Diablo 3 - Reaper of Idiots

[Fedora Master]

The power creep is real. I went from freshly leveling to 70 to T10 in a few hours. Haedrigs Gift can easily give you the boost to skip all other difficulties.
(Good thing there is T13 now...)

 

[Perkel]

Ok since switch emulator works (and 0 slowdowns) and you can now play D3 with all DLC and updates completely offline free from lag and dcs. I decided to give it fair shake. Last time i played it was at release and without saying much it was garbage spend 200 hours with it and if i could i would get refund. I spend 40-50hours playing D3 in last two weeks so by no means i seen all or went deep into end game.

So:
- first of all, after playing D3 for a while on sticks i think genre is best played with sticks. I used to think mouse and keyboard was the best for it (muh precision) but ARPG in essence is twin stick shooter with equipment. Playing ARPG like D3 on pad is just better. Once i got to play it like that it clicked in less than 10 minutes. I have gone back to Grim Dawn to confirm it and yep. GD also plays a lot better with pad. Basically what it does is it decouples your movement from targeting, moreover maneuvering is much easier because to maneuver on mouse you have to move mouse which takes more time than just bending stick a bit. All dodge actions whatever it is GD or D3 all also feel a lot better thanks to near instant nature of them. Yes there are some slight issues with not targeting best AOE attack position but overall it is pretty minor stuff once you start playing. Yes if you want to complete is mehsports m+k is the only way but if you want to have more fun sticks is way to go.
- Itemization. Yes you still get power from weapon regardless of what you do which is retarded but the single most important change i saw was how itemization was changed. Yes standard stats are mesh of "don't care, this adds attack or defense" but because how legendaries have been revised and how frequent they are it doesn't really matter anymore. It is all about special effects from loot. D3 had huge issue because compared to something like POE its skill system was almost static with release version. You had skill and that was it. Currently that is no longer the case. There are vast amount of gear that changes how skills work much more than stuff from Grim Dawn which is sharing similar approach. Here is quick example, i have some one handed scythe that gives my necromancer siphon souls which is single target spell ability to siphon 3 enemies at the time not one. So the real progress when it comes to loot comes from finding right combination of items. In addition to that i found some offhand that gives my siphon soul 40% chance to fire blood nova for free evertime i use it. So basic attack used to fill up my essence reserves now is effectively my main skill. I found a ring that gives me ability to summon 2 mages instead of one at the time. That is just equipment. Then there are gems. At start i though this is all there is but then i got to rifts new form of end game and you get those legendary gems that further open up builds because each gem gives you unique passive ability. In my case i got for an example gem that adds bleed damage after crit strikes for decent amount of damage. There is gem that increased damage to elites for 30second after you kill elite pack etc. There are a lot of those. Then when i think it was all there is i found canai cube, which have ability to extract legendary equipment power and wield it without item. This naturally means that every unique item is effectively passive/active skill you are limited to 3 of those power but still that is another layer.
Overall D3 after all those changes feels like proper ARPG when it comes to customization of your build and i have to say it almost reaches POE with its combination and it is above GD. Yes classes limit what can you do but overall it gives you a lot of depth to play, test and play for 100s of hours.
- balance and combat. If anything D3 done right it was combat. It always felt great to smash monsters and watch them fly away. Whole game had physical aspect to it felt like monsters followed some physics, some died with animation, some just flied away after particular hard hit. After playing nearly 1900 hours of POE and 400 of GD i must say that in current form with amount of time i spend with it so far D3 has the best balance when it comes to gameplay. At no point you feel like mistakes were not your own, unlike POE there is noticeable buffer of what you can do and you can't do, there are no out of whack combinations that just one shot you even if you build around defense all deaths i had came from me being to greedy. I don't remember if it was like that on release but elites and champions now usually have small amount of effects rather than large amount but each of those effects actually does something beside stats. So if you see such monster you know there will be something to deal with, it could be field of walls, teleportation etc but it never feels like killing just another random mob which is pretty common feeling in both GD and POE. The single best thing about balance in D3 though is Singletarget vs AOE damage play. Unlike POE or GD (lower but still) single target damage has actually a lot to do. Elites and Champions have usually a fucking lot more HP which means that your AOE spells will be joke for them so you have to develop skills for both single and group combat. It is definitely something i love about it after playing POE and wathcing it kill melee because via GGG head honcho : "AOE is just natural evolution and you shouldn't not play single target"
- finally alternative to retarded campaign story. Adventure mode is simply way better and frankly speaking after playing adventure mode a bit i think it is much better overall that standard campaigns of ARPGS. D4 is supposedly going this way and i know now why. Nephalem rifts aren't maps of POE and they feel worse overall but imho adventure mode feels just better. You are just cog in machine that just fix shit up which is fresh take compared to retarded campaign.
- edit: Resource management. I really forgot how POE and GD shit on resource management. In both your mana is basically either off or on, never something you think about. In D3 it is constant balance which forces you to use other attacks than your most powerful.


Overall my score from initial version 2/10 goes to 9/10. It could change later because i am yet to go properly into end game but overall game feels a lot lot lot lot lot better than release garbage.

Overall for me now:

POE > D3 >>> GD. Overall competition has been nice thing and each game improved a lot while leader POE actually degraded due to balance changes and basically annihilating melee in process. IT feels nice to play actual melee character for once in D3.

 

[ArchAngel]

I also played it a bit few months ago, just to kill Diablo with my Monk that I stopped half way and one thing I got straight from it that combat is boring. Levels are boring and enemies are boring.

 

[polo]

From 2/10 to 9/10, edgy much?

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

i thought all you did in these types of games is left click on shit
if you're some sort of pro gamer maybe you hit q or e once in a while

how could that not be boring?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

- first of all, after playing D3 for a while on sticks i think genre is best played with sticks. I used to think mouse and keyboard was the best for it (muh precision) but ARPG in essence is twin stick shooter with equipment. Playing ARPG like D3 on pad is just better. Once i got to play it like that it clicked in less than 10 minutes. I have gone back to Grim Dawn to confirm it and yep. GD also plays a lot better with pad. Basically what it does is it decouples your movement from targeting, moreover maneuvering is much easier because to maneuver on mouse you have to move mouse which takes more time than just bending stick a bit. All dodge actions whatever it is GD or D3 all also feel a lot better thanks to near instant nature of them. Yes there are some slight issues with not targeting best AOE attack position but overall it is pretty minor stuff once you start playing. Yes if you want to complete is mehsports m+k is the only way but if you want to have more fun sticks is way to go.

This has nothing to do with KBM but a complete lack of development of the genre.
For an example of how to have good controls with KBM, check out the game Victor Vran. It's mechanically very lite but the controls are far better than any other Diablo clone. It uses WSAD to move rather than click to move, btw.

 

[Perkel]

I should check VVran. Is it any good ?

From 2/10 to 9/10, edgy much?

I am completely serious. I really fucking hated original campaign and mechanics. Release game was so fucking bland that those generic korean MMOs had more mechanics than it. From whole game only combat is something i liked but that would get stale quickly when you couldn't make builds. The worst part, stat system was annoying precisely because there was nothing above it.

In comparison current loot has similar stat system but legendary effects make those stat only secondary. So it completely changes dynamic of a system. It is more about trying to find right combination of items to make builds rather than chasing some small stat differences.

So D3 had fun combat but 0 depth but they fixed depth. So now you have both fun combat and depth to building your character. D3 didn't have end game. Now it has.

Now in therms of breath of build creation it actually isn't far from POE. Orignal D3 had essentially only few uniques that could change your build. In post 2.0 almost all uniques have special abilities that change how you play then there are legendary gems that further change how you play, then there is canai cube that extract power from legendary items and makes those powers into effects you can turn on off (3 max). Ancient items which were added which are puffed up versions of uniques can also get legendary effects you scrubbed earlier which means you can create even some chains.

It went from 0 to something like 9 where poe complexity is 11.

To me action house never was an issue because i don't like trading it was stat system and depth of build creation that was my main issue.

I still can't quite believe that i changed my opinion on it. I only went back to it because i tested Switch emulator and D3 was only thing that worked perfectly with 0 slowdons and i just wanted to see how shitty ARPG would play on pad. Pad being better for ARPG is another weird outcome. I have 2k hours in D2, 1800+ in POE 500+ in GD and never i though that pad would be better and yet here i am. IT only took like 15 minutes to get "yup that works great"

 

[abija]

From 2/10 to 9/10, edgy much?

It's Perkel. He needed shit like 100000 dmg increase to mix and match items, otherwise stats lacked "depth". Also considering shit like

Resource management. I really forgot how POE and GD shit on resource management. In both your mana is basically either off or on, never something you think about. In D3 it is constant balance which forces you to use other attacks than your most powerful.

he obviously didn't even get to mix and match those items properly

 

[Mastermind]

I also played it a bit few months ago, just to kill Diablo with my Monk that I stopped half way and one thing I got straight from it that combat is boring. Levels are boring and enemies are boring.

Monks are the most boring class. There's a couple of fun builds but if you aren't leveled to 70 and have access to compete sets it's a slog.

 

[Mastermind]

This has nothing to do with KBM but a complete lack of development of the genre.
For an example of how to have good controls with KBM, check out the game Victor Vran. It's mechanically very lite but the controls are far better than any other Diablo clone. It uses WSAD to move rather than click to move, btw.

people routinely lose their shit when devs implement WASD movement in diablo clones

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This has nothing to do with KBM but a complete lack of development of the genre.
For an example of how to have good controls with KBM, check out the game Victor Vran. It's mechanically very lite but the controls are far better than any other Diablo clone. It uses WSAD to move rather than click to move, btw.

people routinely lose their shit when devs implement WASD movement in diablo clones

Those people are retarded.

 

[Mastermind]

This has nothing to do with KBM but a complete lack of development of the genre.
For an example of how to have good controls with KBM, check out the game Victor Vran. It's mechanically very lite but the controls are far better than any other Diablo clone. It uses WSAD to move rather than click to move, btw.

people routinely lose their shit when devs implement WASD movement in diablo clones

Those people are retarded.

Retarded or not devs are wary from breaking convention.

Also TBH I didn't like victor vran. Chronicon is a diablo clone with WASD and a much better example of how well one plays.

 

[Xor]

Diablo 3 completely sucked on release; it was a grinding simulator designed to force you to use the AH to get any real progression through its difficulty system. The expansion made it actually a decent ARPG. So I don't know if I would give it Perkel's rating but he's right in that it's in a much, much better state than it was pre-RoS. Still not everyone's thing, obviously, but MUCH better than the massive waste of time and energy (and money) that the original release was.

Elites and Champions have usually a fucking lot more HP which means that your AOE spells will be joke for them so you have to develop skills for both single and group combat. It is definitely something i love about it after playing POE and wathcing it kill melee because via GGG head honcho : "AOE is just natural evolution and you shouldn't not play single target"

Wait until you get up to 100+ grifts where the guardians take half the time limit to kill. HP scaling gets nuts.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

This has nothing to do with KBM but a complete lack of development of the genre.
For an example of how to have good controls with KBM, check out the game Victor Vran. It's mechanically very lite but the controls are far better than any other Diablo clone. It uses WSAD to move rather than click to move, btw.

I wouldn't say this is really true. While not isometric, both Dragon's Dogma and Dark Souls are hack & slash games too. Hell, beside the fact that it's third person instead of isometric, Dragon's Dogma is a pretty similar system in regards to special movies; although Dogma has a superior meter management system for special attacks instead of Diablo's shit cool downs, and because it has direct control instead of point and click stuff like combos make more sense. So there have been developments in the genre, even if this particular corner of the genre hasn't really changed much since Nox and Diablo 2 came out in 2000.

Bit surprised nobody ever really picked up and ran with any of the stuff Freedom Force did. That would've been a couple years after Nox and Diablo 2. Allowing the player to pick up objects in the environment depending on their strength was a nice touch. And giving the player the option to select attacks from a menu with the mouse was good too.

 

[Kruno]

Torchlight 3 has infinitely more depth with 1 skill tree than Diablo 3 has with the entire game.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

This has nothing to do with KBM but a complete lack of development of the genre.
For an example of how to have good controls with KBM, check out the game Victor Vran. It's mechanically very lite but the controls are far better than any other Diablo clone. It uses WSAD to move rather than click to move, btw.

people routinely lose their shit when devs implement WASD movement in diablo clones

Those people are retarded.

Retarded or not devs are wary from breaking convention.

Also TBH I didn't like victor vran. Chronicon is a diablo clone with WASD and a much better example of how well one plays.

I have seen people on Blizzards forums asking for direct controls (usually controller, but WASD would fall into that too) and rolling to be patched in since the console version came out, so it's at least something they know even PC players want.

- first of all, after playing D3 for a while on sticks i think genre is best played with sticks. I used to think mouse and keyboard was the best for it (muh precision) but ARPG in essence is twin stick shooter with equipment. Playing ARPG like D3 on pad is just better. Once i got to play it like that it clicked in less than 10 minutes. I have gone back to Grim Dawn to confirm it and yep. GD also plays a lot better with pad. Basically what it does is it decouples your movement from targeting, moreover maneuvering is much easier because to maneuver on mouse you have to move mouse which takes more time than just bending stick a bit. All dodge actions whatever it is GD or D3 all also feel a lot better thanks to near instant nature of them. Yes there are some slight issues with not targeting best AOE attack position but overall it is pretty minor stuff once you start playing. Yes if you want to complete is mehsports m+k is the only way but if you want to have more fun sticks is way to go.

I had this realization when I ended up playing Diablo 3 on a console and it just felt so much better. It was like: Oh, this is just a beat 'em up. In the case of Diablo 3 since you don't really do anything with stats I'd say it's actually quite literally a beat 'em up, it just happens to be isometric instead of side scrolling...which some beat 'em ups were anyways. It didn't feel all that different from Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons beat 'em ups from around the mid '90s. Funnily enough it looks like at one point those Capcom games were going to be in a top-down kind of view. Would have been interesting to see how that turned out.



Now changing it to direct movement does fundamentally change one aspect of the game. And that is without the abstraction of point and click, invisable roll misses just don't work anymore. It's one thing to tell your character to walk somewhere, punch a guy, and he misses. It's another thing when you manually walk your character over somewhere, press the button to make your character attack, you see the attack hit, and then the word "Miss" pops up and no damage is taken like there's something wrong with the hitbox. Maybe they could still pull that kind of stuff off if there were specifically animations for you missing and enemies dodging, (which is how dodges work in action games anyways) but that aspect as it is now (which I'm sure is why they dropped misses from the console versions) doesn't work with a direct control input system.

It is funny because as much as I like it, and for how much better it feels to play with a controller, Blizzard does some really stupid shit in the console version of Diablo 3. It makes all the talk about the PC version being compromised for a later console version look so fucking stupid, because you play Diablo 3 on console and it's like: They weren't thinking about consoles when they made this. It's not terrible or anything, but there were better ways to do range attacks than want they came up with; even if the auto-lock function works really well.

 

[thesheeep]

It's another thing when you manually walk your character over somewhere, press the button to make your character attack, you see the attack hit, and then the word "Miss" pops up and no damage is taken like there's something wrong with the hitbox. Maybe they could still pull that kind of stuff off if there were specifically animations for you missing and enemies dodging, (which is how dodges work in action games anyways) but that aspect as it is now (which I'm sure is why they dropped misses from the console versions) doesn't work with a direct control input system.

That's just rubbish.
An animation is just an animation, pixels on the screen, something to represent the underlying stat-driven gameplay data / simulation.

Of course it is nicer if animation and gameplay data align perfectly, but it is by no means a requirement. Nor is it really possible for all kinds of games, or would be pretty damn expensive.
It is also silly as hell in X-COM and other similar games, when you can see the shotgun even pokes into the opponent's model, yet you still miss at 95%.
But it works anyway, because it is not the representation that defines what does or doesn't happen, it is the simulation.

In the same way, input is just input.
Doesn't matter if you click somewhere and your character goes there and then does something, or if you keep some button pressed to achieve exactly the same outcome.

In the end, the underlying simulation determines the outcome, not whatever you think you perceive on the screen. That's just feedback.
At least in case of RPGs - if it behaves differently, you got an action game on your hand.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

It's another thing when you manually walk your character over somewhere, press the button to make your character attack, you see the attack hit, and then the word "Miss" pops up and no damage is taken like there's something wrong with the hitbox. Maybe they could still pull that kind of stuff off if there were specifically animations for you missing and enemies dodging, (which is how dodges work in action games anyways) but that aspect as it is now (which I'm sure is why they dropped misses from the console versions) doesn't work with a direct control input system.

That's just rubbish.
An animation is just an animation, pixels on the screen, something to represent the underlying stat-driven gameplay data / simulation.

Of course it is nicer if animation and gameplay data align perfectly, but it is by no means a requirement. Nor is it really possible for all kinds of games, or would be pretty damn expensive.
It is also silly as hell in X-COM and other similar games, when you can see the shotgun even pokes into the opponent's model, yet you still miss at 95%.
But it works anyway, because it is not the representation that defines what does or doesn't happen, it is the simulation.

In the same way, input is just input.
Doesn't matter if you click somewhere and your character goes there and then does something, or if you keep some button pressed to achieve exactly the same outcome.

In the end, the underlying simulation determines the outcome, not whatever you think you perceive on the screen. That's just feedback.
At least in case of RPGs - if it behaves differently, you got an action game on your hand.

No, that's bullshit. Input isn't just input. One system is an abstract system in which you're telling a character to do something and they do it. It doesn't feel bad if you tell a character to go punch something and they miss. You're kind of out of the equation on that. It does feel bad if you're directly controlling a character however, can see you're hit hit the other character, and then nothing happens. That just feels like you've got a game with shit hitbox detection. You also know the whole point of that quote is it would fundamentally change Diablo to some extent?

And of all the games to make some kind of point about money on, the Diablo series ain't exactly it. They aren't hurting for money given how big the game is, and I doubt the cost of making it is anywhere near other huge games. Also, having a miss animation stuff like on melee attacks isn't going to brand the bank.

Given one of the biggest complaints you'll hear about X-COM are missed point blank shots, especially if your missing the target your gun is in, that seems like a very weird example to me.

 

[thesheeep]

No, that's bullshit. Input isn't just input. One system is an abstract system in which you're telling a character to do something and they do it. It doesn't feel bad if you tell a character to go punch something and they miss. You're kind of out of the equation on that. It does feel bad if you're directly controlling a character however, can see you're hit hit the other character, and then nothing happens. That just feels like you've got a game with shit hitbox detection. You also know the whole point of that quote is it would fundamentally change Diablo to some extent?

And of all the games to make some kind of point about money on, the Diablo series ain't exactly it. They aren't hurting for money given how big the game is, and I doubt the cost of making it is anywhere near other huge games. Also, having a miss animation stuff like on melee attacks isn't going to brand the bank.

It really seems to me you are incapable of understanding how games work.

Instead you argue about "feelings". Dude, your feelings are irrelevant, what matters is how the game works and how results are calculated and how the feedback is shown to the player.
If what you see doesn't match what you "feel", the game isn't to blame, it is obviously you who goes about it with a completely wrong stance, expecting it work like something it isn't (a pure action game).
At no point does the game tell you it is suddenly an action game just because of some input scheme change - and to expect it to do that is absurd -, it's the same game it always was, an RPG at least when it comes to hit & damage calculations.
If you want to make some actual points, please bring something that isn't 100% based on subjective notions like which input scheme you prefer or how that makes you feel. That's like arguing with children, or reading a lot of Steam reviews.

I'll agree that Blizzard should have the money to make feedback match the actual systems better if there is a problem, but that's really about it.
Anyway, there is usually so much going on at the same time, it's a bit of a mystery to me how you even got to notice that there might be a discrepancy between feedback and actual results.
When I use abilities or swing weapons, I see the HP bars going down and that's it - seems to work fine...

And though it's been a while since I played, isn't there an option to show damage numbers? Would be additional feedback.

Given one of the biggest complaints you'll hear about X-COM are missed point blank shots, especially if your missing the target your gun is in, that seems like a very weird example to me.

The point is not that a 95% shot can be missed, that's just logical. The systems work fine, that's what I meant. Whoever complains about that is a blathering idiot with no place to discuss the game mechanic at hand.
The problem is that the discrepancy is where characters are displayed right next to each other, standing still - which isn't what really happens and could certainly be improved animation-wise (imagine two characters of opposing sides going into some kind of special animation when right next to each other, showcasing they are not, in fact, just standing there). But, again, that's a problem requiring money thrown at it and not every dev has the money for that amount of detail.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

No, that's bullshit. Input isn't just input. One system is an abstract system in which you're telling a character to do something and they do it. It doesn't feel bad if you tell a character to go punch something and they miss. You're kind of out of the equation on that. It does feel bad if you're directly controlling a character however, can see you're hit hit the other character, and then nothing happens. That just feels like you've got a game with shit hitbox detection. You also know the whole point of that quote is it would fundamentally change Diablo to some extent?

And of all the games to make some kind of point about money on, the Diablo series ain't exactly it. They aren't hurting for money given how big the game is, and I doubt the cost of making it is anywhere near other huge games. Also, having a miss animation stuff like on melee attacks isn't going to brand the bank.

It really seems to me you are incapable of understanding how games work.

Instead you argue about "feelings". Dude, your feelings are irrelevant, what matters is how the game works and how results are calculated and how the feedback is shown to the player.
If what you see doesn't match what you "feel", the game isn't to blame, it is obviously you who goes about it with a completely wrong stance, expecting it work like something it isn't (a pure action game).
At no point does the game tell you it is suddenly an action game just because of some input scheme change - and to expect it to do that is absurd -, it's the same game it always was, an RPG at least when it comes to hit & damage calculations.
If you want to make some actual points, please bring something that isn't 100% based on subjective notions like which input scheme you prefer or how that makes you feel. That's like arguing with children, or reading a lot of Steam reviews.

I'll agree that Blizzard should have the money to make feedback match the actual systems better if there is a problem, but that's really about it.
Anyway, there is usually so much going on at the same time, it's a bit of a mystery to me how you even got to notice that there might be a discrepancy between feedback and actual results.
When I use abilities or swing weapons, I see the HP bars going down and that's it - seems to work fine...

And though it's been a while since I played, isn't there an option to show damage numbers? Would be additional feedback.

Given one of the biggest complaints you'll hear about X-COM are missed point blank shots, especially if your missing the target your gun is in, that seems like a very weird example to me.

The point is not that a 95% shot can be missed, that's just logical. The systems work fine, that's what I meant. Whoever complains about that is a blathering idiot with no place to discuss the game mechanic at hand.
The problem is that the discrepancy is where characters are displayed right next to each other, standing still - which isn't what really happens and could certainly be improved animation-wise (imagine two characters of opposing sides going into some kind of special animation when right next to each other, showcasing they are not, in fact, just standing there). But, again, that's a problem requiring money thrown at it and not every dev has the money for that amount of detail.

No, I get how video games works. Which is why I'm not the one arguing how a game feels to play doesn't matter, or that different control inputs won't change things. Or maybe I should put it this way: Different control inputs should change things.

Here, let me put it a different way, because for some bizarre fucking reason you seem to be having a really difficult time wrapping your head around this idea. In a traditional RPG and hack & slash, whether or not you hit something, or don't hit something, or dodge, or the enemy is able to dodge you is all based on not your ability to do something but your character's ability. Point and click controls like Diablo has work perfectly fine for this style of games because you're telling the character to go do something, and whether they're able to do it or not isn't based on anything the player did, but the character. The abstract nature of seeing a character swing and visually hit the character on screen but still miss also works ok for this, because again, the player isn't part of the equation.

When the player is part of the equation however, when you're directly controlling things, that change things. When the player is in control you need visual feedback. Think about Morrowind and Thief: The Dark Project for a second. Both games have archery. Now Morrowind function like a FPS, it has visual indicators like it is a FPS, you have a crosshair on the screen like it's a FPS. But it's not really a FPS, and despite having all the trappings of a FPS whether you do or don't hit anything is stat based. And at the start it feels like shit, it feels like you're playing a really shit FPS, and it doesn't fucking matter that it's an RPG, or what Bethesda was going for, because the controls and visual indicators they went with don't mesh with the system they were going for. Now think of Thief. Thief isn't an RPG. But it does do this thing where when you're shooting a bow and you have it drawn too long you get some wabble that gets worse and worse until you can't aim anymore. This feels good. Morrowind could have done this exact same thing with its archery system, made what was abstract something the player could see and have it funtion the exact same way it does in the game, and instead of feeling like shit it'd feel good. I want you to imagine you're playing a beat 'em up game, you press the attack button to attack, you see your hit hit the enemy, but nothing happens. It's as if the hit just isn't registering for some reason, like it's a glitch or bad hit boxes. Now you could say: But this is different, that's one thing and this is another. But the thing is that doesn't fucking matter, because now you're operating under the rules of that other things. You can however still do the exact same thing the other system does, but the abstracts need to be made not abstract anymore because now you're functioning under a whole different control type that brings different things with it. If you're still wanting to do "misses" with direct controls (which is fundamentally a more action based system) you're probably going to need to come up with a better way of making the player feel like that miss happened other than showing them they hit and having the work "miss" or a "0" pop up.

The long and short of it is direct control is a more player skill based system, and point-and-click controls are a more character skill based system. You can do character skill based system stuff with direct controls, but you're going to need to convey that information to the player better, because directly controlling the character is fundamentally less abstract than indirectly controlling them. Personally I think a more player skill based system works better for these kinds of action based hack and slash games than the purely character skill based system, which is why this game feels better on consoles were it's more like a beat 'em up, and stuff like Dragon's Dogma feels way better than the Diablo games.

 

[thesheeep]

Here, let me put it a different way, because for some bizarre fucking reason you seem to be having a really difficult time wrapping your head around this idea. In a traditional RPG and hack & slash, whether or not you hit something, or don't hit something, or dodge, or the enemy is able to dodge you is all based on not your ability to do something but your character's ability. Point and click controls like Diablo has work perfectly fine for this style of games because you're telling the character to go do something, and whether they're able to do it or not isn't based on anything the player did, but the character. The abstract nature of seeing a character swing and visually hit the character on screen but still miss also works ok for this, because again, the player isn't part of the equation.

This is correct.

When the player is part of the equation however, when you're directly controlling things, that change things.

No, it doesn't change anything about how the systems work, and that is where your fundamental misunderstanding lies.
If the game is an RPG, it doesn't matter if you have fully indirect mouse controls, direct FPS controls, if you are using kb&m, a controller, two controllers, gamecube bongo drums, microphone-input via loud fart noises or VR-cabin-controlled pelvis thrusts.
All of it will do nothing more but tell the character what to do. Outcomes of actions are determined by the character, not by the player, the player just issues commands. It isn't you doing the swing, it is the character. How you give the command doesn't matter. That's the fundamental core of an RPG.
Sure, you can introduce some action-ness by having more direct control, where now a need for timing comes in, as well as a need for clearer immediate feedback. But that's about it.

instead of feeling like shit it'd feel good.

It only "feels like shit" if the player does not understand what an RPG is and what is happening on the screen.
If the player would understand that they are playing an RPG and what they see is only a (flawed due to resource restrictions, mostly) representation of underlying systems, it wouldn't feel bad at all. It would be no different than another perspective or another control scheme.
Games can not be blamed for the idiocies of their players.

Or maybe I should put it this way: Different control inputs should change things.

Right, different control inputs should change a game's genre... brillant.
I'll just stop replying now, because your ramblings are getting too ridiculous to even bother with anymore.

 

[abija]

You dumb dense brick, this is not tb or rtwp. The range, precision and speed of player inputs matter.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Thesheeep, no, it fucking changes things. How you control a game changes things. How you control a game not having any effect on the game is maybe the dumbest fucking stance I've ever seen anyone take about video games.

If you make a RPG that feels like a shit beat 'em up, saying "Well, it doesn't matter because it's actually a RPG, so it's ok" doesn't stop it from feeling like a shit beat 'em up. Intentions only matter so much. Some things work for certain control schemes, and some things don't. I also didn't say controls change the genre, I don't know where you're getting that shit from. I said that with direct controls stuff like misses that look like hits don't work, or at least they don't work like they do in a indirect control system (specifically Diablo) like point-and-click. Also being hit when the attack don't visible connect with your character also doesn't work with direct controls, it doesn't work because it feels off when a game gives you the manual ablitity to avoid an attack but still lets you be hit; if a game does that then there's no point having that manual ability in the first place, in which case you may as well have a whole different system of control.

I never said you can't do things like misses, I said if you are your going to you've got to covey why something didn't hit differently. This is probably a good time to point out that Diablo 3 on consoles, where you do have direct control does drop misses, presumably because whoever headed it wasn't a total moron and either already knew, or discovered during development that that feels bad with that kind of control input. Likewise, you don't have it in Dragon's Dogma, because again, combat with that style of control would feel like shit with that style of missed hit. None of this is to say you can't do any stat based things with direct controls, but you've also got to approach things differently.

 

[thesheeep]

You dumb dense brick, this is not tb or rtwp. The range, precision and speed of player inputs matter.

For what?
That your character won't die because you took an eternity to press the ability button? Sure, but that's the case in every type of game that isn't turn-based, or paused.
That you actually make your character attack the right enemy instead of one on the other side of the screen? Okay, yeah...
But those are fairly small influences, and they only matter insofar that you do have to give your characters commands at the right time.
They don't decide if those commands are executed correctly in any way and they don't decide the outcome - not in an RPG, that is. I am assuming we are talking about RPGs.

About D3... does the game even have misses? I just installed it and had a look around and I don't think I missed a single time. On PC, that is.
Though maybe that is just early game, I don't know.

 

[Mastermind]

You dumb dense brick, this is not tb or rtwp. The range, precision and speed of player inputs matter.

For what?
That your character won't die because you took an eternity to press the ability button? Sure, but that's the case in every type of game that isn't turn-based, or paused.
That you actually make your character attack the right enemy instead of one on the other side of the screen? Okay, yeah...
But those are fairly small influences, and they only matter insofar that you do have to give your characters commands at the right time.
They don't decide if those commands are executed correctly in any way and they don't decide the outcome - not in an RPG, that is. I am assuming we are talking about RPGs.

About D3... does the game even have misses? I just installed it and had a look around and I don't think I missed a single time. On PC, that is.
Though maybe that is just early game, I don't know.

player has a dodge stat (mostly from monk passives), not sure about monsters