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).
IronicNeurotic said:
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.