DI Team VS D4 Team

General Discussion
21

If you have the right equipment and supporting skills invested, sure. However, there are hundred world tiers of difficulty. Some will lose mobility, some will lose cast reach to climb that. Just as D3 speedfarm builds and push builds being distinctively different in terms of damage output and effort requirement to maintain their stance in combat.

In example, Greater Rift push builds in D3 will be slower and dish out high amount of damage in a small time frame or upon an intense area to clear the content and keep tabs on different variables.
All the while speedfarm builds of D3 will be highly mobile but their damage output won’t be as comparable, yet easier to play as it require less inputs and their effective cast reach is greater.

Also, you are skipping the detail that not every class gonna play the same effort-wise, let along different builds. Each class has its own fundamental designer, practice some trust at that. Do you honestly think that there will be only one cookie-cutter build per class with no repercussions? No, there will be many depending on the purpose, and this means build diversity on its own by end game tasks or effort and thought process in combat. Designing a class and a build are much deeper process than you thought.

You just feel like complaining about respec cost which is a thing that you can avoid completely if you play your own way and become aware of parameters of your build. On your fourth or fifth play through of the same class, you should have an idea about how to play your character from scratch and aware of its backdraws upon picking different skills. This called player’s learning process which naturally happens regardless of respec costs. Rewarding a commitment is simple as allowing player to avoid punishment which they can tweak at will.

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22

Not at all surprised that the D:I team makes yet another bad decision.
I sure hope the D4 team is nothing like them :smiley:

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23

This is exactly what people do in DI Paragon.

Everyone just spent their paragon points on the “best” or “viable to the most situations” paragon tree and then rests on damage and health nodes.

It is not like other paragon trees are bad, but due to the time gate, people are not willing to take the chance to try other paragon trees that have specific purposes due to the time gate. What if the paragon tree that they invested not suitable to their play style or class build? Now they have to wait for 7 days to reset the paragon points, thus having their character “weak” due to their curiosity for the whole week until the next reset.

24

The cost is not that high and if you know what your are doing when you spend skill pts you don’t need to respec.

In original D2 classic and xpac LoD I never respected except for first day of new season where we all respec from fire to cold or a pally from fire to hammer etc.

So you are using that Act1 normal respec when you hit lvl24 in Act3 or 4 normal.

From there on you don’t respec again unless you are a new to game and don’t know what’s going on.

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25

Not everyone is the same. In D2, I wanted to be a Werewolf. Then I got burnt out and wanted to play a Werebear. Then one day I wanted to be a summoner. Then I wanted to be an elemental Druid but could not as I was out of specs. I had to level a whole new character. It had nothing to do with not knowing what I was doing. It was playing the class I liked most and doing a different build so it’s not the same old thing every day.

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26

Diablo everything team.

27

This scenario I can definitely relate to.

But this also seems like the obvious example of where it imo makes sense to create a different character, as you did in D2.

28

The Diablo Immortal team making bad choices isn’t really news.

Though the whole “cookie cutter builds!” and “muh experimentation” argument on either side isn’t gonna have anywhere near the effect people suggest they’re going to.

People use cookie cutter builds in Diablo 3 where you can respec every 5 seconds. People use cookie cutter builds in Path of Exile where respeccing is so scarce it might as well not exist.

Likewise people experiment in both games.

and none of you have any actual data to try to tell me that either is more or less common in either game.

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29

I had no choice, unfortunately. Would have been nice to just be able to swap specs like in WoW. Imagine if you made a tank warrior but if you wanted to be Fury, you had to make a whole separate character.

30

So your idea to avoid high espec costs is not to respec.

Alternatively…

If you do not want to respec for your personal enjoyment, you do not have to respec if tespec costs were low.

31

I can tell you factually that D2 initially had no respecs and that the D2 developers changed it based on player feedback and data.

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32

Yep.
Cookie cutter builds are unavoidable. Dont really see a reason why they should be avoided. What they should be though, is balanced. If some of those builds are too powerful, or their weaknesses are not impactful enough to offset their power, then they need to be rebalanced.

WoW is a different kind of game, with roles that are required by the game.
But yeah, in an A-RPG, the above would be quite fine with me.
Albeit, I do think it should be possible to respec once in a while.

Heck, I kinda think it should be possible to respec every second if you wanted to, but the skills/build having to regain its power afterward. Like, skills going back to some kind of lvl 1 base power, then increasing in power as you use them over the next maybe 10-20 hours.

33

I can also tell you factually that Diablo 2 doesn’t let players respec as freely as Diablo 3 even after adding them in and that after both games, for a 4th game they’ve decided to not allow free respecs like Diablo 3 had.

None of that really means much to the arguments people always throw out in these threads, though. We can go back and forth on cherry picking individual things Blizzard has done over the years to try to insist that our personal preference is the “correct” way of doing things.

Yeah there is nothing really wrong with cookie cutter builds inherently. Especially since a subset of them always includes builds that might not be as powerful but are simply easy for new or lower skilled players to use.

Or in PoE’s case, builds that aren’t as expensive on items.

34

Not entirely that specific. My idea is to players avoid getting punished, which they’ll learn in time. Regardless of respec cost, it’s a natural process and has way less impact on restricting build diversity than you imagine.

A giant, well made and detailed skill allocation system allow you to alleviate the situation even if you have made mistakes, so you can bear it at the long run. This what makes the player unique on its own. Especially when character prowess rely on not just skill points you have, but equipment, cognitive skills and dedication.
In junction with all that, momentary impulses on decision will allow player to find their own comfort zone with slight differences by the equipment and certain modifiers they have. You may have a good Legendary or Unique item that you may like to try, and you may wanna incorporate that to your build for a spin. You may figure out that you can farm faster if you invest in this or that skill too. These are not mistakes; not well optimized for intended purpose but not mistakes either.

In short; you will not learn without making mistakes or testing it for yourself. You can read guides and curse at poor NPCs when they don’t hand you the item you exactly need as written on the guide, or shake it off and try to figure a substitute item. Any radical choice you can take, may take you to explore different end games, such as PvP or PvE.
That’s at the hands of the player, but they ought to have fun while compensating as they have to be aware of outlier effects to their progress. Cognitive skills play a role here and it differ for everyone, as well as their luck.

For instance, cookie cutter builds will not go buttery smooth while you snore infront of the monitor and press one button, at all. Most of them would require high grade multiple luxurious items which can be very rare or expensive on the market, else require really highly intense effort to play it right. You can go check Diablo 2 builds, which is decades old at this moment or PoE if you need some evidence.

Learning the ropes is a natural progress of gameplay experience; this is how players grow. If you don’t like being “wrong” on your character skills, ridiculed for your choices and has this urge to optimize everything for perfection, then you have to ask; “are you playing this for fun at the first place?”.

If you really like a class, you apply what you learnt from Diablo 3 and all other ARPGs you played and figure it out yourself. This being the fourth installment of the series, you ought to know its ropes or at least estimate what you’re standing before here.

35

And now D4 Team is doing exactly what the DI team did in the past; restricting players’ freedom to build their character, and DI’s case, it is just paragon time gate while D4 is doing both.

Also, the DI team also making a lot of good choices and I don’t see people praise them for them. At least they give “auto pick up on blue and yellow”, “Ghost Blacksmith in the end of the dungeon” and “salvage all legendaries” features.

True. Players using cookie-cutter builds are inevitable.

However, the difference is D3 and DI you don’t have to reroll/swap “specialized” alt to do different PVE contents like pushing GR, Speed Bounty farming, or raiding in DI and D4.

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36

To be fair if they had made a good game instead of a mediocre money milking machine, people might have played it longer to appreciate some of the things it did.

You can generally do the content in the game, you just aren’t optimal at it.

That nobody can be optimal at everything is not something people who are against free respeccing think is a bad thing.

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37

WoW started with really really high respec costs that made it worth almost having two chars. We had a warrior main tank but he liked to PvP on off nights. The costs were insane and were a big problem to switch once or twice a week.

They moved away from that eventually.

Blizzard has been all over the map with costs on this stuff from not being able to change spec at all in D2, to totally free in D3, to the hybrids in other games.

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38

No worry. Those who are still playing DI are certainly appreciating their constant QoL updates.:+1:

Only those haters will hate everything on DI even if the DI have 100 positive things and 1 negative thing. :sunglasses:

Also, the “mediocre money milking machine” has better and more PVE endgame activities than… you know

Hence, alt swapping for optimal results for most players.

I am sure people dislike to make alt characters just for one or 2 contents but forced to do so. I mean, for an example, would you content to play a character that need average 13 minutes to clear GR100 or making another alt that specializes in running GR100 under 3 minutes?

Not helping if the game has fewer character slots.

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39

That’s a fair point. Open beta apparently had the max number of 10 character slots per account. Now if the live game is to have the same amount, then that’s not enough imho, especially since the game is intended to have a costly respec.

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40

Which is fine. People who want to min/max every last bit of gameplay have always gone to extreme lengths to do so. The people who will do that are a small enough portion of the playerbase I don’t really care about them.

I just want enough of a limit on repsec to discourage respeccing every 30 minutes for individual dungeons.

I’m sure people dislike needing to pay money to be optimal at even one thing in D:I but that doesn’t seem to stop you defending it.

I’m also sure if I insisted I didn’t like being “forced” into meta builds because they’re optimal, I’d get laughed off the forums and told nobody is forcing me to do a damned thing.

Just cause it’s optimal doesn’t mean you’re being forced into doing it.

The game should have lots of character slots.

One bad decision isn’t an excuse to make more.