I imagine it would result in it being considered mandatory to be the more optimal specs for most players.
If nothing else, it would make getting groups a nightmare and hurt the multiplayer part of the game quite a bit.
Things might be better if you only ever play with friends, but forget pugging if you aren’t the optimal build for the content. Nobody will want you, just like nobody wanted hybrid DPS on WoW back in the day even though they could technically clear any content.
Given that I don’t think they’re going to make it take 200+ hours to level a new character, that would even probably become the most efficient way of gearing up characters would just be to play another character better optimized for farming the content you need the gear from.
and I can tell you that I absolutely would do that. I wouldn’t even consider anything else short of some pretty drastic measures that would probably just make me not want to play the game anyway.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a difference in performance or that free respecs should be a thing, but if you’re too harsh on the gap in performance or on the limitations people aren’t going to be happy with it.
They’re going to feel like they NEED to switch, but then you’re going to deny them the ability to do that.
The solution will be to roll another character with the build you need.
Kinda think we’re on a similar page but not quite the same… I can get Shadout’s ideas but also think they come from personal experience, which in turn gives extra credibility, but also slight dropdown/limitation to imagine
INSTEAD of player “choosing” a dungeon (by key), they should probably instead wear all kinds of keys to “reduce difficulty” of a keyed dungeon (up to a certain point), such as something like this:
Watch your step hero !!, a word of caution is adviced. The forces of hell are strong ahead and empowered with the following anomalies:
All non-elites have 50% increased movement speeds and can dodge back or sidestep at times [Trait]
Melee champions and elites have 25% of knockback or mutilation (receive 50% less healing for 5 seconds) per hit [Trait, parties of 2-3]
Stagger-bars of champions and elites and altered melee fighters are doubled and take 50% less sources from elemental sources of damage [Trait, parties of 4+]
> [Keyed mutations, insert a key to remove]
[Blessing] Reduce each of the anomalies listed below in power by 33% if not inserted any keys
Summoners and archers have a 50% extra casting and firing range as well as 50% greater projectile damage [removed by inserting a crimson key]
Some creatures are lightning-enchanted, they take less and deal 50% extra damage from lightning sources of damage and cast any sorts of lightning traps on the ground occasionally [removed by a runic key]
All of the melee champions and elites are tagged as “menacing”, they have a portion of their damage altered to DoT elemental damage. That DoT damage is increased by 50% and can stack up to 3 times (All DoT sources) [removed by topaz key]
[2-3 party only] Casters have a 25% chance for multicast (including revive). Damage sources from the ground have a chance to silence a player standing on it for up to 2 sec [removed by a greater crimson key]
[4 or more party only] Each summoner or archer has a flyer pet that bombard players occasionally. Melee fighters shapeshift rapidly when above half HP [removed by a greater obsidian key]
Well, I guess this kind of “wall of text” probably doesn’t seem something “as attractive” on the first sight, but a bit of visual here & there (for example hover on each anomaly and put key to remove or choose not to waste a key) and cautious/intuitive design should do
BUT, but If anything I still kinda prefer this kind of approach cause it feels “choice-friendly” whilest still retaining high-risk-high-reward in it’s core design/base, as namely:
Requires some strong decisions from the player/s whilest STILL not rewarding (or punishing) greatly for doing a “wrong” build choice
Cause there are up to 6 challenges from the 3 keys and the blessing alone that the players can choose in order to beat. Yet alone, talk about the potentially/totally different “experience” when in a party
This also kinda has a small chance to reward “stubborness” (or a character that prefers “key sparing”), so a player can enter, “test their might” a couple/few times. And finally give it a “greater risk” (when insert a key or two to reduce the “difficulty” of the run). And finally beat the challenge and get nice/shiny rewards at the end for it
Overall: IDK if I’m one of those guys that don’t quite believe in the benefits/drawbacks of the “pick your poison” approach tbh. Think there should be more of a lesser “guilt” feeling on the player when fighting against the “odds” I’d say… I find this “choose the lesser of the evils” more appealing overall (even if potentially harder at times), cause gives the players a bit more choices whilest not directly punishing their build
But those players looking for people to join their group likely won’t be the optimal spec either. And unless you want to find a new group for every single dungeon you do, even if you find someone with the optimal spec, they will only be optimal for that single dungeon, like 15 minutes or less. Finding new groups every 15 minute will have its own inefficiency cost.
Which also makes it fairly incomparable to WoW.
Make dungeon keys bound to each character so you can’t just move them between characters to optimize their use.
If there is an end-game progression system (hopefully not anything like paragon), make it per character, so a trader for using multiple characters is slower progress.
That said, I think encouraging more characters is a good thing. Within limits of course.
I’m sure there might be some issues with stricter respec rules. But those are extremely overshadowed by the negative aspects of having free respecs.
I hope keys only give some info about the dungeon, like it’s place, type and one modifier. Upon entering, and consuming the key, 1-3 more modifiers might be revealed, as well as other random elements throughout (enemy types, bosses etc), so you still don’t know exactly what you get, and thus can’t fully optimize for it.
Also, maybe you should only be able to hold a relatively small amount of keys, so if you want to get new ones, you had to do the ones you had first. And if you destroy or abandon one, it could give you a 30 min debuff “can’t get any new keys”
I guess I think A-RPGs should somewhat adhere to the rogue-like roots. You play with what you get (items/build) against the challenges thrown at you.
No retakes. No choosing the path of least resistance at every corner. Just see how far you get with the tools you have.
If not stuck players will simply “skip” content they don’t like to play against, or bother with
So even though it sounds like “survival of the fittest”, it will probably just reward “luck in build” or “luck in gears”
As for the second-part:
No retakes
No cutting corners for the path of least resistance
I kinda prefer it that way cause forces “longer term” player optimization, and if you get stuck you’re inclined to “seek out a solution” even if seemingly stuck you’re not stuck “completely”
Also does offer the “place and space” to low-key up the challenge if not a problem… The data is easy to track by seeing what players really choose as their “least resistance path” most of the time and just buff that one
This one is kinda weird logic (secondary, probably again inspired by experience, say like glory orb from D3, only curse instead of buff :P, or maybe other arpg-s), but there’s STILL a simpler way (think of preservation/stash/economy)
1 - “disabling all anomalies” (total obscure) could require one additional obsidian key (so for example above you’d require: crimson/runic/topaz/obsidian = 4 KEYS to negate all anomalies), OR even simpler solution could be - not allow all keys are inserted so a player has to pick at least one not-disabled-by-key anomaly
2 - making keys harder to drop (outside of keyed dungeon bosses or elites) in the first place… Say for example first time defeating Lilith she drops you 1 key from all types (the minor ones only), i.e. have a good starting point but still have to be cautious to not screw up cause then further attempts at defeating her has a low % to drop only one key
So at first time defeating her you end up with: 1 cobalt, 1 crimson, 1 runic, 1 obsidian, 1 topaz, 1 saphire, 1 amethist, 1 emerald, 1 ruby key (hopefully didn’t forget any :P)
On the other hand there’s a chance for an extra key (or even 2) in a keyed dungeon to drop from an elite or boss (or both) so that you have a very/slow/positive “climb” if careful about it but have to re-fght lillith like 10 times (or whatever) if struggle to begin with, i.e. regain a “lost” key
That’s kinda how I envisioned it I guess. For the sake of “weaker” players perhaps have a reduced % (somewhat smaller than Lillith) on other bosses as well so “mandatory” Lillith runs at all cost don’t become a thing (perhaps one could acquire from Duriel or any other/stronger boss that isn’t the final boss maybe)… , still, the “grind to gain” ratio being low enough thus rewarding those players that play efficiently in keyed dungeons late game
Even if you make them harder to gain, over time people will probably accumulate them anyway. Limiting how many you can have at any time prevents that, kinda like with respec tokens.
The game shouldn’t really be difficult enough to stop most people completely. Rather it might just be a matter of spending 30 min to clear a dungeon instead of 15 min or similar. Or dying 3 times vs not dying (with the penalty/reward that comes from that).
And if you are truly stuck, with a horrible build, that is what the infrequent respec option is for.
Problem is, if you can respec freely, all paths are the one of least resistance. Since you just change to be overpowered and optimal against each challenge.
More interesting gameplay, more replayability, when you cant easily respec to overcome all challenges, making each playthrough feel more unique.
Assuming that there is some kind of group finder, it’s not all that much different from WoW. Dungeons in WoW don’t take that long either these days. It varies from dungeon to dungeon, but Mythic+ also has a timer just like rifts in Diablo 3.
Plus if you can control the dungeon you run, you can just get an optimal group to farm the same dungeon over and over for the specific loot you need that comes from it.
Which I’d just roll separate characters as needed to farm different areas of the game unless you’re also going to make loot character bound too.
See, the problem is you’d have to impose enough restrictions that you’d probably make the game not very fun to begin with to counter-act me wanting to do this.
Encouraging other characters is good, but this is a ham fisted way of going about it. Players shouldn’t feel like they have to do it just to keep up.
Which if builds are up to twice as effective as other builds, I feel like that is exactly what is going to happen.
Ok, let’s make a “standard” to what is difficult… D2 hell diff ?, pretty difficult right ?, especially if your character is a Sorc (or any other but elemental-damage based)
But here’s the catch, what if, WHAT IF you could choose which “affixes” to be weaker by opponents, suddenly some content you just skipped (or builds that didn’t seem likely to work) might have a shot, right ?
So, having that in mind think will keep people trying… There are “finesses” to failure:
Fighting Belial undergeared for 40 minutes and then not killing him for 2-3% final HP due to too much “green stuff” going on on the screen isn’t fun is it ?,
BUT
Trying to clear a 10-15 mins dungeon, with the potential to be a slightly different challenge (but still repeat the very same if choose to do so) might show promise
What really stops people play is a “brickwall” but of the type that they’re convinced there’s nothing they can do about it, BUT, if there ARE choices to be made, tweaks to apply to make things more manageable (each effective in a different way) then people will keep it up and get encouraged (eventually)
In other words - there’s a difference between a 10-15 minutes of challenging and can try in different times/occassions, and a “brickwall” of 40 minutes that you fail at the very end but there’s nothing you can do about (other than try the very same thing again)… In fact I’d waste even 5 hours at the first type if need be, the second one is probably a two-time experience only (3rd time in a party and that’s if others persuade me :P)
TBH thought previously we talked about this, up to 3 respecs per character. But even if these are acquirable thing (even rarely acquirable), what does this have to do with having a possibility to try alter the content you play against slightly ?, if your build (or your gameplay) is bad, it will fail (eventually)
You just reduce the re-spec frequency even more (if need be)… Only with this “extra” mechanic, you’re also capable of knowing when it’s the “now it’s real time to re-spec, tried 5-6 different ways and nothing worked so far even closely”, the other is just a “blind adjustment” where chances are you did it cause got “fed up” with your build at a one (or few similar) place/s
Let’s think of it this way: in the SC campaign, in each expansion there are 2 ways you can upgrade each unit, there are 5-10 “global” upgrades you can switch freely at any time… In WoL you could even choose whether you play against the Nyduses or advanced air and in the last there were 2-3 different “fractions” of each unit
ALL of that designed to give you that extra-bit of well-needed versatility to keep trying instead of “screw this, should’ve taken the Marauder instead of Reaper” and replay all over again
Now it’s “debatable” which is better, but I personally would prefer to have those “tools” that may help overcome a content I wasn’t “supposed to” beat (if there are some odds of “optimizing” to continue with it… But either way the point is that - The difficulty/challenge remains the same
So, what is more replayable to you, the one content where you can try the last level/s 10-20 times and each time feel like you’re closer or the one that makes you go “screw this” go “afk” for couple of weeks and then start all over again ?
D2 Hell was not difficult. It would be hard to truly be stuck there.
I’d definitely say harder than that. But not a lot.
40 min is an exaggeration, but fighting Baal for 5 minutes, failing it at the end, sounds perfectly fine
I don’t necessarily have anything against being able to slightly alter the dungeon you enter, although I don’t think you should be able to outright remove modifiers.
But if you could freely “respec” enemies, that would have a somewhat similar result as respeccing your character. Everything becomes the same.
But that is still a thing without free respecs, or “respecs” of enemies.
Gear plays that role. You can (and should) equip more poison resist gear against enemies using poison dmg, etc.
False choice imo Nothing prevents you from retrying 20 times with a suboptimal build either. It should still be completely doable with that build.
I don see ‘twice as effective’ (between an optimal and suboptimal build, there will be plenty of builds in between the two) as that much though. If you go much lower than that, you risk losing all sense of combat diversity, making both build choices and in-combat choices meaningless. A much bigger loss than the ‘loss’ some might feel by having restrictions on respecs.
Finding an optimal group manually in a group finder would likely still take a lot of time. And if it is an automatic group finder it wouldn’t know how to optimize.
WoW dungeons are also (mostly) static, which yeah, makes it easier there. Doesn’t seem like it would be much of an issue in Diablo. Sure, you can optimize your group, but the time spend doing so between every single dungeon would like make it inefficient. Unless you can freely respec that is.
There is more to the game than loot. There is the joy of trying to take a new character/build through the game.
Seems relatively easy to ensure people don’t just jump between characters for different content though. Also without making gear character bound, which should indeed not happen.
Maybe what PoE does in its endgame, creating a coherent journey for a single character.
It doesn’t seem that easy if such restrictive mechanics are required just to achieve that.
Changing character/build from time to time is not a bad thing. In PoE I had 2-3 different characters with which I was running specific maps and it didn’t feel like “doing the same”. Quite the contrary, it’s nice to change the beat instead of just playing the same abilities over and over again.
The game just has to let you get enough keys, like PoE’s maps, and you will always have some content for your character without feeling incited to change for another one.
Also, I strongly disagree on D2 Hell being easy. ^^ Unless you meant “with the right build and lucky drops”, then yes. But most players didn’t even finish Nightmare… Forcing players into this kind of difficulty, instead of letting them decide for some easier or harder content, would be bad for the game.
You can get through Hell even with fairly bad gear. You need some kind of workable build, but it hardly needs to be optimized. I’d definitely consider D2 Hell easy, in the sense that nearly nothing prevents you from getting through it (in SC of course). Which is mostly positive since it allows for more builds to be viable.
Yeah, playing multiple characters is great and the game should encourage it (for example through limiting respecs). Not require it though.
Seems fair to me that the progress you have on one character does not translate to progress on another (other than the gear you find). They each have their own ‘campaign’ to go through. In which case you can play multiple characters, but doing dungeon X on your WW barb won’t directly help your throw barb getting through dungeon X, etc.
Which imo is a big difference from just having one Barb that does everything.
Then you’re talking about casters. But classes that are weapon-dependent will have a hard time.
To an extent, yes. Like Paragon being shared to the whole account, that’s a terrible design.
However it would feel like a bummer to get a high level map that would be perfect for another build but gruelling for the one you have, even if it’s feasible for some players. But maybe keys could be something totally different, not actual items but an objective you can reset randomly for a moderate price. That way it wouldn’t feel like an arbitrary rule.
I know it’s not exactly like WoW, but twice as effective is about right for comparing the worst hybrid DPS specs to the pure DPS classes and nobody wanted the hybrid DPS classes.
Even in TBC when they were sitting at ~75% of the good builds people only wanted one of them because they brought valuable buffs.
The problem is that the pool of players you can take from is absolutely massive, so people can afford to be picky. If there are 6 people wanting in your group and 4 of them are using optimal builds, guess who is getting the invites?
An automatic group finder wouldn’t but I wouldn’t want an automatic one since that tends to lead down the road of needing the content to be too easy.
Also you can throw a few curve balls at the player but unless you’re planning on going back to a Diablo 3 rift system where the player has basically no control over what they’re going up against, you’ll be able to just farm the same stuff over and over again.
There is, but we’re talking about the effects of having large performance gaps between builds.
Which would most likely make me roll different characters with the specific intent to use them to farm different kinds of content in the game.
The hard part isn’t making people not jump between characters, it’s doing it in a way that doesn’t hurt the overall experience.
It’s not worth having that much build diversity if the game just isn’t fun otherwise, or if you cause massive problems to the multiplayer component to the game.
I’m all for supporting singleplayer play for the people who prefer it, but Diablo is a multiplayer game to me. I don’t want to compromise that.
and even though Diablo isn’t World of Warcraft, WoW is a good case study into how players are going to act when there is significant performance differences to the tune of 50% vs 100% in builds.
That could be an issue, but at least it will be minimized since d4’s scaling will be lower. I’m sure the elitist will care about damage, but personally I’ll just group up with whoever, I don’t care if i’m doing more damage. In d3 it’s impossible because the difference in power is massive. In d2 no one cares how much damage you do and everyone party’s together. I love that about the community, when everyone just wants to play together.
Well the scaling wasn’t off the charts in the early days of WoW either.
Also despite claims to the contrary I maintain that Diablo 2 was an easy game even on hell with basic drops. That’s the main thing that makes people not care: The content is so easy it basically doesn’t matter.
I’d like Diablo 4 to offer a bit more challenge than that, personally.
Ya we all want D4 to offer a challenge, I fall asleep playing D3 just holding down 1 button spinning in circles around elites. There’s also RNG with equips so you’ll never be on the same page as someone else. You either don’t care about damage and play with everyone, or form a static team of 4 people that only play together.
That would be my assumption too. Most people playing with friends wont care that much if it takes a little longer to clear a dungeon.
Not that you should necessarily design toward “most people”
But honestly, the “elitism” in D3 is a design error. One that should not be repeated in D4. It is not about limited respeccing or high combat diversity (since D3 offers neither).
It is about the leaderboards, which should be completely redesigned, so you cant just fish for, and push, a single dungeon (and thus not optimize for it). If leaderboards is based on doing diverse content, and you can’t respec for it, then the problem Cyonan describes from WoW should not happen imo.
Nor would relogging to another character help you to get further on leaderboards on the first character.
And it is about endless paragon, and endless scaling rewards for doing the endlessly scaling content. Which reduces build diversity, and forces people to be elitist if they want to progress.
Well, in that case, those 4 people with optimal builds wouldn’t want to join your group, if you are not having an optimal build. In which case you will have to join up with other people who do not have an optimal build => people without optimal builds should still be able to find a group.
And those people without optimal builds for the dungeon, might have an optimal build for the next dungeon after that. Seen over running 100s of dungeons you will sometimes be in the situation of having an optimal build, and for other dungeons you wont.
Heck, to avoid having to spend time finding new groups every ~15 minute, you might potentially be better off having 4 players with different strengths and weaknesses, so you are more likely to have at least one player in the group who are strong against whatever dungeon you happen to get.
I dont see any major problems with the randomness in Rifts as such. The problem in D3 is the lack of different types of end-game content. But randomness within a type of content is good.
I am fine with people picking one type of content to run, like, someone might focus on Key dungeons, another might focus on “boss runs”, a third might focus on playing in the overworld or campaign. All of these should be equally viable, as should focusing on all 3 end-game types. Unlike in D3.
But as long as the content within each of those end-game types is still heavily randomized, picking one of these does not mean you can just pick what is best for your build.
Also if it means your character end-game progression suffers?
It might be like if instead of taking one character through Hell in D2, you play 5 chars through Nightmare. Sure, you can do that, but it comes at the cost of not getting very far with any single character.
Build/play diversity seems quite fundamental for the game to be fun, so if you dont have that, then nothing else is likely going to save it.
Nor is there any reason this should affect multiplayer more than it affects singleplayer. Not being able to optimize for each dungeon etc. would affect both solo and multiplayer. Diverse content that some builds handle better than others will affect both solo and multiplayer (multiplayer groups will have an easier job to have the right tools against all challenges than a solo player, but that is “just” a balance issue).
Not really. Because those examples you mentioned from WoW was seemingly about a hybrid doing 50% as good as a pure dps, in general. Against all content.
That is very different from having a build that performs 100% in dungeon A, 50% in dungeon B, 84% in dungeon C etc. Especially in a game where you are running 100s or 1000s of dungeons. And not just one raid or a few dungeons each week.
Agreed. But not too high a challenge imo. Then you kill diversity.
It is not a big problem that even a D2 build with mediocre gear can finish Hell, as long as one with good gear/skill/whatever can do it much much more efficient.
Problem in D2 is not so much that it can be fairly easy. It is that the ceiling is too low.
This is where we start running into a catch 22: Randomness is good to a point, but too much of it takes away from builds mattering too.
If the game throws such a variety of things at me that regardless of what I run I have virtually no control over how optimal or not optimal I am, my build didn’t matter all that much in the end short of being a newbie check to avoid the dumpster fire builds.
After all, what’s the point of having a boss running character if the game can screw me over and put me at 50% efficiency anyway? That’s not a system that feels good. That feels like I have very little control over how strong my character actually is.
Alternatively the more control I do have over how optimal or not I am for any given content in the game, the more we run into the problem I’ve been talking about where I’ll just exclusively focus on the things I’m optimal at. That’s sort of the point of having an optimized build, you focus on the things you’re optimal at.
This is also kind of what i was getting at when I first said “You’d have to do so much that it’d probably make me lose interest in the game”.
What you’re describing sounds like so much randomness to the point where I simply can’t create optimized builds, which to me feels like I now have virtually no control over how strong or weak my character is. I’m still going to run into dungeons where I’m at 50% half the time regardless of what I do.
At which point I lose interest because character building doesn’t sound interesting to me anymore. You just made my choices not matter in my mind by doing that.
It matters in terms of how you handle the different challenges.
Surely you can have optimized builds in such a scenario. Optimal will just be a matter of being able to handle things reasonable well on average. Which might be a jack of all trades, or a build that is good enough at one thing to compensate for being weak at other areas.
Which sounds way more interesting to me than just picking the optimal build for each task you do.
Maybe player “skill” will have a chance to matter then.
If one end-game activity is boss runs, you can certainly make a boss killer build and somewhat optimize that way. But the RNG might just mean that your fire boss killer build will struggle against some of the bosses, while being great against others. Vice versa for some other boss killer build. Both might be better than some non-boss kill build though.
You can have a build optimized for something but you have very little control over if I encounter the thing I’m actually designed for, undermining the entire point of building a character to be strong at a certain task.
It means that the primary difference between the optimized character and the jack of all trades is that the optimized character will get very wonky power spikes from monster to monster but in the long run the optimized character wont be any better despite being optimized.
It greatly diminishes how effective building your character a certain way can be, because over the course of multiple dungeons you’re not really rewarded for being clever or knowledgeable.
I actually think this would result in less diversity than my original “Just don’t make the performance gap too big” idea. It undermines the reasons behind a lot of builds.
Diablo is still part RPG. Character skill needs to matter too.
Definitely yeah. I mean, my argument is that there should be significant power differences between different builds after all (though of course, much much less so than in D3)
Jack of all trade builds can be clever or knowledgeable builds too. Builds that tries to make sure they dont have too grave weaknesses.
