Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

I've posted that endless dungeon suggestion on the official forums. Hopefully something like that comes into existence.

I agree with you that the expansion will sell well because most of the player base played the game until the credits rolled and then moved on to the next game. They'll buy the expansion and play it until the credits roll and then shelve the game again. Meanwhile the rest of us will have to hear incessant whining about how the game is dying for the next decade.


I'm totally lost on chockomonkey's point, though
He seems to be saying that there was no casual game market in the mid-90's which seems bizarre given that that's all there was at the time

even if someone believes that Diablo was released in a scene where only hardcore games and gamers existed they'd be hard-pressed to argue that Diablo was part of it. Diablo, a game that takes zero skill and ability to play...diablo that consists of walking around clicking a button and picking up random loot.

The only hardcore element to the Diablo franchise is that one can waste a lot of time playing it and get nowhere. But if that's the criteria for a hardcore title then any zynga or coin-op qualifies.

Then chockomonkey is so adamant to disagree with me that he's even willing to categorize Diablo I and II and their expansions as Blizzard "mistakes"

I don't see how there can be much discussion when those are his positions
 
Diablo 1 was marketed to the group that exists somewhere between Roguelikes and Fallout, which tend to be pretty hardcore markets.
 
I think a lot of times people get heated over game discussions. At that point one should take a step back and realize games are meant to be played for fun. If you play something that lacks the enjoyment factor for you, play something else.

Back to the game at hand though, I still play from time time. It's still fun for me.
 
I won't buy it unless some of my IRL friends are going to pick it up to play over the weekend. My big problems with the game are

-Graphics...instead of a dark, scary looking world, it basically looks like World of Warcraft. I really dislike the art direction in the game. I have actually confused screenshots of this game for WoW (personal taste, I'm sure many people like the graphics)

-Too much of a grind and items are too similar/boring

-I don't want to have the ability to respect. I would prefer if it was the old method of building a certain character type and rerolling if you want to change. It freshens up the game a bit and keeps you dedicated to your build. This may sound crazy, but I prefer it this way.
 
Items are supposed to get another overhaul, but how drastic of a change those will be only time will tell.

They did say you don't have to grind normal mode if you want a Leoric Signet, just as an example. You could get that version in inferno as ilvl 63. But again, that does nothing but up stats. Most of the items need a huge overhaul. Some are good, but don't offer variety outside of bolstering certain damage types or skill types.
 
If you don't like the respec feature then play hardcore. It won't matter because by the time you want a new build or think you want to try a new one your character will be dead.

Also, the idea of different types of builds coming from that kind of system is largely revisionism. It didn't take long for the most optimal builds to be posted on the internet and then those builds to be copied. The only thing stats were good for were the minimum necessary for gear. Both were simply mechanics that appeared to increase complexity but diminished it in practice.


I've said it before in this thread and I'll say it again: people complaining about builds and the AH should post their diablo profile. Hardcore addresses all of those issues. The only thing it doesn't address is itemization and that will be addressed in upcoming patches.
 
Won't even lie. I'm softcore. Dumped about 850 hours into my main. I would never do that knowing my toon could die permanently. I'm waiting on Blizzard to let you sell characters like they've mentioned in the past. Once that feature rolls out, I will hang up my hat. I'm still having fun until then.
 
Started playing again. Seems like they made a bunch of improvements over the last few patches. So my hate is slightly less. Seems like more players are getting back into it as well.
 
If you don't like the respec feature then play hardcore. It won't matter because by the time you want a new build or think you want to try a new one your character will be dead.

Also, the idea of different types of builds coming from that kind of system is largely revisionism. It didn't take long for the most optimal builds to be posted on the internet and then those builds to be copied. The only thing stats were good for were the minimum necessary for gear. Both were simply mechanics that appeared to increase complexity but diminished it in practice.


I've said it before in this thread and I'll say it again: people complaining about builds and the AH should post their diablo profile. Hardcore addresses all of those issues. The only thing it doesn't address is itemization and that will be addressed in upcoming patches.
It does address them...but not in a way I like. I want to have many characters, not one that can just die (and probably infuriate me due to a cheap death).
 
Diablo's runes were released in the expansion

Diablo II's runes were released in the expansion

Diablo III's runes will be released in the expansion

Which Diablo I expansion released runes ?? :confused:

I've played all three Diablo games and I don't remember runes in Diablo, nor rares items. The best items were the blues like ORoZ, OaOZ, KSOH, KSOS, etc.
 
I'm totally lost on chockomonkey's point, though
He seems to be saying that there was no casual game market in the mid-90's which seems bizarre given that that's all there was at the time

Maybe i'm just not making myself clear.

Game devs made games. They didn't have to really consider making their game accessible to the most people, because there was not a casual market at the time. Sure you could argue that there was tetris and that was a casual game... but i'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the millions of people who sub to WoW or buy the next CoD, and those are the only games they've played.

Then chockomonkey is so adamant to disagree with me that he's even willing to categorize Diablo I and II and their expansions as Blizzard "mistakes"
I didn't think i was that hard to understand, but i'll elaborate again.

I never said the games were mistakes. You mentioned runes weren't included until expansions in all the games. I say that they are silly for making that mistake with each iteration of their game. where obviously they believe runes should exist. Either they keep making the same mistake again and again, or they're purposefully holding out to add an item to a "features" list on the expansion.
 
I don't really see how people can call D3 casual and yet bitched about its difficulty all at the same time. Sure its easy now but when I first passed the game pre 1.0.3 this was one hardcore fucking game....Took me and a group of four 8 hours to beat 1 boss.

Its just more action and less RPG.....Items and Leveling up are pretty much the only 2 RPG elements in the game. That doesn't make it any more or less casual just different.

In the end there are no casual games only casual players.....I rock Tetris hardcore like a boss.
 
I don't really see how people can call D3 casual and yet bitched about its difficulty all at the same time. Sure its easy now but when I first passed the game pre 1.0.3 this was one hardcore fucking game....Took me and a group of four 8 hours to beat 1 boss.

Its just more action and less RPG.....Items and Leveling up are pretty much the only 2 RPG elements in the game. That doesn't make it any more or less casual just different.

In the end there are no casual games only casual players.....I rock Tetris hardcore like a boss.

Being hard doesn't make it hardcore imo. Its initial difficulty would have been received differently if there were actually different elements in the game to tweak in order to overcome the challenges. Without some sort of talent system, players just hit a brick wall. There was no, "Well maybe my spec sucks so i'll see what i can improve there"

It was simply a gear-check, and that's not fun.
 
Being hard doesn't make it hardcore imo. Its initial difficulty would have been received differently if there were actually different elements in the game to tweak in order to overcome the challenges. Without some sort of talent system, players just hit a brick wall. There was no, "Well maybe my spec sucks so i'll see what i can improve there"

It was simply a gear-check, and that's not fun.

Actually before all the nerfs, inferno was really challenging. You couldn't buy your way though the game so you really had to balance what you could afford. There was a small window of time and gear worth when that balance was really fun an challenging. Actual player skill and dps/defense gear balancing is what got me through inferno before the sweeping nerfs. I had up to two full rows of gear that I swapped in and out mid dungeon crawling to handle different situations (DR, Invul mins, and mortars required me to change my gear most of the time).

Of course gear could trivialize everything just as under geared made it impossible, but there was a time that the op gear was just impossible to obtain. People confused the challenge with requiring more gear and rage quit because they couldn't get gear that wasn't needed. People thought you needed 1k resists and 100k dps to beat inferno, but that was definately not the case and good players realized it.

When I got to diablo in inferno I had to actually learn all his abilities, I had to learn how to survive and dodge what I could and handle the sticky situations. I had to use the map layout to my advantage to win. And with 30-40k dps, I had to play at a near perfect level for a long time to beat it. I picked up and tried new abilities that I never used before, I re-evaluated skills I relied on the entire inferno playthrough. I'm pretty sure this was the intention of how blizzard wanted it to be challenging.

Of course came the crybabies that didn't understand godly gear wasnt needed and came the sweeping changes. The increased drop rates and an ah in general accelerated the real issue that endgame gear was broken. When a single level could allow access in gear that increased your dps an order of magnitude, then there are issues. Then came more crybabies that thought 200k dps was needed to beat inferno; this came more nerfs to inferno. As the nerfs came the gear became more overpowered.

Now diablo is trivial, if you still need the ah to beat him, you should stop playing video games. What challenge existed before is all gone.
 
Well Inferno at first was broken as most mobs literally 1 shot you. I used to take my Demon Hunter and skip most packs just to be able to continue. I played solo with @500ms ping as I live in NC. My ping to the Asian servers was 300ms. But then again I did it with 12k dps and really low health. YMMV as doing it with 12k dps was a bit harder than 40k so my memories weren't as rosy.

And you're right Blizzard did nerf Inferno too much for the casuals. But then again without the AH most of the people wouldn't have gotten through it in the first place. So I reckon that the nerf was to allow people to wear whatever dropped to progress through Inferno as the probability of getting decent gear playing solo was pretty much impossible. Of course some people were lucky and got good drops I'm sure that allowed them to progress easier.

It's like Blizzard doesn't really know what type of game they want to build. And when confronted with that challenge they just make it easier. Whatever works for them as they certainly make tons of money off it.
 
Maybe i'm just not making myself clear.

Game devs made games. They didn't have to really consider making their game accessible to the most people, because there was not a casual market at the time. Sure you could argue that there was tetris and that was a casual game... but i'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the millions of people who sub to WoW or buy the next CoD, and those are the only games they've played.
This point you're making is historically incorrect.

You can't throw Tetris out and claim there was no casual game market while using CoD and WoW as examples. Those games didn't come about until ten years after Diablo and Warcraft and twenty after tetris and Super Mario Bros. In the mid-90's the casual, mainstream gamer market was all that existed. What you may be confused about is the fact that when it came to gaming on a computer one had to be a geek to run them or have a friend who was a geek to set it all up. But make no mistake about it the games were far from "hardcore."

Blizzard's transition into the subscription model was controversial at the time in large part because the market wasn't used to the kind of thing you are taking for granted now--millions of players only playing a single game for years on end. That phenomenon simply didn't exist until mid-2000. There wasn't even such a thing as millions of people playing a game simultaneously together because the internet as people know it today didn't even exist.

The Diablo and Warcraft franchises had already been going strong for a good ten years prior to the timeframe you're thinking of. Not only that but Diablo wasn't originally created by Blizzard, nor was it even intended to be a multiplayer game (or even a real time game, for that matter). It's first expansion was published by Sierra On-Line. Sierra was making King's Quest, Police Quest,Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry. Adventure games.

Someone mentioned that Diablo was marketed like a roguelike. Well, again, roguelikes weren't marketed to "hardcore" gamers back then. No such thing existed. Rogue was a game from the mid-80s and it's marketing was handled by Epyx. Take a look at their games list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epyx

Nothing hardcore on there at all. Rogue itself is subtitled "The Adventure Game"
 
lots of words

I was talking about that point in time when inferno was difficult.

That said, i don't disagree with anything you said... i saw my barbarian and monk friends doing that.

I had a very different experience. What class did you do that with? I tried to do the same shit (you know, overcome the challenges by trying different specs).. as a wizard, there was jack shit i could do.
(unless, of course, i actually suck and missed it somehow... but it wasn't until after they fixed CC that wiz in inferno became fun)
 
This point you're making is historically incorrect.

You can't throw Tetris out and claim there was no casual game market while using CoD and WoW as examples. Those games didn't come about until ten years after Diablo and Warcraft and twenty after tetris and Super Mario Bros. In the mid-90's the casual, mainstream gamer market was all that existed. What you may be confused about is the fact that when it came to gaming on a computer one had to be a geek to run them or have a friend who was a geek to set it all up. But make no mistake about it the games were far from "hardcore."

Blizzard's transition into the subscription model was controversial at the time in large part because the market wasn't used to the kind of thing you are taking for granted now--millions of players only playing a single game for years on end. That phenomenon simply didn't exist until mid-2000. There wasn't even such a thing as millions of people playing a game simultaneously together because the internet as people know it today didn't even exist.

The Diablo and Warcraft franchises had already been going strong for a good ten years prior to the timeframe you're thinking of. Not only that but Diablo wasn't originally created by Blizzard, nor was it even intended to be a multiplayer game (or even a real time game, for that matter). It's first expansion was published by Sierra On-Line. Sierra was making King's Quest, Police Quest,Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry. Adventure games.

Someone mentioned that Diablo was marketed like a roguelike. Well, again, roguelikes weren't marketed to "hardcore" gamers back then. No such thing existed. Rogue was a game from the mid-80s and it's marketing was handled by Epyx. Take a look at their games list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epyx

Nothing hardcore on there at all. Rogue itself is subtitled "The Adventure Game"

We're both talking about the same thing dude. You're just calling it a casual market. I don't like using that term because in recent times we have seen a real casual market develop. You can't compare the two markets and call them both casual.

By casual i mean games made and marketed for the masses. Games were not made nor marketed for the masses in the 90's because the masses had yet to adopt gaming.
 
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The point is that my original claim, that Blizzard always has been a gaming company that targets the mainstream consumer, is correct.

You disagreed with that.

The point that people continue to raise in this thread that Blizzard is somehow (and only recently with D3) turning its back on its primary customers, and that their primary customers are a hardcore gamer scene, is wrong.
 
The point is that my original claim, that Blizzard always has been a gaming company that targets the mainstream consumer, is correct.

You disagreed with that.

The point that people continue to raise in this thread that Blizzard is somehow (and only recently with D3) turning its back on its primary customers, and that their primary customers are a hardcore gamer scene, is wrong.

I'm not sure we know what your definition of hardcore is.
 
Hardcore as in dedicated or hardcore as in masochist ?
Look at what he's saying:
By casual i mean games made and marketed for the masses. Games were not made nor marketed for the masses in the 90's because the masses had yet to adopt gaming.

It doesn't matter what terms or definitions one uses chockomonkey's perspective on gaming's history is flat out wrong.

For him to think that WoW and CoD were the advent of "gaming for the masses" he's probably in his twenties. The 90's are often regarded as the "Golden Age of Gaming"

Aside from the Sierra titles I already listed hasn't anyone here heard of:
Ultima, Thief, Ultima Underworld, X-Wing saga, System Shock, Deus Ex, Fallout, Darklands, Baldur's Gate, UFO, Jagged Alliance, etc.

Aside from Sierra have any of you heard of Broderbund?
One can't just ex out titles like Myst or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? among a slew of other titles that were on every computer in every school across the US? The TV show Two Broke Girls made a Carmen Sandiego reference last night.
 
Look at what he's saying:


It doesn't matter what terms or definitions one uses chockomonkey's perspective on gaming's history is flat out wrong.

For him to think that WoW and CoD were the advent of "gaming for the masses" he's probably in his twenties. The 90's are often regarded as the "Golden Age of Gaming"

Aside from the Sierra titles I already listed hasn't anyone here heard of:
Ultima, Thief, Ultima Underworld, X-Wing saga, System Shock, Deus Ex, Fallout, Darklands, Baldur's Gate, UFO, Jagged Alliance, etc.

Aside from Sierra have any of you heard of Broderbund?
One can't just ex out titles like Myst or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? among a slew of other titles that were on every computer in every school across the US? The TV show Two Broke Girls made a Carmen Sandiego reference last night.


Quite a few of the games you mention in this post are considered hardcore to the gaming industry of today.
 
When I got to diablo in inferno I had to actually learn all his abilities, I had to learn how to survive and dodge what I could and handle the sticky situations. I had to use the map layout to my advantage to win. And with 30-40k dps, I had to play at a near perfect level for a long time to beat it. I picked up and tried new abilities that I never used before, I re-evaluated skills I relied on the entire inferno playthrough. I'm pretty sure this was the intention of how blizzard wanted it to be challenging.


Now diablo is trivial, if you still need the ah to beat him, you should stop playing video games. What challenge existed before is all gone.

I remember clearing Inferno with my monk pre-nerf and having my friend (Demon Hunter using the melee build with traps) joined me at Diablo to clear it with me... he ragequitted during the clearing of Act 4 while I continued. It was easier alone also since the monster scale was insane :eek:

I was able to DW to clear Act 3 but in Act 4, I wasn't strong enough so had to respec and use shield to make any progress with a Helm of Command :cool:

I also remember not being able to pass the first stairs in Stonefort-Act3 because we were getting killed by the first Elite... :p

We had to maximize everyone's class strength to make any progress and work together!
 
Yeah, say what you will about Inferno, but it was ridiculously intense back then. Clearing an act was a huge accomplishment.

edit: Which is why I get irrationally angry when people these days complain about Inferno being too hard or requiring the RMAH. 3 difficulty nerfs, countless class and item buffs, and you still think it's a brickwall???
 
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Also, the idea of different types of builds coming from that kind of system is largely revisionism. It didn't take long for the most optimal builds to be posted on the internet and then those builds to be copied. The only thing stats were good for were the minimum necessary for gear. Both were simply mechanics that appeared to increase complexity but diminished it in practice.

Those attribute minimum requirements were integral to the system because they created a framework to build upon for both characters and item designers. Want to know what happens when you remove them and don't redesign the system? Nearly everyone can use Skorn. Every DH can use crossbows or bows or hand-crossbows. Nothing is special.

Now, many moons later, they've identified a need to make some cool new items that actually are special. Go figure.

If there is a high DEX requirement on a Lightsaber, you ensure that not everyone can equip it unless they either a) invest attribute points, b) use stats on other pieces of gear to get the DEX, or c) some combination of a and b. Of course, that investment into DEX may also influence what kind of shield you can and cannot use. It also means you'll have less life, but you will likely have a higher block chance. Depending on the class, your damage may benefit directly from that dex, or it might suffer for it. The D3 way is just "everyone can equip it, hope you like the numbers."

The fact that Barbs and Wizards can wear the same armor with no other requirements is beyond ridiculous, and a simple example of how the stat points had purpose in D2: gear stat requirements -> stat allocation choices <- -> gear choices <- -> skill choices. Each element of customization impacted each other element, which is where build diversity came from; the fact that there were cookie-cutter builds that you could look up to keep your brain from working doesn't change that.
 
Those attribute minimum requirements were integral to the system because they created a framework to build upon for both characters and item designers. Want to know what happens when you remove them and don't redesign the system? Nearly everyone can use Skorn. Every DH can use crossbows or bows or hand-crossbows. Nothing is special.

Now, many moons later, they've identified a need to make some cool new items that actually are special. Go figure.

If there is a high DEX requirement on a Lightsaber, you ensure that not everyone can equip it unless they either a) invest attribute points, b) use stats on other pieces of gear to get the DEX, or c) some combination of a and b. Of course, that investment into DEX may also influence what kind of shield you can and cannot use. It also means you'll have less life, but you will likely have a higher block chance. Depending on the class, your damage may benefit directly from that dex, or it might suffer for it. The D3 way is just "everyone can equip it, hope you like the numbers."

The fact that Barbs and Wizards can wear the same armor with no other requirements is beyond ridiculous, and a simple example of how the stat points had purpose in D2: gear stat requirements -> stat allocation choices <- -> gear choices <- -> skill choices. Each element of customization impacted each other element, which is where build diversity came from; the fact that there were cookie-cutter builds that you could look up to keep your brain from working doesn't change that.

Please go work for Blizzard. Somehow this was entirely lost; my wizard running around with a 2H axe or crossbow is retarded. Not only that, but outside of maybe a crazy .001% chance roll, wands and staves are 99.99% useless. Completely, absolutely, no sense to the system whatsoever. I'm not sure how so many devs, in the company that made WOW, Diablo, Diablo 2, could miss that so much.
 
Every DH can use crossbows or bows or hand-crossbows. Nothing is special.
That's because DH is primarily a bow class; only DH can duel wield 2H crossbows and only DH can wield a quiver (with or without a 2H weapon)

It also means you'll have less life, but you will likely have a higher block chance. Depending on the class, your damage may benefit directly from that dex, or it might suffer for it. The D3 way is just "everyone can equip it, hope you like the numbers."

The fact that Barbs and Wizards can wear the same armor with no other requirements is beyond ridiculous
Barbs and Wizards can wear the same armor but the result is what you said you liked about D2 is what will happen in D3: you'll have less life, but higher block chance or in the case of an int piece of armor higher resistance or a str piece of armor more armor but less dps

The D3 way is *not* everyone can equip it. That's false. Numerous things can not be universally equipped and of the things that can be universally equipped many are not optimal. The problems that do exist are that certain gear doesn't encourage various builds. Blizzard instead left that up to the players and has since decided that they'd like to encourage more usage of *skills* (not classes or items). Itemization is an issue in that regard but they aren't adding *more* different items but rather adding affixes so that gear will synergize better with abilities.

The cookie-cuttter builds didn't keep people's brains from functioning. If certain stats weren't allocated in specific ways a player hits a brick wall end-game and has to re-roll from scratch. That's not build diversity.

Furthermore, the same .001 chance of finding BIS gear applied in D2 but by the time most people whining about D3 were playing the game everything was duped 6 ways to Sunday.
 
Look at what he's saying:


It doesn't matter what terms or definitions one uses chockomonkey's perspective on gaming's history is flat out wrong.

For him to think that WoW and CoD were the advent of "gaming for the masses" he's probably in his twenties. The 90's are often regarded as the "Golden Age of Gaming"

Aside from the Sierra titles I already listed hasn't anyone here heard of:
Ultima, Thief, Ultima Underworld, X-Wing saga, System Shock, Deus Ex, Fallout, Darklands, Baldur's Gate, UFO, Jagged Alliance, etc.

Aside from Sierra have any of you heard of Broderbund?
One can't just ex out titles like Myst or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? among a slew of other titles that were on every computer in every school across the US? The TV show Two Broke Girls made a Carmen Sandiego reference last night.
the fuck man? now you're makin shit up that i never said.

Where did I say that "WoW and CoD were the advent of gaming for the masses?"

I used those two titles to define casual gaming today because they are broadly recognized NOW as games for the casual masses.

I also don't understand the point of listing off all those games. If anything, that list proves that developers were not creating games for the lowest common denominator (the masses). They were still trying to make good games in the 90's yo.
general brilliance.

It's because of the removal of such a system that you have their nonsensical "melee takes 30% less damage than everyone else" shit.

The game just reeks of decisions being made bass-ackwards. Like resists.

How is it that All Resistance rolls higher than single resists?

I'd bet money that was a backwards decision made when they were developing that monk passive.
 
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Umm... The best gear in D3 for a long time was stuff that the class in standard fantasy lore wouldn't use. For example my wizard was rocking a 2hnd mace and my wizard companion had a 2hnd sword as 99.9% of the wands and staves on the AH were garbage. I could have equipped a different weapon, but at a penalty to dps and survival stats.

Really if you were to be honest about D3 it's more of a game of how fast can you kill, than how long you can survive. I remember eventually getting my Wizard to 130k dps and 12k HP. As long as I was aware of my surroundings I never died as nothing lasted long enough in Inferno level 1 to kill me. If I glanced over to Pandora to change a track I was pushing up daisies.

So eventually Inferno became a dps race to see who could grind and clear the fastest. Nobody really wore what you thought a fantasy character wore as most of it was trash gear. Eventually I did get a wand and offhand combo, but that was only because of some weird damage calculation about black weapon damage if you remember that.

Even them I still had better 2hnders, but I just hated looking like the village idiot. Well that's how I felt using a 2hnd axe on my Wizard. Maybe it was cool with the rest of you, but it irked the heck out of me.

Maybe I'm just too set in my ways. :)
 
The stat requirements in D2 were great....until about level 70 then they became rather pointless.

Get enough strength to equip the gear you wanted.
Get enough dex to not miss EVERY single hit and max block
Everything else Vitality........True for all classes.

Stat allocations did become pointless near end game but served a purpose before Hell...Gear level requirements are the only real barrier to gear in D3.

Did anyone ever play Magicka? I swear Blizzard saw that game and said lets make Diablo 3 like that but with gear. D3 is much closer to Magicka then it is to D2. I'd even say its closer to a game like gauntlet legends than D2 as well.

Labeling "Casual" as anything geared towards the masses doesn't work at all because it puts games like BF3 into the casual category....which it isn't.


I'd say Difficulty, learning curve, time investment, and special sauce are the 4 big factors in what I'd consider hardcore. I'd give them a hardcore score each area getting 10 points. Special Sauce covers that magic factor the makes a game.....Like for BF3 it would be the requirement of TeamWork which adds to its hardcore factor. D3 would be things like Aution house, build research/planing.

Diablo 3 started out as 8-7-8-5
Now its 3-6-6-5

BF3 would be something like 8-8-8-9.

[H]core scale just invented.
 
Even them I still had better 2hnders, but I just hated looking like the village idiot. Well that's how I felt using a 2hnd axe on my Wizard. Maybe it was cool with the rest of you, but it irked the heck out of me.

Maybe I'm just too set in my ways. :)

It's just the WoW influence. It's the WoW engine isn't it? It's probably WoW devs too.

Everything from Int = Wizard and Dex = Monk to what you describe above. It's all similar to WoW.

Even their half-assed crafting and gems are akin to WoW.
 
In Dungeon and Dragons casters relied on intelligence and they could wield anything except, if I remember correctly, shields. They were proficient in certain weapons (and blunt weapons were one of their weapon class proficiencies, btw) and had deficiencies in others. Those bonuses or detriments impacted the rolls...but they were allowed.

But even if D3 allowed all classes and all builds to use whatever they want (which isn't accurate) then arguing against that system and limiting wizards to only using wands and staves would simply reduce build options--the opposite of what some of you were saying a few posts and pages back.

Some of you appear to be angry without even knowing *exactly* why you're angry.

There's not enough build diversity so therefore Blizzard should require that stats get allocated in specific ways?
The best weapon you could find for your wizard at the time was a 2H mace but that looks silly according to Lord of the Rings so therefore it shouldn't be allowed?
 
In Dungeon and Dragons casters relied on intelligence and they could wield anything except, if I remember correctly, shields. They were proficient in certain weapons (and blunt weapons were one of their weapon class proficiencies, btw) and had deficiencies in others. Those bonuses or detriments impacted the rolls...but they were allowed.

But even if D3 allowed all classes and all builds to use whatever they want (which isn't accurate) then arguing against that system and limiting wizards to only using wands and staves would simply reduce build options--the opposite of what some of you were saying a few posts and pages back.

Some of you appear to be angry without even knowing *exactly* why you're angry.

There's not enough build diversity so therefore Blizzard should require that stats get allocated in specific ways?
The best weapon you could find for your wizard at the time was a 2H mace but that looks silly according to Lord of the Rings so therefore it shouldn't be allowed?

I don't think you're understanding correctly.

He's not saying that you should limit wizards to just wands. He's saying that if you want to be an axe-wielding wizard, that there should be trade-offs or considerations you have to make. And it is out of those trade-offs that build diversity is realized.

Right now all wizards are the same. They all just chase a DPS number. I should be able to create a strength-based wizard which focuses on damage mitigation through armor (having more strength should also let me put on equipment which has higher armor values) and thus i'd also have the strength required to equip my axe.

As an aside, I've also always had issues with using 2-handed melee weapons on my wizard. Not because they're melee weapons, but because their physical damage somehow impacts my spell damage.
 
So I'm misunderstanding him? When he writes:

Umm... The best gear in D3 for a long time was stuff that the class in standard fantasy lore wouldn't use. For example my wizard was rocking a 2hnd mace

Nobody really wore what you thought a fantasy character wore as most of it was trash gear. Eventually I did get a wand and offhand combo, but that was only because of some weird damage calculation about black weapon damage if you remember that.

Even them I still had better 2hnders, but I just hated looking like the village idiot. Well that's how I felt using a 2hnd axe on my Wizard. Maybe it was cool with the rest of you, but it irked the heck out of me.

Maybe I'm just too set in my ways. :)
he's really talking about encumbrance?

okay...now remind me who wrote this again?
the fuck man? now you're makin shit up that i never said.
 
They just plain and simple borked the drops/droprate so the AH would have a purpose. It was nigh impossible to gear yourself up without it (haven't played since about a month after the RMAH came out). I suspect it still is. It wasn't fun to me to grind away to not actually get something for my charactor myself. So the game lost the appeal the earlier ones had in my eyes. I suspect it did to a good number of folks. Beat Diablo on Inferno and have not played since.
 
Barbs and Wizards can wear the same armor but the result is what you said you liked about D2 is what will happen in D3: you'll have less life, but higher block chance or in the case of an int piece of armor higher resistance or a str piece of armor more armor but less dps

Lol, way to cherry-pick a couple of sentences and ignore the rest of my comment.

You are now comparing two classes wearing an identical piece of armor (Barb+INT vs Wiz+INT) with having different classes of armor to choose from (Dusk Shroud vs Sacred Armor). You may have responded to me, but it is clear that you did not even understand what I wrote.
 
I've never really watched movies, but I do love to read books. From my experience reading books and playing boardgames as a child, D3 gear choices don't fit the fantasy worlds that I construed in my mind. I always envisioned RPG games as extensions of those precursor tales that I read as a child. Yes, I know that there were melee based wizards, as there is a viable corresponding build in D3.

The problem is that to realize that build you can use a salad fork to melee with if that was a choice in the game. Or a thimble, goblet, toenail, etc if they were to add those as weapons. It makes the game seem more like a cheap thrill than a RPG. Like I bought a dps racing game than a RPG. In a fantasy setting I would expect that melee wizard to be using a melee weapon, and casting spells using that base weapon for animation purposes. For me it boils down to immersion, and the way D3 gearing operated it just didn't seem like a serious RPG.

So is there a reason Mope54 that a dexterity based class such as the Monk would want a legendary 2hnd sword because it has more dexterity and dps than fist weapons? Or why did the 1hnd Demon Hunter Xbows suck so bad when they looked iconic when equipped? Why isn't a staff one of the best weapons for a Wizard? Shouldn't Blizzard think about in one of their meetings what made this staff a bad choice and fix it?

Sure gear variety is good but as long as it's kept in context of what it's being used for. I never got the impression that there was a trade off for equipping an item other than it would add more time to my run. And that's not the impression of the quality of their development team that Blizzard Entertainment gave me for all of those prior years. I guess everyone is allowed a mistake to learn from, but to me looking in from the outside this seemed like elementary fantasy storytelling snafus.

Guess Big_Aug is right. I do hold certain company's quality standards to a higher degree as I expect the best from them. But my father always taught me to buy the best and expect them to deliver quality. I'm not sure if I want to start expecting second best from my purchases in the future. That future is very disheartening.
 
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