No-one outside of Blizzard knows for certain yet what they will be releasing. I wouldn’t complain about something new for D3, but i think D4 is more likely considering that they’ve been working on it for years and have already cancelled a second expansion for D3. Even if it’s not called “Diablo 4”, i think it will be something separate to D3. And we know that it’s not Immortal because it is known that it’s an unannounced project.
D2 is not a hard game to learn. Sure making mistakes suck. But it doesn’t take that long to re-roll and get the new character to where the other one was at. And D2 doesn’t take any research. Just some good old fashion trial and error. Not as much testing as one would think either. More so after the patch that added synergies. The only thing that would be needed to be researched would be learning how to properly gear your character. More so if you are new to arpg games in general. If not then figuring out what would make good caster, melee, ranged, etc… gear wouldn’t be hard at all.
That depends on who they have working on D4 and how far they will go in returning to the roots of Diablo.
I have no doubt that they are indeed working on D4. They just haven’t announced it yet. We have way too much evidence pointing to D4 than more new content for this game.
- The second expansion for this game was cancelled.
- A lot of new jobs where posted for unannounced projects with varying amounts over the last few years or so.
- The blog that talked about the future of this game. Take seven classes, seven seasons, seven sets to be added (one per class). That would fit nicely for a Blizzcon D4 announcement and would keep us busy playing this game till D4 hits the shelves.
You just love this endless experiment sandbox game. Where you really don’t need to do much thinking about what you will use to play this game. Having jacks of all trades is not the best approach in arpgs.
It makes the characters in this game paper dolls that are identical in every way till you strap on gear. The same would be said about any other game that gives free johnny on the spot respecs. They would be seen as just a collection of skills.
This is absolutely correct. Last Epoch does an amazing job its skill system.
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They are games, not commitments. I’ve been playing since vanilla, and am not P1200 in NS.
I’m after a fun building experience more than rank 1. D3 was great for me until the theory crafting was ruined when the inconsistent game mechanics became apparent.
I now only check in during PTR periods to see if those things have finally been sorted, and i continue to be disappointed.
So, I’m just hoping for D4 now, and that the leader of that project chooses self - balancing systems over dev - weighted, arbitrary, mechanics.
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But that is the beauty behind it, to skip the step of making another character, to have sort of an emotional attachment to it. I still play the same paladin/crusader I had in both wow and d3, never made a new one (except for seasonal and such).
If the only thing these consequence brings is to reduce the respeccing possibilities on the fly, then all it would create is people making more chars, that’s the sad truth about it, because they might like the class itself and not just that particular build.
But how does that make them identical?, they may have the possibillity of being identical, but it’s not an absolute. Since stat and skillpoints are in almost all cases static, the possibility of clones exist everywhere. What i’m talking about is the possibility to switch between your own builds, the ones you have created yourself. Is it possible for someone to replicate said builds?, ofcourse, but that’s because the game isn’t randomized in those static points.
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So which is it? I can understand not wanting to remake a character because you put a point where you didnt mean to. Or you wanted to try holy bolt but holy bolt sucks. Or the gear you ended up getting had some skill bonus and that makes you wish you could move those ‘hard’ points into something else. Or you had gear that boosted one skill so you put one point to make use of three bonus points but then you get something better and wish you had that point back. That is totally understandable and I am in that boat.
What is not understandable is wanting to be able to be the best speed farmer and then the best uber bosses killer and then the best GR pusher (hopefully doesn’t return). I don’t even want to rule that out completely but I sure don’t want it to happen at the click of a button and multiple times a day every day. Maybe you get 2 or 3 chances to make that decision. If you want to excel at speed farming, then you should be less good at other things. If you want to play everything with one character, then build a well rounded character.
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Neither skill tree system of D2 or the free swap system of D3, are bad mechanics. We’re just having a discussion to promote their strong points. I’d appreciate if you didn’t heat the thread in a way.
In D2 we had required skills, debuffing, planning and synergies; in D3 classic we had to plan and swap our skills by minding how much crowd control we need and what sort of skill bonuses we had on our equipment. Then in Reaper of Souls we forgot that we had them and went for the “ten thousand percent dabliegje” damage bonuses but I think that’s out of subject… cough…
In an action aspect D3 allowed players to experiment without regret while promoting use of your “main” build for a linear experience. In an exploration sense D2 did a better job by introducing some dead ends and newbie traps yet gave you freedom on your approach to make use of it.
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So at one point I was answering shurgosa, were I believed that respeccs should exists, the second point is that I’m not sure limiting one build per char is the best alternative, because as i’ve pointed out before it just makes people make more chars. It’s not about being a jack of all trades because you’re not supposed to be able to switch in the middle of every fight, but you shouldn’t have to leave the game and log on another char of the same class to achieve this.
So, it’s purely to take away that step, because it makes the game flow better imo.
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Maybe if D4 is done right ‘Jack of all Trades’ requirements won’t be needed.
One can only hope…
Every character of that class will have the same amount of points to spend. Every character of that class will have the same skills and attributes to spend them on. It should be obvious I am talking about pre spending of any points.
While that is true that something like that can happen. As long as the difference in the builds are not too high as it is in this game then everything should be fine. As long as D4 is not a huge grind fest of farming whatever in order to get other things done then we might see that happen.
I think the generic “goals” that an arpg imposes on you are important too. I feel like D3 atm has only one goal worth pursuing…the highest Grift you can score. PoE to me has many goals.
- Hitting 100 asap(especially if you’re competitive and want to rank on the ladder)
- Hitting the highest(or is it lowest) delve level…which is the equivalent of Grifts(except it’s gated behind mapping).
- League challenges - It’s a good long term goal to have at the back of your mind for “collection” purposes(though admittedly stupidly grindy).
- Just generically defeating/grinding the various other contents…particularly bosses…like Uber Atziri/Uber Elder/Aul/whatever the current league final boss is.
- For the people wanting to express themselves, just rolling the builds/skills they feel like testing…regardless of meta.
Maybe listing these specific “goals” aren’t particularly relevant, but I think the point is most of these goals is it doesn’t require (other than maybe the first two goals) the player to have a have a narrow sited view on what builds you want to use for the job. The problem in D3 is that the games mechanics are currently pressuring me solely relying on Grifts as content(or changing your build to access these Grifts faster via Rifts).
It’s just some kind of weird/great tragedy in my mind. I feel like D3 has the most flexible tools, yet I feel the least flexible out of any arpg. That said…maybe the goals I developed in my mind for D3 are rather narrow minded. You can easily say the season journey is a genuine goal, but it’s much, much shorter than challenges in PoE(for better or worse depending on the person).
Yeah, but that doesn’t make the builds identical, unless you activly make them so. I dont really see what you’re getting at…
If you have the possibility to have a armory function like d3 currently has, you have different “load outs” of your own pre-created build, this build may be completly different from the other, but with the limitation of being in the same class.
This mean you have the same char to cover several builds, instead of several chars to cover all the builds, granted that they are within the same class. You can still have full optimization within each load out.
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There is the flaw in your logic. Is there really a consequence when your build fails hard but you have the ability to instantly and completely change it. I say there isn’t. Just because you try something without thinking it through shouldn’t be an excuse to design a game which is trivial to those that do.
If you have invested time and gear into that build, only to notice later that it doesn’t work, then yes, it is a consequence. Do you want to realize that you’re whole time playing that char is wasted or just parts of it?
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I want a player to be challenged to make intelligent decisions and the amount of time spent correcting or improving upon those decisions is a measurement of how well they did, and is all part of the rpg experience. I don’t want the trial and error safe space you seem to want.
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shrug Fine by me. I’m perfectly ok with non-seasonal characters getting the seasonal mechanics. Not sure what you were trying to prove here.
Look you don’t get it do you, I didn’t say that it makes the builds identical. I said again that take two characters of the same class side by side. Strip them of points and gear and both will be identical in every way.
If you could freely respec anytime you wanted in D2 it would be the same thing. Each Barbarian will unlock the ability to points into Berserk at level 30. Sure they have to have at least one point into the requirements. But the skill still unlocks at 30. As well as all skills are unlocked and available to spend points in at level 30. Some skills need requirements, points into other skills.
As it stands right now in this game you have classes that have way better builds for x than other classes. Take the Witch Doctor, while the Angry Chicken build is probably one of the fastest land builds there is. It isn’t the fastest speed build in the game. There are other builds of other classes that are faster. That right there defeats the purpose of having one class and one character to cover all things.
It gets worse if you have limited play time and want to be able to get a lot done. Then you will need the best builds for speed farming content. The best builds for x and so on. Each will probably be a different class.
PoE is a great example of this. You have some that are designed to farm Uber Lab. Others that are designed to farm Uber Atziri. Still others for fast mapping, plus a whole lot more. Each would be a different build and class to pull it off. One class cannot possibly cover it all in PoE and neither will it be able to in any other game whether the game has a lot of skill and attribute points to spend or not.
Season is where you have to start from level one. If you are gonna use a different build in seasons than what you were doing non season. Then add in the fact that you said you hate re-rolling characters to try out new builds. What have you just done when re-rolling to play seasons? Haven’t you done the same thing that you just said you hated doing.
Over the years, I’ve yet to really find someone satisfactorily justify why our characters should suddenly be able to “stop learning” through the commonly desired skill point system. If I wanted to start learning a new language tomorrow, there’d really be nothing stopping me other than my own personal motivation to do so. We don’t really have a “cap” on knowledge we can acquire, even if people do vary on retention or the need to refresh. As such, I’m not sure why we can’t extend this luxury to our video game characters.
At best, the argument just seems to be that we have to punish people for being stupid, not researching, and not meticulously planning. The common punishment mechanism that follows usually then correlates to adding time sink, be it via rerolling characters or EXP/resource loss as the more common options. However, as others realize, it’s not unusual for a build to be a late bloomer. Just getting something to the point where you can even start to legitimately tinker can be time consuming, and again with no guarantee of success or failure. We can say “It doesn’t take long to re-level in D2!” when I imagine most saying that leave out the silent “If you get rushed and do botted Baal runs!” For those who don’t, you’re looking at an exponentially longer turnaround, but I also have no doubt that some would look to those players who don’t partake as idiots or other colorful slurs.
Again, there are other ways to both grow characters and restrict them to curb potentially overpowering combinations. The +skills affixes of D2 were also no real different than the commonly slammed set bonuses or even back-in-the-day tri-fecta here in D3, which would no doubt be coveted in whatever future form they take. If you think people being unable to pass properly constructed content because of their choices or practiced ability up until then isn’t enough of a punishment, I’m just going to assert you have no place in a game design process. Time sink for the sake of time sink is not content. Making people redo things they’ve already done to maybe be able to do the things they can’t is not actually training for overcoming the latter. If someone is failing, the reason why needs to be teachable, and ideally in ways beyond “I’ll just make some other unrelated numbers bigger!” That can mean things like learning mob placement, how to best take advantage of the environment, prioritization of targets, things that should be dodged, and so on. If, after trying all that wearing level appropriate gear and you’re still failing, then perhaps some deeper retrospective into a build is needed, but it still doesn’t mean you need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Our characters don’t need to forget Algebra to learn Biology, but for some reason we still cling to that concept being good when I’m just going to keep calling it bullsh*t.
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Okay so if you missed it, it doesn’t matter if they are the best class for it, what I meant was the fact that you probably have a speed build, which does lower content at a much higher speed. Now is crusader the best at this? No, but they have a speed build.
They whole idea is to keep your class. Sure, if you want to be the absolute best at everything, you bring the meta at every turn, but that’s not how everyone plays.
I’m not saying that every class will be the best at everything, but every class has some way of making a decent build for that category.
This is suggesting that D4 use a classless, a game without levels. Where all characters in time will learn all skills if the player wants them to similar to Secret World Legends.
It doesn’t take that much effort in planning not only if the skill tree system is done right. Add to it the players learning the basics of the game. Oh wait you want it where Daddy Devs hold our hands yet again letting all things be instant success, even if there is a failure the failure only last a few minor seconds. That is a continual experiment sandbox game that is not a true Diablo game.
I wouldn’t doubt that those that know the basics of D2 can figure out good builds on their own without any extra research. The most that they would do if needed is to look up some gear which isn’t that hard to do.
Further how many players in D2 actually stay and listen to every story, every line of dialog. Going out to kill all things before moving on. I am sure that there are plenty that rush through the game.
In fact I could be a millionaire many times over if I had a dollar for every rush game online that I saw. More so if I actually was just watching for rushing games and spending only about 5 hours a day at most.
After the majority of the players heard the story once they just didn’t want to hear it again and just played right through only doing the quest that was needed to get whatever reward needed to to advance the story.
I highly doubt that these days leveling to cap in D4 will take much longer than leveling to cap here in D3. So that is a little moot. I highly doubt that these days the devs of D4 would make it a chore to get to max level. They will likely have a much better end game giving us more things to do with our max level characters than what we do now in this game.
Having a bad build is something that players can learn on their own. Without Daddy Dev holding our hands yet again.
I am sure that the majority are more than smart enough to notice that their build isn’t working. More so if they know that they got more than good enough gear handle the content. Although I am not always up for a gear check system for handling content.
Games like this one that would likely mean that at the least D4 is online only. Then add in chat functions and I am sure that those players can ask others for help. As long as there is some way they can telling them their build and gear. Then the response would be fix this or that and you are good to go. Some in a system of limited or zero respecs might be you need to re-roll. But even then it won’t be as bad as you think.
Path of Exile is a game that is younger than D3 and it gets away with having us re-roll to try out new builds as well as fix our broken builds. Why isn’t that game company hurting for players if it just doesn’t work.
You mean that you cannot decide to take a small amount of time and learn the basics of the game by playing it as well as maybe some research. But I do highly doubt that it will be needed because we are likely to see a D4 planner in the near future after D4’s release. Using it we will be able to make any type of build that we want. It won’t take super long to do either. It gets even easier if you already know the important offensive and defensive stats that will be needed to make a good build. Then the point spending will show what way will be best for what you want to do with the character.
Great idea if you only want one character per account. Where that character has no choice but to be a jack of all trades. But I do want more than one character per account. The hold my hand continual experiment sandbox game is a soulless game that makes our characters just a collection of skills.
Oh so it is more than just having a jack of all trades. Now the classes need to be homogenized. Where they have the same or roughly the same amount of tools in the tool kit for all categories huh. That won’t help either, it will mean that they will be boring and bland, instead of fun and lively.