i also think, this system is way too simplified
but i understand they wanted to get rid of the “portal-to-town-and-buy-an-inventory-full-of-mana-pots-system” as well
there has to be a compromis
better options for mana leech/regen
and the potion system should be in the flask style imo.
so if you run out of mana, you just have to use ur basic attacks/cost free attacks, until u gain back your ressources
Disagree because:
- Your bag is empty when you leave town, (when you go hiking, you take lots of food in your bag).
- there is nothing hard to buy packs of potions
- The belt can be automatically filled up for consoles, it does not have to be like in d2
- When you go back to town, your bag is empty of potions and full of items so it totally makes sense.
- going to town is time management, it’s a ressource. Again, if you remove the need of it, you remove decision making and possibilities to optimise a competitive play.
- Potions are iconic must be a resource to manage at a cost, just make the cost of a potion very high if you want but remove the CD.
- Casual players can still use potions every 30 sec if they want.
- Blizzard has to let the players figure out by themselves what is the most reasonable and tactical option to use. The player must find out by himself what’s adequate.
- To remove cooldowns and encourage diversity of spells, monsters need to be diversified. Resistances & weakness to elements must progressively increase as we progress in the game (no full immunities to keep solo viable, but let’s say -100% weakness to 90% resistance)
It feels juicy to drink potions, just by the way they look compared to diablo3:
https://i.ibb.co/LC5nCZt/d2-d3-potions.jpg
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well you could say, if you are killing good enough, and you have a kinda auto equip system, it could work for potions
looking at some speedruns its just a very spammy and not so fitting gameplay for 2019
…and that is what a cooldown accomplishes…you cant spam it because you need to make a decision on how and when to you use them because they are limited.
not sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp…
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because it tells you exactly, how to deal with it ->you wait 40 seconds
giving it a high ressouce cost, offers different options
spare some other minor consumer skills, use a lot of potions, build on extrem manasupply/leech/regen etc.
or just…wait 40 seconds
basing it on ressources, could even increase the possibilities of how skills could work
f.e. a skill could use up all of your resource and deal damage, based on the spent ammount
or conduit spends mana over time and lasts as long as you have mana
cooldowns cant offer such different systems
I think you people and Blizzard still don’t GET it, it’s terrible. We repeat this for YEARS. You still think what matters is getting as fast as possible out of town to slay demons. You still don’t get it that an RPG must be balanced in every aspect of the game, and not emphasis only combat. Get out of this mindset.
Currently, d4 is still the same stupid pace as d3, it runs too fast in town.
None of the demo streamers have red the quests. NONE. They all skipped the quests and followed the GPS arrows. it defeats the purpose to be on our own in this world .
You totally underestimate the will of players to prepare for battle, to analyse the options, builds and items in town, as well as potions management.
Diablo 3 is an action game, but an ARPG is also about roleplay, management, analysing and benchmarking.
D2 was a success because it enriches both action and role play.
- there is a time for emotion, relief,
- a time for benchmarking and analysing
- a time for adrenalin and sweat
Towns must contrast with combat, time must STOP intown and one must give a purpose to it. it allows party to make short breaks, repair, share tips and prepare your character for battle. Potions can be very diverse and serve various combat situations.
The reason why D3 make sure people go on the battlefield as fast as possible is because dialogue, story and music are garbage, and they want players to get occupied with clicking.
Further analysis how pace and quests should be improved here:
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if you read some of my posts, you would recognize, that i am fully on your side
but unlike you, i am actually thinking out of my bubble
im not talking about preparing for fights
but preparing is not, dropping potions on the ground, next to your portal, porting back to town, all 20 seconds, restock, unload your stuff, port back, unload your stuff…thats just no fluent gameplay
Indeed sorry I missed this specific comment, your comments make sense now. Yet, the pace and the purposes in town must be reworked.
Of course they can. People just need to actually think outside the box…
explain it then 
you can explain how it works with mana
so you should be able to do it with CD
Even D3 , as poorly designed as it is ,has interesting takes on cooldown management…sometimes killing enemies reduces cost, Lol has instances where killing certain enemies resets cooldown etc…
Its quite disingenuous to assert that the restriction of time cannot be manipulated in interesting ways that gives players situations to contend with…
just not as much as with resources
only short the CD itself, or get x seconds CD per hit/kill
It accomplishes this the first use of the skill. After that there is no decision on when you use the skill next until the entire duration of the cooldown has elapsed.
Player style and efficiency are dictated by the developers via cooldowns. I’d rather see charged skills or diminishing returns used as a means of discouraging mindless skill spam. Synergies and combos can also be used to incentivize alternative play styles. That way every use of a skill is dependent on actions of the player, not some timer used as a governor of skills for a game void of challenge and depth.
If there were both consequences for and desirable alternatives to skill spam along content challenging enough to provide a real threat to the face tanking play style, cooldowns would not be needed. You would either adapt or die. I think cooldowns only contribute to reduced diversity in characters and play styles.
I agree that the first use of a cooldown skill does involve strategy. But I challenge you to truly consider what other effects they have. I have seen them used to good effect in games with pvp that require a extremely even playing field where multiple players can target another player instantaneously. But in a game like Diablo I feel they are a net negative.
I think there are many more concepts to consider than the obvious…
When you say this above, are you asking me to consider;
Other effects that cooldowns have as in the negative side effects of cooldowns in general when they are in a game?
-or-
Other effects that cooldowns could have to make them more interesting than your described “use then wait” type of system that is so very common?
Negative side effects of course.
Cooldowns are use and wait by their very nature. You can reduce the wait until it’s negligible enough that it’s impact is minimal but in that case they would be balancing the challenge of the game to cooldowns. I’d prefer the game be balanced to the strength of my character building ability and my strategy and execution in combat.
ah ok so what is the most glaring negative side effect that a cooldown system brings to a game, summarized in a few sentences?
I would say the impact they have on play style. I think they severely limit diversity of skill use. Most will point to mindless skill spam as a consequence of the lack of cooldowns when really it’s just the consequence of a shallow game lacking meaningful challenge. I think there are better ways provide strategic skill use that involve the player somehow earning the opportunity to use a skill through in game actions rather than an arbitrary delay built in.
ah ok. so my take on this is;
Mana can also potentially have this same unwanted impact on play style.
I would say any resource type one can name has a chance to fail the player in the same way, if it is shallow or poorly designed then skill useage becomes more predictable, and less interesting or something like that…etc…
and that because it is on a case by case basis that Mana fails, then its also a case by case basis that any other type of associated cost, including cooldowns, or any other type of cost… fails.
I find it basically impossible to completely condemn or worship any type of cost aimed towards a player, based on the type of cost it happens to be and what it happens to ask the player to sacrifice.
that counts for costs ranging from life, time, mana, energy, focus, durability, gold, potion charges, souls, items, temperature, generator power, turns or resources of any shape or size, or anything in between.
They all have a chance to succeed or fail based on how they are implemented in the game, and what else the game is made up of
and because I agree with your line about thinknig about how “there are better ways”, I cannot worship any type of cost either. its as you say, what can be “better”. No type of cost or any instance of a cost the player pays, should ever be outright shielded from criticism.
My biggest problem with the whole concept of cooldowns is that I feel they apply a consequence that has nothing to do with the actions of the player. At least if you are casting spells like a madman and run out of mana, it makes sense and seems like a justifiable outcome.
If a spell costs your maximum mana each cast and it takes 20 seconds to recover all your mana that resource system is indeed broken. But this example pretty much displays the effects of a Cooldown. Yes cooldowns do not effect your entire skill bar but I think this logic describes why I despise them as much as I do.
I think that both D2 and D3 are really flawed in the resource management section.
D3 hard cooldowns are lame I would say, but the issue is that the skills are way too powerful to just be spamed around, the skills became a lot more impactful in D3.
I’m okay with the existence of “filler” skills to be used while you recover after casting a few stronger skills, but I would prefer that those spells didn’t increase your resource generation.
On D2 on the other hand mana is almost a pointless resource, you either suppress the costs with some type of leech or just chug mana pots until you need to go back to town, no one puts stat points into energy because there is no need to.
My opinion is that there is no need for cooldowns but:
- The resource management needs to be way harder, if you’re planning on spamming meteors you need to make an investment into the “resource controlling stat”, don’t let me suppress my resource requirements either.
- Some long lasting skills can’t stack, like hurricane on D2 you cast again and it just increases the duration.
- They need to remove all instant resource recovery effects (skill and pots), resource recovery should always be over time (Mana pots increasing your natural recovery in a % for example would be a cool system).
- Resource (Mana or whatever) pots need to be rarer, make them count, make me consider saving them for a boss.
- They need to change the idea of “ultimates” such skills just do way too much on automatic and I don’t think they would work when limited by resource costs (some of them are huge buffs that wouldn’t make sense to run out of resources after using)
- Don’t create limitations that can later be easily ignored like the cooldowns on D3 where some sets can easily reset cooldowns on certain powerful skills.
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