Blizzard's Community Relations

[Ironwood]

Ah, I see.

I like having more buttons I can quickly find than less buttons that aren't quickly swappable.

[waffel]

Played D2 tonight - shitty graphics, played it to death more times than I can think since release.


... still enjoyed it more tonight than D3.

If only D2 was the exact clone of D2 but with better graphics... I'd play that :)

Pretty much this. Every change they made in D3 that deviates from D2 has been for the worse, graphics aside.

Reading and watching interviews with Jay Wilson is painful. I can't remember how many times he's stated "D2 had this system, but players didn't like that, so we did this" It's almost like they took nearly everything about D2 and changed it, when many of the systems in place were fine as is and at most needed some tweaking. Then he stated that nobody leveled to 99 because it was pointless, I guess forgetting that every level gave you stat points and a skill point.

[Miasma]

I don't know about level 99 but I wouldn't mind some sort of very difficult to obtain but completely optional advancement system.  That way if I clear an act and don't get a single good drop (most of the time) I could at least say I made 1% progress towards that nice to have but optional goal.

I would like an AA point which made it so that I didn't have to refresh my monk's mantra every three minutes.  It's just annoying and I can't think of a useful purpose for making me do that.  It just makes me constantly check to see if my mantra is about to expire.

[Segoris]

I forgot about the lack of hotkeys; that is an improvement in D3. By skill system I meant a speccing system, trees, etc. In D3 I don't have any identity for my character beyond "I'm a wizard" while in D2 I was "a whirlwind pike-barb" or "a lightning sorc" or "a spear/golem necro".

Regarding crafting, even if you made it "free" there is still a cost in the form of the money lost by not vendoring or AHing the items you salvage. Just ratchet up the amount of materials it takes if you want to make it "cost" more, but having to spend money and materials to craft things just rubs me the wrong way.

I can definitely agree there is a lack of identiy, but I also think that is partly due to most skills/runes being useless in D3. Improving skills wouldn't solve the problem, but it would help quite a bit imo if every class didn't have the same 4 base skills and same playstyle as other players within that class. It's why I like the game up through Hell, but once you hit Inferno the classes are mostly pigeon-holed (not entirely, but there certainly aren't many competitive abilities).

I don't think there is fun to be found in needing to increase the number of items that need to be destroyed just to craft one single item, which is why I think it comes back around to needing that gold fee. Sure the vendor value is lost as well, which is why I think the current amounts should be lowered slightly, but not free so that gold has a way to be removed from play besides repair fees (which will be adjusted soon, or almost ignored with the indestructible stat).


For IW & Mala:

Those reasons are why I would have loved some sort of hybrid system between D2 and D3. Something along the lines of pressing F1 brings up a mini-window like it did in D2, only updated with the current ability selection and their groupings. Example: Press F1 and the primary skills come up, press it again (or click on a left or right arrow in the window) and it will move to the next set of abilities. Pressing 1-5 (or clicking an icon) would select that ability, same thing for runes.

Or have preset alternative skills for a hotkey with usage of the F-keys.

Something, anything that would give characters more desperately needed depth with, imo, the improvement that is more than lmb/rmb

[Phred]

In D3 I don't have any identity for my character beyond "I'm a wizard" while in D2 I was "a whirlwind pike-barb" or "a lightning sorc" or "a spear/golem necro".

So essentially you miss cookie cutter builds? If you think about it with D3 you can just identify with the current skills you are using. While the variety of skills could be better in D3 this is the one area I liked. Not having to level a new character to play with builds was way more fun that slogging through 30 levels just to test out an idea for a build.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The problem is anything that encouages skill changes on-the-fly (like hot-keyed skill sets or damage-type immunities/vulnerabilities) becomes a completely useless mechanic once the "real" game begins (at 60) due to their stupid Vision TM insistence on having any skill change break NV.

[Setanta]

In D3 I don't have any identity for my character beyond "I'm a wizard" while in D2 I was "a whirlwind pike-barb" or "a lightning sorc" or "a spear/golem necro".

So essentially you miss cookie cutter builds? If you think about it with D3 you can just identify with the current skills you are using. While the variety of skills could be better in D3 this is the one area I liked. Not having to level a new character to play with builds was way more fun that slogging through 30 levels just to test out an idea for a build.

I think you missed the point - I had a bowazon plus a javazon plus a jabazon - 3 toons, 2 ranged, one melee - there was no cookie cutter build, they were different approaches with a different flavour using different skills. You played each one differently with different subtleties to the way you used each skill.

Now it's: "I'm a monk". By Inferno, I can't be a 2HWW barb because the game won't let you - "sword and board bitch - it's the way you play the game" in the leap from Act4 Hell to Act1 Inferno (at least in my experience - maybe gold farming pointlessly for hours or handing over cash would fix this).

This game is not about builds, it's about gear.

[Phred]

In D3 I don't have any identity for my character beyond "I'm a wizard" while in D2 I was "a whirlwind pike-barb" or "a lightning sorc" or "a spear/golem necro".

So essentially you miss cookie cutter builds? If you think about it with D3 you can just identify with the current skills you are using. While the variety of skills could be better in D3 this is the one area I liked. Not having to level a new character to play with builds was way more fun that slogging through 30 levels just to test out an idea for a build.

I think you missed the point - I had a bowazon plus a javazon plus a jabazon - 3 toons, 2 ranged, one melee - there was no cookie cutter build, they were different approaches with a different flavour using different skills. You played each one differently with different subtleties to the way you used each skill.

Now it's: "I'm a monk". By Inferno, I can't be a 2HWW barb because the game won't let you - "sword and board bitch - it's the way you play the game" in the leap from Act4 Hell to Act1 Inferno (at least in my experience - maybe gold farming pointlessly for hours or handing over cash would fix this).

This game is not about builds, it's about gear.

I get the point fine. What happened when you got to Hell in d2 and found out that the jabazon was a gimp build and couldn't survive? How did you know you were on the right track unless you copied other successful builds. That is a cookie cutter build.

[Lantyssa]

I just built the way I wanted, not caring about others' skill allocations.  Never had any trouble, and my Amazons ranged from low 30s to the 70s.

(I did use trainers to respec occasionally, but I considered the lack of that option to be D2's greatest failing.)

[Phred]

(I did use trainers to respec occasionally, but I considered the lack of that option to be D2's greatest failing.)

That doesn't really support the current argument though.

[apocrypha]

Yes it does Phred. It supports your side of the argument quite nicely I think 

Build variety in D3 will open up once the content is mostly trivialised. By gear. Having to level up multiple characters in order to try different specs, with no easy respec option, was retarded and poor gameplay. D3's system is a vast improvement, it's just cockblocked by the equally retarded difficulty jump from Hell to Inferno.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

It is absolutely trivial to separate D3's skill system from the presence or absence of respecs, in comparison with D2's skill system. As evidenced by the fact that a simple trainer could allow you to respec in D2. Nobody has yet suggested that the killer app that made D2's skill system superior was the inability to respec -- a counter-argument based around D3's respeccing is pretty far beside the point being discussed.

Just imagine that you could respec in D2, it's easy to imagine, and it would have been easy to make D3 'just like D2, but you can respec for free.' But they didn't. They made it completely different, in worse or better ways.

Personally, I feel like D3's system is shallow -- the lack of speccing "in" to certain abilities, in the sense of committing some portion of 'build power' (e.g. skill points, but it could have been modelled lots of other ways), makes all the various skill choices feel extremely superficial, particularly in terms of sheer effectiveness. You cannot build a character to take advantage of particular gear, or gear a character to take advantage of specific skill builds -- there are a few exceptions, but basically (as mentioned) you just want all the same stats on your gear no matter what skills/runes you have chosen, give or take some vitality or damage-stat here or there.

The lack of the skill-point/'boost individual skills/runes' build options also reflects back on the gear, as it eliminates things like +skill bonuses and +%damage-type modifiers the like that often made lower-level or lower-base-stat gear still worthwhile in D2. This in turn contributes to the overall-shitty D3 itemization -- with the exception of one or two very specific items (which, surprise! actually have unique or uniquely-effective affixes), you ALWAYS want a level 60 (ilvl 63) item, not only because of higher base armour but just because it will have higher bonuses overall to all the stats you care about. The total lack of sub-60 sets just confirms this, making me wonder how much more interesting itemization would have been if they had just kept the open-ended level-to-99 structure -- I feel like if they had, you would see a greater spread of powerful/or-at-least-interesting legendaries and sets spread through the 45-75 range, instead of just having everything stuffed into level 60, making sub-level-60 'farming' basically pointless and post-level-60 'farming' an exercise in incredible AH-based item glut.

[Setanta]

I get the point fine. What happened when you got to Hell in d2 and found out that the jabazon was a gimp build and couldn't survive? How did you know you were on the right track unless you copied other successful builds. That is a cookie cutter build.

You're right, my poor Matriach Jabazon was totally unable to get through hell because the skills to make her work were totally not-obvious.


Ergo I must have copied some online build... or maybe I worked it out myself as I did my other 'toons. After playing 2 other 'zons I wanted to explore the trees a bit more - it's pretty intuitive stuff. Diablo 2 wasn't rocket science - if people needed to copy builds to beat the game, that's sad.

OK... I may have looked up Runewords to plan my gear, but back in my days of D2 addiction I built the way I liked for fun :)

[Rendakor]

In D3 I don't have any identity for my character beyond "I'm a wizard" while in D2 I was "a whirlwind pike-barb" or "a lightning sorc" or "a spear/golem necro".

So essentially you miss cookie cutter builds? If you think about it with D3 you can just identify with the current skills you are using. While the variety of skills could be better in D3 this is the one area I liked. Not having to level a new character to play with builds was way more fun that slogging through 30 levels just to test out an idea for a build.

I never once looked up a skill build for Diablo 2; I didn't even realize the concept was commonplace until I started raiding in WoW WotLK. And Ice Cream Emperor makes most of points, but I'll elaborate a bit.

Every level up in D2 brought a choice about how you want to increase your power: you got the stats to allocate which you could put towards survivability, damage, throughput, or being able to equip better items. You also got better at your skills, which had a lot of depth because their power had a variable number of levels; skills' power relative to one another were also not flat in D2 because some skills were further down the tree, and thus could be made stronger. Over the course of a character's career, you had more than 100 choices to make about skills (and another 500 or so for stats) between levels and quest rewards*. In D3 you have 15 choices: 6 skills, 6 runes, 3 passives.

*To change gears, quest rewards are pretty terrible in D3. Aside from unlocking the crafters (which happens once ever, account wide) and followers (solo only), the only quest rewards are XP, gold, and the occasional item. In D2 quest rewards consisted of: skill points, stat points, the Horadric Cube (the thing I miss most from D2), Charsi's Make-A-Rare, Add-A-Socket, etc.

The bottom line is that everything in D3 feels so streamlined that the game is no longer interesting to me. If either the skill system or the loot was excellent, I could forgive weaknesses in the other. But those are the core of the game and they got both wrong.

[Malakili]

Every level up in D2 brought a choice about how you want to increase your power

Not if you knew how to build your character right.  I know you addressed this in your post already, but quite frankly, pumping 5 points into vitality every level wasn't exactly exciting choice making.  If what you miss is the ability to make terrible permanent decisions - well, I can't imagine lots of people miss that.

[Ironwood]

You building your character right at the moment ?

[waffel]

Every level up in D2 brought a choice about how you want to increase your power

Not if you knew how to build your character right.  I know you addressed this in your post already, but quite frankly, pumping 5 points into vitality every level wasn't exactly exciting choice making.  If what you miss is the ability to make terrible permanent decisions - well, I can't imagine lots of people miss that.

Terrible, permanent decisions? How? This only applied on MAYBE your first time playing the game. Say your first ever character was a Sorc, and you decided to for the first 10 levels to pump up Energy. It doesn't take very long to realize: 'I'm dying too quick' or 'I can't equip new armor'. After that, it doesn't take a genius to go "Well, maybe I'll put points into Strength or Vitality or Dexterity." From that point on, your character is hardly gimped and the 10 levels put into energy are pretty negligible once you get to 50+... so really, I don't see how the D2 stat system was that difficult or confusing that it needed to go. A sorc with 10 levels extra in energy could still complete the game.

The fact is, it was a choice. It was a method to personalize your character and give them a unique feel while feeling like a reward for leveling up. The same exact thing applies to the old skill tree. The only way to gimp your character is to either purposely do it, or to have zero working knowledge on how RPG games always worked.

Sadly, both systems I feel were removed because of the plummeting IQ of today's average 'gamer'.

[Ingmar]

No, the terrible permanent decisions were constant for a lot of players well beyond their first time through the game - and patches changing how things worked made it worse. Getting rid of stat allocation in particular is probably the single biggest improvement between D2 and D3. Skill point allocation is more arguable, D2 system + respecs would probably have been fine. I like the D3 system though, personally.

[Paelos]

Sadly, both systems I feel were removed because of the plummeting IQ of today's average 'gamer'.

I'm going to call you out on this. If the average gamer doesn't find something fun, it isn't because they are suddenly a lower IQ. It's likely because they don't want to play a numbers game inside their time-waster game. ARPGs are mostly to be about whacking stuff and watching loot fall out, not about spreadsheeting builds.

Frankly, I encourage developers to design games for the customers they have and their needs. If there was an outcry for more math and outside theorycrafting in games on a large scale, you'd see it in more of the games. The fact is that the people who want these things were and still are in a very small minority.

That's not to say you should gut every system, but don't just assume that they removed stuff because our tiny minds couldn't handle it.

[Ironwood]

Frankly, I see the plummeting numbers of people playing this shit as a testament to the IQ of gamers.

 

[Paelos]

I think we can agree that Blizzard has managed to suck out much of the fun with their approach to shoring up exploits.

However, I think that has more to do with itemization, barrel nerfs, and repair costs than the skill system.

[Ironwood]

While I find the skills all right, I don't find the runes particularly engaging.  As a mechanic, it's kinda bad. 

[Rendakor]

No, the terrible permanent decisions were constant for a lot of players well beyond their first time through the game - and patches changing how things worked made it worse. Getting rid of stat allocation in particular is probably the single biggest improvement between D2 and D3. Skill point allocation is more arguable, D2 system + respecs would probably have been fine. I like the D3 system though, personally.

This is a problem easily fixed via respecs.

[Lightstalker]

... Getting rid of stat allocation in particular is probably the single biggest improvement between D2 and D3. ...

That's not universal and we don't have the telemetry data to say one way or the other which is more popular.  I don't like the change, I'm not alone, but I may not be the majority.  Of course, I'd like the game better if at the end of the game Diablo kicks your ass and 'wins' the game, where your 'victory' is based on achieving victory point conditions in mitigating the loss of everything that is holy to the burning hells.  Then Diablo IV could be played from the other perspective, the desperate and underdog army of Heaven vs. the complacent and all powerful army of Hell.

[Ingmar]

Well yes, I thought the "in my opinion" was implied.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Why do people keep bringing up the lack of respecs in D2 as though this were a fundamental design decision integral to the skill and stat-allocation system? From a design perspective all you need to do is flick the 'free respecs' switch and there is literally no more problem. The 'you make bad choices and you are permanently screwed' problem is SOLVED. There is a known solution, and it is not 'remove the ability to make choices' -- it is 'let you change your mind later'. I understand how in, like, a story-based CRPG, this won't work as well, and so eliminating bad choices is often a better solution, but in an ARPG it is literally 100% perfect to just let people change their mind later if it turns out they accidentally fucked up their build.

The idea that simply removing entire vectors for character-building, power-allocation, etc. is justified by the (seemingly implied) impossibility of respecs is kind of nuts. I do agree that stat allocation was hardly the most fascinating choice to make, but it was a choice and it did have an impact, and if nothing else it seems to be symptomatic of an overall shift in the design philosophy between the two games.

[Ingmar]

IMO the stat allocation thing was retarded with or without respecs. It wasn't customization, it was just a pass/fail check that everyone failed unless they knew ahead of time what the stat requirements for the very best gear in the game was. Adding a respec to it means you might as well just remove it for all the impact it has... so they did. I can't fault that decision at all.

[Paelos]

I do agree that stat allocation was hardly the most fascinating choice to make, but it was a choice and it did have an impact, and if nothing else it seems to be symptomatic of an overall shift in the design philosophy between the two games.

Or, the design shift was because it sucked. And as you said, it's hardly fascinating.

Granted, I think they could have done more with the skill system, but removing stat allocation is one of the best ways to keep any game from getting bogged down in completely blind decisions.

[Malakili]

Why do people keep bringing up the lack of respecs in D2 as though this were a fundamental design decision integral to the skill and stat-allocation system?

Because what people are saying is that they liked the feeling that their build is unique.  Flick on the free respecs button and it doesn't matter if it is skill trees like D2, or the D3 system.  If you want to be a "Nova sorc" or whatever, the system itself matters less than the respecs.  The only thing that made you a "nova sorc" in Diablo 2 is that you couldn't choose to NOT be a nova sorc after the decision was made.

[Lantyssa]

I felt like a unique snowflake and I used trainers to gain respecs.

Maybe YOU wouldn't, but plenty of us both liked the system and thought it had one, tiny, miniscule flaw which was easily rectified.  I liked just playing the game.  Sometimes I realized I wasn't using a skill and wanted to optimize a bit.  All a respec did was make me not worry if I wasted a level by putting a point in skill A instead of B when it turned out I didn't use A.

What I didn't do was go out hunting theory crafting discussions or to find out what was FotM.  I killed shit and had fun.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Because what people are saying is that they liked the feeling that their build is unique.  Flick on the free respecs button and it doesn't matter if it is skill trees like D2, or the D3 system.  If you want to be a "Nova sorc" or whatever, the system itself matters less than the respecs.  The only thing that made you a "nova sorc" in Diablo 2 is that you couldn't choose to NOT be a nova sorc after the decision was made.

I understand what you are saying, but really what made you a nova sorc was that you invested your skill points in the skills involving nova-sorcery? And that doing so was considerably more involved than selecting the 'nova' rune on the 'frostular DPS' skill. And the fact that doing this was dramatically different than if you were a fire-hydra-sorc, in terms of build and progression and ideal gear, etc. The builds were dramatically more different-feeling, IMO, even though yes a lot of that was tied to how different they felt to level up.

But yeah, I really don't think free respecs actually means people respec constantly -- I know I certainly don't change my skills that often in D3, and certainly not in a way that dramatically changes my playstyle (or more to the point, makes me feel like 'now I'm a different type of X'). I think even if D2 had respecs, people would still build characters along similar lines -- they just wouldn't have to freak out about mis-allocating skills, and would be free to experiment.

In any case there is obviously a huge, fruitful span of possibility between 'no respecs' and 'trivial, instant respecs' -- heck, it's Diablo, make that shit drop somewhere if you want. The real problem is that the skill system itself does seem to allow for noticeably-different, equally-viable builds within a class.

[koro]

Diablo 2 actually does have respecs now, 3 per character, earning one each difficulty. It's pretty nice, mainly for "late bloomers" like Whirlwind Barbs, Hammerdins, and Meteorb Sorcs, and can even reset stat points for those folks who like to do experimenting.

[SurfD]

On a related note, looks like they are working to fix the level 13 cap on Digital Purchases: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5911721680

The standard security-related restrictions that will be in place for digital purchases until payment verification is complete:

    No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
    No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
    Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
    Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
    Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
    Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers

So basically, untill your payment clears as verified, you wont have any way to offload ill-gotten gains, but will be free to power level to your hearts content, and will be able to play with friends, but not be able to join random pubbie games.

[Phred]

Ok this is definately to combat the gold sellers/spammers. I guess they are using fake credit card numbers or stolen ones to make digital purchases. This sucks for people trying to buy the game legitimately but  I guess we can't have nice things thanks to the greedy among us.

[Paelos]

That's a much better solution than the level 13 nonsense.