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

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Avireyn wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

What you're forgetting is that diablo (2) is far more about the loot than about the bosses, they were never truly hard (although they'll probably be harder in D3), and not using the system would just be gimping yourself. After all, what point is there to beating the boss in an easier way when you get crappy loot out of it.

I'm not only talking about Diablo II. I'm talking gameplay mechanics in general. If you give your players tools, they will use them. They will even try to use tools you don't give them.
Personally, I don't play for the loot. I play for the gameplay. Sure, getting loot is nice. But I never have and never will do hundreds of boss runs just to obtain better loot. Exception: If it's something that just vibes design-wise with my character (I've run Rivendare in WoW until my warrior had his two [Skullforge Reavers]).

And considering your example of Diablo II:
Duriel was an ass-hard boss for anyone (try soloing hardcore...). He hits like a mack-truck, he has his slowing aura, he charges and has massive health.

As a summon-mancer? You were SOL. As a sorceress specialized in anything other than Blaze you simply expected to die 5-10 times before taking him down. Same went for several other builds.

Now consider respec a la Diablo 3: The summonmancer goes bonemancer, the sorceress shifts to "max out blaze", and suddenly the encounter is very much different in terms of difficulty.

And it's not just boss battles: Being able to dish out AoE damage was beneficial in some encounter,s while in others, having monstrously powerful single target attacks won the day (the was a barbarian build centered around Leap Attack with a Polearm which excelled in single target damage but sucked in all else).
In Diablo II you would have had to weigh the pros and cons, because there are many different gameplay situations that play out differently with different builds.
With unlimited respecs, you can master them easily with the best suited spec for your task.
Take Diablo's Sanctuary: Go in with a highly mobile AoE build, clear the area. Switch to Single-DPS build (maybe with lightning and fire resists for his red frizz of death), summon Diablo, mow him down in five strikes.

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What you should also realise is that respeccing doesn't suddenly make content easy. Sure, maybe you now have a build that's a little more suitable to deal with a certain situation, but that doesn't mean it won't still be hard.

But it means that all situations have to be designed in a way that makes anything other than using that respec gimping yourself.
And that makes the "optional" respec not so optional any more.

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Tagek wrote:

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Avireyn wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

I'd say a lot of what they wanted to achieve with the current system is stopping you from being stuck with a crappy build. In diablo 2, even a lot of the common builds were rather weak unless you had insane gear.
Take poison necromancer for example, or smite paladin (yeah, the best class in the game with good gear, but total shite without it).
They really didn't do anything at all unless your gear was top notch.

But that dependency on gear is something of a home-brewed design flaw by Blizzard. They're the ones making their games more and more about gear being the only real character progression.

It's just an issue with builds that are extremely diverse.
You can't keep every build viable while also making it difficult for every build. Hence why they just threw out being tied down to a build.
I mean, if you built wrong in diablo 2 you had to make a new character and do it over. There it wasn't such a big issue, because in less than a day you had a lvl 85 due to boosting glitches. I'd say it's very likely that these kinds of glitches won't be in diablo 3, or atleast to a lesser extent, so having to remake a character would be an extremely tedious process that well over 95% of the player base would not enjoy.

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Tagek wrote:

That's just because diablo 2 has piss poor balancing.
Classes like sorceress and especially necromancer just weren't very fit to deal with a lot of encounters.
This problem is made even larger if they chose a more straying from the path type build.

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Diablo 3 won't really have builds that just straight up suck, and even if you manage to find one, you can just get rid of it.

Also, no. They won't require you to respec for every encounter, in fact, that's exactly what they want you not to do via the nephalem valor system...

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Tagek wrote:

My point is that diablo 2 had too many builds that sucked.
I suppose I could have just not mentioned the gear thing, but I didn't want to say they just sucked outright, because with good gear some of them didn't.

But yeah, in diablo 2 too many builds are ridiculously bad compared to others (big balance issues, and forces you to respec in most cases), they want to prevent this in D3.

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Avireyn wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

That's just because diablo 2 has piss poor balancing.
Classes like sorceress and especially necromancer just weren't very fit to deal with a lot of encounters.
This problem is made even larger if they chose a more straying from the path type build.

But for, that's exactly to appeal of having a variance of encounters and a variance of builds with strengths and weaknesses: Having to cope with difficult situations with the set of abilities you decided to go for.
Though I do agree that Diablo II had extremely poor balance. But just because Blizzard has mucked it up with Diablo II does not mean they should go for the easy way out and design a game around "everyone can be and do everything".
It's exactly the path WoW took. They had very diverse classes and builds within those classes, but with ever expansion, they morph nearer to each other. You have less and less the feeling of playing a certain class.

And frankly, I don't care if a class is weaker or stronger than another, as long as it's fun to play.

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Diablo 3 won't really have builds that just straight up suck, and even if you manage to find one, you can just get rid of it.

Also, no. They won't require you to respec for every encounter, in fact, that's exactly what they want you not to do via the nephalem valor system...

They don't want you to, but they give you the tools for it and only mild encouragement to not use those tools. Frankly, it comes across as a bit schizophrenic.

Plus: Taking away the possibility to even have a build that sucks... not my cup of tea. I like experimenting. I find that "D'oh, that sucks, next time I'll avoid that" is strangely alluring to me.

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Disillusioned wrote:

Hm... well some builds needed more gear to work around with, definitely, but it will be the same situation in D3, will it not? With +Skill gear, you're going to be looking for those items that enhance a few abilities you enjoy having and wish to take to the next echelon of effectiveness. I do know that abilities sort of, "level with you" in a way but it'll all peak the same for everyone else unless you have ways to surpass that soft cap.

Like, here's where I'm coming from: let's say by 60 you have a Barbarian that has Bash and Frenzy. I love Frenzy, but it pales in comparison to Bash simply due to how the game automatically scaled them upon levelling. I'm hellbent on making Frenzy work, and to do that, I cannot allocate points in my tree to have the power of Frenzy compete or go beyond that of Bash so I'm stuck needing to find gear in order to enjoy a particular skill I want to hone for Hell and Inferno difficulties where the difficulty will (allegedly) be significantly increased.

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Disillusioned wrote:

And here is where the balancing scale comes into play: Frenzy is underwhelming out of the box, but players on forums say that if you get this certain affix or this unique item that buffs it significantly, you can make it work. Now maybe you don't have all the time in the world to dedicate farming the entire game over and over for this chance drop, so you go to the RMAH to buy it.

But wait - a patch comes out which buffs Frenzy. This makes your Frenzy *ridiculously* strong and you have possibly broken the game with the buff in terms of difficulty. So Blzzard has to nerf it down... only due to your delight of seeing Frenzy more powerful, you went out and bought more items in the RMAH to further increase the power of it and sailed through the first act in Inferno.

The nerf hits, and now you and any one else that spent real funds to enhance their ability is in an uproar and demand refunds... I'm curious how Blizzard will handle this?

And I am absolutely shuddering to think how PVP will come into play with this in mind. Do they simply just say, "Fuck it" and leave anything overpowered as is? Do they attempt to balance through buff/nerf patches and risk their players wasting their money?

Hopefully they got that TOS nice and covered.