So I press 1, my sword goes lightning, it connects with the target and fires a fireball while also applying a lighting debuff, and casts a firewall underneath them. In one single hit.
Have I got this correct?
If so it seems pretty overkill and a lot of spell effects happening in just a few seconds. Not something I can get behind personally. Too many elemental effects every hit.
And you want all skills to be dropped as gems like POE right?
Again not a fan of this sorry.
I like the latest iteration of the skill tree they designed and hope to see more of it in the future. Unlocking skills as I level is my preffered method.
Yeah, imo seems messy and chaotic. Hard to imagine any meaningful tactical decisions in combat being made, if each attack explodes in a rainbow of effects.
I am a big fan of modular skill design though, and it very much should be possible to alter skills in different directions. But it should be each individual skill that is altered, like in PoE, Last Epoch, Wolcen etc., and not a bunch of different skills being connected in a chain reaction.
I say a big no to skills being skill gems for D4. D4 isn’t PoE nor should it be. If Blizz wants to copy a decent skill system that is more in line with today’s games then look no further than Last Epoch. I love the idea that skills have their own skill trees. You level up the skills by using them. Spending points to customize the skill along with increasing its power.
They are more like collectibles.
Imagine a spell that drops and you can now equip.
This is inspired from Dungeon Siege.
Look at “Fireshot” in this image representing the beginning of this game: https://www.playonmac.com/images/apps/med/1398.jpg
Thanks, I divided by 10 the proc rate of Conduction (10% chance) and changed reduces by ignores.
Before attack, you gain a power that says your next attack has 10% chance to deal additive bits of lightning, but stays Fire in this case because you cast Fireball.
After attack, you gain a power that says that rolls 10% chance, and if you pass all of the lightning damage you deal in the the next 3 seconds ignores target defense.
Of course you still have to pass the 10% chance to deal additive bits of lightning for the attacks happening in the next 3 seconds to benefit from this bonus, or simply go with a lightning skill.
But Fireball is selected here because the player got an interesting gem from loot called “Ignited” and to trigger this one you have to deal lots of fire damage.
Player select Fireball and also combine it with an after-attack-gem (that it also got from loot) called “Firewall” that gives 20% chance on hit to provoke more ignition
I reduced the proc rate of Firewall to 5% for the purpose of the demonstration, but bear in mind you can level up that gem, even before you level up any other gem.
Yes !
I could have keypressed twice, but the lifespan of my keyboard and carpal tunnel would then have been divided by two.
Most of the time there is no need for the game to collect player action into the the physical world to capture its intent. Player gamestyle is described in the decks.
Moreover, you pay the cost in mana at each step. If you don’t have enough mana, the current step examinated is cancel and the chain reaction stops. You’d better have enough resource to sustain your playstyle, or else you’re dead meat.
You can use Numeric Pad 2 trigger instead of Ignited trigger if you prefer have manual control.
Fireball is the skill altered
Ice shard is the skill altered
The only difference is Ice shard can be triggered automatically.
But again if you dislike automation and connections, you can silo reactions and cast each deck manually.
The gems proposed are just examples photoshopped at 4:00 AM, it could be anything. Focus on the gem system. Keep mind open and make proposals
If you played at Season 25 and used soul shards, you can tell it is already happening.
Gems solve lots of problems (granularity, composability, diversity).
Graph theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_(graph_theory) says trees are connected nodes, which means a curated /predetermined choices and no way to connect node A to node C.
This property fundamentally decreases the number of combinations available thus breaks the build diversity.
Skills tree are generally worst than that because they are oriented, which means once you go to a direction it is very hard or nearly impossible to go the opposite direction.
This property, again, fundamentally decreases the number of combinations available thus breaks the build diversity.
Cyclic graphs can solve this but bring a whole new class of problems like infinite loops or exponential complexity by creating predetermined static links between any node, like this: https://aurastrategic.com/images/blog/networks-scale/networks-scale.001.jpg
Conclusion:
Skills trees are very bad, at a mathematical level.
Open combinations are the best way to deal with these problems.
I agree on leveling skills and/or their modifiers, either by symply using them like in Dungeon Siege 1 (automatic leveling), or by spending points obtained through experience.
Personaly I prefer automatic leveling through usage.
It feels more natural and more balanced.
In this proposal, Gems are intented to automatically level up.
I am quite fine with the gem system. Works fine in PoE. Well, except it shouldnt use item sockets, but then they are fixing that in PoE 2.0.
But yeah, people should think about which skills to use when, and not just click a single button to do multiple stuff. That is the part I didn’t like.
While I very much prefer webs over trees, exactly because it allows for more non-linear choices, restrictions in how easy it is to go different paths is not only a bad thing. It can help with balancing, when there is a point cost for going in multiple directions.
A risk with complete freedom in how you combine skill upgrades is that it becomes too easy to just always pick the upgrades that works best together.
So you can level up all skills just by using them? That would be bad for having to make choices. Not a whole lot of choices being made if we can just get everything.
Yes, this is a step in the right direction !
For those who missed the Path of Exile 2 reference on removing sockets from items, check this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHA3cYpkMYA&t=161s
Few examples of this lack of balance are:
Diablo 3 legendary gems: 50% of them are useless
Diablo 3 legendary items: 50% of them are useless
The natural selection operated by players make them reject half of the game.
Balance matters, ideally:
Granular powers (1 line)
Useful powers (increase)
Limited effects (time, max)
Limited synergies (no set)
Broad use cases (any class, any skill)
In my mind:
You can equip everything
Your class has affinities (bonuses) => for fantasy / identity
You auto level up gems on usage
You auto level up gear on usage (using repeatedly a weapon type grants you a bonus with)
The choice is made through the action of equipping and playing with.
It realizes the player’s intent.
Maybe, but perfection makes for bad games, imo.
Choices should emphasizes a builds strengths and weaknesses. Shouldn’t be able to max it all.
If some restrictions could be made, where you have X skills you use, and lvl them up, but can’t max them all, then I dont mind lvling them up through usage though. Doesnt make that much of a difference in itself.
Like, we have 6 skills in a build, each with 20 lvls max. By using the skills we can get up to 20 skill points for each skill, BUT only 80 of the points can be spent; preventing us from maxing all 6 skills (since that would require 120 points spent)
The number of skills is limited (6 decks: 1 skill per deck)
Skills have a maximum level (Skill A max 40, Skill B max 25)
For the global limit I am shared between several opinions:
Using points and a max points limit (all players are on-par at some point)
Using XP and a max XP limit (all players are on-par at some point)
Using points without any limit (Parangon system, game never ends)
Using XP without any limit (Parangon system, game never ends)
Points VS XP
In most cases the action of spending points can be avoided.
There is at least one exception: Respecialization
Respecialization is easier with points.
Respecialization cannot be done by reseting XP because you cannot simulate usage of skills over time, you just have to use skills in real time which means re-play and remount you build.
Respecialization was introduced because you could made wrong choices. Wrong choices only happen when you made choices. You can’t make wrong choices if you don’t make choices.
This is why the “practice makes perfect” mantra is cool.
Some people might argue that equipping the wrong gem is a wrong choice in itself, and since XP cannot be respecialized, all that time spent on the wrong gem is lost and cannot be recovered, canceling the very principle of respecialization.
In reality, the time spent on that wrong gem is not really lost if you consider that you didn’t level up, but the gem has.
The gem acquired a level and can be shared with your other characters, for example to help them to shine at low level.
This is where decoupling character and skills becomes handy.
Granularity and composability.
Limit VS No limit
This is a debate:
Make all players equal at some point
Allow players to satiate their daily appetite with a never ending game
Summary
In my mind:
No XP limit in the game
All gems can be maxed
Limited gems levels
Limited sockets
Limited Leaderboards / world challenges
Best time for Rift / Boss killed where gems are limited to level 20
Max monsters killed for Rift where gems are limited to level 50 in 60 seconds
Seasons to reset everyone
XP has to be rewarding in any case, but we enter into the topic of Parangon boards.
As I read this, it’s very hard to figure out what’s being suggested. Too much complexity is always a potential flaw in game design. We want simple learn, simple to understand. We want to be able to look at an item or skill, look at our upgrade options, and rapidly assess which would be our best upgrade. With all of these various triggers and effects happening, it’s difficult to evaluate.
Further, it looks like you’re suggesting:
Altering the core function of spells (your Multishot suggestion)
And adding CC
And adding extra damage mechanics
And adding additional spells cast on hit
I appreciate the goals here, but it’s too much, but more importantly, in such a system, you don’t have to choose between damage and CC, or between elemental damage types, etc. All of those things that would normally make a spell unique all get shoved into a single spell via your various triggers such that everything would perform, in practice, essentially the same. Why would you opt not to add chill effects when you can do it so easily and keep your high damage and get the fire wall and mana regen on top of it? KISS rule applies.
In practice, they’re more like a gate, where you can’t access the spell unless you’ve had the thing drop. Designer then have to either make the drops super common so everyone has access to the spells (which creates ground clutter) or they gate the best spells behind killing certain boss monsters which creates a bit of build “elitism” in that you can’t even attempt that build because you can’t get the item you need for the spells you want. It’s really a bad design regardless of whether you make the barrier to access the full range of spells low or high.
It works for PoE because it has a different class concept than Diablo games do, but it’s not something I think Diablo needs. A better solution is to give access to the skills a class may use at baseline, but give only so many points to allocate that players must pick some and omit others
It also means that once you make a choice, it’s meaningful (you have to give up other options). Yes, it decreases the total number of options, but not the realistic set of viable builds. The game is going to present a wide range of threats to the player, so an end-game viable build is going to have to have tools to deal with the vast majority at least reasonably well. We’re going to get 6 active abilities in D4. There are only so many options that are going to make practical sense. Having access to four different kinds of large, long-cd, AoE attacks doesn’t really matter. You’d never realistically pick all 4 in your build. You can give plenty of meaningful choices between:
Choice of skill
Choice of how much passive support to give each skill
Choice of which modules and how many of them you pick to modify each skill
Use of “build-defining legendaries” to further alter how spells function
Ultimately, we’re likely to see a system which supports builds with patterns like:
specialists who want to invest heavily in 1 attack skill (ie frenzy barb)
hybrid builds who want to invest in 2 skills (maybe a single target and an AoE, or 2 different elements to manage monster resistances, etc)
tanky builds with multiple defensive spells
utilitarian builds that may follow none of these paradigms, but offer great CC, pets, or other unique approaches
All of this can be done with skill trees and without unnecessarily limiting build diversity.
Playing can be an enjoyable slavery.
Depends on the gameplay, boring or not.
Of course we do.
Complexity is a matter of incremental perception.
In Diablo 3 most items, gems, skills are only accessible past a certain level.
We can do the same here.
Example:
Level 1 - Game unlocks On Attack sockets (skill) and these gems start to drop
Level 20 - Game unlocks Trigger sockets and these gems start to drop
Level 30 - Game unlocks Before Attack sockets and these gems start to drop
Level 40 - Game unlocks After Attack sockets and these gems start to drop
Level 50 - Game unlocks On hit sockets and these gems start to drop
As you said yourself, you would get the same effects using skills, runes, legendary powers and legendary gems.
I propose to make a tabula rasa of this system, which has clearly shown its limits and weaknesses over the last 10 years.
The proposal starts from scratch.
The allocation system described in the proposal is fundamentaly and purposely different.
Accept the difference.
Out-of-the-box ideas only.
In Diablo 4
Fire skills produce ignite effects
Cold skills produce chill effects, and repeated chill effects eventually freeze the target
Of course any of these crowd control effects comes with limitations (duration, cooldown, resistance, …etc.) https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Crowd_Control
In the example of the proposal, Ice shards and Blizzard can both chill and freeze the targets.
Mana costs apply.
Crowd control limits apply.
It is exactly the same as if you pressed a keyboard key.
But now you can automate it, thus avoid pain in the physical world.
Gating is an option, but is highly previsible.
I prefer RNG to be surprised.
Every game has to bring a different experience.
The original idea was to make gems drop randomly, so you adapt your deck to what was rolled, like any card game, which are imprevisible by nature.
Only your tactical talents matters, given your ability to deal the best from what you got.
Gem choices are also meaningful since you invest XP in them.
The difference is decoupling character from skills.
Thanos is powerful because of its gems.
Any Titan using these gems would be as powerful as Thanos.
Character is simply a vessel of a much greater power.
What is important is not the Character, but the achevements and adventures it conveys. A character’s legacy and treasures shall be remembered and carried over next generations. Ex: Ragnar Lothbrok sons
The issue isn’t that you’re introducing new game mechanics as the players invests time in his character. We both agree that’s a good strategy. The introductory levels should be easy so someone brand new can pick up the game, play it, and find it enjoyable. And once players get the hang of it, we can introduce new mechanics.
What I’m saying here is that this mechanic itself (to the extent I understand what you’re suggesting - sorry, it’s still not perfectly clear to me) is too complex. Attacks need to be fairly predictable. You press the button and the effect happens. What you’re talking about is adding 4 layers to that button press with checks for things before the attack happens, after the attack happens, whether you hit or not, all of which may or may not play based on your mana bubble. It’s too much. We have 6 different skill slots. Let each one of those take care of the individual effects you’re proposing here we want on the battlefield, IMO.
Not precisely. My frostbolt will never cast a firewall, but it inherently will chill and slow my target. I can add passives to make it hit harder or the projectile fly farther. I can add an active skill modifier to split it, reducing the damage of each individual shot but making it an AoE chill spell. I could add equip a Staff of Frostfire to add 50% damage as fire damage to all of my cold projectiles. Each of these is an individual and controllable choice, specific to this spell, and each effect happens reliably every time I push the button. I get specialization, but it’s not gated by items, it’s intrinsic to the character making it harder to change than simply swapping out items (other than the legendaries of course), and it’s reliable. There’s no chance an effect I’m counting on may not trigger if I’m at low mana.
I understand the difference in the approaches. No need to be rude simply because I disagree on this. I’ve been respectful and provided reasons for my positions, haven’t I?
There’s a saying: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sometimes, in-the-box ideas are in the box because they’re good solutions that work and have withstood the test of time. If we’re going to change, the standard is to show that we have a better solution, not merely that we have another workable solution. Also keep in mind this is the 5th game in a franchise, (Immortal being the 4th). There are some things which are part of that identity which make the game what it is, and they’ll be hard to change. Changing them would mean you’re really just making a totally new game, no?
Here, I like the skill tree concept. I’ve explained why in one of my posts above. I’ll add to it that when I play other games with more complex skill systems like PoE or Grim Dawn, I find them to be extraordinarily difficult to sort through, and in the end, only a handful of the hundreds of potential options end up actually being viable. They add complexity without adding real choice. Essentially, they add a lot of “wrong” answers to the question of how to build a good end-game character.
Another issue is the sheer number of choices. This can actually be a barrier. Psychology tells us that humans are really good at understanding and making good informed choices between up to 5-6 different things. Beyond that, and there are simply too many choices. People don’t fully inform themselves about each option because of the time required, or even if they do, they end up with a sort of “decision paralysis” where there are too many things to choose from and we can’t make up our minds. If you ever go to a restaurant with a guest who doesn’t know what they want to eat and stares at the menu for 15 minutes, you’ve seen it in action.
A skill tree takes away the fluff and presents you only with a reasonable set of choices, each of which is manageable and viable. It’s also easier to design because at each phase, designers can clearly evaluate the options and adjust values to bring those choices into balance.
I’m working on a post on this right now. How much RNG is too much? Do we need limits on randomness and to what extent? For me, I think some systems in the game need to have less randomness. Building intrinsic elements of my character, like the skills he can use, his essential stats (str, dex, int, etc) should all have little to no randomness.
Let randomness be introduced if we do chance to hit or miss mechanics, in the map generator, the monster generator, and the loot generator. Plenty of surprise within those things. But when I go into combat, I have at least a few things inherent to my character that I can rely on without surprises.
You want to have the basic rules of the game be non-RNG. From then on - I’d say the more RNG the better. If you make a post with all aRPG rules/systems listed one by one I’d mark you those that have to be non-RNG on all cost.
Yeah. Combat dice rolls (like On Hit procs, damage ranges etc.) has some randomness in them of course, but the options our characters has available to them should not be random. As in, how you access them might be somewhat random (like items, or skill gems), but what they do definitely should not be random. A lvl 1 base fireball should always behave a specific way. It should always (within a patch of course) have the same upgrades you can pick etc.
(to connect it with the point further below, that predictability in choices and consequences is also what allows players to learn over time, turning analysis paralysis into learning and getting better at the game - if everything is always purely random, that can’t happen).
The games so far dont have a whole lot of character systems in common though. A skill gem system would not be a bigger departure than what has come before. Heck, for the longest time, Diablo 3 had some kind of a droppable skill gem system, until it was removed shortly before release. And Diablo 1 has droppable skill books.
I dont think D4 should have a droppable skill gem system, or anything remotely like it, especially not a system where skills connected in some endless chain reaction, but skills being droppable would not go against the identity of Diablo.
People dont have to be good at it from the start. We can learn over time. Even very complex systems with thousands and thousands of separate elements.
The analysis paralysis issue is mostly an issue for one-off choices. Big, life changing choices we only get to make once. And even then, as bad as that paralysis might be, it is still so much better than the alternative; of not having enough options. Like, which education you want, which job, who to spend your life with, and so on.
What to eat at a restaurant (or when shopping at the local super market, which has endlessly more options than 6, without everyones brains melting down each time they go shopping) is not that.
If you repeat that choice enough, people learn what to choose.
Which is what a game offers, especially a game like an A-RPG. The option to make choices, again and again, until you figure out what you like and what works well together. Being paralyzed at the start is not a bad thing. That is what makes it interesting to learn and try out all the different possibilities.
(and sure, also a reason why very early in the game, it should be easy to respec, to try out all the different skills, and then as we lvl up, becoming harder and harder to respec, forcing us to settle on a build, after having gotten the chance to learn)
Hmm, how much diversity actually exists. AFAIK there only choice in the helm is Terror and the majority of the builds use the Anguish in the weapon. Great diversity right. Also PoE is not all that great at build diversity. There are still a lot of underused skills in that game due to them not being able to be part of whatever meta that is going on during the current patch.
Have you really taken a close look at Last Epoch’s skill tree. Their skill trees for certain skills can have a lot of differences depending on what you want to do with the skill. That way no to users of skill x will be using the same things. That in itself is another form of diversity.
How many combinations of runes are used in D3 for each build. I am sure that if I were to build a GoD HA build it will be identical, except for maybe a passive skill or two, to the next GoD HA build.
I wouldn’t doubt that even in PoE there are a lot of underused combinations of passive skill gems that could be used for active skill gems all because they don’t give the majority of the players what they are looking for.
if skill trees are implemented properly along with other tools for customization and power we could have all kinds of builds that would be very interesting.
Open combination is not the way either because look at D3 and its trillions of combinations. We never truly were able to use all trillion of them. not even close to that number. Why because most of the combinations are junk. And that is what happens in an open system as well.
Rather than going to traditional restaurant and paying the whole addition at the end, it’s like going to a sort of modern Amazonified japanese restaurant and live-paying the cost of each sushi that goes into your mouth.
You know in advance what you will do (the deck being your intent), it is still predictable. Of course the real execuition depends on monsters in front of you as they can influence (reduce) your mana.
In terms of numbers there is not much difference between:
A) 6 skills x 5 runes x 23 gems x 13 items x 3 cubbed powers // Diablo 3
B) 6 decks x 5 events x N gems x 13 items // Proposal
Don’t be so sure.
It will if you are equipped with such an item casting effect X on event Y.
It already happens in Diablo 4.
There is a demo showing jewelry that periodically trigger a sort of lightning effect on ground
Amulet drop : https://youtu.be/rg2m2n9HBPo?t=48
Description says
Esadora’s Overflowing Cameo - Legendary Amulet
Lightning traps periodically appear aroundyou dealing 270 damage after 2 seconds to nearby enemies
In addition, Using a Wizard / Sorceress you can press 1 to cast a frostbolt, and the microsecond after you can press 2 to cast a Firewall, which effectively produce the same results.
What seems to bother you is simply the fact that the trigger can be, if player wants, an other thing than a manual input from the physical world.
Triggers already happen in Diablo 4, which introduced at Blizzcon 2019 (3 years ago) the concept of Rune triggers https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/diablo-4-runes-everything-we-know
Triggers are an essential piece of composition and modularity. They are basically the IF instruction of Diablo 4 programming language for players.
I personally find triggers very exciting.
It brings freshness to the game, and will teach many kids & teens the basics of the programmation. Learning while playing. Serious Gaming.
You socket a modifier.
How is that different from socketing a gem ?
Well the difference is the gem is decoupled from the character.
It can be transmitted from character to character.
No different from gems based on specific abilities like Taeguk in Diablo 3.
Gems being able to be shared between characters, I prefer generic gems for the replayability, but there is no rule implying they have to be.
Specialized gems are okay.
You can see gems as gems.
You can see gems as runes.
You can see gems as items.
And yes, at some point, ice can become fire. Even in the real world. Chemistry has lots of unexpected combinations.
(TLDR: Fire is a simple transfert of energy, like electricity)
Elements are not siloted.
Magic is a flow and can be transmuted.
See it like a cooking game where you can mix and merge any flavor to any other and either enjoy the beauty or the monster that you created.
If you didn’t tried it yet, I strongly encourage you to play to Diviny Original Sin 2 to feel what I am referring to. In this game you can mix spells together, like a Blood book with a Water Book to create a Raining Blood spell : https://divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com/Crafted+Skills
Such crafted spells totally rexrite how you play the game and are super enjoyable. Composability is the key for fun and replayability.
Which I think is bad.
Power without cost is power creep.
No skill shall be free of cost.
If Diablo 3 was so perfect there would not be any use of competitors.
Path of Exile, Wolcen, Last Epoch proven how much Diablo 3 mechanics were outdated. These games aren’t perfect and have lots of defaults, but at least they tried to improve core features.
Path of Exile Gem system itself can be considered as a perfectible prototype, but the idea of decoupling skills/runes/powers from characters is absolutely genious.
One thing I don’t like in path of Exile Gems is they all look the same to me. It’s impossible to distinguis a green gem from another green gem, moreover if you are color blind. Poor UI choices were made at this point.
This why I tried to improve the Gem system in this proposal by offering squared gems with a big icon so we can recognize one gem from another. This is quite an improvement.
Yes, this is the fate of any skill tree.
Because mathematical reasons intrinsic to the Graph Theory.
Skill tree are UI trap.
Many people think they are good because they prototype skill trees with few nodes to start with, but then the game adds features, thus nodes, and devs realize sooner or later this mathematical rule from Graph Theory saying any links between nodes inside a tree has an exponential complexity (2^n), which means they don’t scale UI-speaking. Too bad the game is launched, and now devs are stuck in a dead end.
Agree on that paragraph, there are different public out there with few or less time to give to the game. I would even say we reach the point were attention is dramatically low.
It means the game
has to be enjoyable for any public
has to work right from the start (increasing complexity)
has to offer harder challenges for those who want to spend more time within
It is not an intrisic of skill trees (far from that, it is the exact way, see Path of Exile and Graph Theory), but rather a will to keep the tree depth to few nodes because you know it will be a mess if you add nodes.
Whic h means you restrict the build diversity because you selected the wrong tool to represent those choices.
This is a wrong choice, accountable fro developement team rather than players.
A wrong choice from the developement team can lead to x100 problems on players side.
Skill trees are a perfect example of this.
Failures are a mathematical level and we see the result in Path of Exile or even Wolcen.
The only one game currently released that more or less managed to get through this Path of Exile by cutting the big tree into subtrees, but this is an illusion as you can’t connect substrees.
Diablo 4 tries to overcome by implementing connection points / teleporting gates into its parangon boards (which are in fact subtrees), but anyone with a mathemical degree and ability to project exponential complexity can tell this is a quick and dirty hack (see my explanation few posts above on cyclic graphs, terrible mistake), because skill trees are fundamentally the wrong tool to handle that.
I propose :
Barbarian: Affinity with melee weapons
Rogue: Affinity with distant weapons and daggers
Wizard: Affinity with spells and staffs
…etc.
Any character can equip any gem (so any skill / rune / item to compare with D3), BUT your affinities will determine how much they are strong with your character.
Which means the class you choose, the character you build, the way you play acts as a catalyzer to buff the gems you are equipped with.
And naturally the selection will be made.
Open choices and affinities rather than class-lock.
Yes, this is covered by your class affinity and your deck.
Your playstyle intent is declared.
This is reliable, unless environement or monsters prove it wrong).
Interesting observation !
For the record, even the tiniest basic rule of all ARPG, which is weapon damage, is RNG. There is not fixed damage. Weapons do have a range of damage. Which means RNG is the core of ARPG.
This is true over and over in the game, from the monsters, environement, dungeons, …etc. Everything is procedural these days.
Sure there is a blueprint with a general direction, the intent (just like the decks I propose), but the realization itself is 100% RNG.
This is extremely important for replayability and boredom avoidance.
Strongly disagree.
A Barbarian could be able to launch a Fireball or a Firewall if it wants.
He won’t just have affinities to do so, so it won’t be as good as a Wizard to do so, but it still can. And Maybe the fire spell is just a trigger for another skill where the Barbarian has affinities on it. You can’t tell in advance how players will use the game, and this is what I like.
The role of the development team is to provide a framework.
The role of players is to use these tools and actually make the game.
The players do the game by finding the better way to play to play it.
No developer should pretend to know how players like to play.
Full-RNG (Affinities, dynamic / adaptative, general guides)
Maybe we need an option for this in the game to make everyone happy.
Yes of course.
The proposal doesn’t change the spells core mechanic.
Fireball is Fireball.
Gems can level up so Fireball makes more damage per level.
I discreetly (viciously ?) introduced a new concept no one has talked about yet: The fact that there are multiple variables in gems.
Proposal states “1 projectile dealing 150% weapon damage as Fire”
“1” being a variable, it can also be altered by leveling up the gem.
Do you fellows feel comfortable with this ?
I forgot to tell that Gems evolution is predictible.
A tooltip shows you in advance what kind of benefits next levels will bring to you.
I deactivated this tolltip in the first 4K poster attempt to not overflow readers with information, but at this point of discussion, I can reactivate it. I will rework and update the proposal tomorrow.
General guides could help.
Also guides on gems evolutions or gems interaction could help.
Can’t stop laughing
But seriously this is a great example of modularity.
Strongly agree.
Trial and error.
Learning is the key.
It is the golden path to success.
Yes.
Well they can’t go full gem system with just a season.
10 years of Diablo 3 legacy prevent this.
But I bet they tested the gem system for Diablo 4.
Diablo 3 Seasons are their A/B testing platform.
116 hours played, I suppose I did
https://i.ibb.co/BVdjNBy/last-epoch-116-hours.jpg
I got your point saying strong identity is a form of diversity.
The proposal flexitarizes this a bit by using class affinities.
You still keep strong identities (Barbarian, Wizard, etc being more powerful in their respective domains), but all combinations remain possible.
Best of both worlds !
To be fair, the concept of open classes is quite old.
It happens now in Diablo 2 Resurrected where some items grant you power from other classes, like the Enigma runeword allowing any class to teleport, or runewords granting you firewall on hit, …etc.
Don’t blame the usage.
Blame the tool.
There is no diversity because the rune system do not allow you to select multiple runes, or because itemization has been locked by developers with static items and values. Possibilities have been restricted from the start and you never, as a player, really had a choice. You were locked into developers choices right from the start. This is an example of bad design.
50% of powers (gems and items) are useless.
This is why players do not use them.
100% of them are false choices, locked by developers.
This is why players feel boredom.
I said it before the diablo franchise isn’t path of exile and they are not testing to make it that way either, at least AFAIK they aren’t. I don’t think they should because it won’t solve what you think it will solve.
Trouble of it is though not all combinations will be strong enough. When D3 launched it was suppose to have trillions of combinations. What happened why couldn’t you use any possible combination in a build.
With that line of reasoning I should’ve been able to make a Wizard build with Magic Weapon, Familiar and all four armor skills and have a great build. I wonder why that didn’t happen. Now do you see why not all possible combinations will be possible. Some combinations that you could do with one class will be stronger on a different class.
Also the danger is that the classes will be seen more like races if the skills are not tied to the class.
Take a closer look at the original D3 the wizard build I mentioned above wouldn’t have went anywhere because it has no attack skill at all. Four armors and two buff skills. What you will be a melee build but have no extra damage other than the weapon that wouldn’t have worked for the wizard at all.
There is no way to make the trillions of possible combinations work at all in any game. With that line of reasoning I could have zero attack skills and just use the normal default attack and have 4 defensive skills and two buffs I don’t think that would go as far as a well balanced build of attacks, buffs, utility, etc…
The only way around it is to homogenize everything that way it is balance but boring. Due to it being just a different flavor as the only difference between one skill and another.
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