…in one particular player versus environment instance, on a single pack of mobs that remind the player that maybe there is more to diversity than picking a path and insisting it be the optimal choice. This is shortsightedness. Exclamation that ‘being forced (it is not) to specialize in various means’ as opposed to ‘being able to just use cold’ is not a valid ‘which is more diverse’
Diversity is difference. Singularity would be less diverse than plurality. This is on the player - players who don’t have their heart set on only playing 1 type of way shouldn’t be punished by compromise to the potential complexities that they themselves thrive in. It is a matter of preference. It is fallible to center game design around preferences.
That’s just not really true though? Maybe if you didn’t know what you were doing. If you accounted for the + skills bonuses you could compile from items it was pretty easy to do more than 2 skills and the masteries.
Honestly not trying to be rude but not sure you understood the strategy there.
The objection here though is not about whether or not you’re capable of ‘beating’ the difficulty. Unless of course a person defines beating the difficulty as in clearing every last mob in the zone (as opposed to defeating the final boss in that level)
I don’t recollect any bosses ever being incapable of being defeated by players that only specialized in one method of offensive?
Again - a matter of preference. I won’t argue with you on this as our preferences differ.
Making dual element builds optimal is a singularity and not depth. You say you want depth but that doesn’t look like depth.
In principle, i’m okay with resistances and almost every arpg player is. Randomly making a quest uncompletable because of immunities is not depth. Because if you don’t have a cold immune counter un d2 you can’t even do den of evil in d2 hell.
Cold is 1 of three ranges of attack for a sorc. She caught amnesia and forgot how to use fire to burn things that were already so cold, that cold healed them…
Sorry, I haven’t played D2 since D3 and I haven’t played D3 for almost a decade. There have been lots of alternatives since that offer the depth you feel I’m not interested in or for some reason feel I don’t understand.
It really is a futile debate for a game that hasn’t been released yet.
Yea so you’re argument is that someone should just be able to pump all their points into one part of the skill tree and not have any issues with it at all.
But then you’re like “immunes kill build diversity”
Mobs already have resistances and some are harder to kill then others. There is absolutely no value added by making them immune. That would just frustrate players and be bad for the game.
Mobs that are entirely of cold orient shouldn’t be damaged by chilling them further.
Fire should do increased damage to them. I’d go so far as to say that if you’re trying to make an ice giant dead by freezing it - you deserve to be pummeled into the ground, For healing it (cold should heal mobs that are immune to cold).
Meeting somewhere in the middle for the sake of compromise - we could say fine, cold “resistant mobs” are immune to being chilled->frozen.
It doesn’t add up because you’re making up my arguments. Implicit in your disdain for pumping points into one tree (not one part of one tree, it’s actually impossible to do that in d2) is your lack of recognition/ignorance that different skills might actually operate differently and people might want access to both of those simultaneously, say glacial spike’s freeze and Frozen Orb’s concentrated single target if aimed properly.
So yes, not having access to both of those simultaneously DOES kill diversity.
You are also ignoring fantastical archetypes that people like to impersonate in rpgs. Which one would think would be a major part of an rpg. Like being a frost witch like the ones in fairy tales.
Just 50%-75% resistances should be high enough to reward diversification while not completely gutting builds people make. Anyone who is diverse would have twice to four times the farming throughput in particular content. Though for reasons aforementioned i would discourage those from being elemental resisances. (They could be split by attack type for example projectile, AoE, melee) and then you’re encouraging build diversity by actually encouraging the usage of types of skills that differ mechically as opposed to color.
If you wanted to do something real fun, you could add a mechanic that makes the attack type suboptimal but also changes game play, like % chance to reflect projectiles. Then a player would have to more careful and responsive if they invest in projectile skills (having to dodge/defend against their own attacks) but then can still do uber projectile damage they built. It would still be sub optimal against packs that have say 20-30% projectile reflect chance (and probably slow them down by as much as 50-75%, like resistances), but have a real impact on gameplay while not destroying diversity entirely.
You do have access to it though. You CAN choose to only use cold. The argument here is revolving around a player preferring to do so not being punished for it, as opposed to a player who prefers to spread his repertoire about being punished for it.
Here’s the thing. What if cold is supposed to be the utility aspect of the sorc (and any class archetype that is both able to employ cold & does so)? Then if you’re limiting yourself by choosing to play the way you choose to play - more power to you. By default there shouldn’t be any 1 optimal way to play. We can agree there? For the sake of lacking diversity aka the manifestation of meta builds.
The bottom line is the more surprises the games pve throws at a person the less rampant botting will be because bot designing will require revisions.
Not having counters eliminates clout of any kind. There needs to be counters in place in order to make the game challenging enough to require something more than spam clicking with one size fits all.
Wouldn’t it make more sense that if you opt to only use cold - that you stick to places in which such a build excel? For example, a place where, a sorc opting only to use fire, suffers? Etc.
And i’m not disagreeing that there should be counters, and maybe we agree on that much. I’m saying color isn’t really a valuable one and moreso hard immunities to color. That’s really all elements mean is the color of an attack. That’s inherently boring. And there’s soft counters like the one i mentioned that are plenty effective and actually add meaning to gameplay.
I also wouldn’t want gameplay artificially annoying or unfun to counter bots.
In a fast moving post some of my comments maybe moot.
As long as it’s expand the right way as you level there will be no problems, I know in PoE my first few characters I got pissed off as I missed the way resistances breakpoints changed as I leveled, I just started to die and to me for unknown reasons.
So done well it will work.
Again it comes down to being shown the mechanic as we level.
As it should be, we all want to be able to play our way.
Yes or the game will be what PoEs endgame is, can I clear the screen in front of me while not get damaged, to me the challenge just becomes speed or power creep not the best option.
