D4 6 Skills Only?!

General Discussion
91

Yeah, but if itemization grants a skill that defines your build, its related.
You can still decide if you prefer more damage or benefit with synergy builds like in D2 or have more utility instead, depending how your build and playstile fits offering wider customization.
You could for example create a full warcry support barbarian maxing battle orders and shout just to buff your teammates instead of going for damage.
Its your decision if you want to skill grim ward and stuff like find item, search potion, or leap.
Same with other shouts like taunt.
You can definetely activate and use all your spells in your own D2, is it worth it? probably not (because of your specialization), but the choice is yours to do so and the system doesnt prevents you to have a max cap of spells in your hotbar for that reason.
I totally agree, max 6 spells for your hotbar in this modern era is a joke.

In D3 its mandatory, pick 6 spells with a selectable upgrade which is automatically unlocked and nothing else.

Spending skill points by your own decision, creates a build.
Just selecting 6 spells from all your spell pool doesnt create a build, its just selecting what fits you best, locked solely for that one activity.

92

Respeccing is a different topic. Respeccing should be costly/limited regardless.

Picking 6 skills out of 30 very much is making a build. It would be a very shallow game if that is all you do, but a build nonetheless.

The max all 30 skills example is of course taking things to its most extreme. Resulting in 1 skill build.
But even in D2 it limits build diversity. You get 1-point wonders that everyone use, making builds more alike.
Could a better skill design limit the power of 1-point wonders? Sure. it would just be really hard to do. Limiting how many skills we can have seems like a much better solution. Even if that number should be more than 6.

Also, to bring in skills from gear for a moment. If such a thing existed, they could exist on top of that limit. Personally I would probably have 1-2 skill slots available only for skills from items. For some of the same reason. To not end up with a game where everyone use the same items to get a ton of skill buffs.

93

The moment the system decides for you what to select and you are not free to choose and build in your own, thats what I dont call a build.

I dont really believe there are too many one point wonders in D2 honestly, because in hell difficulty if you dont spend skill points in those, they can surely help you a bit, but for sure not give you a free win.
Just like people believe that corpse explosion is a one point wonder because this spell doesnt increase the damage % of corpses life per skillpoint, but radius of explosion instead.
There are indeed builds that use corpse explosion capped to the max.
The only one point wonders I can think of are stuff like teleport, but the rest?
If teleport per skillpoint increased additionally its cast speed, it would not be a one hit wonder anymore because there would be reason to spend points in it.
I can assure you that most auras effectiveness are pretty bad at lvl one, they help you, but they dont assure you a victory.
If redemption is in level 1, you can wait like 5 seconds til you finally regain a bit of life and mana, while exposing yourself to danger.
Vigor extra movement speed at lvl 1 barely makes a difference.
Just like a low cta doesnt increases your hp and mana by that much and you gotta keep casting it to redo buff because it doesnt last long, at least in Project Diablo2 CTA got nerfed to the ground where it barely makes a difference.

In the end, its just a matter of balance for those “one point wonders”, and build diversity should not suffer because of this reason.

94

If you pick 6 skills of out 30, it implies you are free to select?

Whether they give a free win or not, does not affect the topic of whether they limit build diversity though.

Trying to strengthen build diversity here, not make it suffer :smiley: But yeah, you can get far with balancing. I doubt it can get you all the way. Even if you make sure each skill are not very good at lvl 1, then still offer some use. There just isnt much choice in whether to get a lvl 1 buff or not, if you cna have unlimited skill slots.

But maybe a balance could be if you have to pay skill points to unlock more skill slots?

Like

You need to spend skill points to unlock skill slots. First 6 slots cost 1 skill point each (or are simply free). Basically everyone will get those.
7th slot cost 5 skill points. 8th cost 7, 9th cost 10, 10th slot cost 15 points.
So getting more skill slots will reduce how many skill points you have to lvl your skills. Choices!

1 Like
95

Gotcha. Yeah, and I understand that game companies make a huge investment into games these days and do everything possible to monetize and keep players play for as long as the can these days.

As for D2, with the issues I had regarding no respecs and clunkiness, I found no reason to replay it after my runs through hell. But I get why people do think that way. But for the slow people in the room, this is not an attack on D2.

1 Like
97

Not sure how having everything always at your disposal is more meaningful, tbh. Having a push-button answer to every situation at the ready is objectively less diverse and provides less meaningful choice than having to select a kit in advance.

3 Likes
98

The system itself unlocked those 30 skills, I didnt choose to unlock them, its done automatically.
Thats not what I call creating a build, the moment I decide what to choose and spend on my own to create a build, thats what I understand by the definition of a creating a build.

Now we are talking, Id vote for such a similar system because its something you decide on your own and not being relevant in all other 3 series.
Its something unique you just thought of.
Or unlock a new skill slot through itemization or by a far passive talent tree point, for example.
The more possibilities to tweak the system you have in the game, the more interesting the game gets.

100

lol what? So are you saying you have to use all 30 if we have the choice too? The amazing way Diablo III players warp reality blows my mind. If you can use 30 different skills doesn’t mean everyone will or has to lol. Options means more diversity. Limiting it to 7 will mean there will easily be a best way to make a character as strong as possible and 90% will play that build, great example is Diablo III only has a handful of builds per class and most play the most powerful one for each class. If you can only use 7 skills you do not have more options and diversity. The current design will make you focus your passive tree points to make certain skills stronger so that using almost all the skills at once isn’t as effective as using a combination without spreading yourself to thin if you try to use everything. Having limits like 7 max means you have to use only the skills that can fit lowering the number of possible class options even tho you might have passives that would benefit others beyond those 7. Passives points to focus your power into the areas that benefit your skill choices making the opportunity for diversity much higher than being forced to a 7 skill limit. How you can pretend less choices causes more diversity is hilarous.

108

Which btw is exactly the reason why there is no magical answer to how many skill slots is the right number.
It depends on the combat design.
If the game has immunities (it should not!), then more skill slots are needed. If the game manages to separate singletarget and AoE skills, so you cant just AOE everything down (it should!), then we need more skill slots etc.

6 skill slots might have been appropriate in D3. But then D3 also have really shallow combat.
Hopefully D4 has better combat, and could use more skill slots.
Preferably not unlimited skill slots though. Or at least, add a cost to the skill slots, so that using many skill slots is a real build choice, with a significant cost to it.

1 Like
109

Reposting… lol (it’s been taken out so I deleted the explicit content)

Totally agree. The target is completely different in the two games. In D2, you decided what was going to be the build of your character before or while creating the character, naming it consequently. Then as you were leveling you gathered specific (niche) and non specific (great uniques/rares) gear to empower your character. In D3, in my experience anyway, I don’t know what I’ll play. Is the uniques (that are so niche, so specific in D3) that orient what build I’ll make. If you try to play like in D2, your character will suck because power is so gear-oriented that if you don’t find that niche item, you’ll suck. So basically you go with the flow, not much control, until you reach level 70 and can be carried through Grifts, drop everything you need and finally make the build you wanted.

110

To be fair, Diablo 3’s first console version came out a full year after the PC release, so it’s highly unlikely that the choice of a 6 skill limit was due to consoles.

Besides, if you really want to get down to it, with modifier buttons you could have 36 buttons on a controller. Or more.

1 Like
111

6 skills is a freaking luxury, compared to diablo 2’s just two skills at a time.

its fine. in fact, i could argue that its a bit too much, unless you were able to use the elective system properly.

112

With the difference I can use up to 16 hotkeys for skills or unlimited skills in D2 when im in combat compared only to a mere locked selection of max 6 spells in D3.

113

To be frank I never used hotkeys in D2 either but somehow/someway got to Act 2 on Hell diff :smiley: , it takes kinda some time to practice but not impossible if you remember the exact position of your skills

However, the most important thing about depth IMO is a tag-system, not necessarily a super complex one, but just several like:

AoE,
Overtime,
Empower,
TargettedNuke,
AntiArmor,
Impair (curse or debuff),
Overpower,
CC

Aand that’s about it, either via talents or via skill nodes allow the players to customize the “effect” (and what kind of impact) they want from their skill

Let’s say you can “spec” a meteor to be a massive AoE, or SingleTargetNuke with less AoE, or you can spec your Upheaval be an impair or even CC (instead of AoE), your Ancient spear or Lightning spear be an Anti-Armored skill, your Teleport as an Impair for using offensively or Empower (defensively ?)

IDEALLY you’d like to have each category covered in some way/s, but you probably wouldn’t have ALL the “tools” you need just via skills and that’s (probably) the beauty of it

Cause you’d need gear/sockets to either “secondary” fill those things, or simply empower your strengths and be even greater liability vs things you’re not specced up against/with

If you can “bypass” that by having just a bunch of “extra” skills I think the complexity gets toned down quite a bit. So yes, having the talent and skill node system I think works IN FAVOR of the limitation (rather than against it…)…

That being said, the 6 skill limit I don’t see it being a problem, however, what they really SHOULD take a second look of is reduce the CDs of most of them, by quite a bit (i.e. no skill has longer CD than 10 sec, and most of the other should have around 3)

114

Personally, I care less about whether the skill/spell selection is limited to 6, 8, or 10. As other people have already mentioned, in other threads as well, I just think ‘click - click’ method of D2 style (2 skills at a time with ability to rotate skills via hotkey) dumb. That was just an archaic system from D1 (not that D2 doesn’t have archaic features of its own). When I hotkey stuff, I want that skill to fire right away, not set it to a mouse key, having to press again.

Either simply D3 style or D3 style (read: modern game style) with more than 6 skill choice, ability to hotkey skills, but not straight up D2 style, please.

115

It was a dumb system back in 1997. It was part of the old turn based game where you had a load out of 2 skills and a limited amount of action points(like Falout), and it cost a point to swap out skills for that turn.

Honestly, I’m with you, 6, 4, or 20 skills, allow me to see them all and access them all at once.

1 Like
116

Two seems good. Just make the other four passives.

117

yes thats the reason

118

Wrong answer. As mentioned multiple times, the controllers of the time were capable of over 100 seperate inputs and many games before and since D3 was in development have used more than ones used for D3. This was a design choice Jay Wilson and his team made.

Should really stop spreading misinformation.

119

never seen in my life a caontroller whit 100 butons, and since the game is oriented for consoles that doesnt have 100 butons i know thats the reason the limit the amount of skills