Diablo 3 - The Ten Commandments

Dhruin

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I think the point of this IGN article is to cover the design pillars of Diablo III but it essentially ends up a standard preview:
Diablo III's five strong class line-up is looking incredible, and each is even more unique than before. In previous games, for instance, each class utilised mana for powering various skills and spells. In Diablo III, each class has its own system. The Barbarian, for instance, utilises fury. Fury is generated by dishing out damage and taking damage, but it also ebbs away, so must be used as it accumulates, meaning that you're always looking for your next set of kills. A good player will choose a mix of fury-generating and fury-using abilities so they can make the most of this system.
More information.
 
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Not happy about them ditching skill points. Sure I might screw up the first few times, but giving me access to all the skills based on my level is too much. Where is the fun in figuring out an awesome combination?

I was on-board with them ditching stat points after getting used to the idea. Truthfully stats always posed a problem for me, but skills? Skill selection is one of the reasons I kept replaying the same dang character over and over again. I want to screw up and I want to figure out on my own how to make him/her more powerful.

I wonder how mod friendly this will be because the first thing I'll look for is if someone modded back in skill points.
 
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D3 will not support mods. Nor can you crack it and play offline with mods, as their server is set so as to not allow that (some of the game is held on it).

This pseudo-preview couldn't have been more one sided if it had been written by Blizzard. Not complaining; as for those not following development closely, it presents a good feature roundup, but, man, did they ever gloss over the fact that many of the latest changes are, at best, a double edged sword.
 
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Some of the game is held on the server? Whatcha talken bout Willis???

I haven't been paying that close attention to this because it was pretty much guaranteed I'd buy it. Now I'm not so sure.

Edit: Just read your reply over at the Dead Island newsbit about D3 not being able to be played offline in singleplayer. Sorry that's a deal breaker for me. I know they could give a rat's ass about my money, but I have better things to spend the money on than that and I have better games to play than being forced online to play a singleplayer game.

Hell I'm still playing Civ 4's Fall from Heaven 2 and Master of Mana mod that is a hell of a lot of fun and they don't force me to play online.
 
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santos, do you mean regarding the skills exploitation?
might be, i think the best way to develop a skill, which i haven't see in any other game, is like Dungeon master, which makes you better at a skill whenever you use it.
 
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I was filled with nerd rage too when I heard about the loss of skill points, but after reading about it I'm willing to at least take a wait and see approach. They do make a fair point that in D2 (and torchlight as well) skill points limit your options more then they increase them. There's usually one skill that you pump all your points into and then you use that skill to the exclusion of all others because it's 20 times as good. D2 had so many cool and interesting abilities that you never used because of this.

Still one of the most fun things for me about gaining a level has always been getting to assign my skill point, even if like D2, it was just into the same skill that the last 15 skill points went into. I guess gaining access to a new spell slot will be pretty exciting too, but that only happens every several levels. So like I said....it's kind of wait and see for me, I do at least trust Blizzard to have some idea what they are doing.
 
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They forgot to mention the three most important design pillars of the game:
- Always on, or else..!!
- No mods
- Real money auctions.

And no, ditching the skill points was not a good idea - if you spent 15 levels in D2 on the same skill, it was because the game was designed as massive grind. If the skills were maxed out at, for example, third level, players would have to experiment much more.
In my opinion, Dredmor does the skills better than Diablo 2 and better than Diablo 3.
 
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Yeah, I'm a bit leery of the no-skill-point thing as well. Plus, they're using language that makes it sound like the skills sort of auto-level with you. If it just comes down to a quick TP (or whatever the D3 equivalent is) to slot the set of skills that will ensure your dominance of a given area without needing to plan your character or adapt to how effective or ineffective your skills are against the monsters spawned in that area, that's going to be lame. If the design of a game mechanic has to be driven by meaningfully challenging the player or giving him/her the broadest freedom of choice (in the sense that you can choose whatever you want without restriction), I'll take challenge every time. Having said that, the rune system could mitigate the problem somewhat. Guess we'll see…
 
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Yeah, I'm a bit leery of the no-skill-point thing as well. Plus, they're using language that makes it sound like the skills sort of auto-level with you. If it just comes down to a quick TP (or whatever the D3 equivalent is) to slot the set of skills that will ensure your dominance of a given area without needing to plan your character or adapt …

I was worried about that too, but from what I've read it's at least a little more complicated then that. The way that runestones work do strongly encourage you to focus on a core group of skills rathen constantly switch them around. Of course we will have to see how it ends up in play.

Regarding skill points and only having say 3-5 skill points per ability, that works better in Dreadmore because you only ever gain about 10 levels.
 
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SEdit: Just read your reply over at the Dead Island newsbit about D3 not being able to be played offline in singleplayer. Sorry that's a deal breaker for me. I know they could give a rat's ass about my money

Yeah, the sad truth seems to be that once they found a way to garner three separate revenue streams off of a single product (game sales, real money auction house fees, and an in-game cosmetic storefront), two of which relied on on-line play, single player off-line's fate was sealed. Again, I understand, without liking it much.
 
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did they ever gloss over the fact that many of the latest changes are, at best, a double edged sword.

regarding that?
 
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regarding that?

OH, I meant, always online, real money auction house, always present chat/invite system, gold shared with all your characters (so, rolling a new class, you can't, as of yet, play fair, and start with nothing on hand- all gold accounts are merged (so says the devs)). That's kinda where I was aiming.
 
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OH, I meant, always online, real money auction house, always present chat/invite system, gold shared with all your characters (so, rolling a new class, you can't, as of yet, play fair, and start with nothing on hand- all gold accounts are merged (so says the devs)). That's kinda where I was aiming.

Well actually from what I've read, the chat/invite system are not always present. You can disable invites, and if there is nobody else playing with you then there will not be any chatting.
 
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