Diablo III: Runestones.

[Damned Registrations]

If by 'running back' you mean clicking your town portal hotkey , shift buying 30 potions and running back through the portal all within 30 seconds, I don't think most people see that as an onerous weight to put up with every 10 minutes.

Besides, mana on kill gear will keep you afloat with a lot of skill builds. Getting when a kill nets you 10 mana and you can swing your weapon 5 times really quickly for 5 mana, mana pots aren't in much demand. It's really only an issue for Sorcs, and even then it's not a big deal since they have good natural mana growth so they got more swing room and get more benefit from wells and shrines. Unless your build focuses on really ineffecient crap like spamming static charge constantly or blowing AoE spells on single targets, you can generally get a kill without spending too much mana.

 

[J1M]

Go start a new character up. Put 0 into energy. Don't twink. See how far you get.

Lolwut? 99% of the D2 build guides I've read for any class specifically recommended that you NEVER put points into energy. I recently started playing a sorceress solo and didn't have much trouble managing my mana without allocating a single point to energy. Potions drop so frequently as to rarely have to run to town to buy some and you can easily start finding mana leech and +mana after kill items in normal difficulty act 1.

Characters with mana leech are fine, but for casters I've never been able to avoid running back to town every 10 mins for potions. If you are, you have a hell of a lot better luck than I.

All "Build Guides" assume you twink the hell out of your characters so that they can have hundreds of mana and +atts without putting a single point into energy, which is basically cheating and defeating the point of the game.

Socketed chipped sapphires and +X mana per kill. Derp derp.

 

[Dire Roach]

Characters with mana leech are fine, but for casters I've never been able to avoid running back to town every 10 mins for potions. If you are, you have a hell of a lot better luck than I.

All "Build Guides" assume you twink the hell out of your characters so that they can have hundreds of mana and +atts without putting a single point into energy, which is basically cheating and defeating the point of the game.

The thing is, even if you put points into energy as a caster, you are still forced to fight more often with weapons than with spells during the early levels in order to conserve mana. With my zero-energy soceress, whenever I ran out of mana, I switched from a weapon with +skills to one with mana leech (which never took me too long to find or buy from an npc). Combined with +mana after kill items, I was able to get back to casting spells quickly, using potions only in the most desperate situations.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I checked my character just to make sure I wasn't doing something totally stupid, and my lvl 25 sorc with maxed fire ball (for her level) takes about 20 mana worth of spells to kill an enemy. That's about 1/5th of her total energy if you don't add in my energy stat. + mana per kill helps but totally doesn't cut it unless you are getting multiple enemies at once. I could use fire bolt... If I wanted to cast 10x for each enemy that would work.

Even if everyone else is riding through the game on magical fairydust equipment, the idea that Blizzard should remove stats because they didn't get them to work well in D2 is laughable. They DID work just fine in D1, which was a much superior game to D2 anyway. It would be very easy to make them more effective in D3, removing them is just dumbing down the game.

 

[thesheeep]

Looking good. I like how the stones do more than just change the color and some random stat of the ability.

But... I've heard you won't have an unlimited amount of dragons, so.. meh.

 

[Destroid]

Looks pretty. Also looks like the Diablo devs have been playing Magicka.

 

[tindrli]

ACID CLOUD is the worst thing that could happend to D3..

 

[IronicNeurotic]

yeah because stats in d2 were so fucking important. Dex and Str enough for gear and rest in Vitality. wow fucking amazing customization. they might as well get rid of the fucking shit. D3 will have more customization than any of the previous games.

d3 will fuck d2, dungeon siege 3, any bioware game or any other ARPG up the ass so fucking hard they will have permanent damage to their asshole so every time they shit it stings like fuck and shit get mixed into their blood and it's fucking gross.

hail satan.

I don't really think D3 and DSIII are in any competition apart from them beeing both ARPGs.

 

[Shannow]

0 points in mana really never were a problem. But Zed is stupid anyway.
We already had this discussion a few times. Stats not mattering much in D2 means you balance them and "make" them matter in D3. It doesn't mean you take away stat allocation. That's a classic example of dumbing down.
And what's it with kids and online "guides"? Too lazy to think for yourselves? I played through Nighmare with 4 or 5 characters and Hell with one. None of them used guides or looked anything like what I hear mentioned from guides. I still had fun for the most part. And whether my characters succeeded or failed, they were mine, not someone elses...

OT: At least those runes look quite good, add complexity and give the possibility to personalize at least a little.

 

[KalosKagathos]

Skill customization looks really nice, but I'd appreciate it a hell of a lot more if Blizzard ripped off the TQ's masteries system instead of offering fixed classes.

 

[waywardOne]

It'll be fun for 5 playthroughs -- each of the classes once. I don't smoke weed anymore so I can't be assured beyond that.

 

[Excidium]

I prefer fixed classes, each one with its own theme.

 

[meh]

lol at people spending points on energy stat increase

Firstly, gold is abundant and there is no problem of buying mana potions. Secondly, check "Warmth" for sorceress, one point is plenty. Thirdly, check out "Insight" runeword for act 2 merc.

 

[Paperclip]

I agree that removing manual stats allocation is "dumbing down" in the sense that making things simpler is "dumbing down", whether it's good or not. But that rune feature must be hella difficult to balance because you don't deal solely with numbers, i.e. socketing a certain skill with a particular rune can turn it into something else. I give props to Blizz for that!

And yes, you don't need to put points into energy whether your char is twinked or not.

 

[Kraszu]

Yes you can play without putting points into energy but it leads to very dull gameplay before you get items.

lol at people spending points on energy stat increase

Firstly, gold is abundant and there is no problem of buying mana potions. Secondly, check "Warmth" for sorceress, one point is plenty.

Not sure if serious, warmth only slightly increases the rate of mana regeneration you would have to wait for good few minutes after killing anything.

Thirdly, check out "Insight" runeword for act 2 merc.

You have all the runes in act 2 already?

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Zero energy allocation on all my toons after I found out how cheap mana items were, socketing sapphires, and checking out my gear. Never twinked beyond the green items I found on battlenet and would pass them down, which would be used for maybe 2 to 3 levels anyway.

Stopped playing when XPack came out and I saw the handholding with the Strafe being changed due to 'strafe lock' that some retards were experiencing. Was level 80 and fighting through hell act 4 and not having such issues due to using my skills well and not being a tard. Decoy/Valk run and gun. Picked up the game sometime after LoD was rleeased and began again. Those first 6 months from release had me by the balls, and I loved that game. Had my timings as a second nature with my Barbarians warcries, my Blood golem + Iron maiden bug tanking for me (that was a necessary fix, but still fun to abuse while I could) I only ever put energy into my characters when I was still learning about the game.

As for dumping points into Vit, I liked my zero vita glass cannon Amazon, wouldnt pull that shit in hardcore, but made for a fun death machine in the normal game, until you had to visit Dureil...... Motherfucker was broken so bad.

 

[meh]

Yes you can play without putting points into energy but it leads to very dull gameplay before you get items.

Not sure if serious, warmth only slightly increases the rate of mana regeneration you would have to wait for good few minutes after killing anything.

You have all the runes in act 2 already?

If the character is not my first one - of course. If this is my starting character - when I finish Normal mode.

EDIT: Oh, I've just remembered 'Stealth' Tal + Eth runeword. There are plenty of ways to increase mana pool/regeneration rate. Energy is useless stat.

 

[Kraszu]

Yes you can play without putting points into energy but it leads to very dull gameplay before you get items.

Not sure if serious, warmth only slightly increases the rate of mana regeneration you would have to wait for good few minutes after killing anything.

You have all the runes in act 2 already?

If the character is not my first one - of course. If this is my starting character - when I finish Normal mode.

EDIT: Oh, I've just remembered 'Stealth' Tal + Eth runeword. There are plenty of ways to increase mana pool/regeneration rate. Energy is useless stat.

So you only have to play through the game once, and grind to make the game good, sounds like a good design to me.

 

[Globbi]

Runestones sound good. The more customization, the better. Some skills change a lot, so you may have a few different playstyles for every character build.


Stats in D2 weren't bad but there is seriously no need for them. In more casual gaming you could go through game without problems with any logical stat distribution (not too much energy for fighters and not too much strength for casters). You could easily omit putting points into energy and just use mana increasing gear - sorceress and necro did better with javelins and melee in act 1 anyway, and not so bad in act 2 either. Later you just use runes and stones to get more mana and find loads of potions.
You could, of course, spend points on useless early skills (and need energy to use them), but your character would be weak later. This wasn't bad design, because you could easily complete the game on normal difficulty with weak character and nightmare and hell are supposed to be hard.

There is not much problem with removing stats, everyone will have good characters anyway. There just are two small points against it:

• Firstly, it would be better if the stats were improved instead of scrapped, so you could customize your character better; every class should work well strong, dexterous or with more magic power, but differently. However D3 will still have some nice customization, the runestones are being added so the game is not really dumbed down in this aspect.
  Secondly, it was fun to get stupid stats distribution and make some unorthodox characters, like melee fighting sorc with high strength and heavy armor. It kinda sucked but there was a melee skill for sorceress. It was entertaining, especially in whole strange party.

 

[Kraszu]

Runestones sound good. The more customization, the better. Some skills change a lot, so you may have a few different playstyles for every character build.

Stats in D2 weren't bad but there is seriously no need for them. In more casual gaming you could go through game without problems with any logical stat distribution (not too much energy for fighters and not too much strength for casters). You could easily omit putting points into energy and just use mana increasing gear - sorceress and necro did better with javelins and melee in act 1 anyway, and not so bad in act 2 either. Later you just use runes and stones to get more mana and find loads of potions.
You could, of course, spend points on useless early skills (and need energy to use them), but your character would be weak later. This wasn't bad design, because you could easily complete the game on normal difficulty with weak character and nightmare and hell are supposed to be hard.

Who did said that D2 was too hard? I just think that not using your skills or having to TP to town very often to buy magic potions, leads to less interesting gameplay. Meh I don't like that normal was so easy.

 

[Zed]

Which is why you wouldn't do it. My point. Unless you want to cheat you want energy.

Well obviously people do it, and without twinking their characters as well. It's only like act 1 and act 2 on normal that are a huge pain, after that you can just farm Act bosses a couple of times for gear.

There is no metagame in D2. . No, PvP doesn't count because its shit.

Meta game refers to how to plan and execute your gameplan to reach end-game and be as good as possible. It's about using foreknowledge to your advantage.

End-game in Diablo 2 is basically being able to efficiently run Diablo and Bhaal on Hell difficulty. It doesn't matter if it's shit or not, it's still something you're able to do when you're levelcapped and maxed out, and people do it.

lolno. D2 is a joke. DotA is only a slightly lesser joke. Starcraft does require skill though. I don't know why you bother to mention SC, its the polar opposite of D2.

Care to elaborate why they are jokes or are all your arguments empty? They were examples of games you could master, games where you can get huge advantages by meta gaming, knowing more about the game than your opponent, etc. I mentioned SC because it has, to a degree, the same type of mastering involved, but mainly because it's just another Blizzard title.

Figuring out the best equipment to use in D2 is as simple as finding the spreadsheet online with the best armor/weapons/runewords on it. At most, you have to compare similar items and compare the tradeoffs. Just like you have to do in every other damn RPG in existence. Hard shit, I know.

It isn't hard, but it's still something advantageous, like the other examples I gave. The point I was making is that there are several aspects of "mastering" the game.

All "Build Guides" assume you twink the hell out of your characters so that they can have hundreds of mana and +atts without putting a single point into energy, which is basically cheating and defeating the point of the game.

Nope, all build guides don't assume that. Actually most quality guides have sections dedicated to what type of gear you got available - if you're packing with uniques or if you're only able to gather items from act 1 normal difficulty.

Even if everyone else is riding through the game on magical fairydust equipment, the idea that Blizzard should remove stats because they didn't get them to work well in D2 is laughable. They DID work just fine in D1, which was a much superior game to D2 anyway. It would be very easy to make them more effective in D3, removing them is just dumbing down the game.

Diablo 1 only had the 4 stats as well; Str Dex Vit Ene. Even though it wasn't as bad as Diablo 2 you still pretty much prioritized a couple of stats heavily for each class.

Removing stats is dumbing down, I agree, but it's still just one way to customize your character, and instead they add far more interesting ways to customize. Hell they've even expanded on companions, having a small skill selection for them.

Overall, Diablo 3 will have more customization and depth to your characters. Isn't that what matters? Is it important that Stats must be part of it?
"Talent trees" are the same as D2 but with different UI
"So, the system we have now... you'll have to just picture it without any visual representation, sorry. They're not radically different visually except that the trees are all viewable at the same time. Taking the barbarian trees for instance (berserker, battlemaster, juggernaut) they're not tabbed now, but instead all viewable at the same time. Side by side.
This is important due to how they are now a unified tier progression. Instead of spending 5 points in the berserker tree to then begin spending points in the second tier of the berserker tree, the new design allows you to spend wherever you like. As long as your points in the first tier of skills adds up to five, the next tier for all trees is unlocked. "
They have ADDED gear slots - gear which everybody who aren't retarded would say is one of the key aspects of customizing your character.
"It also shows that they have added a slot for pauldrons, vambraces and for pants."
They are going to have a lot more items than the previous games, and gems now have 14 quality levels as well.
And while they do have indeed gotten rid of stat allocation on leveling, they still have the attributes, which is essentially the product of stats.
They also ADDED Traits, which passively affect your character.
Of course there are also the Skill runes which this thread is actually about.
Also just to clarify, it wasn't STATS they removed, it was STAT ALLOCATION (the 5 points you get when leveling). But again, yes, this is dumbing down, but the other stuff they introduce instead are more interesting, and add more depth than stats ever did (in any of the Diablo games).

I don't really think D3 and DSIII are in any competition apart from them beeing both ARPGs.

No probably not. Even the games that are direct competitors won't stand a chance. Diablo 3 will be the best-selling (A)RPG of all time.

 

[Kraszu]

Which is why you wouldn't do it. My point. Unless you want to cheat you want energy.

Well obviously people do it, and without twinking their characters as well. It's only like act 1 and act 2 on normal that are a huge pain, after that you can just farm Act bosses a couple of times for gear.

You should not be forced to grind to make the game not suck, you also don't solve the problem with the game being way to easy, actually you are sacrificing mana system sacking less for difficulty sucking more.

D3 looks fine, and there will probably be 10% or so of the game that is good, the problem is that going through 90% of the rest will not be worth it.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Meta game refers to how to plan and execute your gameplan to reach end-game and be as good as possible. It's about using foreknowledge to your advantage.

End-game in Diablo 2 is basically being able to efficiently run Diablo and Bhaal on Hell difficulty. It doesn't matter if it's shit or not, it's still something you're able to do when you're levelcapped and maxed out, and people do it.

Planning is not metagaming. Thats just gaming. Metagaming is planning in PvP based on out-of-game knowledge on what they are likely to do. e.g., if you were to play a SC game against someone big you could watch replays of them to find out what they do poorly against, then fine tune your own strategy so that you beat them even if overall you weren't nearly as good as them. That simply doesn't exist in D2.

Care to elaborate why they are jokes or are all your arguments empty? They were examples of games you could master, games where you can get huge advantages by meta gaming, knowing more about the game than your opponent, etc.

Trial and error gameplay forced by no-respeccing and no prior knowledge of obscured mechanics != having deep gameplay, sorry. Being able to read up on others finding out through their own trial and error is the same story. D2 is basically WoW v0.5 in this regard. If you want an example of what actually does have good gameplay in the style, look at Guild Wars.

It isn't hard, but it's still something advantageous, like the other examples I gave. The point I was making is that there are several aspects of "mastering" the game.

I CHOOS TH WEAPN THT DS MOAR DMG!!!! FUCK IVE MASTARD THIS GAEM!*

*replace "I choose" with "I did what the guide said" for high end levels, because you sure as fuck didn't figure out how to make all the high end rune words on your own

Nope, all build guides don't assume that. Actually most quality guides have sections dedicated to what type of gear you got available - if you're packing with uniques or if you're only able to gather items from act 1 normal difficulty.

"All" should obviously be taken as an exaggeration. But the majority of guides presume a lot more than you would have unless you twinked or farmed. Half of them flat out give advice such as "Don't invest in any early skills at all, just have someone run you through all of the hard parts in Normal/Nightmare so you can save up for later levels". Trash.

Also just to clarify, it wasn't STATS they removed, it was STAT ALLOCATION (the 5 points you get when leveling). But again, yes, this is dumbing down, but the other stuff they introduce instead are more interesting, and add more depth than stats ever did (in any of the Diablo games).

If all lvl 10 warriors have the same stats, there is effectively no stats in the game, just level requirements on items and minor passive bonuses tied to level. Leaving stats in is just a superficial way to pretend that there is depth in the game.

No probably not. Even the games that are direct competitors won't stand a chance. Diablo 3 will be the best-selling (A)RPG of all time.

Not because its good, but because its made by Blizzard. RE: SC2.

 

[1eyedking]

But again, yes, this is dumbing down, but the other stuff they introduce instead are more interesting, and add more depth than stats ever did (in any of the Diablo games).

Not a chance, and even then most of it is item/drop-based (ZOMG MORE GRINDAN)

Also, spreadsheet gaming. It's becoming a reality.

 

[crazy_dave]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH

there's also a "small" difference between basing your game on boring fucking mythology and badass satanic medieval fantasy.

This, motherfuckers, this... Except if they don't fuck it up and make it a cartoony WoW shit-clone... Videos certainly give off that vibe...