No, it would limit the players that leveraged it, but the most competitive (the only ones that should really care how they stack up vs others), would leverage it as those topping the leaderboards will always do everything they can to top them.
And then for those of us that were getting server-firsts, we were constantly having to pay to respec. So we were penalized for trying to be competitive in more than one area.
And then again we were penalized when specific raid specs were just that and performed sub-optimally in dungeons.
And then, ultimately, you and I are comparing an MMORPG where people have roles to fill and are forced to co-op with other players in order to complete different content … versus Diablo 4 where you are not forced to co-op with other players unless you want to.
Are you trying to say that those who are partying up to try to be on the leaderboards are going to want each other to be unable to respec or have a hinderance to respec?
Or just being intellectually honest about
(1) content could be added later that requires co-op and
(2) there are definitely advantages to multiplayer so it will likely be leveraged by the most competitive players?
Yes on both. Blizzard said they are interested in adding more co-ordinated group content, mainly guild activities. And leveling in a group in beta was way faster, but there were a few bugs like xp getting shared even if you were on the other side of the zone and you getting flagged for all loot drop regardless where you were.
That cost was deterring players from playing multiple parts of the game. We lost players from both our PvP groups as well as raid group because of this. They got tired of it and just did one part of the game or outright quit the game. That’s the problem with creating that artificial cost that deters players from doing things that they otherwise would do for fun to stick with the game.
I think you should go watch the videos of people soloing the world boss during the beta weekend.
That’s also not a forced co-op. People were not having to find a raid group, check how many tanks, healers, etc. they had before the fight, and so on. Very different animals.
Why?!
Now you’re wanting to penalize players who don’t want to wait for their friend(s) to “hoof it” to them.
You seem to always err on the side of less freedom and less player fun. What in the world…
Sure, and hopefully it stays that way, but unfortunately more likely an unintended exploit. Blizzard has been quite clear they wanted world bosses to be group only.
The latter certainly is not the only type of co-op.
Multiplayer is multiplayer. Tanks, coordination etc. is not a requirement for that.
Less freedom yes, less player fun no.
If the group lvling meta turns into “you run to X, while I do quest Y, so we can quickly teleport to the next quest” that does not sound fun. I could at least understand if Blizzard would want to limit it.
Player skill is not an exploit. You over-use the word exploit.
There is a massive difference between the two … especially in the context of specs that we’re discussing.
Your spec is checked for a raid group in an MMORPG like WoW. Your spec is not checked for the world boss in Diablo 4.
It is less fun to wait minutes for a friend(s) to run to you.
If you wanted to solve the scenario you described, then you would do like they’ve done for some of the turn-in quests and require the other players to be there before your group could get credit. That promotes the players in a group playing together as a group. And, unlike what you suggested with the teleport to player restriction, it doesn’t hinder the fun of people trying to just play together.
It isn’t, but imbalanced skills etc. in game very much can be.
Never said otherwise. I was not even talking about tanks, healers and what not.
It isn’t checked much for LFR, which is what the world bosses are most comparable to. WoW has roles of course, to the game makes sure there are tanks, healers etc. But how good those builds are made by the player, that is not checked.
Yeah that could be a fine solution. What they should have done for D3 bounties too.
It could also be problematic though. Like, a quest where you need to kill 3 named enemies for example. If one player kills 1 of those before the others are in range, the group now got a problem, as there aren’t enough enemies left to finish the quest.
That is solvable of course, but things are rarely simple.
It limits the power boost one could get from using the teleport to player in ‘unintended ways’. You dont always have to restrict a thing specifically, to reduce the value of said thing.
Sometimes it certainly can be the most efficient approach though.
I have said that in regards to the respec in groups discussion too (about the builds that run ahead of the group), but the first and foremost solution to making sure people actually play as a group, when in a group, is to make sure the content is hard enough to incentivize sticking together.
Maybe they should add a masochist mode, where it’s hardcore only with no grouping, no respecing, no shared stash and no shared renown. I would even maybe play it because at least that mode would be pretty pointless to have bots on.
Those aren’t an exploit. That’s an imbalance. Hence how “imbalanced skills” covered it.
Yes, things are rarely simple. It’s why I wouldn’t err on the side of lock it down and make them have less fun in order to “solve” some “problem” that may be something you don’t like but isn’t necessarily a problem such as players splitting up to try to be more efficient in questing.
So another, better, alternative solution to taking away the player power/freedom is to, instead, design the game to incentivize the good behavior (stay together) … not lock down good behavior in order to prevent bad behavior
Yep … so when you have two solutions and one hinders player enjoyment in a multitude of cases and the other one doesn’t … it seems rather obvious which solution to pick
In such a scenario it might be. That would be a very hypothetical scenario though. In real cases, you dont have that kind of split.
Even in the scenario of trying to make people stay together, it is not necessarily simple. Getting that balance right, where people need to stick together to succeed, is not easy. Devs have struggled endlessly with it.
That’s interesting because we just discussed a scenario where that was the case where requiring the players to be close enough to the quest/event to get credit for it provided such a better solution than preventing/restricting players teleporting to each other.
And let’s not forget the 8+ scenarios issues caused by paid respecs that I’ve listed multiple times that your own solution to , in your own words, was that “those players could go screw their selves”.
(1) Players feel like they have to respec or be less powerful
but you never pointed out how to tell while playing if someone else was more/less powerful at X content than you
you never pointed out why you should care if someone else was more/less powerful at X content than you
(2) You claimed content would have to change to account for players respec-ing for each piece
but you ignored that this doesn’t happen in any of the games where free respecs exist
that the difficulty of content is based on the power possible from current builds (skill points, paragon points, and gear), independent of respec because the respec isn’t where the power comes from … it’s from the other three.
That versus the issues with play variability, build exploration, multiplayer, etc. that I’ve listed. Shall I list them again? Or will that again be a waste of time as you dodge them or just tell players that they can screw their selves when they run into those issues?
