Look at the elder scrolls franchise. From day 1 they have kept a consistent theme, character building, and leveling experience.
Now look at diablo. Between diablo 2 and 3, everything was scrapped. EVERYTHING CHANGED. THE LEVELING, THE ART, THE SETTING, THE SKILL SYSTEM, THE ITEM SYSTEM.
A lot of what everyone loved about the franchise, was COMPLETELY changed from the ground up, for NO reason. I dont give a sh*t if you like D3. I don’t, I liked the franchise as it was before. and its not a lot to ask a franchise to stay consistent and keep the things you love and if they were smart they would.
As is I don’t think I will be playing, hope they change some of their design choices but I’ll be very interested to see how many people play if they make another D3.
mythics are a completely different thing o.o
w/e im not here to convince you, your D3 fanboyism might be less relevant than you probably think
im pretty confident, the developers are taking our concerns into account 
How so, mythic are going to be rare super powerful items, and artifacts were placed on the same tier which were all above ancient versions of legendaries and sets.
The while complaint against ancients is that it just they were just more power, something players felt they needed and had to farm for.
Mythics and artifacts will be no different.
its no surprise, you talking so much…questionable stuff here, since you dont understand much of this whole game design thing
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If you didn’t play D3, where do you have any business commenting on it? Your idea of realism is counter to actual realism. In reality, when we make mistakes we generally have the opportunity to correct them. If you want a proper RPG rooted in any kind of reality, respec has to exist. What you want is an archaic system that most gamers find tedious, repetitive and boring…
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I wholeheartedly disagree. If the devs are watching this: please make the game with a system where the consumer can experience everything there is to offer from the game (like D3) without a ridiculous amount of extra work. I like the D3 system because I can make one character and experience everything that character has to offer…if you make choices permanent, you just annoy the player base because 1) You have to roll multiples of the same character just to make all the builds with them to experience all they have to offer and 2) This will be very difficult to do (let alone needlessly time consuming) because all your games have a character limit. It is because of permenant systems that I won’t buy or play games like Path of Exile. Far too much effort and time sucking just to experience all the game has to offer. Please make Diablo 4 with a better system or I will have to pass.
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Explain to me how it is any different. Ancients are like WF/TF in WoW. It was put i place to keep people running content. The reward is a chance at a better piece of gear, i.e. a warforged/titanforged upgrade or an ancient drop. Typically a significant upgrade over normal gear.
People complained about the ancients for that reason instead if looking at it as a chance to upgrade their character more just for playing longer.
They remove ancient upgrades and are looking at ways to make rates relevant, but yet they are keeping mythics and artifacts. Uber upgrades people will pine fore. As well as having hu dreds of legendaries which most people will be going after.
It all is a vicious cycle of getting better loot the more you play. Call the gear whatever you want, it makes no difference. Everyone playing will be killing mobs and looting corpses in Hope’s they get an upgrade. The only difference is what color and tier name they are.
tedious repetitive and boring because the underlying games you played were tedious repetitive and boring.
I loved rerolling on D2, doing the quests again, getting my runes in act 5, by the time you got to hell you’d probably have a couple good drops, maybe even a soj or a shako, that would last you forever.
D2 was fun. If I had to reroll and play D3 again, hell no. That game is crap. I wouldn’t want to play through again, theres no life to it, everything is an infinite progression, I cant luck into a high rune in nightmare mode or get one of the games best items by chance on a new low leveled character, theres a stupid level cap, the skill system is bland boring and one dimensional.
No, the downfall of Diablo 3 was the black market auction house, which the game was designed around. And the always online connection. Which, surprise surprise, left it unplayable for many at launch. A mistake which Blizzard insists on repeating for Diablo 4. Early WoW had respecting, yet that’s the least of WoW problems. Backing me into a corner with a spec and leaving no way to change it is not how you get me to play an ARPG. And making comparisons between games and real life is nonsense, please stop doing that. It’s a world of the literal devil and angel wars. Basically you are arguing that to be a true RPG it can’t have basic quality of life improvements that don’t actually destroy RPGs. A tired and outright farcical idea.
Edit: typo
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increasing simply the power of items over the itemization balance, makes them an inevitable BiS, while for D4 they seem to be returning to a very balanced itemization system that is not solely covered by sets and legendaries in the endgame
Gotcha. I still believe we will end up mostly in legendaries due to the effect combos you can make.
Here’s the thing. I actually agree with you on the reasons why Diablo 2 was more engaging and that the little details of convenience have made the experiences in games like this worse. Being able to reallocate your skills at the drop of a hat makes everything feel a bit meaningless from a character development standpoint, yes. Absolutely. And having to make actual choices that stick is both thrilling and rewarding.
However, the giant rampage you go on about how that then means it isn’t an RPG because ROLEPLAYING means you get to play DIFFERENT ROLES and the reallocation of skills/talents takes away roles is just… ridiculous. That’s just not what roleplaying means in video games. There are countless RPGs where you only have one “role” to play in combat and no character creation at all. This doesn’t mean they aren’t roleplaying games. Alternatively, there are countless games where you have character building and roles you play (Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc) that aren’t RPGs. The idea that if you PLAY a ROLE that means it’s a ROLEPLAYING game is just silly. Then every game ever made would be a ROLEPLAYING game because the player plays a role of some description.
Also, this concept that REALISM has anything to do with why permanent choice is engaging is also a bit strange. Diablo 2 doesn’t feel realistic. The decisions aren’t engaging because of realism. They’re engaging because they’re meaningful.
You should leave the manifesto out next time and just stick to the reasons what’s fun and what isn’t.
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Most of what you said is pretty much nonsense, because:
- There’s no role playing to speak of in D3, unless you mean in the extremely limited sense of focusing on tank/dps/control. That’s not really role playing. Diablo games are ARPGs, where the focus is heavily on the “A” and not on the “RP”.
- With respecs in the game, you can still choose to play the way you want to… just don’t use them.
- D3’s current system of respeccing makes it possible–and quite enjoyable–to experiment with different builds and play styles without the heavy-handed cost of having to re-level the same character class from scratch, which frankly is pretty tedious and time-consuming, especially in most real RPGs.
- It’s pretty realistic that, say, a swordsman learns different styles of combat, but sticks mainly to one that they like… but then after some time switches to a different one, which might involve modifications to existing gear, or buying new gear (which mostly is what respeccing involves in D3 anyway). That’s what a respec is meant to simulate.
- So long as Blizzard continually makes changes to class/power balance, respeccing is 100% necessary, in order to keep a character you built from randomly and arbitrarily going from extremely fun for you to play to completely unplayable.
There are good reasons respec systems are included in the vast majority of modern RPGs, including ARPGs. You don’t like that? No problem… DON’T USE IT. Leave the rest of us alone. Your way of play need not be ours.
What’s that? You can’t stop yourself from using it if it’s there? That’s your problem. Don’t make it everyone else’s.
Fortunately, it’s a safe bet that the fine folks at Blizzard will not drop it based on your old, tired argument that inevitably pops up eventually in the forums of every game that offers a respec mechanism.
“That’s all I have for today. Go away now.” – The Critical Drinker
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Fair enough. My point was there was not enough uniqueness between roles in D3. This was as much of the fault of the dumbed down and simplified skill system where they completely removed skill trees from D2. It made the “roles” feel less deep and more shallow.
I would say Diablo 2’s art, setting and vibe all lend to a gothic realism. Its not over the top fantasy, or cartoony, if you don’t like the word realism we could use minimalistic when it comes to effects, additions, and extras. Everything fits into the world, from the UI to the characters. It all seems real. There’s no glowing treasure goblin hippidy hopping away while making silly noises.
There’s more good news for you then… If you prefer the way Diablo 2 works, you can still play it…
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and the good news for people who prefer the way Diablo 3 works is that you can still play that.
Blizzard didn’t start talking about Diablo 4 going back to the series roots because they wanted us all sitting around playing a 20 year old game we’ve all owned for decades.
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Indeed, but the selection of what is or should be able to be chosen IS… In real life, you can change your mind. Almost no choice is permanent–even the choice to chop off a limb can be undone… with varying degrees of success depending on the method and how much time has passed. But in RPGs it’s no problem… just suck down a healing potion.
In real life, it would take you decades to go from the equivalent of a level 0 swordsman (for example–the diablo classes don’t exist in real life, so…) to level 70. No (A)RPG is that realistic, nor should it be: That would be fun for just about no one. But if you want to stick to the realism argument, fine: An expert swordsman–the equivalent of level 70–should be able to change fighting styles, and the tactics they use, pretty easily. Not to mention that they never have to make a choice to use only a limited subset of the tactics that are available to them–they can use everything they know, which could be dozens of skills and tactics. But more to the point, having to start from scratch, just to play with a different build/style, is not FUN, for a large portion of the gaming community. Hence, respec functionality.
This is a game. In the end, any argument based solely on realism falls down, because it can not be realistic. Nor should it be. What it should be is FUN. And designing any sort of simulation, unfortunately, involves making tradeoffs that will be fun for some people and not so fun for others, especially when the mechanics being simulated are completely fantastical, as with Diablo. You don’t like the choices a particular game made? Play a different one. Or if it’s a simple matter of preferring a particular feature not have been included, that’s easy too: Don’t use it.
Diablo 1 was the first game I was “addicted” to, Diablo 2 was the first game I hungered for pre-release and by the time Diablo 3 was released it was a massive nostalgia hit.
At a guess, I played each game about the same amount and I although I hadn’t given it much thought, 1 & 2 did have a better RPG experience. I remember thinking (early on in D3) what’s the point of playing a character more than once… other than to get a male and female variant?
However, being much older (and time poor) than I was when I discovered D1, D3 was more playable for me because I could respec. I could experiment, equip any combination of the gear I found, discover crazy new fighting styles or skill combinations without having to play the whole campaign over and over again.
As the Old El Paso girl says… “Why can’t we have both?”
Hardcore: no respec, when you die you don’t come back
Core: no respec, when you die… well you ain’t really that dead
Softcore: respec all you want, “Don’t worry, nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos”
Keep all the stashes and progression separate but have a game mode where you can test stuff out. Maybe some people would only play this way much the same way that some people never play hardcore.
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Thanks bud. What a clever little chappy you are. How about this, you play Diablo 3. I’m giving advice because the release devs said they wanted to hear feedback. I won’t buy this game if they don’t go back to their roots. And I’ll be very keen to see if they can get as many people to buy this game as Diablo 3. Maybe I’m wrong. But also maybe I’m not and maybe I’m right.
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