I think that the D4 Devs should remove cooldowns from the game and use resources instead, such as Mana, Fury, Spirit. I feel that Cooldowns fit MMO:s better than ARPG:s, Resource such as Mana is very good for a game like Diablo, look at Diablo 2, you get that flow of gameplay because you are not bound to cooldowns as you are in D3.
The flow of the game suffers if you have to Wait for your cooldowns to be back up, especially long cooldowns as ultimates. Ultimates could be good if they were Implemented like they are in Overwatch were you gain Ultimate charges when you hit an enemy, so you could have 6 abilities and 1 Ultimate. This makes Ultimates more interesting, this makes ultimates more appealing because you get your ultimate charges when you slay Demons. (For Console, you could make it so that you activate your ultimate when you press RB and LB at the same time.)
Also with cooldowns, you get this awful Affix called cooldown, which is essential for you if you play a cooldown build, this makes cooldown stats so important that you need to have it on every single piece of your gear.
No one likes cooldowns! An excellent example of this would be how everyone uses CDR in D3 to basically remove the time between cd’s so they basically don’t exist. ARPG players don’t like cooldowns it honestly feels bad to not be able to use your skills when you want to use it. It makes sense if you don’t have enough resource that you must wait to generate more.
The idea of having a strong ability that you need to wait on maybe makes sense if its like 200% to all abilities for 20 seconds but that’s also boring gameplay. We should just have abilities that we use resources for and are best used situationally. For example you do more damage if you x meters away from the target or if you’re on its side or back as melee. If you’re a caster you could have combo abilities that you do where if you time your abilities right you’re rewarded with more damage or haste but if you fail then you use more resources.
As a necromancer you could have a rhythm of ability presses to keep up your skeletons that you do a dance with keeping your resources up while spending them at the same time. I think that would be super engaging and immersive gameplay, way better than just spawning them and they go do their own thing.
If I actually put thought into designing classes I could make a fun ARPG I think lol.
100%
Instead of giving long cooldowns, just give high resource costs and maybe global resources so you can have more possibilities to manipulate gameplay via items and global affixes/skills
If you have cooldowns, you can just face roll your keyboard all x seconds
Cooldowns are just another game mechanism. More mechanisms => Good.
Making stuff different from each other makes them more interesting.
You can have two damage skills, that basically do the same, except one got a mana cost and another got a cooldown. Choices! (and yes, you can get the same through itemization and talents, but it does not have to be either/or).
Other than dmg skills (and I think most pure dmg skills should not have a cooldown - maybe 20% of dmg skills could have a cd), cooldowns makes the most sense on:
defensive abilities - to make their use more strategic
offensive skills with added effects - like a stun etc. again to make their use more strategic
utility skills - like a heal, or an ability that gives all your mana back etc. which would break the game if spammable
I dont think giving cooldown skills much higher dmg is a good idea. Because that very well could lead to what many people fear, that you have to use those cooldown skills to kill anything. Differentiate them in other ways.
The concept of Ultimates, as they exist in MOBAs etc. should go to hell (another hell than Diablos). They do not belong. But not because of cooldowns.
Just add severe diminishing returns on the stat if it becomes an issue. Or make the stat only exist on few item slots.
Not that I really think it is an issue. Plenty of stats are essential for specific builds, that is not an issue on its own.
Cooldown skills in D3 are just too strong - and it is often not normal CDR on gear that makes them spammable, but the terrible set design or legendaries with 50% CDR on them etc.
Imo, cooldowns and CDR affixes works just fine in a game like Grim Dawn.
I don’t mind reasonable CDs, as long as I can use most abilities while the others are coming off CDs and not have much down time. I don’t like “ultimates” with minute plus CDs. Although D3 did a fairly decent job of having items that reduced CDs on kills. attacks and such. If they were to have these big CD ultimate like abilities, they should be independent of the skill bar abilities.
In general I feel CDs force you to think about using your abilities as opposed to using them at will constantly.
Not really because you will just always use them on cooldown instead of thinking about your resource mamanagment, you will just wait-faceroll-wait-faceroll
I don’t use defensive/offensive abilities on cooldown, I save them for harder enemies where I’ll need them.
And it’s not like resource management involves a lot of thinking either. Just look at D2: most builds have a bunch of buffs that you keep up at all times, and for the rest you use mana-leech and potion spamming.
I’m not referring to d2 potion spam game
Im talking about a possible optimal D4 where you decide, which skills are useful for which enemies, urself. And then you can actually spam those skills and try to manage your resources while doing so
It would amount to the same thing. People will just gear to reduce resource costs / increase resource generation. You will always end up with a rotation in either case.
Spam resource spending ability until you run out of resource -> spam ability/potion to replenish resource. Buffs get reapplied whenever they run out. That’s how resource spending works.
I would prefer toggle/reserving buffs because temporary buff keeping is pain in the…
Ok look imagine your playing with your sorc and ur encountering that single strong enemy, not an endboss, just a yellow one maybe. And ur like “oh damn he may not come near me and u will just spam frost bolt and orb (I don’t know, some effective freeze combo) so he will not be able to reach me and I kite him a bit if I can’t keep up the stun, no need for expensive aoe skills” and then in an other room, you are having this huge group of fallen ones, they are basically trash but many so ur like “OK, if I manage to cast down 3 blizzards, I will clear this group” so you go blizzard, get some mana back blizzard, get some more mana back, blizzard and the group is down, and then you are having this group of elite hell knights, charging at you and ur like “oh damn, they gonna blow me up” so u cast down a blizzard and hit your frost skin, to stay immune for a while and after that, port away to kite some mana back and then call down blizzard again and frost skin again and maybe 1 of them is left, so you finish him of with some frost bolt/orb
3 different situations, 3 different “spaming”
If you have cooldowns and ridiculous costs like in…you know…you will do the same thing in all 3 situations, face roll, run or hit, depending on your defense, faceroll again
Ur not deciding, what is useful, u hit any damage that you can hit, because its “up”
At least being limited by resource is due to the actions of the player. The limitations of a Cooldown are 100% decided by the developers, even if you are able to reduce its duration.
If a resource system is so broken that you can only use a skill once, you essentially have a Cooldown. Enough said.
It’s very annoying to have a skill that you can’t use because the game’s creators say it’s too strong, so if the ability is too powerful just increase the cost of mana, and anyone who wants to use that ability every time mana sufficient should be able to use.
Everyone is enjoying the changes that value player choices, choices that give freedom, but cooldowns are the complete opposite.
