I don't know if any of you ever Low Level Dueled, but it's essentially using Jewels and Charms to make your low level character mega good. To me, it got ruined when Runewords like 'Spirit' were made so a million level 30s suddenly popped up. Prior to that there was nothing funner for me and my brothers in the world. I haven't done it much in years, but countless unique low level builds have popped up, in some cases utilizing inexplicably rare or overlooked mods on items to their advantage. It was a relatively short-lived period for us, and we were on-and-off at best, but man did we ever have a blast making low level duelers. I hope it's viable to do so in Diablo 3.
PvP was never the intention for Diablo 2, but I don't think the creators even envisioned that people would create low level duelers like they did. I hope in Diablo 3 they take it into account and make it competitive and possible.
THE FOLLOWING IS A RANDOM STORY ABOUT ME AND MY BROTHERS' SOMEWHAT LIMITED EXPERIENCE IN THE LOW LEVEL DUELING WORLD OF DIABLO 2. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WASTE YOUR TIME READING IT.
Shortly after me and my brothers bought the expansion in 2001 (or whenever it was released) we obsessed over it while we were on a long vacation with our grandparents. The anticipation built up and we couldn't wait until we got home to play as the Assassin and Druid! In hindsight, it probably ruined our last vacation we took with our grandparents. Bad call on our part, should have enjoyed the scenery...I digress.
I'm not sure how long into playing the expansion it was that we discovered Low Level Dueling. I don't know who invented it, but the expansion brought Jewels and Charms, and with those made it possible to beef up your characters to an unhealthy degree at very low levels. My oldest brother was the first of us to discover it firsthand, claiming a level 9 Assassin was completely owning his level 24 Barbarian. Impossible, we thought. No way a level 9 could beat a level 24 unless of course they were HACKING! Little did we know we were about to enter a world in which we could flip the table and be accused of hacking countless times ourselves.
First thing on our minds was revenge. We needed to make an awesome character to beat these stupid "hacking" assassins. There was more than one and apparently they were constantly in the dueling scene. Well, at some point we realized they weren't hacking and realized what they were doing, but something got lost in translation as our first attempt at a Low Level Dueler was, I believe, a level 18 Barbarian who wielded two 6-socket Crystal Swords pumped full of nothing but Perfect Emeralds. You know, for poison damage! No way those little twerp assassins could handle us now! Revenge was imminent!
They continued to completely slaughter us. Perplexed, we didn't know what to do. Oh, max damage jewels? Not gems? Oh, you need CHARMS? That makes sense. The first Low Level Dueler I remember was, the love of my life and long since gone from it: a_ball. That was her name, a_ball. She was my brainchild and I just thought it would be HILARIOUS if it said people were slain by a_ball (I was like 12 at the time, shuddap). She was a level 9 Tiger Strike Assassin, a very common level 9 build especially at the time when LLD was hardly popular. She had 3x 9 max damage jewels in superior 15% enhanced damage 3-socketed Blade Talons. The same in a superior 15% enhanced defense breast plate. And the same 3 jewels in a superior 3-socketed mask. Little did I know it was possible to get 8-minimum damage jewels, which are insanely rare and I've never even owned one. But they are far superior to 9-maxers.
Anyways, the fun we had with her was incredible. Getting constantly accused of hacking was something that never stopped being fun. Charging up Tiger Strike and one-hit killing level 25 to 30 sorceresses. Eventually we cheaped out and made a_ball level 13 for Cow King's boots and the Angelic Rings and Amulet. She was only the first of numerous LLD's we had. Probably our best was my brother's creation, Banana_Berry. A level 18 jabazon. We could never find her ethereal repairing War Javelins, but we had some good rare javelins, Twitchthroe, and really good charms. Prior to whatever patch it was that made life leech no longer work in duels, before that was the prime time for low level dueling. Banana_Berry could hold her own against some really, really good level 24 Concentrate barbarians. They all used the Blood Crescent scimitar since it had crazy life leech. There were also tons of level 27 zealots who used 'Honor' Divine Scepters. They were, in a word, godly. Yet our level 18 could hold her own against them.
Now that I think about it...Mine and my brothers' true favorite was actually one of my own creations. This was still prior to the installment of STUPID DUMB runewords like 'Spirit' that came around and mucked everything up. You were able to find good rare items that could set you apart from the field. Case in point, my brother found a sorceress orb that was, I believe, and it is an absolute TRAVESTY that we allowed this to disappear due to disinterest, but it had +3 Fireball, +1 Sorceress Skills, +1 Fire skills, 20% FCR, around 50-60 mana and some other useful things. So in one orb alone we had +5 to fireball! It had a level 23 requirement so I thought, man, let's just make a level 23 sorceress and use that baby!
I called her P_NutFB or something. No idea why, I think I liked my cat Peanut. My brothers thought it was a stupid idea. They told me she would stink, etc., etc. So we got her rushed and stuff, got her max block, put the rest into Vitality, pumped up fireball and I think we got it doing around 600-700 damage. Now, there are numerous ways even at a low level to nullify fire damage. Nokozan Relic, Hot Spur boots, etc. But we never met a level 18 zealot (very popular at the time) that could beat our little sorc. We could also put down some newb levels 40s no problem. She didn't fit into any of the "guidelines" specified by LLD101.com, what many people went by, but there were few LLD's that even considered a level 23 sorc to be anything but a newb. That's what was so satisfying about her. We had an orb that no one in the entire realm was likely to have, and we made a character that therefore no one else likely could have. Then, at some point, the stupid patch came with all those runewords and we quit playing for whatever reason, lost the LLD's and just moved on I guess. There were countless others, and nothing was much funner than low level dueling. Which is why I hope it's still viable in D3.
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A belief in no God is a belief in everything. It is a belief in the unfathomable number of events of blind chance required for every living thing to be here.
I never did it. But i think ti might be extremely fun because the item pool is totally different. It may feels like playing a whole different game.
But i think this LLD thing will not happen in D3. Why? First because the new dev are very close minded. They follow the same design phylosophy of WoW. I mean close-minded: they want to design how the player plays the game, not a game itself. Every step you do must planed and designed by the team. They open the door you must cross and then close the rest.
Second because i bet they will add those stupid game-killing-noob-friendly huge level modifiers. What a level modifier is? Is the factor that makes your level alone increase the level of your skills, damage, etc... In D2 (and in old and good RPG) this factor is irrelevant (this is why the difference between a low level character and a high level one is slim). But in recent mmorpg the level alone count more then any item, build or idea the player can have because this kind of modifiers are huge. So two hours of farming gives you more power then a brillhant god-like idea of using item x in build y. All this because they don't want noobs being slaugthered because they lack the creativity and knowledge it takes to be good. Some hours farming is the solution for everything. Haha
Then it that case owning someone at lvl 20 when you're 10 would be a greater achievement than in D2.
Except for the fact that it's going to be most likely impossible. It's officially stated that each level will greatly increase the power of your character. I will be impressed if people ever decide to duel under 60 because nothing provide more power then level and the PvP in different levels will be utterly frustrating. See WoW.
Then it that case owning someone at lvl 20 when you're 10 would be a greater achievement than in D2.
Except for the fact that it's going to be most likely impossible. It's officially stated that each level will greatly increase the power of your character. I will be impressed if people ever decide to duel under 60 because nothing provide more power then level and the PvP in different levels will be utterly frustrating. See WoW.
Let's be clear here, levels make a big difference even in Diablo 2. Levels play a big part in whether or not you can hit people. The thing is, so many people were/are such newbs, that they have no concept of max block or how to use stat points and skill points etc. Level 9 Assassins should not have been able to kill level 25 and 30 characters. But their characters were so god-awfully bad that we could easily. But that doesn't make it any less fun.
If levels were tossed aside and it was based solely on Attack Rating, Defense, and Damage, there would be some level 30 melee characters that could easily kill level 60's. The Attack Rating formula is based on victim's Defense value, Attacker's Attack Rating value, and then multiplied by the attacker's level divided by the victim's level. Therefore higher level characters would have their chance to hit spiked while lower levels would have theirs nullified.
My point is what you stated existed and Diablo 2, and it didn't always prevent low levels from embarrassing higher levels. Hence, I still hope LLDing is still viable. Even if you CAN'T beat higher levels, the funnest part is dueling other LLD's. :thumbsup:
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A belief in no God is a belief in everything. It is a belief in the unfathomable number of events of blind chance required for every living thing to be here.
Then it that case owning someone at lvl 20 when you're 10 would be a greater achievement than in D2.
Except for the fact that it's going to be most likely impossible. It's officially stated that each level will greatly increase the power of your character. I will be impressed if people ever decide to duel under 60 because nothing provide more power then level and the PvP in different levels will be utterly frustrating. See WoW.
Let's be clear here, levels make a big difference even in Diablo 2. Levels play a big part in whether or not you can hit people. The thing is, so many people were/are such newbs, that they have no concept of max block or how to use stat points and skill points etc. Level 9 Assassins should not have been able to kill level 25 and 30 characters. But their characters were so god-awfully bad that we could easily. But that doesn't make it any less fun.
If levels were tossed aside and it was based solely on Attack Rating, Defense, and Damage, there would be some level 30 melee characters that could easily kill level 60's. The Attack Rating formula is based on victim's Defense value, Attacker's Attack Rating value, and then multiplied by the attacker's level divided by the victim's level. Therefore higher level characters would have their chance to hit spiked while lower levels would have theirs nullified.
It matters but in a much, much lower grade then in more "modern" games. With enough attack rating gear i can hit stuff 30 levels above me. It works like this because gear matter alot more then levels. In WoW if something have a red level to you your attack rating drops to ridicolous amounts. Even with the best gear possible against a naked oponent, you can't hit someone 15+ levles above you. And in Diablo most of my PvP character were level round 80~85 and I never had any attack rating problems against 99 people.
And I just think this limitation greatly reduces the possibility of any PvP below the level cap. You will allways have to look for people in a 2 levels range. Noone will bother to do that.
Well, the jury is still out on that. I expect levels to indeed make a difference again, but whether level differential is as extreme as it is in WoW will not be seen until we can play the game. I highly doubt that rushing characters will even be possible, but the LLD community is still going, and I expect many to eventually make some LLDs. They might not be able to take out characters 10 or more levels higher, but even in WoW there are "Twink" duelers who dominate low level Battlegrounds.
As long as it's possible to scavenge for low level jewels, charms, or enchant equipment or something, low level dueling will exist in Diablo 3. At least to an extent. But like you said, perhaps only against characters that are very similar in level.
What will make this game so fun, I believe, is that it's much more visually stimulating than WoW, but also brings with it many attributes of WoW's complex character development. The core of the game-play itself though will be completely different. So I don't think you can automatically assume level differential will be as extreme as it is in WoW, but that probably is the trend of these modern games.
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A belief in no God is a belief in everything. It is a belief in the unfathomable number of events of blind chance required for every living thing to be here.
Except for the fact that it's going to be most likely impossible. It's officially stated that each level will greatly increase the power of your character. I will be impressed if people ever decide to duel under 60 because nothing provide more power then level and the PvP in different levels will be utterly frustrating. See WoW.
WoW is a bad example of the point you're trying to make.
Levels should make a difference but they should never be a do or die difference in a duel. Atleast to a certain extent, I would expect a level 60 moderate player to take a level 20 good player down with ease but a level 30-40 good player should be able to tackle a level 60 moderate player down if he is that good.
I don't want it where I am level 55-59 and I have no odds to beat a level 60 cause he has a few more levels then me, that isn't how Diablo plays and it def better not start to play that way.
yeah the level of a character vs strength in pvp is a logarithmic function. at some point, above maybe 50, the amount of power in gaining levels for certain classes starts to level out and reach a plateau. and i hope it stays that way for D3, since diablo has always been an item based game over level and skills. (although the new patches seem to favor certain classes, ahem, paladin)
lld is nowadays populated by 2 or three classes. 1 hit chargedins syncing around, foh, and the occasional sorc. its hard to find anything else in pub games.
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
But i think this LLD thing will not happen in D3. Why? First because the new dev are very close minded.
I'm not going to sit here and argue with what you think is close-minded about the game from your highly-experienced game developer background, but LLD was not an intention of Diablo II and, lo and behold, there it is, substantially popular and pretty fun. I don't think it's so much about the developers being close-minded as it is the players being closed-minded about what is and is not good gear and a good build.
Now, if you're going to suggest the game is going to be designed to discourage LLDing on purpose, especially at this point with hardly any substantial information about dueling in general, I would say that's just a pessimistic assumption since there would be no benefit to the company or the players.
Second because i bet they will add those stupid game-killing-noob-friendly huge level modifiers. What a level modifier is? Is the factor that makes your level alone increase the level of your skills, damage, etc...
LLDuelers would only fight near-equally-leveled LLDuelers, so it would not be a major concern, correct?
There are too many things that we don't know about the gameplay to determine whether or not LLDing will be viable, however, I don't really see how it won't be. Like I said, as long as you can have a char that can gather the low level items, and maybe even learn the Artisan skills and craft great items or jewels, and be able to transfer these items over to your LLD, than LLDing will exist.
There's too many unknowns at this time about all the nuances of the game to know for sure. As it is, I'm saying it looks pretty good for LLDing. Last year I was nervous that they wouldn't include Jewels and Charms for some reason. How foolish I was! That's as close to a no-brainer as there is, they can add so much to your character.
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A belief in no God is a belief in everything. It is a belief in the unfathomable number of events of blind chance required for every living thing to be here.
Haha nice story I especially loved that all perfect emeralds plan, should have worked dammit! I feel like doing low level dueling now...
I've been meaning to reply to this. Just so everyone knows, here is precisely why the Emeralds plan failed miserably, aside from the fact that we disregarded using a shield and decided to use double swing:
Take a look at Death's Hand, a staple of VLLD's (Very Low Level Duelers) used in combination with Death's Sash, for 30% IAS. And they obliterate poison. The build sucked anyway, don't get me wrong, but those pushed the suck-factor over the top.
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A belief in no God is a belief in everything. It is a belief in the unfathomable number of events of blind chance required for every living thing to be here.
It's been a long time since I actually put P gems into sockets, so is it true that if a perfect emerald has say +30 poison, then putting 2 of them into a sword will just double the poison?
I discovered this purely by accident, but helps out a lot. A perfect emerald gives +29 poison damage. Put that in a socketed weapon and you merely get that value, added by whatever you choose to put in the object. Instead, I took a 'Artisan's War Axe' with three sockets and an included magical property of something like +12 poison damage over 5 seconds. I put in three perfect emeralds and the axe now has +659-703 poison damage over 7 seconds.
Basically, find a socketed weapon with a magical property, whether it be fire, lightning, cold, poison. Fill the sockets with gems that match that property and increase the gem's property exponentially.
But i think this LLD thing will not happen in D3. Why? First because the new dev are very close minded.
I'm not going to sit here and argue with what you think is close-minded about the game from your highly-experienced game developer background, but LLD was not an intention of Diablo II and, lo and behold, there it is, substantially popular and pretty fun. I don't think it's so much about the developers being close-minded as it is the players being closed-minded about what is and is not good gear and a good build.
Close-minded = they try to plan every step of the game, creating rule over rule.
Ex 1: The reason why they removed the sub weapon toggle just to "fit" what they want about gameplay. If they were open-minded they would simply leave the weapon toogle there and let the players decide if it's useful or not, if it's fun or not. Who creats the gameplay of a good game is the player. The only paper of the design is to provide enough tools for the players to explore.
*****
Ex 2: Greater presence of weapon-class restriction. They remove it simply because they supposely know that barbs will ever need to use wands or wiz will need to use mauls, etc... Heck, if they already know whats good or not before the players get their hands on the game i think they are close-minded.
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Ex 3: Different resources for each class. They are already deciding how each class will player. Wiz will be more explosive, barbs must take the action, monks do combos. This just destroy the strange side builds the game should provide. A open-minded game would simply give mana to everyone and give ways of radically changing it (like builds were hitting gives mana back to simulate barbarian's fury, builds with low mana total but huge regeneration to simulate wiz resource, etc..).
Exemple of open minded games:
Ultima Online: Sure, there was tons of cookie cutters obvious builds. But many people made crazy, ridicolous ideas work. This was only possible because the system allows you to pick any skill of the game w/o any restrictions.
*****
Tekken: Each character has like hundred moves but most player only use a few and playing on internet you cna see everyone has a very unique style. This happens because, when creating the game, people don't really care if each move will be good or not. They just place the tool there. Fightning games were each move is good are just ridicolous. In the end each character has a very fixed play style and the combat has zero depth.
*****
Starcraft: Everyone knows how balanced SC is. But not everyone knows that SC had minimal amount of balance patchs. Why ? Because blizz didn't give a shit about people whinning. When some cookie cutter tatic was too present at the metagame, players naturally started to use different build orders to counter that. WC3 followed the oposite design and ended up a very limited game. Each time one tatic proven to be good the nerf hammer appeared. In the end the game works as "intended" a rock-paper-scisors of melee-ranged-air with very fixed BO for each match. Yeah, all units are largely used, each race too. But everyone do the same thing everytime freaking time.
Do not put words on my mouth. I never said i had any game design experience and i don't have any idea why you thought that. I just don't like the reason behind some of their decisions and i don't need any design pratice too know what i like or not about a game.
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"In time the hissing of her sanity
Faded out her voice and soiled her name
And like marked pages in a diary
Everything seemed clean that is unstained
The incoherent talk of ordinary days
Why would we really need to live?
Decide what is clear and what's within a haze
What you should take and what to give" - Opeth
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PvP was never the intention for Diablo 2, but I don't think the creators even envisioned that people would create low level duelers like they did. I hope in Diablo 3 they take it into account and make it competitive and possible.
THE FOLLOWING IS A RANDOM STORY ABOUT ME AND MY BROTHERS' SOMEWHAT LIMITED EXPERIENCE IN THE LOW LEVEL DUELING WORLD OF DIABLO 2. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WASTE YOUR TIME READING IT.
Shortly after me and my brothers bought the expansion in 2001 (or whenever it was released) we obsessed over it while we were on a long vacation with our grandparents. The anticipation built up and we couldn't wait until we got home to play as the Assassin and Druid! In hindsight, it probably ruined our last vacation we took with our grandparents. Bad call on our part, should have enjoyed the scenery...I digress.
I'm not sure how long into playing the expansion it was that we discovered Low Level Dueling. I don't know who invented it, but the expansion brought Jewels and Charms, and with those made it possible to beef up your characters to an unhealthy degree at very low levels. My oldest brother was the first of us to discover it firsthand, claiming a level 9 Assassin was completely owning his level 24 Barbarian. Impossible, we thought. No way a level 9 could beat a level 24 unless of course they were HACKING! Little did we know we were about to enter a world in which we could flip the table and be accused of hacking countless times ourselves.
First thing on our minds was revenge. We needed to make an awesome character to beat these stupid "hacking" assassins. There was more than one and apparently they were constantly in the dueling scene. Well, at some point we realized they weren't hacking and realized what they were doing, but something got lost in translation as our first attempt at a Low Level Dueler was, I believe, a level 18 Barbarian who wielded two 6-socket Crystal Swords pumped full of nothing but Perfect Emeralds. You know, for poison damage! No way those little twerp assassins could handle us now! Revenge was imminent!
They continued to completely slaughter us. Perplexed, we didn't know what to do. Oh, max damage jewels? Not gems? Oh, you need CHARMS? That makes sense. The first Low Level Dueler I remember was, the love of my life and long since gone from it: a_ball. That was her name, a_ball. She was my brainchild and I just thought it would be HILARIOUS if it said people were slain by a_ball (I was like 12 at the time, shuddap). She was a level 9 Tiger Strike Assassin, a very common level 9 build especially at the time when LLD was hardly popular. She had 3x 9 max damage jewels in superior 15% enhanced damage 3-socketed Blade Talons. The same in a superior 15% enhanced defense breast plate. And the same 3 jewels in a superior 3-socketed mask. Little did I know it was possible to get 8-minimum damage jewels, which are insanely rare and I've never even owned one. But they are far superior to 9-maxers.
Anyways, the fun we had with her was incredible. Getting constantly accused of hacking was something that never stopped being fun. Charging up Tiger Strike and one-hit killing level 25 to 30 sorceresses. Eventually we cheaped out and made a_ball level 13 for Cow King's boots and the Angelic Rings and Amulet. She was only the first of numerous LLD's we had. Probably our best was my brother's creation, Banana_Berry. A level 18 jabazon. We could never find her ethereal repairing War Javelins, but we had some good rare javelins, Twitchthroe, and really good charms. Prior to whatever patch it was that made life leech no longer work in duels, before that was the prime time for low level dueling. Banana_Berry could hold her own against some really, really good level 24 Concentrate barbarians. They all used the Blood Crescent scimitar since it had crazy life leech. There were also tons of level 27 zealots who used 'Honor' Divine Scepters. They were, in a word, godly. Yet our level 18 could hold her own against them.
Now that I think about it...Mine and my brothers' true favorite was actually one of my own creations. This was still prior to the installment of STUPID DUMB runewords like 'Spirit' that came around and mucked everything up. You were able to find good rare items that could set you apart from the field. Case in point, my brother found a sorceress orb that was, I believe, and it is an absolute TRAVESTY that we allowed this to disappear due to disinterest, but it had +3 Fireball, +1 Sorceress Skills, +1 Fire skills, 20% FCR, around 50-60 mana and some other useful things. So in one orb alone we had +5 to fireball! It had a level 23 requirement so I thought, man, let's just make a level 23 sorceress and use that baby!
I called her P_NutFB or something. No idea why, I think I liked my cat Peanut. My brothers thought it was a stupid idea. They told me she would stink, etc., etc. So we got her rushed and stuff, got her max block, put the rest into Vitality, pumped up fireball and I think we got it doing around 600-700 damage. Now, there are numerous ways even at a low level to nullify fire damage. Nokozan Relic, Hot Spur boots, etc. But we never met a level 18 zealot (very popular at the time) that could beat our little sorc. We could also put down some newb levels 40s no problem. She didn't fit into any of the "guidelines" specified by LLD101.com, what many people went by, but there were few LLD's that even considered a level 23 sorc to be anything but a newb. That's what was so satisfying about her. We had an orb that no one in the entire realm was likely to have, and we made a character that therefore no one else likely could have. Then, at some point, the stupid patch came with all those runewords and we quit playing for whatever reason, lost the LLD's and just moved on I guess. There were countless others, and nothing was much funner than low level dueling. Which is why I hope it's still viable in D3.
But i think this LLD thing will not happen in D3. Why? First because the new dev are very close minded. They follow the same design phylosophy of WoW. I mean close-minded: they want to design how the player plays the game, not a game itself. Every step you do must planed and designed by the team. They open the door you must cross and then close the rest.
Second because i bet they will add those stupid game-killing-noob-friendly huge level modifiers. What a level modifier is? Is the factor that makes your level alone increase the level of your skills, damage, etc... In D2 (and in old and good RPG) this factor is irrelevant (this is why the difference between a low level character and a high level one is slim). But in recent mmorpg the level alone count more then any item, build or idea the player can have because this kind of modifiers are huge. So two hours of farming gives you more power then a brillhant god-like idea of using item x in build y. All this because they don't want noobs being slaugthered because they lack the creativity and knowledge it takes to be good. Some hours farming is the solution for everything. Haha
Except for the fact that it's going to be most likely impossible. It's officially stated that each level will greatly increase the power of your character. I will be impressed if people ever decide to duel under 60 because nothing provide more power then level and the PvP in different levels will be utterly frustrating. See WoW.
Let's be clear here, levels make a big difference even in Diablo 2. Levels play a big part in whether or not you can hit people. The thing is, so many people were/are such newbs, that they have no concept of max block or how to use stat points and skill points etc. Level 9 Assassins should not have been able to kill level 25 and 30 characters. But their characters were so god-awfully bad that we could easily. But that doesn't make it any less fun.
If levels were tossed aside and it was based solely on Attack Rating, Defense, and Damage, there would be some level 30 melee characters that could easily kill level 60's. The Attack Rating formula is based on victim's Defense value, Attacker's Attack Rating value, and then multiplied by the attacker's level divided by the victim's level. Therefore higher level characters would have their chance to hit spiked while lower levels would have theirs nullified.
My point is what you stated existed and Diablo 2, and it didn't always prevent low levels from embarrassing higher levels. Hence, I still hope LLDing is still viable. Even if you CAN'T beat higher levels, the funnest part is dueling other LLD's. :thumbsup:
It matters but in a much, much lower grade then in more "modern" games. With enough attack rating gear i can hit stuff 30 levels above me. It works like this because gear matter alot more then levels. In WoW if something have a red level to you your attack rating drops to ridicolous amounts. Even with the best gear possible against a naked oponent, you can't hit someone 15+ levles above you. And in Diablo most of my PvP character were level round 80~85 and I never had any attack rating problems against 99 people.
And I just think this limitation greatly reduces the possibility of any PvP below the level cap. You will allways have to look for people in a 2 levels range. Noone will bother to do that.
As long as it's possible to scavenge for low level jewels, charms, or enchant equipment or something, low level dueling will exist in Diablo 3. At least to an extent. But like you said, perhaps only against characters that are very similar in level.
What will make this game so fun, I believe, is that it's much more visually stimulating than WoW, but also brings with it many attributes of WoW's complex character development. The core of the game-play itself though will be completely different. So I don't think you can automatically assume level differential will be as extreme as it is in WoW, but that probably is the trend of these modern games.
WoW is a bad example of the point you're trying to make.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Twink
I don't want it where I am level 55-59 and I have no odds to beat a level 60 cause he has a few more levels then me, that isn't how Diablo plays and it def better not start to play that way.
lld is nowadays populated by 2 or three classes. 1 hit chargedins syncing around, foh, and the occasional sorc. its hard to find anything else in pub games.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
I'm not going to sit here and argue with what you think is close-minded about the game from your highly-experienced game developer background, but LLD was not an intention of Diablo II and, lo and behold, there it is, substantially popular and pretty fun. I don't think it's so much about the developers being close-minded as it is the players being closed-minded about what is and is not good gear and a good build.
Now, if you're going to suggest the game is going to be designed to discourage LLDing on purpose, especially at this point with hardly any substantial information about dueling in general, I would say that's just a pessimistic assumption since there would be no benefit to the company or the players.
LLDuelers would only fight near-equally-leveled LLDuelers, so it would not be a major concern, correct?
There's too many unknowns at this time about all the nuances of the game to know for sure. As it is, I'm saying it looks pretty good for LLDing. Last year I was nervous that they wouldn't include Jewels and Charms for some reason. How foolish I was! That's as close to a no-brainer as there is, they can add so much to your character.
I've been meaning to reply to this. Just so everyone knows, here is precisely why the Emeralds plan failed miserably, aside from the fact that we disregarded using a shield and decided to use double swing:
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/sets/sets2.shtml#deaths
Take a look at Death's Hand, a staple of VLLD's (Very Low Level Duelers) used in combination with Death's Sash, for 30% IAS. And they obliterate poison. The build sucked anyway, don't get me wrong, but those pushed the suck-factor over the top.
http://au.cheats.ign.com/ob2/068/015/015348.html
Close-minded = they try to plan every step of the game, creating rule over rule.
Ex 1: The reason why they removed the sub weapon toggle just to "fit" what they want about gameplay. If they were open-minded they would simply leave the weapon toogle there and let the players decide if it's useful or not, if it's fun or not. Who creats the gameplay of a good game is the player. The only paper of the design is to provide enough tools for the players to explore.
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Ex 2: Greater presence of weapon-class restriction. They remove it simply because they supposely know that barbs will ever need to use wands or wiz will need to use mauls, etc... Heck, if they already know whats good or not before the players get their hands on the game i think they are close-minded.
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Ex 3: Different resources for each class. They are already deciding how each class will player. Wiz will be more explosive, barbs must take the action, monks do combos. This just destroy the strange side builds the game should provide. A open-minded game would simply give mana to everyone and give ways of radically changing it (like builds were hitting gives mana back to simulate barbarian's fury, builds with low mana total but huge regeneration to simulate wiz resource, etc..).
Exemple of open minded games:
Ultima Online: Sure, there was tons of cookie cutters obvious builds. But many people made crazy, ridicolous ideas work. This was only possible because the system allows you to pick any skill of the game w/o any restrictions.
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Tekken: Each character has like hundred moves but most player only use a few and playing on internet you cna see everyone has a very unique style. This happens because, when creating the game, people don't really care if each move will be good or not. They just place the tool there. Fightning games were each move is good are just ridicolous. In the end each character has a very fixed play style and the combat has zero depth.
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Starcraft: Everyone knows how balanced SC is. But not everyone knows that SC had minimal amount of balance patchs. Why ? Because blizz didn't give a shit about people whinning. When some cookie cutter tatic was too present at the metagame, players naturally started to use different build orders to counter that. WC3 followed the oposite design and ended up a very limited game. Each time one tatic proven to be good the nerf hammer appeared. In the end the game works as "intended" a rock-paper-scisors of melee-ranged-air with very fixed BO for each match. Yeah, all units are largely used, each race too. But everyone do the same thing everytime freaking time.
Do not put words on my mouth. I never said i had any game design experience and i don't have any idea why you thought that. I just don't like the reason behind some of their decisions and i don't need any design pratice too know what i like or not about a game.