I have this gut feeling that Blizzard (not blizzard north) is going to water down the strategy essence of D2 when implementing skill trees in D3. They already auto assign stats (though stats had very little impact in D2, you choose the same stats except for 3 - 4 builds, and they never were really effective builds to begin with), so why not make it more like WoW and have talents instead of a skill tree.

Also, I think they are going to slow down the level process. Every skilled player in Diablo 2 understands there is two ways to play the game. The right way, and the fast way. I don't think there will be a "fast" way in diablo 3, which limits the amount of experimentation you can do with builds, turning it into a very boring game, to me anyways.
 

A) B) No one wants Talent Trees except you. Passive skills are enough.

C) There will be a way to remove and redistribute your skill points.
 

There's a couple of threads on the first page where this could have gone... to continue discussion instead of starting a brand new one.
 

This is a joke. People who believe that they're won't be a way to 'rush' through D3 are fooling themselves. Blizzard tried to eliminate rushing in D2 quite a few times, and people still found ways around it. It would seem folly of them to bar people from rushing in D3 just to cater to a minority group of players. Though, to be honest, Respecs will cut down on many of the reasons people had for rushing characters up.

There's no reason they should eliminate the ability to rush a character at all. Honestly can you imagine playing D3 and not being able to walk through a TP because your not the right 'level' or because you didn't get the WP in the previous game? I don't think anyone should be happy about Blizzard forcing a certain gameplay style on folks, whether you're opposed to rushing or not.

I'm also really irritated with the auto-stats.
 

I have a problem with the concept of "rushing." In my mind, if players have a reason to want to rush, the game is already failing in its gameplay. I think the acceptance of rushing as a necessary part of item-grind RPGs might be an outdated way of thinking that needs to be addressed.
 

There will always be a reason to rush. If you gain more powerful abilities/better items at a higher level, that alone is a reason to rush. I cant think of a single way to make a game last a long time, and be fun at the higher levels without having more powerful abilities/better items as you get to those higher levels.
 

I personally do not like the Auto Stats. Even though they didn't toally remake your character they gave your access to change your build. Giving my sorc armor that gives her +5 to strength doesn't let her use that plate armor I want with high armor value. That's my deal with manual stats you were able to make a character more offensive or defensive by A) allowing access to better armor or B) Give your self fast run speed and able to hit/block more often. its stuff like that.

On the rush subject if I've played the game through a few times I'm happy I wanna start leveling and doing things like PvP now. I like to rush most characters I have after beating a game.
 

People play Counterstrike for years even though there is absolutely zero progression from game to game, because it's "fun." Diablo 2 is addicting, but how much fun is it? And this is coming from someone who's logged a lot of hours on that game.

Now, we know that's not impossible to achieve -- we can tell from the quests they're putting into D3 that the single player campaign is actually going to be exciting. Because it's going to be unpredictable, challenging, entertaining, etc. When you'll be playing the single-player you'll be playing in the moment, as opposed to rushing to the moment in some other act.

The challenge is translating that same quality to the multiplayer game. And the ultimate challenge is doing that on a consistent basis.
 

Counterstrike is a different game entirely. There are no item upgrades, there is no character advancement. The only improvements you can make are from repeated playing to make yourself better. You can not compare across genre's that are so wildly different. It is like me saying you only need a single unit in SC2 because counterstrike basically has only a single unit. It doesnt work that way because they are nothing alike.
 

But I'm not making a comparison for the sake of the comparison. And even so, you should note that there were two arguments there -- from the angle of Counterstrike and from the angle of D3 single-player, which you did not address.

In both of those situations, there is fun gameplay that is engaging, entertaining, etc. -- at that exact moment in time. You're not playing for the sake of something in the future, you're playing because what you're doing is fun right then and there.

Diablo 2 is many things, but IMHO it's pretty hard to describe it as "fun" except maybe during duels or your first play-through the story and its cinematics. Otherwise it's just addicting stuff... play now so you can have a better level 90 character eventually.

I'm convinced that the D3 single player campaign will be different from that -- in the same way that CS or SC or whatever are fun "in the moment" (you're not rushing for the sake of something in the future [rushing isn't "fun" in and of itself, which is what most of the leveling process is], you're playing because you're enjoying what's going on right then as it is)... and I'm curious as to how the multiplayer aspect of the game could take a page from that book.

Dismissing the very idea as impossible in an item-based, level-based RPG seems to me outdated thinking.
 

Story mode is only fun the first time you play it, and enjoyable a second time if there is some reason to play it again. Diablo 2 did not have one of those stories. Once you played it once through, you knew the story pretty well, and logically had no reason to play the game through again by story standards.

However, Diablo 2 is a unique game in the fact that you are faced with hard choices which can make to break your character. Diablo 1 didn't even have this, as you could continually play Diablo 1 as the same character, and eventually end up the same as everyone else, which is what I fear D3 is going to look like. These hard choices make the game have something called "replay value", something highly sought after by game developers, because it means they have to develop less games in the future (probably the reason diablo 3 is coming out literally 10 years later). This replay value can be attained through a lot of different venues. The main factor is addiction. Some examples:

1. A large goal, a promise of something more enjoyable (mmorpg syndrome) [diablo lacks this, luckily, no grindy grindy]
2. Competitive Multiplayer (counterstrike syndrome) [diablo has this somewhat]
3. Never the same game twice [diablo's main sell factor, for me anyways]
4. Trade community [also keeps the diablo world turning]

I can't speculate on the second and fourth one, I'd assume it's pretty similar to what we have now. The third one is the one this thread is speculating, obviously. If I don't have to reroll a character to start over, then how will new players start up?


I play diablo 2 for the fact that, if I decided tomorrow morning "I want to build a hammerdin", I could gain serious ground by the time I went to sleep the same day. Compounded with the fact that I can go "What happens if I put two Rift Caduceus's on a barbarian using frenzy, how effective could I make him" and actually test it within a reasonable amount of time, the game is very compelling.
 

Hymn, you have to take into account the fact that you are far, far more of a hardcore player than Blizzard's target audience with D3. D2 right now is kept alive -- and in a vegetative state -- by the hardcore players who know the stats on the items by their names alone and who wonder the exact kind of curiosities you brought up.

D3 can't hope to match WC3/SC2/WoW's long-term success if it only works on such an in-depth level. And beneath that in-depth level, for the casual gamer, I would argue that #3 is exactly what D2 does not have, and #1 is exactly what it does (though not very well at that, by today's standards).



As for the single-player, the reason D2's has absolutely no replay value is that absolutely nothing in the game changes depending on your playthrough. While the terrain is random (something that will play a huge role in making D3's replayability soar), the random factor is so irrelevant, the terrain so simple, that it adds nothing to the single player.

D3 on the other hand will offer random quests, random terrain that influences gameplay (whether it's walls you can knock down or different random bosses in different random parts of the dungeon -- INTERESTING bosses), and -- one can hope -- actually an interesting storyline that's worth seeing more than once. And if Blizz plays their cards right, that storyline will change to some degree depending on the class you pick, which is going to make the single player even better.
 

This is all just "gut feeling" right, so why make a debate out of thin air? I'm sorry, I just don't see the point. They've got a long road to travel even before THEY know what they're finally going to do.
 

The concept of a game being "watered down" means that they are trying to appeal to a broader audience, instead of the hardcore audience, hence, the thread.
 

Not out of necessity. SC2 will appeal to a broader audience than SC1 did, but it appeals just as strongly to the hardcore (especially with all the macro adjustments). The two are not mutually-exclusive.

And anyway, I get why you started the thread, but there is a mini-discussion going on that is off on a slight tangent from your OP... so I wasn't addressing my post to your OP but to that discussion.
 

I seriously don't get all this bitching when the game isn't anywhere near release yet