Is that what he was saying? The "not an accident you'd make too many times" was referring to accidentally clicking the wrong button. My scenario is entirely different, where I thought I was getting something out of what I was doing only to find out much later (after investing a lot of time into my character) that it was wasted.

Technically, my scenario was an "accident" I made "too many times," though.

You still wouldn't do that mistake on your second character though. If you can just reroll everything it doesn't even matter what you pick early on; there's no skill in having good skills

Quote from Azrael

I think you...

Quote from Azrael

What, I'm just stating the facts and nothing but the facts

I think you don't know the difference between facts and opinions.

May 15th is my birthday. This simply means D3 and I are one. Behold my demonic powers SEN!

Everyone appreciate my beta account, Patch 15 will be wiping it , and I'm not going to bother going for this again, since the game is about to come out.





They are saying Patch 15 is the game as it will be when it comes on the disc (prob be day one patch though), I hope to hell they have fixed the shitty Elective Mode!!!!

Quote from Roy

I can give you an example, actually. I had a Barbarian, and I thought Leap was the coolest thing ever. I got it at level 6 (as early as I could to try it out) and I could barely jump anywhere because the range was too small, but I found out that I could increase the leap range with each level. This was awesome! As I increased the level, I could hop over more obstacles to save time, escape enemies, or get into a better combat position. I ended up leveling it seven or eight times to increase the leap range until I reached level 18, where Leap Attack was now available. I thought, "Sweet! Now I can attack when I land with my awesome Leap!" Except Leap Attack doesn't care what level your Leap is, and Leap Attack's leap range is basically as far as you can click in one direction. So I just invested several skills points in an ability that, as it turns out, I basically acquire in the level 18 version automatically. How was I to know Leap Attack didn't use the distance from your existing Leap level? There was no mention of it in the skills, and Leap is a prerequisite for Leap Attack so it seemed like a logical result. I ended up throwing away that character because of this.

Yep, that was exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.

A friend of mine had a barbarian and he put lots of points into Bash because it was fun in the early game. Of course this character ended up being gimped in the late game, so you're forced to throw it away and start again. By having free-specs, it means you can actually freely choose skills early on that seem like fun or are useful at the time, and then later on you can change to other skills without any penalty or being forced to start your character from scratch. Obviously Diablo 3 doesn't have skill or stat points, but the skill selection itself still stands.

What's the point of playing a game that literally punishes you if you make choices early on that are fun, but later turn out to be real lead weights that drag you down? How on earth are you supposed to know, before you've played the game, which skills / stat points will end up being useful and which not?

Quote from Azrael

no one is allowed to complain about it because they have the choice to not press it? And saying you won't buy a video game because the challenge, fun, and diversity of it is reduced by the inclusion of such a casual-friendly "feature" is comparable to real life bigots preventing human rights? Okay.

Sure, you can complain, if you're fully informed and have a good perspective on what you're actually complaining about. In this case I think you are not fully informed on what you are complaining about, thus making your complaint invalid and the reason why I felt it necessary to cover the reason why the changes were made. On the face of it, these changes are more casual-friendly, but if you actually dig under the surface (as I have done), you'll see that the changes are actually what the most ardent fans of D2 players would have liked, but were forced to work around the limitations of D2 in the manner that they did (being rushed to clvl 80 by friends to try out new builds, slavishly following character strategy guides from clvl 1 because if you made a mistake your character would forever be weaker than it could be) because Diablo 2 was not meticulously designed with a wealth of modern gaming experience and theory behind it, like Diablo 3 has been.

I repeat: no one is preventing you from playing the game the way you want to play it. So why are you so upset that other people can now more easily play the game they wanted to play? Did you get some sense of superiority out of having a level 85 character when other people only had level 50 characters because they weren't as good players as you?

If you look at it another way: it's pretty weird that you're complaining that they've made the game more accessible and less punishing, giving you more time and ability to have fun than if you were shackled with old design ideas from the late 1990's.

See also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fw_upFVDIkQ&list=UUXRgyuUlyeUOr82XRTQ_6EQ#t=47s I skipped ahead to the first time the "do it again, dummy" point is made, but the whole video is worth watching.

I hardly find it fun to be able to fuck around for the first half of a game because you don't know what you're doing and then just change everything later on so that you don't die late game. You shouldn't be able to change your skills over and over just because you don't know which one to level up. How is it difficult or fun at all to be able to just change all your stats depending on the situation? It's like saying Skyrim isn't good because you found out late-game that you needed more armor, but you dumped all your points into magic perks instead of armor. Should you be able to undo everything just to make it easier for you? No, it was your choice to upgrade those points early on. Now you should live with it. That's kind of the point of an RPG; to make decisions that impact the game later on. It's not to do whatever you want throughout the entire game just because you can change everything later on when it gets too difficult.

Except Diablo has never been anything but the most rudimentary RPG. It's always been an Action RPG. In Diablo 3 they are choosing to emphize the Action part. Now obviously if you liked more of the RPG side of things, then yes, you may be disappointed now. But I think characterising the changes are "casual-friendly" and "noob-friendly" and against what "hardcore" players might like is wrong, because we can see that the hardcore D2 players would have preferred the D3 system anyway.

And yes, I certainly understand the perspective of being forced to live with your choices and mistakes and imparting some degree of learning curve on the player, but I don't really think it's necessary, or that the lack of such things should somehow reduce your enjoyment of the game. You can still play that way if you want. Once you learnt how the game works, you never/rarely made mistakes anyway, so you were hardly forced to live with any negative consequences.

I also outlined this with the changes to the rune system: now you're forced to get to clvl 60 to unlock all the runes, whereas previously any casual or 'noob' player could find (low-level) versions of all of the runes in Normal difficulty, or traded for them.

I've come to terms with playing a game that doesn't have consequences. It might suck, but it hasn't really been done before, and I'll at least give it a shot. Lath made some pretty good points, the point Roy made about leap.

I just want to be be different. Maybe at Lv60 I can be different, but I never even maxed out a a character in D2, and it's not what I'm looking forward to in D3.

I really love the grind from weakling to powerhouse. A mid game Lv20 Barbarian in D2 could be a whole host of different things, very different from another lv20 barb. But in D3 we're all going to be the same till around lv40, when more than half the skills are unlocked and we can actually start using more than 1 rune for our spells.

Also, NEW GRIPE:
I can't believe I forgot the worst change in D3 skills. WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY NUMBERS?! So my hammer smash fury move does "Huge" damage? WTF DOES THAT MEAN? Does it do more than my weapon throw skill? Seriously tell me that's temporary because they change the damage from patch to patch so much, and can't be bothered to re list it. Seriously wtf, it used to say %200 weapon damage now it's just "Lots". A true example of fucking over vets for the sake of nubs that get scared when they see math.

Quote from rockz

Quote from Azrael

I think you...

Quote from Azrael

What, I'm just stating the facts and nothing but the facts

I think you don't know the difference between facts and opinions.

I do, actually. Thanks for illustrating my point.

Quote from Lanthanide

Quote from Azrael

no one is allowed to complain about it because they have the choice to not press it? And saying you won't buy a video game because the challenge, fun, and diversity of it is reduced by the inclusion of such a casual-friendly "feature" is comparable to real life bigots preventing human rights? Okay.

I think you are not fully informed on what you are complaining about, thus making your complaint invalid

Not everyone who disagrees with you has to be uninformed or misinformed. You aren't 'right'.

Quote from ClansAreForGays

It might suck, but it hasn't really been done before

Diablo 2 did it a couple years ago, right about the time I stopped playing. The game quickly lost its appeal for me at that point.

Quote from ClansAreForGays

II really love the grind from weakling to powerhouse. A mid game Lv20 Barbarian in D2 could be a whole host of different things, very different from another lv20 barb. But in D3 we're all going to be the same till around lv40, when more than half the skills are unlocked and we can actually start using more than 1 rune for our spells.

I don't agree, but we'll have to wait for the game to be released.

One key difference between D2 and D3 is that most character builds in D2 had 1 or 2 attack skills and maybe a support skill or two. In Diablo 3 you're going to want to use all 6 available skills, and likely you'd want even more. If you think all builds are going to be the same, you should have a look on the diii.net forums in the class sections where people post multiple different (all seeming quite powerful builds) using the skill calculator on the battle.net website.

Quote

I can't believe I forgot the worst change in D3 skills. WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY NUMBERS?! So my hammer smash fury move does "Huge" damage? WTF DOES THAT MEAN? Does it do more than my weapon throw skill? Seriously tell me that's temporary because they change the damage from patch to patch so much, and can't be bothered to re list it. Seriously wtf, it used to say %200 weapon damage now it's just "Lots". A true example of fucking over vets for the sake of nubs that get scared when they see math.

These are the "basic" skill tooltips, but the "advanced" ones are still available.

Numerous people pointed out that actually Blizzard didn't need to make "basic" ones, they just needed to remove a lot of flowery nonsense from the standard tooltips and it would have been fine.

Quote from Lanthanide

And yes, I certainly understand the perspective of being forced to live with your choices and mistakes and imparting some degree of learning curve on the player, but I don't really think it's necessary, or that the lack of such things should somehow reduce your enjoyment of the game. You can still play that way if you want. Once you learnt how the game works, you never/rarely made mistakes anyway, so you were hardly forced to live with any negative consequences.

Solution: Filter out players into separate realms. The noob-friendly realm allows for changes on the fly, and the hardcore*-friendly realm locks in your choices from the moment you make them. Noob-friendly and hardcore*-friendly characters cannot play with each other.

In this proposed solution, you can create a noob character and play around with their abilities to learn how they all work, and if you want to be a more serious player, you'll have a nice foundation for your hardcore* character's build.

Is there any issues with this kind of system?

* I know hardcore already means something in Diablo, but I used the word to help distinguish the two different types of characters, rather than suggest the serious player's characters have only one life.

Quote from Roy

Solution: Filter out players into separate realms. The noob-friendly realm allows for changes on the fly, and the hardcore-friendly realm locks in your choices from the moment you make them. Noob-friendly and hardcore*-friendly characters cannot play with each other.

In this proposed solution, you can create a noob character and play around with their abilities to learn how they all work, and if you want to be a more serious player, you'll have a nice foundation for your hardcore* character's build.

Is there any issues with this kind of system?

No, that would be amazing. They won't do that though, simply because they don't care. As demonstrated by this thread, most people who actually care about the negative aspects of respeccing can be convinced to buy the game anyways.

Quote from Azrael

No, that would be amazing. They won't do that though, simply because they don't care. As demonstrated by this thread, most people who actually care about the negative aspects of respeccing can be convinced to buy the game anyways.

I just don't believe there are any genuine negative aspects, just you being determined not to like it, for some reason you haven't actually elucidated yet.

I already explained in pretty simple terms how it reduces uniquity, challenge, and fun in general.

My deepest apologies that my personal gaming preferences prevent me from buying a game you intend to buy.

Yes, but nothing is stopping you from playing the game why you want to play it. If you don't want to change skills after you've picked them, DON'T!

I've also outlined why the new changes are more fun: instead of trying to make some generalised build that is ok in all situations, you can instead spend time thinking up new strategies and approaches for different areas, load out different skills and see how successful you are. This sounds more fun than being stuck with blessed hammer or fist of the heavens or frozen orb and having to use that continually against everything with no variation or thought.

Your support for a game mode where no one can change their skills only means that you want to dictate how other people play the game, when really that is no business of yours.

Quote from Lanthanide

Yes, but nothing is stopping you from playing the game why you want to play it.

Already addressed this by demonstrating how an "I win" button can ruin the experience for people even though they have the option not to use it. Your logic here is incredibly flawed, so you should consider not continually repeating the same nonsensical thing.

Quote from Lanthanide

If you don't want to change skills after you've picked them, DON'T!

Don't worry, I won't, since I wouldn't waste my time even pirating such a generic game.

Quote from Lanthanide

Your support for a game mode where no one can change their skills only means that you want to dictate how other people play the game, when really that is no business of yours.

Your objection against a game mode where no one can change their skills only means that you want to dictate how other people play the game, when really that is no business of yours. Your argument is sort of like the ridiculous opposition to gay marriage that some idiots use. Other people being able to play without the ability to respec their characters doesn't impinge on your play experience whatsoever: if you want to play a game where none of your choices are final, then you can choose to play that way. No one is stopping you.

On the issue of PvP



Fuck blizzard

Instant respeccing is a casual feature; it isn't something hardcore players will like. Hence why the hardcore players will move to Path of Exile and perhaps Grim Dawn.

Quote from Jack[RCDF

Path of Exile

Getting this on day of release. It's the real successor to Diablo 2.