Theres design room for a system somewhere between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. Skill/talent trees and skill choice aren't mutually exclusive.
You could have 3 different trees that you allocate points in with empty spots along the tree to slot in skills of that type, the more points you put in a tree the more slots you have for skills of that type/slot level, but you still pick from a list of available skills for each slot with more options than available slots. Sprinkle the trees with meaningful passives like the current WoW talents or the PoE ascendancy nodes and/or let you apply runes/support gems(to use other game examples) to those skills with increasing cost for choosing multiple on a single skill.
Probably the thing I dislike the most about PoE is the skill system being tied to items. It's a pain in the ass getting gear with the right number/color of gem slots to equip all the skills and support gems you want to build around.
(She/Her)
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Theres design room for a system somewhere between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. Skill/talent trees and skill choice aren't mutually exclusive.
You could have 3 different trees that you allocate points in with empty spots along the tree to slot in skills of that type, the more points you put in a tree the more slots you have for skills of that type/slot level, but you still pick from a list of available skills for each slot with more options than available slots. Sprinkle the trees with meaningful passives like the current WoW talents or the PoE ascendancy nodes and/or let you apply runes/support gems(to use other game examples) to those skills with increasing cost for choosing multiple on a single skill.
Probably the thing I dislike the most about PoE is the skill system being tied to items. It's a pain in the ass getting gear with the right number/color of gem slots to equip all the skills and support gems you want to build around.
All about that crafting. Except for 6 links, which are decidedly difficult yes, but for good reason: They're extremely powerful. Once you learn how to use jewelers orbs to roll off stat socket colors and other little tricks it gets a lot more manageable.
Again, which is the direct opposite of D3 where it just rains legendaries and set items on you like it's constantly christmas, and the only real thing you're doing is min-maxing them after the first day.
Theres design room for a system somewhere between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. Skill/talent trees and skill choice aren't mutually exclusive.
You could have 3 different trees that you allocate points in with empty spots along the tree to slot in skills of that type, the more points you put in a tree the more slots you have for skills of that type/slot level, but you still pick from a list of available skills for each slot with more options than available slots. Sprinkle the trees with meaningful passives like the current WoW talents or the PoE ascendancy nodes and/or let you apply runes/support gems(to use other game examples) to those skills with increasing cost for choosing multiple on a single skill.
Probably the thing I dislike the most about PoE is the skill system being tied to items. It's a pain in the ass getting gear with the right number/color of gem slots to equip all the skills and support gems you want to build around.
All about that crafting. Except for 6 links, which are decidedly difficult yes, but for good reason: They're extremely powerful. Once you learn how to use jewelers orbs to roll off stat socket colors and other little tricks it gets a lot more manageable.
Again, which is the direct opposite of D3 where it just rains legendaries and set items on you like it's constantly christmas, and the only real thing you're doing is min-maxing them after the first day.
I personally would prefer a system where getting the skills I want would simply be from leveling up enough times, with my playstyle determined by my skills and not dependent on certain items. Items would be where the incremental 5% more type upgrades would live. Assuming enough skill and build variety to make lots of options viable.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Theres design room for a system somewhere between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. Skill/talent trees and skill choice aren't mutually exclusive.
You could have 3 different trees that you allocate points in with empty spots along the tree to slot in skills of that type, the more points you put in a tree the more slots you have for skills of that type/slot level, but you still pick from a list of available skills for each slot with more options than available slots. Sprinkle the trees with meaningful passives like the current WoW talents or the PoE ascendancy nodes and/or let you apply runes/support gems(to use other game examples) to those skills with increasing cost for choosing multiple on a single skill.
Probably the thing I dislike the most about PoE is the skill system being tied to items. It's a pain in the ass getting gear with the right number/color of gem slots to equip all the skills and support gems you want to build around.
All about that crafting. Except for 6 links, which are decidedly difficult yes, but for good reason: They're extremely powerful. Once you learn how to use jewelers orbs to roll off stat socket colors and other little tricks it gets a lot more manageable.
Again, which is the direct opposite of D3 where it just rains legendaries and set items on you like it's constantly christmas, and the only real thing you're doing is min-maxing them after the first day.
I personally would prefer a system where getting the skills I want would simply be from leveling up enough times, with my playstyle determined by my skills and not dependent on certain items. Items would be where the incremental 5% more type upgrades would live. Assuming enough skill and build variety to make lots of options viable.
I mean that's kind of how it works now, you just buy the skills from a shopkeeper or as quest rewards. Gems have certain levels and stats you need to be at. 4 linked properly colored gear is trivial to come across, the 6 linked items are for skills + support gems.
Some of this feels like it boils down to 'how high a bar do you want to set for your audience'?
I sit down and play something like DotA2 for a month or three leading up to their annual mega tournament. I can do basic things like attack, use skills, I can apply more intermediate knowledge like last hitting, blocking creeps, warding/dewarding, drafting/itemizing against the enemy team, but there hits a point where the information is simply absurd. Unexpected skill interactions, item choices that are counter intuitive but actually optimal, etc. It being a competitive game as opposed to a cooperative one also impacts this, for sure, but sitting down to see that PoE skill map just fills me with 'oh god, I'm going to spend so many hours on Google and reading screeds on why X build is superior that will spontaneously generate a neckbeard on me'.
Easy, easy, I kid, but as we dig into things I hope we can agree on middle ground somewhere, because no game will be everything for everyone, but even at its heights of complexity D2 didn't hold a candle to the level of opaqueness being discussed here.
If they made it the 'dark souls of ARPGs', that would appeal like crazy to many players, but I would not be among them. I am happy to recognize that +X% to one damage type is superior to +Y% to another, and to mull over skill combinations that I find fun, but there is a level of time, effort, dedication, research, and experimentation that goes above and beyond "eh, bone skills are powerful, and poison skills clear crowds, but I just really enjoy a pet heavy playstyle, until oops, it basically falls off a cliff at high difficulty levels" (which they may have fixed/improved upon, but even in the era of synergies, there hit a point where everything but the top golems usually died if anything looked at them funny, which made getting revives difficult, which made solo'ing at all less fun).
D2 had a great many wonderful elements that I enjoyed the shit out of. I didn't enjoy saving skill points until I finally hit the pertinent skill unlock I had been waiting for over the last dozen hours of grinding, or sitting on dozens of spare attribute points until I was certain that X Shield or Y Armour was the highest I was going and thus could justify spending them. The team did a lot to make choices more intuitive, to synergize in ways that rewarded even use of earlier skills that fell off at later levels, but these basically meant there were traps lower skill/knowledge/experienced players could fall into, and even if that were repeated, as noted, we live in a different era. Math will be done. thousand post Reddit threads will go over the tiniest of minutia, and the 'best' builds will be found.
Honestly, this is in some ways a 'casual vs hardcore' discussion with a reskin. I have put in some hardcore periods, when I was progression raiding in WoW, when I was gobbling up every last post and article I could on D2, but there are elements of 'player choice' that can become traps or restrict agency in entirely predictable ways.
The more permanence and weight behind choices, the less likely I am to experiment and explore, because I don't want to spend another 5/10/whatever hours starting over due to a mistake, misunderstanding, or simply not enjoying the result. I'll hit youtube and google and see if my fellow nerds have done the math for me.
Some treat D3 that way, but at least I can sit down to play that and not feel like I can 'fuck up' my character.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
There's a very thin line between good complexity and bad complexity, and it takes a good game designer to know where it is. A lot of RPGs fall into the trap of conflating quantity of systems with depth. It's possible to make a game with deep and interesting progression while still being disciplined about how complex the systems themselves are. I personally consider PoE's systems to be so outrageously complex that it puts me off the game entirely. I'm just not interested enough to put in the work to learn all that.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
There's a very thin line between good complexity and bad complexity, and it takes a good game designer to know where it is. A lot of RPGs fall into the trap of conflating quantity of systems with depth. It's possible to make a game with deep and interesting progression while still being disciplined about how complex the systems themselves are. I personally consider PoE's systems to be so outrageously complex that it puts me off the game entirely. I'm just not interested enough to put in the work to learn all that.
I understand this, definitely.
My take is if you can you achieve functionally the same results using a less complex system you always should do so.
There's a very thin line between good complexity and bad complexity, and it takes a good game designer to know where it is. A lot of RPGs fall into the trap of conflating quantity of systems with depth. It's possible to make a game with deep and interesting progression while still being disciplined about how complex the systems themselves are. I personally consider PoE's systems to be so outrageously complex that it puts me off the game entirely. I'm just not interested enough to put in the work to learn all that.
I understand this, definitely.
My take is if you can you achieve functionally the same results using a less complex system you always should do so.
This is the same problem that Warframe has, too. Games that spawned from Dota are also famous for it. There is something about these games that a certain type of player gets really into and wants to play them for thousands of hours because of it. It's not just complexity for complexity's sake, it's the business responding to customer demands.
It's not for everyone. I have met plenty of people that have been turned off by overwhelming complexity. But there is a certain type of person that gets excited about that complexity, and that's the demographic I think these developers are aiming to capture.
Is Blizzard that type of developer today? I don't know if they are, and that's OK. Diablo 3 is a good game, it's just not something that interests me enough to play for thousands of hours.
Steam: Spawnbroker
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
I love the complexity because the character building itself is like a puzzle. That's why people have made utilities like Path of Building that let you experiment with builds, items, skill trees, etc and see what comes of it. I love seeing a stat that seems so innocuous and finding out it's incredibly fucking overpowered.
The Path of Building sesh using the new items, skills, and balance changes before a league start is tradition for me.
There's a very thin line between good complexity and bad complexity, and it takes a good game designer to know where it is. A lot of RPGs fall into the trap of conflating quantity of systems with depth. It's possible to make a game with deep and interesting progression while still being disciplined about how complex the systems themselves are. I personally consider PoE's systems to be so outrageously complex that it puts me off the game entirely. I'm just not interested enough to put in the work to learn all that.
I understand this, definitely.
My take is if you can you achieve functionally the same results using a less complex system you always should do so.
This is the same problem that Warframe has, too. Games that spawned from Dota are also famous for it. There is something about these games that a certain type of player gets really into and wants to play them for thousands of hours because of it. It's not just complexity for complexity's sake, it's the business responding to customer demands.
It's not for everyone. I have met plenty of people that have been turned off by overwhelming complexity. But there is a certain type of person that gets excited about that complexity, and that's the demographic I think these developers are aiming to capture.
Is Blizzard that type of developer today? I don't know if they are, and that's OK. Diablo 3 is a good game, it's just not something that interests me enough to play for thousands of hours.
It's true that complexity inflates over time when the devs add new things to keep the interest of long term fans. That's okay to a point, but what they need to do is remove or streamline the older systems as they go. WoW has done a lot of this for example, and although not all their decisions are popular, I think it's important to make sure that only systems with an important role remain in the game. Long term games like this have entire new generations of gamers who might want to get into it, and they appreciate simplicity just as much as the original players of the game did on 1.0.
I'm weird in that I love the idea that I could be building my character incorrectly. It makes every choice matter and has me plan out ahead.
I've tried just about every variation of Paladin and Sorc in D2. Off builds are my favorite.
Prayer Pally and Charged Bolt Sorc were my favorite builds.
I remember I got yelled at a lot for playing my Charged Boltress back in D2.
But screw it, teleporting around, static fielding stuff, then filling the screen with tiny sparks was fun.
A while ago, probably 6months or more, I think it was Bellular who made a really great pitch for an overhauled WoW leveling system. Basically, his idea was to keep the current talent tree with it's big decisions at milestone levels. And during the in-between levels, award players with gear or cosmetics, or both.
Imagine something like this:
Ding level 2, 3, 4, the game just straight up gives you a piece of gear appropriate for your level and class. At 5 you get to pick a talent or something. Then levels 6, 7, 8,9 you get more gear for your class. And then another decision at 10.
Then you start upgrading people's cosmetics. At level 11 your fireball looks just a little cooler than it did before. They used to do this in WoW a long time ago anyway, but it wasn't as clearly defined. Remember the mage Arcane Missiles spell during classic/BC? You started with I think just two missiles, but as you gained more ranks of the spell, you started shooting more and more missiles and started looking more and more awesome.
They should bring cosmetic rewards back and just make them a part of the leveling experience.
The models are improved but it's not a full remake, definitely still built on top of the original engine. So they're not exactly trying to make it look like a brand new game.
I've only seen it on youtube and twitch so it might be better on my own personal monitor, but the units do kind of look muddy. I think the buildings look pretty good, they capture the colour and feel of warcraft 3, but right now the units look like those bad fan-edits of diablo 3 screenshots where everything got dark and too detailed to really make anything out. Warcraft 3 is definitely kind of an ugly game, it's that era of awkward polygons especially with how many individual units they want to show on screen, but I don't really feel that the units capture the "spirit" of it yet.
When I talk about ARPGs I lament the loss of Marvel Heroes. I liked the way that game's combat felt and I also liked its progression.
I hope a new Diablo game focuses less on sets. I didn't like them overall in D3. If you have to boost the damage of a skill by 12000% to make it work then ... figure something else out yeesh.
Warcraft Reforged? More like Warcraft Retcon am i right? heh
I watched grubby play it for awhile and if it is the same engine I am not sure what they are doing with it to make it run at that fps. If they make it blizz silky though I think I will still enjoy it.
Reforged looks to me like they didn't settle on a style. Like, the main viewscreen is still primarily WC3's bright and cartoony landscaping, and then you quick take a glance at the portrait window, where a nightmareishly photo-realistic Orc Peon is staring glassily out into space and gah what the fuck is that
Yeah the landscape is what bugs me about it. The detail is okay, but not great, and the colors clash with the detail of the unit models in a way that they didn't before.
There's a very thin line between good complexity and bad complexity, and it takes a good game designer to know where it is. A lot of RPGs fall into the trap of conflating quantity of systems with depth. It's possible to make a game with deep and interesting progression while still being disciplined about how complex the systems themselves are. I personally consider PoE's systems to be so outrageously complex that it puts me off the game entirely. I'm just not interested enough to put in the work to learn all that.
I understand this, definitely.
My take is if you can you achieve functionally the same results using a less complex system you always should do so.
This is the same problem that Warframe has, too. Games that spawned from Dota are also famous for it. There is something about these games that a certain type of player gets really into and wants to play them for thousands of hours because of it. It's not just complexity for complexity's sake, it's the business responding to customer demands.
It's not for everyone. I have met plenty of people that have been turned off by overwhelming complexity. But there is a certain type of person that gets excited about that complexity, and that's the demographic I think these developers are aiming to capture.
Is Blizzard that type of developer today? I don't know if they are, and that's OK. Diablo 3 is a good game, it's just not something that interests me enough to play for thousands of hours.
Warframe isn't even really all that complex to be honest.
What it is is very poorly explained. Like, you need to have the wiki open on your second monitor as a new player poorly explained.
It's gotten better even since I started playing it a year ago but it's got a loooong way to go before Wikiframe isn't a totally justified nickname.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
The skill/rune system was probably one of the best parts of D3. Just give us more of that with more meaningful uniques and better balance.
I think there can be some sort of compromise here as well.
Okay, extreme example is the PoE stuff. For the most part, your main source of damage comes from support gems, but you can also modify what the skills do, how they act, or what kind of damage they inflict.
My biggest bugaboo with the runes was a severe lack of choice there. Like, it's not uncommon in PoE to have a skill gem you swap out for bosses (usually concentrated effect). I think if you took the runes for, example, Black Hole, and made them differing damage types and then also allowed for modification via other means (size, power, duration, crit chance, etc). I think theres a lot of stuff that can be done without being insanely complex like PoE, stuff that can give people a sense of ownership or accomplishment I guess. Figuring the builds out could be fun instead of just getting the designated Best In Slot weapon that was clearly designed just for 1 skill.
The option to be a cold Wizard with Black Hole and a teleport skill that leaves behind a frost trail. For example. Being able to customize your build into a theme or archetype would make people feel p good.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Sets in D3 are boosting skills by 2000% because if you don't do that, there's never a reason to use that skill, ever.
The D3 skill system lends itself to very few optimal builds, because there's no interdependency. If the class has a damage skill that does a little more damage than the others, why would you ever attack another way? Use the rest of your slots for buffs or utility. And if the attacks are all painstakingly balanced so that none of them are better than the rest... it's not so much a build choice as a cosmetic difference.
Sets broadened the specs and skills it made sense to use by tying certain skills together, or by making a skill do something it didn't do naturally.
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
yeah everything ive heard coming out is that they are going to try and get the people they lost back onboard through a lot of aesthetic and thematic stylistic choices that fit the first 2 games
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Yeah watching some of the Remastered stuff added this past week all the new models look good... and kind of out of place, especially against the terrain which it feels like didn't change at all.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I think it just comes down to preference but the skill system in D3 is the main reason I thought it was a pretty bad game.
It just removes all the R in RPG for me. That's one of the most fun parts for me in any game, making meaningful choices about the character. All of that is gone for me when you can simply change every aspect as soon as you are out of combat. Probably makes a difference when you look at what sections of a game you prefer too. The D3 system seems to make sense for the forever-grind aspect of the game when you're at max level and you want to check out and try different things and aim for different sets and stuff like that. I like the parts of games where you are still leveling though. D3 system makes that part totally meaningless for me.
I'd love some thought being put into it but honestly just a copy of the D2 skill tree would make me so much more happy.
I think it just comes down to preference but the skill system in D3 is the main reason I thought it was a pretty bad game.
It just removes all the R in RPG for me. That's one of the most fun parts for me in any game, making meaningful choices about the character. All of that is gone for me when you can simply change every aspect as soon as you are out of combat. Probably makes a difference when you look at what sections of a game you prefer too. The D3 system seems to make sense for the forever-grind aspect of the game when you're at max level and you want to check out and try different things and aim for different sets and stuff like that. I like the parts of games where you are still leveling though. D3 system makes that part totally meaningless for me.
I'd love some thought being put into it but honestly just a copy of the D2 skill tree would make me so much more happy.
Ultimately if you have a max level Barbarian in D3 then why would you ever re-roll another one? The end result is going to be almost identical.
I think it just comes down to preference but the skill system in D3 is the main reason I thought it was a pretty bad game.
It just removes all the R in RPG for me. That's one of the most fun parts for me in any game, making meaningful choices about the character. All of that is gone for me when you can simply change every aspect as soon as you are out of combat. Probably makes a difference when you look at what sections of a game you prefer too. The D3 system seems to make sense for the forever-grind aspect of the game when you're at max level and you want to check out and try different things and aim for different sets and stuff like that. I like the parts of games where you are still leveling though. D3 system makes that part totally meaningless for me.
I'd love some thought being put into it but honestly just a copy of the D2 skill tree would make me so much more happy.
Ultimately if you have a max level Barbarian in D3 then why would you ever re-roll another one? The end result is going to be almost identical.
I don't want to ever re-roll another one. I don't mind investing time into setting up new builds - gear is a good way to do that on one character without turning off my ability to play my current build. But once you've started the fast paced end game farming, the leveling experience is boring.
I was thinking that the campfire should come back, I hope so!
Also how fucking cool would it be if your character select screen mimicked it so you could see all your characters in their gear, like how people thought you’d be able to see all 3 javelins at once in anthem. I guess I’m not sure how they’d handle multiple of the same class though.
Reforged looks to me like they didn't settle on a style. Like, the main viewscreen is still primarily WC3's bright and cartoony landscaping, and then you quick take a glance at the portrait window, where a nightmareishly photo-realistic Orc Peon is staring glassily out into space and gah what the fuck is that
I have noodled on this a while because yeah, I think Reforged looks HELLA questionable... I *think* what they were trying to go for was to make the units look like the Old Skool CGI cutscene aesthetic
but it just didn't come through well. The pre-release screenshots of Arthas... woof.
The beta is out now, if you bought Spoils of War, you have it. If you upgrade, you get it within 48 hours.
I played it last night. This does not feel like a beta of a game that will be released in less than 60 days, but there's lore on the street that this "build" was made months ago, and the game is actually much farther along.
In-action, the graphics come off a lot better than they do when you're watching someone else play it. Possibly because you're so focused on the game that you don't have time to notice how weird most of the portraits are, or the fact that your heroes only animate at like 12 FPS.
In all, the graphics have some problems, but I don't see the problems as unfixable... and WC3 has a very loud and focused community that will beat up Blizzard until they get it right... I'm hopeful for the game
The way RoS reworked the game almost made the question of leveling kind of pointless. Once you can do any part of the game in any order and its always scaled to your level, its not like you're missing on content by being stuck in endgame. They also introduced seasons if you want an excuse to start over anyway and experience that fast numbers progression. Although not exactly perfect, they do show that you can push players to new builds and playstyles via items that focus on certain skills. This is more of a play with the hand your dealt with rather than plan your own character though.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Sets in D3 are boosting skills by 2000% because if you don't do that, there's never a reason to use that skill, ever.
The D3 skill system lends itself to very few optimal builds, because there's no interdependency. If the class has a damage skill that does a little more damage than the others, why would you ever attack another way? Use the rest of your slots for buffs or utility. And if the attacks are all painstakingly balanced so that none of them are better than the rest... it's not so much a build choice as a cosmetic difference.
Sets broadened the specs and skills it made sense to use by tying certain skills together, or by making a skill do something it didn't do naturally.
I think it just comes down to preference but the skill system in D3 is the main reason I thought it was a pretty bad game.
It just removes all the R in RPG for me. That's one of the most fun parts for me in any game, making meaningful choices about the character. All of that is gone for me when you can simply change every aspect as soon as you are out of combat. Probably makes a difference when you look at what sections of a game you prefer too. The D3 system seems to make sense for the forever-grind aspect of the game when you're at max level and you want to check out and try different things and aim for different sets and stuff like that. I like the parts of games where you are still leveling though. D3 system makes that part totally meaningless for me.
I'd love some thought being put into it but honestly just a copy of the D2 skill tree would make me so much more happy.
Ultimately if you have a max level Barbarian in D3 then why would you ever re-roll another one? The end result is going to be almost identical.
I don't want to ever re-roll another one. I don't mind investing time into setting up new builds - gear is a good way to do that on one character without turning off my ability to play my current build. But once you've started the fast paced end game farming, the leveling experience is boring.
And end game farming is boring for me :P That also includes D2. I had 1 or 2 characters that completed the Hell difficulty but probably close to a thousand characters between Normal and Nightmare difficulty.
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You could have 3 different trees that you allocate points in with empty spots along the tree to slot in skills of that type, the more points you put in a tree the more slots you have for skills of that type/slot level, but you still pick from a list of available skills for each slot with more options than available slots. Sprinkle the trees with meaningful passives like the current WoW talents or the PoE ascendancy nodes and/or let you apply runes/support gems(to use other game examples) to those skills with increasing cost for choosing multiple on a single skill.
Probably the thing I dislike the most about PoE is the skill system being tied to items. It's a pain in the ass getting gear with the right number/color of gem slots to equip all the skills and support gems you want to build around.
All about that crafting. Except for 6 links, which are decidedly difficult yes, but for good reason: They're extremely powerful. Once you learn how to use jewelers orbs to roll off stat socket colors and other little tricks it gets a lot more manageable.
Again, which is the direct opposite of D3 where it just rains legendaries and set items on you like it's constantly christmas, and the only real thing you're doing is min-maxing them after the first day.
I personally would prefer a system where getting the skills I want would simply be from leveling up enough times, with my playstyle determined by my skills and not dependent on certain items. Items would be where the incremental 5% more type upgrades would live. Assuming enough skill and build variety to make lots of options viable.
I mean that's kind of how it works now, you just buy the skills from a shopkeeper or as quest rewards. Gems have certain levels and stats you need to be at. 4 linked properly colored gear is trivial to come across, the 6 linked items are for skills + support gems.
I sit down and play something like DotA2 for a month or three leading up to their annual mega tournament. I can do basic things like attack, use skills, I can apply more intermediate knowledge like last hitting, blocking creeps, warding/dewarding, drafting/itemizing against the enemy team, but there hits a point where the information is simply absurd. Unexpected skill interactions, item choices that are counter intuitive but actually optimal, etc. It being a competitive game as opposed to a cooperative one also impacts this, for sure, but sitting down to see that PoE skill map just fills me with 'oh god, I'm going to spend so many hours on Google and reading screeds on why X build is superior that will spontaneously generate a neckbeard on me'.
Easy, easy, I kid, but as we dig into things I hope we can agree on middle ground somewhere, because no game will be everything for everyone, but even at its heights of complexity D2 didn't hold a candle to the level of opaqueness being discussed here.
If they made it the 'dark souls of ARPGs', that would appeal like crazy to many players, but I would not be among them. I am happy to recognize that +X% to one damage type is superior to +Y% to another, and to mull over skill combinations that I find fun, but there is a level of time, effort, dedication, research, and experimentation that goes above and beyond "eh, bone skills are powerful, and poison skills clear crowds, but I just really enjoy a pet heavy playstyle, until oops, it basically falls off a cliff at high difficulty levels" (which they may have fixed/improved upon, but even in the era of synergies, there hit a point where everything but the top golems usually died if anything looked at them funny, which made getting revives difficult, which made solo'ing at all less fun).
D2 had a great many wonderful elements that I enjoyed the shit out of. I didn't enjoy saving skill points until I finally hit the pertinent skill unlock I had been waiting for over the last dozen hours of grinding, or sitting on dozens of spare attribute points until I was certain that X Shield or Y Armour was the highest I was going and thus could justify spending them. The team did a lot to make choices more intuitive, to synergize in ways that rewarded even use of earlier skills that fell off at later levels, but these basically meant there were traps lower skill/knowledge/experienced players could fall into, and even if that were repeated, as noted, we live in a different era. Math will be done. thousand post Reddit threads will go over the tiniest of minutia, and the 'best' builds will be found.
Honestly, this is in some ways a 'casual vs hardcore' discussion with a reskin. I have put in some hardcore periods, when I was progression raiding in WoW, when I was gobbling up every last post and article I could on D2, but there are elements of 'player choice' that can become traps or restrict agency in entirely predictable ways.
The more permanence and weight behind choices, the less likely I am to experiment and explore, because I don't want to spend another 5/10/whatever hours starting over due to a mistake, misunderstanding, or simply not enjoying the result. I'll hit youtube and google and see if my fellow nerds have done the math for me.
Some treat D3 that way, but at least I can sit down to play that and not feel like I can 'fuck up' my character.
I understand this, definitely.
My take is if you can you achieve functionally the same results using a less complex system you always should do so.
I haven’t played PoE much at all, but the almost constant additions of active and support gems is certainly enviable.
This is the same problem that Warframe has, too. Games that spawned from Dota are also famous for it. There is something about these games that a certain type of player gets really into and wants to play them for thousands of hours because of it. It's not just complexity for complexity's sake, it's the business responding to customer demands.
It's not for everyone. I have met plenty of people that have been turned off by overwhelming complexity. But there is a certain type of person that gets excited about that complexity, and that's the demographic I think these developers are aiming to capture.
Is Blizzard that type of developer today? I don't know if they are, and that's OK. Diablo 3 is a good game, it's just not something that interests me enough to play for thousands of hours.
The Path of Building sesh using the new items, skills, and balance changes before a league start is tradition for me.
It's true that complexity inflates over time when the devs add new things to keep the interest of long term fans. That's okay to a point, but what they need to do is remove or streamline the older systems as they go. WoW has done a lot of this for example, and although not all their decisions are popular, I think it's important to make sure that only systems with an important role remain in the game. Long term games like this have entire new generations of gamers who might want to get into it, and they appreciate simplicity just as much as the original players of the game did on 1.0.
how DARE you taunt me with this famous progression system, CURS
I've tried just about every variation of Paladin and Sorc in D2. Off builds are my favorite.
Prayer Pally and Charged Bolt Sorc were my favorite builds.
I remember I got yelled at a lot for playing my Charged Boltress back in D2.
But screw it, teleporting around, static fielding stuff, then filling the screen with tiny sparks was fun.
Not hugely effective, but fun nonetheless.
That's basically what GW2's leveling system is
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I hope a new Diablo game focuses less on sets. I didn't like them overall in D3. If you have to boost the damage of a skill by 12000% to make it work then ... figure something else out yeesh.
I watched grubby play it for awhile and if it is the same engine I am not sure what they are doing with it to make it run at that fps. If they make it blizz silky though I think I will still enjoy it.
Warframe isn't even really all that complex to be honest.
What it is is very poorly explained. Like, you need to have the wiki open on your second monitor as a new player poorly explained.
It's gotten better even since I started playing it a year ago but it's got a loooong way to go before Wikiframe isn't a totally justified nickname.
I think there can be some sort of compromise here as well.
Okay, extreme example is the PoE stuff. For the most part, your main source of damage comes from support gems, but you can also modify what the skills do, how they act, or what kind of damage they inflict.
My biggest bugaboo with the runes was a severe lack of choice there. Like, it's not uncommon in PoE to have a skill gem you swap out for bosses (usually concentrated effect). I think if you took the runes for, example, Black Hole, and made them differing damage types and then also allowed for modification via other means (size, power, duration, crit chance, etc). I think theres a lot of stuff that can be done without being insanely complex like PoE, stuff that can give people a sense of ownership or accomplishment I guess. Figuring the builds out could be fun instead of just getting the designated Best In Slot weapon that was clearly designed just for 1 skill.
The option to be a cold Wizard with Black Hole and a teleport skill that leaves behind a frost trail. For example. Being able to customize your build into a theme or archetype would make people feel p good.
The D3 skill system lends itself to very few optimal builds, because there's no interdependency. If the class has a damage skill that does a little more damage than the others, why would you ever attack another way? Use the rest of your slots for buffs or utility. And if the attacks are all painstakingly balanced so that none of them are better than the rest... it's not so much a build choice as a cosmetic difference.
Sets broadened the specs and skills it made sense to use by tying certain skills together, or by making a skill do something it didn't do naturally.
But in potential news: there's a post on the Diablo subreddit claiming to contain spoilers for Diablo 4. Some characters, mechanics, a villian, etc. User seems to have posted accurate leaks from other games in the past. https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/dpgwmv/diablo_4_information_leak_spoiler/
It just removes all the R in RPG for me. That's one of the most fun parts for me in any game, making meaningful choices about the character. All of that is gone for me when you can simply change every aspect as soon as you are out of combat. Probably makes a difference when you look at what sections of a game you prefer too. The D3 system seems to make sense for the forever-grind aspect of the game when you're at max level and you want to check out and try different things and aim for different sets and stuff like that. I like the parts of games where you are still leveling though. D3 system makes that part totally meaningless for me.
I'd love some thought being put into it but honestly just a copy of the D2 skill tree would make me so much more happy.
Ultimately if you have a max level Barbarian in D3 then why would you ever re-roll another one? The end result is going to be almost identical.
Unsure how I feel about this.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
I don't want to ever re-roll another one. I don't mind investing time into setting up new builds - gear is a good way to do that on one character without turning off my ability to play my current build. But once you've started the fast paced end game farming, the leveling experience is boring.
Also how fucking cool would it be if your character select screen mimicked it so you could see all your characters in their gear, like how people thought you’d be able to see all 3 javelins at once in anthem. I guess I’m not sure how they’d handle multiple of the same class though.
I have noodled on this a while because yeah, I think Reforged looks HELLA questionable... I *think* what they were trying to go for was to make the units look like the Old Skool CGI cutscene aesthetic
but it just didn't come through well. The pre-release screenshots of Arthas... woof.
The beta is out now, if you bought Spoils of War, you have it. If you upgrade, you get it within 48 hours.
I played it last night. This does not feel like a beta of a game that will be released in less than 60 days, but there's lore on the street that this "build" was made months ago, and the game is actually much farther along.
In-action, the graphics come off a lot better than they do when you're watching someone else play it. Possibly because you're so focused on the game that you don't have time to notice how weird most of the portraits are, or the fact that your heroes only animate at like 12 FPS.
In all, the graphics have some problems, but I don't see the problems as unfixable... and WC3 has a very loud and focused community that will beat up Blizzard until they get it right... I'm hopeful for the game
And other games have done this more elegantly by not locking down a skill into just 5 variations.
I'd put that as close to "no" as you can get without it actually being "no" simply because Bliz hasn't said anything
And end game farming is boring for me :P That also includes D2. I had 1 or 2 characters that completed the Hell difficulty but probably close to a thousand characters between Normal and Nightmare difficulty.