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On April 03 2023 04:43 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 04:00 uummpaa wrote:
sigh
its pointless, but ill try it one more time:
YOU ARE DOING THE EXACT SAME THING!!
not allowing respecing FORCES me to make new chars for new builds (or worse just look up meta builds) because it affects all the things in the game you mentioned, everything does, and thus its not a valid argument to not allow it because its just as valid to allow it
for me personally the fun in games like this is trying out stuff or reacting to a neat itemdrop during lvling, which is hugely limited if respecing is very hard. (i.e. a huge impact on how i play). And switching around gear through a shared chest is just tedious, as is lvling a char (which is quite the time investment as well but that’s not even my point here). you have fun another way which is great
if you dont like the respecs how hard are you in the disadvantage in comparison?
less because you can still play your preferred way, and i really dont see a realistic way where your disadvantage for not respecing would be so huge that you arent allowed to go into coop games, earn significanly less gold for trading etc (in that case balancing would be very bad, and the game would have much bigger problems the respecing). you never brought any specific arguments except it gives an edge, but the magnitude of said edge matters a lot here
and just because your definition for longevity in a game is being forced to lvling new chars all the time doesnt mean that the game should delete all your chars every two months does it? Effectively forcing players to keep lvling chars whether they want or not would not add much to longevity either since ppl who don’t enjoy that simply quit
tldr:
free respecs let me play the way i want and you play at at least 90% effectiveness if you completely ignore it
no respecs lets me not play at all the way i like and you at 100%
i call this trade bad game design since one gives more player options then the other
No, you are the one who doesn't understand the point that is being made. I perfectly get where you are coming from. However, not every game can be for everyone. D3 wasn't for me but made the right decision for you. D4 made a different decision I'm more in favour of. If they had gone for free respecs, the game, again, wouldn't have been for me. At least not in a similar manner D2 was. You are trying to explain to us that it doesn't make a difference for us when it obviously does. How is it so hard to understand that all the fun of decision making is gone for some people (e.g. myself) if the decision is meaningless. The disadvantage is clear: The game is not fun, period. This is the same in reverse for you without respec. So no, your TL;DR is wrong. An ARPG with free respec doesn't let me play the way I want because it isn't fun because it feels meaningless. With longevity I didn't mean unnecessarily increasing game time for the sake of increasing game time. I hate that. I meant meaningful, as in fun, game time. Obviously that is very subjective. For you, leveling a new char isn't fun (is that true in every game?). For me it very much depends. In WoW, leveling was pure hell for me so everytime I tried that game I ended up giving up very quickly (respec didn't even matter at that point). In D2 I loved leveling new chars; to me it was a lot of the fun seeing the character grow into a full blown build. And to bring a completely different example: In GW I liked leveling new chars even though the game had free respecs with a very convenient template system. Why? Because there was more attachment to the character itself than in ARPG through the story, titles, which give meaning to your character. The experimenting also doesn't stop once you tried everything once like in an ARPG. Every zone can be different and ask for different skills. Now if D4 did the same, I would personally argue in favour of free respec but the chances for that ever happening are basically 0. Tbf, I'm relatively sure limited respec wouldn't have saved D3 for me. The story was so attrociously obnoxious that playing through it was like constantly getting vomitted into the face. The item system was also attrocious etc. It would have taken a complete revamp of the game to make me like it. Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 04:34 Gorsameth wrote:
The people who level multiple characters, especially of the same class, are logically the vast minority of players. Every statistic that exists from every game ever tells us this.
If the 'casual' player makes a bad build that they can't respec, they just quit rather then level again.
Wanting no respecs is just the hardcore community chest beating themselves about how great they are for having 'meaningful choices' while everyone else walks away to play a more friendly game. I don't think it has anything to do with being hardcore. It just depends on what you think is fun. I don't know if what you say is true or not, although I can certainly imagining it being true. However, I don't understand what your point is. To never make a game that caters to a minority of players? If yes, then I'm done arguing here.
In D3 you didn't really need respecs because there wasn't much of a "build" to begin with and then everything really depended on your items, not your skills, so whatever you choose was pretty much meaningless anyway.
Unfortunately D4 seems to be heading the same way, something I've been against from the start and have been vocal about in this thread. IMO items should not be the focal point of your build, nor should they define it. Might as well just omit the talent tree and skills altogether, to get rid of the illusion that you're actually "building" your character in any other way than finding items.
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Leveling or also farming is also very fun for me, as long as difficulty is present and something is going on that doesn't make it repetitive and makes me make choices. When it's like that I don't mind that pretty much the entire game is leveling/farming cause I just have a lot of fun doing that (such as in wow doing wpvp + managing items then selling + random coop etc). I'd add when leveling or farming isn't fun (cause the game is too easy or I have little choices to make or w/e), I'd probably quit or not want to do it again or dodge the game in the first place.
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On April 03 2023 04:43 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 04:34 Gorsameth wrote:
The people who level multiple characters, especially of the same class, are logically the vast minority of players. Every statistic that exists from every game ever tells us this.
If the 'casual' player makes a bad build that they can't respec, they just quit rather then level again.
Wanting no respecs is just the hardcore community chest beating themselves about how great they are for having 'meaningful choices' while everyone else walks away to play a more friendly game. I don't think it has anything to do with being hardcore. It just depends on what you think is fun. I don't know if what you say is true or not, although I can certainly imagining it being true. However, I don't understand what your point is. To never make a game that caters to a minority of players? If yes, then I'm done arguing here. I'm not saying you should never cater to a minority but the minority that likes to make a dozen of the same character isn't going to bothered by having accessible respecs (note that this does not have to mean free) nearly as much as the likely majority is going to be bothered by not having them.
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On April 03 2023 07:02 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 04:43 Miragee wrote:On April 03 2023 04:34 Gorsameth wrote:
The people who level multiple characters, especially of the same class, are logically the vast minority of players. Every statistic that exists from every game ever tells us this.
If the 'casual' player makes a bad build that they can't respec, they just quit rather then level again.
Wanting no respecs is just the hardcore community chest beating themselves about how great they are for having 'meaningful choices' while everyone else walks away to play a more friendly game. I don't think it has anything to do with being hardcore. It just depends on what you think is fun. I don't know if what you say is true or not, although I can certainly imagining it being true. However, I don't understand what your point is. To never make a game that caters to a minority of players? If yes, then I'm done arguing here. I'm not saying you should never cater to a minority but the minority that likes to make a dozen of the same character isn't going to bothered by having accessible respecs (note that this does not have to mean free) nearly as much as the likely majority is going to be bothered by not having them.
Hm, what do you mean it doesn't bother us nearly as much? Not talking for everyone of course but free respecs obviously bother people enough to not play the game or drop it very quickly. I count that as being similarly bothered to "walking away to a more friendly game". Anyhow, this discussion only caught fire because someone started to call any respec costs at all stupid. Some sort of respec is fine for me, even though I personally prefer no or very limited (e.g. give players the ability to fix mistakes but not respec entirely) respecs for this sort of game.
For what it's worth, in D4 they actually try to appease both camps. Having nearly no respec costs early on to let people fix mistakes and experiment and ramp it up later on so once you reach high levels your choices matter seems to be a sensible solution in theory if balanced correctly. I also don't understand why people say Blizzard lied in this case or are surprised. This is one of the few cases Blizzard actually delivered exactly what they told us beforehand. My first respec cost literally 1 gold with tens of thousands of gold in the bank. We haven't seen how it will play out later but they said it will severely ramp up starting at level 50 (I think? or was it 60? something along those lines).
On another note, I would also like to know when this shift happened. Classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate were very successful and I never heard any complaints about not being able to respec. People who only did one casual playthrough were fine without seeing everything or making "wrong" decisions. Today, everyone seems obsessed with the idea of playing the optimal way and getting to experience 100 % of the game, yet they call themselves casuals. Doesn't sound very casual to me but that's another discussion.
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On April 03 2023 07:42 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 07:02 Gorsameth wrote:On April 03 2023 04:43 Miragee wrote:On April 03 2023 04:34 Gorsameth wrote:
The people who level multiple characters, especially of the same class, are logically the vast minority of players. Every statistic that exists from every game ever tells us this.
If the 'casual' player makes a bad build that they can't respec, they just quit rather then level again.
Wanting no respecs is just the hardcore community chest beating themselves about how great they are for having 'meaningful choices' while everyone else walks away to play a more friendly game. I don't think it has anything to do with being hardcore. It just depends on what you think is fun. I don't know if what you say is true or not, although I can certainly imagining it being true. However, I don't understand what your point is. To never make a game that caters to a minority of players? If yes, then I'm done arguing here. I'm not saying you should never cater to a minority but the minority that likes to make a dozen of the same character isn't going to bothered by having accessible respecs (note that this does not have to mean free) nearly as much as the likely majority is going to be bothered by not having them. Hm, what do you mean it doesn't bother us nearly as much? Not talking for everyone of course but free respecs obviously bother people enough to not play the game or drop it very quickly. I count that as being similarly bothered to "walking away to a more friendly game". Anyhow, this discussion only caught fire because someone started to call any respec costs at all stupid. Some sort of respec is fine for me, even though I personally prefer no or very limited (e.g. give players the ability to fix mistakes but not respec entirely) respecs for this sort of game. For what it's worth, in D4 they actually try to appease both camps. Having nearly no respec costs early on to let people fix mistakes and experiment and ramp it up later on so once you reach high levels your choices matter seems to be a sensible solution in theory if balanced correctly. I also don't understand why people say Blizzard lied in this case or are surprised. This is one of the few cases Blizzard actually delivered exactly what they told us beforehand. My first respec cost literally 1 gold with tens of thousands of gold in the bank. We haven't seen how it will play out later but they said it will severely ramp up starting at level 50 (I think? or was it 60? something along those lines). On another note, I would also like to know when this shift happened. Classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate were very successful and I never heard any complaints about not being able to respec. People who only did one casual playthrough were fine without seeing everything or making "wrong" decisions. Today, everyone seems obsessed with the idea of playing the optimal way and getting to experience 100 % of the game, yet they call themselves casuals. Doesn't sound very casual to me but that's another discussion.
I can imagine playing Baldur's Gate and having a global chat window where people having a conversation about how bad... iunno, subclassing fighter as sorcerer is... would directly impact the casual player who is otherwise playing single player. This kind of thing happens constantly in D3/PoE/WoW etc More information and public perception of balance is a detriment to a "casual player" experience, and we live in a world where that casual player will watch a lore video for D4 on YouTube and in turn get "SORCERESS IS THE BEST CLASS IN D4" and "D4 BARBARIAN IS DOGSHIT AND HERE'S WHY" suggested in their feed as media they'll probably watch, even though it's literally spoilers that ruin what otherwise would be gameplay exploration to them.
The advantage this world brings us is that we can have wholly too mechanically complicated games and still have them be approachable by the general public (PoE, I'm looking at you.) but it definitely narrows the volume of truly casual players, because it takes force of will to avoid the information that would ruin your fun before you even get to have it, and putting effort into remaining casual is... uh... unintuitive.
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On April 03 2023 08:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
we can have wholly too mechanically complicated games and still have them be approachable by the general public (PoE, I'm looking at you.)
PoE is definitely not approachable by the general public. At least not after like lvl 20 or something, even seasoned players look at the skill tree, links, gems and just bail out. For me it was definitely the case of "I can't be bothered with this bullshit", where most I expect from ARPG-style games is that I can run around a bit, click my mouse to kill stuff, level up, spend some points into stats/skills or whatever progression there is and have fun in general without thinking too much.
Once the game asks you to keep track of a gazillion different things, plan out what you'll do in the game for the forseeable future and such it becomes more like a chore than a game.
I also know people who gave up much sooner than I did, without even giving the game much of a chance once they saw some build guides online etc.
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Ehh, I've seen a number of friends be able to follow a youtube build guide and 'complete the game' just fine without having any real understanding of why their build works. PoE would be much, MUCH harder to approach without the 'in' of being able to basically copy-paste a build and do just fine without having any understanding of why your build works.
I get what you're saying, though - it's a double edge. Without the internet or community input PoE would probably be WHOLLY unapproachable. It's insanely complicated because it cab be with the functional living wiki inside of it, but if that living wiki of a player base didn't exist, we'd probably have a simpler, cleaner set of mechanics.
...or nobody would know who shaper is, or how LAB works or anything.
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United States12235 Posts
On April 03 2023 10:03 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 08:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
we can have wholly too mechanically complicated games and still have them be approachable by the general public (PoE, I'm looking at you.) PoE is definitely not approachable by the general public. At least not after like lvl 20 or something, even seasoned players look at the skill tree, links, gems and just bail out. For me it was definitely the case of "I can't be bothered with this bullshit", where most I expect from ARPG-style games is that I can run around a bit, click my mouse to kill stuff, level up, spend some points into stats/skills or whatever progression there is and have fun in general without thinking too much. Once the game asks you to keep track of a gazillion different things, plan out what you'll do in the game for the forseeable future and such it becomes more like a chore than a game. I also know people who gave up much sooner than I did, without even giving the game much of a chance once they saw some build guides online etc.
I played PoE for the first time a couple of years ago without a guide and didn't find it too bad to start. The skill tree appears daunting initially, but it's also pretty easy to set targets and build toward them. What does get confusing is the myriad content elements left over from past Leagues: the Hunts, the Maps, the Heists, the Shadow Realm, and so on... many of these aren't even in regular use by most players, which makes it overwhelming to evaluate their importance. Understanding the economy and the worth of items is another full-time job in itself if you plan to do any trading at all. Playing up to the Epilogue doesn't require much min-maxing, but all the postgame content I would say is extremely confusing for any casual player (and by that time, the enemies are so powerful that you really start to feel the pain if you're not following a guide).
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On April 03 2023 10:03 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 08:46 Fleetfeet wrote:
we can have wholly too mechanically complicated games and still have them be approachable by the general public (PoE, I'm looking at you.) PoE is definitely not approachable by the general public. At least not after like lvl 20 or something, even seasoned players look at the skill tree, links, gems and just bail out. For me it was definitely the case of "I can't be bothered with this bullshit", where most I expect from ARPG-style games is that I can run around a bit, click my mouse to kill stuff, level up, spend some points into stats/skills or whatever progression there is and have fun in general without thinking too much. Once the game asks you to keep track of a gazillion different things, plan out what you'll do in the game for the forseeable future and such it becomes more like a chore than a game. I also know people who gave up much sooner than I did, without even giving the game much of a chance once they saw some build guides online etc.
Exactly my experience with PoE. I am an experienced gamer, and i just couldn't be bothered with it. Just a constant flood of decisions that felt very opaque. A gigantic skilltree with no direction, class just being what you look like and where you start in that tree, high respec costs making just clicking something "for now" feel bad, gems, items with stats, gem slots, links, this, that, and so forth, everything levels, everything can be changed with currency. And absolutely nothing easing you into that in any way.
I think a game can have all those options. But it needs to find a way to ease you into them to make it work for me. Start easy with a clear direction, then one concept at a time. Not "Oh, you are level 2, here is a gigantic tree and you need to decide what your build will look like forever right now!"
And everything seemed to be built around trading and currency, which is something i generally don't really like to do in games. I prefer to actually play, not try to take part in some weird bazaar where i as a beginner have no clue what kinds of items are valuable, what i should keep, what i should buy and so forth.
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Honestly I have no clue how PoE became popular enough to be visible to the mainstream. It's a bit of a madhouse. And it was really ugly and clunky early on in development. People say PoE combat is bad compared to Diablo now, but back in the desync era... OOF
TBH I'd say PoE systems aren't as complicated as they seem, its just that there are shitton of them, and the beginning of the game is the worst part (a huge issue). Once you get past the initial learning hump you're pretty much set, league to league things dont change much. Just depends if you think investing that initial time is worth it
The respec debate is definitely interesting though. Would D4 be better with no respec cost? Or very little cost? I think it depends on how it scales. I feel like up to lvl 25 in the beta, the gold costs were well balanced - for respecs + item crafting/upgrading, the main gold sinks. I never felt like I was shafted by gold, but always wanted a bit more of it. If they keep up this ratio I think it feels good... I personally think some level of gold sinks are good for games, makes it feel like things have actual value.
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On April 03 2023 08:46 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2023 07:42 Miragee wrote:On April 03 2023 07:02 Gorsameth wrote:On April 03 2023 04:43 Miragee wrote:On April 03 2023 04:34 Gorsameth wrote:
The people who level multiple characters, especially of the same class, are logically the vast minority of players. Every statistic that exists from every game ever tells us this.
If the 'casual' player makes a bad build that they can't respec, they just quit rather then level again.
Wanting no respecs is just the hardcore community chest beating themselves about how great they are for having 'meaningful choices' while everyone else walks away to play a more friendly game. I don't think it has anything to do with being hardcore. It just depends on what you think is fun. I don't know if what you say is true or not, although I can certainly imagining it being true. However, I don't understand what your point is. To never make a game that caters to a minority of players? If yes, then I'm done arguing here. I'm not saying you should never cater to a minority but the minority that likes to make a dozen of the same character isn't going to bothered by having accessible respecs (note that this does not have to mean free) nearly as much as the likely majority is going to be bothered by not having them. Hm, what do you mean it doesn't bother us nearly as much? Not talking for everyone of course but free respecs obviously bother people enough to not play the game or drop it very quickly. I count that as being similarly bothered to "walking away to a more friendly game". Anyhow, this discussion only caught fire because someone started to call any respec costs at all stupid. Some sort of respec is fine for me, even though I personally prefer no or very limited (e.g. give players the ability to fix mistakes but not respec entirely) respecs for this sort of game. For what it's worth, in D4 they actually try to appease both camps. Having nearly no respec costs early on to let people fix mistakes and experiment and ramp it up later on so once you reach high levels your choices matter seems to be a sensible solution in theory if balanced correctly. I also don't understand why people say Blizzard lied in this case or are surprised. This is one of the few cases Blizzard actually delivered exactly what they told us beforehand. My first respec cost literally 1 gold with tens of thousands of gold in the bank. We haven't seen how it will play out later but they said it will severely ramp up starting at level 50 (I think? or was it 60? something along those lines). On another note, I would also like to know when this shift happened. Classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate were very successful and I never heard any complaints about not being able to respec. People who only did one casual playthrough were fine without seeing everything or making "wrong" decisions. Today, everyone seems obsessed with the idea of playing the optimal way and getting to experience 100 % of the game, yet they call themselves casuals. Doesn't sound very casual to me but that's another discussion. I can imagine playing Baldur's Gate and having a global chat window where people having a conversation about how bad... iunno, subclassing fighter as sorcerer is... would directly impact the casual player who is otherwise playing single player. This kind of thing happens constantly in D3/PoE/WoW etc More information and public perception of balance is a detriment to a "casual player" experience, and we live in a world where that casual player will watch a lore video for D4 on YouTube and in turn get "SORCERESS IS THE BEST CLASS IN D4" and "D4 BARBARIAN IS DOGSHIT AND HERE'S WHY" suggested in their feed as media they'll probably watch, even though it's literally spoilers that ruin what otherwise would be gameplay exploration to them. The advantage this world brings us is that we can have wholly too mechanically complicated games and still have them be approachable by the general public (PoE, I'm looking at you.) but it definitely narrows the volume of truly casual players, because it takes force of will to avoid the information that would ruin your fun before you even get to have it, and putting effort into remaining casual is... uh... unintuitive.
Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. I have also noticed a conflation of the term casual from content creators. Like, normally casual players wouldn't even watch a video they are targeting at casual players.
Yeah, Poe would have been much more of a niche game in 2000. There is definitely a niche of players who like this sort of stuff. Here's my personal experience: I had the benefit of playing it very early on when there wasn't that much content, just the skill tree, way less items. Back then my first reaction to the skill tree was "damn, I want to explore that". Back then I didn't look up guides and I still managed to get through the campaign on HC. Obviously my characters were completely borked to go beyond that but after a few tries I got further and further into maps. Back when Atziri released I watched the first kill attempts of Mathil and Mors with respect because I was so far away from ever achieving that. But I still had a ton of fun!
Sometime later I took an extended break. When I came back PoE was a completely different game with all the new league mechanics, which were complicated. However, I just thought I would tackle everything one by one. I wouldn't matter if I didn't understand most of the league mechanics for now and it really didn't. For Syndicate I watched an hour long video explaining everythinga and it took me months to get the hang of it. However, that experience felt very rewarding to me. If the ressources wouldn't have been available, I would have probably tried to figure Syndicate out myself for a bit longer and eventually give up and ignore it. I had enough fun with everything else.
All in all I think it depends on how you approach the game. As people have said already, a lot of systems look more complicated than they are. People just feel overwhelmed because there is so many systems. At that point, if you slice it into digestible pieces yourself, I think most people (yes casuals) would be able to finish the campaign just fine. It's definitely not harder than D1/D2. There are really complicated systems (mainly crafting and item-skill-mechanics interactions), but they only matter later on.
On April 03 2023 17:24 EchelonTee wrote:
Honestly I have no clue how PoE became popular enough to be visible to the mainstream. It's a bit of a madhouse. And it was really ugly and clunky early on in development. People say PoE combat is bad compared to Diablo now, but back in the desync era... OOF
I think it came out in the exactly correct time, when a lot of people were really jaded about how dumbed down D3 turned out. It was the complete opposite which let a lot of "fuck you D3"-people smash their head against it, wanting to like it as a true Diablo successor. I think later on content creation and word of mouth (e.g. memes) played a huge role. The skill tree of PoE is kind of infamous. It's brought up in many discussions etc. and thus, there will always be some players who think "woah, that looks interesting, I want to try that." Now, that will be the minority but it will still pile up. And here it also helps having a healthy community with guides so people can just pick something up that works and run with it without understanding how it works. Then some people will turn around and try to figure out why it worked and learn from there. And/or it will give them room to focus on other aspects of the game and learn them.
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I want to believe that PoE's systems aren't that complicated, but I can't get past "10% increased damage" and "10% more damage" being not only different, but HUGELY important for calculating damage. Also damage conversion being very specific, DoT of elements working differently than hits of elements in certain situations (iirc) and other just... oddness.
I've only made a handful of characters "of my own", and the amount of research I had to put into making sure the character actually functions like I'd expect it to was kind of insane.
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On April 03 2023 19:11 Fleetfeet wrote:
I want to believe that PoE's systems aren't that complicated, but I can't get past "10% increased damage" and "10% more damage" being not only different, but HUGELY important for calculating damage. Also damage conversion being very specific, DoT of elements working differently than hits of elements in certain situations (iirc) and other just... oddness.
I've only made a handful of characters "of my own", and the amount of research I had to put into making sure the character actually functions like I'd expect it to was kind of insane.
That is a very fair point. PoE has a big issue with not being descriptive or being inconsistent with its descriptors. For example, "nearby" can mean anything between very close proximity and screen-wide... This obviously very bad and needs to be changed. Iirc, the difference between more and increased was only introduced later and didn't exist orignially. I'm not sure any other game uses this distinction. Funnily enough, after playing PoE for so long in new games I try I always assume it works like it does in PoE only to realise it doesn't because other games either use more or increased, not both. Anyhow, I think this only starts to matter if you consider to push the endgame. For playing through the campaign though, it doesn't matter if you do a little bit less damage because you picked increased damage instead of more or put elemental penetration on a DoT, which doesn't work.
Yeah, there is a lot of research that goes into making a character if you want to push it. It's a bit of a meme that people spend more time in Path of Building (external tool for build crafting) than in the game and at the same time it's not really a meme. I personally enjoy that but I can see how that puts people off.
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On April 03 2023 07:42 Miragee wrote:
On another note, I would also like to know when this shift happened. Classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate were very successful and I never heard any complaints about not being able to respec. People who only did one casual playthrough were fine without seeing everything or making "wrong" decisions. Today, everyone seems obsessed with the idea of playing the optimal way and getting to experience 100 % of the game, yet they call themselves casuals. Doesn't sound very casual to me but that's another discussion.
Baldur's Gate is beloved by the kinds of people who frequently post here but that style of game is pretty niche. Research has shown that the long character creation process before even starting the game is a turn off for most people. You can't make meaningful choices if you haven't even played the game to get a feel for the combat. That kind of western-style crpg is a bit of a dying genre outside a small, passionate fanbase.
And other than class, there weren't many choices you need to spec into in Baldur's Gate anyway. Feats, skills and all that jazz for physical damage classes were added in later games. In Baldur's Gate, you just picked a weapon specialization and that's it. Wizards were the only arcane class in BG1 and they can learn everything. You just have to choose which spells to memorize on rest. It's basically a respec! I'm pretty sure clerics and druids can learn everything in BG1 as well but it's been a while. The only choice in BG1 is whether to specialize your wizard in a school and it's not recommended for beginners.
For what it's worth, in Diablo 1, you can also pick up all the spells that your class can use with only one character. Being forced to make "meaningful" decisions started with Diablo 2. Some people loved it. Some hated the grind to try more skills. I'm in the latter. I played most classes once then gave up on the game.
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D4 has some of these wording unclear issues. I'm not looking forward to figuring out what snapshots and how.
for PoE if you want to play lots of very different builds it gets hard - like I personally don't understand how cooldown reduction breakpoints and Cast on Critical Strike builds work (basically triggered spell spam). but it doesn't matter cus I never play those. OTOH I've memorized how DoT / ailment builds work soooo I can always jump back in the game and know I can make a working DoT build no matter what changes they've made. So yeah I guess I take the piecemeal approach to build and mechanic understanding as well.
it's kind of carried by community tools though. I rely heavily on poe.ninja, an economy / build aggregator site. It collects all the builds on the ladder and saves them in time snapshots, where I can get ideas for item/skill choices. I think D3 also had ways of seeing peoples' ladder builds? I'm curious about what tools / websites for D4 will be available. Though I hope there's enough item / build variety to make such things relevant.
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On April 04 2023 00:34 andrewlt wrote:
For what it's worth, in Diablo 1, you can also pick up all the spells that your class can use with only one character. Being forced to make "meaningful" decisions started with Diablo 2. Some people loved it. Some hated the grind to try more skills. I'm in the latter. I played most classes once then gave up on the game.
But in D1 you had to pick your stat points which determine what spells you can learn and how effectively you cast them, also what other items you can use and the effectiveness. Don't think you could reset those.
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On April 04 2023 01:05 ProMeTheus112 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2023 00:34 andrewlt wrote:
For what it's worth, in Diablo 1, you can also pick up all the spells that your class can use with only one character. Being forced to make "meaningful" decisions started with Diablo 2. Some people loved it. Some hated the grind to try more skills. I'm in the latter. I played most classes once then gave up on the game. But in D1 you had to pick your stat points which determine what spells you can learn and how effectively you cast them, also what other items you can use and the effectiveness. Don't think you could reset those.
Diablo 1 had an item called elixirs which allocated additional stat points. Each class had a maximum value, but the only limiting factor was time/gold or your knowledge of duping.
On April 04 2023 00:38 EchelonTee wrote:
D4 has some of these wording unclear issues. I'm not looking forward to figuring out what snapshots and how.
Snapshotting is just bad game design and I hope they fix it. Equipping items and then taking them off to maintain the benefits should never be a functional play style.
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On April 04 2023 01:15 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2023 01:05 ProMeTheus112 wrote:On April 04 2023 00:34 andrewlt wrote:
For what it's worth, in Diablo 1, you can also pick up all the spells that your class can use with only one character. Being forced to make "meaningful" decisions started with Diablo 2. Some people loved it. Some hated the grind to try more skills. I'm in the latter. I played most classes once then gave up on the game. But in D1 you had to pick your stat points which determine what spells you can learn and how effectively you cast them, also what other items you can use and the effectiveness. Don't think you could reset those. Diablo 1 had an item called elixirs which allocated additional stat points. Each class had a maximum value, but the only limiting factor was time/gold or your knowledge of duping.
Wasn't there a limited amount of elixirs available? Mmmh I think if you play D1 multiplayer, you can reset the dungeons, but on the single player game you only get what drops for you in your run. So I think you have a limited amount of gold and elixirs that drop for you.
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On April 04 2023 01:22 ProMeTheus112 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2023 01:15 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On April 04 2023 01:05 ProMeTheus112 wrote:On April 04 2023 00:34 andrewlt wrote:
For what it's worth, in Diablo 1, you can also pick up all the spells that your class can use with only one character. Being forced to make "meaningful" decisions started with Diablo 2. Some people loved it. Some hated the grind to try more skills. I'm in the latter. I played most classes once then gave up on the game. But in D1 you had to pick your stat points which determine what spells you can learn and how effectively you cast them, also what other items you can use and the effectiveness. Don't think you could reset those. Diablo 1 had an item called elixirs which allocated additional stat points. Each class had a maximum value, but the only limiting factor was time/gold or your knowledge of duping. Wasn't there a limited amount of elixirs available? Mmmh I think if you play D1 multiplayer, you can reset the dungeons, but on the single player game you only get what drops for you in your run. So I think you have a limited amount of gold and elixirs that drop for you.
Diablo 1 had the normal/nightmare/hell difficulties which reset all the mobs.
But resets and additional content are a good point about modern gaming. The expectation now is leagues/seasons and additional content. Hellfire may have been one of the first expansion packs, but that was also a hard reset rather than an addition to the game like we'd understand now. It is far more important for your character and build to be viable when you'll want to play it next year when the new content drops.
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SoCal8908 Posts
On April 03 2023 04:52 Manit0u wrote:
In D3 you didn't really need respecs because there wasn't much of a "build" to begin with and then everything really depended on your items, not your skills, so whatever you choose was pretty much meaningless anyway.
Unfortunately D4 seems to be heading the same way, something I've been against from the start and have been vocal about in this thread. IMO items should not be the focal point of your build, nor should they define it. Might as well just omit the talent tree and skills altogether, to get rid of the illusion that you're actually "building" your character in any other way than finding items.
in d3 different activities absolutely required you to respec into different versions of the build you were playing, or a different build entirely because it was more efficient. especially later on when many of the legendaries were altered and power level for sets took you into deep greater rifts, but you could cut pieces for high torment rifts/farming or bounties.
i'm not sure what else you're advocating for, if not items being important to your build in d4. if you are playing a certain build and a piece of gear drops for another, it's by no means going to force you to play that build the way that d3's set bonuses forced you to pick those pieces of gear.
what other system would work in a game that is built around killing monsters and picking up their items? this isn't a proper MMORPG with fixed loot and drop tables from endgame bosses.
On April 03 2023 19:11 Fleetfeet wrote:
I want to believe that PoE's systems aren't that complicated, but I can't get past "10% increased damage" and "10% more damage" being not only different, but HUGELY important for calculating damage. Also damage conversion being very specific, DoT of elements working differently than hits of elements in certain situations (iirc) and other just... oddness.
I've only made a handful of characters "of my own", and the amount of research I had to put into making sure the character actually functions like I'd expect it to was kind of insane.
Unless you're playing the game like a job, you will always be discovering something you didn't know about the game. Even then, just about everyone relies on POB to make their builds and learn about the game and interactions.
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