I think most AoE skills could be useful against any kind of target, like Fireball, as long as you can’t spam them. D3 got it right by having powerful AoE skill but with high cost (before late RoS’ crazy endless supply of resource broke it).
The main difficulty of this system is also that it depends on how many enemies you’ll get on the screen. It has to be consistent through all zones, even if there’s some variability from pack to pack. The slightest difference may end up in serious imbalance between skills usefulness, and so for attributes increasing ST or AoE.
I agree with Shadout, I don’t think it would work out well as an equivalent to single target. For balancing issues, it has to be clear opposites like :
Single Target vs AoE
Physical vs Elemental
Attack Speed vs DoT
Melee vs Distance
But it also means that skills, and classes as a whole actually, must be designed with this system in mind. By adding attributes as an afterthought, Blizzard did it backward I’m affraid.
Also, I don’t really see the point of having attributes if they don’t improve critical aspects of the character, and damage is certainly the most important of all. Better be imbalanced than boring. ^^
Pillars of Eternity attributes (ignoring the defensive aspects).
In terms of scaling note that you start at 10 points, which give no bonuses. Getting 10 additional points in an attribute is a very high value, so for example getting more than 30% dmg and healing from might requires focusing heavily on that. Getting more than 20 additional points, outside of short-term buffs, is as far as I recall close to impossible. Likewise, going below 10 points would subtract the values below. So having 5 Might would reduce dmg by 15%
Not saying this would fit D4 either of course. Might is a universal stat, since it increases all dmg and healing. Such a thing should not be the case here. It kinda works in PoE since not all classes might be dmg focused, some might be CC, tanks etc. But that of course doesnt really apply to Diablo (as long as the zDPS disaster does not return).
Might
+3% Damage and Healing
Dexterity
+3% Attack Speed
Constitution
only increases health, so purely defensive
Perception
+3 Interrupt (poe1) (increased chance to delay or stop enemy spellcasting when hitting them, not very relevant for Diablo)
+1 Accuracy (hit chance basically, which should NOT return to Diablo :D)
Intellect
+6% Area of Effect (poe1)
+10% Area of Effect (poe2)
+5% Duration (to buffs, debuffs on enemies etc.)
Resolve
+3 Concentration (poe1) (defense against interrrupt, kinda offensive in its effect, since it helped casting your spells)
-3% Hostile Effect Duration (poe2)
Depends on what is considered indirect boosts. Like crit chance would easily be much worse.
Cooldown reduction and resource cost reduction can likewise be much worse.
The others are not that strong either. Well, Str is powerful, on purpose, to help single target skills stay relevant in endgame. Dex Attack speed can be strong, but useless for some skills, and is combined with the weakest defense (RNG based or shield requirement). Damage over time is limited to fewer skills/effects, and also less useful against weaker enemies who die before the dot runs its course, but also a weaker defense (debuff duration), although if resource cost reduction is added, it is potentially a fair bit stronger.
Overall Id say;
Focusing heavily on a specific attribute could maybe have the following soft caps:
Str: 50% ST dmg, 5% stun chance, 35% physical resistance.
Dex: 40% attack speed, 20% dodge chance, 30% block chance
Int: 100% AoE radius, 25% elemental resistances
Wis: 40% damage over time, 30% reduced buff duration, 20% reduced resource cost
If proc chance was added to the mix; maybe around 50% increased proc chance.
Sure, give them all different names instead. Just using those for simplicity.
Str => Focus
Dex => Dex
Int => Ingenuity
Wis => Resolve
Skill tree offers a ton of different bonuses though. Attributes is a small amount of choices of focused choices in comparison. Though you can of course make attributes part of the skill tree, like Path of Exile does. Though imo that is a bad idea that adds nothing other than complexity.
Different skills having different usability depending on where you are sounds like a good thing. Just like fire dmg might be more useful in some areas (or rather against some enemies) than cold dmg.
It doesnt have to be either/or. They can both have low dmg and high cost. I generally dont have much faith in using resource cost. It always fails. Which is not a reason not to use it of course, but better to have multiple balance points.
Cooldowns work too of course, but most skills should not have long cooldowns, so that is not a solution that works for all AoE.
Interesting, I kinda have the opposite view; many different systems, each relatively simple, that interacts with each other => depth.
Not that I am against having a large skill tree, at all. The D4 one is embarrassingly small. But the skill tree should have skill upgrades and passives in it. Not attributes.
yea i guess its completely subjective
depth is for me a few rules and a lot of possibilities
chess is the common example
you can explain the rules in a minute and learn the game for your whole life
when a skilltree is big, the rules don’t change
but when you have 10 different skilltrees, one with active, one with passive, one with attributes, one with end game points…etc. each has different rules let alone knowing how many of them even exist xD (poe as an example) xD
I agree, but giving the player some leverage to increase ST or AoE means monster density has to be well thought ahead for both situation. The reason it worked in classic D3 is because there were almost no way to increase one skill over another.
What I’m trying to say is, ST vs AoE may cause the character being either submerged by small enemies you have to kill one by one or having very long fights against bosses, both of which don’t sound very fun. A problem D3 managed to avoid by having strong AoE, still more efficient against ST than free skills but limited by resource.
That being said, I still prefer your idea over current D4’s. ^^ But maybe having only indirect damage (+Crit, +Attack Speed, +Proc, +Regen, Faster CD…) is an interesting trail.
Well, not always (again, D3V) but of course, having mana potions or mana steal, like in so many ARPG, lead to failure in that area.
What’s important is balancing the player investing into resource reduction vs other damage source (fast attacks, procs, pure damage etc.) so you can’t have crits + spamming Fireball on the same character.
That’s the key for any well-designed game.
Though I’m wary of concentrating everything on one huge skilltree (considering current D4’s is half the size it should be) because even if the rules are the same (which they are not already, with Talent roots and Node breakpoints) the player will be lost in too much choices at once. PoE is a good example, far too big and complex.
I think it’s better to present smaller systems one after the other.
well i guess it comes down to personal preference
i just like seeing all my possibilities in a single picture and i totally love PoEs skilltree
but i dont like the fact that in PoE there are power systems that i dont even know about because there are so many different systems that might only be explained or accessible in later levels that as a player starting the game i can not understand the game before i start making decisions on my character
i like pre planing and i dont like looking up guides on the internet
that used to become a common thing i i would prefer games to take back that responsibility and make their games easy to understand from the beginning and letting people see and understand what they are about to do in the future with their character
My thoughts exactly, the paralysis in front of too much options, but I also feel it with PoE’s tree. ^^ I feel like I’m forced to explore far away nodes even before I spend a single point.
I agree 100%, which is why I think there should be a basic, easy to get Attribute for each class in D4, that works with everything but may not be optimal for more exotic builds. And the possibility to get every skill for free (but not their upgrades) instead of forcing the player to spend precious points for that (PoE’s skillgems are great in that regard).
but thats not the point i am making
i can see this tree and i can look over every single nod and i can decide before spending a single point which capstone i wanna reach first
while if there was another tree i have to check them out separately and parallel and maybe another one that only unlocks after level 10 i dont even know what choices i will have later that might influence my decision in my first 10 levels and point allocations
the more different windows you have to open the more complicated the process becomes
one big window is not complicated
its simply a huge playground that everyone can understand
You would have indirect power gains like say dex gives atk speed. Faster attacks is a power increase. But yes it would be, but clearly having a main stat isn’t the best system.
Without main stat, people will either go for indirectly DPS boost or Vit for survivability in the end.
in D2, caster without FCR is a trash compare to Caster with FCR. And if we actually have DPS meter to track the damage per minute, it is easily to see caster with FCR out damage caster without FCR per minute, and we haven’t included Cost reduction and Max Mana and Mana Regen.
Actually it can, PoE tree is, at least for me. I think smaller systems with many interactions work better (like Attributes + Node breakpoints). PoE also does a poor job at it with the subclasses trees, the god tree, the many many support gems etc.
But I understand what you mean, that’s indeed a matter of taste.
a good example
i would even go as far as also including the active skills into PoEs passive tree^^
thats why i really like diablo4s current version of the branch an the root system
That is what I meant earlier about what people meant by indirect dmg. There isnt any indirect about Crit. Heck, it is too often the most powerful dmg boost you can ever get, and it works universally. ST dmg, attack speed etc. are at least better than that.
Crit should never be part of an attribute system imo, unless we go for the solution where AoE skills simply cant crit, which I would love to see. In which case it basically replaces ST dmg in my concept. I’d gladly take that. Make crit have a more well-defined, narrower, role.
In case I have indicated otherwise, I definitely still think, all else being equal, an expensive AoE should be better against a boss than a resource generator. Neither should be very efficient though.
I dont see the problem here though. As long as your build has both ST and AoE, which you should, you wont have this problem. If you dont have both, you either made a bad build, and suffers for it, or made a very specialized build with strong drawbacks.
Your build should not be ST vs AoE. Each skill should. Giving each of them well-defined purposes. Instead of “use one attack for everything”. Then you can create a build that tries to have those different tools in your toolbox.
Same for monster resistances and dmg types. You should have multiple dmg types to handle different enemies. If you chose not to, you made a decisions that comes with clear weaknesses to your build. Which might work out in a few cases, with specialized builds relying on rare items. But for most builds it will likely be, and should be, a disaster.
And I dont think high resource cost is much of a solution here, since both AoE and single target skills should come in both low and high cost versions. With the higher cost ones having more power of course. But also not so much more power that you get the high CD skill issue; of gathering tons of enemies so you can fire your Nuke/Ultimate at them. Since that, imo, is terrible gameplay. High resource cost only gets you so far (same with Teleport really, at some point that ability is just too powerful, to the point where higher resource cost wont work, without making the skill unusable in any real situation, might be better to make it less powerful instead of just increasing the cost)
Sure. That is not exactly the case by having a skill upgrade tree (and maybe a passive tree), an attribute system, a gear system. Adding an attribute system is nowhere near overloading players with systems imo.
But I agree that PoE throws too many pointless systems at players, especially as it needs to come up with a new system each league (please dont do leagues…)
I dont see how attack speed could be called an indirect power gain either. It very directly increases your dmg (for some skills anyway, which is the important part here; no attribute should give universal power, that is what leads to main stats).
All those are useless for some builds. Albeit they should be added very carefully to an attribute system, in low amounts, since they can skew the balance between different skill types. Like how CDR made cooldown skills overpowered.
Yes. The separation between direct and indirect power gains feel artificial imo. Power gains are power gains.
The separation should be whether it is universal or specialized gains. And universal power gains should simply not exist in D4 imo. Not through attributes, nor gear affixes, nor anything else.
+all dmg is universal. +attack speed, +CDR etc. is not. Which again does not mean those have no problems. They might just have different problems. But getting rid of the universal power gains is simply a good first step.
Vit should also not be an attribute. Vit is another universal stat. I dont think it should be removed from the game, it rather should be the only universal stat you can get on gear. But yeah, not as an attribute, as it just becomes the thing you throw your remaining points at.
Defense
All Res (or individual resists - Fire, Lightning, Poison, etc.)
CC Resist
Healing Received
Move Speed
Dodge Chance
Focus mostly on defensive stats and allow attributes to mostly just be a means to finetune the Passives/Passive bonuses or gain advantage of affixes (like for every 10 points of (Attribute) gain .2% fire resist.)
The attributes should be useful to some extent for all classes. I agree its important that the names thematically align. Strength, Dexterity, Vitality… I don’t see any way those couldn’t apply to every class in Diablo 4. The one that stands out is intelligence. I think it could be easily fixed by renaming it spirit. Strength, dexterity vitality and spirit. The barbarian could easily be imagined as a very spirited character. Spirit can still function as the “main” or “primary” attribute of spell casters / sorceress.
I think a good strategy to take with attributes is along the lines of torchlight 2 with a system in place where classes have a primary, secondary, and/or teritary attribute. What it does it basically cap the secondary and teritary attributes such that a barbarian is going to have primarily strength, but can be significantly affected by smaller amounts of dexterity and spirit.
I’d make some changes to TL2 attributes like dexterity and strength being the shared damage type based on weapon type like in Diablo 2 but overall the concept is good with fairly good implementation that was only hampered by other aspects of the itemization.
Yeah, attributes could be purely defensive. That is a different solution for sure.
I think it might too boring a solution, where the question becomes why even have the attributes at all then.
But it could certainly work.
That said, Move speed is a fairly directly offensive power gain (also, to avoid D3 move speed shenanigans, I’d prefer not to have movement speed in attributes).
Preferably not All Res. That would be a universal power again. All res also should not exist on gear (maybe with the exception as rarely occurring as a legendary/unique affix).
But split up, either individually or as Physical vs. Elemental. Sure.
Some people also really hate the idea of a Strong Sorceress. So both Str and Int probably need new names. Dex, Vit, Willpower, Wisdom etc. works better across the board.
Personally that is exactly what I want far far away from. No primary/main attributes.
As a freshly created barb, str and int (or whatever the names we replace them with) should look equally useful. None of them should be “main” or “primary”.
I dont think any A-RPG has ever had a good attribute system (hence why I keep using Pillars of Eternity as the best example of one - heck, most CRPGs have bad attribute systems too imo), but Wolcen might be top of class currently (which does not at all mean it has a good system! for one, it still uses vitality).
It also use names that works better across classes; Ferocity, Toughness, Wisdom, and Agility.
I don’t think Crit Chance is that bad, especially if it needs Crit Damage on items to be competitive, but won’t argue for it. It works better as an affix anyway.
Then it’s not really a choice if you have to boost both, it’s just an opportunity to cripple your character.
Interesting choices should be different ways to play, like procing Vulnerable status on enemies or getting access to powerful CD skills more often.
Agreed.
Not agreed. ^^ There’s nothing wrong into letting a universal choice for beginners, so they don’t ruin their first characters, as long as it’s not the best path for every builds. That’s what “specialized gains”, as you well said, are here for.
You guys going on about how to balance stats, and here I am just hoping they don’t do another Wrath of the Berserker / Akarat’s Champion / Archon BS again.
You dont have to boost both, you just have to have both in your build (as in, your skill bar). Boosting one or the other (or a bit of both) is part of your build choice, your strength and weaknesses.
A character with no points in str can still kill a boss with a ST skill. It might just take 50% more time, in the example in a previous post. But killing the same boss without an ST skill at all? That might take much more time, like 500% more time. Still possible, just not viable. Pushing the players toward always having an ST skill (outside of the few very special builds). But not pushing them toward using Str as an attribute.
Likewise, a character without Int can still AoE stuff down with an AoE skill. Just going to take more casts, well, unless you cluster the enemies more, then it might take the exact same casts, giving you different approaches for that too.
As long as all power gains are small (which they should be), from attributes, items, skills etc. then your main limit is time, not whether something is possible.
Definitely. One does not have to exclude the other though
