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

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Tagek wrote:

Lack of commitment.. you do realise that a skilltree system is the easiest of all things to develop right?
They could've done that if they wanted to, but they didn't.
It doesn't mean they are lazy, just that their decision in that regard doesn't please your personal taste.

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Avireyn wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

Well you probably didn't play a whole lot of diablo 2 that wasn't with your friends then. I know a ton of people who did uber runs, I even did them myself.
The majority of multiplayer games were made for the endgame, this was easily spottable just looking at their names alone.

Again, I don't doubt that you know a lot of people that did Uber runs. But even if you knew a thousand who did, it would still be statistically irrelevant. The point I'm trying to make is "five million people bought Diablo+LoD. For how many of those, End game was relevant? How many just finished normal mode? Why did Diablo II stop being appealing [wherever they stopped]?"

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Also your wow comparison is quite a faulty one, simply because raiding in wow requires a guild (and a good guild at that), and a shitload of free time if you want to achieve anything. Playing the endgame in D2 just requires playing the game whenever the hell you want to.

Actually, since 4.3, raiding in WoW requires just what you said: "Playing the game whenever the hell you want to". They've integrated a raid browser where you just can pop in and be raiding within minutes. They even scaled down the difficulty of raids. And still, many people are not enthusiastic about those raids.

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alcovitch wrote:

To be fair, there is story progression over the 3 games. If you have read any of the books or backstory, there is a reason why humans are becoming more powreful. They are the Nephalem. Their power was diminished by the worldstone. Now that it no longer exists, their nephalem powers are slowly coming back.

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I think you exaggerate a little in your description of D3's heros at teh start. You show up to town in nothing but rags and a crappy weapon. Hardly the image of a super hereo as you described them.

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Don't forget, it was part of Blizzards design philosophy that your character should feel powerful, because it's fun. And, it is.

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If you want an explanation for why you're doing what your doing... in diablo there is a prophecy that stats a falling star will mark the events of the end time. Those in the know (the heros) seek out the fallen star.

Also, each character has a much greater fleshed out background and motivations then in the previous games by far.

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miljan wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

Lack of commitment.. you do realise that a skilltree system is the easiest of all things to develop right?
They could've done that if they wanted to, but they didn't.
It doesn't mean they are lazy, just that their decision in that regard doesn't please your personal taste.

The thing they did is the easiest. Skill Tree, is much harder to do.

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Avireyn wrote:

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alcovitch wrote:

To be fair, there is story progression over the 3 games. If you have read any of the books or backstory, there is a reason why humans are becoming more powreful. They are the Nephalem. Their power was diminished by the worldstone. Now that it no longer exists, their nephalem powers are slowly coming back.

That is, however, not the point I'm trying to make. I'm well aware that Diablo has a backstory spanning three games and several books.
As Tagrek has pointed out, in D3 you apparently don't start out as the designated hero. That's something I genuinely like. And that's what my posting was about: How much are you the hero when you begin the game? How much of character development is possible or will happen?

But you do bring up a very interesting point. Blkizzard has started to peddle their lore through different media. And they expect you to buy it or you'll be left out of the loop.
Cataclysm is a poignant example of this policy: Without having read the comics, books and whatnot, a WoW player is left stranded with many, many questions that he doesn't know the answer to. He feels disconnected to the franchise unless he goes cross-media and picks up those books/comics.

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I think you exaggerate a little in your description of D3's heros at teh start. You show up to town in nothing but rags and a crappy weapon. Hardly the image of a super hereo as you described them.

As I said, I don't know everything and concerning Diablo II have to rely on what people tell me or I can garner from the web. I've been corrected by Tagrek on this issue :-).
Up until then, I very much had the impression of "From the start, the hero is treated as better than everyone around him/her".

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Don't forget, it was part of Blizzards design philosophy that your character should feel powerful, because it's fun. And, it is.

That's actually that bit that irks me about Blizzard's design philosophy. For me, being powerful is not necessarily fun. Becoming powerful is. There's a nice snippet I always hear when such matters are discussed: "And then, everyone will be special. And when everyone is special... no-one is!"
It's something I was very much reminded in TOR: You're special from the beginning. And to me, that made things very boring after a time. Everyone just keeps on gushing over how special you are. And since I didn't feel I'D earned any of that gushing, it was a very jarring experience. Same, by the way, goes for WoW since Cataclysm. I actually sometimes feel ashamed for being so gushed over by NPCs.

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If you want an explanation for why you're doing what your doing... in diablo there is a prophecy that stats a falling star will mark the events of the end time. Those in the know (the heros) seek out the fallen star.

Also, each character has a much greater fleshed out background and motivations then in the previous games by far.

Again, I have to rely on what I see. And from what I've seen, the characters are tacky stereotypes throwing around one-liners. I wonder why they don't have a Duke in there.

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Tagek wrote:

That point can be countered by: for the five million people who bought those games, how many people actuall rerolled a lot of characters? Those people (who quit early) have nothing to do with the argument, because it was about rerolling characters, and people who quit after normal never rerolled more than a few characters (if any).

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Also on wow, yeah, you can join a random raid.
But anyone who has raided seriously (I was in a pretty good raiding guild back when I played wow) will know that random 'PuG' (pick up groups) are absolutely worthless.
In fact, those groups were generally nothing but frustrating rather than fun, so it's no wonder that not a lot of people participated in them.
So again, just performing the act of 'raiding' doesn't require much. But actually achieving something does require a solid guild and a lot of time.

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Tagek wrote:

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miljan wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

Lack of commitment.. you do realise that a skilltree system is the easiest of all things to develop right?
They could've done that if they wanted to, but they didn't.
It doesn't mean they are lazy, just that their decision in that regard doesn't please your personal taste.

The thing they did is the easiest. Skill Tree, is much harder to do.

Yep, dividing the skills into linear lines while gaining nothing but passive bonuses by putting points into them is extremely hard to do. On the other hand, making multiple variations on every skill in the game each with different effects, numbers, and animations attached to them is a ridiculously easy task.

Don't bother replying. If you do, I won't respond because this discussion is just you saying 'no' without anything to back it up.

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Tagek wrote:

If you read my posts about this you can see that it's really just like in diablo 1 (except far more expanded) and POE.

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Avireyn wrote:

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Tagek wrote:

That point can be countered by: for the five million people who bought those games, how many people actuall rerolled a lot of characters? Those people (who quit early) have nothing to do with the argument, because it was about rerolling characters, and people who quit after normal never rerolled more than a few characters (if any).

That doesn't really counter my argument of "not all focus should be in end game". Even if they didn't reroll, they did play the game up to a point. But obviously, they didn't keep playing and as such didn't see end game at all. They did, however, see the path leading to end game.

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Also on wow, yeah, you can join a random raid.
But anyone who has raided seriously (I was in a pretty good raiding guild back when I played wow) will know that random 'PuG' (pick up groups) are absolutely worthless.
In fact, those groups were generally nothing but frustrating rather than fun, so it's no wonder that not a lot of people participated in them.
So again, just performing the act of 'raiding' doesn't require much. But actually achieving something does require a solid guild and a lot of time.

I'm sorry, but I don't get the point you're making here. I don't know if you played in LFR, but those raids are successful (since it's almost impossible to eff them up). As i said, they've implemented a special difficulty called "LFR" that is easier than normal mode.