I think think you are over exaggerating with these “rules”
You can have a mage with a possible melee build and still have a melee character like the barb in the game, with a possible ancients magic build
It doesn’t exclude these 2 and I would prefer it to 4 classes which would be sorc, battle mage, barb, barb elder
Too specified and narrow
The middle ground is fine here
It seems you two simply prefer a classless system, which is fine.
The “RPG” part however is more strengthened when we have strong class identity and throw the fragile sorceress with the huge sword out of the window.
It is completely against the RPG rules to make a say stupid and strong hero, and play throughout the adventure as intelligent. The game should punish you if you try to do this and turn a fragile sorceress into a gladiator with swords and heavy armor.
That said I am not against the game supporting hybrid classes and the player making a viable build allowing him to play simultaneously melee, ranged and caster (hey Druid). This however should NOT be doable profitably in every class. Otherwise we end up with MEME quality.
You have a really limited view of RPGs.
There are strong and stupid barbs, intelligent barbs, melee sorcs etc.
Using swords do not lead to heavy armor…
Usually battle mages get their defense from their magic, not armor (since in deeper RPG systems heavy armor tend to limit spell casting).
Nor does a sword have to be huge… or a sorceress fragile.
While I am against classless systems in general, a classless system surely will lead to more build diversity.
The cost is just too high imo (loss of character identities).
Oh boy, did they go to school in Alexandria? And at what point they decided to remain Barbarians? Do they kill other intelligent folks in the woods, or stop playing the Barb role and discuss Mathematics with them?
You are limiting the RPG part by allowing hybrids, but you would have known this if you played real RPGs.
I get that you’re trying to be sarcastic here, but intelligent Barbarians, or at least barbarians who favor Intellect over strength have been shown in the series. Diablo 2 for example:
- Nihlathak: The remaining Barbarian elder from Act 5 shown usage of necromancy (caster based abilities) while fighting him and possibly some ice magic as he had froze and trapped Anya.
- Barbarian Elders: The Barbarian Elders created a barrier using a druid-like spell in order to prevent Baal from attacking the Act 5 town of Harrogath.
- Malah: Malah the town healer can actually use spells to heal people or increase their resistance. She is also adept at alchemy as she created the potion that would thaw Anya. She even requested the Diablo 2 sorceress to train her in the ways of magic.
- Anya: The daughter of one of the Barbarian elders is an Alchemist who is well versed in people’s tradition and history (in short she’s intellectual).
- Larzak: The Blacksmith of Harrogath, even though he’s the blacksmith he also thought of inventions (but never had the chance to pull them off) that would’ve given his people an edge in battle, such as cannons and hot air balloons. Even Deckard Cain praised him by saying that due the quality of his work, he would’ve been quite welcomed among the Horadrim (a order of mages and such btw).
And before you say anything about them not being Barbarians; keep in mind that Barbarians in Diablo is another way of saying the Children of Bul-kathos which the people listed above are very much are.
Of course, this isn’t me saying that Diablo 4 needs to give us intellectual/magical barbarians, this was simply me saying that such a thing has already been shown to us before, so if players could opt for an intellectual Barbarian, it wouldn’t be much of an issue, just as a melee sorceress wouldn’t be either.
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Barbarians in Diablo (and other RPGs) is a tribe. You dont get any less part of that tribe because you happened to be intelligent.
Also, intelligent is not the same as educated or knowledgeable.
I said the middle ground
PoE system is fine but not fitting for diablo
It’s just that you can be a bit more creative with classes and give people ways to experiment rather than “this is how you play the class”
What the heroes need are strong characteristics and themes to them and even if some of their abilities cross sightly (fire sorc, volcano druid in d2) they can still coexist
I absolutely don’t follow Diablo lore.
Casting barbarians and melee wizards are fine (meme aside) as long as not all classes are hybrids. But then you can simply add something not so meme as a class fulfilling these roles.
Which is what you need to be to cast spells.
These mean lore background, such that a barbarian is raised in the mountains and not in the wizard schools.
The whole point of having a class system is that you get to choose a background/lore/characteristics thus your class acts as an already marked path with predefined strengths and weaknesses (just as your real life human genes). Making everything available to the player breaks the RPG part and the gameplay part (which would be okay only for a limited time in end of Season for example when your hero gets corrupted receiving demonic powers).
thats the whole point
they might have strenghts and weaknesses but they arent that narrow
take good storytelling as an example, gandalf can fight with a sword, legolas is able to melee (inspiration for this class aswell), drawfs can use bows although i would not give a dwarf class a bow skill, the witcher is a melee fighter with magic skills, its totally ok to have very characteristic heroes that have a kit with more than 1 thing to do and still be very distinct and unique because of the vibe they are giving off
hunter could melee with stabby weapons
barb could range with throwing weapons (a lot of people are asking for it) and also use shield even if not having skills for that, just as an offhand
a sorc could use light melee weapons
a druid can use storm magic that is similar to lightning
a demon knight could use fire/hell magic while also be a tank and summoner
a paladin could already use fire magic aswell
they all arent gonna have just a single thing they do and thats it
because thats boring AF
when you pick a class you still want it to be distinct to other peoples characters
you want to make it your very own character with their own way of dealing with diablo
giving these characters different disciplines (which they are already doing) is not hurting these characters, its making them more interesting
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Interesting is linked to variety, but the more variety you have inside each class the less class identity you get, which then hurts the overall variety.
It’s like different colors on top of each other.
When you allow for 100% hybrids, you end up with everything in the black.
can you examine why are you 24/7 exaggerating here?
none wants PoE skilltrees here
Wild mages, or mages who are not in control of their spellcasting, is a thing in RPGs.
Witch doctors, Necromancers, Demon Hunters, etc. are presumably not attending wizard schools either.
Nor did barbarians attend wizard school to learn how to summon their ancestors into combat.
Not that I care the slightest about the lore. The idea that you can only use spell-style abilities if your class went to magic school is just nonsense though.
Kinda supports the RPG part.
The RPG part is choosing, out of that pool of everything, what to excel at.
Exactly. Pool of everything = pool of classes. Not the single class. See the image above.
Single class excelling at everything = what you want = black.
your picture is a good point
i dont want blue, red and yellow classes
i want purple, orange and green classes
It’s okay to disagree. This doesn’t make you right on the topic.
D4 team already went for strong class identity, so you can try to understand why they’ve done that or meme posts.
No. You allow some to be in the black. While also allowing others to be… well, anywhere else in that color space. Depending on their build choices.
This would be a barb:
Over here we have a sorceress:
Each have multiple directions they can go in. But you cant turn your barb into a sorc. Since they are separate classes with different skills. You might be able to create somewhat similar playstyles though.
A black barb is not the same as a black sorc here, nor is a yellow barb the same as a yellow sorc. They still have their own class identities, despite having a broad range of options.
Yep.
Sorry, but again, nonsense.
Being able to pick between everything is not equal to excelling at everything.
You need to pick and choose your strengths and weaknesses.
And yes, if you pick the black option, you become a jack of all trades character, which can do a bit of everything, but exactly not excel at any of it.
Well even if you don’t follow the lore, it’s not something you should ignore or dismissed especially when it comes to creating characters and said characters capabilities. If the lore suggests that there have been both intellectual Barbarians who rely on a form of mystic arts, and Sorcerers who were also adept at melee combat as well as magic, then there’s no travesty for players to actually be able to play as such builds in game.
Keep in mind that even if hybrid builds existed, it’s not as though classes would play similar to one another. For example an intellectual Druid who specializes in the elements wouldn’t play the same as a Sorceress; nor would an hypothesized melee sorceress play the same as a Barbarian as each of these hybrid builds would still mostly draw strength from the core concept of their class.
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i can actually see the druid to be a more versatile class compared to sorc and barb which might need some more variation^^
but i dont see memes here
well thats a bummer while trying to discuss how characters and classes are supposed to look like in a specific franchise^^
Yeah, what makes druid an actual hybrid class, and not just one that can be a lot of different things, is that it is meant to be good at doing those things in one build. of course still a bit weaker than if you specialize, but maybe not a lot weaker. That is kinda part of the druid class fantasy in many RPGs; turning to a bear, then mid-combat to humanform to cast a spell, and over to bear again etc.
Whereas a Hunter class might need to choose if they want to be good at using a bow, or a dagger. They got both options, but trying to do both might not work well as well as what a hybrid druid can pull off.
i dont think you can make a distinction here^^
in the end its just code and skillpoints and you can spec into whatever you want and what you have maxed is strong^^