I still don't get what is keeping you from playing a Melee Demon Hunter or Flame Witchdoctor... It's your choice in what you want to play...
I imagine people including myself will still make multiple characters to play through the game to get the full experience of playing these fun customizable builds without using the other skill sets. The problem I have is with the fact it takes away the "epicness" of creating a awesome build(even if cookie cutters surface in the future). It makes the skills feel trivial because at any moment you can switch out of it without being hurt by it in any manner. Part of what was awesome for my experience in d2 was playing a class out from scratch with skills and then reaching a point where it no longer worked or battling through it. I realize you can still play with this mentality but it makes it feel more trivial. The fact the skills will scale as they go only add to it. For me at the least, I didn't use character guides, I'd play a character through and if I thought the grass was greener elsewhere, I'd replay it through and tweak the character(hence a reason to play through again...). I may have felt dumb for "wasting" points here and there along the way but it really did add a awesome dynamic to when I got it right. This system will sadly mean I'll only be making 1 run through for each type. This feels like a sad version of no child left behind. Hopefully I end up wrong about this but I always was and still stand for consequences in ones actions.
As for the auction house, if people want to spend their money on items, good for them.
What happened to costly respecs? Also not being able to allocate skill points just removes too much customisation. It's basically choose your skills and go. Every few levels you unlock another tier and choose some more skills. Not happy with your choices? Change them whenever you like at no cost.
Not even going to read the posts in this thread, as everyone is so whiny and complains - CONSTANTLY. I'm impressed with what they've done and any uncertainties I have will surely be laid to rest or escalated to the point where I actually say something when I actually play the game.
GTFO. This is a forum, where people discuss their opinions.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
...differences between skills, runed skills, and skill combinations will vary a lot.
Yea I suppose, but you have to admit, skill combinations would have varied greatly with the ability to use your own points.
I was reading this and I can't help but point out, that statement did not refute Don's point. You essentially created a straw man argument.
In any case, I'm one of the ones who voted 'love it' on the new skill system. Main reason: It's been 10 years since D2 and I'm not the 14-yr old back then who had nothing but time on hand. I am going to enjoy having one uber Monk who can be any build, since I don't have time to level up a few different Monk builds. This is just more fun for me, personally. I don't want to make any comment on the longevity of the game due to this change; we'll just have to see how it goes.
I feel it is a decent well thought out idea.
I like the idea that you won't have 1 or two skills that you spam constantly the whole entire game.
That was extremely boring after awhile.
I think what most people are afraid of is that this system waters down the playing experience, but at the same time we must also realize that runes (which have not changed as of yet, it was just an idea wilson had) increases the experimentation range. Instead of each class having similar skills with different points in them, classes will have different skills.
Each charater will have to select 6 skills from, currently, a pool of 21*5=105. And while you will be losing out on minute differences in the skill department, it looks as of crafting your gear and modifying that with various gems and enhancements will still allow people to customize their characters quite a lot.
The instant respect is a little worrysome, but I'm not sure how much yet.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
I just want to say that i've been waiting for Diablo 3 for so long and i will definitely buy it and probably love it.
But i'm scared that it will not meet my expectations of what a true Diablo sequel should be and I say this because of this recent decision with skills.
Having skills automatically acquired for you character is not Diablo, it removes customisation, it removes a unique build and it makes your character just feel like everyone else's.
I believe Blizzard did find a reasonable problem with the previous skill design, but have now made that problem much much worse. They did not fix ANYTHING. The argument was that the previous skill design made players choose one skill that they would invest all their skill points into, making everyone come to the same build as it would have been the most effective. All they have done now is allow everyone to still come to that same build, but if someone on the off-chance wants to be a little different and make a different build just to experiment, they now cannot do this, they are pigeonholed into this ONE build - there is NO choice. Yeah you can swap skills out and choose another, but once you manage to find a really good build, guess what, everyone else can just switch their skills and do the exact same thing. No need to respec, just a click of the mouse and their good to go.
Now from my rant you may get the idea that I hate this current set-up, which I don't really as I can still see different forms of customisation. Its just that I feel Blizzard just got lazy and only want to now rush the game to release. What they could have done was developed some sought of different skill system that allows the players to choose what skills they want and everything, but are unable to just respec and put all their skill points into 1 or 2 skills. In fact, I would much much much much much prefer for Blizzard to completely scrap the respec idea and keep the old skill design, its much better than what they are leaning towards now.
So Blizzard - get rid of respecs and replace the old skill system. Respeccing is in no way a loss in comparison to removing our freedom to make a unique character build!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In fact, by removing respeccing, it will further enforce the longevity of the game as people will create more characters to try different builds rather than just try a different build on the same character. I know I would prefer to do that and I had no problem making a new character in Diablo 2 - its one of the things that made the game last for so long!
Yours sincerely: Frustrated, but understanding fan.
I think it's important to notice that you can now choose only 3 passives which could turn your wizard into a melee class, which would mean you still would want another one to be caster. I'm sure passives will change playstyle a lot.
Oh my god. I don't know what Blizzard is doing anymore. This makes no sense at all. Maybe somehow it'll make sense at release. Right now it seems they officially killed replayability.
You know this makes no sense, right? With the ability to change your spec at any given point, it means there will be a lot more experimentation and freedom of choice instead of saving points up and allocating them later.
How is experimentation = replayability?
Experimentation = replay-ability because you'll be replaying characters after you've maxed out with one of them, and you'll be able to tailor your character's skills to your own playstyle. Not to mention that you have zero idea as to the end-game content, and what they have in store for us.
Personally, I'm keeping a "wait-and-see" attitude about nigh everything that's being released until I get my hands on the beta. Then, I'll be able to assess the impact that these systems have on the game; Otherwise I'm just making armchair speculations about systems that affect a game which I have never played before.
Also, I don't know of anyone who completely "replayed" Diablo 2. The idea was that once you got a feel for the game, you'd want to just make another character and power-level it. I don't know about you, but I think that would be less replaying and more skipping the game, just to get to end-game content (arena/getting items to sell/getting items to wear/who knows?).
Saving up points and allocating them later is just the sign of a player who've thought about his build before he made the character. This is the whole point - thinking about your build, specializing, making a plan beforehand. Ever played SC2? You won't get far without knowledge of the game and a plan (and scouting).
It's also a sign of a flawed game design, where skill points work against the player's ability to play through the game at each part (not just for end-game) seamlessly and without a feeling of insignificance at higher levels if they used the skill points. The argument holds true in a similar fashion for characters that save up the points, where the game is so easy that they don't need the skills system to actually work their way through it.
Looking at trees and planning points was an entertaining part of the game for me, so losing the trees way back a few years ago for me was a bit of a dissapointment. That being said:
-skill allocation is not "automatic" (you still choose what you want)
-skills are still limited (6 active, 3 passive) so there will be multiple builds
-you can still choose to start from scratch with a new build
As long as those things stay the same, I personally will still be able to really enjoy the game. Would be nice if respecs were limited.
Finally, when D2 came out, the skill system was radically different from that of D1, and I thought that was epic at the time. In some ways, I am glad that D3 is departing from the old ideas in such fundimental ways, as that has been one of the reasons their games have always kicked so much ass.
I like the idea of having all skills; they are put in place and used for different situations. I highly doubt Blizzard would put this in place or put skills in place that have no purpose.
What do we get now? I mean after we have all 6 active and 3 passives, what do a levelup give us except for some automated stats?
A level up will make all of the skills you are currently using more powerful, but you're right in that you probably wouldn't get to "click" on anything except for those times where something new was being unlocked.
On the other hand, you WOULD be able to "click" on skill things at more or less any time you wanted to since you have open respecs.
I have a feeling that this is going to be a fun system, but that won't be evident until one gets to use it.
In other words.... it doesn't feel right. I don't know, its like its just wrong. You're trying to give the player too much for too little reason and you're sacrificing important feelings for it.
I'm not one to say that I'm against quick and easy respecs. But it just feels like the characters are -so- not set in stone at all that they will all be the same.
This is exactly why I hate being here during the development process. If I was cowering under a stone, I would never have been told of anything and I would just eventually play it, however it is then. This is killing me, frankly. I just want each characters to feel unique, and the game not feel casualized, but I can't help but feel this goes against both.
I am not sure how I'm supposed to build a character now. That aspect always attracted me more than the looting/gearing aspect. Now it's gone, unless I missed something. There are still runes I guess. But not what I'm looking for.
Whats that you say? Your taking the RPG out of my Diablo?
But seriously, don't these changes do what they have been trying not to do and make skill choices feel meaningful? I seem to remember them making lost of changes based on that fact just togo ok you just get your 100% interchangeable skills. I miss having more passives but it might be better that I'll have to see. I do like the auto scaling skills for the fact that it means I can use 6 actually viable skills. I would still like to see the passives available before I make any comments on them. The other part of the change to the skills is the change to the runes that has honestly lost e a little bit as to how they work now.
What makes my character my character if the skill anyone uses can be respeced any time we want with no penalty?
Has anyone else considered asking Blizzard for a Diablo 2 2 ?
Have to agree with some people I'm looking at everything and my former going O M G ! ! ! it's about diablo 3 !!! to more of a oh... whats that? diablo 3? what about it?
Hate it. What happened to making your character unique?
I know you could potentially permanently screw up your D2 character with bad skill point allocation, but there are much better ways of going around that than just flat out giving everyone the same level progression.
Gone are the days of Bowazon, Fishymancer, Meteorb sorcs. Your character now feels like any other one. Able to completely change his specialty with a touch of a few buttons. Sad.
There's more choices now than there were before. I don't understand how people can't grasp this and it's starting to give me brain cancer having to read through uneducated complaints.
No, there's not. How many choices are to make a character of about lvl 90 with all the avalable skill and stat points? It's a pretty damn gigantic spectrum of customization. If you feel like any of the current options allow for more, than by all means.. elaborate.
I agree that there are better ways to improve stat allocation than to get rid of it altogether, but considering how inflexible it was to begin with, this isn't a step backwards.
This was the "easy" solution. Kind of like, if everything else fails, we always have this to go back to. I'm just afraid they didn't try hard enough.
Uhh, I guess? I'm sure we'll come up with new, interesting builds. Again, I don't see how the ability to experiment without repercussion hinders us.
You're right, it was much better being stuck with one spec for life. It was so awesome and fun and dynamic, having to powerlevel your character and stock up on skill points instead of picking what seemed cool as you go.
I know people are generally afraid of change but what the fuck, guys? At least make a solid argument against said changes instead of spouting nonsense.
I'm not saying they should copy D2's system to the full extent. But instead of dumbing it down to a point where you can't mold your path through skills/talents, they should have just made it more forgiving (like maybe 3 times per char reset, +1 per balance patch) and not have an incentive to dump everything into two-three skills. They also could have given you like 15 points you can spend on skills, and 30 on skill upgrades (just throwing numbers). Honestly there are SO many options besides a linear advancement it's just stupid they went with this system.
I know exactly how the system works and how it stacks compared to GW/WoW (as I played both). I still say it's too easy to just flip your character any way you want. You know when you're playing D2, if you make a bonemancer you are not having the easiest time before your Spear/Spirit start peaking. But all that time you spend slowly advancing through the ranks, the guy just grows on you and even subconsciously, you are looking at him as an individual character with an identity, you know he'll be really bad at some PVE aspects but he'll be a powerhouse in a lot of PVP matchups.
Well that's simply gone now. Your character can not only PVE with one build or PVP with the other. He can tailor his skills based on boss, area, pvp opponent class, anything really, with no risk or anything. It kind of breaks the whole identity you have. Sure, you can stick to playing with your playstyle, but powergaming will always make you constantly change your skills because it's fairly obvious some are going to be better at certain situations than others.
You may have liked it in GW, as did I, but that is not the gameplay I want in Diablo 3. Neither is the Diablo 2 system, but something that lets people make their characters specialize in certain fields of the class, rather than having everything unlocked all the time at no cost.
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I imagine people including myself will still make multiple characters to play through the game to get the full experience of playing these fun customizable builds without using the other skill sets. The problem I have is with the fact it takes away the "epicness" of creating a awesome build(even if cookie cutters surface in the future). It makes the skills feel trivial because at any moment you can switch out of it without being hurt by it in any manner. Part of what was awesome for my experience in d2 was playing a class out from scratch with skills and then reaching a point where it no longer worked or battling through it. I realize you can still play with this mentality but it makes it feel more trivial. The fact the skills will scale as they go only add to it. For me at the least, I didn't use character guides, I'd play a character through and if I thought the grass was greener elsewhere, I'd replay it through and tweak the character(hence a reason to play through again...). I may have felt dumb for "wasting" points here and there along the way but it really did add a awesome dynamic to when I got it right. This system will sadly mean I'll only be making 1 run through for each type. This feels like a sad version of no child left behind. Hopefully I end up wrong about this but I always was and still stand for consequences in ones actions.
As for the auction house, if people want to spend their money on items, good for them.
GTFO. This is a forum, where people discuss their opinions.
-Thomas Jefferson
I was reading this and I can't help but point out, that statement did not refute Don's point. You essentially created a straw man argument.
In any case, I'm one of the ones who voted 'love it' on the new skill system. Main reason: It's been 10 years since D2 and I'm not the 14-yr old back then who had nothing but time on hand. I am going to enjoy having one uber Monk who can be any build, since I don't have time to level up a few different Monk builds. This is just more fun for me, personally. I don't want to make any comment on the longevity of the game due to this change; we'll just have to see how it goes.
Thanks for reminding me. That was an implication that I found really exciting when I read the interview.
I like the idea that you won't have 1 or two skills that you spam constantly the whole entire game.
That was extremely boring after awhile.
Each charater will have to select 6 skills from, currently, a pool of 21*5=105. And while you will be losing out on minute differences in the skill department, it looks as of crafting your gear and modifying that with various gems and enhancements will still allow people to customize their characters quite a lot.
The instant respect is a little worrysome, but I'm not sure how much yet.
But i'm scared that it will not meet my expectations of what a true Diablo sequel should be and I say this because of this recent decision with skills.
Having skills automatically acquired for you character is not Diablo, it removes customisation, it removes a unique build and it makes your character just feel like everyone else's.
I believe Blizzard did find a reasonable problem with the previous skill design, but have now made that problem much much worse. They did not fix ANYTHING. The argument was that the previous skill design made players choose one skill that they would invest all their skill points into, making everyone come to the same build as it would have been the most effective. All they have done now is allow everyone to still come to that same build, but if someone on the off-chance wants to be a little different and make a different build just to experiment, they now cannot do this, they are pigeonholed into this ONE build - there is NO choice. Yeah you can swap skills out and choose another, but once you manage to find a really good build, guess what, everyone else can just switch their skills and do the exact same thing. No need to respec, just a click of the mouse and their good to go.
Now from my rant you may get the idea that I hate this current set-up, which I don't really as I can still see different forms of customisation. Its just that I feel Blizzard just got lazy and only want to now rush the game to release. What they could have done was developed some sought of different skill system that allows the players to choose what skills they want and everything, but are unable to just respec and put all their skill points into 1 or 2 skills. In fact, I would much much much much much prefer for Blizzard to completely scrap the respec idea and keep the old skill design, its much better than what they are leaning towards now.
So Blizzard - get rid of respecs and replace the old skill system. Respeccing is in no way a loss in comparison to removing our freedom to make a unique character build!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In fact, by removing respeccing, it will further enforce the longevity of the game as people will create more characters to try different builds rather than just try a different build on the same character. I know I would prefer to do that and I had no problem making a new character in Diablo 2 - its one of the things that made the game last for so long!
Yours sincerely: Frustrated, but understanding fan.
Personally, I'm keeping a "wait-and-see" attitude about nigh everything that's being released until I get my hands on the beta. Then, I'll be able to assess the impact that these systems have on the game; Otherwise I'm just making armchair speculations about systems that affect a game which I have never played before.
It's also a sign of a flawed game design, where skill points work against the player's ability to play through the game at each part (not just for end-game) seamlessly and without a feeling of insignificance at higher levels if they used the skill points. The argument holds true in a similar fashion for characters that save up the points, where the game is so easy that they don't need the skills system to actually work their way through it.
Looking at trees and planning points was an entertaining part of the game for me, so losing the trees way back a few years ago for me was a bit of a dissapointment. That being said:
-skill allocation is not "automatic" (you still choose what you want)
-skills are still limited (6 active, 3 passive) so there will be multiple builds
-you can still choose to start from scratch with a new build
As long as those things stay the same, I personally will still be able to really enjoy the game. Would be nice if respecs were limited.
Finally, when D2 came out, the skill system was radically different from that of D1, and I thought that was epic at the time. In some ways, I am glad that D3 is departing from the old ideas in such fundimental ways, as that has been one of the reasons their games have always kicked so much ass.
A level up will make all of the skills you are currently using more powerful, but you're right in that you probably wouldn't get to "click" on anything except for those times where something new was being unlocked.
On the other hand, you WOULD be able to "click" on skill things at more or less any time you wanted to since you have open respecs.
I have a feeling that this is going to be a fun system, but that won't be evident until one gets to use it.
And I have a hard time making my mind.
In other words.... it doesn't feel right. I don't know, its like its just wrong. You're trying to give the player too much for too little reason and you're sacrificing important feelings for it.
I'm not one to say that I'm against quick and easy respecs. But it just feels like the characters are -so- not set in stone at all that they will all be the same.
This is exactly why I hate being here during the development process. If I was cowering under a stone, I would never have been told of anything and I would just eventually play it, however it is then. This is killing me, frankly. I just want each characters to feel unique, and the game not feel casualized, but I can't help but feel this goes against both.
I am not sure how I'm supposed to build a character now. That aspect always attracted me more than the looting/gearing aspect. Now it's gone, unless I missed something. There are still runes I guess. But not what I'm looking for.
This is not Nox. Or WoW, for that matter.
But seriously, don't these changes do what they have been trying not to do and make skill choices feel meaningful? I seem to remember them making lost of changes based on that fact just togo ok you just get your 100% interchangeable skills. I miss having more passives but it might be better that I'll have to see. I do like the auto scaling skills for the fact that it means I can use 6 actually viable skills. I would still like to see the passives available before I make any comments on them. The other part of the change to the skills is the change to the runes that has honestly lost e a little bit as to how they work now.
What makes my character my character if the skill anyone uses can be respeced any time we want with no penalty?
Has anyone else considered asking Blizzard for a Diablo 2 2 ?
Have to agree with some people I'm looking at everything and my former going O M G ! ! ! it's about diablo 3 !!! to more of a oh... whats that? diablo 3? what about it?
I know you could potentially permanently screw up your D2 character with bad skill point allocation, but there are much better ways of going around that than just flat out giving everyone the same level progression.
Gone are the days of Bowazon, Fishymancer, Meteorb sorcs. Your character now feels like any other one. Able to completely change his specialty with a touch of a few buttons. Sad.
No, there's not. How many choices are to make a character of about lvl 90 with all the avalable skill and stat points? It's a pretty damn gigantic spectrum of customization. If you feel like any of the current options allow for more, than by all means.. elaborate.
This was the "easy" solution. Kind of like, if everything else fails, we always have this to go back to. I'm just afraid they didn't try hard enough.
I'm not saying they should copy D2's system to the full extent. But instead of dumbing it down to a point where you can't mold your path through skills/talents, they should have just made it more forgiving (like maybe 3 times per char reset, +1 per balance patch) and not have an incentive to dump everything into two-three skills. They also could have given you like 15 points you can spend on skills, and 30 on skill upgrades (just throwing numbers). Honestly there are SO many options besides a linear advancement it's just stupid they went with this system.
Well that's simply gone now. Your character can not only PVE with one build or PVP with the other. He can tailor his skills based on boss, area, pvp opponent class, anything really, with no risk or anything. It kind of breaks the whole identity you have. Sure, you can stick to playing with your playstyle, but powergaming will always make you constantly change your skills because it's fairly obvious some are going to be better at certain situations than others.
You may have liked it in GW, as did I, but that is not the gameplay I want in Diablo 3. Neither is the Diablo 2 system, but something that lets people make their characters specialize in certain fields of the class, rather than having everything unlocked all the time at no cost.