Bro. I’m with you when you talk about realism and D2! I think you didn’t go far enough! For realism sake we need to get rid of magic and undead and monsters. D4 should just be a bunch of pasty dudes (and dudettes) without any discernable ways to defend themselves going out getting thrashed by mobs.
And I’m with you on the inventory thing too. You get ONE 2H sword and that’s it. Forget about playability and fun. Those weps are heavy and if you’re getting chased by zombie dogs you can’t have more stuff to carry!
Nah, I’m good. Had my fill of D3 after playing for years. I’ll do what I always do: Wait to see if the next thing looks fun, and if so I’ll play it. If not I’ll skip it, and find a better way to spend my free time.
Exactly. They’ll hopefully build a new game that takes advantage of all the things they’ve learned since D2 and D3, and makes the game as accessible as possible for as many players as possible, since by and large that’s what makes Diablo games fun… at least with regard to multi-player modes. Tinkering with builds is a big part of what made D3 fun for pretty much everyone I know who played it, and plenty of people on these forums over the years, so I would expect you’ll see some form of enabling that in D4. I would also expect it won’t work like D3 or D2… whatever that entails.
Diablo 3 barely had builds. The skill system was a shallow shell of what it was in D2. I’m happy to have limited respeccing as long as the skill system is deep enough to allow for completely different playstyles on the same class.
I don’t care enough to read through 200 comments. I keep seeing “it makes the game more real”, this is a hack and slash dungeon crawler where you are grinding loot. 0 story.
I started with D1, played a ton of D2 and have grown up playing all the final fantasy games and role playing games in general.
If you’re looking for a real feeling game then you’re just filling in reasons to justify why D2 felt so real.
D2 wasn’t real, it just was unforgiving with choices. Convenience is the general direction of the masses now, look at the progress of WoW. Your talents actually mattered in WotLK and then they were simply cool perks. They dumbed down the game massively.
I agree with most of this… But I think it’s worth pointing out that in D3 “instant respec” really just means changing the skills you’ve selected from the pool of skills you have available to you. You still have to level up (the simulation for actually training in a combat skill) to be able to use it. And, importantly, this often happens in response to acquiring a new piece of gear, or at least is performance-dependent on having synergistic gear. This is eminently realistic: If you’ve acquired ring daggers (in real life, I mean), but you’re currently using a hunting knife, and you want to start using the ring daggers, your combat style and tactics will necessarily change, because of your change in gear–you don’t use ring daggers the same way you use a hunting knife. And… you have to train to use a skill before you’re effective at using it, which is what leveling up is meant to simulate… So the skill is in your bag of tricks, even if it’s not one you currently choose to use, based on your preferred style and the gear you own at the moment.
I really think those in the camp of “no respec 3v4r” (or even make respec harder) are not looking at this the right way. Even in real life, you can change jobs between two seemingly unrelated fields so long as they share certain core skills, potentially without any additional training, e.g. from software engineer to technical sales, or as in my case, from retail manager to sysadmin (with a degree in MIS). The sort of respec D3 enables is extremely realistic, and also a lot of fun for folks like myself who enjoy tinkering with builds, but don’t enjoy the tedium of leveling another toon to do it.
Now, perhaps that’s where the immersion argument comes in (and it’s one I’ve made myself)–if the process of leveling was inherently more fun (immersive, or whatever) it might matter less. But regardless, if you made me choose a static set of skills, and require me to re-level to use different ones, I’d have played D3 a lot less, and maybe not at all. And all my buds who also played are probably also in that camp… or at least much closer to that camp than the “make respec hard” camp.
I disagree with the premise that respeccing makes it not an RPG.
In a TTRPG, I as a GM can play with the results of fumbles and lack of skills and shape the story with it. You’ll find some interesting characters that way, and it can lead to some hilarious and dramatic moments. The player’s choices being permanent does not ruin the enjoyment of the game because I can imagine an outcome that works and we can still play. But this is a video game with technical limitations.
If a wrong stat spread leads to a less fulfilling gaming experience, and there’s no recourse like respeccing? In a game where the main function of my stats is solely combat?
I would hate to reach an endgame and find out that because I made these decisions at a previous level, now my character isn’t viable or suffers constant death, and there’s nothing I can do except wipe and start again. Especially as I don’t have much time to play as I get older. (Thank God for dadbuilds)
Now, If D4 were to have player choices that impacted the story or shaped things, I would 100% agree that Player choices should be permanent, and they should matter.
The fact of the matter is this is just another Bologna Sausage post from someone (you) wanting to take something away from other players when it’s not needed.
If you don’t like respeccing don’t do it, but don’t try to make that decision for me and other players.
No. I want game design to be centred around providing meaningful skill tree choices and unique fulfilling specialisations within classes such as with weapons and spell types in Diablo 2 you goose.
What if someday you were drunk, sleepy and blur while respeccing your character on the last respec you had and screw up badly? Now your character is a useless and brick character that can’t even hunt the loot on his own. Even if the game has the way for you to make another respec token, there is no way your current useless character can find those ingredients especially when it involving killing monsters and bosses.
Should everything be designed to protect the lowest common denominator from doing something stupid? Yeah you were dumb and screwed up. If I get drunk and put glass in my eye can I get the taxpayer to pay for my medical bill because I was an idiot?
I feel after fleshing out my ideas more. I’m not as hardline against respeccing, I just want actual meaningful choice and deep customizable skill trees with synergy such as in diablo 2. Respeccing doesnt even bother me that much but I think theres an argument to be made for
You know what I like best? Not wasting hours of my time on a game and then having my experience dampened because I didn’t look things up ahead of time. I’ve been loving Fire Emblem: Three Houses for example, but I’ve probably spent a solid 10% of my playtime just looking up things because I didn’t want my characters to die and to be at least slightly optimal. Yeah it’s a great game, but the amount of downtime I had not actively playing the game was kind of annoying. The less I need to spend out of a game for said game, the better.
If you think respeccing is so terrible, then just don’t use it. Problem solved. The rest of us will use it when we want to. Best of both worlds. I personally don’t like having my time wasted, and I’m sure people with way, WAY less time than me will agree with that.
We all lose a little uniqueness by allowing everyone to respec whenever they want. I cant make a bow amazon and enjoy that I made that choice instead of all others, and therefore I’ll always be better at some things than others, and worse at other things than others.
No. Then anyone can decide whenever they want, they can be or do anything. So you remove the individuality, you remove any strengths or weakness and you make everyone the same. So everybody is the same and the only differentiation between character is gear.
If that’s because there aren’t enough compelling choices, then that’s on the designers. If you’re forced into a bad spec because you weren’t looking things up ahead of time though, that’s a much worse outcome that no one should be forced into.
I could gladly bring up how much money (or time creating a new character) my dumb teenage self wasted on MapleStory correcting mistakes I made because that game forces you to pay or be screwed. No game should go without a respec function. Imagine if an MMO like WoW didn’t have one, or if a game became impossible because you built incorrectly.