2661

You can’t release a game without respeccing these days. Players won’t stand for it. Also, while the potential skills are identical for each class, with runestones and passive slots there are one hell of a lot of options.

2662

So then use a more traditional respeccing system. What Diablo 3 is doing is too streamlined for me.

Runestone and passive slot choices are impermanent too, right? See, having so many options for character customization is great, but the fact that I can undo them so easily makes me think that building a character in Diablo 3 will involve about as many hard choices as customizing a loadout in a modern multiplayer shooter, and that’s not what I’m looking for in an ARPG.

2663

You could just not respec.

2664

The game is very clearly built around changing your skill loadout to meet the current challenge. I know you’re joking, but that won’t work for me.

2665

Let’s discuss save-anywhere: valuable tool or a crutch for the weak?

2666

I wouldn’t be opposed to an ironman mode, though I certainly wouldn’t pick it for my first play through.

2667

The developers’ view, with which I happen to agree, is that once you allow players to respec, you should make it as easy as possible to do. Rather than forcing players to reallocate 30-plus points in a skill tree, many of which are passive and uninteresting, you pick from a short list of iconic skills and powerful modifiers. This actually allows for a lot more customizability and less frustration. They make you return to town to switch out your skills, though, because the alternative was people playing with the skill window open and switching on the fly, which is crappy gameplay. Again, everything in D3 is polished to a degree I found difficult to imagine. Everything has been iterated upon to the nth degree. They’re taking thoughtful design to a new level.

2668

I get deciding that the game isn’t for you. I don’t see how that can be paired with impatience, though. If you weren’t going to get the game, then why would you get frustrated due to delays? It seems like an odd pairing of emotions.

2669

Grapes, like I said, it’s mostly that I’m tired of hearing about the darned game so much. It’s all over cool dev twitters, most anticipated games lists, and, anytime there’s an excuse for any news site to post about it, my RSS feed. It won’t be talked about nearly as much several months after release. So, the sooner the better.

2670

Yeah, the skyrim buzz definitely dropped off after it came out.

2671

I understand where you’re coming from, but I feel like I really need to play Diablo 3 to say anything more about it.

I find myself occasionally looking forward to the game. I hate what Blizzard has done to character development, at least on paper, and I’m concerned about the lack of randomness and excessive linearity of the level design, but I expect the best overall loot system since Diablo 2, which I love. And I find Blizzard’s polish intoxicating. This is a small part of why I show up here sometimes.

2672

I’m hoping at least news sites and dev twitters stop talking about it so much once it’s been out for several months. That’s been the pattern with every other major release, and, once big 2012 releases start dropping, Skyrim will get the same treatment.

2673

Since when have previous diablo games had any character development at all? D3 is leaps and bounds better than D2 in that department. As you run around town, people have little conversations, they mention your accomplishments, there are NPCs that join you briefly in your adventures, you find narrated journals strewn around dungeons talking about the backstory, in-game cutscenes, etc, etc.

As for randomness, it seems just as random as D2 to me. There are some “setpiece” areas that will always be the same, but the majority is random.

Skyrim came out almost exactly 2 months ago, and while the buzz has dropped a bit, it’s still a pretty big deal.

2674

Are people excited about runestones? Seems to me like they’re mostly there for the talking point: “With our new runestone system, players can customize their characters with over 92830924095682093825498 combinations of skills and runes!” After looking at some of the effects, they seem as superficial as the rest of the character customization. Maybe one or two of the five runes will change how you actually play the thing, and the rest tweak spell stats.

2675

Except for the one red rune that’s always just “does more damage”, they generally do change how the ability is used, if not its purpose. Look at magic missile, the most plain-jane spell of them all.

White: Seeker missiles
Red: More damage
Yellow: Hits regenerate arcane power (remember magic missiles are free to cast, you use them in-between other abilities)
Blue: Fires 5 missiles, turns into AE
Black: Missiles pierce through targets

Then look at the barbarian’s weapon throw, their only ranged attack. Unruned it does damage and snares a single target.

White: Makes the enemy attack its allies for a couple seconds
Red: More damage
Yellow: Consumes all your fury (resource) and throws an actual person, doing AE damage per point of fury spent.
Blue: Makes the weapon do AE damage
Black: Adds a stun

Which one do you choose? Well, it depends. There’s no right answer for all situations. The base weapon throw is pretty useful, so you might want more damage and slot red. When facing really tough enemies, you might want the white rune to take one out of the fight for awhile. When killing trash with gaps between groups, you want blue. When killing constant streams of enemies, yellow. PvP? Probably black.

Also there are various levels of runes. If you’re fighting AE groups but only have a blue rune at level 1, you have to choose whether to use it to turn your weapon throw into AE or just to use an ability that does AE by default like Cleave and slot something to do more AE damage, like the white rune that makes enemies explode when killed with Cleave. It gets complicated really fast.

2676

I’m going to do what I did in Diablo II and play Hardcore mode. That way you will have some interesting choices and exciting moments, while also allowing replaying the same character class many times over.

2677

Thanks stusser, some of your examples are pretty intriguing. My skepticism triggered from this video of the Wizard’s Hydra ability. At this point it’s “summon a turret with different elemental damage.” But, beta and all that, and maybe some of these will play better than they sound.

2678

Ho hum. I am hoping the no auction house joy will spread. Nothing like actual money to make hacking much more profitable. FIFA, anyone.

2679

Ironman mode + always on DRM sounds like a recipe for frustration to me. I realize there were some crazy people who played Ironman Diablo 2 on Battlenet, but that surely must have lead to many bitterly unfair deaths?

Tony

2680

That’s the nature of the game. Of course, there were also players who managed to hit Level 99 on what is correctly termed hardcore mode.

Also, the argument earlier about skill choices is crazy. Diablo II was essentially a bad game when it came to character development. It was too easy to screw oneself with a well developed character by investing skill points into the wrong skills. There were plenty of skills that just weren’t worth using, even when the synergy system came into play in a later patch. At least when Blizzard allowed respeccing in Diablo 2 did it help alleviate the pain rather than starting off with a new character.

Keep in mind that Diablo II was crap with its character development. There were some basic sub-classes to follow (eg: frozen orb sorc, multi shot zon, zeal paladin, whirlwind barb) to name a few that were min-maxed to the hilt. Spam the same skill over and over, chug some potions and move on.