Just as a FYI, I've now included a link if your interested in downloading the very beta shield simulator. I've recently updated it with some additional features/explanations.
I quickly fooled around with building a very simple shield block simulator (excel vba) for D3 to gauge the relative effectiveness of blocking for my inferno hardcore barb. It's not perfect as the simulator does not consider all combat skills and damages but it is a work in progress. The intention was to build this for my own interest but I thought it "may" be of some use to others in the community. Further development is warranted but I would require some feedback.
It basically will let you see how long your character would survive against a predetermined # of enemies without considering the fact that you would be killing mobs during the simulation. You can change the stats of your character, mob damage , passive skills and shield stats to evaluate the impact on the survivability of the character. It's mainly been designed for barbarians but I've included enough flexibility to allow for testing of other character types. I've included a link to the simulator on my thread on this other website since I'm not sure how to add attachments here.
I think I would end up paying if it was $15 or less. But as other stated I don't see how Blizzard could ever sell beta access since they'd be flooded with requests. Besides beta testers might be more demanding of extra gameplay if they'd paid for access to that content. Either way I guess it's moot since noone is selling.
I was thinking having the option to have custom death messages might be humorous instead of the standard "Vile the Wicked has slain Grizzle". Perhaps it would ease the burden of death and give others a chuckle.
It might read something like "Vile the Wicked didn't like Grizzle's build and decided to make him reroll"
or
"Vile the Wicked tickled Grizzle until he screamed like a girl and was turned to into fairy dust".
I'm sure others could come up with some funny ones. Good idea or bad?
Hardcore is the only way to play. Thing is it's an awesome feeling when your tempting fate and comming out on the winning side (which should be most of the time) but when you die it can be like a punch in the gut. You'll curse some and swear you'll never play HC again until you realize that it's the whole idea that you could possibly die that made you play HC in the first place. Then it's back to rerolling and doing it some more. I think some of the frustration would be subsided if instant replays of character deaths was possible. I can remember having a level 1 mule in some of my private games with my character and then losing him and being forced to msg random people with the hopes that they'd be able to come into my private game and help me loot my fallen hero. Ah the shame.
I can't really see them selling anything outside of perhaps vanity items. After stating that they wouldn't be creating items to dump onto the Auction house I can't see how they'd be able to get away with selling in game items on their E-store. It's basically the same thing.
As I haven't played the D3 beta I can't really comment on monster AI in the beta so most of this is just speculation. Diablo has always been a blast for me because with the appropriate gear you character feels like you are a God amongst mortals. Killing waves after waves of mobs and picking through their bones to find trinkets has always been a devious pleasure of mine (oooooohhh shiny!). Fortunately for our heroes, Diablo's monsters will continuously walk through our frozen orbs or fire walls because they are so driven with rage to kill you that they ignore the most obvious pitfalls to their existence.
My question is would it be less fun if monsters were more intelligent and put together some tactics to take you down? What tactics they would employ I'm not sure. Perhaps counterspelling magic mobs or putting down snares that make melee susceptible to range attack. Or having mobs that could pick up gear of our fallen brethren and use it against us? It may very well be that smart mobs = annoying mobs. I know we all probably hate the mobs that run away when attacked (thus % chance to flee was a hated stat for melee). Maybe have ranged mobs cast acid traps in front of them to deter melee heroes? Maybe some of these things are already in the D3 beta? At the end of the day I enjoy lots of dull witted mobs with the occasional semi-intelligent (think 8th grader equivalent) boss mob. There has to be some demon that knows better than to jump on our swords. What's the verdict by the community?
2. Traps.
Traps aren't really associated with mob AI as developers have them preset to specific locations. My question is whether people enjoy the trap aspect in Diablo. D2 had the dreaded Fire shrine and lots of the monster urns in the caverns of act 5. The risk was almost never worth the reward but I felt obligated to click the button regardless. Will traps be more elaborate in D3? Do we want higher risk /higher reward traps? Ones that might mean certain death in many cases? Personally I love being tempted with fate and having to decide whether it's worth risking my HC character for the prospect of uber loot. While others might feel traps are an unnecessary obstacle and only a fool would purposely set one off.
Thanks for listening and I'm interested in what others think.
Personally I'd rather be fighting for RMAH in Hardcore than worrying about having HC from the start. Learning the ropes for the first play through kinda makes sense to me. This way we'll be able to enjoy the storyline without worrying about the loss of life. If I had to pick sides though I'd say let the player decide if they want to start of with HC.
I have got a BRILLIANT idea. Every time someone comes up with a unique build, they get a "Special Snowflake" Achievement. (Obviously once you get the achievement you can't get it again)
Problem
Solved!
Haha. Ok that made me laugh. As others have said true uniqueness is never attainable in a game where there are limited permutations of skills. That being said I think people like to feel that they bring something different to the table when dispatching Diablos hordes otherwise we wouldn't be asking for so many permutations of skills and gear. Its interesting to see that most people here dont feel the loss of having defined builds or builds that require some sort of investment (gold, time etc). Obviously Blizzard has made the right decision and maybe I have to be a little more open to the new design.
But at the start of this game, you have different explained origins for each hero class. So it makes sense that they'd start with differing abilities. If you were just some town schlub who picked up a sword and started whacking zombies, then sure...a system to let you change class entirely would be pretty sweet. Then again, if you are level 60, I'm not sure you'd be overly successul respecing from Barbarian to Wizard - the play styles would be totally different. And at the highest difficulty is probably not a good time to learn the ropes.
Heh, good points. I think until recently, when Blizzard decided to change the item affix's back to a more class specific itemization, it might have been possible to change specs without too much difficulty (thank god they changed that). Also I agree that the background story for each character class is important in telling the tale of diablo and thus free spec wouldn't work. It was more my point that some amount of permenance is fun. I'm not a believer yet in their systems. We'll see I guess.
At this point I think we're all going to be forced to learn to live with or love the rune system that has been presented. Blizzard has at least shown significant improvements of their games with expansions. I'm sure that vanilla D3 will be fun enough even with its simplicity. But hey if someone wants to throw out an improved rune system then Bring it on.
I'm still wondering if there will be any point of rolling a 2nd character of the same class. Personally I thought that was a big appeal of D2. At least we get unique names......errr..or not.
Curious why you'd bother? Seriously. At level 60, you are still playing the level 1 content, only more difficult. You get the story (I presume) and everything else that goes with it. It's just at your presumed skill level. I really don't get the fascination of rolling the same class a second time just to see a different skill. Then again, when I played WoW, people I knew had like 1 druids, 3 warriors, 2 paladins, 4 mages, and a priest. And I'm like...Why?
Makes a lot more sense just to let you respec into it somehow and continue at your skill level.
I actually re-started skyrim 7 times because I dorked up some points in my build and I'm kinda anal about that kind of stuff. It got stupid and repetitive - and I loved that game to death. But running away from the dragon, bleak falls barrow etc got old. Really quick.
I like having the ability to mess around. Imagine going thru 60 levels of leveling and finding out that your build can't survive the hardest difficulty? Egads, that'd suck. Wouldn't make me play thru again, that's for sure. It'd make me shelve the game. Probably the reason I quit playing Dark Souls, too. Dorked up some points early on and didn't get my +1 estus flask (got 5 humanity instead - somehow) and never enjoyed the game the same after. It was just too tedious to start it all over. Wasn't difficult, just tedious.
I imagine accidentally picking corpse spiders at level 27 (let's pretend you earned at this level) instead of wall of zombies or whatever. And realizing it's a bad choice. That'd suck really really hard. A game shouldn't require preplanning to play it; or internet research to find out what works best for you. Life lets you make mistakes, why not this?
It's just not conducive to getting people to play your game. You want hurdles (which should the acquisition of runes, in my mind - I think Blizzard really screwed up in giving them out as they do in the new beta), but you don't want hurdles so high that it becomes frustrating. Respec cost might make sense as a hurdle too - increase its cost based upon how many times you change up skills. Whatever.
But it's a joke to suggest that you should be locked into a decision because you didn't do some internet research as to what the most optimal abilities are.
I don't disagree with your points. You bring up very valid issues when you have a system the forces you to reroll to play another build. Of course you could take it even farther and just have 1 class in stead of 5 classes and have blizzard let you choose to specialize in a wizard /barb etc but let you reroll spec whenever you feel like. Is that an improvement? I think there has to be some sort of inbetween where your not permalocked into a build but at the same time there is at least some cost to changing builds. If there is no investment in a character it begins to feel a bit shallow in my opinion. Who knows maybe once I play the game I'll end up enjoying the fluidity of being able to change skills on a whim whenever I choose.
In the end, no one wants to be unique, they want to be the best. Usually the best (in games) means having the same (ie best) gear and the same (ie best) build.
I think your correct in your analysis for a good portion of the community. I do think however there are some people who want to be able to say that their character is somehow different from the rest of the community and not necessarily the most efficient build but perhaps a build that shows some sort of coolness factor to it. Within the boundaries that Blizzard has constructed this game I wonder if that will still be possible.
I guess what it boils down to is that there is no longer the opportunity for someone to discover a new build without someone else having the exact same build in a matter of seconds. Maybe that's for the better as it'll allow us to adapt to different situations more quickly.
I'm still wondering if there will be any point of rolling a 2nd character of the same class. Personally I thought that was a big appeal of D2. At least we get unique names......errr..or not.
This topic is just for interest. I'm not raging on Blizzard or anything. I still believe the game is going to be a lot of fun. The question is how long will the fun last? This is where I feel character customization through builds really begins to determine this aspect.
We all know that it's been Blizzard's goal to streamline game systems (Rune system, removal of mystic, No stat points, simpler skill tree's etc) and focus on making great gameplay without unnecessary complexity. In principle I'm ok with this philosophy so long as there is still enough uniqueness to one's own character that ensures 2 things.
1. That when another Wizard/Barb/ or whatever shows up in the game, that we are not both employing the same skills and strategies when taking down mobs. (Maybe that's not a big deal to most people)
2. I feel inspired to have more than one character of the same class. (Again is that something that most people would like?)
Now with all the new Skills* Runes, Blizzard has basically stated that there are so many permutations that characters will not end up being cookie cutters of one another. Will this hold true if people can change skills/runes on the fly without any gold sink? Does it bother people if the character that joins your game starts emulating your skills and attacks. Or that peops keep asking you in every game. "Hey what skills are you using?". For myself I'd be inclined to use skills that aid the party and aren't being used by other characters of the same class so long as the skills are enjoyable to use. I don't plan on emulating other characters of the same class just for the sake of killing speed. I'm hoping that the gameplay will push us to choose different skills to aid each other in battle. Maybe Blizzard has already forecast this issue by ensuring mob types will be so varied that it will be disadvantageous to see 2 wizards using the same skills in the same game. Perhaps all this is moot already?
Through the simplification process, Blizzard has basically deemed that most of our uniqueness will come from the gear that each of us find or buy, along with the jewelcrafter aiding in some additional customization. I do think gear is great and it's the #1 motivating factor that all of us love to play the game but a part of me feels like in the long run the flavor of not having a permanence to character builds is going to chip away at the love affair that I had with Diablo 2 for over 3 1/2 years straight. Add to the fact that with the auction house the mid level and higher gear might be reasonably obtainable for many of us within a couple of months. This makes me think that itemization between characters will no longer being that big separator in the long run. I also feel quite strongly that itemization does not provide characters with the active choices that are usually associated with a RPG. Usually active decisions through skill choice (permanent) are what makes up a RPG. I think many of us were hoping the rune system would add some sort of semi-permanence to their character builds (or maybe that was just a few of us). Is this viewpoint shared by others or are most people satisfied with the uniqueness provided through itemization?
At the end of the day Blizzard seems to be going against a lot of the logic that I thought made Diablo 2 great. That isn't bad necessarily but it's definitely a different direction. Fortunately, as I plan on playing Hardcore, the fact that permadeath will be removing characters of mine from time to time I feel there will be ample longevity in the gameplay. At the end of the day I still have faith in Blizzard but a small amount of concern has been raised with the announcement of certain systems. Thanks for listening and feel free to comment.
I wonder what Blizzard has learned or not. For some of us they seem to fall into the same pitfalls over and over again. Namely being forced to give a release date and discuss their development of game systems. I know in my work sometimes its difficult to anticipate all of the pitfalls and hurdles you might encounter before your deliverable is ready for distribution. I'm sure a number of us have been involved in projects that have run past release dates by months or maybe even years. On the one hand it'd be cool to have legions of fans anticipating the release of my next project but on the other hand I can see how it'd get to you when people flame decisions. There are those of us who would rather just be told one day hey Diablo3 is being released tomorrow and never have paid attention to the development cycle.
Maybe they've learned not to discuss game systems until they're finalized. I think it might be easier to announce the rune system in its final form and defend it as opposed to having discussed it previously and given fans the impression it might have been more than it is today. I definetly don't agree with all of the decisions the game development has taken but I'm not privy to all of the information and testing info they have access to. I guess at the end of the day they're openess is both a godsend and their bane to different segments of the Diablo community and it's hard to comment on whether it's been good or bad to the community as a whole. Personally while I'm extremely excited about the release of the game I also have enough going on in my life that makes the wait alot more tolerable. That's not a critism to those who feel they can't wait as years ago when I was alot younger I'm sure I felt the exact same way when waiting for game releases. It's just that I've learned that life is too short to worry about just a video game and just to enjoy the time in between.
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It basically will let you see how long your character would survive against a predetermined # of enemies without considering the fact that you would be killing mobs during the simulation. You can change the stats of your character, mob damage , passive skills and shield stats to evaluate the impact on the survivability of the character. It's mainly been designed for barbarians but I've included enough flexibility to allow for testing of other character types. I've included a link to the simulator on my thread on this other website since I'm not sure how to add attachments here.
Download link below.
http://diablo.incgam...532#post8366532
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It might read something like "Vile the Wicked didn't like Grizzle's build and decided to make him reroll"
or
"Vile the Wicked tickled Grizzle until he screamed like a girl and was turned to into fairy dust".
I'm sure others could come up with some funny ones. Good idea or bad?
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0
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1. Monster AI
As I haven't played the D3 beta I can't really comment on monster AI in the beta so most of this is just speculation. Diablo has always been a blast for me because with the appropriate gear you character feels like you are a God amongst mortals. Killing waves after waves of mobs and picking through their bones to find trinkets has always been a devious pleasure of mine (oooooohhh shiny!). Fortunately for our heroes, Diablo's monsters will continuously walk through our frozen orbs or fire walls because they are so driven with rage to kill you that they ignore the most obvious pitfalls to their existence.
My question is would it be less fun if monsters were more intelligent and put together some tactics to take you down? What tactics they would employ I'm not sure. Perhaps counterspelling magic mobs or putting down snares that make melee susceptible to range attack. Or having mobs that could pick up gear of our fallen brethren and use it against us? It may very well be that smart mobs = annoying mobs. I know we all probably hate the mobs that run away when attacked (thus % chance to flee was a hated stat for melee). Maybe have ranged mobs cast acid traps in front of them to deter melee heroes? Maybe some of these things are already in the D3 beta? At the end of the day I enjoy lots of dull witted mobs with the occasional semi-intelligent (think 8th grader equivalent) boss mob. There has to be some demon that knows better than to jump on our swords. What's the verdict by the community?
2. Traps.
Traps aren't really associated with mob AI as developers have them preset to specific locations. My question is whether people enjoy the trap aspect in Diablo. D2 had the dreaded Fire shrine and lots of the monster urns in the caverns of act 5. The risk was almost never worth the reward but I felt obligated to click the button regardless. Will traps be more elaborate in D3? Do we want higher risk /higher reward traps? Ones that might mean certain death in many cases? Personally I love being tempted with fate and having to decide whether it's worth risking my HC character for the prospect of uber loot. While others might feel traps are an unnecessary obstacle and only a fool would purposely set one off.
Thanks for listening and I'm interested in what others think.
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Haha. Ok that made me laugh. As others have said true uniqueness is never attainable in a game where there are limited permutations of skills. That being said I think people like to feel that they bring something different to the table when dispatching Diablos hordes otherwise we wouldn't be asking for so many permutations of skills and gear. Its interesting to see that most people here dont feel the loss of having defined builds or builds that require some sort of investment (gold, time etc). Obviously Blizzard has made the right decision and maybe I have to be a little more open to the new design.
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Heh, good points. I think until recently, when Blizzard decided to change the item affix's back to a more class specific itemization, it might have been possible to change specs without too much difficulty (thank god they changed that). Also I agree that the background story for each character class is important in telling the tale of diablo and thus free spec wouldn't work. It was more my point that some amount of permenance is fun. I'm not a believer yet in their systems. We'll see I guess.
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I don't disagree with your points. You bring up very valid issues when you have a system the forces you to reroll to play another build. Of course you could take it even farther and just have 1 class in stead of 5 classes and have blizzard let you choose to specialize in a wizard /barb etc but let you reroll spec whenever you feel like. Is that an improvement? I think there has to be some sort of inbetween where your not permalocked into a build but at the same time there is at least some cost to changing builds. If there is no investment in a character it begins to feel a bit shallow in my opinion. Who knows maybe once I play the game I'll end up enjoying the fluidity of being able to change skills on a whim whenever I choose.
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I think your correct in your analysis for a good portion of the community. I do think however there are some people who want to be able to say that their character is somehow different from the rest of the community and not necessarily the most efficient build but perhaps a build that shows some sort of coolness factor to it. Within the boundaries that Blizzard has constructed this game I wonder if that will still be possible.
I guess what it boils down to is that there is no longer the opportunity for someone to discover a new build without someone else having the exact same build in a matter of seconds. Maybe that's for the better as it'll allow us to adapt to different situations more quickly.
I'm still wondering if there will be any point of rolling a 2nd character of the same class. Personally I thought that was a big appeal of D2. At least we get unique names......errr..or not.
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We all know that it's been Blizzard's goal to streamline game systems (Rune system, removal of mystic, No stat points, simpler skill tree's etc) and focus on making great gameplay without unnecessary complexity. In principle I'm ok with this philosophy so long as there is still enough uniqueness to one's own character that ensures 2 things.
1. That when another Wizard/Barb/ or whatever shows up in the game, that we are not both employing the same skills and strategies when taking down mobs. (Maybe that's not a big deal to most people)
2. I feel inspired to have more than one character of the same class. (Again is that something that most people would like?)
Now with all the new Skills* Runes, Blizzard has basically stated that there are so many permutations that characters will not end up being cookie cutters of one another. Will this hold true if people can change skills/runes on the fly without any gold sink? Does it bother people if the character that joins your game starts emulating your skills and attacks. Or that peops keep asking you in every game. "Hey what skills are you using?". For myself I'd be inclined to use skills that aid the party and aren't being used by other characters of the same class so long as the skills are enjoyable to use. I don't plan on emulating other characters of the same class just for the sake of killing speed. I'm hoping that the gameplay will push us to choose different skills to aid each other in battle. Maybe Blizzard has already forecast this issue by ensuring mob types will be so varied that it will be disadvantageous to see 2 wizards using the same skills in the same game. Perhaps all this is moot already?
Through the simplification process, Blizzard has basically deemed that most of our uniqueness will come from the gear that each of us find or buy, along with the jewelcrafter aiding in some additional customization. I do think gear is great and it's the #1 motivating factor that all of us love to play the game but a part of me feels like in the long run the flavor of not having a permanence to character builds is going to chip away at the love affair that I had with Diablo 2 for over 3 1/2 years straight. Add to the fact that with the auction house the mid level and higher gear might be reasonably obtainable for many of us within a couple of months. This makes me think that itemization between characters will no longer being that big separator in the long run. I also feel quite strongly that itemization does not provide characters with the active choices that are usually associated with a RPG. Usually active decisions through skill choice (permanent) are what makes up a RPG. I think many of us were hoping the rune system would add some sort of semi-permanence to their character builds (or maybe that was just a few of us). Is this viewpoint shared by others or are most people satisfied with the uniqueness provided through itemization?
At the end of the day Blizzard seems to be going against a lot of the logic that I thought made Diablo 2 great. That isn't bad necessarily but it's definitely a different direction. Fortunately, as I plan on playing Hardcore, the fact that permadeath will be removing characters of mine from time to time I feel there will be ample longevity in the gameplay. At the end of the day I still have faith in Blizzard but a small amount of concern has been raised with the announcement of certain systems. Thanks for listening and feel free to comment.
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Maybe they've learned not to discuss game systems until they're finalized. I think it might be easier to announce the rune system in its final form and defend it as opposed to having discussed it previously and given fans the impression it might have been more than it is today. I definetly don't agree with all of the decisions the game development has taken but I'm not privy to all of the information and testing info they have access to. I guess at the end of the day they're openess is both a godsend and their bane to different segments of the Diablo community and it's hard to comment on whether it's been good or bad to the community as a whole. Personally while I'm extremely excited about the release of the game I also have enough going on in my life that makes the wait alot more tolerable. That's not a critism to those who feel they can't wait as years ago when I was alot younger I'm sure I felt the exact same way when waiting for game releases. It's just that I've learned that life is too short to worry about just a video game and just to enjoy the time in between.