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On June 09 2020 10:37 ProMeTheus112 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2020 21:03 Manit0u wrote:On June 08 2020 06:32 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
Said it before but something I really like and that's important to me is to get to play more complex characters (as well as highly customizable), so characters that may use many skills, over 12 skills, or over 20 or even more. It really is playable, in wow characters have close to 50 skills.. when well balanced it's just awesome. (You can just switch your keybind "pages" using 1 2 3 4 5 and use keys around WASD for skills and actions for example). With open playstyle, not a pre written playstyle. This and complex mechanics and stat system etc. Quality > quantity but to bring more depth and quality, quantity can matter : P
It's something D2 has to a good extent, but it's tricky to find the builds that work well with up to 16 (active) skills, there are though. You have up to 16 hotkeys for actions, 1 of them would be town portal and maybe 1 or 2 skills coming from items, there is room for making effective skill builds that use the remaining 13 or 14 keys like Sorc based on chain lightning + meteor + thunderstorm + hydra (using telekinesis energy shield frozen armor static field teleport enchant etc) or amazon using a combination of spear + bow with lightning strike + fend + strafe + some enchanted arrow and passive skills including inner sight etc. Done similar with druid or necro I think all characters in D2 can actually build with a lot of skills effectively just gotta find the balance and pick your items ofc. Because of 1.10 synergies and runewords its kinda easy to build with only a few skills and be effective since 1.10 though. I don't think having 50 skills on your skill bar is beneficial in any way. Even if you have so many there's still usually just a handful that you'll be cycling through to have the most impact. I really like the GW approach here, where you have a gazillion skills that you can also mix and match by having 2 classes effectively (similar to Grim Dawn) and of those skills you can pick only 8 (1 of them elite) but you can switch your skills and attributes whenever you're in town (can't do it outside of town when doing missions). Come to think of it, GW is pretty much an ARGPG at this point since you can solo all of the game content and areas are instanced to your team so it's not open world (only town hubs are open and serve as a sort of a lobby). On June 08 2020 15:53 Harris1st wrote:On June 07 2020 06:09 Gorsameth wrote:On June 06 2020 21:44 Latham wrote:On June 06 2020 05:34 Emnjay808 wrote:
Meh I keep rewatching the gameplay video hoping I can change my mind. Still looks like a reskin of D3. Too little too late imo.
I’m gonna wait for what D2 remaster will offer. I hope it can be heavily modded. You're still hopeful after what happened to WC3 Remaster? Jesus, I wish I'd have 1/8th of your optimism. Why does WC3 matter when D4 will have an (entirely) different team working on it? Still the same executives who shoed a very unfinished game out the door to make some quick buck It could be interesting to go down a route where not only clearspeed matters. Imagine instead of 100 mobs on screen which all are pretty much oneshot but instead only very few with meaningful attacks, buff, debuffs, ... where every fight is a "small boss" fight. Like an isometric dark soul meets D2 kinda game. It be totally down for that Yeah, that's also what I want. This tension when you start running out of mana or some other vital resource, your health is plummeting and your opponent is on the verge of death but you're uncertain if you can take it down, you have to position yourself, do some kiting, side-stepping etc. and when you finally come out on top it feels like an actual accomplishment. I think for sure that more skills isn't necessarily better, but in wow played a lot of druid wpvp and you can actually make use of almost all of your skills effectively there (even on a single fight). Wow does have something with cooldowns and some design where your playstyle may be sorta defined by for example very strong skills on a cooldown that you just have to use, crowd controls or the ability to heal a lot etc. Anyway for a ARPG I don't think 50 skills is necessary but I definitely want to be able to use for example 12 or more, and be rewarded for that. Also like to play with quite a bunch of stats and skills values etc. Also the point about clearspeed I really agree, if only the speed of killing matters there is a depth problem and a difficulty problem. If you just slow down a bit it's easy, if you want to do a playstyle that doesn't kill the fastest it's suboptimal etc. That's part of why I'd suggest looking at ways to reward or punish for things like getting hit less over a longer period of time. In my opinion one of D2's biggest flaw is the mega incentive to RUSH like crazy. That's amplified by the ability to get XP from mobs killed by higher leveled characters, but also because the rewards for rushing are big and there isn't much of a penalty to doing some stuff better or worse if you just don't die. I played a lot of D2 completely avoiding to rush and instead building up by doing extra areas and I've had a lot lot more fun playing that way (actually is one way to make the high skill count builds work, by getting more gear at each level so you can avoid maxing some skill early and instead start branching out etc). I see that as a problem. Yes, you have the skillset in you need to master in WoW, when you utilize those skills, but it really limits the customisability, because you are basically "just" using all skills, and are required to, if you want to master it. There is very little theorycrafting involved, and basically 10s of thousands players just like you, doing the same build as you, building for the same things as you.
Like you said earlier; quality over quantity.
I am not sure I get what you are saying about RUSH. Are you talking about people being boosted? If you are, it is only people that do not really care for the journey that wants to be boosted by letting higher level players play for them. There are no rewards other than skipping most of the game, if that is a reward. I never got it, but people can do what they feel like and if they only value end game, then well, that is their game. I feel Blizzard erred there with D3, because there is such a big jump between lvl 69 and lvl 70, due to set items, and as such, I reckon you got some point, that the journey can be viewed as a chore, you rather skip, but I don't consider that a design quality, but a huge design flaw.
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On June 09 2020 20:23 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2020 20:03 Dracolich70 wrote:
... I like that they have returned to origin with a gritty look, but other than that, I expect another dumbed down experience like D3, but maybe it isn't so bad. Maybe this is Blizzard's greatest strength of making something very accessible.... That is, in essence, what Blizzard always was. Combined with the "easy to learn, hard to master" credo all gamers love is what made Blizzard big. Besides the obvious flaws and bugs, Blizzard games are still very accessible, but they are now "easy to learn, something boring to something profit" I feel they have lost a bit of hard to master part. Outside that, I agree, but I also feel they "stole" the best parts of other games in said genres, and made great games with it. They failed massively with HotS on that part, and probably D3 as well.
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They've lost the hard to master part when they've dumbed stuff down so much that there's actually no real though process required, making pretty much all of the player's decisions when creating a build moot.
Just look at the failure D3 is in this regard. You can't really choose between different gear options, all that changes is which set you'll be wearing and that in turn will dictate your build. In D2 you've had to really think if you want to use a blue item that has less affixes but can get better numbers on them or a yellow item that gets many more affixes but with smaller numbers. In D2 you've had to take into account your skill points and synergies between them to craft your build and make your skills stronger. In D3 the effectiveness of your skills depends solely on the gear you have and most set gear has numbers like +4000% damage for skill x. What even are those numbers? When you have your full set (not even ancient or primal ancient) you do damage in the high billions. Is that even necessary? Another thing I've always admired GW for was that they've had small numbers across the board, you get 400-500hp at max level and maxed skills do around 100dmg (300+ with crits etc.) making for a fast paced game where you don't need a degree in astrophysics to comprehend how stuff works and how it affects things. It's rather simple to understand what a 20% increase on 90 damage might have for you, calculating +3000% here and +2500% there from 132456875 is quite a bit harder (and I guess most people just see it as +A LOT OF DMG anyway).
I want some real choice and some real skills, not farm items so you can farm items faster gameplay loop.
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The answer is to get God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals.
But let's be straight, there are few builds that allows you to walk through hard mode. Mostly just panic builds.
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On June 09 2020 14:34 frontliner2 wrote:
Looks like a reskin of D3. Blizzard USA openly fascist to the enemies of the CCP.
D3 was a disaster, WC3R a train wreck. Killed both Brood War and WC3 classics deliberately, just to bully us to buy their shit. Outsources to cheap dev teams in Asia.
Fires 800 ppl after a record year, pays low wages, caters to genocidal communists and rushes to defend their honor. Kotick enriches himself disproportionally. Announces d3 immortal unironically. Announces shifting all major devs to mobile projects. Kotick is an Epstein pedo buddy.
Doesn't care about games at all, just wants to milk IP and mice on. Exists solely for profits and share holders / company value.
Why would anyone like or trust anything from them now? Why?
Remember when they presented this shit reskin of Warcraft back in the days? What was this shit game called again?
>Blizzard USA openly fascist to the enemies of the CCP<. What the fuck?
D3 was a disaster? They had a different vision and fixed for almost free for the community. Warcraft 3 reforged is going through the same process. Brood War and WC3 are still perfectly playable.
They just announced that they hire a shitton of people. Whats wrong with Diablo 3 Immortal? Post your full review of the game.
Doesnt care? Why are they patching every game for free?
Just milking? How much did you pay for there franchises in the last 20 years?
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On June 10 2020 00:21 Manit0u wrote:
They've lost the hard to master part when they've dumbed stuff down so much that there's actually no real though process required, making pretty much all of the player's decisions when creating a build moot.
Just look at the failure D3 is in this regard. You can't really choose between different gear options, all that changes is which set you'll be wearing and that in turn will dictate your build. In D2 you've had to really think if you want to use a blue item that has less affixes but can get better numbers on them or a yellow item that gets many more affixes but with smaller numbers. In D2 you've had to take into account your skill points and synergies between them to craft your build and make your skills stronger. In D3 the effectiveness of your skills depends solely on the gear you have and most set gear has numbers like +4000% damage for skill x. What even are those numbers? When you have your full set (not even ancient or primal ancient) you do damage in the high billions. Is that even necessary? Another thing I've always admired GW for was that they've had small numbers across the board, you get 400-500hp at max level and maxed skills do around 100dmg (300+ with crits etc.) making for a fast paced game where you don't need a degree in astrophysics to comprehend how stuff works and how it affects things. It's rather simple to understand what a 20% increase on 90 damage might have for you, calculating +3000% here and +2500% there from 132456875 is quite a bit harder (and I guess most people just see it as +A LOT OF DMG anyway).
I want some real choice and some real skills, not farm items so you can farm items faster gameplay loop.
So in Diablo 2 you can really do whatever you want and still perform just as good as the "best" build if you just play well, is that correct? This goes with every class, right?
Why cant you swap gear in Diablo 3? Cant you just swap gear and check how you perform with that gear? Or is it because there are numbers that makes you think: "Hey, this number is higher, so its better!"
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On June 09 2020 20:33 Dracolich70 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2020 10:37 ProMeTheus112 wrote:On June 08 2020 21:03 Manit0u wrote:On June 08 2020 06:32 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
Said it before but something I really like and that's important to me is to get to play more complex characters (as well as highly customizable), so characters that may use many skills, over 12 skills, or over 20 or even more. It really is playable, in wow characters have close to 50 skills.. when well balanced it's just awesome. (You can just switch your keybind "pages" using 1 2 3 4 5 and use keys around WASD for skills and actions for example). With open playstyle, not a pre written playstyle. This and complex mechanics and stat system etc. Quality > quantity but to bring more depth and quality, quantity can matter : P
It's something D2 has to a good extent, but it's tricky to find the builds that work well with up to 16 (active) skills, there are though. You have up to 16 hotkeys for actions, 1 of them would be town portal and maybe 1 or 2 skills coming from items, there is room for making effective skill builds that use the remaining 13 or 14 keys like Sorc based on chain lightning + meteor + thunderstorm + hydra (using telekinesis energy shield frozen armor static field teleport enchant etc) or amazon using a combination of spear + bow with lightning strike + fend + strafe + some enchanted arrow and passive skills including inner sight etc. Done similar with druid or necro I think all characters in D2 can actually build with a lot of skills effectively just gotta find the balance and pick your items ofc. Because of 1.10 synergies and runewords its kinda easy to build with only a few skills and be effective since 1.10 though. I don't think having 50 skills on your skill bar is beneficial in any way. Even if you have so many there's still usually just a handful that you'll be cycling through to have the most impact. I really like the GW approach here, where you have a gazillion skills that you can also mix and match by having 2 classes effectively (similar to Grim Dawn) and of those skills you can pick only 8 (1 of them elite) but you can switch your skills and attributes whenever you're in town (can't do it outside of town when doing missions). Come to think of it, GW is pretty much an ARGPG at this point since you can solo all of the game content and areas are instanced to your team so it's not open world (only town hubs are open and serve as a sort of a lobby). On June 08 2020 15:53 Harris1st wrote:On June 07 2020 06:09 Gorsameth wrote:On June 06 2020 21:44 Latham wrote:On June 06 2020 05:34 Emnjay808 wrote:
Meh I keep rewatching the gameplay video hoping I can change my mind. Still looks like a reskin of D3. Too little too late imo.
I’m gonna wait for what D2 remaster will offer. I hope it can be heavily modded. You're still hopeful after what happened to WC3 Remaster? Jesus, I wish I'd have 1/8th of your optimism. Why does WC3 matter when D4 will have an (entirely) different team working on it? Still the same executives who shoed a very unfinished game out the door to make some quick buck It could be interesting to go down a route where not only clearspeed matters. Imagine instead of 100 mobs on screen which all are pretty much oneshot but instead only very few with meaningful attacks, buff, debuffs, ... where every fight is a "small boss" fight. Like an isometric dark soul meets D2 kinda game. It be totally down for that Yeah, that's also what I want. This tension when you start running out of mana or some other vital resource, your health is plummeting and your opponent is on the verge of death but you're uncertain if you can take it down, you have to position yourself, do some kiting, side-stepping etc. and when you finally come out on top it feels like an actual accomplishment. I think for sure that more skills isn't necessarily better, but in wow played a lot of druid wpvp and you can actually make use of almost all of your skills effectively there (even on a single fight). Wow does have something with cooldowns and some design where your playstyle may be sorta defined by for example very strong skills on a cooldown that you just have to use, crowd controls or the ability to heal a lot etc. Anyway for a ARPG I don't think 50 skills is necessary but I definitely want to be able to use for example 12 or more, and be rewarded for that. Also like to play with quite a bunch of stats and skills values etc. Also the point about clearspeed I really agree, if only the speed of killing matters there is a depth problem and a difficulty problem. If you just slow down a bit it's easy, if you want to do a playstyle that doesn't kill the fastest it's suboptimal etc. That's part of why I'd suggest looking at ways to reward or punish for things like getting hit less over a longer period of time. In my opinion one of D2's biggest flaw is the mega incentive to RUSH like crazy. That's amplified by the ability to get XP from mobs killed by higher leveled characters, but also because the rewards for rushing are big and there isn't much of a penalty to doing some stuff better or worse if you just don't die. I played a lot of D2 completely avoiding to rush and instead building up by doing extra areas and I've had a lot lot more fun playing that way (actually is one way to make the high skill count builds work, by getting more gear at each level so you can avoid maxing some skill early and instead start branching out etc). I see that as a problem. Yes, you have the skillset in you need to master in WoW, when you utilize those skills, but it really limits the customisability, because you are basically "just" using all skills, and are required to, if you want to master it. There is very little theorycrafting involved, and basically 10s of thousands players just like you, doing the same build as you, building for the same things as you. Like you said earlier; quality over quantity. I am not sure I get what you are saying about RUSH. Are you talking about people being boosted? If you are, it is only people that do not really care for the journey that wants to be boosted by letting higher level players play for them. There are no rewards other than skipping most of the game, if that is a reward. I never got it, but people can do what they feel like and if they only value end game, then well, that is their game. I feel Blizzard erred there with D3, because there is such a big jump between lvl 69 and lvl 70, due to set items, and as such, I reckon you got some point, that the journey can be viewed as a chore, you rather skip, but I don't consider that a design quality, but a huge design flaw.
I pretty much completely agree with your points about Wow where you have limited customisability and the playstyle is too prewritten, I don't think wow is perfect at all and this is where I would place the criticism to progress further into its genre (also would make points about crowdcontrol, healing and super strong abilities on cooldowns, or way too strong invisibility/"stealth" etc. And definitely would place emphasis on open world versus instances, or at least bring more balance in between them on the rewards and activities, for both pve and pvp). The balance is elsewhere for a ARPG, but I want to make points of comparison on the amounts of skills because I have seen a trend where a lot of games now limit your # of skills to a preset number of either 3, 5 or 7 or something like that. I want to keep playing more complex characters, and that involves both having a interesting balance with skills that can be used many different ways and depending on a player's playstyle, customisability, and a rewarding system for playing a more complex characters that uses more skills, though it doesn't have to be 50 skills. Quality still beats quantity, it's better to have a limit of 16 skills that give amazing combinations of possibilities, than 100 skills that you have to use the same way no matter what, for sure.
About RUSH : the reward I think I would place on the position that your character finds itself in in the total pool of characters. If you rush in D2, and I'm sure in D3, and this is actually a problem in many RPGs imo, you will get faster to a point where you will get more valuable rewards more quickly therefore getting ahead for your role in the server economy or combat power and etc. Wow vanilla mitigates this to an extent by providing valuable stuff at lower levels so that you can still for example make a decent amount of gold while you are not lvl 60, and on the contrary you kind of need to buy a lot of expensive stuff from other players at 60 to get into the raids consumable stuff... But if you are level 60, you are still in the position where you can make the highest amount of "gold per hour". And getting there as fast as possible involves sleeping as little as you can while killing monsters mega repetitively as fast as possible... In D2, it means going for a cheap easy build with a tele sorc in your group and zipping through the game and you will get ahead in nearly every way from characters who don't do this, especially because you can also just reset your stat and skill points later (since 1.10). What is the answer against this playstyle, which isn't really fun but very powerful hence often becomes predominant ? Perhaps it is best not to reward XP from just killing monsters or doing anything fast, and have the player make choices during the character progression that can't be undone at the end, so that doing the fastest playstyle isn't necessarily the most overall efficient. This way you can actually reward other playstyles which a lot of players would find more fun, making them also rewarding in game power.
Also agree with "they lost the hard to master part" and all the points Manit0u brought up.
What I'm looking for is something even better than D2.
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On June 10 2020 00:21 Manit0u wrote:
They've lost the hard to master part when they've dumbed stuff down so much that there's actually no real though process required, making pretty much all of the player's decisions when creating a build moot.
Just look at the failure D3 is in this regard. You can't really choose between different gear options, all that changes is which set you'll be wearing and that in turn will dictate your build. In D2 you've had to really think if you want to use a blue item that has less affixes but can get better numbers on them or a yellow item that gets many more affixes but with smaller numbers. In D2 you've had to take into account your skill points and synergies between them to craft your build and make your skills stronger. In D3 the effectiveness of your skills depends solely on the gear you have and most set gear has numbers like +4000% damage for skill x. What even are those numbers? When you have your full set (not even ancient or primal ancient) you do damage in the high billions. Is that even necessary? Another thing I've always admired GW for was that they've had small numbers across the board, you get 400-500hp at max level and maxed skills do around 100dmg (300+ with crits etc.) making for a fast paced game where you don't need a degree in astrophysics to comprehend how stuff works and how it affects things. It's rather simple to understand what a 20% increase on 90 damage might have for you, calculating +3000% here and +2500% there from 132456875 is quite a bit harder (and I guess most people just see it as +A LOT OF DMG anyway).
I want some real choice and some real skills, not farm items so you can farm items faster gameplay loop. I agree with everything you said. I think Blizzard became a fan of big numbers, because - for some people - it gives the illusion of great progress. Big numbers translate into extreme value, even if it is just illusory and at large meaningless, because it is just a scale thing you have to accommodate to compete with the scale of the game in itself as you level, or progress further. Some people get hyped and put value into bigger numbers and see it as lack of progress, when your HP has only scaled 100% from lvl 1 to lvl end game. And to some extent they have a point, because if you only have small increments of power scale, the ceiling and the broadness is rather low and narrow in terms of itemisation and skill progress. The main problem for Blizzard is that they haven't utilized this into something truly meaningful, because essentially your item and skill choices are very limited. Your gear just becomes obsolete very quickly and you need stats that accommodate your current level, leaving no decision choices or very limited.
I didn't play GW2 a whole lot, but I felt that it was more about your skills as a player than scaling or itemisation. I feel Path of Exile really hit it the balance well, because there are so many decisions you need to make that are larger than just damage/damage mitigation, and it has multiple pathways to Rome.
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On June 10 2020 02:56 ProMeTheus112 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 09 2020 20:33 Dracolich70 wrote:On June 09 2020 10:37 ProMeTheus112 wrote:On June 08 2020 21:03 Manit0u wrote:On June 08 2020 06:32 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
Said it before but something I really like and that's important to me is to get to play more complex characters (as well as highly customizable), so characters that may use many skills, over 12 skills, or over 20 or even more. It really is playable, in wow characters have close to 50 skills.. when well balanced it's just awesome. (You can just switch your keybind "pages" using 1 2 3 4 5 and use keys around WASD for skills and actions for example). With open playstyle, not a pre written playstyle. This and complex mechanics and stat system etc. Quality > quantity but to bring more depth and quality, quantity can matter : P
It's something D2 has to a good extent, but it's tricky to find the builds that work well with up to 16 (active) skills, there are though. You have up to 16 hotkeys for actions, 1 of them would be town portal and maybe 1 or 2 skills coming from items, there is room for making effective skill builds that use the remaining 13 or 14 keys like Sorc based on chain lightning + meteor + thunderstorm + hydra (using telekinesis energy shield frozen armor static field teleport enchant etc) or amazon using a combination of spear + bow with lightning strike + fend + strafe + some enchanted arrow and passive skills including inner sight etc. Done similar with druid or necro I think all characters in D2 can actually build with a lot of skills effectively just gotta find the balance and pick your items ofc. Because of 1.10 synergies and runewords its kinda easy to build with only a few skills and be effective since 1.10 though. I don't think having 50 skills on your skill bar is beneficial in any way. Even if you have so many there's still usually just a handful that you'll be cycling through to have the most impact. I really like the GW approach here, where you have a gazillion skills that you can also mix and match by having 2 classes effectively (similar to Grim Dawn) and of those skills you can pick only 8 (1 of them elite) but you can switch your skills and attributes whenever you're in town (can't do it outside of town when doing missions). Come to think of it, GW is pretty much an ARGPG at this point since you can solo all of the game content and areas are instanced to your team so it's not open world (only town hubs are open and serve as a sort of a lobby). On June 08 2020 15:53 Harris1st wrote:On June 07 2020 06:09 Gorsameth wrote:On June 06 2020 21:44 Latham wrote:On June 06 2020 05:34 Emnjay808 wrote:
Meh I keep rewatching the gameplay video hoping I can change my mind. Still looks like a reskin of D3. Too little too late imo.
I’m gonna wait for what D2 remaster will offer. I hope it can be heavily modded. You're still hopeful after what happened to WC3 Remaster? Jesus, I wish I'd have 1/8th of your optimism. Why does WC3 matter when D4 will have an (entirely) different team working on it? Still the same executives who shoed a very unfinished game out the door to make some quick buck It could be interesting to go down a route where not only clearspeed matters. Imagine instead of 100 mobs on screen which all are pretty much oneshot but instead only very few with meaningful attacks, buff, debuffs, ... where every fight is a "small boss" fight. Like an isometric dark soul meets D2 kinda game. It be totally down for that Yeah, that's also what I want. This tension when you start running out of mana or some other vital resource, your health is plummeting and your opponent is on the verge of death but you're uncertain if you can take it down, you have to position yourself, do some kiting, side-stepping etc. and when you finally come out on top it feels like an actual accomplishment. I think for sure that more skills isn't necessarily better, but in wow played a lot of druid wpvp and you can actually make use of almost all of your skills effectively there (even on a single fight). Wow does have something with cooldowns and some design where your playstyle may be sorta defined by for example very strong skills on a cooldown that you just have to use, crowd controls or the ability to heal a lot etc. Anyway for a ARPG I don't think 50 skills is necessary but I definitely want to be able to use for example 12 or more, and be rewarded for that. Also like to play with quite a bunch of stats and skills values etc. Also the point about clearspeed I really agree, if only the speed of killing matters there is a depth problem and a difficulty problem. If you just slow down a bit it's easy, if you want to do a playstyle that doesn't kill the fastest it's suboptimal etc. That's part of why I'd suggest looking at ways to reward or punish for things like getting hit less over a longer period of time. In my opinion one of D2's biggest flaw is the mega incentive to RUSH like crazy. That's amplified by the ability to get XP from mobs killed by higher leveled characters, but also because the rewards for rushing are big and there isn't much of a penalty to doing some stuff better or worse if you just don't die. I played a lot of D2 completely avoiding to rush and instead building up by doing extra areas and I've had a lot lot more fun playing that way (actually is one way to make the high skill count builds work, by getting more gear at each level so you can avoid maxing some skill early and instead start branching out etc). I see that as a problem. Yes, you have the skillset in you need to master in WoW, when you utilize those skills, but it really limits the customisability, because you are basically "just" using all skills, and are required to, if you want to master it. There is very little theorycrafting involved, and basically 10s of thousands players just like you, doing the same build as you, building for the same things as you. Like you said earlier; quality over quantity. I am not sure I get what you are saying about RUSH. Are you talking about people being boosted? If you are, it is only people that do not really care for the journey that wants to be boosted by letting higher level players play for them. There are no rewards other than skipping most of the game, if that is a reward. I never got it, but people can do what they feel like and if they only value end game, then well, that is their game. I feel Blizzard erred there with D3, because there is such a big jump between lvl 69 and lvl 70, due to set items, and as such, I reckon you got some point, that the journey can be viewed as a chore, you rather skip, but I don't consider that a design quality, but a huge design flaw. I pretty much completely agree with your points about Wow where you have limited customisability and the playstyle is too prewritten, I don't think wow is perfect at all and this is where I would place the criticism to progress further into its genre (also would make points about crowdcontrol, healing and super strong abilities on cooldowns, or way too strong invisibility/"stealth" etc. And definitely would place emphasis on open world versus instances, or at least bring more balance in between them on the rewards and activities, for both pve and pvp). The balance is elsewhere for a ARPG, but I want to make points of comparison on the amounts of skills because I have seen a trend where a lot of games now limit your # of skills to a preset number of either 3, 5 or 7 or something like that. I want to keep playing more complex characters, and that involves both having a interesting balance with skills that can be used many different ways and depending on a player's playstyle, customisability, and a rewarding system for playing a more complex characters that uses more skills, though it doesn't have to be 50 skills. Quality still beats quantity, it's better to have a limit of 16 skills that give amazing combinations of possibilities, than 100 skills that you have to use the same way no matter what, for sure. About RUSH : the reward I think I would place on the position that your character finds itself in in the total pool of characters. If you rush in D2, and I'm sure in D3, and this is actually a problem in many RPGs imo, you will get faster to a point where you will get more valuable rewards more quickly therefore getting ahead for your role in the server economy or combat power and etc. Wow vanilla mitigates this to an extent by providing valuable stuff at lower levels so that you can still for example make a decent amount of gold while you are not lvl 60, and on the contrary you kind of need to buy a lot of expensive stuff from other players at 60 to get into the raids consumable stuff... But if you are level 60, you are still in the position where you can make the highest amount of "gold per hour". And getting there as fast as possible involves sleeping as little as you can while killing monsters mega repetitively as fast as possible... In D2, it means going for a cheap easy build with a tele sorc in your group and zipping through the game and you will get ahead in nearly every way from characters who don't do this, especially because you can also just reset your stat and skill points later. What is the answer against this playstyle, which isn't really fun but very powerful hence often becomes predominant ? Perhaps it is best not to reward XP from just killing monsters or doing anything fast, and have the player make choices during the character progression that can't be undone at the end, so that doing the fastest playstyle isn't necessarily the most overall efficient. This way you can actually reward other playstyles which a lot of players would find more fun, making them also rewarding in game power. Also agree with "they lost the hard to master part" and all the points Manit0u brought up. What I'm looking for is something even better than D2. I agree, but I think it is a balance between options and decisions. When you have all skills available to pick, there are a lot of options, but you are deprived of decisions and in the other end, if you only have 6-8, you may not have a lot of options(the pool could still be very deep), but you have to have a lot of decisions, depending on pool size, with a limited scope, the best options quickly emerges and outside balance patches, there will be a best way very quickly. I understand your argument with complexity, but is quantity the only measure of complexity? I agree with your notion of playstyles, and an overlooked or underutilised notion of ARPGs. And I agree that quantity can give a false sense of complexity, because the decisions aren't really decisions you have to make, as they are not hard to make.
I have heard the arguments that "The game starts at the end game", and I feel that is basically a design flaw, that companies have tried to drill into their players. It is basically a replayability mode where you decide to skip most of the game, because you have done so before, but the experience is so lackluster, that the true power spike is at max level. I know people are different, so people work around it where they find the value of the game. Personally I love the progress from nothing to something and the replayability comes from the decisions I need to make as well as the journey. When I get to end game, I quickly think of the next build, and the end game feels like a chore, because at that point it is just a matter of min/maxing. Others love this part and that is okay. That said, a truly good game, makes both the journey to end game as well as the end game enjoyable with their subplot goals attached to them. Trivialising one, makes a really boring experience. Paying for a boost or having people to play the game for you until a certain level, is really just proofs of really bad design flaws as much as admitting both from players end and from developers end that most of their game is actually a boring and tedious experience and only the destination is of any value. I understand the player that wants all the bells and whistles, when it comes to both WoW and Diablo 3, because Blizzard forgot what makes a good game and maybe the players did too. But essentially you are deciding to skip most of the game and that feels incredibly empty to me. They may as well give you the option to start at max level, and cut your journey short. I don't fault you in any way, because these things are simply the game leaving you in a limbo of not making any investments until you are max level, and your grinding, gold per hour etc starts there, because the spike is at max potential.
As you imply, any level should feel relevant. And the Diablo franchise needs to get back to that(I know a lot of players boosted in D2 as well. Most of my friends did, while I found no pleasure in it. Hell, some even had bots to grind for them for loot, while I did them manually, and they shook their heads at me). In D3, your goal is getting set items(unless you are LoD), because much of your build revolves around that, and as such, Blizzard made the notion that 1-69 is just a waiting queue to your build to come into fruition or even possible.
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On June 10 2020 13:40 Dracolich70 wrote:
I didn't play GW2 a whole lot, but I felt that it was more about your skills as a player than scaling or itemisation. I feel Path of Exile really hit it the balance well, because there are so many decisions you need to make that are larger than just damage/damage mitigation, and it has multiple pathways to Rome.
GW1 and GW2 tackle it a bit differently. In GW1 you get to max level super fast (around 25h, which is nothing for a MMO) and you can buy the max stat gear straight off the shop. But that's when the game really begins, you can play like that sure but where you sink your time is getting elite gear (just cosmetics), trying to find perfect runes and upgrades for your gear (so you get +20% chance on faster skill recharge instead of +18% and +50 health instead of +41), getting faction points, dyes and hunting elite skills. Another thing to note is that you don't hit max level near the end of campaign. For 2 out of 3 campaigns you'll be max level after leaving the tutorial, so you have the entire game ahead of you.
And speaking of elite skills, I think it's an awesome feature. You can only have 1 of those on your skill bar and to unlock them you have to defeat bosses that use them and capture the skill from them.
In GW2 it's a bit slower (there's 80 levels instead of 20) but it goes at a relatively fast pace and it's pretty easy to get max gear (then it's cosmetics and upgrades like in GW1). In general I brought up GW1 in my examples since it's more similar to ARPG than MMO with everything being instanced etc.
On June 10 2020 02:21 jimosa wrote:
Warcraft 3 reforged is going through the same process. Brood War and WC3 are still perfectly playable.
Hahahaha, really? Reforged has no ladder 6 months after launch, there's a bunch of critical bugs and desyncs that have been there since day 1 and they managed to even break the old WC3 with it. They really do care about the community... WC3R is a dead game by now pretty much. They've had their chance to make a great thing, a lot of people were hyped for it, now it's just a dead shell that people who still play WC3 (most people use the old client) mock and all the potential new players have already left because they can't wait gods know how long until the game has some basic features that they need. I would not call that "perfectly playable".
But back to D4, I have very little faith in it right now. We'll have to wait and see what they show us but I'm just afraid that there's too much pressure to make a game that can be easily monetized instead of making it actually good. Welcome to the corporate world.
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I don't expect D4 will be good. But yeah explosion of numbers mean that low level stuff will become irrelevant so the journey is less/not relevant to the end and that's not a good thing etc. I don't play to rush, I go slow, even when I play wow I don't care about raids I just do tons of wpvp from start to finish.
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You have to make the leveling progress meaningful with something that can't be done at max level with minimum effort in half the time.
GW does that quite right: You have to discover all the nodes and points and whatnot and it's best done while leveling. Sure you can go to max and then do it, but it still takes time and you don't have that much of an advantage.
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On June 10 2020 22:43 Harris1st wrote:
GW does that quite right: You have to discover all the nodes and points and whatnot and it's best done while leveling. Sure you can go to max and then do it, but it still takes time and you don't have that much of an advantage.
You say thats done quite right and others would say that is obnoxious. PoE has the same with its 20something quests that reward you a skill point and some people complain that even that is just annoying. Truth is there is no objectively optimal solution. Some people like one way some people like the other way more.
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Well, if you tie everything together nicely it doesn't have to be such a chore. If to complete your build you need some skill or item that can only be found in a specific place and to get to that place you have to progress through the story I think it's a nice incentive to do it.
I agree that there's a lot of people who are not interested in the story at all and they only want to get to the final grind and end game content but you can't cater only to those people. Making stuff you find earlier in your progression still relevant during the end game is one idea of doing it right.
Or I'll get back to GW again here with a different approach. If all you want is say just end game PvP you can create a PvP character that starts with max level and max gear. You unlock elite skills and gear upgrades through doing PvP stuff and you don't have to touch the story at all. However, if you create an RP character, have to go through all the leveling etc. you also unlock PvP stuff for your PvP chars, you can take part in PvP with this char and you get access to a plethora of activities and content those PvP chars don't. It's a nice way of handling it and I think D3 actually needed such a thing, where you create a lvl 70 char and all you do is run the rifts (can't access the campaign map with the bounties etc.). If leveling from 1-69 is just to get you to that point anyway why go through the chore? You could either play rift-runner or have a more permanent character that goes through multiple seasons doing the bounties etc.
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On June 10 2020 23:21 Warri wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2020 22:43 Harris1st wrote:
GW does that quite right: You have to discover all the nodes and points and whatnot and it's best done while leveling. Sure you can go to max and then do it, but it still takes time and you don't have that much of an advantage.
You say thats done quite right and others would say that is obnoxious. PoE has the same with its 20something quests that reward you a skill point and some people complain that even that is just annoying. Truth is there is no objectively optimal solution. Some people like one way some people like the other way more.
I am one of those people 
My absolutely subjective opinion: After playing PoE for some years and leveling 2-3 characters each league, i just can't stand the friggin campain anymore.
The revamp into 10 Acts was great, but thats already 2 years old and it feels like a chore again each time. I honestly can't understand HC players who level even more characters or streamers like Mathils with 10-20 chars per league.I would have jumped out of my window already.
Thats one of the points where D3 is clearly better in my eyes. I have the choice of 3-4 ways to level: Rifts, Bounties, Killstreaks, even campaign! But it is optional, i can chose whats most fun for me, so thats a feature they hopefully get right in D4.
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On June 11 2020 00:36 Soltanol wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2020 23:21 Warri wrote:On June 10 2020 22:43 Harris1st wrote:
GW does that quite right: You have to discover all the nodes and points and whatnot and it's best done while leveling. Sure you can go to max and then do it, but it still takes time and you don't have that much of an advantage.
You say thats done quite right and others would say that is obnoxious. PoE has the same with its 20something quests that reward you a skill point and some people complain that even that is just annoying. Truth is there is no objectively optimal solution. Some people like one way some people like the other way more. I am one of those people My absolutely subjective opinion: After playing PoE for some years and leveling 2-3 characters each league, i just can't stand the friggin campain anymore. The revamp into 10 Acts was great, but thats already 2 years old and it feels like a chore again each time. I honestly can't understand HC players who level even more characters or streamers like Mathils with 10-20 chars per league.I would have jumped out of my window already. Thats one of the points where D3 is clearly better in my eyes. I have the choice of 3-4 ways to level: Rifts, Bounties, Killstreaks, even campaign! But it is optional, i can chose whats most fun for me, so thats a feature they hopefully get right in D4. It is Mathil's job. He made a vod on how he avoided burnout. I couldn't do it either, but there are worse jobs in the world. HC is not my cup of tea, but the incentive is problem solving, feeling urgency, and well, starting of a new project, because the replayability of the game is not the same experience each and every time, even on same classes. I doubt you felt you could play 10-20 characters every season in D3, even if we pretended it was a valid option, which it isn't, as there is no incentive to.
It is only a chore, if you treat it like one. Top players do it in 3-4 hours, if they at large ignore the league content, which in itself is far richer than D3's season ditto. If you do rifts during the levelling, that is all you will do on that character, as there isn't anything other to do(outside bounties, that has little incentive). PoE has more than mapping. And the mapping itself has the variety of the different mechanics.
All those measures to level in D3 are not very thrilling processes in themselves, and since itemisation is at large irrelevant during the whole process - outside you pick up new items every few levels, and the decision process is incredibly limited, your journey is much the same on all characters, unlike in PoE, that has so many, many, many, many more options, during this process in the campaign alone, that it will feel like a different experience.
I have levelled 100s of characters in PoE, since I started in 2014. D3 is only interesting to me, because I never really played it until recently, even if I have owned it for 4 years. Having levelled 4 characters in season 20 over a 2 week period, where one was the campaign, I was done. They also had pretty much all the pieces I needed for the builds, and the rest was just getting more Ancient or Primals. Your paragon levels are carried over to the next character and as such it is process of getting to 70, where itemisation and the build can start.
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On June 10 2020 23:21 Warri wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2020 22:43 Harris1st wrote:
GW does that quite right: You have to discover all the nodes and points and whatnot and it's best done while leveling. Sure you can go to max and then do it, but it still takes time and you don't have that much of an advantage.
You say thats done quite right and others would say that is obnoxious. PoE has the same with its 20something quests that reward you a skill point and some people complain that even that is just annoying. Truth is there is no objectively optimal solution. Some people like one way some people like the other way more. There may not be optimal solutions, as that is too subjective, but diversifying your experience, is always more optimal than a static and limited one. Well, unless you are one of those very rare people that prefers to throw a tennis ball up against the wall 8 hours a day with no pattern change.
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I absolutely hated the story of Diablo 3. It was dumb. The game itself became decent, but still not good. I played a lot after the release of RoS, it was fun while it lasted, but I'm not a grinder in these games. I play until all my characters are max level and can tackle some decent high level content. The highest I got was with a DH, Torment 10 iirc. So overall, I'm not really hyped for D4. Especially after Blizzard's recent failures.
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D4 looks like it will be a fun to play game, pretty excited to get it honestly even though so many Diablo fans are skeptical. I also enjoyed D2 a lot more than D3 so I am hoping it rekindles some of that energy as well.
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EPT
