In one of the Blogs the developers were going to allow the player to allocate strength, dex, Int etc. This was due to being able put points into stats that buffed crit hit damage, crit hit and allow for some variation in skill usage and so forth.
Has this been sidelined? My memory really is bad lately, sorry in advance if this is a commonly known thing. Seems like I saw points being auto distributed in a later video(?)
Many of the things in the blogs have been changed or eliminated altogether. I would not be surprised if D4 at launch looks totally different from what we have seen in the blogs.
Yeah, it is quite wild if they have removed that. D3 trajectory all over again.
I dont think it has been confirmed, but there have been some disturbing indications at least.
we haven’t even seen the skill trees for over a year? who knows how they look like right now xD
It’s possible that if anything is gone (including what I am talking about) it could pop up in an expansion.
Attribute allocation seems unlikely to be an expansion feature imo. They usually tend to focus on expanded endgame, and not adding more stuff to do while lvling.
But damn… after all those blog posts talking about “player choice” and “increasing the power of the character vs. the power of items” this would be such an absurd move by Blizzard.
I do hate the possibility of no attribute point allocation. Auto allocation is just not the same. It doesn’t entirely feel like an RPG that way. And i realy don’t see any reason, why they could not do both. Like if it won’t make or brake a character, but atleast it would gives us a sense, that we have a slight controll over our characters developement. And not funeling us entirely.
Personally I never got the point of having a choice that’s not actually a choice at all, main reason why I tend to despise talent trees. sure, you might technically have 3 choices, but one is clearly in every way superior to the other 2 so what’s the point in having it at all.
As I remember a Barb has no reason to put points in dexterity, but they added additional breakpoints for either crit hit chance or crit hit damage in dex. Did the same thing for other classes with different stats. So it was a choice decision that had build meaning.
Otherwise you are pretty correct, it would have no meaning. See the link shows the allocation differences.
D4 attributes were certainly very flawed when they were announced. But it could have been build upon.
Like, really stupid to have 1 of the attributes be intentionally weaker than the others. The goal should always be to make them equally valuable.
Because the illusion of choice is apparently better than actually no choice at all, which is what you can end up with.
There are going to be a number of things that you can do in these sorts of games that can make for a fun build, but ultimately a top performing build for end game task A, task B, task C, etc, is going to come down to what build performs the best with what gear/attributes/skills.
Regardless how complicated, simple, deep or shallow, it will all boil down to the the same result in the end.
However with more choice, at least there will be a larger illusion till that result is finally reached.
Game on.
Illusion of choice is a very very useful tool in story telling, and just a good thing to use for designers. In those cases, illusion of choice > no choice.
However it quite useless in character building. The character choices should always matter, otherwise, dont have them.
Now, that clearly does not mean the conclusion should be not to have the choices. Just ensure that they matter. Design good attribute systems, good skills trees etc. that actually offers meaningful choices for the player. While not easy, it also isnt particularly difficult. You nearly have to go out of your way to make it meaningless. D2 attributes managed that, by making the whole system about reaching a breakpoint in str/dex, and the rest in vitality, with arguably the only real choice being “block or not”. But that is also a bit of an extreme case. It would not take much effort to make a better system than that. Making a truly great system would be much harder, but, eh, dont let perfection be the enemy of good. A decent system of meaningful choices still beat no choices, even if we could all dream of something better.
dont be a meta slave
Yeah, that’s the thing I fail to see the point of. I know that there’s only one viable choice, having to manually put a point there is to me utterly pointless.
I would disagree.
Why would I intentionally gimp myself?
i think there’s a difference between roleplaying a lightning mage because you wanna despite it being the worst element atm and what some inbalance defenders would tell you “jUsT Use A LoW lEvEl wEapOn, JusT fIghT naKeD” that would be gimping yourself
For any practical purpose it’s not, not that I ever got the point of roleplaying either, not in an arpg at least.
well i’m sorry for you but i guess to each their own.
I am just glad game designers dont.
It is not exactly fair to call them illusions in the first place tbh. These things are about experiences, or feelings if you will. If you had a certain experience making a “good” or an “evil” choice in a game, then that experience was completely real, even if the choice was an illusion.
For build choices it is different however. Those are about designing a character, effectively creating something that can do well in the game. Much more quantitively based. For those choices, illusions are not good.
Both the skill trees and the skills in D3 (not so much the skill runes sadly, as they were effectively abandoned by Blizzard long ago) offer meaningful choices, that are not illusions. Doing so is not very difficult. The D3 skills might not do a great job at it, but they do some kind of job.
If the choice has no effect on the outcome you would have the same experience either way making the choice pointless. If it has an actual effect on the outcome it’s not an illusion, and as such serves a purpose.
It really is, choice 1 gives you nothing, choice 2 gives you nothing, choice 3 gives you something. Sure, in theory you have three choices, in practice you have one.
how is playing a build and having fun “nothing” because you kill things faster than me? am i missing something?