Also there was talk of boss stages, as in the boss changes forms.
I guess I'd crash the Epoch into Diablo to avoid the first stage.
Well, its more like skipping a dozen stages.
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I don't consider not standing in fire a boss mechanic. I imagine all of Diablo 3's boss battles will be common sense not something I will have to watch a guide to be able to beat. Stay out of brightly colored boss attacks and damage anything on the boss that is shiny. I don't think the boss encounters will be anything like cc this add wave, while kiting a flaming Diablo to the big tub of water which you will need to trigger on him to put out the flames to allow him to be melee dpsed again.
Alex Wilder on
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
It's been awhile, but one of my pet peaves with WoW raiding was figuring out the "trick" for taking down a raid boss and having 25-40 people execute flawlessly and then you *might* win. Ugh.
I don't mind clever mechanics to keep people from spamming a single attack skill, but I sure hope it doesn't evolve into the craziness that WoW raids became.
It's been awhile, but one of my pet peaves with WoW raiding was figuring out the "trick" for taking down a raid boss and having 25-40 people execute flawlessly and then you *might* win. Ugh.
I don't mind clever mechanics to keep people from spamming a single attack skill, but I sure hope it doesn't evolve into the craziness that WoW raids became.
Yeah because standing there spamming your left and right mouse button holding down shift is soooo much fun.
It's been awhile, but one of my pet peaves with WoW raiding was figuring out the "trick" for taking down a raid boss and having 25-40 people execute flawlessly and then you *might* win. Ugh.
I don't mind clever mechanics to keep people from spamming a single attack skill, but I sure hope it doesn't evolve into the craziness that WoW raids became.
Yeah because standing there spamming your left and right mouse button holding down shift is soooo much fun.
That's what Diablo is. I will quit video games forever if Diablo 3 turns out to have WoW style raids. I won't want to live on this planet.
Well, the 4 player cap does put some limits on what the boss mechanics can be like in WoW terms.
The lack of true "tank/dps/healer" roles throws a lot of that out of the window, along with the necessity that all of the bosses be doable with at most 1 player (with or without a minion).
I'm sure there'll be some interesting mechanics/effects/events, but "deal damage to this guy/these guys/that thing(s) and stay out of the fire*" (* "Fire" being "generic bad shit" in WoW terms, not necessarily liteal fire) will probably cover a good chunk of them.
I mean, in the beta we have mini-bosses who you do exactly that to (deal damage, run away, deal more damage), or you chase them down to deal damage, then there's the Pillars event which isn't really a mini-boss per se, but I could see bosses similar in structure existing, and finally the Skeleton King, who combines chasing, running away and hordes of minions all at once.
Unless you one-shot him, of course.
I'm sure Blizzard will make things interesting in later levels and difficulties, but as much cross polination as there might be, the difference between knowing a group should consist of at least 1 'tank', 1 'healer' and 3 'dps' versus "the whole game can be completed by one guy with enough time and patience" does hamsting some of the mechanics, or requires significant alteration to make them applicable to a single player version.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Well, the 4 player cap does put some limits on what the boss mechanics can be like in WoW terms.
The lack of true "tank/dps/healer" roles throws a lot of that out of the window, along with the necessity that all of the bosses be doable with at most 1 player (with or without a minion).
I'm sure there'll be some interesting mechanics/effects/events, but "deal damage to this guy/these guys/that thing(s) and stay out of the fire*" (* "Fire" being "generic bad shit" in WoW terms, not necessarily liteal fire) will probably cover a good chunk of them.
I mean, in the beta we have mini-bosses who you do exactly that to (deal damage, run away, deal more damage), or you chase them down to deal damage, then there's the Pillars event which isn't really a mini-boss per se, but I could see bosses similar in structure existing, and finally the Skeleton King, who combines chasing, running away and hordes of minions all at once.
Unless you one-shot him, of course.
I'm sure Blizzard will make things interesting in later levels and difficulties, but as much cross polination as there might be, the difference between knowing a group should consist of at least 1 'tank', 1 'healer' and 3 'dps' versus "the whole game can be completed by one guy with enough time and patience" does hamsting some of the mechanics, or requires significant alteration to make them applicable to a single player version.
Couldn't have said it better myself :^:
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
edited March 2012
damn that's weird forar's post made me want to play wow. what the fuck? it's been so long.
It's been awhile, but one of my pet peaves with WoW raiding was figuring out the "trick" for taking down a raid boss and having 25-40 people execute flawlessly and then you *might* win. Ugh.
I don't mind clever mechanics to keep people from spamming a single attack skill, but I sure hope it doesn't evolve into the craziness that WoW raids became.
Yeah because standing there spamming your left and right mouse button holding down shift is soooo much fun.
That's what Diablo is. I will quit video games forever if Diablo 3 turns out to have WoW style raids. I won't want to live on this planet.
Word. Jar of Souls embodies exactly what I want to get out of Diablo. Throw in random lightning/teleport elites now and then, and I'm content.
Considering they started reusing boss abilities in Wrath of the Lich King (every 5man boss was a variation of old raid boss abilities) and Cataclysm brought nothing new to the table either
Which was the boss in Vanilla/TBC/WotLK that had you attacking its legs to steer it?
It's been awhile, but one of my pet peaves with WoW raiding was figuring out the "trick" for taking down a raid boss and having 25-40 people execute flawlessly and then you *might* win. Ugh.
I don't mind clever mechanics to keep people from spamming a single attack skill, but I sure hope it doesn't evolve into the craziness that WoW raids became.
Yeah because standing there spamming your left and right mouse button holding down shift is soooo much fun.
That's what Diablo is. I will quit video games forever if Diablo 3 turns out to have WoW style raids. I won't want to live on this planet.
They have the opportunity to have a greater complexity in this game. In Act1 you get a taste of what they can do in this game and actually having to think in games makes them more fun to me. I am not saying they need WoW style raids but they can add in more mechanics than what the prior iterations had. That is what I hope for.
BTW WoW raids are the most fun aspect of any game I have played in the last 10 years. You say crazy I say fun. When we started heroics on this teir I couldnt help but smile because we finally got to the challenging stuff.
It's been awhile, but one of my pet peaves with WoW raiding was figuring out the "trick" for taking down a raid boss and having 25-40 people execute flawlessly and then you *might* win. Ugh.
I don't mind clever mechanics to keep people from spamming a single attack skill, but I sure hope it doesn't evolve into the craziness that WoW raids became.
Yeah because standing there spamming your left and right mouse button holding down shift is soooo much fun.
That's what Diablo is. I will quit video games forever if Diablo 3 turns out to have WoW style raids. I won't want to live on this planet.
They have the opportunity to have a greater complexity in this game. In Act1 you get a taste of what they can do in this game and actually having to think in games makes them more fun to me. I am not saying they need WoW style raids but they can add in more mechanics than what the prior iterations had. That is what I hope for.
BTW WoW raids are the most fun aspect of any game I have played in the last 10 years. You say crazy I say fun. When we started heroics on this teir I couldnt help but smile because we finally got to the challenging stuff.
And that's cool. But if you want those style raids why not just stick with WoW, and leave the clickclickclick looty style stuff to those who like that?
You guys are really going overboard with these WoW comparisons. Especially the people thinking there are going to be raid boss mechanics for these boss fights.
Did you guys even PLAY Diablo or Diablo 2? The major theme of the fighting in those games is "oh shit I'm surrounded by monsters, CHUG POTIONS AND KIIIIILLLLL!" That formula works, and it was massively successful for Blizzard. There is no reason to mess with game mechanics that work and are fun, and both diablo games have generally been like that. There is no reason to expect that Diablo 3 is suddenly gonna get all crazy and start copying WoW mechanics. Diablo bosses are fun without mechanics like those, because you're hacking and slashing and chugging potions and casting different abilities based on what's going on. They're fundamentally different styles of gameplay.
I have seen no indications that there will be WoW-style raid mechanics in these boss fights. The worst I expect is something akin to Diablo's fire-lightning from Diablo 2.
I except D3 will have mechanics like "Run away from that AoE" and "Don't stand in fire" and "Dodge the giant lightning bolts" and "don't die from the hordes of monsters the boss summons" and such.
Considering they started reusing boss abilities in Wrath of the Lich King (every 5man boss was a variation of old raid boss abilities) and Cataclysm brought nothing new to the table either
Which was the boss in Vanilla/TBC/WotLK that had you attacking its legs to steer it?
I'll admit that was a pretty cool boss, and the flying through rings on the phoenix too. Firelands actually had a number of innovative bosses. But before that we had such incredible fights as turn the dragon away from the other dragon, kill adds in a specific spot so you don't flood the floor with corruption and split the party into two teams. Not to forget my favourite boss of all time, Ragnaros, who spends his time smashing his hammer into predictable spots and having you dodge waves of lava before he gets up out of the lava and runs around a little.
Considering they started reusing boss abilities in Wrath of the Lich King (every 5man boss was a variation of old raid boss abilities) and Cataclysm brought nothing new to the table either
Which was the boss in Vanilla/TBC/WotLK that had you attacking its legs to steer it?
I'll admit that was a pretty cool boss, and the flying through rings on the phoenix too. Firelands actually had a number of innovative bosses. But before that we had such incredible fights as turn the dragon away from the other dragon, kill adds in a specific spot so you don't flood the floor with corruption and split the party into two teams. Not to forget my favourite boss of all time, Ragnaros, who spends his time smashing his hammer into predictable spots and having you dodge waves of lava before he gets up out of the lava and runs around a little.
Expecting every single boss to be completely different from previous bosses in every possible way is a little much.
Considering they started reusing boss abilities in Wrath of the Lich King (every 5man boss was a variation of old raid boss abilities) and Cataclysm brought nothing new to the table either
Which was the boss in Vanilla/TBC/WotLK that had you attacking its legs to steer it?
I'll admit that was a pretty cool boss, and the flying through rings on the phoenix too. Firelands actually had a number of innovative bosses. But before that we had such incredible fights as turn the dragon away from the other dragon, kill adds in a specific spot so you don't flood the floor with corruption and split the party into two teams. Not to forget my favourite boss of all time, Ragnaros, who spends his time smashing his hammer into predictable spots and having you dodge waves of lava before he gets up out of the lava and runs around a little.
Expecting every single boss to be completely different from previous bosses in every possible way is a little much.
I know.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Also the highest level of content of WoW still has a fair amount of difficulty. Yes, most of the content is easy, but as people have said, people won't pay if they can't play as much of the game as possible.
Supposedly less than 1% of the player base saw Sunwell Plateau. While I understand there is a certain pride in being one of those 'elite' few who did, that doesn't pay the bills. Hell, look at one of the things their focusing on in MoP: Pokemon. I honestly think we'll see some sort of Farmville-esque thing at some point, too. Not that it's bad, per se, as it will definitely cash in on the casual player dollar, but it's fairly obvious the time and money is now being spent more heavily on keeping people playing, instead of mostly on high level raid content. PVP will never be amazing, but then again, I don't PVP.
Anyhow, a single player (or limited player) game is much easier to balance, so I'm not worried at all about D3.
I'm not worried about it with D3. As people have mentioned before, having the same content just with multiple difficulties means they can tune things so no one has to feel left out. I'm sure some silly geese will complain about Inferno being too hard and claim they're missing content, but ideally Blizzard won't bow to those people.
Diablo 2 had a decent amount of movement to avoid damage mechanics. Diablo's Cone of Lightning comes to mind immediately. You also had to kite Duriel, dodge Mephisto's orb and charged bolts, dodge Andariel's poison gas, and more things like that.
I think it would be cool to see more raid like mechanics in Diablo.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Big news: Inferno is no longer constant-difficulty, it now scales up(but still capped at level 60):
This is may be a good a time as any to REVEAL TEH SEKRITS! that Inferno monster levels aren’t linear any longer. They get progressively more difficult. This was really a reaction to Inferno playtesting. Our original intent was to have a flat difficulty level where you could go wherever you want, farm for items, and it’d be no more or less difficult than any other area in Inferno. This caused a few inherent issues for us, though:
It just felt wrong. It didn’t feel right to be progressing through the game and have it stay pretty much the same difficulty the whole time. It felt like a letdown to get to the final boss of the game and it be no more difficult than the first.
There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into. We expect that anybody with enough time and dedication will reach level 60. But the jump in difficulty to Inferno needed to be different amounts for different people. For the crazy people they need a HUGE ramp in difficulty, for a more “casual but still hardcore” audience you want an obvious but milder increase in difficulty. So for the crazy people who play non-stop they’ll hit Act I and get a challenge, but 1 month later they’ll still have something to work on (Acts II, III and IV). For the “hardcore-casual” they will reach level 60 later and not get brick walled when they reach Inferno. They can experience some “small victories” working on Act I with the dream of maybe someday reaching the later acts.
Longevity. We know people really want goals to work towards and challenges to overcome. We made Act III and Act IV really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only. It felt wrong to make ALL of Inferno that brutally hard.
Now, you may be saying “I thought you wanted us to be able to farm anywhere we wanted. Now we only have half as much area in the game to farm in? What gives?” Our goal is to make the loot mathematically better in the later acts without making the earlier gear completely obsolete. We feel Diablo II actually did a very good job with this and we expect Diablo III to perform similarly.
Specifically, people in D2 did Diablo runs, DiabloWikiMephisto runs, DiabloWikiPindleskin runs, Pit runs, DiabloWikiBaal runs, etc. because the loot in Diablo is extremely random. Even though the theoretical best items might come from the later Acts, well-rolled items from earlier acts will still be better. Internally we find sometimes after an intense session of brutally hard Inferno it can be really fun to cruise through DiabloWikiHell Act III or IV and it’s not too uncommon surprise when an upgrade drops. We expect this to carry through to Inferno difficulty where somebody who can theoretically farm Act IV will likely still enjoy romping through Act I simply because the drop potential is still there. It’s all because of the highly random items having lots of overlap in their power distribution curves.
Interesting. I'm okay with that. I liked the idea of all 4 acts being the same level (of brutally punishing but rewarding challenge), but I'm okay with sort of separating it into the first half as "really hard" and the second half as "gird your loins, bitches".
I'm sure there's a 90 page thread about how they're sellouts and ruining diablo and catering to casuals already, but I don't see anything to be terribly worked up about.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
The most obvious problem was "why bother going into act 2, 3, or 4 if act 1 has the same drops?"
If it scales reasonably to the player level and then maxes out quickly, which is what they seem to be saying, then act 1 would be an extension of Hell, while acts 2, 3, and 4 would be level 60 Inferno as before.
My first thought at this was disappointment at the loss of variety from every act being equally good for gear. But the more I think about it the more I'm warming up to it. The old system had some clear drawbacks - it was probably unreasonably hard when you first start, and eventually was no big deal when your gear was maxed out. It became easier and easier as you went through the acts making it not that satisfying to finally beat. But the new system resolves a lot of those issues, and actually adds variety in some ways. From the sounds of it, I'm guessing Act 1 Inferno was made easier and Act 3-4 Inferno were made harder. So in exchange for all the acts being equally good for farming, they gave you a better choice of how seriously you want to play.
Say I'm an ultra D3 badass in the endgame, with a fully min/maxed character with the best build and the best loot. In the old system, there probably isn't anything in the game that poses a challenge to me. In the new system I can always play Act 4 for a crazy challenge and the best loot rate. But maybe I want to try an offspec, or play with some friends who aren't so great. In that case I can take a breather in Act 1, and probably find more loot there since I would only struggle in Act 4.
I'd say something about "not wanting to run the same act forever".... then I realized the community I'm speaking of has been doing the same short boss runs for roughly a decade, so that's probably moot.
It's a good point.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
But I thought the whole point of having inferno in the first place was the constant difficulty across all acts! It was supposed to give you theoretically optimal farming areas across all acts, with the other 3 difficulties providing all the ramping. Now they want to throw that concept away just to give you a longer ramp? If it doesn't "feel" right to progress through inferno and not have it get harder, then just unlock all areas in Inferno after you beat Hell. Bah.
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Maybe they should have, you know, realized this before from past experiences and followed the textbook, instead of wasting their time thinking of new crazy ways to make it feel like not-D2, because the closer it gets to gold status, the more it is turning into something they initially didn't want to become.
You can't just analyze concepts on paper and determine how well they work. Sometimes you need to experiment and get feedback before you figure out your idea wasn't as good as you thought. And it's not wasting time. That's how you design games. You make concepts, prototypes, then if it's good enough you get programmers to implement it. Then you see hjow it works out in the game and you tweak. Sometimes it means breaking it all down and starting that feature from scratch.
Sounds reasonable and almost expected. Ever since they first announced the "same difficulty throughout Inferno" I've been skeptical of how they could really pull that off. I'm sure there are some crazy monsters and boss mechanics in later difficulties that just pose challenges that act 1 zombies and skeletons never could (without being completely unfair by having 10 million health and killing you in two hits with melee attacks from 30 yards away). One part is kind of weird, though:
We feel Diablo II actually did a very good job with this and we expect Diablo III to perform similarly.
Specifically, people in D2 did Diablo runs, DiabloWikiMephisto runs, DiabloWikiPindleskin runs, Pit runs, DiabloWikiBaal runs, etc. because the loot in Diablo is extremely random.
Personally I don't think D2 did a very good job of it. There still weren't that many viable "runs," most were focused on a very small/brief segment of the game, and some of these only came to be due to lots of min-maxing or developer intervention. Pit runs really only worked because the monsters that spawned there happened to be exceptionally weak and easy to kill for their item level. Countess runs only happened because the devs explicitly went in and gave her a better chance (but still terrible) of dropping high runes. And most of these runs were directed at very focused, small segments of acts, getting to the sweet spot as quickly as possible while skipping everything else.
Basically most of this shit was just anomalies that it took people tearing the game apart to figure out. It wasn't clever design or anything motivating it. I think D2 did a pretty bad job with it and I hope D3 doesn't perform similarly!
We feel Diablo II actually did a very good job with this and we expect Diablo III to perform similarly.
Specifically, people in D2 did Diablo runs, DiabloWikiMephisto runs, DiabloWikiPindleskin runs, Pit runs, DiabloWikiBaal runs, etc. because the loot in Diablo is extremely random.
Personally I don't think D2 did a very good job of it. There still weren't that many viable "runs," most were focused on a very small/brief segment of the game, and some of these only came to be due to lots of min-maxing or developer interaction. Pit runs really only worked because the monsters that spawned there happened to exceptionally weak and easy to kill for their item level. Countess runs only happened because the devs explicitly went in and gave her a better chance (but still terrible) of dropping high runes. And most of these runs were directed at very focused, small segments of acts, getting to the sweet spot as quickly as possible while skipping everything else.
Basically most of this shit was just anomalies that it took people tearing the game apart to figure out. It wasn't clever design or anything motivating it. I think D2 did a pretty bad job with it and I hope D3 doesn't perform similarly!
Yeah I found that statement weird as well and I think you did a good job explaining why.
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I guess I'd crash the Epoch into Diablo to avoid the first stage.
This is why I keep coming here.
Well, its more like skipping a dozen stages.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I don't mind clever mechanics to keep people from spamming a single attack skill, but I sure hope it doesn't evolve into the craziness that WoW raids became.
Yeah because standing there spamming your left and right mouse button holding down shift is soooo much fun.
That's what Diablo is. I will quit video games forever if Diablo 3 turns out to have WoW style raids. I won't want to live on this planet.
The lack of true "tank/dps/healer" roles throws a lot of that out of the window, along with the necessity that all of the bosses be doable with at most 1 player (with or without a minion).
I'm sure there'll be some interesting mechanics/effects/events, but "deal damage to this guy/these guys/that thing(s) and stay out of the fire*" (* "Fire" being "generic bad shit" in WoW terms, not necessarily liteal fire) will probably cover a good chunk of them.
I mean, in the beta we have mini-bosses who you do exactly that to (deal damage, run away, deal more damage), or you chase them down to deal damage, then there's the Pillars event which isn't really a mini-boss per se, but I could see bosses similar in structure existing, and finally the Skeleton King, who combines chasing, running away and hordes of minions all at once.
Unless you one-shot him, of course.
I'm sure Blizzard will make things interesting in later levels and difficulties, but as much cross polination as there might be, the difference between knowing a group should consist of at least 1 'tank', 1 'healer' and 3 'dps' versus "the whole game can be completed by one guy with enough time and patience" does hamsting some of the mechanics, or requires significant alteration to make them applicable to a single player version.
Couldn't have said it better myself :^:
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They have the opportunity to have a greater complexity in this game. In Act1 you get a taste of what they can do in this game and actually having to think in games makes them more fun to me. I am not saying they need WoW style raids but they can add in more mechanics than what the prior iterations had. That is what I hope for.
BTW WoW raids are the most fun aspect of any game I have played in the last 10 years. You say crazy I say fun. When we started heroics on this teir I couldnt help but smile because we finally got to the challenging stuff.
And that's cool. But if you want those style raids why not just stick with WoW, and leave the clickclickclick looty style stuff to those who like that?
Did you guys even PLAY Diablo or Diablo 2? The major theme of the fighting in those games is "oh shit I'm surrounded by monsters, CHUG POTIONS AND KIIIIILLLLL!" That formula works, and it was massively successful for Blizzard. There is no reason to mess with game mechanics that work and are fun, and both diablo games have generally been like that. There is no reason to expect that Diablo 3 is suddenly gonna get all crazy and start copying WoW mechanics. Diablo bosses are fun without mechanics like those, because you're hacking and slashing and chugging potions and casting different abilities based on what's going on. They're fundamentally different styles of gameplay.
I have seen no indications that there will be WoW-style raid mechanics in these boss fights. The worst I expect is something akin to Diablo's fire-lightning from Diablo 2.
I'll admit that was a pretty cool boss, and the flying through rings on the phoenix too. Firelands actually had a number of innovative bosses. But before that we had such incredible fights as turn the dragon away from the other dragon, kill adds in a specific spot so you don't flood the floor with corruption and split the party into two teams. Not to forget my favourite boss of all time, Ragnaros, who spends his time smashing his hammer into predictable spots and having you dodge waves of lava before he gets up out of the lava and runs around a little.
Given that WoW has had 23409882034098234 different instance/raid bosses, with differing mechanics...
It's hard to say there WON'T be a match somewhere
I know.
Supposedly less than 1% of the player base saw Sunwell Plateau. While I understand there is a certain pride in being one of those 'elite' few who did, that doesn't pay the bills. Hell, look at one of the things their focusing on in MoP: Pokemon. I honestly think we'll see some sort of Farmville-esque thing at some point, too. Not that it's bad, per se, as it will definitely cash in on the casual player dollar, but it's fairly obvious the time and money is now being spent more heavily on keeping people playing, instead of mostly on high level raid content. PVP will never be amazing, but then again, I don't PVP.
Anyhow, a single player (or limited player) game is much easier to balance, so I'm not worried at all about D3.
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I think it would be cool to see more raid like mechanics in Diablo.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'm sure there's a 90 page thread about how they're sellouts and ruining diablo and catering to casuals already, but I don't see anything to be terribly worked up about.
If it scales reasonably to the player level and then maxes out quickly, which is what they seem to be saying, then act 1 would be an extension of Hell, while acts 2, 3, and 4 would be level 60 Inferno as before.
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Say I'm an ultra D3 badass in the endgame, with a fully min/maxed character with the best build and the best loot. In the old system, there probably isn't anything in the game that poses a challenge to me. In the new system I can always play Act 4 for a crazy challenge and the best loot rate. But maybe I want to try an offspec, or play with some friends who aren't so great. In that case I can take a breather in Act 1, and probably find more loot there since I would only struggle in Act 4.
It's a good point.
Better than what? Better than the best items? That makes no sense!
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Personally I don't think D2 did a very good job of it. There still weren't that many viable "runs," most were focused on a very small/brief segment of the game, and some of these only came to be due to lots of min-maxing or developer intervention. Pit runs really only worked because the monsters that spawned there happened to be exceptionally weak and easy to kill for their item level. Countess runs only happened because the devs explicitly went in and gave her a better chance (but still terrible) of dropping high runes. And most of these runs were directed at very focused, small segments of acts, getting to the sweet spot as quickly as possible while skipping everything else.
Basically most of this shit was just anomalies that it took people tearing the game apart to figure out. It wasn't clever design or anything motivating it. I think D2 did a pretty bad job with it and I hope D3 doesn't perform similarly!
Edit: Fixed some dumb typing.
Yeah I found that statement weird as well and I think you did a good job explaining why.