Diablo 3 - The Shared Stash, Skills Calculator

Dhruin

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A new blog entry on the Diablo III site explains the Shared Stash and related changes, such as Gold is automatically shared among characters:
While players will start out with only a single tab in their shared stash with a limited number of slots, upgrades in the form of additional slots and tabs can be purchased for gold by any character you create. You'll be able to buy up to 5 tabs, each containing 70 slots of space, for a total of 350 slots of shared storage! Once bought, the upgraded storage space will be available to every character on your Diablo III account.
Skill Calculators are also now available for each of the five classes if you'd like to play with builds.
More information.
 
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I just wonder why they decided to create a skill calculator when there are no builds for this game. A build would be ways to decide how to level your character but since you get everything there are no builds. (there is just the decision on what class you pick at the beginning of the game.
 
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Perhaps if you tried out the skill calculator you would find out. People have been sharing builds ever since the calculator was released.

I just wonder why they decided to create a skill calculator when there are no builds for this game. A build would be ways to decide how to level your character but since you get everything there are no builds. (there is just the decision on what class you pick at the beginning of the game.
 
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I already did and it is just selecting the skills for your hotbar (or whatever it is called in this game) and skill mods. It isn't a build since you get everything there in game and it is pretty much the same as having a list of skills and mods for the game.
 
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You mean your choosing the abilities that you will take at each level from a list. Just like you do in every game and with every skill calculator. The number of options are staggering, given that with runestones there are about 150 different power choices per class but you can only pick 6 of them, plus 3 of about 20 passive skills. I've seen dozens of versions of the same character class. To say there are no builds is ridiculous.

Also for the record, you don't get everything at once. You have to invest runestones to power up the different mods. If you decide to switch to a bunch of skills that you've never invested runestones in, then those skills will be weak. So yes the skills you choose to focus on make a huge difference while leveling.
 
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The problem, however small some may consider it, is that you can potentially try everything with a single character - without doing any kind of strategic planning or experimentation.

A lot of the fun of these games, for my part, is coming up with unique builds that may or may not be powerful. Just to get to "invent" something new by having a vision and following a carefully laid out plan is a lot of fun.

It seems you won't do that in D3 - as you can experiment endlessly without penalty - and until I see how the Runestones work exactly, in terms of drop rates and restrictions, I'm not buying this new approach as an overall improvement.

If you can switch out skills at will, with or without the runestone enhancement, you won't really need to consider your build carefully. The strategic aspect would seem to be significantly reduced.
 
fadedc: You don't even know how the leveling system works in Diablo 3. The developers have said several times that you get all skills and don't choose skills while leveling up. Also the developers have said you can attach 2 runestones to each skill and you can change what runestones are on each skill when you want. They haven't mentioned whether or not you get the runestones back if you remove them though. (at least I think) That pretty much means the only "builds" you can make, can be made by anyone just by going to their skills and changing their runestones.
 
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plus 3 of about 20 passive skills.

Sadly, as of now, this is not even remotely close, as the average is 12 passives.

Also the developers have said you can attach 2 runestones to each skill and you can change what runestones are on each skill when you want. They haven't mentioned whether or not you get the runestones back if you remove them though. (at least I think) That pretty much means the only "builds" you can make, can be made by anyone just by going to their skills and changing their runestones.

Where on earth did you read/see this info? I have never seen mention of 2 runestones to each skill; ever; ever. And, yes, you get them back, when switched out.
 
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Actually I was wrong you get to put a runestone on each of your 7 currently active skills. There are different ranks with each runestone and you replace the runestone with the next higher rank when you find it. You can get this info at http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/world/systems/runestones.xml and since it is Blizzards own site it is probably accurate.

PS. There is a video at the bottom of the page explaining this in simple form also.
 
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I don't mind the lack of long-term punishment for char dev experimentation. Short-term punishment (i.e. failures that can be quickly remedied) is OK for experimentation. I think this is a move in right direction. There are many Diablo and Titan Quest builds I never tried because building them up would be too repetitive. I hate repetition in replaying games just for exploration's or different builds sake. I guess I am not that hardcore. ;)
 
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fadedc: You don't even know how the leveling system works in Diablo 3. The developers have said several times that you get all skills and don't choose skills while leveling up. Also the developers have said you can attach 2 runestones to each skill and you can change what runestones are on each skill when you want. They haven't mentioned whether or not you get the runestones back if you remove them though. (at least I think) That pretty much means the only "builds" you can make, can be made by anyone just by going to their skills and changing their runestones.

I do fully understand the way in which leveling up works. I've been following the fan sites for awhile. You do gain access to every skill. However it is only access. You have to return to town to respec to choose which skills your character actually has. For example at level 10 you gain 2 passive skills, but can only actually have one active on your character. Basically you choose a build that determines what skills and abilities your character can use just like every other game. You can respec your character very easily, but most games allow respecs now, it's especially important in games that continue to be developed after release. So the only thing that's really different is that respecing to play around with different abilities is more encouraged.

As for runestones, people have already mentioned that you seemed to be confused there. The website you linked is out of date (for example it mentions 7 active skills instead of 6) and doesn't give that much info. Blizzard has been tinkering around with how runestones work a lot, and my understanding is that you can take them out but you can't move them from skill to skill, once you assign one to a skill it becomes locked to that skill. There's also supposed to be some randomness in what an individual runestone actually does when it's bound to a skill. But I suspect Blizzard may still be tinkering with the way this system works best so it's probably better to wait and see.
 
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Just to confirm, it looks like Blizzard is still tinkering with and playtesting runestones to see what works best. They have said that they want you to always be happy to find runestones, and for the runestones to give you an incentive to stick with certain skills that you've invested them in. But the actual mechanics seem to be still in flux. In their last major press release they suggested that the effects of a runestone would be unclear until it was bound to a skill, at which point it was a gain a somewhat random effect just like any magic item, and possibly a random color. The intent of this was to encourage players to keep putting runestones into their favorite skills to search for the most optimized effect. It's unclear if that will actually be how it works in the final game however. I don't believe that runestones exist in the beta.
 
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I, obviously, like the random stat boost on the runes, but was a bit annoyed with Jay's announcement of the "bind to skill" effect that they're considering. It all seems geared to fuel the RMAH, as people will likely turn there, after the 12th rune in a row didn't produce what they were hoping for. Here's hoping that they drop that idea.
 
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I, obviously, like the random stat boost on the runes, but was a bit annoyed with Jay's announcement of the "bind to skill" effect that they're considering. It all seems geared to fuel the RMAH, as people will likely turn there, after the 12th rune in a row didn't produce what they were hoping for. Here's hoping that they drop that idea.

Speculation right now based on the calculator is that they are more likely to keep skill binding but remove the randomness. But it's just speculation based on how the runes seem to have fixed effects, but to change their names depending on the skill they are attached to.

I think having runes bind to skills will be necesarily if they want to make them continue to be an exciting find for any length of time. Otherwise you will only ever need a small handfull of runes no matter how many times you play with different class builds.

Regarding the AH, no matter what they do the economy is likely to eventually become so oversaturated with runes that it it will probably be easy enough to buy them on the gold AH.
 
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You have to return to town to respec to choose which skills your character actually has.

Incorrect. At least as far as the beta vids have shown and the debates have raged on the D3 forum. You can currently respec anywhere, anytime. Even in the midst of combat.

My biggest criticism of this approach is it greatly reduces your personal “RPG” investment in the character. Many folks keep going on about how "you'd rather be gimped!?", but that's just silly. For those of us whose primary motivation doesn't happen to be power gaming, we enjoy the challenge of having to adapt and it gives the characters we build a part of their identity. Part of the fun of games is challenge. If my build doesn't dominate an area of the game, I like the challenge of having to adapt my play-style, tactics and/or gear in order to make it through. It makes me feel more connected to that particular character as I guide them through an especially difficult chapter in their story. It seems many of the arguments for the new system assume all players are power gamers who are more interested in constant dominance, character uniqueness be damned!

Even within the context of the power gamer paradigm, the runes being the character customization vehicle doesn't make sense to me. Either they'll be plentiful enough as to be rendered meaningless in that they only add yet another administrative layer to being able to change my build with relative ease to whatever I want at any time or they'll be so rare as to undercut the whole “freedom of choice” design approach they claim to be following in as much as my “freedom” will actually be restricted to what rune drops I get.

For me, 5 character classes will most likely be enough variety in and of themselves to provide me with all the replay value I have time for at this stage in my life. But for those who'd like to make multiple builds per given character class, there would seem to be no point in having more than one character of said class as you'll be able to morph them into any build you like. By having all identities accessible, your character will have no identity. The price of being all things to all people.
 
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