Dhruin
SasqWatch
Also from last week, diii.net has a lengthy forum post by Blizzard's Bashiok, defending the recent glimpse of Diablo III's skill tree (see Blizzcast 8). Apparently the design has come into criticism for being both too similar to Diablo II and, alternatively, World of Warcraft. Here's a small snip:
More information.I should stress that what everyone was allowed to see was a behind the scenes glimpse at where the UI is now. BlizzCast specifically serves that purpose, and by showing unfinished work we take the risk of people critiquing our work before it’s done. To that same effect though it’s an amazing way of getting feedback, but that doesn’t change that it should be understood to be unfinished work. Moving on…
The Diablo III skill tree is a skill tree and not a talent tree because you learn all of your skills from it.
You aren’t given new abilities every other level from a trainer. There’s no expectation that you’ll have some specific ability at some level. There’s no role requirements that dictate where you have to spend points to hurt monsters. The points you spend determine exactly how the character is built, how it functions, and what it’s able to do.
So, people are comparing the trees for a few reasons and using these reasons as negatives. I’ll try to cover them all.