Development Info Diablo III item drops will encourage trading

[racofer]

Oh noes, the zero people in existance who used two handed axes with their sorceress are shit out of luck.

You can whine all you want about BUT BUT BUT PLAYER CHOICES, except that those choices don't mean dick if nobody chooses them.

Indeed, it's better to not have any choice at all than having it and opting for not using it. Too many choices could provoke a mental diarrhea on Diablo players anyway, amirite?

 

[Micmu]

Blizzard is dead to me.

 

[kingcomrade]

Automatically allocated stats has killed the game for all these people? When everyone put all their points into vitality anyway? Putting your points into stats was a waste of time.

I'm not much of a Blizzard fanboy but you guys are kind of being dill weeds. Oh gosh the thing I did once just for laughs for 5 minutes isn't in the game any more. No more battleaxe sorc blizz u ruin progaming.

You guys pick really stupid shit to care about in games.

 

[Shannow]

Oh noes, the zero people in existance who used two handed axes with their sorceress are shit out of luck.

You can whine all you want about BUT BUT BUT PLAYER CHOICES, except that those choices don't mean dick if nobody chooses them.

As for the stats thing, that wasn't character customization, that was just a giant fucking trap that you fell in if you didn't know the game well enough. There weren't multiple awesome builds with varrying degrees of what stat goes where for each class; every class had the same build stat-wise, and deviating from it made your character worthless and shitty. So oh god, I guess I have to complain about Blizzard removing a stupid new player trap from the game.

This is the mindset mmos (and diablo2) produce. Awesome, ain't it?
Yeah, and doing away with a feature that could be good and is actually part of any claim diablo ever had to being an RPG (whatever that is worth) instead of simply fixing/improving it sounds really intelligent, too.

Don't care about the restricted weapons, though. Which isn't surprizing since I don't care about

either.

 

[Data4]

I never was into Diablo, but reading about these gimps and changes makes me doubt Blizzard's next-gen MMO. It was touted as not competing directly with WoW, so a lot of people think it COULD draw from a UO influence rather than the standard Diku/EQ path of WoW.

Now it's looking more like it'll be competition with Free Realms.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Honestly, this seems like a hell of a lot of nitpicking. I'm hardly a blizz fanboy, and have really only played Starcraft with any regularity, but a mage not using a battleaxe doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. And as far as auto-allocated stats... if I know anything about Diablo 2, which I don't really, but isn't the entire game based around min-maxing anyway?

 

[Drakron]

And as far as auto-allocated stats... if I know anything about Diablo 2, which I don't really, but isn't the entire game based around min-maxing anyway?

Min-max means experimenting on builds, there is no point on trying to do it in Diablo III because everyone is the same besides equipment.

Even mix-maxers will ditch it because the challenge of building a build is gone.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

I never was into Diablo, but reading about these gimps and changes makes me doubt Blizzard's next-gen MMO. It was touted as not competing directly with WoW, so a lot of people think it COULD draw from a UO influence rather than the standard Diku/EQ path of WoW.

Now it's looking more like it'll be competition with Free Realms.

UO by Bliz would be like porn without sex.

 

[Lurkar]

And as far as auto-allocated stats... if I know anything about Diablo 2, which I don't really, but isn't the entire game based around min-maxing anyway?

Min-max means experimenting on builds, there is no point on trying to do it in Diablo III because everyone is the same besides equipment.

Even mix-maxers will ditch it because the challenge of building a build is gone.

You people keep saying that. "OH NOOOOOOOOOOO, NO MORE EXPERIMENTATION! NO MORE LEARNING WHAT BUILD IS BEST!"

Except there was no fucking experimentation in the first place. You're complaining that something is missing when that something wasn't even there to begin with.

Like I said - allocatable stats was just one big fucking trap. There weren't multiple awesome ways of making your character, there was one. For all classes. That doesn't make the game awesomely customizable, it means if you don't follow that one, you're fucked.

Yes, obviously Diablo 3 is dumbed down because it no longer has stupid and badly designed traps in the game to fuck over players. HOW DAR THAY. It's like whining that Fallout 2 removed ALL THE FUN of having to pickpocket from your NPC followers. WHAT IN PLANESCAPE TORMENT I CAN CHANGE BETWEEN FIGHTER MAGE AND THIEF AT ANY TIME? DUUUUUUUMBED DOOOOOOOOOWN.

 

[Secretninja]

I thought min maxing meant optimizing your character, not making a dumbfucked java-sorc.

 

[Drakron]

Oh?

And how people got to those THE ONE BUILD! ?

Trial and error, also there is no THE ONE BUILD from the start and creating a situation were there is THE ONE BUILD simply shows the shortcomings of design.

Diablo 3 had two choices, be less dependent on equipment or ditch stats ... they taken the easy way out.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Lurkar, you are arguing that since it was BROKEN in D2, it's better to remove it completely, instead of FIXING it. That is fucking dumb.

I could not care less about Diablo but anytime that a designer cuts features instead of improving/fixing them is alarming - and that people lap that shit up like Gecko's lap radioactive goo is worrisome. It's the same mental laziness trait that leads into quest compass, respawn chambers every 5 meters, "there is only one build"-syndrome and more stupidity.

So please, don't argue for less options, less thinking, more railroading and more hand holding.

 

[Data4]

I never was into Diablo, but reading about these gimps and changes makes me doubt Blizzard's next-gen MMO. It was touted as not competing directly with WoW, so a lot of people think it COULD draw from a UO influence rather than the standard Diku/EQ path of WoW.

Now it's looking more like it'll be competition with Free Realms.

UO by Bliz would be like porn without sex.

Are you kidding? IF and that's a big IF, they were to apply their production values and polish to a sandbox game in the spirit of UO, but with all the modern whizbang graphics and tech, it'd just be sex. Pure sex.

It won't ever happen, though. Sandbox is too niche and Blizzard's beancounters are too used to subs passing 1 million. The public at large is too stupid to figure out how to play a sandbox style game.

 

[Redeye]

In D2 I frequently used non-standard items to make groovy combos.

Usually this meant equipping one item that I normally wouldn't use in order to enable the use of something that I did want to use, but didn't qualify for.

Maybe there will be enough other things in D3 to offset the removal of Rube Goldberg item/stat strategies.

I want a shield-rammer build.
Dual-wielded shields on a lightweight, high-speed character that can do bulldozer zooms.
I don't even like barbarians, but this would be fun for a while.

fake edit: checked the site.

It's a bit gay.

Why couldn't they have brought back all of the classes from both D1 and D2?

 

[Turok]

I will play a wizard barbarian witch doctor multiclass caracter.


I can do that right?

 

[Jasede]

Cry more.

 

[MetalCraze]

Game developer from '90s:
"This feature doesn't work perfectly - let's improve it until it does!"

Game developer of 2000s:
"This feature doesn't work perfectly - let's cut it out"

Welcome to the next-gen gamedev philosophy.

 

[racofer]

That applies to a lot of stuff on the computer world too, unfortunately.

 

[Redeye]

I want a "Play As Monster" version where I get to burn villages and eat babies and invade castles full of humans.

I want to gas the Dwarves in their holes.

Most of all I want to launch a pogrom against the Elves.
Defoliate their tree-cities.

Also, a magical component system based on enemy body parts: human hearts, dwarf beards, halfling feet, gnome dicks, elf ears.
Use them to make charms.
The skin would be for scribing scrolls.

Potions would be blood-based with ground up charm components to add extra effects.

It's about time.

 

[KreideBein]

KC and Lurkar have it right: bitching about these changes is stupid; Blizzard is only making official what everyone already did anyway. Novelty builds are briefly fun but quickly become totally useless, and every character in D2 had standard stat distribution paths; enough strength (and dexterity in a couple cases) to use the really good items and everything else into vitality. People still play D2 because it has a formula that works, and it looks to work even better in D3. The only things in D2 that distinguished characters were skills and equipment (and people always seemed to flock to the same equipment in the endgame anyway), and D3 is seemingly adding to those areas. Maybe Blizzard is employing bad and/or lazy game design, but the changes aren't going to affect the core game.

 

[Haba]

I want a "Play As Monster" version where I get to burn villages and eat babies and invade castles full of humans.

I want to gas the Dwarves in their holes.

Most of all I want to launch a pogrom against the Elves.
Defoliate their tree-cities.

It'll come eventually (Overlord already kinda did it, after all).

 

[dolio]

The original Diablo didn't have any variation between characters. As long as you found enough elixers to max out your stats (and books to max all the spells), one naked mage was the same as any other, and so on. The only builds were equipment sets (does your mage use equipment to stand in the middle of guys and blow them up, or does use more fragile equipment that boosts his spell levels more).

Clearly Diablo 2 is the anomaly.

 

[Gerrard]

 

[Carceri]

There weren't multiple awesome builds with varrying degrees of what stat goes where for each class; every class had the same build stat-wise, and deviating from it made your character worthless and shitty.

It is true there is a general formula concerning stats that worked no matter what but I wouldn't go so far as to say this is the ONLY usable one. What about the specialised builds? Take for example the glass cannon amazon with all dexterity and no vitality, which is devastating. The warcries only barbarian dual-wielding javelins, his only purpose is to boost up other chars. I want to have the possibility to choose between a full vita build and a max block one, or to be able to invest more points into strength so my assassin would have a better damage output, therefore sacrificing health. I pretty much liked the idea to customise a character according to my needs.

 

[Jasede]

Yes, a barbarian who is useless except in boosting other characters - sounds fun - and an amazon who dies faster in hardcore than I can log in.

Must preserve this valuable diversity...