It’s a fine line to walk. Before sets were usually pointless novelties. I like that they are useful, but I don’t disagree with you.
The scaling of enemies is drastically different than any other game I’ve ever seen and I think that has a lot to do with why the system is how it is. You have to have huge bonuses to things so the player can keep up with the scaling, and having the sets be such a big part of that reduces the degrees of freedom of how gear can be assembled (your complaint). If legendaries were strong enough to accomplish that same sort of scaling, there’d be many more ways to break the system with synergies.
There’s also the one-size-fits-all stat budgeting and damage equations, so that (almost) literally every class and ever build values the same stats with the same weights (mainstat > crit% > critDmg > [life/vit/armor/resist] > LoH > regen).
They built this really complex system with all these interactions, then an equally if not more complex set of equations to make sure that no matter what inputs you give the system, the outputs are the same. I don’t get it, but what do I know?
Again, I think it makes it easier for them to balance (in relative terms…not implying it is perfect or anything). The system definitely has flaws, though. For instance, you see some of the same items again and again in drastically different builds (Furnace for instance).
What would you like to read about? I think I recall reading a while back Tom Chick saying he came to the realization that Diablo wasn’t a game about killing Diablo. No truer words were ever spoken. This is a game about gear and numbers. I’m sure it can satisfy someone for a single playthrough alright, but people aren’t rabid about it for that reason. It’s a game I come back to because it’s really, really deep – if you want it to be. The key for me is not letting it get to be too much of a grind; if it does I will just lose interest. If only there were a neverending story to play through without repetition, lol.
Thats funny, at this point I guess there really is nothing to discover so we just discuss ways to make numbers bigger. Which is cool if that’s what you’re into I guess, but I look at numbers all day long. But again, that’s a me thing and not a Diablo thing, so I’ll just see myself out.
But I’m serious. What would you like to read about? That’s not sarcastic at all. The only way to play the game better is to educate yourself on how the game works. And the game is full of numbers that are communicated to you for that purpose (IOW there’s no fog of war; the system numbers aren’t hidden from players) . And unlike D2 to a large extent, the numbers are wholly dependent on the gear you wear. So… numbers and gear. Gear and numbers. What else is there to the game?
Well, for me, I don’t look at it as a chase or hamster wheel to get stronger. I am a math person and I like digging into mechanics, true, but it’s more a case of “I have this objective in the season journey, how do I accomplish that?” Or maybe I’ve set my sights on some item to add to the build or trying to solve an issue with the build I’m using. And there’s always another thing to do or an item to work toward, like crafting an awesome hellfire amulet or gambling some thing you want to cube.
The end result is the same as what you are describing, perhaps, but it’s more about the journey than the destination. And if it stops being fun for whatever reason, that’s my stopping point.
I guess I find that slightly depressing. You’ve boiled the game down to its essence but is that a worthwhile effort? I’m not looking for new story beats, not after my nth derivation of the entire game, but I do like to see something interesting for my work. For instance, I like powers that look cool and feel interesting, like the wizard’s ice beam and the witch doctors jars of spiders. I don’t know if those are effective powers and I guess I don’t much care. Sure, you can then ask me how many times can I talk about how cool a jar of spiders looks when it lands on some dude’s head? And yeah, you got me there. The only new things going on is what you found and if it has better numbers, I guess. That just feels lifeless to me. Anyway I don’t expect the game or the conversation to pivot around what I like so I can certainly back away, I’m just trying to answer your question.
Banzai
6253
For me, the game is about not dying while steadily getting stronger. Constant awareness of danger, constant changing of positioning and tactics based on that danger, with the certainty that if I mess it up, that’s the end of a lot of hours invested. That’s what keeps me playing, seeing how far I can get this time.
I think the more important question in this context is, “What else could there be?” To be honest, the numbers themselves aren’t the important point, it’s the qualitative feel of the play that’s important unless your goal is to get the best rift time on the highest rift evar. Most of us want to experience something new, that feels fun to do. Some of the numbers are there to actually balance the game, so that you can’t create invincible builds, others create the kind of pushbacks that make putting together a build feel like an achievement (they are essentially a replacement for the old grind-to-99 style of pushback), but mostly the numbers create an artificial treadmill that keeps people talking because there’s always a higher torment or GRift level to play at. If the default approach is “stack mainstat / crit / crit damage until you reach a specific threshold, then only change gear if you can do so while maintaining that threshold”, the game has sacrificed a lot of room for depth in exchange for grind. The whole point of having different stats on gear is that those stats should be desired more by different builds. Even if we accept the mainstat concept, you could have builds for each class that emphasize mainstat (perhaps because they just use vanilla abilities for damage and a bunch of quirky powers), ones that emphasize crit % (because they get cool benefits from each crit), ones that prefer crit damage (maybe they get occasional free crits, or special effects when they deal really high damage?), ones that prefer LoH (some cool effect whenever they gain a big chunk of life?), ones that prefer regen, vit, globe radius, etc. These things actually exist to some extent, but it’s all at the margins and mostly de-emphasized to the extent that it never changes the priorities, and that certain items are viable and others are simply trash due to the lack of specific lines on their stats. Don’t get me wrong, I love the RNG nature of the loot, but man it would be a lot clearer if they just made it so that each piece of equipment had a “power” stat with a wide range on a power-law drop-off, which increased your resists, armor, life, damage, crit %, and crit dam all at once. Then they could use the line-item stats to do the cool stuff.
Sorry for the rant. Just as an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about here, they could replace the current quantitative differences between torment levels with qualitative ones: distribute certain elite powers across the difficulties, stagger the appearance of certain mobs, quests / events, and uniques, and stagger the availability of specific kinds of gear so that you are striving to reach, say, Torment IV because that’s the level where you’re able to acquire a RRoG or defeat a Keywarden, as opposed to getting there only because it somewhat decreases the time it takes to find things.
The point is, when determining what gear you decide to use, you are guided by the numbers. In my case, the Trag’oul Set was the only set I had completed, so I couldn’t use a different set. You then “craft” your set to improve… THE NUMBERS. There is no way around it. So it’s disingenuous to decry discussions about numbers since that’s what everyone who is playing the game competitively (vs themselves, like me, or others like those seeking rankings). You WILL NOT succeed in the game by any measure if you disregard the numbers and what makes a character effective.
Sure one can piddle around and stay in the low difficulty areas that aren’t dependent on high quality gear that has symmetry, but you aren’t going to advance into areas of the game that permit you to obtain the better stuff and more of it to make the task of getting the stuff easier. That’s what Diablo is to 95% of the people who play it, I’d wager. So that’s how I approach the game. I enjoy being directed by what gear I have, rather than boxing myself into “my idea or style”. I like being forced out of my comfort zone as long as the direction I’m forced into has rewards. Playing the game in my conventional style all of the time seems dull dull dull, to me.
Just to play devils advocate, the top of the Necro leader board is running a legacy of nightmare build right now (which is all ancient legendary’s). I’m personally running an all ancient legendary build on a few of my characters. This kind of build is really the wild west, as there are so many different combinations of legs you can put together, it’s pretty much endless. There are quite a few legendary orange effects that can become insanely powerful when stacked up, passive/triggered AOE damage for instance.
I don’t disagree to some extent, as the bonus you get from sets pretty much makes everything else moot from a fairly simple gear hunt, but that’s only if you’re chasing after that meta. I’ve had more fun in D3 coming up with my own ideas and builds, when I get to the point where I’m just looking at what someone else did and trying to copy it, I lose interest pretty quickly.
A lot of misery is self imposed in this game, there really are some fun and interesting things you can goof around with. I find fun in sort of both sides of the coin, I’ve done my share of trying to min/max, but I’ve spent much more time goofing around with concept builds like ‘All AOE’ or ‘only yellow items’.
I succeed just fine disregarding the numbers and I don’t need you to tell me why I play a video game, thanks.
What difficulty level are you playing at?
I think what Lohengrin was trying to say is just that no matter how you slice it, it’s a video game, and hence, driven by numbers. Every combination, whether driven by the competitive meta or your own sense of fun, ultimately is adjudicated by game through numerical values. While of course it’s up to each player to figure out what their fun place is–hell, until right before this season all I did was tool around in the low Torment levels, rarely did GRs, and had fun mixing and matching stuff to get cool effects. But eventually I figured I wanted to try what I hadn’t done yet, which was actually try to do a successful build. So it’s watching the sets and numbers.
I think it’s 100% true, though, that for the vast majority of players, it is all about the numbers.
Sure, games are driven by numbers but they’re not about numbers. That’s all under the hood. So what if I am happy to cruise around the neighborhood and never crack open the hood to see what’s underneath? I’m content to be a weird minority, I still like playing Diablo.
The numbers in Diablo are not under the hood. I love the setting of Diablo, I like the fantasy genre, but there are a lot of fantasy RPGs out there and I don’t go back to them. There are a lot of fantasy action RPGs out there and I don’t go back to them. I go back to Diablo because the gear and numbers game is very addicting. Especially the RNG “game”. It’s literally gambling.
Shout out to this. Well said.
Well said? What language is it?
