Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[ezrast]

I agree. Playing with character builders and theorycrafting builds is genuinely fun for me, but in D3 there's just no reason to.

My problem with free instant respecs is that it creates a divide between optimal playstyle and preferred playstyle. I *love* the fire wall spell in D2, and while going pure fire wall was rarely an optimal choice, but it was very effective in certain situations so I didn't feel like building one was a waste. In D3 I'll never be able to play with a suboptimal-but-fun spell without feeling like I'm having fun wrong.

It's still probably a day 1 purchase, but mostly just because I know the price is never ever going to come down anyway.

[Malakili]

I agree. Playing with character builders and theorycrafting builds is genuinely fun for me, but in D3 there's just no reason to.

My problem with free instant respecs is that it creates a divide between optimal playstyle and preferred playstyle. I *love* the fire wall spell in D2, and while going pure fire wall was rarely an optimal choice, but it was very effective in certain situations so I didn't feel like building one was a waste. In D3 I'll never be able to play with a suboptimal-but-fun spell without feeling like I'm having fun wrong.

It's still probably a day 1 purchase, but mostly just because I know the price is never ever going to come down anyway.

I'm not sure why I follow that that a suboptimal build felt more fun in D2 than in D3?   There was ALWAYS a divide between the two.  Was it just that before you couldn't switch to something better after the choice was made so you just lived with it and liked it?

[Lantyssa]

Respecs I don't mind at all.  Since I played single-player, I used trainers to reset my stats all the time.

It just seems odd the character building and theory-crafting can't really start happening until late in a character's life.

[kildorn]

D3's system is an interesting peek into how permanence (or even semi permanence) plays into people's perceptions of accomplishment and enjoyment.

You can play a sub optimal build all you want, the only thing different is that if you decide it's too bad, you're not just fucked.

[Hoax]

I think this game will end up being a lot less sticky and it will be because of some of these changes. It seems like people still don't get that nobody is complaining about free respecs removing the punishment aspect of building. That is a non issue for anyone but the wash my armor with your casual tears crowd.

I'm very hopeful that it will be awesome but I bet we're not even thinking of playing it a year after release and that makes me a little bit sad considering Diablo2 was worth revisiting for a long long time after.

[Mosesandstick]

In pre 1.10 D2, putting anything in to any skills that weren't cookie cutter (i.e. most of them) was basically gimping yourself. It wasn't a very good system.

[Phred]

I really don't mind the idea of leveling up, getting all my stuff by level 20 or something, and then just leveling for the enjoyment of playing the game. I don't actually NEED a new fozzle appearing every ding. The sound effect is hard wired in my head enough.

Where did you get the idea you stop getting runes by 20? According to the devs that's so not true.

A Diablo 3 Barbarian will finish Normal difficulty (level 30, per Bashiok's confirmation) with 59 (FIFTY-NINE) different skills to choose from. He will continue gaining skills after level 30 all the way up to level 60 at the rate of about 2 new runes to try per level, for another 72 (SEVENTY-TWO) skills left to be earned by the end of Normal, or a total of 131 different skills to select by the time he's just about to start Inferno difficulty.

[ezrast]

I agree. Playing with character builders and theorycrafting builds is genuinely fun for me, but in D3 there's just no reason to.

My problem with free instant respecs is that it creates a divide between optimal playstyle and preferred playstyle. I *love* the fire wall spell in D2, and while going pure fire wall was rarely an optimal choice, but it was very effective in certain situations so I didn't feel like building one was a waste. In D3 I'll never be able to play with a suboptimal-but-fun spell without feeling like I'm having fun wrong.

It's still probably a day 1 purchase, but mostly just because I know the price is never ever going to come down anyway.

I'm not sure why I follow that that a suboptimal build felt more fun in D2 than in D3?   There was ALWAYS a divide between the two.  Was it just that before you couldn't switch to something better after the choice was made so you just lived with it and liked it?

Basically. Dealing with a pack of fire immunes as a fire sorc was an interesting challenge to me. It would have been much less interesting if the "proper" way to do that was to spend five seconds switching to Blizzard - a spell I found boring. I like that power was more than one-dimensional, and not everybody was equally good at everything.

[Phred]

Per-player loot will have been the best addition to the genre from D3. Torchlight 2 take note.

Except it was in Sacred 2 4 years ago.

[Phred]

This is made even more noticeable by the greater portion of your Xp coming from quests, not monster kills.  Kills = loot, but instead people run past tons of monsters to finish the quest.  You see it all the time in the beta, just swaths of untouched dungeon.  "Find the stairs, go down, kill the objective, repeat."

This is the one change I think it completely retarded.

[Phred]

It felt like a fairly different way of playing, even at level 9 with only a couple things unlocked. If they had made it so I could have set up both ability sets as presets so I could switch on the fly it would've been a really flexible and fun class. Stopping to manually switch everything was total shit, though.

Don't you have a 3rd control slot open at 9? Why not just assign it to that. That's what I did and it worked fine.

[Lakov_Sanite]

normal mode campaign = done in a weekend(at most)

Grinding mobs IS the game, levelling will be done within days.

[Nija]

Sorcerer has always felt good to me, but I agree that they're hiding the shitty skills later for the classes that felt weak.  Except on Scorc they moved some good skills later in the tree, bringing some of the weaker ones to the fore.

Disintegrate was the bomb and used to be where frost ray is.   IIRC Frost Nova and the Wave of Force were swapped at that point, too, while electrocute - which did suck - was moved beyond the beta.

You're right - I forgot to mention that on the Wizard, Arcane Orb has been continuously pushed back in the skill tree due to it being so good and popular. They're putting things in front of it so you'll use those things. Until Orb, of course, and not a second after.

[Ingmar]

Not to mention the skill rune system was stupidly designed to begin with.  It hadn't even occurred to me until after their, "we'd have 600+ additional drops to manage!" explanation that there would be a rune per skill. 

Wait.. what? Why?!  That's asinine.  No no.. 6 runes. White, Red, Blue, etc.  Simple, elegant, logical.

No, instead they were going at it as:  White: Spider Jar; White: Magic Missile; White; Whirlwind.

Fucking bonkers, man.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one disappointed with the rune changes.  Still like the game but yeah, I can see how those who were hyped about D1 & D2 and enjoyed micro-managing builds have little to no interest here. 

I don't think there was ever a point in the design where it was literally 600 different objects and dropping a separate rune for every single skill/color combination. I can see how you'd take that away from what they said but I don't think that was actually the case, I am pretty sure they were really talking about how they had to have all those different rune *effects* because there were different qualities for each rune color. A white rune that dropped would still go into any ability, etc.

[kildorn]

Where did you get the idea you stop getting runes by 20? According to the devs that's so not true.

I didn't say that's how the game Was, I said I don't mind the idea instead of "omg, I went from 58 to 59 and NO NEW SHINY" that Diablo 3 seems to be trying to avoid. I'd much rather have the runed skill I want by 20, than to be halfway through my hell playthrough to be able to bust out my actual character build.

[Phred]

Where did you get the idea you stop getting runes by 20? According to the devs that's so not true.

I didn't say that's how the game Was, I said I don't mind the idea instead of "omg, I went from 58 to 59 and NO NEW SHINY" that Diablo 3 seems to be trying to avoid. I'd much rather have the runed skill I want by 20, than to be halfway through my hell playthrough to be able to bust out my actual character build.

I'm sure it's easy to say that but my experience with games that cut back heavily on skills at later levels is it gets kind of old. 40 levels of no skills? no thanks.

[Merusk]

Not to mention the skill rune system was stupidly designed to begin with.  It hadn't even occurred to me until after their, "we'd have 600+ additional drops to manage!" explanation that there would be a rune per skill. 

Wait.. what? Why?!  That's asinine.  No no.. 6 runes. White, Red, Blue, etc.  Simple, elegant, logical.

No, instead they were going at it as:  White: Spider Jar; White: Magic Missile; White; Whirlwind.

Fucking bonkers, man.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one disappointed with the rune changes.  Still like the game but yeah, I can see how those who were hyped about D1 & D2 and enjoyed micro-managing builds have little to no interest here. 

I don't think there was ever a point in the design where it was literally 600 different objects and dropping a separate rune for every single skill/color combination. I can see how you'd take that away from what they said but I don't think that was actually the case, I am pretty sure they were really talking about how they had to have all those different rune *effects* because there were different qualities for each rune color. A white rune that dropped would still go into any ability, etc.

No, they said 600 different objects dropping and it was about making inventory management easier.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4475014/Skill_and_Rune_Changes-2_18_2012#blog

If it's just /5/ drops instead of "Oh one for each skill and 5 quality types for each drop" it's a sane system, loot-centric and almost exactly what they have now without needing to be level 48 to do everything with your character.  Instead, it's a gated mechanic that just forces people to grind levels to do their builds. That's shitty.

[Ingmar]

They said 600 rune variants, yeah. I really don't think they meant 3000 discrete drops with the quality levels though - I think they were just talking about the system we saw at Blizzcon a couple times where the runes were generic drops that had different effects in different abilities.

And yeah it was totally sane, and loot-centric, and fun, and I really don't understand why they changed it. It made you want to get back in line and wait again just to see if you could get an alabaster drop to put in that power to see what THAT did, etc. I don't see this being as sticky without that.

[kildorn]

That was also the build where there were like, 4 damage rune types, a mana reduction rune type, and a SLOT THIS FOR AWESOME rune type that every sane person would use. I liked that build a lot.

[FieryBalrog]

Every character of a class in WoW is basically the same because you have infinite respecs and dual spec and on the fly glyphing just like D3.

Doesn't really hurt the stickiness at all. The number of people who actually care more about "permanent choice" (reroll to try anything new, bitches) vs "flexibility" seems to be on the losing side to me. I mean the immense relief and popularity of dual spec should drive that point home. I also want to point out how dumb it is for a game to demand that you make lots of detailed, finicky permanent choices before you have sufficient info to really make involved decisions (hello, PoE).

On the other hand, you can actually have goofy as fuck loadouts in D3 and play with them on your main char, without having to dedicate 40 hours to grinding up that character while hoarding points and plinking away with your synergy skill. You'll still have to grind out gear & gems to optimize a loadout, but you can try it no-cost. As opposed to WoW, where you have 3 loadouts per class, maybe 6 if you count pvp.

And yeah it was totally sane, and loot-centric, and fun, and I really don't understand why they changed it. It made you want to get back in line and wait again just to see if you could get an alabaster drop to put in that power to see what THAT did, etc. I don't see this being as sticky without that.

This I agree with. I can see them adding drops that power up certain runes. I mean, I hope they have something.

[Paelos]

I also want to point out how dumb it is for a game to demand that you make lots of detailed, finicky permanent choices before you have sufficient info to really make involved decisions (hello, PoE).

Thankfully that's a nerdy part of gaming that's going the way of the dodo.

[Hoax]

I also want to point out how dumb it is for a game to demand that you make lots of detailed, finicky permanent choices before you have sufficient info to really make involved decisions (hello, PoE).

Thankfully that's a nerdy part of gaming that's going the way of the dodo.

Its also a straw man literally nobody is defending yet we can't go ten posts without someone pretending that its worth bringing up. Again.

If we have infinite free respecs why can't we have as much if not more micromanagement over our character progression if you get it wrong you just do it again. You follow the guides. You change after patch day. The main drawback of the system they removed doesn't exist anymore when we have free anytime respecs. Yet instead they removed character build micro options AND abilities/runes are being given out very slowly all the way until level 59.

[Paelos]

I fail to see the problem with removing the micro options.

[Ghambit]

D3's build micro options are built into the loot (also via crafting, sockets, etc.); whose item stats/effect act as passive skills modding baseline char. stats.  Much like what the vast majority of 'skills' in most RPG do. e.g. they're passive.  And do not forget any class can wear/use anything they pick up typically.

In this way, it's no different than any standard skillcentric (not lootcentric) diku with traditional skill/respec systems; only here you've gotta earn the gear to mod the stat.

And let's see, a wizard by endgame will have 25 mouse+actionbar skills that literally all do something near completely different with a recognizable in-game effect.  Then you've got 15 separate passive skills.  All this is runeable btw.  That's a lot to 'micro build' with on-the-fly or otherwise.  And given the potential loot-builds there's some synergy to be had as well.

Let's not forget the AH either. (the elephant in the room)  It's devved as a ginormous part of the game and one you're near forced to deal with either with ingame gold or RMT.  If they'd gone the traditional skill route it would've placed less importance on this mechanic.  Moreso even if they'd given you the majority of your skills from the outset instead of parsing slowly.

Cant have the best of all worlds.

[Sjofn]

That was also the build where there were like, 4 damage rune types, a mana reduction rune type, and a SLOT THIS FOR AWESOME rune type that every sane person would use. I liked that build a lot.

God did I love SLOT THIS FOR AWESOME.

QQ

I'm sure I'll like D3 fine (I liked the little beta well enough), I just won't like it as much as I might've. Ah well.

[Phred]

I'm sure I'll like D3 fine (I liked the little beta well enough), I just won't like it as much as I might've. Ah well.

Just like every other game that gets lots of discussion, D3 just won't be as good as the one in my imagination.

[Draegan]

Yeah, no one here is complaining about "making real choices" and permanent builds.  I'm all for infinite respecs.  My main complaint is that I don't have any way to tweak my character outside the gear that I loot.  We've always had to build our characters through loot, they just took everything else away and just gave us all the abilities once we had the appropriate level.  It seems Blizzard said, we'll just take this whole talent tree system away and just give you all your abilities.  So instead of figuring out point allocation to get certain abilities for a build, we'll just give you the abilities so you can ignore the rest.

Builds etc. will still be there, but it will feel superficial.

[amiable]

My main complaint is that I don't have any way to tweak my character outside the gear that I loot. 

I'm not sure what you are saying here, because I feel exactly the opposite.  There are a ton of ways to tweak your character via the rune/skill system, to the point that it is unlikley that many folks will be running the same build.

[Malakili]

Yeah, no one here is complaining about "making real choices" and permanent builds.  I'm all for infinite respecs.  My main complaint is that I don't have any way to tweak my character outside the gear that I loot.  We've always had to build our characters through loot, they just took everything else away and just gave us all the abilities once we had the appropriate level.  It seems Blizzard said, we'll just take this whole talent tree system away and just give you all your abilities.  So instead of figuring out point allocation to get certain abilities for a build, we'll just give you the abilities so you can ignore the rest.

Builds etc. will still be there, but it will feel superficial.

So it is about the fact that all characters CAN do everything if they respec?  Whereas before there were some things a character could never do because they didn't build for it?

[kildorn]

That was also the build where there were like, 4 damage rune types, a mana reduction rune type, and a SLOT THIS FOR AWESOME rune type that every sane person would use. I liked that build a lot.

God did I love SLOT THIS FOR AWESOME.

QQ

I'm sure I'll like D3 fine (I liked the little beta well enough), I just won't like it as much as I might've. Ah well.

I think we all had the same reaction during the demo of the runes and effects. "So wait, why the fuck would I use anything but the hilariously awesome rune of dropping giant frogs on things and summoning zombie bears?"

[Paelos]

Yeah, no one here is complaining about "making real choices" and permanent builds.  I'm all for infinite respecs.  My main complaint is that I don't have any way to tweak my character outside the gear that I loot.  We've always had to build our characters through loot, they just took everything else away and just gave us all the abilities once we had the appropriate level.  It seems Blizzard said, we'll just take this whole talent tree system away and just give you all your abilities.  So instead of figuring out point allocation to get certain abilities for a build, we'll just give you the abilities so you can ignore the rest.

Builds etc. will still be there, but it will feel superficial.

Considering the fact I believe specializations in these games are inherently stupid and/or follow a mob mentality, I won't miss them.

[Samprimary]

Most important question ever asked about D3 ever:

Why does electrocute look so terrible. D2 lightning looked very cool. D3 lightning looks ... way worse than it should be.

[Draegan]

I'm not sure what you are saying here, because I feel exactly the opposite.  There are a ton of ways to tweak your character via the rune/skill system, to the point that it is unlikley that many folks will be running the same build.

So it is about the fact that all characters CAN do everything if they respec?  Whereas before there were some things a character could never do because they didn't build for it?

First, I know that there are dozens of combinations of skills and runes that you can do to create builds and that is really a great thing.  But that's not my point.  There isn't a system of give or take.  You just pick what you want.  There is no inherently balance to putting X points into one tree allows you to get one ability leaving only a certain amount of points in another tree.  I enjoy creating builds that you have to think about balance in point distribution.  I.e. is this ability worth losing access to another ability? or Is this ability worth losing the passives in another tree.

I enjoyed finding the perfect balance of point allocation between builds, like with what RIFT does.  They have the talent system, the root system and gear augmentation.  It's really ideal for people who enjoy that sort of thing.

I love the meta game of testing out builds and finding the perfect and most optimal balance for certain play styles BEFORE you start acquiring gear. 

To the second point, forget about respecs.  If you take the old D2 system on it's surface, and just give players infinite easy respecs and build load outs, it would be great.  I will note I do like the fact you don't have to assign stat points just so you can equip gear.  I never liked that.  I hated pooling points just in case I got a drop.  But to reiterate, I do not like the fact where the focus is just finding the combo of skills/runes to use, versus creating builds that allow you access to certain skills, runes and passives.

[Draegan]

Yeah, no one here is complaining about "making real choices" and permanent builds.  I'm all for infinite respecs.  My main complaint is that I don't have any way to tweak my character outside the gear that I loot.  We've always had to build our characters through loot, they just took everything else away and just gave us all the abilities once we had the appropriate level.  It seems Blizzard said, we'll just take this whole talent tree system away and just give you all your abilities.  So instead of figuring out point allocation to get certain abilities for a build, we'll just give you the abilities so you can ignore the rest.

Builds etc. will still be there, but it will feel superficial.

Considering the fact I believe specializations in these games are inherently stupid and/or follow a mob mentality, I won't miss them.

The way the system is still does this though.  You'll have builds that specialize.  You will have people who follow the mob mentality of the best melee/caster build.  Nothing changes.  These games are based on stats, gear and the abilities you use.  Nothing has changed on the surface.

[Malakili]

The way the system is still does this though.  You'll have builds that specialize.  You will have people who follow the mob mentality of the best melee/caster build.  Nothing changes.  These games are based on stats, gear and the abilities you use.  Nothing has changed on the surface.

Well, except for the fact that the game doesn't punish you if you want to play your hilarious giant front lulz build on your own one day, and then the next day switch up to your serious business inferno progression build to play with your friends.