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exquisite tea posted:unless you're on the cutting edge of upper solo GR there are many ways to be effective. I think this is pretty key to enjoying these games for me. I don't care about being completely optimal. I choose a mechanic or theme I like and I run with it, trying to do that thing as well as I can even if it isn't the best thing. I used to be really into a variety of MMOs, but these days the only one I put any time at all into is Guild Wars 2. The game has a lot of its own issues, but I do like that it actually features mechanical character customization. (That and the limited number of abilities are the reasons I play.) Sure, the top players have a build they think everyone should be using, but you can do a whole lot and still get through basically any content in the game. (and on the topic of respecs, they are free and instant any time outside of combat. If you actually bother to grind out the highest rarity "legendary" items, you can even swap out the stats on your items freely any time.)
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May 23, 2018 17:11
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DoubleNegative posted:Because for some reason people think it's the highlight of character building to have to assign stat points. I have never seen a game do stat assignment correctly. Either there's only one correct way to assign your points and every other way is 100% incorrect (Diablo, Diablo 2, Torchlight, Torchlight 2, presumably Path of Exile), or you have to spend skillpoints to level up your stats (Titan's Quest, Grim Dawn presumably). That's actually another thing Chronicon did right: there are no ability scores to manage. You get, and can respec with a separate cheap potion, Mastery Points, which give minor bonuses to certain types of skills, elements, and health and mana, if you want those, but they are strictly presented as bonuses rather than something necessary to not suck. Putting points in a particular subclass also gives a small bonus, like a percentage point of extra poison damage and attack speed, but, again, the bonus is small enough to feel like an added bonus rather than a necessity. Damage, health, and mana are calculated by level and equipment, with every piece of equipment giving a damage, health, and mana bonus. All skill damage and extra damage sources are presented as a percentage of that base damage number. All of this makes skill choices feel meaningful, and, so far, I haven't encountered any trap skills. Some are better than others, but every skill is workable for a specific build. That said, though, I hate passive, "numbers go up" design in skill systems, in which you need to pump X points into a single skill to have its damage keep pace with enemies' health, or have passive bonuses as necessary points along the skill tree to dump points into before getting the skill I was trying to get in the first place. If uninteresting, thematically blank passive* bonuses is necessary to the balance of a game, then just bake those bonuses into leveling rather than forcing the player to waste a skill point. *I mean stuff like "+10 HP" and "+2% crit chance" for uninteresting and thematically blank passives. Passives like "gusts of wind periodically blow projectiles away from you" on a wind-based character, especially with projectiles visibly altering their trajectory when affected by them, are A-okay in my book. Spending extra points on a fireball skill is also fine and good if the fireball gets noticeably bigger, or goes from a red ball exploding with a small foom to a blinding white one that rattles speakers off of shelves. Audio and visual presentation is key here.
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May 23, 2018 17:14
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MrAptronym posted:I am fine with free respecs, but I do think they should have to be done at a specific time or location. (Your hub area in most games.) This encourages players to make characters that can handle a variety of situations rather than just rebuilding their character for every single encounter. It adds a bit of weight to your choices. A fair cost on respecs does the same. I recall borderlands doing a good job at respecs. I never had an issue when I wanted to respec my character, but it did have a cost that added a bit of weight to that decision. Personally, I think your choices with your character having weight are a bad thing. I very much prefer having the freedom to experiment and find what works best for me.
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May 23, 2018 17:18
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OutOfPrint posted:That said, though, I hate passive, "numbers go up" design in skill systems, in which you need to pump X points into a single skill to have its damage keep pace with enemies' health, or have passive bonuses as necessary points along the skill tree to dump points into before getting the skill I was trying to get in the first place. If uninteresting, thematically blank passive* bonuses is necessary to the balance of a game, then just bake those bonuses into leveling rather than forcing the player to waste a skill point. Speaking of God of War 4
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May 23, 2018 17:29
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Byzantine posted:Speaking of God of War 4 This was also a thing in Skyrim that I hated. I liked the idea of the perk system but they made it as boring as possible. The best perk for every tree that had it was the "You are 20% better at [thing]." one right at the start that you could take five times. The skill is already a passive increase to your ability at that thing! Make the perks do something that actually affects the way I play! While I am complaining about that system, half the perks in that game are broken or downright useless. So many trap choices.
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May 23, 2018 17:57
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Byzantine posted:Speaking of God of War 4 Why is there no cutscene skip. I dont care about totally different personality Kratos and his latest kid, I want to get back to exploring this relatively pretty world so I can get more frustrated with both how bad the combat and button layout is.
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May 23, 2018 18:31
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I liked to play through the games of Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 full clearing and developing a character like they were action RPGs with a loot mechanic. Played them hundreds of hours over the years too. Never grinded for gear beyond trying it a couple times and realising it wasn't for me. Then the Diablo 3 dev team was like "oh hey, this is a game where everybody grinds for gear exclusively lets gut every other loving aspect of the series" and made a really bad Diablo game for anyone not a loot addict. So many changes they made that were just "Oh this thing you like? Gone. This one too." I got one character to max level playing with my brother and 2 friends. Then I started up another character and was like... why? The campaign is poo poo and every character is the same. There's no point doing anything but the most optimal thing at any point in time. In Diablo 2 I played all kinds of variants not just the strongest things. Some of the worst characters were the most fun to play at higher difficulties cause of the challenge and then logging in to see your firebolt sorceress or whatever that you took through hell without grinding. It was fun. Diablo 3 is just literally grinding. Meh. Diablo 3 for me is like the next CoD game for someone who used to play them for the campaigns. Futuresight has a new favorite as of 18:58 on May 23, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 18:49
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It's possible to have Diablo 2 skills without Diablo 2 tedium.
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May 23, 2018 18:57
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poptart_fairy posted:It's possible to have Diablo 2 skills without Diablo 2 tedium. Sure. But Diablo 3 didn't do that.
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May 23, 2018 18:59
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If it makes you feel better the loot grinding part of D3 is also poo poo 
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May 23, 2018 19:02
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Futuresight posted:Sure. But Diablo 3 didn't do that. Well as you didn't really specify what depth was stripped out 
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May 23, 2018 19:03
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poptart_fairy posted:Well as you didn't really specify what depth was stripped out The depth of character building was taken out. The stats and skills made it possible to make your own character and to see your character build come together. The campaign was also non-poo poo so you could play the campaign instead of treating the game like a series of unconnected xp and loot pinata spawning locations. You actually had challenge and different areas stressing your build in different ways and dealing with power troughs and things like that. The entire 1-max game was taken out. Literally anything that wasn't grinding. If they wanted to remove tedium they should have done something like moved the level cap down to like 30 (roughly a normal game of pre-expansion Diablo 2) and consolidate skill choices so there are no real trap choices. Then just let loot be the way you advance through nightmare/hell. Like actually address the concerns within the framework of the old games instead of gutting them entirely and starting again. That way people who want to max level X build can do that quickly. People who just want to play through aren't getting trapped in dead-end builds. And people who want to build multiple characters and play through the campaign with those builds still get to do that. What they did instead was make it so extra characters are irrelevant so the only permanent choice you make is class. You pick skills but they don't feel like choices because there's no permanence to the choice. EDIT: Look at how people replay Soulsborne games over and over again with different builds. That's the kind of thing Diablo 3 threw away unnecessarily. A lot of people including myself played them very much like they were Soulsborne games with random loot. Futuresight has a new favorite as of 19:27 on May 23, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 19:20
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I dunno man, not having to grind through the campaign again just to try a couple new skills at a decent level of power seems like it was dealing with most of the tedium. Given all the cookie cutter guides I saw as well, I don't think Diablo 2 characters were quite as unique as you're making out. To each their own and all.
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May 23, 2018 19:24
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poptart_fairy posted:To each their own and all. That's the problem though. :P Diablo 3 chose a specific play style and dumped the others. No compromise solutions, just straight up winners and losers.
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May 23, 2018 19:29
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Well how about you choose a D3 skill and never, ever change it. Original system right there. 
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May 23, 2018 19:31
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I mean I know you're joking but unironically I'd be more fine with the D3 system if you were allowed to unlock runes (but not skills) in the order you wanted. Part of the problem is your theorycrafted build doesn't come together on your own terms. You don't make decisions and slowly create a build that you watch progress and develop. You're just stuck using a mishmash of whatever you happen to have at the moment and thats such a lovely feeling. As is you can't even just pick a skill and never change it because the skill or rune you want might not unlock until some arbitrary level at 50+.
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May 23, 2018 19:35
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I really like Diablo 3 and I got a serious second wind for it when I decided to get it on PS4 for local multiplayer on a gamble, and that paid of super well because it's a loving blast with friends on a couch, and not only that: my wife also likes playing with me, which is worth a lot to me. However, we like starting new seasons because there's always a little more new and exciting stuff and we don't like endgame grinding forever, so an excuse to start anew is very welcome. But the initial grind of a new character to max level so that all abilities are unlocked is loving torture and after the twentieth time or so that I've done it I'm really really sick of it. I know that using the correct strategies in Adventure Mode it doesn't even take that long, but it still takes at least four play sessions for the two of us because we have better things to do than JUST game, and it drags severely. Especially because as has been said, for every character skills unlock in the exact same order every time, so each playthrough you'll be thinking "no, this skill is worthless until I maybe get [x] later to supercharge it" again or "this time, I'll try [y]...oh wait it's too costly until I get a resource engine running which is late late late game". So you do the stuff that works again and again. The one thing that helps this a little is that the droprates on Legendaries have been increased a LOT, and their bonuses have also been made actually fun. From things like "this skill now deals triple damage and costs half as much" encouraging you to actually use something that used to be too costly for its effect to complete gamechangers like "this skill that used to have no cost but high cooldown now has no cooldown but high cost". You might even find a combo - DURING a grind to max level, absolutely unheard of at release - that couples that with "also you generate resource now when using this skill" or something like that. If you do not happen to find that (or have found it before) you just go through the same motions again. My favorite period of a season is actually when you do not yet have a full class set yet (completing increasingly more difficult challenges in a season gives you two, then another two, then the final two pieces of such a set, so it's guaranteed to get one eventually). Because before that happens, you find new weird poo poo practically every time you sit down to do a Rift or whatever strikes your fancy, and can go "oh cool, I guess that's another skill I've passed over before that's now neat and worth trying out". This is where the ability to change your build on a whim really shines: you find a new item that you really want to use and...just use it. In Diablo 2, when my Fire/Frost sorc found the bestest most rarest lightning-empowering diadem in the universe, I'd have to go "welp that means making a completely new sorc then to use this". All that goes out the window again once you complete the class set, because putting together the six-set-bonus hypercharges your character to such an absurd degree that you can immediately jump the difficulty up something like four levels at once. So you should really do that. But then you have to wear those six pieces, and if you find a cool helmet with a unique thing that you'd love to try, too bad, the set helm has to stay on (unless you find a very specific ring, I know I know). And the sets often push you into using a specific build as well, like "your divine hammers now deal +2000% damage and also gain all runes and bring you pizza" (the damage part is true, including the size of the number). As the set you get is fixed per season, you can't even go "but I'd rather use the make your avatar form stronger set", that's not in the cards. It takes some serious grinding to make the build a bit more interesting that JUST using the skills the set tells you to use (you still use them, but now you SUPER use them and become a ludicrously polished unkillable death machine instead of "just" dealing absurd amounts of damage), and an unacceptable amount of grinding to leave the set behind completely and do something equally as powerful, but more unique. And that's kind of sad.
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May 23, 2018 20:06
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Agent355 posted:I never felt like my character was 'mine' in D3. It's funny you say that because that's basically how I feel about every ARPG where I need to dig up somebody else's build because the developers decided to not include proper respec functions. And every ARPG with trap options. And every ARPG with ludicrously dense build options that actually figuring out a coherent build without outside help is down to dumb luck. IE, drat near all of them.  on how the rune system is both good and bad. Being tied to the leveling curve (such that it exists) means that some runes are objectively more powerful than others. And even if that wasn't the case, you still end up having to make choices based on incomplete information or needing to do the math yourself. Just as a basic example: Rune A doubles your damage on a single target spell. Rune B makes that spell hit three targets instead of only one. Which is better? Wellll D3 is mostly about blowing up large packs of enemies...except when it isn't. Also let me just list the six legendaries that interact with that spell and oh hey it turns out that one of them makes the spell deal 30000% more damage if you only hit a single target. That would be maddening if you couldn't just swap out everything at will, but it also ends up meaning certain rune choices are arbitrarily invalidated based on the whims of what legendary effects they decided to make and which of those you happen to find.Agent355 posted:As is you can't even just pick a skill and never change it because the skill or rune you want might not unlock until some arbitrary level at 50+. It also feels equally bad when you've decided to stick with one of the very first runes and then then the rest are just a waste of space filling up the unlock path. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 20:36 on May 23, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 20:31
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Futuresight posted:What they did instead was make it so extra characters are irrelevant so the only permanent choice you make is class. You pick skills but they don't feel like choices because there's no permanence to the choice. I pretty much agree with your post, but you missed the key point, the only choices you make are class and GEAR. Gear is really the pivotal problem as mentioned earlier, as it's what the entire game was designed around. Remember that they weren't ever building Diablo 3, they were building Auction House Cash Cow Item Generation System. Now that the auction house is gone, the scars are what's left. Grinding for the six piece item set that makes your build work takes a minute, and then the new game is finding the gear you already own at *LEGENDARY* quality. And pray you get the *ULTRA LEGENDARY* version with maximized stats. Let's also recall that there is literally no trading or marketplace, arguably the biggest draw to Diablo 2, all the loot you ever see drop is yours alone, and you may only share it with people in your current game, max 4 players. Game's got problems. All that said, given that Diablo 3 hasn't received any content changes for several seasons and Blizzard has been regularly hiring Diablo developers, it seems Diablo 4 is on the horizon. Here's hoping they've learned from their mistakes! Poulpe has a new favorite as of 20:42 on May 23, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 20:31
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Poulpe posted:...Blizzard... Here's hoping they've learned from their mistakes! So long as what think of as mistakes are profitable, even in the sense of "we could fix this, but, eh, it works enough, let's not spend wages on it," they will continue to make them. See also: Bethesda
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May 23, 2018 21:34
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Thin Privilege posted:No, I don’t have a gun. I’m in the air vent. From a while back, but I'm tired, and this had me rolling thinking of a goon hiding in their vent system frantically typing on their phone because of a game.
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May 23, 2018 22:31
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The best part of my D2 druid was not getting any skills other than the first level cone of cold and hurricane. Sure was a fun time leaving up to that point.
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May 23, 2018 22:45
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If the fun part of looter games like Diablo is meant to be the endgame builds and crazy combos, why don't they start you at level 1 with the endgame build and crazy combo stuff, and then that way the rest of the game is fun and they can build the game around that? Then you can just have horizontal progression by being able to swap out that cool stuff for other cool stuff you find. And have zero concept of trash equipment, that way.
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May 24, 2018 05:34
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bewilderment posted:If the fun part of looter games like Diablo is meant to be the endgame builds and crazy combos, why don't they start you at level 1 with the endgame build and crazy combo stuff, and then that way the rest of the game is fun and they can build the game around that? Because nerds who love to play those games also get very, very upset if "casuals" get to enjoy the same gameplay experience they do. So developers have to pad out the end-game content with what amounts to a lot of wasted time grinding to make the quote-unquote serious players feel validated that no casual scum will ever break into their secret no-girls club of spending literal weeks of their life playing a video game just to farm one boss over and over again for rare drops that are marginally better than what they have already. You see the same poo poo in basically every progression based game like MMOs. Where people will complain endlessly if they don't have enough people to do a raid. But then get pissed to the high heavens if you dare suggest they help gear up newer players, or that the developers could ease the ramp into the end-game content so new people don't get bored of farming the dead past content just so they can play the new content.
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May 24, 2018 06:41
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Polyseme posted:From a while back, but I'm tired, and this had me rolling thinking of a goon hiding in their vent system frantically typing on their phone because of a game. You gave me a mental image that’s loving hilarious. Thanks dude 
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May 24, 2018 06:46
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God of War's upgrade system isn't the worst upgrade system on the market, sure, but its not great and having multiple kinds of checkpointing on gear that all effectively boils down to story progression feels less rewarding and more "why couldn't you just give these upgrades to me as part of the cutscene you're forcing me to watch anyway"
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May 24, 2018 07:11
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Is this stuff about gear that makes a skill do 2000% more damage the top end of a fairly continuous scale of gear that boosts by lesser amounts, or is it more like "second-best gear is 50% more damage, best gear is 2000%"? It sounds from people's posts that it's the latter, which would be really dumb and terrible. Gear sets are bad anyway, because mix and match is fun and leads to more build possibilities, so why have a mechanic that actively discourages that Qwertycoatl has a new favorite as of 09:00 on May 24, 2018 |
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May 24, 2018 08:56
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It's the latter. It is dumb and terrible. I have many problems with D3 but the way 'pick a gear set, that is your build because the modifiers are insane' works is probably the worst one. It's miserable.
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May 24, 2018 09:04
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One of the actual cool things they did to address some of the concerns being raised ITT is they put in the ability to mash a unique up into an inherent ability that you can then just staple to your character for free; I was having a good time in the most recent season with a lightning barbarian using the Fulminator (enemies sometimes turn into lightning damage sources if they take lightning damage) with Odyn Son's chain lightning as an inherent ability; basically, combined with the fact that I was using the zero-cost / short-cooldown lightning-damage earthquake variant and a set that made every Leap cast cause an earthquake, every map turned into a hilarious clusterfuck of lighting damage hitting everything from every angle forever. You can get one ability off a weapon, another off a piece of armour, and a third off of a ring; this means that if you get a duplicate of an existing unique, or a low-level unique that will be outclassed by a fully-levelled variant, you still have a reason to keep it around because its inherent ability is always stripped off of it at maximum power. It means that while you can find new bits of unique gear out in the wild that you can't wear because it'll break your set, you can still look at that piece of gear and think, huh, that weapon's worse than what I've got, but its ability could go well with what I'm doing because I loving love me some lightning damage, I'll mash it up and see if it works. Basically Diablo 3 is still really good as a midpoint between Path of Exile's total loving crunchy madness and Torchlight 2's smooth, gentle hand-holding, and in my mind that's a fine place for it to be.
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May 24, 2018 13:37
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D3 is a really fun, easy to get into monster clicker game and anyone who describes the experience of blowing up demons at 3,000mph as "miserable" is kinda tilting at windmills here.
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May 24, 2018 13:43
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exquisite tea posted:D3 is a really fun, easy to get into monster clicker game and anyone who describes the experience of blowing up demons at 3,000mph as "miserable" is kinda tilting at windmills here. I find D3 is absolutely fun and engrossing right up until you get to end-game proper. Every so often me and my friends will play it, have a blast leveling new characters and finding new gear. Then we hit the end of the game where it just stagnates into running those awful rifts and hoping we get the same gear we already have, but with slightly different or better random rolls and the game just feels like a chore. So we stop and wait until the bug bites us again.
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May 24, 2018 14:40
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That's what you're supposed to do.
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May 24, 2018 14:44
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exquisite tea posted:D3 is a really fun, easy to get into monster clicker game and anyone who describes the experience of blowing up demons at 3,000mph as "miserable" is kinda tilting at windmills here. I find it too mindless and boring. It's basically a very pretty and visceral clicker game. Which definitely has its audience but it's just not my thing.
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May 24, 2018 16:09
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Middle Earth: Shadow of War had a free weekend last week and the implementation was pretty terrible in that it would only let you play the first few hours and then locked you out from further progress after finishing the first chapter. The thing is that the first chapter is basically an extended tutorial with a bunch of scripted story-driven missions and plays completely different from the actual meat of the game which is a freeform sandbox based on building up your orc army and methodically infiltrating and taking over strongholds, so the demo ends right when you get the ability to dominate orcs and all the actual new features that weren't in the first game start to unlock. It also came at a weird point of transition where they have announced that they are removing the lovely microtransactions and lootboxes that made everyone turn on the game in the first place and have disabled the ability to buy premium currency with real money but it's still in a state of transition so the actual marketplace is still in the game and there's basically have an entire mechanic that you can't use because they haven't added a way to earn premium currency in game. It's frustrating because the actual game is great and the hugely expanded Nemesis system is exactly what a fan of the first game would want in a sequel and they're just bungling the actual release every step of the way.
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May 24, 2018 18:13
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The other mistake D3 makes is that it's kind of scattershot w/r/t movement abilities. I feel like if you're going for super accessible, mile a minute hack and slash every class needs a fun movement ability. They got about halfway there.
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May 24, 2018 23:16
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which class do you think doesn't have one?
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May 24, 2018 23:41
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Closed-Down Pizza Parlor posted:which class do you think doesn't have one? All of the "I walk faster" movement abilities, Witch Doctor, Necro, and I think Crusader? They got the short stick in a big way.
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May 25, 2018 00:18
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Poulpe posted:All of the "I walk faster" movement abilities, Witch Doctor, Necro, and I think Crusader? The Witch Doctor makes up for it by being able to vomit frogs
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May 25, 2018 00:26
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I found all the d3 movement abilities I used annoyingly slow and limited compared to PoE's. Either their CD was too long or the resource cost got in the way. Maybe the barb was the exception, can't remember now.
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May 25, 2018 00:37
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There is no class in D3 that can't clear rifts at ridiculously fast speeds.
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May 25, 2018 00:37
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