Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[MrHat]

That was a fine idea 12 years ago, but my thinking is more or less:
- How many people will find being brutalized fun gameplay?
- Has more casual style play, including Blizzard's own WoW, trained players to walk away once they feel something isn't fun anymore?

I'm not saying "I know people are going to play to difficulty 3 and walk away in disgust!"  I'm just wondering if that'll be the case.  I guess I'm not communicating very well.  

Personally, I'm looking forward to it.  Then again, I think Etrian Odyssey games are great fun, and wish I had a PS3 so I could play Demon's/Dark Souls.

I think the kind of people who would have trouble past normal/nightmare difficulties will long be turned off when they get to Hell difficulty much less Inferno. The whole D2 replayability mechanic was the game getting increasingly punishing on each difficulty level while requiring more creative/specific gearing/speccing to survive.

The audience of people you're talking about would've punched out after running all of the classes they liked through normal mode, and possibly dabbling with the cow level once or twice with a harder-core friend. The part of the D2 playerbase that would've been like, "Rune-what?" when having nightmare/hell level play described to them will likely be perfectly happy fucking about on normal with the various classes until they get bored and shelve it for a while.

Here's the thing though - they way the redid the rune system was to make award you for leveling up.  As it is, new skills are earned all the way to level 58 or some shit.  You can't approach those later levels without delving into Hell.

They're trying to encourage people into the 'end game' I suppose.

Regarding Inferno - they missed a huge opportunity to just randomize EVERYTHING in inferno.  Give the even the standard monsters swapped out kits, not just champions and the such.  That way you'd never know what to expect.

[Malakili]

Here's the thing though - they way the redid the rune system was to make award you for leveling up.  As it is, new skills are earned all the way to level 58 or some shit.  You can't approach those later levels without delving into Hell.

Are the people who only care about playing the game on normal really going to care that they can't get the rune that gives them cold damage instead of fire damage on X skill without playing a high level character? 

It seems like the only people who are actually in trouble here is the people who are actually casual but like to think of themselves as hardcore.

[Fabricated]

Personally I rather liked the old idea of the rune system where they were drops. Having to wait until X level to get some effect or another is annoying; runes would be a bit daunting to new players if they had them as drops and just had the whole system open up early on but the runes aren't really tradeoffs. They're all pretty much direct improvements on your base ability, just in different ways.

[Merusk]

Here's the thing though - they way the redid the rune system was to make award you for leveling up.  As it is, new skills are earned all the way to level 58 or some shit.  You can't approach those later levels without delving into Hell.

Are the people who only care about playing the game on normal really going to care that they can't get the rune that gives them cold damage instead of fire damage on X skill without playing a high level character? 

It seems like the only people who are actually in trouble here is the people who are actually casual but like to think of themselves as hardcore.

No, the problem is the casual people want to dick around and do a theme build but are told, "LOL No, that's not 4 u. Level up, noob."   

The rune system is a hellaciously stupid change to the game that only punishes bad and casual players. You know, the folks who did stupid ass builds in WOW across 3 specs.  It was fun for them and this being marketed as a single player game, shouldn't have mattered at all if they did a stupid ass build that wouldn't work in Hell/ Inferno.  So long as you're having fun it shouldn't matter.. except now it does.

[Ragnoros]

I know this is f13. However, the amount of butthurt in this thread is reaching critical levels.

[Fabricated]

I know this is f13. However, the amount of butthurt in this thread is reaching critical levels.

                                   /

[Phred]

I can't believe everyone missed this from the original article.

 

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.

So essentially you are getting butthurt over them announcing they are nerfing inferno.

[Yegolev]

This is just the tip of the butthurtberg.  Wait for release and the predicted outages, followed by CLASS BALANCE since this isn't a single-player game anymore.

[Phred]

This is just the tip of the butthurtberg.  Wait for release and the predicted outages, followed by CLASS BALANCE since this isn't a single-player game anymore.

Has there ever been a diablo game where class nerfs didn't come out with the first patch? Don't you remember D2 necros? Nerfed into the joke class by the first patch. This is one of my big reservations about d3 being always online. at least with d2 if you didnt like a nerf you could play single player and not patch. No way jose for that happening now.

[Ironwood]

This is just the tip of the butthurtberg.  Wait for release and the predicted outages, followed by CLASS BALANCE since this isn't a single-player game anymore.

So very this.

[Malakili]

No, the problem is the casual people want to dick around and do a theme build but are told, "LOL No, that's not 4 u. Level up, noob."   

The rune system is a hellaciously stupid change to the game that only punishes bad and casual players. You know, the folks who did stupid ass builds in WOW across 3 specs.  It was fun for them and this being marketed as a single player game, shouldn't have mattered at all if they did a stupid ass build that wouldn't work in Hell/ Inferno.  So long as you're having fun it shouldn't matter.. except now it does.

How does the rune change matter?  As far as I know we don't have a great idea how Runes were going to work aside from the fact that they were going to drop from somewhere.  Which means the casual players would have to farm for their runes (and it is not clear how hard they would be to find anyway) rather than just leveling up to Max level, which they can do just by playing the game normally.  It is QUITE possible the change to runes makes them WAY more accessible.   

Here is a quote about the old Rune system:

“Diablo is all about the item drops. But with around 120 base skills, that meant there were around 600 rune variants; on top of that, each variant had five quality levels each, meaning ultimately there would be something like 3,000 different runes in the game… and we knew we were heading toward a problem.

Yeah, sounds real casual friendly....

Also, how does it matter now all of sudden where it didn't before?  At what point did "stupid ass builds that wouldn't work in Hell/ Inferno" become impossible? 

[Ingmar]

Also, how does it matter now all of sudden where it didn't before?  At what point did "stupid ass builds that wouldn't work in Hell/ Inferno" become impossible? 

Because now you can't even 'finish' a build (as in at least have access to all the skills) before you get there.

[Malakili]

Also, how does it matter now all of sudden where it didn't before?  At what point did "stupid ass builds that wouldn't work in Hell/ Inferno" become impossible?  

Because now you can't even 'finish' a build (as in at least have access to all the skills) before you get there.

What I'm saying is that by all indications you NEVER could (if you consider a runed skill different from the regular version of the skill).  If you want to make this a criticism of the game, then fine, but you should've been making it a year and a half ago.

Oh edit:  You don't get any new active skills after level 30, which is the end of normal mode.  It seems like there are a few passive skills which you only get at higher levels, but I'm not 100% sure on this, I can look at the UI later and confirm.    The only thing you are missing with the runes as you level are are small modifications to skills via the runes.

[Yegolev]

This is just the tip of the butthurtberg.  Wait for release and the predicted outages, followed by CLASS BALANCE since this isn't a single-player game anymore.

Has there ever been a diablo game where class nerfs didn't come out with the first patch? Don't you remember D2 necros? Nerfed into the joke class by the first patch. This is one of my big reservations about d3 being always online. at least with d2 if you didnt like a nerf you could play single player and not patch. No way jose for that happening now.

I sure as shit remember D2 necros.  I mean the actual ones, not that bullshit that was patched in.  Which is where I derive my superpowers in this thread.

[schild]

Man, necros were great. Our d3 forum will have strict no sandy vag rules.

[Ratman_tf]

This is the kind of fiddlefuck percentage of a decimal place bullshit that turns me off.

[Thrawn]

This is the kind of fiddlefuck percentage of a decimal place bullshit that turns me off.

I'm in some weird middle ground where I don't even get what the whining is about. 

[Merusk]

The whining is about turning a single player experience into a MMO with all the suck and e-peen appeasement inherent to that genre.

[Yegolev]

Also unavoidable patching.  Don't forget that one.

[Murgos]

The whining is about projection of fear.  When really, the worst that happens is you spend 60 bucks to find out it's a shitty game and move on.  But, chances are it's probably going to be pretty fun for most people.

[Yegolev]

I think the worst case involves people being unable to move on.

[Xanthippe]

For some reason, I loved collecting those little bits of gems so I could turn them into bigger gems. Is D3 going to have that system?

Will players have the ability to respec?

[Ironwood]

I think the worst case involves people being unable to move on.

You don't get to post anymore.  I can't handle all this wisdom.

[Malakili]

The whining is about turning a single player experience into a MMO with all the suck and e-peen appeasement inherent to that genre.

Diablo 3 will be exactly like Diablo 2 in this regard - you can play solo without ever needing to interact with anyone ever at all, end of discussion.  You can also choose to play multiplayer if you want to and take part in the player economy.  Again I reiterate, this is precisely like Diablo 2.

Here is a list of the things I think are legitimately changed.

1) Always on internet requirement.  A legitimate concern, but not the explicit reason anyone is complaining at the moment.
2) Required patching .  A legitimate concern, but not one that resonates with me.
3) The inability to use character trainers to make characters of an arbitrary levels to play with your friends.  This one came up way earlier in the thread.  I guess its hypothetically a concern, but what is the amount of the population that was really doing this to begin with?

Here are things which aren't changed from Diablo 2 to my mind, but seem to have some people up in arms anyway.

1) The game gets hard and inaccessible at the highest difficulty.  
2) Loot farming. (Its Diablo people, come on)
3) Not being able to "finish" a build until max level.  Actually, Diablo 3 is WAY more accessible in this regard than Diablo 2, I honestly can't see how anyone would think Diablo 2 was superior in this regard.


Note that the issues which are legitimate in my opinion actually aren't gameplay related but have to do with battle.net 2.0.   If you want to make that argument, feel free, but I don't see how you can argue, from a gameplay perspective, that D3 is going to be a fundamentally different experience from Diablo 2.

On an unrelated note:

For some reason, I loved collecting those little bits of gems so I could turn them into bigger gems. Is D3 going to have that system?

Will players have the ability to respec?

Yes on both counts.  The gem system is roughly equivalent to the D2 version complete with the different quality levels of gems which upgrade into the bigger gems.   You can respec at will, I think there is like a 30 second cooldown on abilities you switch out or something so you can't just respec mid battle, but that is the only restriction.

[ezrast]

No, the problem is the casual people want to dick around and do a theme build but are told, "LOL No, that's not 4 u. Level up, noob."  

The rune system is a hellaciously stupid change to the game that only punishes bad and casual players. You know, the folks who did stupid ass builds in WOW across 3 specs.  It was fun for them and this being marketed as a single player game, shouldn't have mattered at all if they did a stupid ass build that wouldn't work in Hell/ Inferno.  So long as you're having fun it shouldn't matter.. except now it does.

How does the rune change matter?  As far as I know we don't have a great idea how Runes were going to work aside from the fact that they were going to drop from somewhere.  Which means the casual players would have to farm for their runes (and it is not clear how hard they would be to find anyway) rather than just leveling up to Max level, which they can do just by playing the game normally.  It is QUITE possible the change to runes makes them WAY more accessible.    

Here is a quote about the old Rune system:

“Diablo is all about the item drops. But with around 120 base skills, that meant there were around 600 rune variants; on top of that, each variant had five quality levels each, meaning ultimately there would be something like 3,000 different runes in the game… and we knew we were heading toward a problem.

Yeah, sounds real casual friendly....

Also, how does it matter now all of sudden where it didn't before?  At what point did "stupid ass builds that wouldn't work in Hell/ Inferno" become impossible?  

Absolutely everything I've seen about the old system prior to this indicates that there were five rune types (before considering quality), and if (say) an Alabaster Rune dropped you could slot it into whatever skill you wanted. This is the only sensible way for it ever to have been designed and for them to claim now that they have to scrap the system because it necessitated 600 rune types makes me don my tinfoil hat.

edit: Anyway, even with 600 types there's no reason to believe the shitty low-level ones wouldn't quickly become available for like 30 cents each on the auction house. And keep in mind that it's not just casual theme-builders who will spend most of their time below cap. Hardcore players are going to spend much of their lives leveling too.

[Ingmar]

Yeah that's exactly how it was before. They had 600 different effects, I guess, but there weren't 600 different runes.

[Hoax]

I preferred the old system. More drops and they sounded like drops that you would trade between party members at low levels (omfg I really want to use that obsidian rune!) which is always super fun during those first 2-3 days of gameplay. The runes in the old system also seemed like visually and thematically they would let you do cool looking things. You know people would get a kick out of using all one color rune builds just because they would not because it was min/max.

The new system feels sort of dumb. Either when you get to the next level you will want to use the new "rune" because its better and then it feels like you are stuck on a linear progression and just making the same boring choice as everyone else or you level up and you get an ability that you don't even want to use which always feels like shit in mmo's and I'm sure will feel bad here as well.

Or I just don't get how the new system works, not gonna lie I haven't been reading up on all this fucking shit.

[K9]

The gems in single player D2 fell into the too awesome to use category I found. I guess if you were playing on the realms and had good farming setups going they were ok, but in singleplayer I just ended up saving them forever.

[Malakili]

The new system feels sort of dumb. Either when you get to the next level you will want to use the new "rune" because its better and then it feels like you are stuck on a linear progression and just making the same boring choice as everyone else or you level up and you get an ability that you don't even want to use which always feels like shit in mmo's and I'm sure will feel bad here as well.

Or I just don't get how the new system works, not gonna lie I haven't been reading up on all this fucking shit.

They made the decision that it was better to have the runes this way because they wanted people to feel like they were progressing when they leveled up.  Since you have all your active skills by level 30 (and you don't even keep putting points into them or anything) you would go many levels where the only thing you got was the paltry stat bonuses from leveling and this felt unrewarding, so they wanted people to get something new every time they leveled up.  The first rune you slot is pretty much a straight upgrade from the base skill, but after that they are less upgrade and more option.  For example, do you want the ability to do fire or cold damage, knockback or stun, etc.

[Merusk]

I preferred the old system. More drops and they sounded like drops that you would trade between party members at low levels (omfg I really want to use that obsidian rune!) which is always super fun during those first 2-3 days of gameplay. The runes in the old system also seemed like visually and thematically they would let you do cool looking things. You know people would get a kick out of using all one color rune builds just because they would not because it was min/max.

The new system feels sort of dumb. Either when you get to the next level you will want to use the new "rune" because its better and then it feels like you are stuck on a linear progression and just making the same boring choice as everyone else or you level up and you get an ability that you don't even want to use which always feels like shit in mmo's and I'm sure will feel bad here as well.

Or I just don't get how the new system works, not gonna lie I haven't been reading up on all this fucking shit.

You're dead on about how they presented the old system and how the new system currently works.   They felt the need to spread everything out across all the levels because lolmmodesignrules.  The concern was "Well, shit.. we go up to 50 and you get all your abilities by 25. What's the point of continuing to cap?  We need to give people who continue to advance something to achieve, to strive for."  Nevermind that in Diablo that 'something' was better loot, not moreabilitieslolz.

Malakili, once again you're going "Dude works4me" and ignoring everyone else.  We're here pointing out concerns and issues and your response continues to be "I don't care, works for me."  Great, guess what, not everyone likes it. The question is how many don't vs. how many are ok with it.  You've listed a lot of "well, how many really care?" questions.   If you get enough of those, it adds up to a lot of people who care and may or may not purchase based on that.

Hell, on the online-only thing alone if the stability and herky-jerky performance remains the same I'm certainly not going to waste money on the game.  I've got a machine that should glide through this without a hiccup, but because of conditions on Blizzard's end I've rubber banded or frozen-up pretty often over the last few play sessions.   Certainly enough that if I was in hardcore mode on a difficulty other than normal I'd have lost the character.

[Ingmar]

I loved the runes-as-drops thing when I played it. Don't love, at all, runes as checkbox on character sheet in principle, but I haven't played with it yet.

[Malakili]

Malakili, once again you're going "Dude works4me" and ignoring everyone else.  We're here pointing out concerns and issues and your response continues to be "I don't care, works for me."  Great, guess what, not everyone likes it. The question is how many don't vs. how many are ok with it.  You've listed a lot of "well, how many really care?" questions.   If you get enough of those, it adds up to a lot of people who care and may or may not purchase based on that.

Hell, on the online-only thing alone if the stability and herky-jerky performance remains the same I'm certainly not going to waste money on the game.  I've got a machine that should glide through this without a hiccup, but because of conditions on Blizzard's end I've rubber banded or frozen-up pretty often over the last few play sessions.   Certainly enough that if I was in hardcore mode on a difficulty other than normal I'd have lost the character.

My response, more accurately, is that nothing they are doing is drastically different than what they did in Diablo 2.  I've acknowledged the problems with online-only.  But from a gameplay perspective it is precisely what should be expected in a Diablo game.   Want to play solo - you can.  Want to play only with friends  - you can.  Want to only play normal mode - you can (and arguably have more of your build complete than in Diablo 2).  The only time I really made the "how many people really care" argument was with character trainers, an argument no one has even made in 20 pages or something and even that I listed under my legitimate concerns heading.

We can argue all day about which rune system will ultimately be more casual friendly, but I have to say you are being quite optimistic if you really think that the drops system would have made it easier for people to get all the runes they want.   But since that system never saw the light of day outside their internal testing or a few conventions, its impossible to say for sure anyway.  Without knowing the drop rates, we'll never know.

[Sjofn]

That change to the rune thing makes me extremely sad. I don't play Diablo to level, I play it for things to drop and me to get excited over. And getting a Rune of Making Your Ability Hilarious would've been the best sort of loot.

[Typhon]

[...]
We can argue all day about which rune system will ultimately be more casual friendly, but I have to say you are being quite optimistic if you really think that the drops system would have made it easier for people to get all the runes they want.   But since that system never saw the light of day outside their internal testing or a few conventions, its impossible to say for sure anyway.  Without knowing the drop rates, we'll never know.

I never expected to get all the runes (as in D2).  I expected to get a couple of runes that were significantly better than the 'filler' runes that I would then have to put some thought into which char/which ability I slotted it.  I'm sad that they moved away from that because it kind of implies that there won't be any runes that make you go 'wow!'

[Hoax]

I can see why they made the change, not getting anything at level up would be bad for people especially the millions of people they expect to come over and try Diablo3 straight from WoW and maybe with WoW being their only real video game experience of note.

Makes one wonder if we wouldn't have had more fun with the old rune system and a more typical put points into skills to make them kill more shit system. Best of both worlds? My understanding is they felt put points into things to kill more shit resulted in cookie cutter builds (unavoidable) and gimping (not an issue in a world of instant free/cheap respecs).

Oh well, its still liquid gaming crack for me I just thought that the examples of the old system looked fucking awesome and I knew that skill rune drops if they had a suitably awesome sound were going to get me both hard and wet. Then again I suppose skill rune drops would have just been another thing making me sad because loot is player specific.

Am I the only one who finds the idea of player specific loot to be the biggest removal of something I found fun in D1 & D2 out of all the changes? I mean that frantic search and coupled adrenaline rush whenever I heard a gem or ring drop sound was part of the hook bigtime I felt. Now its who gives a fuck because only I can see the loot.