Well, sure, with that caveat. Problem is in D3 2.x tons of skills have been completely useless for the entire duration of the game. Like my favorite, frozen orb. Amazing looking skill, hits everything on the screen, and it simply cannot be used.
Hell naw, DMO frozen orb is great. Sure, certain skills wax and wane from season to season, but thereās next to nothing that I know of that Iād describe as useless. Some will be better suited to pushing max greater rifts, others more for speed clearing lower difficulties. But pretty much everything has its place now.
Right, I agree about that - Iām just saying that you have to design the dungeons differently if people can respec to match their mechanics / enemy types than if they canāt.
It does, though. Even if the game could be completely balanced for both free respecs and no respecs, you are asking players to come up with their own ārespec costingā scheme so that you can have respecs for free. Itās true that any mechanic that assigns a cost to a game action restricts playstyles that want to do that action a whole lot, but there were a lot of people who disliked the free respecs of D3 and it is not the norm in RPGs or ARPGs, even if some MMOs do it. This was a decision they made specifically to appeal better to their fanbase. They will need to get the cost balance right, but I think itās a huge positive to the game.
That said, at least thereās a skill tree that enables some form of choice in which order you get the skills. The D3 scheme where each of these clusters would have unlocked serially in a static order would be awful for rerolling. Also, since you can customize your appearance, thereās that much more value to rerolling to have the characterās look match their skill fantasy.
I bet they could make the cost quite modest and still have the conceptual idea that rerolling and power-leveling is faster than respeccing every single skill and paragon point. I just donāt understand why so many ARPG players are against making new characters when they completely change their character. I suspect itās an MMO mentality that drives it.
Honestly, I doubt you will have to farm gold for the purpose. Youāll be getting tons of gold farming items and will just have to not spend it on one of the 10 other ways it is used to change / improve your character. Itās not like you have to pay rent with it.
Diablo 2 certainly disagrees with that statement; youāre fucked with certain builds in certain dungeons, and thereās no respec for you.
Because I donāt want a horde of alts I need to spend time thinking up unique names for, and dressing up how I like, nor do I really enjoy wasting hours levelling through content Iāve already seen and skipping cutscenes that barely held my attention the first time through. So much of the āalt levelling experienceā in these games feels like such an utter waste of time to me; so much given to just travelling, backtracking, clicking through text Iāve already read, on and on. Basically just time spent doing things other than what I want - killing stuff and watching the loots rain down.
Ironically D3 is about the only game I didnāt mind it in - because adventure mode did away with literally all of that superfluous time-sucky nonsense - but that seems gone now. And thatās my concern. Not so much the ālevelling yet another charā but just having to jump through hoop after hoop of unfun things. Even the rifts were at least somewhat semi random; the world of D4 looks as static as that of any other MMO and so much of my time didnāt feel spent in dungeons so much as running to themā¦
Also, Iām not ācompletely changingā my character either; I just want to switch from using the bow Iām carrying to using the daggers Iām carrying. Itās one thing to do that, I feel, and another to want to become a spellcaster. I donāt mind creating a rogue and a wizard, as they are very different. But I do sorta mind having to create 2 rogues; if thatās the goal why not just have an archer and a stabber and make the design intent there a bit more clear.
Something like adventure mode should be in all of these games and somehow they all seem to think playing through the story with every character is fun
Itās going to be interesting which way this ends up in practice.
I loved D2 - in its time.
I love D3 (RoS) - in its time and now.
I donāt want D4 to be exactly like either of them - they exist already!
Butā¦as mentioned upthread, D3 made for such a seamless gameplay experience. I would take D4 touching closer to that over going back to D2, including re-specs.
There is no content in D3 before say, Greater Rift 30, that requires specific builds or gear. And while that isnāt āhigh levelā for āendgameā, it is every piece of map content and every boss through several Torment levels, using any wacky build you want. Something not working quite right? Swap out that rune skill. A crazy legendary dropped that wasnāt part of your build? Adjust to try that power out and see if you like it.
Diablo, to me, is a game about really satisfying fast combat, trying out new skill combination easily, finding crazy loot during that combat, and being able to easily try that crazy loot with skill adjustment.
It is not about having to create a ton of characters each taking tens oh hours to level just because I borked my skill choices or need an entirely new one because of the sweet legendary I got with +15 Face Melting when my guy had Bone Crushing skill instead. Just let me switch my skills to Face Melting.
I went back to play D2:R to make sure I wasnāt missing something. Super fun game mechanics but with 2000 era punishment if you choose poorly or drops donāt go the exact way your build is set up. Ugh
The recent posts have me worried D4 will cater heavily to old skool D2 rather than do its own new thing. Iāll still play through it once, but it would be a missed opportunity imo. Hoping I am just reading wrong today ;)
Except that when you level in D4 you can go pretty much anywhere and I think you can skip almost all the quests if you want, because the reputation and codex are account-based. And you get to actually have the experience of having good loot drop on a regular basis because you arenāt just farming the tail end of the bell curve at max level.
Iām pretty sure dungeons are too.
Then you probably wonāt have to spend much to respec
It takes a lot of training to learn how to shoot a bow well or how to fight well with two knives. If you change every skill you have, you are basically making a new character - why should your stabber and your archer inhabit the same body and have the same name? Is switching from stabber to archer just a costume change?
Again if I tell you that it will take about as much time to reroll your character as to earn the gold needed to full respec, that isnāt the same as saying, āyour choices are to go through the same content again or to mindlessly farm gold forever.ā Iām sure they were basing that on the rate of earn gold through normal play patterns and on the rate of levelling an alt through normal play patterns. If you think itās more fun to keep playing your old build than to go through the content again you will be able to do that without any problem. But what a lot of people are asking for is to be able to instantly switch with no cost, so that all rogues are exactly the same.
I mean, does anyone do this in D&D? Do you get to 10th level as a wizard and decide you want to change schools, learn a whole new set of spells and reallocate all your feats?
EDIT: I think Iāve already mentioned that person preference would be to have alt re-roll at higher levels so that you get to allocate a bunch of points instantly. That would also let you skip the tutorial area, which is one of the most cutscene-heavy and which does gate your access to the rest of the world. Perhaps they will add a āskip tutorialā option, though.
Again, this is still the experience they are going for up through the early levels. It was certainly true in beta: the cost to respec at 25 was basically free, maybe a little more painful if you literally changed every point. I suspect this remains true until you get close to max level and even there, you donāt need to respec more than 6 points ever if all you want to do is see how a new set of skills works.
I wouldnāt want another Diablo 3. There are no ābuildsā in Diablo 3. Just skills/runes you decide to use since everyone is the same character with access to all the same skills/runes at max level outside of gearā¦just the gear, and by gear I mostly mean a handful of dev curated set items tied back to skills, and weapons are purely cosmetics with stats since youāll always be using the skills.
Returning to the Diablo 2 skill tree builds and the idea that my sorc can still hit a goatman with a sword if it wants to sounds better to me.
They should probably make the first respect free though. Probably.
So, yeah seriously I played all 28 seasons. I didnāt complete all of them on PC, let alone switch. I never got Cosmic wings but I got Galaxy wings which I consider superior on at least 3 PC accounts and both switches.
If they add anything or let you start the season with your completed altar Iād play a bit for the lulz but otherwise Iām on to maiming D4 on a single account. My 3080 PC ate up the beta and I might try to find a 4070 laptop for my frequent trips to care for my parents but thatās a post launch goal I guess.
And I donāt care about skill tree respecs. There will be plenty of season resets to play different toons in different modes.
Haha damn. Just curious, why do you have multiple PC accounts for Diablo? Is it for multiple PCs that you use in different locations?
Depends on what our definition of āgoodā is here, but I didnāt see the D4 loot being much different to D3. Itās level appropriate gear and nothing more - I donāt know if the design of D4 will see the stats cap out at a certain point but everything collected in the interim is completely transitory and destined for the trash heap.
Plus they said the drop rate for legendaries and such was greatly increased for the beta, so exactly how much āgoodā loot weāll be seeing in such early levelsā¦ well, who knows.
Because itās implied by the design of the game, which is what I have issue with. If archery and stabbing are so different and transitioning between the two so fundamentally impossibleā¦ Why are they both sharing the same skill tree? What is the point? Why trap me in a system where only 50% of a bloated UI is actually of interest to me as an archer? Or where half the loot I get is wasted on a spec Iām not playing? Again, isnāt it just better design to have two completely separate classes here?
And if the argument here is one of realism - that stabbinā and archinā are just too different - exactly how does merely draining oneās bank account instantly make one a great archer?
āProbablyā doing some lifting here - we donāt know. For sake of argument though, letās assume D4 is so well balanced that it literally takes the exact same amount of time to do these things, down to the second. Thatās great, right? But there are two fundamental differences.
First, if I say Iād rather grind out the gold to change my archer into a stabber, then Iāve automatically made a bad decision. Iāve made a bad decision because should I ever want to go back to archery, I gotta re-pay the fee. And thatās true every time. So the optimal choice - the only sensible choice - is to create an alt. I invest the time once, then from that point on I can spend 5 seconds in a character selection menu choosing between stabber or archer*.
Secondly, low level characters just arenāt as fun to me. Skipping past plot/dialogue Iāve already seen/read/heard isnāt fun to me. Barely having any skills isnāt as fun to me. My character moving slower isnāt as fun to me. Thereās so much play time with new characters just fundamentally wasted on, I dunno, āadminā; the play experiences to me are chalk and cheese. But, again, who knows really; maybe rifts are there as an account wide unlock at a certain point and the issue is as moot as D3 effectively rendered it (not holding my breath on that one TBH).
* Abstractly, donāt lose sight of the fact that past a certain point weāre arguing whether the player spending 5 seconds completely altering who they are in a menu with ācharacter selectionā written at the top is, a different/better system than the player spending 5 seconds completely altering who they are in a menu with āskill selectionā written at the top.
It was a little because extra accounts were on sale for $9.99 and a little bit obsession to wring all I could from seasons. I go wide, not deep
And I think this is a good example of why Blizzard is in a no-win situation, because the leveling process is what I enjoy. Maybe the first 5-10 levels arenāt great, but I enjoy taking a character from a slow skilless nobody into a screen melting machine as I develop that characterās particular build. Once I get to the endgame loot chase my mind starts to see through the curtain to the hamster wheel Iām running around on and I nope out. A new character does a good job of bringing back the illusion. Happens in MMOs too where the endgame stuff is all serious players care about and itās the stuff I canāt stand.
I was responding to two different scenarios with those two quotes.
Then you can choose to make a different build by pay the respec cost.
But the āfeeā in this case is spending time playing the way you want, then using the loot you find to make the character work the way you want. Maybe some of the choices you made for stabbing are still relevant to archery. If you really want to be able to be two completely separate characters whenever you choose, why shouldnāt you have to build each of those characters up, in the same way you have to earn the loot and in the same way you would have to if you chose to be a druid instead?
I mean, itās not impossible, itās just something the game asks you to earn. They share the skill tree to give you options. I seriously doubt that the options are as completely separate as you are making out here. Itās not like every skill in the tree is either an archery skill or a stabbery skill. Most of them work with either approach.
But also donāt lose sight of the fact that you are complaining about the cost of changing from fully-optimized build A to fully-optimized build B with very little overlap between them. So again, you are asking to be allowed to level up as whatever build makes it easiest to level up and then switch for free to whichever build you want to play at high level. Why not just be able to create any number of characters at the highest level youāve achieved whenever you want?
If all you want is to try out archery skills, you need to swap maybe 3 points? 6 at most?
I mean loot that is better than what you are wearing. You get the fun of upgrading gear. This is why seasons exist the way they do: because just grinding out incremental improvements at max level gets tedious, whereas leveling up from scratch in a clean economy is the experience the genre is designed around.
The game is specifically designed to let you pick and choose the content you want to play, even at the start (though I think you have to play through that tutorial area each time?). You donāt even have to do Act I before Act II in the main story and I donāt think you have to do either to get to a huge amount of map. Dungeons are the rifts-equivalent, though, and I donāt know how far you have to get to start finding nightmare sigils. I suspect thereās a totally-viable leveling strategy that is just moving between world events and dungeons and strongholds (though Iām not sure if you can reset strongholds?).
Because thereās always a ton of friction in this, which is what I keep getting at. Whenever you create two same-class characters, youāll always have a couple items that are applicable to both and now you have the problem of logging into character A, running to your stash, dragging your super duper ring/amulet/whatever into it, logging out, logging into character B, running to your stash, dragging your super duper ring/amulet/whatever back to your character then, finally, getting to do whatever it was you wanted to do in the first place.
Itās a total waste of time. A total waste of time that was eventually, and elegantly, solved completely in D3 with the wardrobe system. Prior to that I did, at one point, run two demon hunters (one built for speed clears, one built for greater rifts) because it was less tedious than manually equipping my gear/skills/runes for each activity despite there being zero ācostā (my time is the cost). So one of these characters basically existed only to solve a UI issue, though even then it was a sucky hack with a number of drawbacks; I still had to unsocket/socket legendary gems that were applicable to both, for example.
I just donāt understand the regressive design here, nor the support of it. If raising alts is truly what you enjoy most about these things, D3 never stopped you doing just that. Create and level as many as you want! The existence of easy, free respecs doesnāt impact or discourage that at all.
This wasnāt my experience of D4, it may be more āopen worldā but certain areas/activities were clearly level gated. Granted, I didnāt bother creating an alt (I wasnāt that interested in grinding out the beta, and youāve probably gathered by now Iām not a big fan of doing that anyway), but what evidence is there youād be able to take your level 2 character straight into the last act or whatever? Seems sus.
Leveling in D3 was always exactly the same because skills unlocked in the same order and the number of different builds you could possibly use was very small until you were fairly high level. They tried to solve this issue by making it super easy to hit 70 but thatās a lame solution because the leveling itself should be fun, not just the loot quest.
It may be that with the skill tree as it is, leveling is fun enough and the price of respecs is irrelevant to me because I end up just making a new character each season and never really grinding at max level. But when you make it free to swap to any possible build of your level, you immediately make it so that every skill has to be either end-game viable or it is worthless. Thereās no room left for the skills that help you survive at early levels or for the feeling of progression from janky to godly. Then all you have left is grinding until a random new shiny gives you a reason to change your skills again or endlessly optimizing the last few affixes and glyphs.
Basically, I donāt understand the mentality of āthe game begins at max level.ā If thatās the case, why not removing leveling altogether?
I donāt know for certain how they will handle the story progression, but the evidence that you will be able to progress in different ways is that thereās a huge world, filled with different dungeons and events and story quest and side quests with no barriers other than the boundaries of the beta. And you unlock the first quests of acts I, II, and III at the same time, so presumably that means you can do them in any order and they all come together somehow in act IV? Either way, you can access their zones.
I would go even further and say the leveling experience in Diablo 3 becameā¦totally meaningless. Just a rout exercise that only took a few hours, or light speed if you have someone level rush for you. At the start of a Season they should have just handed you a max level character because the real game doesnāt starts until you are at max level, getting max level scaled item drops, and running greater rifts. Itās weird.
I greatly prefer the leveling experience and development of my character along the way. Rushing to max level should never be a realistic goal which makes Diablo 3 a bit of a black sheep of the series.
I donāt understand this argument at all. I always use rapid fire in D3 as soon as I get it, and itāll last me to the end game. Just because it eventually ends up being a poor choice at 70 doesnāt make that journey worthless, nor the decision a bad one.
What would make it absolutely worthless though is if I couldnāt easily change it at 70. Then Iād never take rapid fire. Iād take the not-quite-as-good-at-low-level multishot. Why would I ever take anything else?
But only if you chose to do it that way. fox.mrs and I would always level up the long way each season we played together and we had a blast doing that. D3 has beenā¦ a different game at various points, but last time we did it I ended up getting a legendary drop early on with +800% grenade damage. It completely altered my skillset and play experience.
I guess Iām not sympathetic to arguments around power levelling ruining your experience. Nobody forces you to take a gem of simplicity, nor getting other players to rush you (like this didnāt happen in D2! Ha. ha. ha.). If you (again, choose) to do that a lot, all it suggests to me is that you donāt actually like levelling alts.
Also, donāt mistake me here - starting a new season vs levelling an alt, to me these are non-equivalent play experiences. Both of you are broadening a specific argument into something else. The focus here is that I specifically donāt want to have to level - even powerlevel - two rogues (in a season).
There were literal boundaries on the map where areas were marked ālevel 25+ā in the beta, fitting the pattern Iāve always seen of open worlds only being āfullyā open to max level chars. Iāve not really been following D4 that closely, though. Have they explicitly stated that enemies are just level scaled to your character everywhere now?