Re: No Baal Runs!!!
Yes, it's pretty much impossible. And it really doesn't have to do with technology. I think your desire for a system more rewarding of exploration is clouding you folks vision.
I'll try and explain...
An interesting explanation, and one that I flatly disagree with on every point. I am going to respond to your post as best I can, and respond to your points as I understand them. If I am incorrect in any of my interpretations of what you have said, please feel free to correct me.
A) This System is Too Expensive.
Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that has made their entire fortune based on doing one simple thing; releasing high quality games that are polished until they are blindingly good looking. If there is any game company on earth that can manage doing this, it is blizzard. This goes into hiring writers, hiring developers, hiring designers, and so on and so forth.
You talk about Blizzard as if it’s amateur hour over there, but these guys make solid titles for a living, and have done so by giving the players systems and game play that are not simple duplicates of something they have already done in the past.
Need I remind you that this is the company that has developed games almost to completion and then shelved them because they were unhappy with them. Can you name any other game developer that has done that and hasn’t closed shop? We’re talking about a studio who has already admitted that they have done a complete overhaul of their skill tree system for Diablo 3 over six times!!! That’s massive, and would be financial suicide for any other studio.
The statement that it will be too expensive on the developers side is almost completely laughable in this case.
B) This System will take too long to Develop.
Blizzard has already shown that they’re more then willing to take a ridiculously long time to develop a game, to the point of pushing back it’s release. Diablo 2 itself was pushed back several times before being released. Star Craft 2 has been in development for ten years! Once again, this point is somewhat laughable as Blizzard doesn’t really care about it.
C) This system will demand more from CPU system specs.
I don’t really disagree with you, but I don’t really see that as a problem, just as a fact of life. Diablo 2 requires more system specs then Diablo 1 did. Doom 3 required more then Doom did. I don’t understand why suddenly Diablo 3 would be able to operate on the same system Diablo 2 did.
If you’re trying to suggest that the system specs required would somehow make the game unplayable, I’d be very curious to know how. We’re talking about technology that currently exists and is used in games that can play on a standard system. Basically, if your system can run Diablo 3, I don’t see why it’d have a problem with this system at all.
D) They’ll only be able to make a handful of these types of quests
Simply put, your suggestion that they will only be able to make ten of these quests is laughable. That’s less then the average single player game made by an indie developer. That’s less then any RPG ever made. That’s less then any game made in the last five years. Blizzard would literally have to forget how to turn their computers on to create only ten of these quests. The idea that Blizzard would release a game with such a blisteringly poor amount of content when every other game developer on the planet as not done so is silly.
Also, you forget about patching in quests. Let’s say that they somehow managed to totally screw the pooch and only release ten quests for their game, somehow. They can still turn around and patch quests in. This system fully allows this, and allows them to do it in an extremely streamlined manner. They can expand their endgame at will, even if they somehow, ASTOUNDINGLY, only put ten quests into the game.
F) This System Encourages Static Play
This is just completely false on the most basic of levels. You said several times through your post that somehow this system would lead to static play. A paradoxical statement I find. Let’s assume for a moment that you are correct and they only manage to create ten of these types of quests. That means that this system would be ten times more diverse and randomized then a standard static boss. (Such as Baal) So even in your worst case scenario where only ten quests get made, the game is already ten times more diverse then having one standard boss encounter at the end of the game. Even if they only created TWO of these kinds of quests, the game is already twice as diverse as the standard boss farm. To get this system to the point where it is actually LESS diverse then the one that is currently in place, they would actually have to not have the system in the game at all, as even having ONE encounter would make it EQUAL to the current system.
Saying that somehow this system creates game play that is more static then the game play that currently exists is just flatly wrong.
G) The Quest will be exactly the same as one another.
This is true only on the most basic of levels. Those levels being that you will be your character, and you will be exploring a dungeon in order to find a boss to fight. This is like saying Half-Life and Doom were exactly the same because they were First Person Shooters, or that President Bush and President Obama were the same because they were both presidents, or that every day I’m ever going to have is the exact same because I’m the same person and I wake up every morning. It’s a senseless argument to make because anyone can see that those statements aren’t true simply by looking into the details of those things.
Were Duriel and Andarial the same? Was Diablo the same as them? Was Baal? According to your argument these fights played out exactly and precisely the same as one another. You went into an environment and fought a monster, so, precisely the same… except not at all.
Take my example of “Jim the Magician†and “Harmony and Melodyâ€. Let’s assume the absolute possible worst case scenario and say that the dungeon you walked through to fight Harmony and Melody was exactly the same as the one for Jim the Magician. (A statistical miracle, and most likely a total impossibility, but that’s ok, we’re playing worst case scenario here.) So you make it to Harmony and Melody.
Now, let’s say that Jim is spell caster who has no control over what he casts. Sometimes he might raise skeletons, sometimes he might throw a fireball, sometimes he might accidentally teleport himself. He doesn’t know what to do with his magic and he’s quite bad at it. He’s a bit of a comical character, as you can see. Still deadly, however, as the magic will still kill you. Add in a few more abilities, as well as a bit of a change up come the half health, or quarter health mark, perhaps he turns into a demon, and you’ve got an encounter. (This is all off the top of my head, so trying to pick it apart will be a waste of time.)
Compare that to Harmony and Melody. Now, they are already completely dissimilar to Jim in that there are two of them. Harmony loves to use charms and fear affects to confuse the players, and bog them down in minions that she sends at them relentlessly. Melody is far more vicious and prefers to get into combat, howling and screeching to debuff you and buff herself. All of their abilities are musical, perhaps harmony could be waify and beautiful, while Melody is truly demonic, and a horror. They would only attack you one at a time, switching spots periodically, and if you kill one of them the other turns into a total terror that you have to deal with. (Harmony could become much more physical, and Melody would lose her ****.)
So, already you can see that I’ve created two completely different encounters that are only similar in the regard that there is fighting going on, and you had to walk to get there. I don’t even get paid to do this and I know that creating encounters that are the same is boring. Why would Blizzard make the same mistake?
H) Players skipping content is good game design.
This is just outright false. If players are skipping content that means that they find that content to be worthless in terms of fun or in terms of rewards. This is an outright failure for the developer, and any statements that encourage developers that creating meaningless content is a good thing should be totally shunned.
I want to play a game where every footstep I take is engaging and fun. Don’t you?
I) Assumed Failure
This wasn’t an outright point you made, but it is certainly at the heart of almost everything you say. You assume that the system will fail in almost every single one of your points. You constantly take the worst possible case scenario, and assume that the people creating the system will be incompetent, and moronic. This is an extreme flaw in logic which corrupts your entire point, and creates a foundation which is impossible to stand on.
Your counter to this might be that I am taking the best case position, which is also a flaw in logic, but I am not. I am looking at what Blizzard has done in the past, and in what the player base wants to have in a new game, as well as accounting for any potential problems that this system could create. So far the only one that holds any merit to me is that Power Gamers might hate it. I simply shrug at that and say “Ok.â€
I simply do not see how this system is worse then Static Baal Runs. If you would care to explain that to me, I would very much like to hear it.
