I've been int he beta for quite some time now, and I've liked every single change to the game, except for the last one. I'm talking about what happened to runes.

To get you caught up, Diablo 3's skill system is completely different from what you're used to. There is no skill tree, you can now rearrange your spells/skills to copy anyone you want at no cost. So the only thing that separates one wizard from another is the items they're wearing, and their level. That's where the runes came in. You could socket runes into your skills like gems into items. It would change your spell dramatically, and make your wizard maybe stand out from another, because there were so many combinations. That's gone now. Now instead of collecting runes, your spells just auto level up to unlock said variations with your level. Everyone is boringly equal again.

tl;dr probably not getting D3

w00000000000000t


too bad they deleted PVP...

...and custom boss kill animations...

Seems like I have to finish my assignment before that date

Quote from ClansAreForGays

tl;dr probably not getting D3

Wow, really? Because they took droppable runes out?

News flash: once you had level 7 runes of each type, you could get all the same skills as other players anyway. Or, say you only had level 3-4 runes: you could still get the same skills that other people did, they'd just be weaker. You'd also be faced with the lame situation where your Demon Hunter had all level 7 runes, but you wanted to start a new Monk. Now you'd be tempted to pilfer all the runes from your DH to put on your Monk. Then if you wanted to play your DH again you'd have to shift them all back over from your Monk. Pointless busy-body work.

Welcome to the days of accommodating noobs.

To unlock all the runes, you have to get to clvl 60. This requires playing in Nightmare and Hell modes. Most noobs won't even play Nightmare, or get beyond the start of it. This contrasts to the previous rune system where you could find rank 1 or 2 runes in Normal difficulty, therefore allowing "noobs" to experience all the different skill abilities without venturing into Nightmare/Hell difficulties. Nobbs could also previously trade for runes without having to find them all themselves.

If anything, this change locks more of the game away from noobs than the old rune system did.

Quote from Oh_Man

too bad they deleted PVP...

What? Completely? Not just in the beta?

Quote

...and custom boss kill animations...

I didn't know it existed or what this is.

Quote

News flash: once you had level 7 runes of each type, you could get all the same skills as other players anyway.

The point is I don't want people to be able to just make a near 1:1 replica of my hero.

They essentially took runes out, and replaced it with "you get a new skill every level"

Nothing feels customizable. I feel like it's obvious and forced what the best skills are to equip. When I play online, I'll see witch doctors with different spells, but if they are the same level they all have the same equipped spells.
Don't tell me there was NEVER anything but items to make one player different from another, it doesn't make me feel any better. I WANT to like this game again (Love the monk and DH, and everything else about the game).
Tell me I'm blind and just missing something. Something that won't make every lv20 barb the same as another. I never thought I'd miss a game not having "a point of no return"

And please someone tell me they didn't completely take out PvP, so I can at least have some excuse to buy this game.

Quote from ClansAreForGays

Quote from Oh_Man

too bad they deleted PVP...

What? Completely? Not just in the beta?

It won't be on the game on release, but will come out later as a free patch. I expect it to be 6-9 months later.

Quote

Quote

...and custom boss kill animations...

I didn't know it existed or what this is.

Some big bosses like the Siege Breaker had special death animations where they would pick up your character and bite it's head off if they were going to do a killing blow. This was shown back in 2008 when they announced the game, but it turns out it was a scripted event and was never properly implemented. Not too surprising really.

Quote

Don't tell me there was NEVER anything but items to make one player different from another, it doesn't make me feel any better. I WANT to like this game again (Love the monk and DH, and everything else about the game).
Tell me I'm blind and just missing something. Something that won't make every lv20 barb the same as another. I never thought I'd miss a game not having "a point of no return"

So there are no stat points or skill points to assign, and essentially infinite free respecs. It has been said multiple times over and over that these weren't actually 'fun' in Diablo 2 anyway. If you accidentally mis-allocated a skill or stat point, you had no choice but to start a new character over from scratch (and most people had them rushed up to clvl 80 anyway).

The only real difference here is that if you decide to build a particular character style, in D2 you had to spend a lot of time doing it, and to change it you'd have to create a new character and spend more time. In D3 that time component has been cut, but the fact is there was nothing preventing you from making additional characters in D2 in the first place. Any idea of unique identity was purely in the player's head. A lot of people playing D2 just read character guides and followed what they said for skill and stat points anyway, so where was the actual 'fun' in that?

What will prevent multiple characters at clvl 20 from looking exactly the same in D3 is the same thing that prevented it in D2: people like to play the game in different ways. In fact Diablo 3 should be much much better in this regard, because they have put a huge amount of effort into making all of the skills cool and useful in different situations, compared to Diablo 2 where we had ice bolt / fire bolt / fire ball / ice blast / glacial spike which were all pretty boring. The combat is a lot more in-depth and people will definitely find particular styles that they like to play.

Will the end game ultimately end up with some "best" configurations? Probably, but Diablo 2 had that as well. Diablo 3 is likely to have more 'best' configurations as well, and in any event this should be more fun. Instead of choosing 1 particular build and being stuck with it for the life of your character, therefore forcing you to choose something general, you'll now be able to have 3 or 4 different kit-outs that you might use for different areas of the game, or when you party with different characters you'll want to change your skills out. This should make the game much more fun and diverse, not less.

Oh yeh... they also deleted the Mystic.

The skill changes thing is actually pretty smart. The only major gripe I have with it is they also added in this shitty nub-mode skill 'categories'. They tried to mitigate this somewhat with a thing called "Elective Mode". But Elective Mode is still far too unintuitive compared to the old skill system (drag and drop spells into any hotkey of your choice). SOURCE: My beta testing experience.

So what will be different between two barbs of the same level CAFG? Well the items they have equipped, the spell build they have, and the runestones they have in each of those spells. Of course, none of these is a permenant difference, like in Diablo 2 with unchangeable skill trees and customisable attributes and Bind on Equip or whatever-the-fuck. Those two barbs could swap their armour sets between each other, change their spells, and pretty much trade places. That doesn't mean it is any LESS unique though.


Also one more thing I would like to point out, before there used to be level 1-7 runestones of varying power, that is now gone. But they have brought it back in a different way: 'item attributes'. Now you can get items with an attribute "increases your Magic Missle attack". Read about that here: http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/skill-item-modifiers-confirmed


System Changes - mystic deleted, nephelm cube + cauldron of jordan removed
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4325959/Systems_Changes-1_19_2012#blog

Skill and Rune Changes
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4475014/Skill_and_Rune_Changes-2_18_2012#blog

PVP Deleted
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4574895/Diablo_III_PvP_Update-3_9_2012#blog

Quote from Oh_Man

The skill changes thing is actually pretty smart. The only major gripe I have with it is they also added in this shitty nub-mode skill 'categories'. They tried to mitigate this somewhat with a thing called "Elective Mode". But Elective Mode is still far too unintuitive compared to the old skill system (drag and drop spells into any hotkey of your choice). SOURCE: My beta testing experience.

I expect, based on the very clumsy interface, that this is the first iteration of the new skill system UI. Certainly it's less easy to use than what went before it, and since Blizzard made both they obviously have the capability to return to a UI design more like the previous one. They do employ at least 1 guy to work full time on the D3 UI so I'm sure he knows all the problems with the current system vs the old ones. So I'd expect this to change before release (potentially in tomorrow's patch 15) or within a few months afterwards.

Then again, see how long it's taken Blizzard to come up with the SC2 1.5 patch.

I just don't understand how these problems don't get caught way back in the 'ideas' phase, let alone reaching all the way into implementation and fully coded into the game before realising it is inferior to the previous system.

And also it is a clear example of, as Demonslayer says: "the days of accommodating noobs."
They are basically trying to herd their spell builds.

Quote from Lanthanide

It has been said multiple times over and over that these weren't actually 'fun' in Diablo 2 anyway.

It can be said any number of times, it won't make it true. The customization and uniqueness of characters is what made the game fun for me. You had to give careful consideration to what you wanted to invest your points into. When I went into a game online with my trap-focused Assassin, I would play with other Assassins that had totally different skill sets and playstyles, and people who hadn't played with an Assassin that only used traps. You could mix and match different skill trees if you wanted to, or focus entirely on getting the best skills from one, and the choices you made ultimately felt meaningful, because they actually were.

Quote from Lanthanide

If you accidentally mis-allocated a skill or stat point, you had no choice but to start a new character over from scratch.

Bad decisions having consequences isn't a bad thing, and I'm pretty sure that's not an accident you'd make too many times, or at any point where you were experienced enough that it would matter. I certainly never had this happen, and I'm not even sure how someone would manage it. May as well discuss the possibility of accidentally deleting your character, or accidentally formatting your hard drive, or accidentally falling asleep while smoking and burning your house down. They all result in losing your offline characters, and they would all be your own fault.

Quote from Lanthanide

In D3 that time component has been cut, but the fact is there was nothing preventing you from making additional characters in D2 in the first place. Any idea of unique identity was purely in the player's head.

False. The time component is exactly what prevented people from making every sort of character with every combination of skills and stats. Your statement is that uniqueness isn't reduced by a reduction of the time required to achieve all unique combinations, and that's blatantly false. If they make it so your singular character can switch between all classes and levels them all up in parallel, that results in everyone having access to all skills in all classes regardless of what they start with or do over the course of the game, and obviously reduces uniqueness.

Anyways, anyone can scream its praises and defend the game for the next decade until D4 is announced, but I'm not purchasing it, because it simply isn't worth my time, and it certainly isn't a worthy successor to the previous installment. I would rather play through D2 yet again and make yet another unique character than to waste my time bothering with such a trite gaming experience. This is a good example of a developer making design decisions just to cater to a new audience, hoping to make it more accessible and casual-friendly, and still assuming they will profit off the people who loved the franchise already while completely disregarding them all the same.

It's not that I don't like Diablo enough, it's that I like Diablo too much to pay someone to dumb it down and make it worse in general.

Quote from Azrael

It can be said any number of times, it won't make it true. The customization and uniqueness of characters is what made the game fun for me.

Bashiok put this pretty simply on the forums a week or two ago. If you enjoy leveling new characters, then you can do that. If you don't enjoy leveling new characters to try out new skills, then you can do that too. Previously in Diablo 2 everyone was forced to level new characters to try out new skills. Therefore Diablo 3 has not taken anything away (except forcing everyone to play a specific way), but has added flexibility. As I pointed out also, most people in D2 just got rushed up to clvl 80 by their friends anyway, because they didn't actually want to play through the game levelling characters.

You can argue about this all you want, but the sheer fact of the matter is, the way that the majority of people played D2 shows that the way they have implemented D3 is what the majority of players want.

Quote

May as well discuss the possibility of accidentally deleting your character, or accidentally formatting your hard drive, or accidentally falling asleep while smoking and burning your house down. They all result in losing your offline characters, and they would all be your own fault.

And yet mis-clicks and mistakes happened. Just because you say "it's rare" or "it never happened to me" doesn't mean it didn't happen. It's like designing some sort of product that kills 0.0001% of its users and deciding that it's not worth the money to fix that design problem: if you get 1 million people using your product, you're still going to kill one person that didn't need to be killed.

Quote from Azrael

False. The time component is exactly what prevented people from making every sort of character with every combination of skills and stats. Your statement is that uniqueness isn't reduced by a reduction of the time required to achieve all unique combinations, and that's blatantly false. If they make it so your singular character can switch between all classes and levels them all up in parallel, that results in everyone having access to all skills in all classes regardless of what they start with or do over the course of the game, and obviously reduces uniqueness.

You're saying that the time cost ensured scarcity. Except that D2 only had a few 'best' builds anyway. Forcing someone to spend 5 hours getting a character rushed so they can make a cookie-cutter build doesn't seem any more "unique" than spending 5 minutes re-speccing your skills over. I certainly know which one is more fun for me. If you want to spend 5 hours rolling a new character: no one is stopping you.

Quote

Anyways, anyone can scream its praises and defend the game for the next decade until D4 is announced, but I'm not purchasing it, because it simply isn't worth my time, and it certainly isn't a worthy successor to the previous installment. I would rather play through D2 yet again and make yet another unique character than to waste my time bothering with such a trite gaming experience. This is a good example of a developer making design decisions just to cater to a new audience, hoping to make it more accessible and casual-friendly, and still assuming they will profit off the people who loved the franchise already while completely disregarding them all the same.

Your argument is sort of like the ridiculous opposition to gay marriage that some idiots use. Other people being able to respec their characters doesn't impinge on your play experience whatsoever: if you want to play a game where all skill choices are final, then you can choose to play that way. No one is stopping you.

Whoever is trying to argue that people played anything besides hammerdins when hammerdins were the best or the zeal/smiter when that was the best is wrong. Except for the rare novelty sorc with so much lower resist she could punch through immunity, there was no such thing as "unique" in d2.

Quote from Lanthanide

Your argument is sort of like the ridiculous opposition to gay marriage that some idiots use. Other people being able to respec their characters doesn't impinge on your play experience whatsoever: if you want to play a game where all skill choices are final, then you can choose to play that way. No one is stopping you.

So if the game is released with an "I win" button, and pushing it gives you a max character with all the best items, 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 was going to reply to everything, but at this point I couldn't take it seriously anymore. I think you have too much emotional investment in this game. I hope it meets your expectations and you get as much enjoyment from it as you expect to.

Quote from Azrael

I think you have too much emotional investment in this game.

Quote from Azrael

It's not that I don't like Diablo enough, it's that I like Diablo too much to pay someone to dumb it down and make it worse in general.

If that ain't one of the worst cases of the pot calling the kettle black I ever seen. lol.

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

Quote from Azrael

Quote from Lanthanide

If you accidentally mis-allocated a skill or stat point, you had no choice but to start a new character over from scratch.

Bad decisions having consequences isn't a bad thing, and I'm pretty sure that's not an accident you'd make too many times, or at any point where you were experienced enough that it would matter. I certainly never had this happen, and I'm not even sure how someone would manage it.

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.

As azrael said, that's not something you'd do the second time around, now is it? ;o