3061

Unlimited respeccing makes games more game-y and less RPG-y. I think that’s what he means by lack of investment. I’m mostly inclined to agree.

3062

I would tend to agree as well, if this was a Skyrim or a Dragon Age. But it’s an action-RPG and I don’t really feel like it should make me play a fourth Wizard character just to try out “Melee Wizard Build”. To each his own though. Maybe I’m just getting too old and these new conveniences are over writing my old preferences.

3063

Yeah, I’m more concerned with enjoying myself by being able to change out of a spec if I don’t like it rather than be locked into it and either deal with it or start a new character.

3064

Agreed, especially since the effectiveness of various skills are likely to be balanced and rebalanced.

3065

Yeah, this is definitely the way Blizzard is aiming their games. As they’ve seen with WoW, it can be problematic to have a game designed in such a way, that players feel like they “have to” play a specific character, because that’s the one who has something that can’t be obtained on another character.

There’s no question that this setup reduces that level of investment, when it comes to an individual character. But given that D3 has the limit of 10 characters, and no way to play it offline to mess around with other builds, it would be problematic from their point of view, if players felt a need to roll many different copies of the same class.

3066

Well, I never felt like I “had” to replay and grind to test out specs. I enjoyed that more than anything, actually. I love the concept of planning for a build and then testing that plan in reality. Most of the time, you come up with something less than ideal - which is part of the challenge of coming up with these cool ideas for unique builds.

Being able to switch around at will, will lessen the impact of unique builds - and it will mean “powerbuilds” will be trivial to copy - and everyone will just use the perceived FOTM build, rather than making the effort of building such a character - and investing in learning how the skills interact.

But that’s the new Bliz - and I didn’t expect differently. I hope there will be other aspects to the game that makes it worth it.

3067

LOL - gosh, I hope so too! :)

3068

Actually, I wish Dragon age gave me respecs. Picking spells as a mage without doing extensive online research is just a crapshoot. How useful is this exotic telekinetic branch? It sounds cool, but who the fuck knows!

The only class I played in D2 was sorceress and I made 5 of them, with 5 different builds. I’m fine with just making one of them and getting to work on that character alone.

love the concept of planning for a build and then testing that plan in reality. Most of the time, you come up with something less than ideal - which is part of the challenge of coming up with these cool ideas for unique builds.

A lot of the horrible tension in Diablo 2 was that an optimal build was usually a terrible experience when leveling. Can I put some points in this cool new level 12 skill so I can kill these monsters in Act 1? NOPE! Fucking useless skill at level 82, so just save up that point for when you get Frozen Orb or whatever.

Pretty much every build I made involved maxing 2 skills and 2 masteries (as a sorc this was typical) and so you got from level 1-30 by putting a point in icebolt, a point in static field, hoping for a staff with +3 fireball, and then plinking monsters to death. Or maybe just getting powerleveled. You could get power leveled in a matter of 24 hours and it didn’t matter what the hell your build was, so where was the character investment?

3069

I just played through with a Monk.

My biggest reaction is that the interface for “Elective” skill selection is horrible. I didn’t find the old interface particularly confusing, but I can see why it might have been. This new one, though, I find completely unacceptable.

In the old implementation, it was possible to map the same skill to multiple hotkeys. There is no real reason to want to do that (other than maybe being able to wildly swat at an area on your keyboard and have a better chance of hitting the skill you’re looking for), but it does mean that it can be harder to shuffle your skills around. Say you have 3 slots unlocked (left/right mouse and 1) and 3 skills mapped to them (A, B, C, respectively). You want to make it so that C is on the right mouse and B is on 1, you have to assign skill D to right mouse, then B to 1, then C to right mouse. They should either allow you to double up skill assignments or make it so that if you assign the same skill a second time, it swaps.

Last complaint about the UI. When you are on one of the selection screens for a skill type (Defensive, let’s say), you basically have two sets of information, a row of skills at the top and a row of runes underneath. In order to see the available runes for a particular skill, you have to actually click/select that skill. Once you click on the skill, the rune row updates with the runes for the skill in question. You can hover over the skill to see the skill tooltip, but you can’t get any rune information that way. If they had the horizontal row of skills at the top and then columns of runes underneath each skill, you could get the tooltips for all the runes without having to select a skill first. And not just the tooltips – you can’t see which runes are unlocked for a particular skill, either. It’s stuff that you really need to be able to get at a glance. That is probably too information-dense a solution for Blizzard, but they need to do something different.

As for the reworking of the skill/rune system itself, I’m not a huge fan. Currently, there is a specific time to unlock every rune (for every skill). The higher level runes are not strictly more powerful than the lower level ones, but they are still doled out to you in a tiered fashion. Here’s what I would prefer: whenever they were going to unlock a level 1 rune, instead give you a level 1 rune in your inventory. You spend that rune to unlock a level 1 skill/rune combo of your choice. You would still be getting the improved leveling rewards they were excited about. They would still be sure that you’re not going to end up way outside the planned power curve. But it would give you a little bit of agency. If it turns out that the passive Runes are way more powerful than the others (or something like that), then they could separate them into as many different rune types as they wanted – they could even do “primary offense” runes, etc. I see no downside to this.

3070

There’s a toggle in the options menu that solves pretty much all of the UI issues you’re talking about.

3071

What toggle is that?

edit: No, there’s not. You’re talking about the toggle that turns on Elective mode, and most of what I was saying is a complaint about Elective mode, specifically.

3072

I like the new direction, but I agree the interface needs some love - though since the game isn’t coming out any time soon and it’s only been in the testers hands for a matter of hours, I’m sure we’ll see improvements made soon.

3073

I have to agree with JPR about the UI, while the skill UI is much simpler for newcomers, it’s way too convoluted for moderate and expert players to use.

3074

Yeah, if you read what he’s saying, elective mode does not fix the problem. It’s a new UI, and that Blizzard is extremely good at addressing usability issues.

3075

Did you enjoy the Monk? I just finished running one up to lvl 10 and found it a little tiresome until I finally unlocked some runes. The AOE is a little weak.

I do see it as a very good support class especially in PVP. With the mantras and then dashing strike everywhere, doing some quick combos, and dashing away from enemies before they know what hits them. Possibly doing some DOT with poison added onto your strikes in the process.

The customization is definitely there. I really like the new way runes are implemented, I just still wish they kept some kind of level up system for them. At least 1 thing to level up would be nice.

On a side note, I just saw that strafe attack from the Demon Hunter in action and it looks so bad ass. It reminds me of a Devil May Cry move. In fact this entire game is starting to feel more action game like than anything. Which isn’t a terrible thing in my opinion, but definitely a deviation from the other games.

3076

Hmmm, let me see if I can put words to it. It’s like… what makes my character, say a Monk, not a carbon copy of every other monk out there? Yes, I know you’re limited to what you have on your hotbar, but that can be changed easily. You were limited by a certain number of hotbar slots back in the EQ days, but no one tried to pretend that was a way of customizing your character.

Put another way - what are the interesting character development choices to make along the way? I can’t think of any. If I’m not making any character development choices, then I’m not feeling invested in a particular character. Does that make any sense at all? I feel like there’s more character decision in a game like Renegade Ops which is kinda weird since that doesn’t even try to bill itself as an ARPG.

I know Blizzard polishes to a T and the look and feel of the game will just scream polish, but… it’s just sounding really shallow to me. I’m not writing the game off, I would really like to be blown away by it, but I’m rapidly losing interest with all the various updates they’re releasing.

3077

By far my favorite class.

The way the basic attacks all have a 1-2-3 combo system that can be mixed and matched makes the Monk feel less repetitive and more tactical than the others. It’s very much like the Assassin class from LOD (which was also my favorite).

That’s also why I think the new default skill assignment system will screw a certain percentage of people playing the monk – if you don’t go in and change that option, you CAN’T mix and match the basic attacks.

3078

If respeccing is difficult and inflexible, I will end up playing an “optimized” build. If respeccing is easy and flexible, then I’ll end up playing with my own home brew fun build, safe in the knowledge I won’t hit an insurmountable wall.

3079

I might be the last person in the world to appreciate that there’s a time-period in any “MMO” kind of game where “top-builds” AREN’T known. Where strategies to overcome the hardest challenges HAVEN’T been detailed and posted on the net.

Let’s say the first 3-6 months.

This period of time is the best for me, personally, because it’s that time where everyone is experimenting and coming up with unique stuff.

It’s that time before the millions of players manage to correlate experiences and come up with “mathematically perfect” builds.

It’s also the time where your personal investment in your character matters the most, and the time where you have the greatest chance of coming up with something truly creative that’s also very effective. Especially if you play with friends in a closed circle mostly.

I know that after a few years of the game being out, this will seem like a distant dream - and everyone is running classes with one of 1-3 builds that have been proven the be most efficient for one reason or another.

But that’s also the time where I’m no longer playing, or I’m fine with no longer being able to come up with unique stuff.

Also, I’m one of the people who think “cookie cutter FOTM” builds aren’t, necessarily, the best ones out there. Because there are enough factors that human beings can’t really take them all into account for any one build.

So, this is why I really appreciate limited respeccing and the process of “discovery”. Discovery being about whether your plan or idea works - and hopefully coming up with something great that DOES work - after a few playthroughs. I love those playthroughs - because the primary incentive is to see my plan progress (like in a strategy game).

This is why I understand Diablo 3 isn’t targeting me, and that’s ok. I’m not happy with it - but I don’t feel entitled.

Still, I’m hoping it will have other ways to entertain me - and I’m ready to be “wrong”, and that this free experimentation without limitation is actually better for discovery. I can’t see it now - and only the game will be able to demonstrate this efficiently. I can only hope that the “old way” is really the bad way - as so many people seem to think it is.

3080

Are you kidding? I was power leveling through the Bloody Foothills the week of release on LoD. That actually wasn’t the most optimal method, so you’re actually right about “top-builds” not being known, but that has nothing to do with power leveling and cookie-cutter builds. It takes barely any brainpower to realize that D2’s skill system heavily encouraged you to focus on like 3 skills or 2 skills + whatever essential passives.

Also, this isn’t the year 2000. It’s 2012 and min-maxers will be all over this shit in several weeks. Not 3-6 months. If anything, World of Warcraft has trained the shit out of people in that respect. These aren’t the wild-eyed clueless days of early mass online gaming.

Top guilds in SWTOR- a game with no combat log and basically no information at all- cleared the hardest content in the game in like 10 days. And could give you cookie-cutter specs for all the classes and which classes to stack on raids (e.g. “Bring 6 Merc DPS and only use Sorc healers!”). Sure, it may turn out that they missed some minor optimization routes, but that sense of mystery is gone, irrevocably, unless you shield yourself in a bubble from outside information.