Diablo III: Not Just a Vitality Race!

[TamerBill]

I'd argue you were not actually building a character, but a set of skills to use on the same character that everyone else has, but I'm glad that you have fun with it.

This is how it's always been; you've never actually owned your character in Diablo. You're not playing a barbarian, you're playing The Barbarian, with his own backstory, history and personality. The Diablo 3 system is better from a story perspective as well as a gameplay one.

[Karoht]

Accidental ways to suddenly be less effective/viable and therefore have less fun are nothing but a nuisance to the player and anyone saddled with that player as a party member.

'Trap' talents and skills and combo's are poor design. Even the designers of this and many other games have claimed such.

[Starwulf]

Wow, and I thought I was complainy when it came to D3 ^^

So, I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but you do know that with the rune system, there are...hmm, what did you tell me earlier in the thread Karoht..something like 1billion different combinations for the skills for a single character? If that isn't customization, I'm not sure what is. There certainly wasn't the opportunity for 1billion different skills in D2, not even a fraction of that. Yes it sucks they took out the ability to pick and choose, but at least they replaced it with something a good deal more intricate.

[The_Jackal]

So, I know this was announced beforehand, but is anyone else who played the Beta this weekend extremely disappointed by the fact that your character is in no way customizable, other than items?

I am a sad fanboy. sad, sad.

I think you're making far too much of a largely inert feature. World of Warcraft never had a characteristic buy system, and it still manged to be great fun. I do wish they'd offered some graphical customization, but I'd rather they make the gameplay fun and compelling, especially given the relatively small scale the character's look is going to occupy.

Letting players pick characteristics isn't really customization, it's just an error-introduction system, as Diablo II clinically proved.

I was actually disappointed when the respec feature was added on to D2.

I believe switching builds should be impossible in a RPG.

RE: Specific build: How did the Hammerdin first happen? By someone deciding to go against the "current meta" and deciding to do something wild and see if it would work.

Yes, there where a relatively short amount of "usable" builds, and a very short amount of "top tier" builds. This is not a intrinsec problem of the design, or the idea of point investing.

Well, if you're patient enough to re-build your level 90 Amazon when they nerfed Guided Arrow into the toilet, more power to you. Me, I was FURIOUS. How did the first hammerdin get built? When somebody sat down for a few hours with a calculator and figured out how epic blessed hammer could be made. Which is the REAL point behind ditching that type of customization. After playing 8 years of WoW and needing to consult the spreadsheet gurus on ElitistJerks to figure out what the most effective build is, I'm OVERJOYED that I can switch my skills on the fly whenever I want to.

Because permanent builds and intrinsic imbalance ARE a problem with game design in the real world. The platonic ideal of perfect game design might be able to reconcile them, but we don't exist in a perfect world with perfect game design. Unshackling them from having to balance every skill to a nicety saves both Blizzard and their players from tons of grief, pure and simple.

I suggest that the what makes your character yours is that YOU are the one playing it. You use the abilities you want to because you like them, not because they're the most mathematically efficient method for extracting gold from mobs. If you really feel the need to level the same character 3 or 4 times to get that level of attachment, feel free. I'll be on my level 60 Witch Doctor, throwing spiders onto Diablo's face, then laughing at him.

[AgentPaper]

Do I really have to answer this one?

Basically everything.

It's not a ROLE playing game if I'm not taking the ROLE of a person and have significant choices regarding who that person IS.

Diablo 3 seems to be an action game with a built in character improvement mechanic.

There's two parts you hit on there. One is taking the role of someone, and making significant choices about who that person is. I don't think even you could argue that D3 doesn't do the first, but the second is a bit more interesting.

How do you define a "significant" choice? Does it have to be permanent for it to be significant? I would argue that it doesn't. Making the choice of what skills you pick, what runes you put in them, what gear you pick up, and so on, all of those are significant in that they decide whether you live or die when you go out to fight your opponent. Beyond that, they are significant in that they define how you fight.

The fact that these choices aren't permanent doesn't make them any less of a choice. Your level 80 Demon Hunter has the potential to take any skills, any runes, and wear any equipment he wants, but then so does a level 1 necromancer. The only difference here is the time involved. You can spend 200 hours getting your necromancer up to nightmare, or you can spend 2 minutes changing your demon hunter's skills. Does that 200 hours actually make those choices more significant?

You can keep arguing whatever, but the fact that I dislike it is not gonna change.

The whole point of discussion is that you might be proven wrong. If you're not here to discuss, then why are you here?

It means that my character is a master at every single ability available to him at the same time. It doesn't make sense. And yes, it does make choices less meaningful, if not meaningless.

No, it certainly does NOT mean that. You have 6 skills, 3 passives, and a rune for each skill. You can use exactly those skills at any given point of time. If you want to min-max, you can forsake character identity and change your skills every fight, but there's no reason to assume that you need to. For me, at least, I plan to play around with a few builds, but will likely end up focusing on a specific build, and fine-tune that build to exactly fit my playstyle. That build will be mine, and mine only, as opposed to D2, where I was forced to go online and use someone else's character.

I sort of agree, but I would have expected Blizzard to come up with a way to make the choices better and more meaningful, not taking them away.

They didn't come up with the way because it doesn't exist. Permanent choice has inherent flaws that are impossible to address. It certainly makes sense in a few games, but Diablo 3 is not one of them, and neither are most of the RPGs it's forced into. It's only common because people expect it, not because it actually improves most of the games it's in.

The only games that should have permanent choice are tabletop RPGs, and storytelling games (IE fallout/oblivion) where the actual gameplay is secondary to the story being told.

You're describing an action game. That's ok. But it's not what I expected of Diablo 3.

Diablo is an Action RPG, so was Diablo 2. Besides that, does it really matter what you call the game? It's a game, unique in it's own way, and should be judged on it's own merits. Just because other RPGs (mostly single-player, by the way) did things a certain way, doesn't mean that those are the right thing for D3 to do.

[Xapi]

Wow, that's a whole lot of posts to tell me hoiw wrong I am to like a mechanic better than another.

I'll just answer to one last thing and call this discussion over from my side. Brreaking it down into little bits, but it's really just one concept.

Diablo is an Action RPG, so was Diablo 2.

In my opinion, D2 was an action RPG , D3 is just action, no RPG.

Besides that, does it really matter what you call the game? It's a game, unique in it's own way, and should be judged on it's own merits.

Does it matter what we call it? Not in itself, but there's a catch. For instance, I loved FO3, but a dear friend who loved FO1 and FO2, will not stop raving about how great 1 and 2 where, and how 3 did not live up to that standart.

Can I fault him for being disappointed by a game that did not deliver what he expected from it? No. I can have my opinion about why FO3 is what it is, and how it makes sense for it to be a modern game, but I can't tell him "you should be happy that the gameplay is different because that old gameplay sucked anyway". I liked the old gameplay (or character generation, in this case) and playing the Beta, I missed it. Is there something fundamentally wrong about this? The amount of replies here seem to point to yes, unexplicably.

Just because other RPGs (mostly single-player, by the way) did things a certain way, doesn't mean that those are the right thing for D3 to do.

Yeah, but the point is taht D2 did things a certain way. And I liked it. And I don't like the fact that it is now done in another way. This isn't in any way an attack on Blizzard, or people who like this new mechanic. It's just my personal opinion on my personal preference, that's all.

[Aidan305]

In my opinion, D2 was an action RPG , D3 is just action, no RPG.

A curious argument. Care to explain your reasoning?

[Avilan the Grey]

I hope with this message what I mean by costumization is clear to you.

You mean "build", not customization as such.

Although "builds" have their charm, in an action "RPG" like the Diablo series they only took away from the fun, for me, since it forced you to play a specific character. I am extremely curious about this system because it seems to offer a wonderful array of options never before available in the Diablo franchise.

[polity4life]

Alright, here's the deal.

If you feel this game does not provide an adequate means of customizing a character or providing a greater sense of ownership of that character then greener pastures can be sought elsewhere. There's no sense in arguing the mechanics of a game if you are sold that it does not fit the mold you desire.

However, if you approach to conflict resolution is to throw jars filled with spiders at the problems then I'll see you on Battle.net.

And no, I will likely never cease to enjoy the fact that an attack in this game involves hurling arachnid receptacles at my enemies. If only the zombie dogs spit bees!

[Xapi]

You mean "build", not customization as such.

Although "builds" have their charm, in an action "RPG" like the Diablo series they only took away from the fun, for me, since it forced you to play a specific character. I am extremely curious about this system because it seems to offer a wonderful array of options never before available in the Diablo franchise.

Very well, I see someone has finally understood me. There is no build in D3, and I believe that, from D2 that was an action RPG, you take away the "build" concept, and you're left with an action game. And that is what I consider D3 to be, and I'm disappointed by that.

This may be the best action game ever though. I enjoyed playing the Beta, and I will consider buying the game, specially if I get to play the full version when/if a friend buys it.

Alright, here's the deal.

If you feel this game does not provide an adequate means of customizing a character or providing a greater sense of ownership of that character then greener pastures can be sought elsewhere. There's no sense in arguing the mechanics of a game if you are sold that it does not fit the mold you desire.

That's spot on too. Although the game does have its merits on other points, so I'm not convinced either way.

However, if you approach to conflict resolution is to throw jars filled with spiders at the problems then I'll see you on Battle.net.

I actually tried the witch doctor, and I have to say the spider jars weren't exactly my cup of tea. The repeating spitting venom was my weapon of choice.

However, endless stream of arrows from TWO one hand crossbows at the same time?

There's still hope you'll see me there, I'd say

[Chen]

Very well, I see someone has finally understood me. There is no build in D3, and I believe that, from D2 that was an action RPG, you take away the "build" concept, and you're left with an action game. And that is what I consider D3 to be, and I'm disappointed by that.

So any game with a respec option would lose this build concept? Because I can respec fairly freely in ME3 it removes part of the RPG aspect? I can't really agree with that. Does the difficulty or cost of the respec make a difference here?

[Xapi]

So any game with a respec option would lose this build concept? Because I can respec fairly freely in ME3 it removes part of the RPG aspect? I can't really agree with that. Does the difficulty or cost of the respec make a difference here?

I haven't played ME3, but from what I heard of the ME series I understand that you can actually make character choices that affect the world around you, so I would probably call it a RPG even without a "build".

But yes, if you can respec freely then it's not really a "build" in an RPG sense.

Basically, for me, there are two ways for a game to be an RPG, most traditional RPGs have both.

1 - You make permanent choices about who your character is, and his skillset depends on these choices.

2 - You make permanent choices about what your character does with the situations he's confronted with, and the outcome of the situations depends on these choices.

It would seem that in ME3 you get 2 but not 1. In Diablo II you had 1 but not 2. In D3 you don't get either.

[AgentPaper]

So I think what we've learned here is that "RPG" isn't a strictly defined concept and it comes down to opinion about what constitutes one. As with all things based on opinion, argument is futile since there's no right or wrong answers.

[Chen]

I haven't played ME3, but from what I heard of the ME series I understand that you can actually make character choices that affect the world around you, so I would probably call it a RPG even without a "build".

But yes, if you can respec freely then it's not really a "build" in an RPG sense.

Basically, for me, there are two ways for a game to be an RPG, most traditional RPGs have both.

1 - You make permanent choices about who your character is, and his skillset depends on these choices.

2 - You make permanent choices about what your character does with the situations he's confronted with, and the outcome of the situations depends on these choices.

It would seem that in ME3 you get 2 but not 1. In Diablo II you had 1 but not 2. In D3 you don't get either.

To me this seems like a shallow definition of RPG. Things like Final Fantasy have neither elements 1 or 2 and are certainly RPGs. Really I only had an issue because of your sweeping statement that because of X this is not considered an RPG anymore, which frankly is a silly statement considering the number of other games that people consider RPGs that also don't have these characteristics.

[polity4life]

While the definition of the RPG genre is interesting, let's talk about more D3 related stuff! We're about two weeks off

Do we have a list of Battle.net user names put together? If so, where can we find and link it? If not, we should start assembling one for future Playground shenanigans in Sanctuary.

[Karoht]

Karoht#1505

I would say it is a bit early to discuss builds, or at least for anything beyond level 13. But I know what I'm doing with pretty much all of mine at least for those levels. Below is listed in order of what I plan to play most/first.

Wizard

Spoiler

Show

Magic Missile until I get Electrocute.
Frost Nova and Wave of Force for basic crowd control/burst AoE.
Arcane Orb until Disintegrate. Disintegrate is on a case by case basis.
Overall build is going to focus on a Turret style. Hydras, Mirror Images, etc.
Name: Ujelii

Monk

Spoiler

Show

Defensive stuff every step of the way. My fiance is going with an offensive monk, I'm going with defense. Or as I call it, my Bulletproof Monk.
My fiance is naming her Monk RaRaRasputin, mine is to be named Rushinqueen. Cookies for references.

Barbarian

Spoiler

Show

Cleave/Frenzy as appropriate
Leap and Stomp for CC and on-demand Rage.
Hammer of the Ancients until I get Seismic Slam as my Fury Dump.
Later plan is to focus on Mobility to always be in-your-face and then Fury Dump and then GTFO.
Name: Ragequit

Witchdoctor

Spoiler

Show

Dogs.
Grasp.
Haunt.
Maybe Firebats.
Passives and Runes to make Dogs invincible.
Name: Wallabingbang.

Demon Hunter

Spoiler

Show

Probably not going to play this one until I have a glut of spare gear, build to be decided on at that point.
Name: Miris, named after my old Amazon.

As for professions, my fiance is focusing on the Blacksmith, I'm going to focus on the Jeweller. I wonder if it is possible to max out professions before hitting Hell Difficulty.

That 30 second spot that released on the weekend? Awesome. Angels look good, Demons all look good, can't wait.

[Avilan the Grey]

My first character will be a female witchdoctor, I think... Not sure why, I just like what I have seen so far.

[Corlindale]

I'm going with a witch doctor as my first. After playing beta I also considered the wizard, but ultimately witch doctor is most appealing to the old necromancer-player in me. Wizard is certainly second, though.

As for his build I'm just going to experiment, though I thought about going with a "nova" build with lots of powerful, long-cooldown abilities and one ability with no cooldown but high mana cost (firebats perhaps). Combined with the Vision Quest passive, which gives 300% mana regeneration with 4 or more skills on cooldown. So I would use the cooldown powers whenever they trigger, and then spam the mana-intensive ability when stuff is on cooldown. Don't know if it'll work in practice, but in my head it's pretty powerful
Otherwise I'll just try to focus on being a powerful summoner.

[polity4life]

Methinks we may need a Witchdoctors in the Playground subgroup. Moar spidar! I just wish I could spec for a bigger jar though. A boy can dream...

Anyway, I meant to check out my Bnet name and post it but I forgot yesterday. I'll throw that up but it's polity4life...something.

As for a name, I'm thinking I'm going to try and steal OogieBoogie. We'll see if I can though.

[Chen]

I haven't decided on what to start with yet. I think its close between Barbarian and Wizard. The barbarian just has a great feel to it. The only thing that kind of disappoints me is that at the end of the beta I was running with all the skills I felt I'd really need.

Cleave with exploding enemies rune is absurd for clearly things. Let the big bad guy get surrounded by little guys->cleave->dead everything.

Leap and stomp are perfect for building rage and dealing with getting surrounded and/or getting to things. Wouldn't trade them away.

Only Hammer of the Ancients felt a little weak. Wasn't really using it all that much considering the power of the other abilities.

As for Wizard at least with that I felt I hadn't gotten to the good skills yet. Electrocute is clearly the best signature skill. And I really liked Disintegrate when it was available early in the beta. The Wizard also feels like there are more variety of skills instead of just "hit this in a slightly different way".

I suppose I could also try Demon Hunter which was fun. Monk and Witch Doctor though I didn't really get into, so I doubt I'll play them until later.

[Suichimo]

Definitely starting Wizard. Not sure if I'll go with wide beam Disintegrate of the faux FO as my main attack skill, though. Not even sure if the Celestial Orb will work like Frozen Orb to begin with.

[Karoht]

@Arcane Orb-Check Youtube, you can find all the rune variants already. One of them sort of worked that way. But bear in mind, you won't be able to really spam it until late game when you have boosters to your max Arcane Power and lots of recharge.


@Witchdoctor Mana
Sooooo many options for mana. Spiders, that AoE-drain souls-thingy, dogs, passive/s, bats, I'm sure there is more. Lots of healing options as well surprisingly.

[Chen]

I tried using the spiders in the beta for the Witch Doctor but they just seemed so inefficient compared to the triple blowdart. Maybe DOTs will work better on higher difficulties but they seem pretty pointless in the beta considering most things die in one or two hits anyway.

[polity4life]

I tried using the spiders in the beta for the Witch Doctor but they just seemed so inefficient compared to the triple blowdart. Maybe DOTs will work better on higher difficulties but they seem pretty pointless in the beta considering most things die in one or two hits anyway.

That's interesting. I would drop Grasping Hands, or whatever it's called, down and hurl nigh endless jars of arachnids onto enemies and never be under any threat of damage. It worked really well in dungeons with clearly defined, narrow hallways.

It is a very different flavor of gameplay as triple dart offers more direct damage. However I found that with enough spiders, enemies were torn apart very quickly. And it's just a fun attack to boot!

[Chen]

That's interesting. I would drop Grasping Hands, or whatever it's called, down and hurl nigh endless jars of arachnids onto enemies and never be under any threat of damage. It worked really well in dungeons with clearly defined, narrow hallways.

It is a very different flavor of gameplay as triple dart offers more direct damage. However I found that with enough spiders, enemies were torn apart very quickly. And it's just a fun attack to boot!

I tried the same thing. Dropped Grasping Hands, spammed spiders. Sure everything did die and I took no damage. But when I did a similar pull using Grasping Hands + triple blowdart everything just melted away MUCH faster (and again I took no damage). Thing is I've found the blow dart lets you quickly kill annoying monsters, provided you get LOS on them. Throwing spiders and hoping they kill the summoner skeleton instead of the ton of regular skeletons around him was just a pain in the ass. Whereas a few blow dart volleys cleared the way to him and then killed him in much less time.

Like I said once things get more HP maybe DOTS/spiders will be better, but everything seems to die so much faster to direct damage (similar problem with the 360 aoe DOT the barbarian has, it just seems pointless).

[Suichimo]

@Arcane Orb-Check Youtube, you can find all the rune variants already. One of them sort of worked that way. But bear in mind, you won't be able to really spam it until late game when you have boosters to your max Arcane Power and lots of recharge.


@Witchdoctor Mana
Sooooo many options for mana. Spiders, that AoE-drain souls-thingy, dogs, passive/s, bats, I'm sure there is more. Lots of healing options as well surprisingly.

Yeah, Celestial Orb is the faux Frozen Orb. Just looked it up as well and it just seems to pass through things... No explosion at the end of its travel, nothing other than just passing through roughly a screen's worth of enemies. Frozen Orb was firing out Frost Bolts the entire time, slowing and, potentially, shattering a large amount of enemies and then exploding in a final burst of Frost Bolts. This is nothing like it. Looks like I'll be going with Disintegrate.

Spiders are awesome.

[Karoht]

Yeah, Celestial Orb is the faux Frozen Orb. Just looked it up as well and it just seems to pass through things... No explosion at the end of its travel, nothing other than just passing through roughly a screen's worth of enemies. Frozen Orb was firing out Frost Bolts the entire time, slowing and, potentially, shattering a large amount of enemies and then exploding in a final burst of Frost Bolts. This is nothing like it. Looks like I'll be going with Disintegrate.

Spiders are awesome.

Arcane Orb + Explosion Radius Rune + Arcane Damage Slow Passive = A really really close approximation. It just lacks the piercing effect and the 'firing little bolts' effect. I have a feeling that this is going to be my bread and butter for quite a while.

As for Witchdoctor and his Blowdarts and Triple Dart rune. I'm holding out for the snake rune. Because nothing says lovin like a snake in the face. It looks cheesey, I know it, and I love it.

Or if they ever allow more than one rune in abilities... triple snake!

[Starwulf]

I'm going to run up both a Monk and a Wizard to 15 at the start, and make my decision on which one I'm going to take up to 60 first from that point. Unfortunately I have no idea WHAT skills I'll be using, as even though I have faster internet now, I've decided to keep a black-out on D3 information, so I have no idea what the skills each character has are! The only information I get is from this thread, and none of it makes much sense to me anyways since I've never read anything about it on Blizzards site.

I'll be snagging my usual Starwulf moniker, though I won't be available for playing with anyone for a while, me and best friend are going to run through the first(and likely second) difficulty together before we bother to split and find others to pull into our group.

[Karoht]

As of latest build:
You know how in the tavern they talk about the Bard who got eaten?
My fiance found him.
He's around near Leoric's Passage, where you rescue Deckard Cain.
Probably a random event. Oh, and he was tough at the level she ran into him, watch it.

Our plan is to speed clear the Skeleton King with all of our planned characters, at which point the real game begins for us.

[† Dran †]

must admit I am a bit disappointed in the armor styles available to the demon hunter. The barb looks good/awesome in most of his gear, like the style of the wizard as she levels, witch doctor has some awesome masks... demon hunter seems lacking :/

Oh and then there's a monk or something, really not interested in that class.