But 2 minute cooldowns?! If you reach a hard part all you'll be doing is sending off your uber mega skill, running to hide for 2 minutes, rince repeat.
Pretty much this. What does this leave us? 2 situations:
Either we _need_ that 2 minute spell to kill something, so we cast it and then we run away.
Either we don't need that 2 minute spell to kill something and we forget about it since why worry about another skill when we can just use the ones we have.
(Either they made it so that every 2 minutes of gameplay time you need it, but not otherwise)
Perhaps. I personally dislike it overall. NWN items were flat, as well, but I never had an issue with them (and they're cartoony). I think it's more the boring look of all the items. Lack of detail and definition. If anything, it's more about it being drawn fill-tool style than being flat.
The rest of the pics you provided are very low level and they look rather plain.
That's a fail argument. Just compare them to DII's low level items, or even DI's. Look at DII's clubs, axes, daggers, armors early game. They all had a very different style to them that I liked a lot better.
However, a better comparison may be to Diablo II's Beta paper doll.
Diablo II and Diablo III have very different development cycles, so comparing their betas is quite invalid. That's like saying that to discuss SCII's graphics, we have to compare SCII's beta to WarCraft in Space. It doesn't work like that. If you look at SCII's development, beta and release weren't that different. Furthermore, that DII screenshot is clearly Diablo I influenced, which is not the case for Diablo III, which isn't artistically influenced by anything.
They're low res pictures but the armor still looks top notch!
We must have very different definitions of "top notch". Those are particularly bad, with the black outlines and all. If that was the final design, I would be screaming "Wtf <insert bad Hack&Slash company here>, give me my Blizzard back!".
The ones that OP linked actually look much better, which confirms my view that it's too early to judge. Still, the DIII ones have a more stylized tint to them, while the DII ones are closer to a realistic image.
Todd Howard said that there will be places with high-level enemies, regardless of your level.
Which is very, very bad, especially for some of us.
In a game without scaling, if I can't beat something, I can get powerful somewhere else and come back. In a game with auto-scaling, I may never be able to defeat them depending on what it expects me to have in terms of stats. If you're trying to build something out of ordinary, this really gimps you, especially in a game where your personal skill doesn't really matter. You have to guess or read up on the game's auto leveling engine to know how much stats you need to beat something, which is BS imo.
There's also a similar issue with low level caps.
There's really no advantage to an auto-leveling system at all, I don't get why they keep it in their games. It removes strategy and a sense of improvement, as well as homogenizing the entire map so that you can be everywhere or nowhere. Auto-leveling is what effectively kills Oblivion. If you build standard, everything is super easy. If you build sub-standard, you can't kill anything... everything is the same everywhere, every chest gives you garbage. Autoleveling is just horrible, ugh.
It's why I will always find Gothic superior to the TES series. Because you can walk in a cave and get one-shot by an ogre, then return many levels later and show him who's boss. Or that you can beat some difficult enemies at lower levels through tricks and strategy and get some neat items.
Eh. I don't even know if I want to play the beta. If anything, I'd concentrate on PvP to get a head start there and to not mess up my PvE experience.
I'm pretty sure the higher difficulty stuff and skills are already being tested by Blizzard's inside, professional tester team. Public betas don't really perform that task very well, they generally exist for other reasons (playability, customer reaction, publicity, stress tests, exploits, etc.).
Most of the game's balance will come out post-beta and get patched, hopefully.
They've said many many times that there will be two sets of skills. A PvE set and a PvP set. That way they can balance both sets for their respective uses.
To me, the problem is the mere presence of these nuke skills. I never liked abilities that could wipe the screen.
This. I never understood the point of such abilities. In regular combat, you wouldn't care to use them too much since you're going to have a similar screen in a few minutes. They seem to be for-boss abilities or something. I personally never liked the normal enemies vs boss dichotomy that Diablo had, though, and I would prefer to see it decreased rather than increased. Using a set of abilities for normal enemies, an a different set for bosses, just feels gimmicky.
As for teleport, I don't even know. I think this was more of an issue with item skills and Baal runs than the teleport itself, though.
Random builds will fail, like inb any other game. This is the fun of creating a build: trying to seek something viable in a certain contest.
There's nothing wrong with this concept, the problem is axing the amount of viable spells by lineariarizing progression. This is why I never liked skill trees. The idea of "this leads to this leads to this" streamlines and limits builds in a similar way that synergies did.
Theres around 80 viable PvE builds in D2 (build = strategy set.
80 is pretty limited considering how much skills and modifications we have, even then, I'm not certain what you're including into that number. Diablo had a decent amount of pre-hell builds, but overall it was a rather low number still.
Diablo II is a bad example of anything, though, because it was unbalanced even in places where it shouldn't have been unbalanced, leading to a set of weird and illogical builds (Hammerdin), as well as a set of builds that simply did not work (builds involving thorns aura), and builds that only worked pre-hell.
The reason Diablo II doesn't feel as limiting as it should be (and you're describing how it worked for you), is specifically because it's unbalanced across the board.
Diablo II had useless skills. It had skills it was useless to spend more than one point in. This is unacceptable. The game should be balanced in such a way, that for every skill, and for every point increase of the skill, there is a build that includes it. Otherwise, that's a balance failure.
Looking at how DIII seems to be designed so far, it maybe that all builds including skill X will always include skill Y in a higher tier.
What people seem to be missing is how much this limits build choices. The presence of OP skills, limitations of one skill per tier, and cooldowns, will lead to lines, e.g., builds will compose of a set of skills from 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, with careful balance of the line, removing builds within tier or multiples of tiers, thus drastically lowering build diversity to each tier x number of skills x number of tiers - side effect of balancing, vs a permutation of # of skills per class.
I am not sure why we're coming back to DII really...
I honestly never liked the tiered system that much to begin with, but they seemed to have wanted to genuinely balance them this time around. Now, why does Locust Swarm even exist? To spam something before I get my tier 7's? Disgusting.
I think of COURSE we're going to have cooldowns. If you have powerful skills and actually want a balanced game, those skills have to be on cooldown. Otherwise everyone will min-max for the most powerful skill and spam it.
This is my issue. I want locust swarm to be as powerful as WD's level 7 skill, and I want freedom in how I spec. Not be forced to min-max for the most powerful skill (cooldown or not), there should be NO most powerful skills.
You just said you don't think teleport was overpowered... Then you say you don't remember a game that had a spell specifically as a cop out. Say what? Is it just me or was that spell specifically designed to escape situations where you are otherwise screwed?
Teleport is a positional spell. As any positional spell, it may be used as escape or offense, but it is not necessarily for escape only and will probably be used for other purposes. Whereas, sticking a cooldown on it will make it an escape-only spell.
You thought the game was supposed to be difficult? I have been playing Diablo 2 for almost 10 years now. I have played hardcore for the last 7-8 years of it. I have probably lost about an average of one or two characters a year... A lot of people I know/play with die far less than I do. That game was extremely entertaining and you didn't constantly die.
Which doesn't change the fact that myself and many others expect the game to be difficult.
I am still struggling to see where CDs lead to a rotation.
CD's don't lead to a rotation. (Nox's Warrior was based on CDs, but there was no rotation at all). CD's are generally used in cases where spells are unbalanced, which means spells are done in the order of strongest with highest cooldowns to lowest, hence rotation.
I expect the worst. It seemed to me they wanted to put cooldowns on all higher level spells (like WW). That, to me, is a huge issue.
Thing is, putting cooldowns on a few select skills just makes them useless for PvE.
Teleport was never an issue? LOL! Only that it was the most overpowered skill in the game.
I said in other games.
It was overpowered in DII for three reasons...
- costs nothing;
- comes from an item (giving other characters' skills on items will always be very difficult to balance);
- lack of CC in DII.
There's nothing overpowered about the spell itself. DII is the only game I recall it being overpowered in.
You don't need a legal game to play with friends, you only need Hamachi - that's what I'm talking about. Currently, with old games, it only makes sense to play with friends or on private servers like PGT, because all other places, hacks everywhere. Even StarCraft! WCII and WoW work, but I play neither, so I can only wait for Diablo III and StarCraft II to buy, so far, no multiplayer for me, unless I get a friend who plays Diablo II/StarCraft...
The bad thing about Blizzard is their support of old games. I bought Diablo 1, could have as well downloaded it - after I went to the multiplyer, people in there were copying items, giving themselves 99999 health, casting apocalypse on level 1, etc... impossible to play properly.
Well, I think Blizzard won't let us down. Add a few classes, redo the old ones, change damage calibrations, add something new in, Blizzard always had wonderful ideas. Of that, I do not worry.
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Either we _need_ that 2 minute spell to kill something, so we cast it and then we run away.
Either we don't need that 2 minute spell to kill something and we forget about it since why worry about another skill when we can just use the ones we have.
(Either they made it so that every 2 minutes of gameplay time you need it, but not otherwise)
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That's a fail argument. Just compare them to DII's low level items, or even DI's. Look at DII's clubs, axes, daggers, armors early game. They all had a very different style to them that I liked a lot better.
Crap, I don't know, because this is a forum to discuss Diablo? What exactly is wrong about making a thread about something you dislike?
Diablo II and Diablo III have very different development cycles, so comparing their betas is quite invalid. That's like saying that to discuss SCII's graphics, we have to compare SCII's beta to WarCraft in Space. It doesn't work like that. If you look at SCII's development, beta and release weren't that different. Furthermore, that DII screenshot is clearly Diablo I influenced, which is not the case for Diablo III, which isn't artistically influenced by anything.And 5 other people.
There isn't even a lumberjack axe anywhere in the pictures.
At least the DII hand axe looked like a hand axe.
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The ones that OP linked actually look much better, which confirms my view that it's too early to judge. Still, the DIII ones have a more stylized tint to them, while the DII ones are closer to a realistic image.
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In a game without scaling, if I can't beat something, I can get powerful somewhere else and come back. In a game with auto-scaling, I may never be able to defeat them depending on what it expects me to have in terms of stats. If you're trying to build something out of ordinary, this really gimps you, especially in a game where your personal skill doesn't really matter. You have to guess or read up on the game's auto leveling engine to know how much stats you need to beat something, which is BS imo.
There's also a similar issue with low level caps.
There's really no advantage to an auto-leveling system at all, I don't get why they keep it in their games. It removes strategy and a sense of improvement, as well as homogenizing the entire map so that you can be everywhere or nowhere. Auto-leveling is what effectively kills Oblivion. If you build standard, everything is super easy. If you build sub-standard, you can't kill anything... everything is the same everywhere, every chest gives you garbage. Autoleveling is just horrible, ugh.
It's why I will always find Gothic superior to the TES series. Because you can walk in a cave and get one-shot by an ogre, then return many levels later and show him who's boss. Or that you can beat some difficult enemies at lower levels through tricks and strategy and get some neat items.
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I'm pretty sure the higher difficulty stuff and skills are already being tested by Blizzard's inside, professional tester team. Public betas don't really perform that task very well, they generally exist for other reasons (playability, customer reaction, publicity, stress tests, exploits, etc.).
Most of the game's balance will come out post-beta and get patched, hopefully.
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I'd look at them as versions.
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As for teleport, I don't even know. I think this was more of an issue with item skills and Baal runs than the teleport itself, though.
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80 is pretty limited considering how much skills and modifications we have, even then, I'm not certain what you're including into that number. Diablo had a decent amount of pre-hell builds, but overall it was a rather low number still.
Diablo II is a bad example of anything, though, because it was unbalanced even in places where it shouldn't have been unbalanced, leading to a set of weird and illogical builds (Hammerdin), as well as a set of builds that simply did not work (builds involving thorns aura), and builds that only worked pre-hell.
The reason Diablo II doesn't feel as limiting as it should be (and you're describing how it worked for you), is specifically because it's unbalanced across the board.
Diablo II had useless skills. It had skills it was useless to spend more than one point in. This is unacceptable. The game should be balanced in such a way, that for every skill, and for every point increase of the skill, there is a build that includes it. Otherwise, that's a balance failure.
Looking at how DIII seems to be designed so far, it maybe that all builds including skill X will always include skill Y in a higher tier.
People don't typically mean that when they say random build. They mean a build that doesn't make immediate logical sense from looking at the trees.
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I am not sure why we're coming back to DII really...
I honestly never liked the tiered system that much to begin with, but they seemed to have wanted to genuinely balance them this time around. Now, why does Locust Swarm even exist? To spam something before I get my tier 7's? Disgusting.
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Because spells are unbalanced between each other with 7 tiers and only one spell per tier.
Which doesn't change the fact that myself and many others expect the game to be difficult.
CD's don't lead to a rotation. (Nox's Warrior was based on CDs, but there was no rotation at all). CD's are generally used in cases where spells are unbalanced, which means spells are done in the order of strongest with highest cooldowns to lowest, hence rotation.
It would just make it a rare use spell, aka used as soon as possible and forgotten, or used in specific situations of "whoops". Horrible game design.
Rotations are impossible without cooldowns. Why rotate if you can spam your most powerful spell or use what is appropriate.
I expect the worst. It seemed to me they wanted to put cooldowns on all higher level spells (like WW). That, to me, is a huge issue.
Thing is, putting cooldowns on a few select skills just makes them useless for PvE.
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It was overpowered in DII for three reasons...
- costs nothing;
- comes from an item (giving other characters' skills on items will always be very difficult to balance);
- lack of CC in DII.
There's nothing overpowered about the spell itself. DII is the only game I recall it being overpowered in.