A Humble Suggestion

[AFS]

A Humble Suggestion

Hello all. I look forward the next installment of our favourite hack-n-slash RPG. Part of the excitement and reason we put in countless hours and lose some sleep is the loot, the hunt for the treasured items. However, part of what I felt was flawed in D2 was the fact that the characters require high level items to be playable and viable on hell difficulty. It didn't come down to the builds and the skills of the characters, but rather what they were equipped with.

Now I understand that some of you may feel that item finding and hunting is integral to the building of the character, but I feel that it should be something extra and not a handicap. The flip side argument would be that if the high level items did not help on the hardest difficulty, then they would not so useful and would not be worth trying to find and trade for. They would be reduced to a novelty. This is a valid argument against the untwinked, hell-viable character, but it overlooks one obvious point: those items should be a novelty.

Take for instance your standard WW-Barb using swords. Play the game using two basic colossus swords (if you're dual-wielding) and some basic elite armor (the names escape me) for all your gear. Even with cl20 synergies and skills, you would be hard-pressed to survive Andariel. This sounds fundamentally wrong to me. Replace the standard crap gear with an IK set and now you're death on two legs.

I don't know if Blizzard reads these forums (they should), but the one request I deeply hope that is considered is that this game design is revised and adjusted towards the focus of the character skills and build primarily. Uber items should be a secondary focus in the character build. That's all. The rest is gravy for me.

How do the rest of you feel about this? Thanks for your time.

 

[Kiroptus]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

Okay sounds fair. Yes I understand your point but we have to take into account that a game with such an addicting nature of hunting for the best loot avaliable makes the community quickly get what they want: To get the best equip avaliable. Now I agree that the game shouldnt be balanced around it but also when someone finally achieves their goal, it shouldnt be the walk-in-the-park that is D2 right now, for example: When a Hammerdin get his uber equip nothing can stop him, even on 8ppl hell difficult game. Thats to me, a scenario that can repeat itself at all, even a super powerful hero should find challenge somewhere.

But I agree with Singleplayer being a little more toned down, because it doesnt have the power of trading and playing within a community that also is gathering good equipments.

Now if you are talking about MP well... we have to acc that a new element is being added in D3: The focus on cooperation. There is a lot more incentive to have people cooperating to kill stuff, we always felt the need to play alone in hell difficult because of the competition for drops and the fear of someone being actually a jackass and use PK against you. That is gone, and in D2 Hell Difficult even a group of players with very very low gear can go through hell without much problems if they cooperate, its just.... never happens because no one wants to compete with other people for drops. So thats a new element to take into consideration, we need balance for solo untwinked, solo twinked but also and most importanly the balance for a group of twinked characters and for a group of untwinked characters.

We will see how blizzard handles it but I am confident that everything will do fine.

 

[AFS]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

We will see how blizzard handles it but I am confident that everything will do fine.

I hope you are right.

 

[SlechtWeerBeer]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

I don't know if Blizzard reads these forums (they should), but the one request I deeply hope that is considered is that this game design is revised and adjusted towards the focus of the character skills and build primarily. Uber items should be a secondary focus in the character build. That's all. The rest is gravy for me.

How do the rest of you feel about this? Thanks for your time.

No. That would essentially blow the spirit of Diablo I and II out of the water. Diablo is an item-hunting game for a reason.

 

[TheWhetherMan]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

No. That would essentially blow the spirit of Diablo I and II out of the water. Diablo is an item-hunting game for a reason.

I agree. Gear should have a huge impact on a character's effectiveness, but characters with terrible gear should at the very least be able to contribute in group situations using buffs/debuffs and utility skills.

 

[raveharu]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

Take for instance your standard WW-Barb using swords. Play the game using two basic colossus swords (if you're dual-wielding) and some basic elite armor (the names escape me) for all your gear. Even with cl20 synergies and skills, you would be hard-pressed to survive Andariel. This sounds fundamentally wrong to me. Replace the standard crap gear with an IK set and now you're death on two legs.

You get what you deserve, completing the entire set of IK is not easy for some of us.

If you put yourself into the shoes of a person who slowly accumulate his wealth just to get the whole set, wouldn't you want certain benefits?
So you mean you still want to be as weak as the barb with 2 basic swords after working so hard to get the set? I don't think so.

That's when the need for trade comes into place, and trading plays an important role for building the game's economy, and at the same time it adds flavor into the game.

It's kinda silly if you want items to play zero role in the game, since Diablo is all about item fetishes.

PS: I wouldn't like using D2 as an example, the economy is haywire, with all the duping, overpowered runewords and the trading threads are flooded with too many items.

 

[KTang]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

I think D2 trading is one of the biggest highlights of the game, atleast for me. It's what keeps me coming back, I love trading on these forums. Item dependency is necessary, and considering how easy it is to level, I think making Skills the only major factor and dominant over Item Dependency wouldn't be the best idea.

As someone said earlier, item-hunting makes this game. I personally wouldn't want to be able to run through hell using an untwinked barb who has just picked up some crap magics on the way, but because of my synergised whirlwind I can clear x/y/z areas with mild difficulty because I "skilled so well". What I would prefer is failing miserably, but forcing myself to find these better items, and therefore deal with the x/y/z areas with a bit more ease.

I might have misunderstood you, just offering my opinion though :smug:

KT

 

[isak viking]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

this thread made me start me 100th barb

 

[chezzmaster]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

No. That would essentially blow the spirit of Diablo I and II out of the water. Diablo is an item-hunting game for a reason.

I agree with you there. If you look back to the diablo's series' hack-n-slash predecessors, they were all about a)defeating a gigantic learning curve (which exists at a ower level in the diablos) and b) epic loot. These roots shold not be forsaken.

 

[nEgativezEro]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

Hello all. I look forward the next installment of our favourite hack-n-slash RPG. Part of the excitement and reason we put in countless hours and lose some sleep is the loot, the hunt for the treasured items. However, part of what I felt was flawed in D2 was the fact that the characters require high level items to be playable and viable on hell difficulty. It didn't come down to the builds and the skills of the characters, but rather what they were equipped with.

Now I understand that some of you may feel that item finding and hunting is integral to the building of the character, but I feel that it should be something extra and not a handicap. The flip side argument would be that if the high level items did not help on the hardest difficulty, then they would not so useful and would not be worth trying to find and trade for. They would be reduced to a novelty. This is a valid argument against the untwinked, hell-viable character, but it overlooks one obvious point: those items should be a novelty.

Take for instance your standard WW-Barb using swords. Play the game using two basic colossus swords (if you're dual-wielding) and some basic elite armor (the names escape me) for all your gear. Even with cl20 synergies and skills, you would be hard-pressed to survive Andariel. This sounds fundamentally wrong to me. Replace the standard crap gear with an IK set and now you're death on two legs.

I don't know if Blizzard reads these forums (they should), but the one request I deeply hope that is considered is that this game design is revised and adjusted towards the focus of the character skills and build primarily. Uber items should be a secondary focus in the character build. That's all. The rest is gravy for me.

How do the rest of you feel about this? Thanks for your time.

I think this more illustrates the issues with the monsters in the game more than the equipment. There's little to no strategy in D2. In most cases you run up to the monster, attack until one party or the other is dead. Making uber items a luxury would make the game very boring for those who find the uber items. Things would be too easy. Plus, theoretically, rares should play a more important role in the game, making those uber items less of a necessity and more of a luxury like you are asking. Rares in LOD are by in large useless, save for a few item types (essentially anything that can spawn with +skills and jewlery items).

In any sense, I'm not too worried. As each ladder season restarts I've never found it a problem to get my characters through the game. I may not get the very best items til later, but it's easy enough to find items to allow you to complete the game without too much trouble.

 

[Nimbostratus]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

I appreciate the idea that people who dedicate themselves to the game and really hunt for items should have something better, but I don't appreciate when a game focuses too heavily on that aspect. When you get a game, it should be fun right out of the box- you shouldn't have to "earn" your fun. It should not only be possible to win with what you find on a single-pass playthrough of the game, but fun to do so. People tend to mix up the ideas of something being possible or viable with something being fun. To clarify this, there are four basic levels of viability for character/equipment setups in D2:

• Possible: Through enough skill, luck, or plain attrition, you can get through the game with this. It takes a while to kill stuff, and you're using hit-and-run tactics often, but it's possible. At this point, the game is more like work to most players. In D2, this is where most untwinked characters usually fall.
• Practical: AKA "Fun." You're not perpetually on the brink of death, and you can defeat your enemies in a timely fashion. D2 equivalent would be a character that's gotten a few uniques off of Mephisto in Nightmare.
• Powerful: Now you can start wreaking havoc- normal monsters aren't much of a threat, and most bosses go down without breaking a sweat. Just don't get too cocky- some things can still hurt you if you're careless. Here's your D2 guy after a fair bit of Hell Meph running.
• Overpowered: Nothing stands in your way. Equipment and (character) skills are strong enough that you can basically brute force the game. The only skills needed by the player are things such as "Don't stand in the middle of a champion pack of frenzytaurs." This is any cookie cutter build with "godly" equipment in D2.

Diablo 3 should strive to have everyone fall into the middle two categories- Practical and Powerful. You shouldn't have to do boss runs, area runs, or whatever just for the game to start being fun, nor should a massive amount of item hunting let you mindlessly plow through even the hardest targets. In a multiplayer environment, everyone needs to be remain relevant. If you're too weak, you might as well not be there. If you're too strong, the other players might as well not be there.


When you have massive power disparities between players based only on equipment, you encourage...

• Leeching: Powerless characters are the leeches, and overpowered characters are accepting hosts.
• Item hunting: Of course. Even with a relatively small power gap, you'll still have people looking for the best.
• Botting: High reward, repetitive work. And just as strong equipment lessens the need for skill, it lessens the need for bots to have good AI.
• Duping: Pretty obvious. D3 will have better prevention, but why leave out tons of bait?

and discourage...

• Cooperative play: Players too weak to do anything hang back and do nothing. Players stronger than everything do the work for everyone else. If everyone is very powerful, the most cooperation you have is "let's all fire in the same direction so stuff dies faster."
• New players: Ever notice how often it is that, when somebody new to the game comes asking for help, they're handed a shopping list of items and told to start Meph/Pit/Baal running? I don't know about you, but I find it much more satisfying to learn how to outmaneuver or outsmart an opponent than to be told "stop making progress and start doing repetitive tasks." That advice doesn't make for a very good first impression, either.
• Skill: When your equipment lets you mow through everything, why bother learning how to play the game? (hello, eBay/rich friend)
• PVP: To have any chance of winning in D2's PVP, you need either overpowered gear or experience against other players; preferably both. What does a PVP hopeful who doesn't like item running have? Neither. There's only so many losses until somebody says "screw it" and goes back to pure PVM. Even the impression of this kind of situation is highly discouraging.
• Originality: Just as some like being the strongest, others like creating themed characters or simply standing out from the crowd. When everyone is focused only on the best, they search for specific items and cookie-cutter builds. Anything deviating from the top tier seems ineffective or simply called out for being "noob-ish."

On a final note, realize that we're all used to item running by now. Think back to when you first started playing- Did you think it was so easy? Did you think it should be such an integral part of the game? Did you think it should be a requirement for your character to be effective?

There's probably more I could add, and stuff I could clarify better, but it's 5 AM here.

 

[Starving_Poet]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

I think you're looking at it incorrectly.

Beating normal can be done with a naked character on skills alone.
Beating nightmare can be done with moderate gear and good skills.
Beating hell needs to have both a focused skill-set and good gear.

Why should hell be easy?

 

[Risingred]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

I think you're looking at it incorrectly.

Beating normal can be done with a naked character on skills alone.
Beating nightmare can be done with moderate gear and good skills.
Beating hell needs to have both a focused skill-set and good gear.

Why should hell be easy?

For mp, I agree. (D2 single-player is borderline b.s.)

Something to consider is that Diablo 2 is not a very well-balanced game. As others have mentioned, duping and the ridiculous runewords have added to this. But if I am to get to end-game Hell, which is where the buck stops and there's no more content, I want it to take a while. Now, if I can get through hell with basic equipment on, that seriously overpowers the uberbarb with the "best" items for his build in the game and makes Hell very boring. Nightmare? Sure. Not for hell. Hell is, as stated, the true end of the game and it needs to last and be as exciting as it can for as long as it can.

I think some of your issues will be addressed with the tweaked skill system. I hope they keep five ranks per skill (or levels if you prefer) because then you don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of points to get a skill to level 20 with minimum benefits per level. That handicaps the player and it makes for a very awkward strategy for building your character.

I know many won't like me saying this, but WoW had a great skill system (which was based on Diablo II's) with the XX/XX/XX in each tree kind of build where you could plot it out and it wasn't convoluted at all.

What I'm saying is that the skills seem a lot more cleaned up and focused now, which eases some burden on the player and also allows them to balance better in accord with equipment stats. They seem to have a clear vision for how they are going to balance the game from the outset, which perhaps was the downfall of D2's development.

 

[RogueJuggalo]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

I appreciate the idea that people who dedicate themselves to the game and really hunt for items should have something better, but I don't appreciate when a game focuses too heavily on that aspect. When you get a game, it should be fun right out of the box- you shouldn't have to "earn" your fun. It should not only be possible to win with what you find on a single-pass playthrough of the game, but fun to do so. People tend to mix up the ideas of something being possible or viable with something being fun. To clarify this, there are four basic levels of viability for character/equipment setups in D2:

• Possible: Through enough skill, luck, or plain attrition, you can get through the game with this. It takes a while to kill stuff, and you're using hit-and-run tactics often, but it's possible. At this point, the game is more like work to most players. In D2, this is where most untwinked characters usually fall.
• Practical: AKA "Fun." You're not perpetually on the brink of death, and you can defeat your enemies in a timely fashion. D2 equivalent would be a character that's gotten a few uniques off of Mephisto in Nightmare.
• Powerful: Now you can start wreaking havoc- normal monsters aren't much of a threat, and most bosses go down without breaking a sweat. Just don't get too cocky- some things can still hurt you if you're careless. Here's your D2 guy after a fair bit of Hell Meph running.
• Overpowered: Nothing stands in your way. Equipment and (character) skills are strong enough that you can basically brute force the game. The only skills needed by the player are things such as "Don't stand in the middle of a champion pack of frenzytaurs." This is any cookie cutter build with "godly" equipment in D2.

Diablo 3 should strive to have everyone fall into the middle two categories- Practical and Powerful. You shouldn't have to do boss runs, area runs, or whatever just for the game to start being fun, nor should a massive amount of item hunting let you mindlessly plow through even the hardest targets. In a multiplayer environment, everyone needs to be remain relevant. If you're too weak, you might as well not be there. If you're too strong, the other players might as well not be there.


When you have massive power disparities between players based only on equipment, you encourage...

• Leeching: Powerless characters are the leeches, and overpowered characters are accepting hosts.
• Item hunting: Of course. Even with a relatively small power gap, you'll still have people looking for the best.
• Botting: High reward, repetitive work. And just as strong equipment lessens the need for skill, it lessens the need for bots to have good AI.
• Duping: Pretty obvious. D3 will have better prevention, but why leave out tons of bait?

and discourage...

• Cooperative play: Players too weak to do anything hang back and do nothing. Players stronger than everything do the work for everyone else. If everyone is very powerful, the most cooperation you have is "let's all fire in the same direction so stuff dies faster."
• New players: Ever notice how often it is that, when somebody new to the game comes asking for help, they're handed a shopping list of items and told to start Meph/Pit/Baal running? I don't know about you, but I find it much more satisfying to learn how to outmaneuver or outsmart an opponent than to be told "stop making progress and start doing repetitive tasks." That advice doesn't make for a very good first impression, either.
• Skill: When your equipment lets you mow through everything, why bother learning how to play the game? (hello, eBay/rich friend)
• PVP: To have any chance of winning in D2's PVP, you need either overpowered gear or experience against other players; preferably both. What does a PVP hopeful who doesn't like item running have? Neither. There's only so many losses until somebody says "screw it" and goes back to pure PVM. Even the impression of this kind of situation is highly discouraging.
• Originality: Just as some like being the strongest, others like creating themed characters or simply standing out from the crowd. When everyone is focused only on the best, they search for specific items and cookie-cutter builds. Anything deviating from the top tier seems ineffective or simply called out for being "noob-ish."

On a final note, realize that we're all used to item running by now. Think back to when you first started playing- Did you think it was so easy? Did you think it should be such an integral part of the game? Did you think it should be a requirement for your character to be effective?

There's probably more I could add, and stuff I could clarify better, but it's 5 AM here.

I have most of my fun in Diablo 2 from trading and PvP. The only PvM character I have is a level 90 mf necro that occasionally satisfies my crafting addiction and helps me kill time when I don't feel like anything else. When I did start playing on single player (back when the only internet connection was the dreaded dial-up), finding cool items as I went through the game was a lot of fun. I never had any problems beating the game until I got to Hell, but I was in like 6th grade back then and I did end up beating the game and feeling really good about it.

I thought it was an amazing game back then and once I did start up on battle.net I began having even more fun. I love to compete in PvP to showcase my skills as a player and as a trader. Trading on b.net is frustrating at times, but overall it has taught me a lot and has provided me with a lot of fun.

Ultimately, I can see your points but they don't represent everyone who plays D2 as a whole. Also, I think the reason that people play online is to have a different type of fun as opposed to the 'traditional' fun you have playing through single player for the first few times when you're not worried about having the perfect godly build/gear but instead just focus on doing what you have to at the present to advance in the game.

 

[Starving_Poet]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

For mp, I agree. (D2 single-player is borderline b.s.)

Just as a note, I only play SP HC nowadays, so that's where my perspective comes from.

 

[Krugar]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

Without a strong and aggressive item-hunting focus on D3, I'd quickly lose interest in the game. That's what makes me tick in D2 8 years after it was released.

Such a game would be of little interest to me.

 

[Akse]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

To OP. Yeah the game balance in is bad now. It was better before 1.10 synergies and stuff, it is really hard to do well in Hell difficulty now without really good gear which you obviously can't really find from Nightmare.

Without a strong and aggressive item-hunting focus on D3, I'd quickly lose interest in the game. That's what makes me tick in D2 8 years after it was released.

Such a game would be of little interest to me.

For me the game isn't about items but character development in levels.. While gaining levels I also keep finding better and better items.. I'll rather do it that way than just keep finding items items items items which is dull and makes the gained items pointless when all you do is just find more items.

 

[raveharu]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

To OP. Yeah the game balance in is bad now. It was better before 1.10 synergies and stuff, it is really hard to do well in Hell difficulty now without really good gear which you obviously can't really find from Nightmare.


For me the game isn't about items but character development in levels.. While gaining levels I also keep finding better and better items.. I'll rather do it that way than just keep finding items items items items which is dull and makes the gained items pointless when all you do is just find more items.

That's because the way D2 skill tree was made, the flaw was that one can actually get their main attacking skills really early in the game in the 24's and 30's. Besides it's pretty easy to level your characters in the game, takes a few days to reach the 70's for multiplayer. Thus the majority of the game is mostly used for hunting equipments.

Now that we have skill runes implemented in D3, it brings a whole new level of experience into the game. We get to modify our skills, which makes everyone different from one another. And it makes hunting for items more interesting. I'm predicting they might add other surprises, besides the usual equipments.

 

[Synchrotron]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

D2 was a lot easier before but when Blizzard added those ubber runewords they made the game too easy. The best solution would be balancing the runewords but they did the opposite and raised monsters toughness instead.

That resulted in a game almost impossible to beat in Hell difficult if you are playing SP or don't have any friend to help you on battle.net.


I think D3 will be a lot more balanced, IMO all people should be abble to beat the game on hell difficult, even if they waste hours and hours playing. The current D2 system is IMPOSSIBLE to beat on hell difficult if you don't have godly gear. Just encounter a pack of soulds and you are fried.

 

[Starving_Poet]

Re: A Humble Suggestion

That resulted in a game almost impossible to beat in Hell difficult if you are playing SP or don't have any friend to help you on battle.net.

This is not true; the only time SP was 'challenging' was before they fixed the FELE bug and an FELE ancient could one hit kill ANY build.