Time Capsule from PoE Closed Beta -- a classic PoE vs D3 thread circa 2012

It might not seem TOO obvious right now, but I'm not the sort of gamer to do that anymore. If Diablo 3 did not have the word 'Diablo' in it, I wouldn't be all that interested. Precisely because it does not exhibit behaviour or factors that draw me to a game. We all have our flaws, and that's one of my big ones. I don't give every. single. game its due; if I don't like what I see, I don't play it.

The ONLY reason I bought Dungeon Siege III (I never played 1 or 2) is because I was desperate for ANYTHING clickclickclickkilly -- how was I to know Amalur was just around the corner?! Now that's a game I really do like, for all its shortcomings. And it has nothing to do with Diablo, really. The item system is more WoW, the gameplay is a weird mix of DMC and God of War (never played much of those either)...it just works for me.

Path of Exile (to talk about the game this forum was designed to...talk about, as it were) is just so unashamedly reliant on the things I adored in Diablo 1 and 2. It taps skill systems from two other games I played to death and back. It feels like it was made with a great deal of attention, with that sort of anal-retentiveness a game like this demands of its developers. It works for me.

Yes, Diablo 3 is going to offer a lot. It better, it's a hundred bucks out of the box here in Australia. The 'single player' campaign is going to be incredible. And you're absolutely right, being a one-spell-oh-lord-my-mana-is-gone starter in D2 was the pits, and it can occasionally suck in PoE as well, but that's the caster for you, all the way back to D&D. A typical wizard in D&D got like, what, 2-4 spells a DAY.

So with this buffed power system of D3 in play, yeah, the first time through that campaign is going to be nuts.

...But then what? I said I'm not a big multiplayer...player, but with the right people I am. I did D2HC with one person for over a year, and that was just so crazily intense. And I didn't do it for the story, either. I did it to try my sub-optimal builds with someone who wasn't afraid to be a little cheesy with hers. I was a holy-bolt paladin, she a shuriken-tossing assassin. I was, in fact, an early version of a healbot, but to make one of those on D2 was quite innovative at the time! No way was I going to play a hammerdin or a whirlbarb through HC! People did that all the time! Yawn.

So really, this is where we're at: what is the replay value of a game, for me, that severely restricts tangential, thematically diverse builds within any given class?

Well to be fair, although you can switch to whatever build you like when in a town, there will still be plenty of possible build combinations per class.

That will provide you with plenty of replay value. (At least, it will for me).


Btw: I loved amalur.. It's just a real shame that the item drops and difficulty were so broken. (After a few levels the game became a breeze even on the highest difficulty, and the items didn't really scale with your level at all)

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Tagek wrote:

Well to be fair, although you can switch to whatever build you like when in a town, there will still be plenty of possible build combinations per class.

Wasn't gonna post on this topic again, until you reminded me about this...

Watching D3 Beta play on YouTube, it was clear that the players were switching up skills on the fly. So, what did Blizzivision do? Changed things to require a trip back to ruttin' town just to change up skills.

Why? Because there was something wrong with what the players were doing?

"Changing skills while in the dungeon violates our play-flow esthetics, Blahdeblahdeblah... We'll put a stop to that, all right!"

So, in a game where one might ostensibly wish to avoid their character becoming a one-trick pony, the devs enacted a change in play requiring an inconvenient interruption of the action in order to change out one's current skill set.

Just another reason I lost all desire to play D3. =>[.]<=

Same thing killed Amalur that killed Skyrim for me. And no, it wasn't the shared function of lockpicking chests. Crafting uberness. Good lord. Skyrim, you COULDN'T ever possibly find anything with double enchant, therefore smithchanting was inevitably the only way to get decent items, and when you did, BAM, godmode. Amalur, Sagesmithing, same thing. Love the Irish accents though!

Yeah, D3 has plenty of builds, but not as we progress, Tagek. We've been over that. And if we're talking replay, then really we're talking replaying progression. Probably twinked/tweaked out the butt -- a lot of my sub-optimal builds came from a more normal high-level me finding an item and going, oh HEY I gotta try THAT on a different class.

Classic example, my staff assassin. Found ribcracker in HC NM act 2, saw the attack speed, the crushing blow, all that. I just had to try it on a teleporting, charge-building assassin. So I started one. Instead of leveling her up an easier way (traps or claws) and THEN equipping ribcracker to turn her into a Shaolin Goddess of Pain at level 31. I played her with staves the whole way. I twinked a basic War Staff with three topazes her way, and she was smacking through act 1 in no time. This taught me precisely how it'd feel using Ribcracker in a4 and beyond. What skills to use and when. That's what you have to do with a quirky build -- learn from the start. The very start.

I played an early melee wizard in D3 pre patch-13. Not with the cheese of Spectral Blades, just enchant weapon and armor buffs. The true melee wizard. From what I can tell (I read Flux's feedback when patch 15 came out), now that you can't change your equipped spells, it's impossible to put 'default melee attack' on LMB -- it's magic missile. This is even with elective mode on. Clearly their idea of 'melee wizard' is 'wizard who casts a cheap hits-everything-spell-with-his-sword'. Shameful.

...Seriously? You're telling me my wizard doesn't know how to swing a sword?


AND I might note that you don't even GET Spectral Blades now until level ELEVEN. The one 'melee wizard' build I could find linked to the official skill calc now is a projected level 58. That's not going to help me as I level up.

Meanwhile my blade-swinging Witch, rapier-stabbing Ranger and Fire-raining Duelist are having a ball clearing the Mud Flats at level...5...

EDIT: I'm browsing posts over at the d3beta about the removal of the default attack and what it did to the melee wizard. Here's the overwhelming response: 'Spectral blades is superior to basic melee attack in every single way, stop complaining.'

...If Blizzard had removed default attack from D2, you'd not have the Meleemancer. Saying a cheesy, spammy SPELL replaces a good weapon swing is utterly stupid.

Alright I get what you're saying.
Ultimately though those wacky builds are just for a few lols, but then you'd go back to your 'real' character to slay some baddies.
It's a shame that these types of builds are gimped, but it's not something I will particularly mind as I do enjoy dealing lots and lots of damage.

Kinda...but then a whacky 'lol' character turns out to be more FUN for me. In the end, I didn't have any standard builds on D2, or indeed on any of my 21 (yeah, 21) Gw1 chars across two accounts.

I think it all goes back to my lack of competitive spirit. Heck, I even play chess like it's a slaughterfest rather than actually trying to win. My little gaming group has a min-maxer, a rules lawyer who loves strategy tabletop, a few others, and me -- the one whose method is madness, if it's amusing and...relatively harmless.

This translates well to online gaming! ...Just not to D3, because like I said, they've forgotten what makes the clicking and killing rewarding: all the setup beforehand, and the tweaking after (items notwithstanding). Customisation.

I couldn't make a Meleemancer in D3.

And I think that's that.

PS Can't do it in Guild Wars 2 either, but good lord that game is going to work on all sorts of different levels, I really don't *need* to use quirky builds there to keep myself amused or crazy.

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Raycheetah wrote:

Watching D3 Beta play on YouTube, it was clear that the players were switching up skills on the fly. So, what did Blizzivision do? Changed things to require a trip back to ruttin' town just to change up skills.

Why? Because there was something wrong with what the players were doing?

"Changing skills while in the dungeon violates our play-flow esthetics, Blahdeblahdeblah... We'll put a stop to that, all right!"

Nope, watch again recent videos.
D3 is the game I feel screw a lot less the players.
You can switch your skill in the middle of nowhere, you just have a little 20s cooldown on the skill to not abuse it in PvP or during a boss fight.

@CharanJaydemyr: agreed, GW2 will be amazing, can't wait to play it aswell...
At least the traits system works, it's not here to screw noobs if they don't know the passive skill tree like PoE.

I never played GW before, why is there so much hype about it? I played a little WoW, is it similar to it?

You can't really compare a game that's fully playable albeit on beta (PoE) to Diablo 3 beta with only level 13 cap and only a miniscule part of Act1 playable, geez.

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kgb300 wrote:

You can't really compare a game that's fully playable albeit on beta (PoE) to Diablo 3 beta with only level 13 cap and only a miniscule part of Act1 playable, geez.

Funny, I think I kinda did. So did others here. Now, if you'd said 'you can't really say with absolute certainty what Diablo 3 will be like' then you'd be right, which is why we're doing this funny little thing based on impressions, expectations, experience and projections called 'speculating.' Know where else people 'speculate'? The stock market.