1.07 looks great

[Redblade]

just to show you how wrong you are.

http://www.diablofans.com/page/tools/skill/index.html

Every class had 30 talents to pick from


Compare those 30 talents to this

http://www.diablowiki.com/Barbarian/Skill_Progression
http://www.diablowiki.com/Barbarian#Active_Skills

22 active spells to choose at any time (Not counting runes which effectively triples this number)
16 passive skills to choose from.

Thats 38 choices Vs 30.

Yet you had up to 98 individual choices to make across 30 talents and they where all yours to make, in D3 you don't have 22 active spells to chose from as one choice excludes several others, for example you won't have 6 rage spenders as it would be beyond stupid, and while you have 16 passive they are fixed in their values that you can't affect in any way.

There is no way you will convince me that the D3 system offers the player more freedom of choice, it's more flexible but that's not hard to fix with the talent tree version either, and this is just comparing D2 and D3, if D3 had been developed with talent trees who knows what it had looked like, PoE offers the most choice I seen in any game and that's one version of talent trees taken to the next level.

[Pendulous]

I was really hoping for an entirely new gem for all resistances(like diamonds in shields in D2) this patch when I heard about the gems but o well maybe in the expansion. I'm sick of getting good chest pieces with awesome offensive stats and 3 sockets but I can't use it on my monk because I have no way of adding some resistance to it. Especially when I play a monk and need two different types of resistance specifically. Thrown/sold out so many decent dex+vit+ 3 socket chests just because they had no resistance. Yet If I get a chest with decent resistances and 3 sockets but low stats I can at least salvage it by loading it with base stat gems. Seems like such a waste to be able to at least salvage it one way, and not the other.

I'm not talking about the high end gear either obviously, it would just be nice for monks just hitting inferno though or something and they can't yet afford the best gear on the AH. MY major beef with D3 is that it takes so much more effort to find good gear without using the AH. Having resistance gems would at least help to alleviate that for gear for starting inferno.

Preachin to the choir man. Although, %damage vs. undead wouldn't make for a very good weapon enchant.

[Jtbrig7390]

Yet you had up to 98 individual choices to make across 30 talents and they where all yours to make, in D3 you don't have 22 active spells to chose from as one choice excludes several others, for example you won't have 6 rage spenders as it would be beyond stupid, and while you have 16 passive they are fixed in their values that you can't affect in any way.

There is no way you will convince me that the D3 system offers the player more freedom of choice, it's more flexible but that's not hard to fix with the talent tree version either, and this is just comparing D2 and D3, if D3 had been developed with talent trees who knows what it had looked like, PoE offers the most choice I seen in any game and that's one version of talent trees taken to the next level.

Offtopic: Ya PoE's system is sick

Only other game I can think of that did something like its skill system is Final Fantasy X.

FFX's system was really interesting and to me it feels like PoE took that did there own version of it and added it to a ARPG.

"I'm sure they didn't even look at FFX or any game really when they did there talent system its just how it feels to me"

Offtopic Edit: Installing PoE now but won't play it until after the final character wipe in 4 days.

[Deleted]

Yet you had up to 98 individual choices to make across 30 talents and they where all yours to make, in D3 you don't have 22 active spells to chose from as one choice excludes several others, for example you won't have 6 rage spenders as it would be beyond stupid, and while you have 16 passive they are fixed in their values that you can't affect in any way.

There is no way you will convince me that the D3 system offers the player more freedom of choice, it's more flexible but that's not hard to fix with the talent tree version either, and this is just comparing D2 and D3, if D3 had been developed with talent trees who knows what it had looked like, PoE offers the most choice I seen in any game and that's one version of talent trees taken to the next level.

Ok, here's the thing.
Having look at http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree most of the points in those web repeat ad nauseum, they boast on 1k+ passive skill while a large number of those skills are +5% life, 6% energy shield. To make matters worse they didn't even make skills have ranks so you could add say 5 points to 5% life for a total of 25%. No, they spread those points around to give an impression of bulk. IMO, of course, that's just eye candy. It's a contrived PR stunt so they can then market those 1k+ skills as a major feature.

I feel they create the illusion of choice.

On the other hand I agree that the rune system is far from perfect. It is very flexible but the trade off is that it makes the experience less personal, less involved. It needs a twin system that could interact much better with a player. Maybe something like the perk system in fallout 1/2 that has no connection with vertical progression.

It would definitely benefit from more choice, more runes, tiers, more skills overall. In any case more meat to the system.

[Redblade]

Ok, here's the thing.
Having look at http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree most of the points in those web repeat ad nauseum, they boast on 1k+ passive skill while a large number of those skills are +5% life, 6% energy shield. To make matters worse they didn't even make skills have ranks so you could add say 5 points to 5% life for a total of 25%. No, they spread those points around to give an impression of bulk. IMO, of course, that's just eye candy. It's a contrived PR stunt so they can then market those 1k+ skills as a major feature.

You are free to chose any distribution you like though.

I feel they create the illusion of choice.

Even if it's an illusion the player feels he made a choice which in return gives the game more feeling of depth, so the illusion can be as powerful as having actual choice.

On the other hand I agree that the rune system is far from perfect. It is very flexible but the trade off is that it makes the experience less personal, less involved. It needs a twin system that could interact much better with a player. Maybe something like the perk system in fallout 1/2 that has no connection with vertical progression.

It would definitely benefit from more choice, more runes, tiers, more skills overall. In any case more meat to the system.

That's the thing, talent trees can provide that if you take the time to evolve them, Blizzard didn't want to for the past 5 or so years as they decided talents wasn't "fun" anymore and spent the next few years reducing and restricting them to eventually scrap them altogether for both WoW and D3.

Edit: I'm not saying talent trees are perfect nor that people won't use cookie cutter builds, they do however allow for choices to be made by people who do like to theory-craft and try different things, and I'm for diversity in games as it cost nothing to have more options than you use.

The only cost for the players that don't care is the time it takes to find a cookie cutter build and fill it in, something I don't see as asking to much compared to the cost for the players who enjoy it by it's removal.

[Jtbrig7390]

Ok, here's the thing.
Having look at http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree most of the points in those web repeat ad nauseum, they boast on 1k+ passive skill while a large number of those skills are +5% life, 6% energy shield. To make matters worse they didn't even make skills have ranks so you could add say 5 points to 5% life for a total of 25%. No, they spread those points around to give an impression of bulk. IMO, of course, that's just eye candy. It's a contrived PR stunt so they can then market those 1k+ skills as a major feature.

I feel they create the illusion of choice.

On the other hand I agree that the rune system is far from perfect. It is very flexible but the trade off is that it makes the experience less personal, less involved. It needs a twin system that could interact much better with a player. Maybe something like the perk system in fallout 1/2 that has no connection with vertical progression.

It would definitely benefit from more choice, more runes, tiers, more skills overall. In any case more meat to the system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b0b7E7rauY "gamespot video shows off the talent and gem system"

With both the way the talent system is and the gem system it gives you almost a infinite amount of choice's on how you want to play your toon. I don't feel the way the talent system is setup is a illusion of choice. even in the first 2mins of that video he talks about the many things you can do with it and why they did it that way.

With PoE the Talent system go's hand in hand with the Gem system and that is one of the major reasons why I like it.

---------- Post added 2013-01-19 at 04:36 PM ----------

That's the thing, talent trees can provide that if you take the time to evolve them, Blizzard didn't want to for the past 5 or so years as they decided talents wasn't "fun" anymore and spent the next few years reducing and restricting them to eventually scrap them altogether for both WoW and D3.

My Personal Opinion.

I think blizzard scraped the old talent systems because they became to much work to keep blanced in both Pve and Pvp for WoW and they forseen the same problem happening in D3.

[Redblade]

My Personal Opinion.

I think blizzard scraped the old talent systems because they became to much work to keep blanced in both Pve and Pvp for WoW and they forseen the same problem happening in D3.

I won't disagree with that, streamlined development and less need for theory-crafting on their end to balance are the obvious reasons. From a customer standpoint nothing good comes from it though.

[Jtbrig7390]

I won't disagree with that, streamlined development and less need for theory-crafting on their end to balance are the obvious reasons. From a customer standpoint nothing good comes from it though.

I agree.

Just got done messing with 1.07 on PTR and nothing feels changed to me "yet" at lease not changed to where you will really notice.

[Deleted]

The only cost for the players that don't care is the time it takes to find a cookie cutter build and fill it in, something I don't see as asking to much compared to the cost for the players who enjoy it by it's removal.

TBH forum talk is mostly speculation as we don't have access to any kind of metrics, maybe their metrics told them theory-crafting was a very small % of the player base and not worth their time, again speculation.

With both the way the talent system is and the gem system it gives you almost a infinite amount of choice's on how you want to play your toon. I don't feel the way the talent system is setup is a illusion of choice. even in the first 2mins of that video he talks about the many things you can do with it and why they did it that way.

If you have to eat through 10 tons of side dish to get to the meat. That's part of what creates the illusion of choice.
Have to agree that the gem system is interesting. Now you have to agree that the gem system is similar to Diablo's rune system only better defined.

[Palmatum]

Well it looks like I'll never PvP. Quite frankly I think it's embarrassing that Blizzard would even put it on the PTR in the state it's in right now.

[Lysah]

Yet you had up to 98 individual choices to make across 30 talents and they where all yours to make, in D3 you don't have 22 active spells to chose from as one choice excludes several others, for example you won't have 6 rage spenders as it would be beyond stupid, and while you have 16 passive they are fixed in their values that you can't affect in any way.

Are we talking about D2 skill points? Because you had 110 total to play with if you ever got to 99, though the number was more realistically around 100, what most people would get as the 90-99 was just painful.

I can't help but look at D3 from a realistic standpoint. Does it have more "choices" at face value? Maybe, but so many of the skills are completely worthless. We have to look at builds as far as what they actually offer us from a gameplay perspective.

D2 Sorc:
1) Blizzard
2) Orb/TS
3) Meteor
4) Meteorb
5) CL
6) Enchant/hydra/firewall

D3 Wizard:
1) CM


Now, you can surely change a few skills or runes in that CM build, but if you want to do anything in this game you're going to use critical mass, period. Go try to sell a near perfect wand without AP/crit and see how much you get for it (sold a 1350 black DPS wand with a socket and 70% crit damage and 100 int and 15 max AP for 10 million, AP/crit would've shot the price up to hundreds of millions). The fact is, no matter how free you are to change runes and even whole skills in this build, most of your build is decided for you. You're going to use wicked wind or meteor, you're going to use frost nova, you're going to use diamond skin. Do anything else and enjoy the walk back to your corpse. Therefore, D3 is the ultimate icon of illusion of choice. It's just as bad for other classes. Monk has 5 skills decided for it already, as much as I would love to branch out and do something other than what everyone else does, I don't want my monk to die in mp1.

[Redblade]

If you have to eat through 10 tons of side dish to get to the meat. That's part of what creates the illusion of choice.

That's really just a problem on your end though, it's the same as the age old argument for WoW talents that 5% crit wasn't a choice nor was it "fun". The problem with that is that it's not looking at the whole picture, in the WoW example 5% crit wasn't really the choice, it was the path to your choice, every talent can't be "fun" and hard choice, you can make the path have very small choices until you get to your actual choice.

Obviously you can improve on the small selections to make them matter more but at the end of the day they are a means to an end, the important choices, now removing talents in favor of a streamlined system hurts the player that enjoyed the talent part, keeping it hurts no one beyond the finger of the player not caring when he fills the talents from the latest cookie cutter build...a build made by the guy enjoying talents and theory crafting.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Weren't talent/ability/stat bonus choices in D2 permanent?

[Redblade]

Weren't talent/ability/stat bonus choices in D2 permanent?

Yes it was, nothing would have prevented it from being used in D3 without being 100% permanent though...

[Deleted]

That's really just a problem on your end though, it's the same as the age old argument for WoW talents that 5% crit wasn't a choice nor was it "fun". The problem with that is that it's not looking at the whole picture, in the WoW example 5% crit wasn't really the choice, it was the path to your choice, every talent can't be "fun" and hard choice, you can make the path have very small choices until you get to your actual choice.

This is not a "it's not the destination it's the journey" case. It's simple math. Theory-crafting in an enclosed system is just about as good as your math.
You know where you start, you know where you end up and you can weigh every step along the way, there is not discovery no sense of "wonder" involved, it's just about as exciting as walking up a flight of stairs.

and yet it gets so much praise...

[Redblade]

This is not a "it's not the destination it's the journey" case. It's simple math. Theory-crafting in an enclosed system is just about as good as your math.
You know where you start, you know where you end up and you can weigh every step along the way, there is not discovery no sense of "wonder" involved, it's just about as exciting as walking up a flight of stairs.

To you perhaps, to others it might be exciting, not everyone has to use the "optimal" spec that's the best mathematically, your view is purely egoistical willing to sacrifice others enjoyment for what, avoiding to click a few boxes that are to you obvious and without choice?

With development time and planing you can make the minor choices be actual choices as well, in the WoW example if we made the first tier be 5% crit or 5% haste and balanced crit and haste to have similar values, your choice would be that of a play style preference, this principle can be applied all over the design to make various choices have more or less mathematical value or more of less play style value.

Don't compare to what talent trees was available but instead what is possible to do with them, that's the most common mistake people do when discussing it, they get stuck arguing based on something that was as if it couldn't evolve past that version.

[Pendulous]

Weren't talent/ability/stat bonus choices in D2 permanent?

Stats, yes. Later on (much later), they implemented respecs. You got one free per difficulty, so three per character. After that, you had to farm the items needed to create a Token of Absolution. The four pieces dropped off the four Act bosses, excluding Act 2.

Edit; And it was a low drop chance off the bosses. Last I played, the fused Token cost about an Um rune if I recall.

[Resentful]

Stats, yes. Later on (much later), they implemented respecs. You got one free per difficulty, so three per character. After that, you had to farm the items needed to create a Token of Absolution. The four pieces dropped off the four Act bosses, excluding Act 2.

Edit; And it was a low drop chance off the bosses. Last I played, the fused Token cost about an Um rune if I recall.

Regardless rushing in that game wasn't even a problem get a friend to rush you and boom your high level f-yeah poison nova necromancer LES DO THIS. K I'm bored of him BRB leveling corpse explosion thingie necromancer.

Repeat

[Lysah]

Well, until they fixed ubers leveling was just stupid, 1-80 was doable in like four hours. Even after that got changed leveling was such a breeze that no one minded making alts to try new builds, for people like me, that was actually part of the fun. Leveling in D3 is such a chore by comparison, not fun at all.

[Palmatum]

Well, until they fixed ubers leveling was just stupid, 1-80 was doable in like four hours. Even after that got changed leveling was such a breeze that no one minded making alts to try new builds, for people like me, that was actually part of the fun. Leveling in D3 is such a chore by comparison, not fun at all.

Leveling in D3 is fine. I don't think many people do anything other than run a set route farming legendaries anyway, so it's no big deal.