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I dont want perfection I want it to have fun. I want the feeling of mabe in the next chest is this and that unique I am looking for and I want different itemisation as you call it for different chars. I want Uniques that are allways unsefull or not at all. One name - one item, like ik-maul in the earlygame. I want Runewords and i want a piece of cake.
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@fearus
I think you're overselling D2 PvP a bit, I definitely wouldn't call D2 PvP the apex of game design. It wasn't balanced, lots of teleport and potion spamming (not my personal taste but others like it) and people running back into town in the middle of a fight.
Better than D3's current PvP? Yes. Apex of game design? I would call D2 PvP an afterthought, the dev's just added a hostility feature and called it PvP.
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On August 30 2013 01:21 SarcasmMonster wrote:
@fearus
I think you're overselling D2 PvP a bit, I definitely wouldn't call D2 PvP the apex of game design. It wasn't balanced, lots of teleport and potion spamming (not my personal taste but others like it) and people running back into town in the middle of a fight.
Better than D3's current PvP? Yes. Apex of game design? I would call D2 PvP an afterthought, the dev's just added a hostility feature and called it PvP.
I don't think he means apex of game design as in the developers really climaxed when developing d2 PVP. He is saying the PvP community was the apex of D2 and gave the game it's longevity and replayability. The PvPers literally broke the game down to individual frames and offered all of the hardcore calculations that weren't relevant to PvM. PvM was more or less solved very early on. PvP was the biggest reason to acquire wealth, and was probably the largest active player base in D2 since like 1.08 (excluding bots of course ;p).
I still remember before the epic .10 patch, PvP was by far the most active game state. PvP1 PvP10 PKPK1 PKPK2 etc games up and filled instantly and consistently.
From a game designer perspective I don't think PvP was balanced or even attempted to be balanced by the developers. I think they thought it would be fun if we could kill each other and let us do it. The community made the PvP what it was and broke it down and exploited every last drop of the games overall design.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
lack of itemization variety would also affect pvp. if all you have over the other guy is a bit more health, damage, crit etc etc, then pvp is simply micro + gear advantage, with the latter very simple and adding no flavor to the fight at all.
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On August 30 2013 00:33 fearus wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2013 20:40 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 20:36 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 18:14 SixStrings wrote:On August 29 2013 06:55 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 00:50 crms wrote:
i like a lot of these suggestions but itemization and character development are by far the most important issues. paragon system 2.0 is a nice baby step but the items and character interaction needs an overhaul.
while the writing is harsh and I wish better written and a bit more comprehensive, this 'info-graph' highlights the major issue with D2 vs D3 loot itemization. While doing my re-play of Diablo 2 this week, I've run Nightmare Meph about 10-15 times and found ~12 uniques (legendaries). Including some nice niche uniques that are great for certain builds on other classes. Stuff like that just doesn't happen in D3. It won't happen because you'll never spend 15-20m doing quick boss runs to obtain ~12 legendaries, and the legendaries you would find in ACT3NM wouldn't be worth IDing. When characters have no depth of customization, the items are boring and undesirable.
I think there are 2 separate issues that this infographic is trying to pass off as one. The stat allocation issue is completely separate to the diversity of gear issue. If you couldn't allocate stats in D2, the exact same gear would still be desirable to the exact same builds (the only difference being the number of str/dex charms required to equip it). Character stat allocation did absolutely nothing for gear diversity; having unusual and gamechanging affixes is what did it. As for what makes gear "interesting", every single item from D2 that I would call "interesting" has one thing in common: they grant unique spells that are normally locked to one class. Whether that be Enigma, Andy's visage, Insight, Passion, Chaos, Atma's scarab, Demon Limb, Wolfhowl, etc. Yes, there are other powerful items like BotD, but there is nothing interesting about BotD other than it being really really powerful. These items were interesting because they let you make (effectively) cross-class hybrids. They did nothing for itemisation - maybe you aimed for a different IAS breakpoint but that was really it. Some of them changed nothing at all about how you build or played your char (2x CTA in alt weapons anyone?). I don't think these are an answer to "the loot problem" - you get a few interesting items, but you won't really add any depth to gearing. And I think that is my problem with analyses like the one in that image. D2 had a lot of pieces of gear which were interesting in isolation (all of them added after LoD, and almost all of those added in 1.10 or beyond when LoD had already been out for years). But they didn't make building a gear set interesting, because by and large it wasn't. What it came down to was meeting some caps (resist all and IAS, and IAS was almost entirely based on weapon IAS so the rest of your gear hardly mattered) and calling it a day. Yes you could stack different things, like going for pure weapon speed (enchantress, firebear, tesladin), stacking CB, stacking DS, whatever. But none of those things really changed anything about how you played the char, or how combat felt. They were just generic DPS increasing affixes that happened to use different mechanics. They were (to use the phrase in the infographic) toast. I think Blizz needs to be very careful, because if they give in and just give D2 patch 1.10-style loot in D3, we might have fun initially until the clear cookie cutter builds come out, and then we will be in the exact same situation as we are now, where after you decide you are going Monk + claw that lets you use whirlwind, the gearing is just as uninteresting as it is today (and as it was in D2). I'm sorry, but I disagree with this. Creating your build in D2 was more than a matter of just meeting a cap or two and call it a day. You had actual choices and liberties, and having the legendaries as know entities helped planning greatly. I spend much more time planning any character, figuring out how much defence I could trade in for offence, if I could justify squeezing in quality of life items, such as the ones that greatly increase run speed, and when I finally build my Enigma, I had a blast trying to fit it on as many characters as I could manage. This sort of planning doesn't come into D3, where your next goal is always more of X. It's fine to say "actual choices and liberties" and "how much defence I could trade in for offence", but it would be nice to list specific examples rather than general sweeping statements. Then we could see if these were actually interesting choices, and more importantly if it's something that could be brought into D3. I doubt you mean stats as (excluding some specific BvB builds) no one would sac 450 vitality for a 5% increase in damage or whatever it worked out to. Enigma wasn't hard to "fit on" any character. Anyone who isn't already a sorc is massively improved by the addition of teleport, regardless of the class. fearus, all the stuff you listed is PvP stuff designed for specific opponents. Isn't this more a symptom of the (lack of) PvP situation in D3 rather than/in addition to itemisation? If PvP was more popular, with a smaller number of popular and powerful builds, might we see people building specific sets as a result (e.g. resist X)? EDIT: Oops, meant to edit my previous post PvP was the end game and the apex of D2 game and item design. I bring this up because looking at D2 from a PvM perspective, would be like a casual player who plays Starcraft single player campaign and think that was all to game. The most in-depth analysis of the game and itemisation was for PvP - before frame rates became public knowledge, the PvPers was already recording animations on video and counting the actual frames to figure out the ias/fcr/fhr breakpoints. Not to mention the top-tier D2 players were the PvPer - in terms of time spend, item wealth and knowledge of the game. When Windforces were selling for 500$ on ebay - it wasn't for PvM. Itemisation for D2 in PvM is trivial. Necromancers could finish hell 8 player completely naked and Hammerdins were hands down the best PvM build. PvP characters was where items, stats points, skill points - reached for perfection.
Maybe for you, but I don't think you can speak for everyone. You might not see what the point in completely optimising a char for farming cows/Baal/Meph/whatever was, but plenty of people did it and had fun nonetheless.
Either way, if the discussion is about D2 PvP vs D3 PvP, the fact is that D3 PvP is nowhere near as popular as D2 PvP was, and IMO it is more likely that the lack of popularity leads to lack of variety in gearing options, than the other way around.
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On August 30 2013 01:47 crms wrote:
From a game designer perspective I don't think PvP was balanced or even attempted to be balanced by the developers. I think they thought it would be fun if we could kill each other and let us do it. The community made the PvP what it was and broke it down and exploited every last drop of the games overall design.
There's definitely something to be said about unbalanced and/or slightly imperfect designs leading to popular fan bases. I remember reading a game design article (maybe even by Blizz??) that players like the feeling that they're breaking the game by finding powerful, possibly unintended combos, or exploiting mechanics in a way that gives them an advantage.
Those might be known features of the game that the developers hid for the players to discover, or completely unintended interactions that the developers didn't know about, but left in because the result was a more engaging game, where players felt like they were "breaking the matrix".
For me, as a PvM HC player, Diablo was always about characters that felt generally overpowered and unstoppable, even though there's always a small chance that next extra strong FE CE bugged death explosion could just oneshot you. It was fun - the chance of death was significant enough to keep you on your toes, but not so high you were constantly shitting yourself and feeling like you couldn't just relax and enjoy playing.
In Diablo 3 (still HC), I felt overpowered until inferno, and then I felt like I couldn't do anything. I did have a lot of fun farming Hell, which felt like a good level of danger, but it didn't feel like diablo "blow up shit just by thinking about because all characters are ridiculously OP".
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lack of item varity is the worst thing in diablo 3.
Mainstat + crit + defense (res, vita, armor) and a bit of LoH/Leech make 95% of your gear.
Diablo II had so much more varity to it, it was simply awesome.
In D3, you can basically write a "Barbarian guide" and explain the 2 different types of a barb. Items stay 90% the same
In D2, you can write 7 different Barb Guides - every single one needs different items (just some core items stay good for all) - and the guide wouldnt be 3 pages - you would need 20 pages to explain it. It was just more complex :/
€: PvP in not that important imo. to me, it doesnt really belong into a game like diablo.
You could make like 4on4 arena or something and it might be cool, but in the end, PvE is what makes those games.
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On August 30 2013 03:28 KalWarkov wrote:
lack of item varity is the worst thing in diablo 3.
Mainstat + crit + defense (res, vita, armor) and a bit of LoH/Leech make 95% of your gear.
Diablo II had so much more varity to it, it was simply awesome.
In D3, you can basically write a "Barbarian guide" and explain the 2 different types of a barb. Items stay 90% the same
In D2, you can write 7 different Barb Guides - every single one needs different items (just some core items stay good for all) - and the guide wouldnt be 3 pages - you would need 20 pages to explain it. It was just more complex :/
€: PvP doesnt matter for me. to me, it doesnt really belong into a game like diablo.
You could make like 4on4 arena or something and it might be cool, but in the end, PvE is what makes those games.
although i generally agree with this, its not entirely true. i can list four builds that require different gear to "work" and are entirely different playstyles for wizard:
- uber death
- blizzard
- cm/ww
- archon
although 80% of the gear is the same (some shit is just good for wizards), there are item dependencies that are critical for the builds to work.
there are legitimate complaints with D3, but some shit is just blown out of proportions because of people's rose colored glasses.
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On August 30 2013 03:33 dAPhREAk wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 03:28 KalWarkov wrote:
lack of item varity is the worst thing in diablo 3.
Mainstat + crit + defense (res, vita, armor) and a bit of LoH/Leech make 95% of your gear.
Diablo II had so much more varity to it, it was simply awesome.
In D3, you can basically write a "Barbarian guide" and explain the 2 different types of a barb. Items stay 90% the same
In D2, you can write 7 different Barb Guides - every single one needs different items (just some core items stay good for all) - and the guide wouldnt be 3 pages - you would need 20 pages to explain it. It was just more complex :/
€: PvP doesnt matter for me. to me, it doesnt really belong into a game like diablo.
You could make like 4on4 arena or something and it might be cool, but in the end, PvE is what makes those games. there are legitimate complaints with D3, but some shit is just blown out of proportions because of people's rose colored glasses.
I know this likes to be said a lot but as someone who just reinstalled d2 this week to get a better understanding of my memory vs reality, the itemization, drop rates and character building differences between d2 vs d3 cannot be blown out of proportion because they're that far apart.
The music is pretty amazing too. 
Early game play is definitely brutal though having not playing in a while. It took until about lv30 before I felt any sort of responsiveness in combat (I'm playing a sorc). Though I don't think anyone argued d2 combat or general play-ability and responsiveness was better than D3.
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On August 30 2013 03:33 dAPhREAk wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 03:28 KalWarkov wrote:
lack of item varity is the worst thing in diablo 3.
Mainstat + crit + defense (res, vita, armor) and a bit of LoH/Leech make 95% of your gear.
Diablo II had so much more varity to it, it was simply awesome.
In D3, you can basically write a "Barbarian guide" and explain the 2 different types of a barb. Items stay 90% the same
In D2, you can write 7 different Barb Guides - every single one needs different items (just some core items stay good for all) - and the guide wouldnt be 3 pages - you would need 20 pages to explain it. It was just more complex :/
€: PvP doesnt matter for me. to me, it doesnt really belong into a game like diablo.
You could make like 4on4 arena or something and it might be cool, but in the end, PvE is what makes those games. although i generally agree with this, its not entirely true. i can list four builds that require different gear to "work" and are entirely different playstyles for wizard: - uber death - blizzard - cm/ww - archon although 80% of the gear is the same (some shit is just good for wizards), there are item dependencies that are critical for the builds to work. there are legitimate complaints with D3, but some shit is just blown out of proportions because of people's rose colored glasses.
and with that, wizard is the most flexible class.
that was just a side point anyway... i need about 15 different affixes on my items to be effective in d2, i have to think about what to get on what item, compare them and do math.
in d3, i get the same shit on every item - and the the next better item has exactly the same - just 2% more of it.
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Will people be able to purchase gold in SC?
Yes - Gonna stay the fuck away
No - Will most likely buy it.
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On August 30 2013 04:49 thezanursic wrote:
Will people be able to purchase gold in SC?
Yes - Gonna stay the fuck away
No - Will most likely buy it.
Yes, through either official or unofficial channels.
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On August 30 2013 05:03 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 04:49 thezanursic wrote:
Will people be able to purchase gold in SC?
Yes - Gonna stay the fuck away
No - Will most likely buy it. Yes, through either official or unofficial channels.
I hope selling gold makes up for the people who won't be playing because of it!!!
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On August 30 2013 05:28 thezanursic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 05:03 SarcasmMonster wrote:On August 30 2013 04:49 thezanursic wrote:
Will people be able to purchase gold in SC?
Yes - Gonna stay the fuck away
No - Will most likely buy it. Yes, through either official or unofficial channels. I hope selling gold makes up for the people who won't be playing because of it!!!
it will because i highly doubt there will be a mad rush for the door of people complaining about something that has been done unofficially at least for probably a dozen years or so.
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On August 30 2013 05:28 thezanursic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 05:03 SarcasmMonster wrote:On August 30 2013 04:49 thezanursic wrote:
Will people be able to purchase gold in SC?
Yes - Gonna stay the fuck away
No - Will most likely buy it. Yes, through either official or unofficial channels. I hope selling gold makes up for the people who won't be playing because of it!!!
If you are hardcore enough to stomache the high death-penalty, you can try hardcore, where there is no official RMAH.
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On August 30 2013 00:33 fearus wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2013 20:40 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 20:36 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 18:14 SixStrings wrote:On August 29 2013 06:55 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 00:50 crms wrote:
i like a lot of these suggestions but itemization and character development are by far the most important issues. paragon system 2.0 is a nice baby step but the items and character interaction needs an overhaul.
while the writing is harsh and I wish better written and a bit more comprehensive, this 'info-graph' highlights the major issue with D2 vs D3 loot itemization. While doing my re-play of Diablo 2 this week, I've run Nightmare Meph about 10-15 times and found ~12 uniques (legendaries). Including some nice niche uniques that are great for certain builds on other classes. Stuff like that just doesn't happen in D3. It won't happen because you'll never spend 15-20m doing quick boss runs to obtain ~12 legendaries, and the legendaries you would find in ACT3NM wouldn't be worth IDing. When characters have no depth of customization, the items are boring and undesirable.
I think there are 2 separate issues that this infographic is trying to pass off as one. The stat allocation issue is completely separate to the diversity of gear issue. If you couldn't allocate stats in D2, the exact same gear would still be desirable to the exact same builds (the only difference being the number of str/dex charms required to equip it). Character stat allocation did absolutely nothing for gear diversity; having unusual and gamechanging affixes is what did it. As for what makes gear "interesting", every single item from D2 that I would call "interesting" has one thing in common: they grant unique spells that are normally locked to one class. Whether that be Enigma, Andy's visage, Insight, Passion, Chaos, Atma's scarab, Demon Limb, Wolfhowl, etc. Yes, there are other powerful items like BotD, but there is nothing interesting about BotD other than it being really really powerful. These items were interesting because they let you make (effectively) cross-class hybrids. They did nothing for itemisation - maybe you aimed for a different IAS breakpoint but that was really it. Some of them changed nothing at all about how you build or played your char (2x CTA in alt weapons anyone?). I don't think these are an answer to "the loot problem" - you get a few interesting items, but you won't really add any depth to gearing. And I think that is my problem with analyses like the one in that image. D2 had a lot of pieces of gear which were interesting in isolation (all of them added after LoD, and almost all of those added in 1.10 or beyond when LoD had already been out for years). But they didn't make building a gear set interesting, because by and large it wasn't. What it came down to was meeting some caps (resist all and IAS, and IAS was almost entirely based on weapon IAS so the rest of your gear hardly mattered) and calling it a day. Yes you could stack different things, like going for pure weapon speed (enchantress, firebear, tesladin), stacking CB, stacking DS, whatever. But none of those things really changed anything about how you played the char, or how combat felt. They were just generic DPS increasing affixes that happened to use different mechanics. They were (to use the phrase in the infographic) toast. I think Blizz needs to be very careful, because if they give in and just give D2 patch 1.10-style loot in D3, we might have fun initially until the clear cookie cutter builds come out, and then we will be in the exact same situation as we are now, where after you decide you are going Monk + claw that lets you use whirlwind, the gearing is just as uninteresting as it is today (and as it was in D2). I'm sorry, but I disagree with this. Creating your build in D2 was more than a matter of just meeting a cap or two and call it a day. You had actual choices and liberties, and having the legendaries as know entities helped planning greatly. I spend much more time planning any character, figuring out how much defence I could trade in for offence, if I could justify squeezing in quality of life items, such as the ones that greatly increase run speed, and when I finally build my Enigma, I had a blast trying to fit it on as many characters as I could manage. This sort of planning doesn't come into D3, where your next goal is always more of X. It's fine to say "actual choices and liberties" and "how much defence I could trade in for offence", but it would be nice to list specific examples rather than general sweeping statements. Then we could see if these were actually interesting choices, and more importantly if it's something that could be brought into D3. I doubt you mean stats as (excluding some specific BvB builds) no one would sac 450 vitality for a 5% increase in damage or whatever it worked out to. Enigma wasn't hard to "fit on" any character. Anyone who isn't already a sorc is massively improved by the addition of teleport, regardless of the class. fearus, all the stuff you listed is PvP stuff designed for specific opponents. Isn't this more a symptom of the (lack of) PvP situation in D3 rather than/in addition to itemisation? If PvP was more popular, with a smaller number of popular and powerful builds, might we see people building specific sets as a result (e.g. resist X)? EDIT: Oops, meant to edit my previous post PvP was the end game and the apex of D2 game and item design. I bring this up because looking at D2 from a PvM perspective, would be like a casual player who plays Starcraft single player campaign and think that was all to game. The most in-depth analysis of the game and itemisation was for PvP - before frame rates became public knowledge, the PvPers was already recording animations on video and counting the actual frames to figure out the ias/fcr/fhr breakpoints. Not to mention the top-tier D2 players were the PvPer - in terms of time spend, item wealth and knowledge of the game. When Windforces were selling for 500$ on ebay - it wasn't for PvM. Itemisation for D2 in PvM is trivial. Necromancers could finish hell 8 player completely naked and Hammerdins were hands down the best PvM build. PvP characters was where items, stats points, skill points - reached for perfection.
I didnt know of any single person that thought PvP was the end game. Everybody I knew farmed for gear to trade with and to make/improve their characters. PvP was like something to do on the side. The only PvP I ever saw was mostly people trolling hostility on baal runs or something (go tppk on hardcore removing the ability to play public games! yay pvp!) because their char was high level with godly gear.
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On August 30 2013 04:49 thezanursic wrote:
Will people be able to purchase gold in SC?
Yes - Gonna stay the fuck away
No - Will most likely buy it.
It's no secret I hated diablo 3 but I never understood the complaints about the auction house.
The Auction house or RMAH were only bad for Diablo3 because of the implications on other design elements. If d2 had an AH and RMAH but same itemization and drop rates, it would be a welcome feature. The problem is when you make items so ass, and drop rates so astronomically low that you're basically forced to use the AH it becomes a bad un-fun game.
I think it'd be awesome in d2 if instead of gold currency since gold was mostly meaningless if there was a 'trading post' type thing where you could place items, and people could offer item bids similar to Dota2Lounge and you could accept their item offers or decline etc.
Good items and appropriate drop rates matter, how you trade your items matters very little. An AH system streamlines trading and is a good feature, manipulating drop rates to account for AH usage or having bad items, is bad.
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The fact that you had to go out of your way to sell/trade ur items made trading far more healthier for the game. Until d2jsp/bots. Sure you could stand in trade channels all day and try to banter but it was way more fun/profitable to do runs on your own for items.
AH is just a couple of clicks and you're selling the goods. The item hunt in D3 doesn't happen at all, as you're basically forced to camp items at the AH.
AH wouldn't be a problem if there were resets involved, as it is now it's insanely inflated and has been since 2-3 months of the release. HC AH was okay for like half a year but it's quite bad now too.
Blizzard need not remove/nerf the AH, just introduce a ladder/league system with frequent resets. You'll still see a lot of AH camping that way but at least it won't be the only way to get items.(especially if they're really fixing current drop rates / quality of drops)
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On August 30 2013 05:55 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 00:33 fearus wrote:On August 29 2013 20:40 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 20:36 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 18:14 SixStrings wrote:On August 29 2013 06:55 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 00:50 crms wrote:
i like a lot of these suggestions but itemization and character development are by far the most important issues. paragon system 2.0 is a nice baby step but the items and character interaction needs an overhaul.
while the writing is harsh and I wish better written and a bit more comprehensive, this 'info-graph' highlights the major issue with D2 vs D3 loot itemization. While doing my re-play of Diablo 2 this week, I've run Nightmare Meph about 10-15 times and found ~12 uniques (legendaries). Including some nice niche uniques that are great for certain builds on other classes. Stuff like that just doesn't happen in D3. It won't happen because you'll never spend 15-20m doing quick boss runs to obtain ~12 legendaries, and the legendaries you would find in ACT3NM wouldn't be worth IDing. When characters have no depth of customization, the items are boring and undesirable.
I think there are 2 separate issues that this infographic is trying to pass off as one. The stat allocation issue is completely separate to the diversity of gear issue. If you couldn't allocate stats in D2, the exact same gear would still be desirable to the exact same builds (the only difference being the number of str/dex charms required to equip it). Character stat allocation did absolutely nothing for gear diversity; having unusual and gamechanging affixes is what did it. As for what makes gear "interesting", every single item from D2 that I would call "interesting" has one thing in common: they grant unique spells that are normally locked to one class. Whether that be Enigma, Andy's visage, Insight, Passion, Chaos, Atma's scarab, Demon Limb, Wolfhowl, etc. Yes, there are other powerful items like BotD, but there is nothing interesting about BotD other than it being really really powerful. These items were interesting because they let you make (effectively) cross-class hybrids. They did nothing for itemisation - maybe you aimed for a different IAS breakpoint but that was really it. Some of them changed nothing at all about how you build or played your char (2x CTA in alt weapons anyone?). I don't think these are an answer to "the loot problem" - you get a few interesting items, but you won't really add any depth to gearing. And I think that is my problem with analyses like the one in that image. D2 had a lot of pieces of gear which were interesting in isolation (all of them added after LoD, and almost all of those added in 1.10 or beyond when LoD had already been out for years). But they didn't make building a gear set interesting, because by and large it wasn't. What it came down to was meeting some caps (resist all and IAS, and IAS was almost entirely based on weapon IAS so the rest of your gear hardly mattered) and calling it a day. Yes you could stack different things, like going for pure weapon speed (enchantress, firebear, tesladin), stacking CB, stacking DS, whatever. But none of those things really changed anything about how you played the char, or how combat felt. They were just generic DPS increasing affixes that happened to use different mechanics. They were (to use the phrase in the infographic) toast. I think Blizz needs to be very careful, because if they give in and just give D2 patch 1.10-style loot in D3, we might have fun initially until the clear cookie cutter builds come out, and then we will be in the exact same situation as we are now, where after you decide you are going Monk + claw that lets you use whirlwind, the gearing is just as uninteresting as it is today (and as it was in D2). I'm sorry, but I disagree with this. Creating your build in D2 was more than a matter of just meeting a cap or two and call it a day. You had actual choices and liberties, and having the legendaries as know entities helped planning greatly. I spend much more time planning any character, figuring out how much defence I could trade in for offence, if I could justify squeezing in quality of life items, such as the ones that greatly increase run speed, and when I finally build my Enigma, I had a blast trying to fit it on as many characters as I could manage. This sort of planning doesn't come into D3, where your next goal is always more of X. It's fine to say "actual choices and liberties" and "how much defence I could trade in for offence", but it would be nice to list specific examples rather than general sweeping statements. Then we could see if these were actually interesting choices, and more importantly if it's something that could be brought into D3. I doubt you mean stats as (excluding some specific BvB builds) no one would sac 450 vitality for a 5% increase in damage or whatever it worked out to. Enigma wasn't hard to "fit on" any character. Anyone who isn't already a sorc is massively improved by the addition of teleport, regardless of the class. fearus, all the stuff you listed is PvP stuff designed for specific opponents. Isn't this more a symptom of the (lack of) PvP situation in D3 rather than/in addition to itemisation? If PvP was more popular, with a smaller number of popular and powerful builds, might we see people building specific sets as a result (e.g. resist X)? EDIT: Oops, meant to edit my previous post PvP was the end game and the apex of D2 game and item design. I bring this up because looking at D2 from a PvM perspective, would be like a casual player who plays Starcraft single player campaign and think that was all to game. The most in-depth analysis of the game and itemisation was for PvP - before frame rates became public knowledge, the PvPers was already recording animations on video and counting the actual frames to figure out the ias/fcr/fhr breakpoints. Not to mention the top-tier D2 players were the PvPer - in terms of time spend, item wealth and knowledge of the game. When Windforces were selling for 500$ on ebay - it wasn't for PvM. Itemisation for D2 in PvM is trivial. Necromancers could finish hell 8 player completely naked and Hammerdins were hands down the best PvM build. PvP characters was where items, stats points, skill points - reached for perfection. I didnt know of any single person that thought PvP was the end game. Everybody I knew farmed for gear to trade with and to make/improve their characters. PvP was like something to do on the side. The only PvP I ever saw was mostly people trolling hostility on baal runs or something (go tppk on hardcore removing the ability to play public games! yay pvp!) because their char was high level with godly gear.
US East ladder had organized 4v4 games where the average player's itemset probably cost in excess of 60 highrunes. I went to one with an Enigma/Eth-Zoded Deathcleaver etc barb and felt like a pauper. It was inarguably the peak of D2.
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On August 30 2013 06:41 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 05:55 TheRabidDeer wrote:On August 30 2013 00:33 fearus wrote:On August 29 2013 20:40 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 20:36 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 18:14 SixStrings wrote:On August 29 2013 06:55 dmfg wrote:On August 29 2013 00:50 crms wrote:
i like a lot of these suggestions but itemization and character development are by far the most important issues. paragon system 2.0 is a nice baby step but the items and character interaction needs an overhaul.
while the writing is harsh and I wish better written and a bit more comprehensive, this 'info-graph' highlights the major issue with D2 vs D3 loot itemization. While doing my re-play of Diablo 2 this week, I've run Nightmare Meph about 10-15 times and found ~12 uniques (legendaries). Including some nice niche uniques that are great for certain builds on other classes. Stuff like that just doesn't happen in D3. It won't happen because you'll never spend 15-20m doing quick boss runs to obtain ~12 legendaries, and the legendaries you would find in ACT3NM wouldn't be worth IDing. When characters have no depth of customization, the items are boring and undesirable.
I think there are 2 separate issues that this infographic is trying to pass off as one. The stat allocation issue is completely separate to the diversity of gear issue. If you couldn't allocate stats in D2, the exact same gear would still be desirable to the exact same builds (the only difference being the number of str/dex charms required to equip it). Character stat allocation did absolutely nothing for gear diversity; having unusual and gamechanging affixes is what did it. As for what makes gear "interesting", every single item from D2 that I would call "interesting" has one thing in common: they grant unique spells that are normally locked to one class. Whether that be Enigma, Andy's visage, Insight, Passion, Chaos, Atma's scarab, Demon Limb, Wolfhowl, etc. Yes, there are other powerful items like BotD, but there is nothing interesting about BotD other than it being really really powerful. These items were interesting because they let you make (effectively) cross-class hybrids. They did nothing for itemisation - maybe you aimed for a different IAS breakpoint but that was really it. Some of them changed nothing at all about how you build or played your char (2x CTA in alt weapons anyone?). I don't think these are an answer to "the loot problem" - you get a few interesting items, but you won't really add any depth to gearing. And I think that is my problem with analyses like the one in that image. D2 had a lot of pieces of gear which were interesting in isolation (all of them added after LoD, and almost all of those added in 1.10 or beyond when LoD had already been out for years). But they didn't make building a gear set interesting, because by and large it wasn't. What it came down to was meeting some caps (resist all and IAS, and IAS was almost entirely based on weapon IAS so the rest of your gear hardly mattered) and calling it a day. Yes you could stack different things, like going for pure weapon speed (enchantress, firebear, tesladin), stacking CB, stacking DS, whatever. But none of those things really changed anything about how you played the char, or how combat felt. They were just generic DPS increasing affixes that happened to use different mechanics. They were (to use the phrase in the infographic) toast. I think Blizz needs to be very careful, because if they give in and just give D2 patch 1.10-style loot in D3, we might have fun initially until the clear cookie cutter builds come out, and then we will be in the exact same situation as we are now, where after you decide you are going Monk + claw that lets you use whirlwind, the gearing is just as uninteresting as it is today (and as it was in D2). I'm sorry, but I disagree with this. Creating your build in D2 was more than a matter of just meeting a cap or two and call it a day. You had actual choices and liberties, and having the legendaries as know entities helped planning greatly. I spend much more time planning any character, figuring out how much defence I could trade in for offence, if I could justify squeezing in quality of life items, such as the ones that greatly increase run speed, and when I finally build my Enigma, I had a blast trying to fit it on as many characters as I could manage. This sort of planning doesn't come into D3, where your next goal is always more of X. It's fine to say "actual choices and liberties" and "how much defence I could trade in for offence", but it would be nice to list specific examples rather than general sweeping statements. Then we could see if these were actually interesting choices, and more importantly if it's something that could be brought into D3. I doubt you mean stats as (excluding some specific BvB builds) no one would sac 450 vitality for a 5% increase in damage or whatever it worked out to. Enigma wasn't hard to "fit on" any character. Anyone who isn't already a sorc is massively improved by the addition of teleport, regardless of the class. fearus, all the stuff you listed is PvP stuff designed for specific opponents. Isn't this more a symptom of the (lack of) PvP situation in D3 rather than/in addition to itemisation? If PvP was more popular, with a smaller number of popular and powerful builds, might we see people building specific sets as a result (e.g. resist X)? EDIT: Oops, meant to edit my previous post PvP was the end game and the apex of D2 game and item design. I bring this up because looking at D2 from a PvM perspective, would be like a casual player who plays Starcraft single player campaign and think that was all to game. The most in-depth analysis of the game and itemisation was for PvP - before frame rates became public knowledge, the PvPers was already recording animations on video and counting the actual frames to figure out the ias/fcr/fhr breakpoints. Not to mention the top-tier D2 players were the PvPer - in terms of time spend, item wealth and knowledge of the game. When Windforces were selling for 500$ on ebay - it wasn't for PvM. Itemisation for D2 in PvM is trivial. Necromancers could finish hell 8 player completely naked and Hammerdins were hands down the best PvM build. PvP characters was where items, stats points, skill points - reached for perfection. I didnt know of any single person that thought PvP was the end game. Everybody I knew farmed for gear to trade with and to make/improve their characters. PvP was like something to do on the side. The only PvP I ever saw was mostly people trolling hostility on baal runs or something (go tppk on hardcore removing the ability to play public games! yay pvp!) because their char was high level with godly gear. US East ladder had organized 4v4 games where the average player's itemset probably cost in excess of 60 highrunes. I went to one with an Enigma/Eth-Zoded Deathcleaver etc barb and felt like a pauper. It was inarguably the peak of D2.
Where was it organized and how many people did this in comparison to every other part of the game? And it was the peak of D2 for YOU.
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