Actually, their goal is exactly that - you should be able to find a skill selection YOU like that YOU built and discovered (or read about) and are having fun with and still be able to succeed with it.Originally Posted by KevinC
Actually, their goal is exactly that - you should be able to find a skill selection YOU like that YOU built and discovered (or read about) and are having fun with and still be able to succeed with it.
I will believe that when I see it, but my hat's off to them if they somehow pull that off.
Man, I hope I don't sound like I'm just trying to shit on the game. The only reason I'm posting in here is because I'm such a huge Diablo fan and I've been waiting a decade for this title. I'm not afraid of change or anything, it's just not change I'm liking the sound of. I'd love to be proven wrong, though! I want to love games, not be disappointed in them.
No worries - even the beta testers are somewhat frozen with terror with some of the changes, all anyone can do is trust that the game will be as amazing as well all hope it will be. After all, if it's not what we want, it's going to be awhile before we get Diablo 4 to have a crack at a better Diablo 2 then....
I think even if they could have (in the end) done the character development stuff better, the game itself is tight and plays incredibly well. For what it's worth.
My specific response there was about the balancing issue. Bastion gives you access, by the end of the game, to every single weapon and upgrade, and you can change freely between levels and before every boss. Yet I swear by either Pike + Musket or Pike + Cannon, and my housemate and friend runs Machete / Mortar and swears by it.
I agree that the current system seems suboptimal. I would certainly have unlocks gated in a way that responds to player input, whether that's buying rune unlocks with skill points / level ups or just choosing which ones to focus on. Or even having them unlock by using; e.g., use fireball, unlock fireball runes.
However, all of this frothing about how Diablo III is taking the RP out of RPG because stat allocation and skill trees are gone is idiotic.
It's more to do with not having player choices/control than it is being wedded to particular systems, at least to me.
Throughout this conversation, I can't help but feel that re-specs are very much like inflation. (Hear me out!) The theory goes that you can increase economic growth by increasing the money supply (not to get into debate about whether the theory is true...). However, it only works if people _don't_ expect inflation, otherwise, they price the inflation into their current expectations, and all that happens is numbers go up, and the economy stays the same size.
Re-specs seem kind of like that. It's better for the players if the re-specs exist, because it makes the gameplay experience more pleasant. But, knowing that you _can_ respec makes people less attached to their character and / or spend less time considering their build. So, ideally, you would allow respecs, but never tell anybody about it.
The decision comes at the encounter level, not the spend-skill point level. That is, every time you enter combat you get to make a choice "which abilities do I want to use?" It's a meaningful choice not because you're stuck with it forever, but because it significantly changes the way you're going to approach that battle. You have more opportunities for meaningful choice, not fewer.
I get what you're saying but the problem is that's not a meaningful choice to me. Picking whether I go Support or Assault in BF3 isn't meaningful either, since I just die and respawn again. The difference to me is BF3 is a manshoot. I expect a little more from RPGs, in that regard.
If I'm wrong and the new system works splendidly for me I'll be posting here eating crow, believe me. I just have serious doubts.
Doubts are okay, keeps your sense of excitement and expectations in check at least. I wish *I* could do that. :( Longest wait EVER.
From Jay Wilson:
We think you’re going to love Diablo III when it’s released, and speaking of release plans, you can seriously expect a launch-date announcement from us in the near future. See, I didn’t say “soon,” so I’m not taunting you. ;) You’ll know as soon as I know for sure the exact date.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...rom-jay-wilson
Well, they're certainly sounding very confident.
I'm really hoping to be wrong about this new approach to character building. I like to be right, of course, but I'd much prefer a worthy D2 sequel ;)
So to bring up weird things that might cause concern, what's going on with the basic attack stuff? I don't actually follow the blizzard forums but I happened to see a link to there saying they removed the ability to make basic attacks from the game, which means that witch doctors and wizards can't attack at all and demon hunters can't use melee weapons. Oddly this makes all the runes for the wizard magic weapon skill useless because they proc stuff on melee attacks. That might seem like a bug, but then they also removed all the passive skills that affected basic attacks too?
basic attack is still in the game.
Not only that but when you can't afford a right/left mouse skill (or if it's in cool down) you'll auto attack if you click.
What last I heard is that Basic Attack isn't an assignable skill. Thus, once a skill is put into left/right mouse button, there's no way to get "back" to Basic Attack.
Thus, once you've chosen a skill for it, it's basically lost forevermore.
This could have changed in a patch in the last day or two; I'm not in beta so I wouldn't necessarily know.
Edit: Armando's ninja post appears to be what they were talking about!
If that changed it went into what you are describing - in patch 12 I was able to select a basic attack and map it wherever I wanted to. I haven't had a need to do it in 13, so I don't know if you still can though.
EDIT - Ah I see, it was patch 13 that changed that. Odd, I hope we can eventually pick it, especially if you find a nice melee weapon that adds blindness or something for your wizard, you might want to use that!
There's a number of builds that could strongly benefit from basic melee attacks, actually. Melee Wizards are (were) totally doable, as well as melee Demon Hunters and even a Pet-based Witch Doctor that needed to stay in range to proc an aura.
Actually, as it stands, the Witch Doctor no longer has an attack that doesn't consume mana, according to redditors.
Now, strictly speaking, attempting an impossible skill (not enough mana, on cooldown, etc.) will result in a basic attack with equipped weapon occurring. . . but the point is that there are (were) viable builds that depended on being able to perform such an attack at-will, even if there was mana available.
Agreed. Hopefully that's already been addressed at least internally.
Sort of an odd thing to see getting still kicked around this late in development though.
I'm fairly certain if you have a weapon that adds, say, a blind effect and you're attacking with something like the wizard's spectral blade, the blind effect will be added to spectral blade. I'd have to double check, but I'm almost certain this is how it works in the beta.
Yeah, I'm not sure there's even any reason to use basic melee attacks. And yes, any weapon effects work with all attacks that do weapon damage, as far as I know.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have our interesting decision.
What's the point of having a weapon if you can't attack with it?
What's the fluff behind this then, characters suddenly discover they have amazing abilities and decide that swinging the sword in their hand is beneath them?
Why would you swing that sword when you can do that amazing skill with the same weapon and do more damage all the time.
The only problem I see with that view is that they haven't bothered to give everyone an amazing skill to actually use all weapons. The summoner witch doctor in particular is kind of hosed.
Hosed how, though? The class is designed to use abilities pretty much exclusively. I reckon if you're swinging your weapon at monsters as a witch doctor, you're probably about to die.
But what isnt giving the player the freedom to do silly things part of role-playing?
Yeah, doing silly things like using all your skill slots on summoning spells and then hanging out with your army either shooting a bow from behind them or stabbing people. Now I guess you can put something with a long cooldown on your main mouse button and resummon it every time it's up so that you can actually attack, which is a kind of goofy kludge to have to resort to considering that the whole basic attack thing started out being in the game.
Also they just updated the skill calculator on the website to mirror the one you guys apparently have ingame. They've super nerfed a lot of runes for balance it looks like. And boy is it ugly and awkward compared to the old one. It's hard to understand how Blizzard of all people could go from the old one to THAT. :(
Clearly a matter of opinion, I think the new interface looks and works pretty slick, though I'm sure it could still be improved upon (in ways I haven't considered).
I'm kind of with Bleed here. Until recently, I've tried to keep my nose out of a lot of D3 specifics, since I didn't want to overdose on info. That means I only have a vague concept of how runes worked before this. But when I go to the character builder, I see a lot of skills I can use, and each skill has a bunch of runes I can use.. and it looks like there's lots of choices, and many of them seem interesting.
In an abstract sense, is it possible that the choices in the game now are fewer than before, will the game be less... uh "fun" than before? Maybe. But since I don't have the choice between pre-change and post-change Diablo 3, but only the choice between buying or not buying release-version D3, it seems to me I'm still buying it. And I still can't wait for the game to come out.
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