They didn't do that at all, Diablo 3 has far more customization than D2 did. The only thing they removed was the permanence.
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Diablo 3 Beta [Beta withdrawal underway!]
- Thread starter maniac-kun
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They didn't do that at all, Diablo 3 has far more customization than D2 did. The only thing they removed was the permanence.
Can't get the game to run. I hit play on the launcher and it just sends me to a pale blue screen and freezes. I have the current video driver and I ran it as Admin...(even tried compat mode with XP - I'm running W7). Not sure what the deal is. Didn't find any ideas on the support forums either. Guess I'll try a reinstall.
Str0ngStyle
Member
Str0ngStyle#1140.
Location, usa
Fave class: monk and Demon Hunter
I would love to get some games coop in before the beta ends
Location, usa
Fave class: monk and Demon Hunter
I would love to get some games coop in before the beta ends
It doesn't feel like "far more." There are more items to equip, but other than that?
It doesn't feel "customized" to me if someone can just see what I have and make their character exactly the same (sans items). In Diablo 2 my character was unique through and threw and I had to build him that way. I couldn't just change my character to whatever someone else has in that very game. I guess I liked building a character, and now it isn't so much building one as it is "unlocking" one. That's what kind of bums me out.
I mean with the items and loot it's still pretty decently custom, I suppose, but that stuff relies on luck. With Diablo I loved that combination of customization and luck. It made your character really feel different from anyone else's.
In Diablo 2, someone can also make their character exactly the same as yours. The only difference is that it would take 5 hours instead of the 2 minutes it now takes. The system in Diablo 2 is highly flawed and Diablo 3 is far superior in this aspect. No more running around for 15 levels, leeching exp from your party because you can't kill shit as a result of hoarding skill points.
guys, i have a question. i never played diablo before but tried the open beta. it was fun my first trip through even though it was easy but i got bored quickly after that. and i have heard that the beta is supposed to be really easy and that it gets harder later on but i am just wondering in what ways? like i have to assume the game is more than about holding down a mouse button and that there is some skill involved in surviving really powerful monsters and stuff, but how? does the later game feature a lot of movement abilities so you can dodge and poke and things like that? because i really like the presentation and the polish and am interested in preordering it but i'd like to see a little more of how the rest of the game is played first or at least learn about it to make sure its really my kind of game
No, they can make a separate character exactly the same as mine. They can't make that one that they're playing right that instant in that game the same as mine. It's really a silly distinction, I'll admit, but it meant something. Really, I suppose the change is just from having a custom character to a custom playstyle. It's different, and I understand why they made the change, because to more casual players having to completely redo things if you fuck up really kind of sucks. But it was one of my favorite things about Diablo 2.
Also, why start a new character now? If you can literally change anything at any time, why would you ever need to do a new character, aside from picking a different class? Seems like there's far less reason to replay than there was before.
Heh... No, Diablo was never about much more than holding down a mouse button. It' snot about dodging and poking at things and all that. It's holding a mouse down, but it's holding a mouse down for crack. It's all about getting loot and customizing your character with that loot, and changing your skills. With D2 it was all about building your character from the ground up with everything from stats to skill points.
That 2nd folder doesn`t even exist for me... and none of the other tips worked either, manually closing/restarting agent.exe/the folder/anything. Oh well, I guess no Diablo3 for me when their files don't even work.
Exactly.
Hehe I forgot totally about hoarding points and how boring that was, not to mention how bad game design that actually is you kept all your points for one skill, making the rest useless. It was so boring running around doing nothing for ages.
I know nostalgia can blind people, but I think most will see this after they spent some real time in D3.
You do realize that spending time/effort doing something makes you more invested in it? And that the fact that your build can't be duplicated in 2 minutes actually does render it more unique?
I find this kind of attitude that the fact that there were very real and very obvious flaws with the way D2 implemented a system of choice and permanence means that the only solution is to remove all choice and permanence from the game really infuriating. People hoarding points was a problem, taking away any and all investment in your character is not the only viable solution. And, pre-emptively, no choosing what skills to bind to what keys isn't really choice in any meaningful sense. It's just a key binding.
Battletag: frostbyte#6780
Location: Australia
Been playing the beta for a couple of hours. I like some of the changes so far but it feels different from Diablo II, not exactly in a bad or good way either. Still, I like what I've played so far. Definitely going to preorder DIII.
Location: Australia
Been playing the beta for a couple of hours. I like some of the changes so far but it feels different from Diablo II, not exactly in a bad or good way either. Still, I like what I've played so far. Definitely going to preorder DIII.
That's very true.
I think spending XX hours to level up is commitment enough, the type of commitment youre talking about is so niche most people nowadays wouldn't want to play a game like that. I totally get your hardcore viewpoint though.
Replaying 20/100 hours just to change a build is not something for the masses and won't make it into a mass market product these days. Maybe smaller games like Grim Dawn and Path of Exile will cater to this niche, much like games like Vanguard tried to cater to the hardcore MMO niche.
In my heart I am nostalgic for these archaic and superhardcore mechanics, but I would never play stuff like this anymore myself.
Oh lord. I'm not a hardcore gamer at all. And Diablo II wasn't some uberhardcore game. It was a *popular* game played by many many people who never made more than one or two characters in it and never levelled any to max or ever stepped foot into hell. And that includes me. And you know what? They enjoyed it.
Is The Sims a hardcore game? People no one on this forum would ever take seriously as gamers pump hundreds of hours into that game, diligently sending their sim to work every day so they can buy a new couch and put it in just the right place in their newly renovated virtual home. The investment is the game.
I remember when people cried foul at being able to run in Diablo 2 because it wasn't hardcore enough, now you always run and no one is complaining. Time is moving forward! I dunno, I guess I like refined game mechanics and don't like to be punished by what is entertainment. I mean sure I want to die and have a challenge, but I don't want to spend another 50 hours of playing again just cause I thought skill X would be cool to invest all my points in.
Of course 11 years ago these mechanics were normal and the game was popular, lots has changed in 11 years though in game design. People also cried that WoW was a huge step down from Everquest/FF11 in how hardcore it was, but it was simply a new era of game design and refinement. Now people want vanilla WoW back cause "that was hardcore" , which was actually not the case compared to games around it
Another example is health in FPS games, almost no game now would use a finite system like in Wolfenstein, hell almost no action game at all uses static bars anymore And thats where niche titles and things like Kickstarter come in. Mechanics in games all have their time and place.
Ridiculous false dichotomy. You can have a sense of investment and permanence without it being absolute permanence. In many ways D3 is an advancement in game design, but I feel this one particular thing is pure regression.
Also, one of the reasons I keep coming back to D2 is *because* there are things I never tried before. Because they were expensive. I like D3, don't get me wrong, but I really doubt I'll be jonesing to play it every couple of years like I was with D2.
Also could you *please* stop shoehorning me into a hardcore gamer box? I'm NOT ONE. I don't like D2 because it was like, omygawd, so hardcore and inaccessible. I like it because it was accessible, fun, and provided a sense of investment right off the bat. I could play it for an hour and felt like I'd made some actual choices in that time. It's that kind of gameplay that's anything but hardcore, it's the heart of stuff like The Sims and Animal Crossing. Except with demons.
it's not a choice? You are still limited in what you can do, you're still going to find builds you prefer and stick with them. The difference? You don't 'find' builds you prefer in D2 without playing the game dozens of times, or more. You make uninformed decisions based purely on ability names. Your next post says you just enjoyed levelling up and playing at a non-hardcore level? ok? So you should be the MOST in favor of the new system, because you basically just assigned points randomly and had no idea if it was actually what you wanted until AFTER you spent them. In D3 I get a new ability, try it a few times, and go 'yknow what, I don't like this as much as the one I was just using' and you swap it back. That doesn't REMOVE choice, that informs choice. A decision you make blindly with only the most miniscule amount of information available is rarely a fair one to you. Players who will play the game once and put it down get more value from this system and make better choices without requiring 'research' but instead basing it on their own player experiences with each skill. Why do you even care if someone else has the same build as you? There are just as many possible builds in D3 as there were in D2, except that in D2 if you pick one of the 80% of them that are bad, you're not being special you're just being bad and you can't fix it. Nobody was special in D2, they were just less efficient and had to start over if they wanted to be better.
Real choice is the D3 method, where I unlock my rune for my Bash skill, put bash + rune back on my bar, try it a few times and say "No, I liked cleave better" and I put it back instead. In D2 that would have been a complete character re-roll to try each. Give me a fucking break.
I'm not saying you're hardcore, but I'm saying such a permanent and time involving game structure is *considered* hardcore in 2012.
I get your point, and I agree to some extent. For me I'm happy I will be able to have one char per class and just experiment on a whimsy which skills to use.
But yes, that sense of permanence is kind of gone now. I guess its also gone in D2 since you can respec there now too, and in WoW respeccing has lost all its meaning too, I just think there is no way back for Blizz on this one.
I really hope some other title can fill that void for folks.
Fine, remove any instance of like or dislike from what I wrote, argument is still the same.
Diablo 2 is imagined choice, Diablo 3 is informed choice.
D2 is someone asking if I'd rather wear a red shirt or a blue shirt without showing them to me, Diablo 3 is me trying both shirts on, looking in the mirror, and THEN deciding.
Just because you have the ability to change your mind afterward doesn't mean it's not a better choice imo.
EDit: I'm ALL for permanence in decisions when decisions are either fair (like if you could play with a skill in D2 then decide if you want it, for instance, and be stuck with it), or early on/inconsequential, but your build in Diablo is extremely important, and it can take a LONG time to build a new character up. It's not like picking a race or a class or something.
And you can still do that. They have skill calculators, they kept changing skills cause of beta but I had a lot of fun looking at potential builds and trying to math out what would work best. You just don't have to reroll every time you want to try a new one.
D2 respeccing is fairly costly in itself. Once per difficulty and then through a lengthy sidequest process after you've finished them all. So realistically most people only got one respec, and it was only added in a very late patch.
I maintain it's not choice at all in any sense that matters (to game design). You just have a limited number of keys on which to map your spells and some spells are mutually exclusive with each other (runes). At the very least you must be able to see that a *level* of choice has been removed, since in D2 you had a similar limit of spells that could be active without going into a menu (F1-F8).
I think the informed aspect could have been achieved without eliminating permanence. And frankly, all I really think they should have done is let people allocate stat points themselves and choose from a level-adjusted pool which spells and runes to get next. That would have been more than enough to give people the sense of choice while also allowing for all the positives the current system has. Maybe you'd make a dumb decision, but it'd self-correct within a few levels.
I maintain it's not choice at all in any sense that matters (to game design). You just have a limited number of keys on which to map your spells and some spells are mutually exclusive with each other (runes). At the very least you must be able to see that a *level* of choice has been removed, since in D2 you had a similar limit of spells that could be active without going into a menu (F1-F8).
I think the informed aspect could have been achieved without eliminating permanence. And frankly, all I really think they should have done is let people allocate stat points themselves and choose from a level-adjusted pool which spells and runes to get next. That would have been more than enough to give people the sense of choice while also allowing for all the positives the current system has. Maybe you'd make a dumb decision, but it'd self-correct within a few levels.
Fallout-NL
Member
Solved simply by just doing some research and planning your character. I actually enjoyed that a lot.
Building a character.
The complete lack of character customization really puts a dent in how much I enjoy leveling up in a game like this.
In Diablo 2, at least when I played it (which was from release until about 2 years later), you could truly have an unusual build, that you thought about and created, and it wasn't something anyone could just instantly copy. I think chasing perfect balance in a game that's primarily PvE focused is foolish, and it introduces too many unnecessary tradeoffs.
In Diablo 2, at least when I played it (which was from release until about 2 years later), you could truly have an unusual build, that you thought about and created, and it wasn't something anyone could just instantly copy. I think chasing perfect balance in a game that's primarily PvE focused is foolish, and it introduces too many unnecessary tradeoffs.
I absolutely agree that it should be up to the player the ORDER they receive abilities, or at least runes, so that you can operate with a build you want as you level through the game. It was the one thing I thought switching the rune system with harmed greatly and I'm still not entirely pleased with. I'm plenty happy with how it will work once you're level 60, but I think the feeling of building towards that goal as you level is removed with the current system. Exactly what you suggest was brought up many times on the beta forums to no avail though :/
Ultimately, I get what they've gone for though. In D3 purely through the course of beta I have tried EVERY ability and rune available, preferred some to others, and been surprised with what I liked and didn't like at times. I suspect there are still a great many D2 skills I've never used (Especially past a token point) despite having played the game dozens of times over the years. The cost of trying something and finding you dislike it was simply too high before, it was better to go with what I knew worked.
Like I said, there are clear and obvious problems with the way D2 worked. I just think they've given people whiplash by running off in the complete opposite direction, and I think that's a shame. I think you could fix the problems with D2's progression without losing the essential feel of it, and that it would be a better game for *everyone*, hardcore or not.
Also, like I said, I enjoy D3. I just don't think it'll endure the way D2 did. There'll come a point when I will have tried everything I feel like trying and I'll be done with the game at that point. On the other hand, I could probably play D2 every couple of years for another 10 years and not feel that way.
Also, like I said, I enjoy D3. I just don't think it'll endure the way D2 did. There'll come a point when I will have tried everything I feel like trying and I'll be done with the game at that point. On the other hand, I could probably play D2 every couple of years for another 10 years and not feel that way.
I'd like to note, there is gear you can craft in beta right now that gives attributes that specifically boosts certain skills, I've seen a level 25 Daibo for Monk which increased the chance to crit on Tempest by 5%. So I expect people to choose skills based on their gear more than ever.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Doing research outside of a game, no matter how many of us like it, is most definitely considered hardcore nowadays. Especially by Blizzard - it's very apparent if you've followed their development of WoW in the past 3 years. Now that may or may not actually be the case (if can afford video games, it's highly unlikely that you don't have access to an internet connection), but that's how it's perceived, at least by most developers not targeting a niche.
This. It's not brought up enough and is definitely a saving grace ever since they cut runestones as items with levels. It made that change bearable, even if very cringeworthy. Although having runestones with levels in addition skill enhancements on gear would have been even better for build diversity.
LOL. Good luck waiting 12+ years then. Maybe within the decade if there's a sale. And no indie could reach close to the quality of Diablo 3. Gameplay possibly. Everything else in the package? Hell no! The production values are too damn high.
Which production values in particular? Because graphically, Path of Exile blows Diablo 3 away.
Eh, I'd disagree. it's a good looking game considering its pedigree (The team is miniscule!) but the art direction is pretty bland. That's not technical disparity, that's production value level stuff.
Fallout-NL
Member
Hmm, not really. PoE certainly doesn't look bad or anything, but it's rather bland on the whole. Perhaps more capable on a technical level. But the amount of actual detail and diversity doesn't really compare to DIII.
fluffydelusions
Member
Battletag: plbelanger#1923
Location: NYC, United States
Location: NYC, United States
Sigh, as I feared its just more Diablo. Now that is not a terrible thing, but I hope it becomes more interesting as the game opens up or the classes that I haven't played are more fun than the wizard.
Compared to all games, I would give it a B+ or so as this is one of my favorite genres. However, if I am grading on just the aRPG curve, then it probably gets a C or so. Games that definitely better/more fun/interesting this far are Titan Quest and Too Human, both of which are significantly better. Games that I suspect will be better are Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn.
Compared to all games, I would give it a B+ or so as this is one of my favorite genres. However, if I am grading on just the aRPG curve, then it probably gets a C or so. Games that definitely better/more fun/interesting this far are Titan Quest and Too Human, both of which are significantly better. Games that I suspect will be better are Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn.
Did this really need to be cross posted in both?
Also...Too Human, really? I mean I liked it despite the flaws, but come on...
Titan Quest? Really? You're joking, right? That game was god awful.
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