10-15% seems still good to me. Especially since you have legendary aspects in the paragon boards too.
I know it’ll take a rebalancing effort for Blizzard, but the aspects that morph player abilities into some other form- THOSE are the few aspects that should have been on the skill tree.
Is that what happened? I was watching D3 with anticipation in 2011 and up to release, after how it turned out, never played it (except to try and get a feel, but the game is rubbish). What worries me more than “Feedback”, is that there are thousands of players that actually regularly play D3. That means those players can be entertained by anything and it doesnt matter what trash Blizzard dishes up for them.
They intentionaly made an easy skilltree that is complemented with gear and paragon. That’s far better then having only skilltrees and one intresting item every blue moon. At least from my point of view.
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It doesnt have to be between 2 extreme ends of the spectrum. There is a good middle ground.
10-15% of the aspects that alter your skills in a utility or fundamental way can be put in the skill tree. Rest is fine
Yes and what a lot of people try to tell you is: We are already on a good middle ground.
The system in place incentivies a player to grind and to play the game for longer. It’s the good old carrot on a stick because the skilltree and paragon systems are sttic and everyone can get them done sooner or later. That’s a walk in the park.
Itemisation is the intresting part. Yiou need to grind for, mix and match, reroll and make good use of aspects. It’s the only part of Blizzard system that is not static where you have to activly to grind for because we all know… XP will most likely be the smallest issue in D4.
Not exactly leaving much up for debate or testing. Your comment went from no aspects on items (all on skill tree) quip to saying we have a good middle ground now, when there are very few aspect-like tiles in the skill trees and in some cases NONE. (almost the other extreme).
Having 90% of the aspects in place will do the same. Only, players have more sense of ownership of their build and some guaranteed build paths slightly more independent from RNG and re-grinds on each refund.
I just think that legendary items should be more general and usable by multiple classes and builds. Specific skill modifiers should be on the tree.
Like “frost damage now has a chance to…” can be on an item
“Frozen orb splits in half after hitting an enemy…” on the skill tree.
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Overall, they don’t have to nail everything on the first attempt/try, think the “starting step” (at least to me) would be something like:
1 - a few talents (playstyle-dependant, not damage or stat dependant, but playstyle-dependant) on each skill on say lvl5 or lvl7 (3 is enough, sometimes even 2 options might do)
2 - Increase damage per skill level (from 10 to like 12 or 15%, or at least at first 10 or so levels)
3 - Reduce all aspect bonuses (and legendaries that increase damage) by some 40-60% (yes, nerf, assume people will acquire a couple or a few and stack those)
4 - Add a new type of affix that depends on player’s character choices (+X% to X based on stat X, for ex. +25% stun duration (based on 250 str), or +50% barrier amount based on 250 WP, stuff like that), yes there ARE already core/basic stats (differ a bit for each class) but if they on/off switch a couple extra of those would be cool
Once all that has been done, think can go nice and easy from there on without making too much rush FOMO-based decisions
In what way? If anything, it feels MORE ARPG because you’ll always have a challenge. There’s nothing more boring than always rolling over every enemy you come across. It’s not like you spent time overleveling in the Den of Evil in D2, right? You went to areas with higher level enemies so you would have a challenge.
Since monsters scale with you and the max level is 100, it’s reasonable to conclude they don’t go past that. Except, of course, for Nightmare dungeons and any endlessly-scaling mechanic they’ll use for special stuff.
It’s statements like these that make me question why you hated Diablo 3 so much, because if there’s any one thing Diablo 3 did it was make your top-tier builds feel powerful as hell.
I still don’t really know what you’re talking about with feeling weak. Whether or not your character was weak in the beta had more to do with being extremely limited in terms of what you could access than anything else. Once you’re able to get some synergies going it’ll be fine. One reason the Sorc was so powerful in the beta is because they were able to get a couple of those synergies off the ground in spite of all the limitations.
This statement is so weird because D4’s itemization is nothing like D3’s. D3’s itemization was your weapon being more important than anything else and then main stat stacking. Other stats were pretty universal for 99% of builds.
Even with the limited stuff we had access to it’s quite obvious that D4’s itemization is much deeper than “stack main stat.” Hell, a lot of items don’t even roll a main stat. Plus we’ve got overpower and vulnerable and lucky hit and a few I’m forgetting on top of things like skill ranks (which is an iconic D2 stat).
I can somewhat agree on the randomization aspect. If Diablo 1 could do it, there’s not really any reason why we can’t have random dungeon layouts.
… I’m not even sure there’s much crossover on the developers’ part. Certainly not the main guys, since Wilson has been gone forever, Cheng was punted over to Immortal, etc. But even if you were right, I should think they’d be smart enough to know what they tried in D3 didn’t work.
Careful. You’re starting to backslide into that “TRUE DIABLO FAN” nonsense.
Actually, D3 has been quite fun for a while. Limited, yes, but quite fun. It’s not one of the best games of all time or anything, but it DID become a good game that’s fun to play every now and again, especially with a group of people.
A game doesn’t have to hold your undivided attention for a 20 year span in order to be a good or great game.
And D2 had complex affix design in comparison? Not really, as far as I can tell. D4 does have some weapon based scaling, but it’s not 99% like D3 was. As for the skill tree, it seems a lot more reminiscent of D2, and better in the long run. D2 had a bunch of useless skills in the endgame and, contrary to what you posted earlier, a lot of point investment that didn’t do a whole hell of a lot.
D4 is trying to improve that so every skill can play a role, and then messing with things with the passives and legendary powers. For example, there’s hunts in the Sorc tree of being able to build around a skill like Charged Bolt, whereas in D1 and D2 that skill was almost entirely useless.
We only got to level 25. How do you know there are useless item qualities? Sure, Lucky Hit seems useless at level 25, but that’s because we didn’t have reasonable access to much that affected it.
Besides, are you really going to sit there and tell me games like D2 and PoE had absolutely no worthless item qualities? You know better than that. There are lots of useless prefixes and suffixes in D2, and lots of items are auto-salvage.
Further, there’s the fact that in D4 you actually need to be selling and salvaging items. Utilizing the crafting system isn’t cheap.
Meh. The overworld can be static.
A tad bit off an offtopic question… why are games allowed to not nail everything on thefirst attempt? Every other industry works anothe way where you don’t get that much second chances as the gaming industry.
Sure there can be some bugs but we most likely head on into a fiasko ^^. It’s like testdriving a car on a race track and before the curves start somone tells you “btw the braks are alpha phase so if they don’t work cope with it.”. Sure cars are a lot less lines of code but then againit’s an easy thing to say the example is bad but then again lifes depend on working cars.
I think people should stop to treat the gaming industry different then any other one. If they can’t deliver they shouldn’t try and save us from their crappy products.
Flexibility, yes, games once upon a time used to be a “hardcopy” product that gets finished at release, BUT, we’re at a time (and age) where everything’s “limitless”… 
, borderline limitless
Thing is, with games (and software in general) you never BUY the “car”, instead what you do is “rent it for life”…
Yes I know it “sucks” to know that what’s yours isn’t truly yours, but then again it’s not the end of the world either… So many things get managed/damaged/maintained in meantime while you don’t care about doing so
One might argue it kills “passion” and dedication from the “end user” and all that gets “transferred” to the owner, basically consider it as a guy that buys the car but doesn’t maintain/repair/replace stuff and doesn’t know how it “purrs” on a road, but instead it’s the rental company that does those things instead/overall
Now as a result of that you could get (and perhaps relatively often) is crappy/shallow drivers that “don’t quite know how to” drive, and don’t have the “unique struggle and growth”, i.e. adventures of risks, ups and downs of “figuring out”, BUT, reality is that not EVERY driver has to be one of those
Same with games, and so is the case for example with music
Music used to be a “one time thing” and has to be done perfect at perfect condition and artists got one time with “one shot” at a studio to make everything right, now people can record/re-record/replay/cut/paste music, e.t.c., yet talk about production, everyone can be their own producer also
Some things “die”, but convenience overcomes also, enjoy the ride I’d say, we’ll get there eventually (or not :P), people have became better at understanding “root of the problem” and “maximum effect with minimal effort” (in other words efficiency and precision) during this somewhat significant period of growth…
Heck, one might argue that it’s perhaps and precisely those “mistakes” and “struggles” that made old stuff unique and have soul, but that might be yet another topic to discuss overall
Because most games are no longer set in stone. Technology has enabled companies to develop their games over a long period of time after the initial release, meaning they have a chance not only to fix what they might get wrong, but improve the game beyond what it was to start with.
No form of software development EVER nails it on the first try. Because its virtually impossible to do so. If you’ve ever worked in IT you know that ‘software release day’ is the worst day of any IT person’s career. Because almost no software is ever ‘good’ on release. Why? Because software is often not able to be tested sufficiently to match day 1 launch. Additionally, doing beta tests is risky. If you let people play the ENTIRE GAME before launch, there’s a very good chance a lot of them will play enough to get their fill during the beta and never buy the product.
Even in the old days… most games came with bugs and issues, we were just willing to ignore them because we liked the game enough. Look at one of the best games of all time Super Metroid. If ytou’ve ever watched a glitch exhibition or a speedrun, you know there are a LOT of bugs in that game. And overall its a fairly simple game compared to the scale of what is released these days. Games nowadays are probably hundreds of times larger.
Edit: Also, another thing to consider is that most products have a very narrow use case. Cars only have to work to drive. And they only need to work to be driven from the driver seat by a person operating them with hands and feet, etc. They don’t need to work as batteries or as bumper cars or to act as a power generator for your house. They don’t need to work for a person lying in the backseat or pushing the pedal with their head.
A lot of games don’t have that luxury. They have to work for ANY WAY a player might play them. And the sheer volume of ‘use cases’(ie. ways a person COULD POSSIBLY PLAY IT) makes it impossible to account for them all.
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I think that it’s more in terms of game design that is worrying not technicalities
“Yeaaa the game is a bit booooring but guys…2nd 3rd season will be fun”
I think that’s the thing that companies tend to do now because it’s possible. Which well, if we didn’t want it we just had to wait another 6 months for release so i dunno If i want to complain.
I honestly think skill power being tied to weapon power is crutch to game design. It makes things easier to design, balance and for the player to learn. But it’s also not very interesting in the long run. But they are trying to make the game easy to learn and hard to master so they can reach mass market sales.
It’s much easier to simply say “skill does X damage” and then adjust for that one variable. It’s easier to implement and it’s easier for players to understand. Want your skill to do more damage then just increase the skill points.
What dividing that damage up between legendaries, skill tree and paragon then scaling off of weapon damage does is it gives both the developers and the players more levers to fine tune the experience.
I disagree wholeheartedly. But its a matter of opinion.
I hate the idea that as a caster my weapon has virtually no bearing on my damage in some older games, and love that we’ve moved away from that in most modern games.
It makes finding a weapon not feel exciting. I never once found a new weapon in D2 on my sorceress and felt super excited about a big upgrade. Whereas in D3 or FFXIV, weapons are the keystone items and feel really good to get.
I totally agree with your post, and honestly, I don’t understand how anyone can disagree and want someone’s build to be based almost entirely on the effects of Legendary items, not even in the end game but for the entire levelling process. This is madness.
Getting items in games haven’t been very interesting to me in a long time. Especially in games like Diablo and wow. It’s a neverending revolving door of upgrades. The power increase is enjoyable and welcomed. But the chase of the next big item upgrade is really tedious after playing these types of games for 25 years.
Some classes should be different. Get their power from a multitude of different systems that other classes just don’t have the option of being a part of. But gear is a easier system to implement, balance, and can keep people chasing the next item in their build.
It works. It’s fun. But it’s not interesting or thought provoking.
Whether that proves to be the case depends on what the end-game items look like. Way too early to judge how the item game is going to look at that point. There are three tiers of items we’ve literally never seen even a screenshot of. We don’t know what those items contain or how they work.
Kinda hard to judge if endgame itemization will be thought provoking without seeing it.
But yes, itemization at level 25 using rares and low level legendaries wasn’t super complex. You’re right.