Wow had extreme backlash from the community over hidden damage numbers with pvp scaling. It had to be completely removed from the game.
Diablo players have also expressed at length how they don’t want items to be chosen purely from stats like attack and defence. Many, many people have expressed the opposite of this including big influencers.
People want to have to think and do some math, none of which has ever been complicated in ARPGs, it’s always been pretty simple. Diablo 2 is a really good example and D4 itemisation is being based heavily from D2.
Not true me and others have also expressed that we don’t agree with you about dumbing down the game.
The amount of people you have personally seen quit are not statistically significant enough to be worth mentioning in this discussion.
They don’t really want simplified games. That’s why we got a resurgence of old school RPGs about 10 years ago. Overly simplified games tend to come with the side effect of very few ways to build characters, which is antithetical to what a RPG is supposed to be.
Sure a Diablo game ought to be easy to pick up and play, but it doesn’t need to be easier than Diablo 2 or 3. That’s just insulting your player’s intelligence level.
I was pretty active in the Mass Effect 3 community back in the day as a theorycrafter for the multiplayer.
I’ve also done my share in Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft.
I guess in my tabletop group I’m recognized as the best theorycrafter at the table, as well. Though my characters are usually built for RP over numbers.
It’s very simple math for Blizzard.
If you try to cater to everyone you will please nobody.
By not having any meaningful theory crafting opportunities, and a little bit of math to push your build to the next level. You will alienate a portion of the player base.
On the flip side, if you do have it and as you say “game too hard” crowd will be alienated.
Which of the two camps are most likely to stick with the game longterm and keep buying micro transactions. Make videos on youtube, posting on forums. Making guides. You know keeping the game alive.
Just be aware though of my added bolded little part, of your core gamers. D3 and patches 1.10 and after in D2 made it in my eyes harder to determine what core players are for the Diablo series for Blizzard, but they did that to themselves.
In my eyes every game and it does not matter whether has simplified or more complex math should have a learning curve and not hold hands beyond that. The learning curve the game provides is and should be the hand holding and that should not end per se in the short story format.
I will give a slight example I know not everyone agrees with me about this and that is fine, but just try to follow my thinking. As some people may know I am not a big fan of recent Inna and EN nerfs. There are two reasons for that, it is not that I think Inna for how easy she was to play it was right she could be as strong as she was, but in my eyes she filled as big stick a need that the game is missing too much.
A build inbetween the top builds and too weak builds, that did require people to use some mechanisms like CoE and pulls while still being reasonably easy and fun to play and as such giving an introduction to real harder builds and mechanisms to get to harder to play builds. Now that in my eyes is the right kind of handholding, giving players a taste and make them notice differences so they learn and then have them end somewhere between GR 120-130, but showing at same time more is possible. We need more builds like that, not less. Challenging players to learn while teasing them even more is there and that some casuals like me tend to stay with Inna is no problem then, since we never get to 150 GR anyway and that is just fine.
Not every build has to be 150, but at least there should be a purpose to builds inbetween and there should be builds inbetween that help players grow in skill while playing and having fun, that is the correct handholding, not solving all your problems and simplifying them or make the jumps to big, though that also partially has to do with some play styles getting to many advantages so what you rewarded with if play different might become to small for many with the time they put in, while play can get to limited in the meta cause too many rewards. That is another discussion though.
I think Skelos is just pulling your leg and trolling because you are against trading. When you go with “trading shouldn’t exist”, he went with “yes, complex math is bad for new generations, also bartering”. I’m saying this out loud because you are unable to read between lines after fifty or so posts.
As modern games with complex systems we have Elden Ring, Borderlands, Minecraft and Cyberpunk, which latter ain’t that a huge scale hit, but still catering to every gamer. Aside from those listed, most modern games out there also use trading as a way of social interaction rather than deeming it a “pay-2-win scheme”, nor you see developers name calling anyone as “cheaters” just because they bought something for a hobby instead of trusting luck by mathematical odds that prescribed in the code.
This won’t go anywhere. As long as you refuse to give examples about why you think it’s bad with solid evidence, he will continue that nonsense. I don’t think OP believes his cause either as he vanished after opening this thread and we try to make sense out of it. Thread itself would go nowhere as long as you have unrealistic ideals, OP knew that.
Not the game, the Math. That’s completely different thing.
We know the statistic and it’s grim - D3 is a dead game. Those people I’ve watched all quit due to not understanding itemization and character upgrading. The real percent of gamers quitting because of that is huge however, like more than half of those starting the game.
Of course. That should be the tutorial/campaign with explanations how to do every basic gameplay. Lost Ark does this perfectly btw - you have training Arena where combat mechanics are explained.
Nah that is where we disagree, the learning curve should be there over the whole game to keep progression interesting for those interested not just at start, easy to play, hard to master.
Just what you try to teach players or tease them with while playing will be more complex in endgame as at start of game, without ever going into handholding or over simplifying. Have some faith in the sort of players that are supposed to be interested in the core of your game. Those not interested in that will have no fun anyway long term and losing them along the way or stuck in a simplified build while still having fun is not a bad thing.
This is my take on difficultes in arpgs. ARPG crowds tends to be older than average, & include many senior citizens, which means wiser, more patient. but less responsive & less mechanical.
As such I think difficluties should be tune more towards stretegy, planning( e.g skill tree), & game knowledge (best way to level, best place to farm the right gears, boss fights stretegy), then twitch skills like avoiding fast moving projectiles, or complicated key combos.
There is room for both things, just do not make only one the way to progress. Unless you decide those are the only players you consider your core and then make sure they know before buy the game.
Well, you always learn. I mean learning the very basics, those things that most players here already know from other Diablo games.
When you start the game for a first time a popup should appear with asking about your experience level as a Diablo player:
1] Zero experience
2] Some experience
3] A lot of experience
Then based on the player’s choice his in-game settings will be adjusted. Zero experience people will have tagged the “show tutorial” popups for example. That’s a modern design game that is to make any player feel at home when starting it.
That is always an option indeed, just maybe make players choose instead of you choosing for them and keep it a recommendation. Even if they choose 1 though the hand holding needs to go down over time, the player should play the game, not the dev for them.
Even if the last is always the case up to a point (there is even a paradox the more tightly and completly designed a game is the more freedom you have), since the devs do decide what you can do, giving the player the illusion his choices matter is important and that can be the difference between a game you feel great with or to hemmed in in. D3 falls a bit too much in the second group in my opinion.
Well, you have settings the game starts with. These can’t be a recommendation, they are some fixed value. But when the game has enough settings in options (like big vs. small numbers etc) the ones the game starts with should be adjusted depending on player’s experience.
D3 has a setting called elective mode which is there to help the new players, but creates troubles for the experienced players. If D3 had such popup on first game launch that would have been handled way better.
Yeah, well at least you are told it exists in loading tooltips. Better might be though if there was a bit of a tutorial on that as soon as you turn level 70 first time and have all skills unlocked that as an experience player you can skip.
Simplified math also leads to more simplified builds when it’s done to the degree you want to that insults the player’s intelligence.
If Diablo 3 is too much then it sounds like you’d want to go back to Diablo 1 where everybody of the same class pretty much used the same build because they more or less had to.
Well, even that might be too complex since there’s stuff to worry about like frame data that affects the math of the stats.
Apparently it’s terrible if the player has to actually think about anything.
Since this is a statistic that we know, I’m sure you’ll be able to provide a source for the player count on Diablo 3. An actual source, and not one just guessing as to what it is or pretending that Twitch’s viewer count actually means anything.
I know you are complaining about math, but maybe the split was 10 percentage point rather than 10 dmg.
Great. I am all in favor of adding a ranking to each affix if it helps someone.
Max roll gets highest rank, and each 10% decrease below max rank gets one lower rank, for example.
Huh. Not wanting big numbers has nothing to do with not wanting math.
I sure dont want D3s big numbers. They are absurd. I especially dont want the crazy scaling that lead to those high numbers.
But the math is the same.
False.
But even if we pretended it was true, that information should still be there for the 0.1%
Troll. We are talking about math and numbers. That screenshot is not about giving you all relevant information for making your own decisions, but about telling you how to play, and holding your hand.
So you got nothing. Surprise.
Exactly.
He is definitely trolling. Seemingly not due to trading. He seems to be quite against player trading.
No they didn’t.
Where does Lost Ark simplify its math for engravings or stats? Oh wait, it doesn’t.
Which parts of D3 combat did you feel was underexplained?
Indeed.
Yeah, completely agreed there. I am not a fan of twitch based combat at all.
A setting specifically added to simplify and dumb down the game.
That is fairly normal game design.
But, it should still only explain the basic controls etc. Not how to play well. That is for you to figure out.
Great, let’s see if they’ll do it or we’ll have outdated design.
No. I said multiple times simplified Math, complex min/maxing in this thread, but people fail to grasp the concept referring to player’s intelligence, trolling and what else… While it’s pretty simple - you don’t need anything more than subtraction and addition of basic numbers to have complex min/maxing and theorycrafting.
