinus
Now, let me ask you: In LoD, you were required to make a MF character and do runs just to get the equipment you needed to build optimal pvp chars. Most of the time drops were near-impossible, and the trading system was unreliable (spam your have list all night instead of actually playing the game), full of poofy items, and time consuming.
Character builds in LoD were too item-centric, because the best items were so much better and nearly impossible to get. After all the time you spent playing other characters just to get the right items for your main character, do you really want to play a game where you have no freedom to customize your character besides getting better items?
Yeah because D3 = D2 right? You don't know what the drop rates on items will be or what the trade system is going to be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by machinus
It sounds like pvp is going to be about two things: getting lucky and finding better items then your opponent, and being able to cycle through 10 different combat skills faster than they can. Which doesn't sound anything to me like an RPG.
You don't have to cycle through skills, there's a hot bar. Instead of just spamming your strongest skill, now you can actually use tatics and have easy access to multiple skills to use against your opponent.
D2 made the illusion that your character was more customizable for pvp. This is true, you could make characters very different from others but if you wanted to be good you basically had to have minimal strength, dex, and mana, the rest was ALL vitality. I am very happy that you can now vary your character more from the cookie cutter builds and not SUCK....I hope
Has Blizzard announced what all the skill caps will be? Have they announced what the stats for each skill will be? No. Most of the caps in the demos we've seen were temporary and won't be in the final game. So it's way too early to complain about cookie cutter builds because we don't know enough yet.
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Eliminating stat customization and stat requirements is a huge blow to pvp, since you will NOT be optimizing your stats to carry your best items and complement the skills you will be using. Every barb is going to have the same str and vit . . .
No, that's false. You WILL be able to optimize your stats and every barb WON'T have the same str and vit. The stat customization will come from your gear. D2 had this, but D3 will have a greater focus on it to give more customization.
You want a pure str titan barb in D3? Fine, load him up with a bunch of str gear. Think of the auto stats in D3 like your base stats, like how the D2 Sorc starts out with a bit of dex even though she'll probably never use it. It's your choice what to add on top of those stats.
I find it kind of odd how people keep complaining about the supposed lack of customization in D3. The new rune system will give us the option to customize our skills in ways D2 never came close to. I think in the end, we will see more customization in D3 than we did in D2.
Pretty much, someone will be creative and figure out one optimal way to build his/her character. Then, the rest of the gurgling idiots will proceed to copy his/her exact build. Soon enough, we'll have a clone war on our hands. My same complain for every game, really.
In all fairness, too little has been revealed for proper speculation, let alone for complains. The game itself isn't even finalized yet.
Stat allocation has been very popular in both Diablo 1 & 2, and was among the prime aspects of the Diablo series. Yet, until Diablo 3 is released, few can truly say the change is not for the best. After all, if the devs. found a better way to provide character customization, more power to them.
... However, I do agree that the new skill tree reminds me too much of WoW's talent tree system, where passive effects dominate. I can honestly say that WoW's talent tree system is probably one of the biggest piece of **** I've had the misfortune of experiencing.
Sure, customization is there, but really, in the end, everyone is forced to build their character the exact same, unspectacular way. To make it even worse, if someone found a way to play the system and actually create an effective, non-conventional build, Blizzard will immediate... remedy the "mistake", through various soulcrushing changes. (straying off-topic...)
Rather alarming to see Diablo 3 going in the same direction.
Last edited by TarnishedHope; 03-05-2009 at 11:40..
To make it even worse, if someone found a way to play the system and actually create an effective, non-conventional build, Blizzard will immediate... remedy the "mistake", through various soulcrushing changes. (straying off-topic...)
Reminds me of the Tri-Spec Hemo rogues or HARPs in WoW... Shame, really.
Has Blizzard announced what all the skill caps will be? Have they announced what the stats for each skill will be? No. Most of the caps in the demos we've seen were temporary and won't be in the final game. So it's way too early to complain about cookie cutter builds because we don't know enough yet.
Thank you for stating this, because many people on the forums need to read it. People are assuming the worst based on variables that can easily be changed for balancing, or even changed entirely based on Blizzard's experiences. Most of us know how Blizzard works, they try out several ideas and are constantly refining them. Don't take all of your information from one or two gameplay videos and moan and whine about what you see.
This was directed at nobody in particular.
Back on topic
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Originally Posted by the V
I really hope they don't try to turn D3 into an MMORPG like WoW, where everyone wears basically the same gear, has the same talent builds, life, and mana.
Wait... so you think Diablo 2 isn't like this now? In some main channels I've seen 4 paladins next to eachother wearing the same armor, helm, and weapon. We all know they were the same items.
Personally I think runes messed everything up, they were far too rare to be taken seriously through legitimate means. Which resulted in massive duping and every hardcore PvP character would end up with an Enigma and Call to Arms etc. Handicapping anyone who tried to compete without buying their equipment online or duping.
Personally I think runes messed everything up, they were far too rare to be taken seriously through legitimate means. Which resulted in massive duping and every hardcore PvP character would end up with an Enigma and Call to Arms etc. Handicapping anyone who tried to compete without buying their equipment online or duping.
I said on another thread I say it again, Enigma and CTA are among the most unbalanced things to disgrace the already weak balance that D2 has. Something must be done to adress it (Removal would be a good choice).
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Wait... so you think Diablo 2 isn't like this now? In some main channels I've seen 4 paladins next to eachother wearing the same armor, helm, and weapon. We all know they were the same items.
QTF. Everyone wears the same stuff now. I still dream with the day that crafted items (and maybe rares, once again) rule the D2 items and have the chance to become the most powerful items in the game instead of boring preset runewords.
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