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- ThumTrick
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Member for 12 years, 2 months, and 3 days
Last active Sun, Jul, 22 2012 09:16:09
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- 53 Total Posts
- 7 Thanks
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May 4, 2012
ThumTrick posted a message on Official BradyGames Diablo 3 Strategy Guide Preview (Inferno Monster Stats, Monster Affixes, Achievements)Uh... SK has over 6 times the amount of HP in Inferno than Hell. Sounds like a good time.Posted in: News -
Mar 30, 2012
ThumTrick posted a message on Inferno Monster Levels No Longer Linear, More Fansite Q&A, Bashiok on Runes, Blizzard FacebookPosted in: NewsQuote from Shrieker
Quote from Bogatog
Quote from ThumTrick
Loot drops can finally be equal across all 4 acts!!! Are you happy? Let's think about it...
Assuming Blizzard makes us start in Act 1 without access to the later Acts initially, most of us will likely start with farming Act 1. You spend a few days/weeks farming Act 1 and you get some sweet loot. Now you move on to Act 2 with your upgraded loot, but the game isn't any harder. Because you're so excited to be in Act 2 you don't think too much of it so you go about your farming and by chance, find some even better loot! Alright! Now we're gearing up and we're ready for Acts 3 and 4 which are now going to be easier than the previous two Acts because of all of our sweet loot.
THIS IS SOOO AWESSSS... wait a minute, this sucks.
This is exactly it for me. 100% agree. I'd like to hear some counters to this from the people who want consistent difficulty across Inferno.
Inferno isn't as much about progressing(if it is at all) as it is about farming, inferno was intended to give the players who like farming a consistent challenge.
I wouldn't spend my first week in inferno farming Act 1, since Act 2 would be as difficult I would move on, because where's the fun in farming the same place over and over (as we will be now).
Since I didn't farm Act 1 for weeks Act 2 won't be super easy(im not saying it will be super easy, but you get the point), instead it will as challenging as any part of Inferno, great!
The only problem was that there was a brick wall, but that brick wall is not bad at all and we who could climb it could then spend our time on a whole difficulty having fun, instead we are forced to spend all our time on the last two acts
SOOO AWESSSSS.... no wait its not.
You casuals have 3 difficulties to enjoy your game, give us 1 atleast, please
I think you missed my point. Conceptually, a consistant difficulty level across all Acts is a great idea. Given the limitations of the 4 aspects (described) that contribute to an Act's difficulty, it's not possible to create such consistancy without making the game awkward. The only way to do it would be to have harder hitting monsters early on in the game because their character models limit their AI potential - not to mention the friendlier level designs.
My point was that I think Blizzard ran discovered this while trying to create this equilibrium of a challenge and just decided to embrace it rather than distort the natural progression of the 4 Acts. My comments regarding the game getting easier in the previous Inferno iteration were just to highlight that there are pro's and con's to each scenario. -
Mar 30, 2012
ThumTrick posted a message on Inferno Monster Levels No Longer Linear, More Fansite Q&A, Bashiok on Runes, Blizzard FacebookIn order to really understand what this means, you have to breakdown what makes a Diablo game difficult. For simplicity sake, I've chosen 4 aspects of a Diablo game that when varied, make the game more challenging as the Acts go on:Posted in: News
1) Overall Monster Strength
- Health
- Damage Delivered
2) Monster Characteristics
- # of Mods
- Quality of Mods (teleport -> waller)
3) Monster AI
- Attack patterns
- Reactions to your attack patterns
4) Level Design
- Physical layout (can restrict movement)
- Presence of level specific traps and obstacles
It's fairly easy to see how you can vary Monster Strength and Characteristics to make an Act more challenging. Increase their health, damage, mods, and you got a monster that's harder to kill, and easier to be killed by.
I could see how Monster AI may be increased in the earlier Acts to make them more difficult, but a lot of the attack patterns and such are directly related to the character model. A zombie that limps around and pukes on you is always going to limp around and puke on you. A demon with a giant axe is always going to wind up and swing. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying it would take a lot of extra effort to enhance the early Act Monster AI to match the AI of the monsters found in the later Acts.
Level Design is probably the most static of the 4. Yeah, you may be able to adjust them slightly, but I don't see a lava pit being added to the Weaping Hollow's anytime soon.
Assuming that Monster AI and Level Design are pretty static (relatively not completely), Blizzard is left with Monster Strength and Characteristics as a means to match early Act difficulty to later Act difficulty. Because the game's difficulty is a sum of all 4 of these aspects and the early acts don't have the character model's with crazy AI and levels with build it traps, obstacles, etc., you literally have to make the monsters in the earlier acts take more damage, hit harder, and have more mods than the monsters in the later acts.
Does that seem right to you?
Let's hyyyypothetically say that Blizzard is able to establish a linear challenge across all 4 acts. The Skeleton King hits like King Kong on PCP but he still does the same old "teleport into a pirouette with a giant mace" move -- Diablo hits like a baby Pandarian but at least "he's got skills" (red lightning, bow hunting, computer hacking, etc.).
Loot drops can finally be equal across all 4 acts!!! Are you happy? Let's think about it...
Assuming Blizzard makes us start in Act 1 without access to the later Acts initially, most of us will likely start with farming Act 1. You spend a few days/weeks farming Act 1 and you get some sweet loot. Now you move on to Act 2 with your upgraded loot, but the game isn't any harder. Because you're so excited to be in Act 2 you don't think too much of it so you go about your farming and by chance, find some even better loot! Alright! Now we're gearing up and we're ready for Acts 3 and 4 which are now going to be easier than the previous two Acts because of all of our sweet loot.
THIS IS SOOO AWESSSS... wait a minute, this sucks.
Are you starting to see what Blizz was seeing in their play testing? I am. So what's the alternative?
The alternative is to let the Skeleton King be a delicate, teleporting ballarina and let Diablo be Diablo in all *cough* her *cough* glory. Embrace the inherently increasing challenge that a Diablo game feeds us as we progress through each Act. And loot away! Give us the good stuff! Yeah, some of the best stuff will be saved for last, but by increasing the games difficulty with each Act, quality of loot dropping in Inferno can be pretty close to linear without sacrificing the quality of the gaming experience.
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Don't they have credit cards where you're from?
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Really?!?! I've got some great idea's for Madden 2014! I'm going to start working on my resume right away!
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Multiple = more than one. But if you insist:
3) Create a new build for a class that you already have a build for
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Sorry, let me rephrase - I think this would add meaning where meaning is lacking. In D2 there were multiple reasons to level new characters. In D3, no matter how you slice it, there aren't. You might level a new character so that you can keep a different build ready to go, or you want to have both a male and female character, but that's about it. And there's nothing wrong with the way it is. This would just give one more reason to reroll and could be considered an advanced crafting mechanic.
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This was meant to be an alternative to laddering which is already just a meaningless timesink.
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That's true. Racing to the level cap which would surely include killing the same monsters over and over again is probably more in line with the lore.
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I think they should implemented some sort of “sacrifice” mechanic in which you could more or less salvage your character for extremely rare crafting materials or gems.
Something about a crafting recipe with the ingredient “the heart of a barbarian” seems really cool to me. “the eye of a demon hunter”? “the mind of a wizard”?
Come on, tell me that doesn’t sound cool…
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What is stopping you from making one Barb that's AOE and one Barb that's crit in D3? Do you not have the will power to refrain from merely swapping skills and gear to change your build? Will the temptation be too great? Or do you posess the will power and simply resent the fact that not everyone has the time and desire to level new characters for new builds?
Grab yourself some tissues and just enjoy the game for Diablo's sake...
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Actually, I think force move works like a mouse click but without the attack. For instance, if you're mouse pointer was in the upper right hand corner of the screen and you hit the force move button just once, you will walk all the way to where you're mouse pointer was. You can hold the button down, but it will always keep moving when you release it if you're mouse pointer isn't right next to your character. I use it off and on and I don't think it's something I couldn't live with out. Too be honest, I usually use it when I want to keep moving while reaching for something with my right hand (beer, water, soda, most likely beer
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You can set advanced tool tips to always show in the options menu somewhere. Take a gander and you should be able to find it pretty quickly.
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If you look through the optional key bindings you'll find a "move" button. I don't think it's actually originally bound to anything. This button will simply move your player to where your pointer is. I use my left mouse button to move and attack quite often, but if I'm treading across the weaping hollows or down a long dungeon, if you hold the move button (in this case Q), its like auto pilot.
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Actions Bar -> A, S, D, F (instead of 1, 2, 3, 4)
Stand Still -> Spacebar (instead of shift - this is amazing)
Move-> Q
Inventory -> W
Map -> E
Potion -> R
I almost never pick my left hand up and it's very comfortable. If I had to suggest just one thing here it is moving "stand still" to spacebar. It makes all the difference in the world.