I believe D3’s itemization came from how they design items in world of warcraft unfortunately. If they want to stray so far off from the core games, why not just make a warcraft arpg instead.
This is somewhat frustrating to me. I really want this to change in D4 and i have high hopes that they will take the feedback from everyone to heart.
I agree! There is a big difference in playing a class and playing a character, sadly most people don’t understand this. They’re hiding character customization and honestly I think that being able to level all the skills is just poor game design, makes me feel like they’re just trying to push a product out of the door to make money.
I think the original Jade Set was a work of art. But I can see your Set being another addition to the Spirit warrior playstyle since the Jade set didn’t encourage you to use all 6 spirit spells.
I don’t get this constant refrain for a skill tree.
Sure maybe it seemed innovative with D2 but:
The OP describes a system in which all Druid skills are available to a starting Druid, but they have a limited number they will be able to choose, and use.
And that the chosen skills are locked for the life of the character, e.i. you choose 5 skills and those are the only skills you will ever get to have, if you want other skills, you must start a new Druid.
None of which I oppose.
I am merely curious why people think this requires a skill tree?
From what I understand, D4 is combining what we had in D2 and D3.
In D2 we had the Skill Tree. Each Class had 3 tabs (or branches) they could follow. The Skill Tree contained our Skills, Passives and Synergies.
In D3 we had a Skills Menu, which included Passive Skills.
In D4 we have the Skills Menu. On a separate tab we have our Skill Tree (Talents).
From the conversation I heard between Lead Systems Designer, David Kim, and Rhykker, we will be able to change our Skills. But, they haven’t decided if there we’ll be a cost or what that cost will be. The Talents can be changed at anytime, with no cost.
The idea is to select the Skills we want our Characters to use and enhance them with the Talents. If and when we decide to change our Skills, we will be able to adjust our Talents accordingly.
David went on to say they were planning to expand on both, the Skills and the Talents. But, they still had a lot of work to do and a long way to go.
What we saw in the BlizzCon D4 Demo is only a sample of what is to come.
What we want is an expanded skill tree and talent tree.
In diablo 2 you are able to respecc both stats and talent once each difficulty. For D4 i would like for you to respecc talents and skills for a price but an unlimited amount, this way you can still try out new builds but what matters is the sacrifice you do to achieve that. If you get everything handed to you, you’ll completely lose the sense of that your character is unique compared to the rest of the players.
I dont want to be one class among other classes like in world of warcraft, i want to be a character among other unique characters. Just look at path of exile, people share builds all the time that as crazy and weird. It’s only natural that commiting to such a build should require some time investment. Otherwise you would ONLY be time investing for more damage output, and not in what your character is. This is not the RPG way.
Although i have to say i understand and respect the opinion of being against skilltrees, i can’t quite put enough reasoning behind why i feel the D3 way is not as fun, the only argument i have is that character uniqueness is lost, and i know that is not a strong reasoning for some. I wish there was a common ground players could agree on.
Bumping this thread to keep it alive
I read this on a walk so I may not go through all the discussions.
I basically agree about the character build is that important to the rpg game. I went to watch that interview of David Kim. He said the skill choice is permanent and you get skill points through leveling and skill tomes. I didn’t hear him say that you can max out every one of them (Please correct if I’m missing anything). If that’s the plan I feel like OK. When a new version/expansion releases and we get more skill points as we get more levels, if we will also get more new skills to make sure we we will still be lack of skill points, I think that’s fine.
I don’t think people will hate rerolling characters that much as far as it is made reasonable. Even in D3 RoS we do reroll new characters every season (and can keep some of our progress), right?
I also agree that current skill/talent tree in the demo should get more complexity and customization of course. As Kim said there is still a lot work to do and they sure can add more things to the system if needed. That’s why we need to continue speaking out and provide our thoughts even if it’s still very early, so that designers can hear (hopefully).
Thanks for the post.
People asking to have locked skill progression are just asking for trouble. Look at all of the hate towards Barbarians and Wizards. When any one class is thought to be superior to another (or vastly underpowered) people complain, and perhaps rightfully so if co-op is to be considered.
But locking skill trees ensures that even within the FotM class, there will be division based on skill selection. If players can’t adjust to the meta, or patches, updates, new content, etc., they are going to be upset. And rightfully so.
Unless Blizzard can make every choice valid and meaningful (and they have mixed success with the flexible D3 system) they shouldn’t lock players into a path.
Is someone wants to purposely limit their choices, then by all means, they can do so. But to force that limitation on the rest of the playerbase, under the guise of “improved game experience” is criminal.
Because this is what would happen:
You have to consider the source. Blizzard is still trying to balance these classes that have been tried and tested millions of times. They largely ignored the feedback from the Barbarian community, and did you try any of the new sets in PTR?
No thanks! Give me the option to adjust my skills, so my enjoyment isn’t as hampered because someone at Blizzard really wanted to push their favorite build.
I think people will hate this but what about the Armory system, but with a max of 2-3 the first is ALWAYS locked down with maybe an option to re-roll at max level or something like a high cost option, but on that same character if you get an item with a skill you want to try then the lets you do that again at a cost if needs be.
But the Armory system has to be handled better then D3 items when swapped must be put back in you stash the right way not all over the place.
You just wrote a master piece !!!
Everything from the first letter to the last one is a piece of art !!! Thank you ! this is what my vision is for SKILLS !!!
if you don’t like it anymore, restart a new character !!! you say you don’t want to have to restart, yet i bet you play SEASONS … comon man use your logic !!!
Awesome post, Jang. I just wanna point out, have you seen the Barb “Weapon Mastery” branch? It has 3 or 4 skills in it. Exactly zero weapon masteries.
How could they possibly mess that up?? There has to be some kind of language barrier here which wouldn’t surprise me given how cheap blizzard is.
Well, that’s definitely not true, as at least in 2 diablo games you didn’t have to sacrifice skills - D1 and D3 .) This is purely D2 feature. Someone likes it, someone doesn’t.
I really don’t see this as a negative. That is because I have always looked at myself as like you said where I am playing the name of the character and not just the build.
Take Conan the Barbarian, if he were real in the Diablo world he would be a great swordsman. But still that doesn’t mean that in order to be able to be decent at using an axe he would have to go back into his mothers womb and be born again in then train to be a specialist using the axe as the main weapon in order to be able to use it.
You love roleplaying the build itself as the character. Others can love playing the name of the character where you can do whatever you class is capable of doing. I on the other hand can do both and love both. That is why I don’t see as a negative for D3.
The only thing that I don’t know about is how man levels each skill can get. If the skills have no cap then in time you could get to the point where some would have more than enough levels into their skills that would give the same affect as those crazy multipliers that sets give.
You must’ve missed an interview or two because I heard that skills cannot be changed. When you put a points into it you are stuck with that skill. The only thing that you can respec are the talents and I like the idea. Talents to me seem like passive skills. I don’t mind swapping out some passives if it will help me with a current fight that I am going through.
IIRC in interviews the devs said just that at Blizzcon. They will be letting players remain in the form that they have chosen.
You have to remember all of what was at Blizzcon is just a demo and like you said is likely to change.
I am fine with changes as long as it doesn’t morph into a clone of this game with a darker tone.
There is no way of knowing when certain skills unlock. That is unless you seen something that I didn’t.
Sets are king because of one simple truth. It is far easier to balance five sets than it is trying to balance an almost limitless number of combinations of gear. The reason that is true is because the gear makes the build.
Not if you can’t swap your active skills you won’t, which is what they said
Items won’t be what makes the build in D4 they have already said that.
Not true. Axes are far easier to use and use effectivelly mainly against armored guys than sword. Same with spears.
Swords are mostly backup weapons.
not sure if some did learn from d3 and reaper of souls itemization/affix+skill+passive system “design failure” and how it got adjusted in various stages… we did not have +1000% dmg or overpowered sets in d3 and reaper of souls just attempted to fix everything that got screwed up… just remember what got said by d3 devs as they reworked stuff for reaper of souls and partly failed at it…
Will be naked/beyond naked challenges in D IV possible???
I’m not exactly sure what the problem is here? I watched the developer video and it looks like you need points to unlock skills and spend further points either upgrading said skills or unlocking new ones as well as going down the talent trees to further augment existing ones.
They said you can earn more from finding items but I imagine that there’s gotta be some sort of soft cap in place that can only be surpassed with +Skill items.
Also they did eventually add a respec option to D2 but IIRC you could only do it once per difficulty… I’m fine with being able to respec, in fact I welcome it because one of the worst design decisions D2 made was locking your choices in and if you made a mistake or wanted to change you had to start all over… which really, REALLY sucks if say you were off by just a couple of stat points from equipping an item. To say nothing of how much EXP it took going past 60 to level up, yeesh…
The grind should be more centered towards the loot, not EXP. As long as there is a substantive cost to respecs and that they can’t just be done on the fly like in D3 then it’s all good to me. I do believe dedicated classes and choices made by the player are a good thing and should matter, and that D3 gave too much freedom in that regard but 2 was too strict and there’s a happy middleground to be found.
Points! I want to do my point allocation thank you! I’m a big boy I can do it myself. Or am I?
Hold on.