Diablo 3 Officially Announced

[Spider]

I would greatly appreciate re-speccing. To the point where I doubt I will ever finish the game if it isn't in. At least not on all difficulty levels.

 

It's simple really. Not all skills are created equal, at least not when personal playstyle and preference is accounted for. But you usually don't figure that out until you've played with the skills for a bit. And if I play a game for 20 hours or so and then feel that I either need to start over with the same class or have a gimped character, I will quickly lose interest.

 

Hellgate: London for instance did this to me. The game sucked anyway, but it was incredibly frustrating having put points in skills I never used because their description was misleading.

 

On the other hand, Titan Quest allowed re-speccing and I loved it. It was money based, but not exactly cheap. At least not until you hit high levels where gold was basically falling from the sky, but at that point it didn't matter as much because I usually knew what the character was going for so I didn't need the re-spec. But it greatly increased my enjoyment of the early-to-mid game.

[Magister Lajciak]

One of the verbal Q&As supposedly mentioned that there will be respecing, but not full respecing.

[Spider]

Speaking of Hellgate: London and respecing by the way, I think they did end up implementing respecing after all. I know there was talk of a patch that would provide a limited amount of respec-tokens for all players and a way to get more for the subscribers. Don't know if it ever happened, but I do know a lot of players wanted that (mostly because the skills were horribly unbalanced).

 

So it's starting to be fairly common to the genre. So the apparent inclusion (according to the post above) should come as no surprise really.

[LadyCrimson]

Someone elsewhere made what I thought was a pretty good suggestion on the respec idea....to make it fit more into D3's kind of game...a kind of compromise for those who hate the respec thing and those who don't.

 

To make it so you can respec in Normal difficulty, but not in the harder difficulties. That way, more casual players could respec during the early phase of learning what skills do and what build they might prefer to continue on with etc. but it couldn't be used as an end-game crutch, if that makes sense...you'd still have to make a new chr. if you wanted both a max lvl fire mage and a max lvl

cold mage, for instance.

 

Not that I or anyone else have any say in what Blizzard will actually do....

[Moatilliatta]

I doubt that that would work very well as one of the reasons people would want to respec is so that they can be superior in high-level PVP where a skill point wasted could mean a lot. At least that is what everyone besides the OCD maniacs would most likely use it for.

Edit: I guess that I should mention that I'm talking out of my ass and don't really know why people would want to re-spec as I don't do so myself.

 

It could be interesting if they made a non-respec mode where you would get a speciel title similar to the one you get from completing the game in hardcore mode.

Edited July 1, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Moatilliatta]

I guess this is worth a double post: Angry Diablo fans starts petition for less WoW-look.

 

Some people must have played it so much that they have WoW permanently ingrained on their retina.

[Tigranes]

Can someone give me an idiot's explanation of respecing? Funnily enough, never heard of it before.

 

And Diablo 2 was very colourful, with a clearly defined (bright) colour palette for each Act. Act 1, and most of Diablo 1, was pretty dark (but then most of Diablo 1 was inside a freaking cave), but to me Diablo 3 looks exactly like Diablo 2 in terms of colour/lighting decisions. Which is fine. Its just that they opted for a Guild Wars approach to landscape/forestry which makes it look more fluffy than before.

[Moatilliatta]

Re-specing is when you get all your skill points back so that you can redistribute them again in a different way.

[LadyCrimson]

One of the biggest arguments for respec is pretty much what Spider said. Casual players - which includes those who can't play 30+ hours a week as well as players who aren't as...hardcore, perhaps? - don't like to have to replay the entire game 60 times in order to try out every possible talent build for every class, just to be able to find out if they even like playing that build/class.

 

Those against it often say such players are just lazy and not willing to work for it. As usual, I fall somewhere in-between...I wouldn't mind some respec ability/feature, because eventually playing the beginning of a game yet again gets really old (Peragus anyone?) but I don't think it should be all-encompassing ala WoW.

[Slowtrain]

Interesting. I never heard of respec before either. On the surface it sounds rather silly. Why not just make all your points totally dynamic and let you shuffle them around whenever you want? I could take my Oblivion fighter at level 20 and go from high stregnth/endurance to a mage with high int and wil. That seems rather a goofy concept.

 

I understand the frustration gamers feel if they put togther a bad character, but that solution seems....

 

[LadyCrimson]

The difference between games like Oblivion and Diablo/WoW is that changing the spec of which "talent/skill tree" you've invested in doesn't make your mage a warrior. The only thing that changes is whether your mage deals in fire, ice, or lightning, or some combo of two, or even all three...with a single-tree chr. being the most powerful in that specialization, of course.

 

 

Respec in this case isn't talking about stat points or changing classes - it's about the points that decide what abilities you will possess and how effective those abilities are, within that class.

Edited July 1, 2008 by LadyCrimson

[Slowtrain]

The difference between games like Oblivion and Diablo/WoW is that changing the spec of which "talent/skill tree" you've invested in doesn't make your mage a warrior. The only thing that changes is whether your mage deals in fire, ice, or lightning, or some combo of two, or even all three...with a single-tree chr. being the most powerful in that specialization, of course.

 

 

Respec in this case isn't talking about stat points or changing classes - it's about the points that decide what abilities you will possess and how effective those abilities are, within that class.

 

 

Thanks for the info. That's not as bad as I thought it was. How many times can a character respec?

[LadyCrimson]

That's the debate.

 

In WoW, as often as you can afford to..the first time is cheap, and it goes up from there, but with an eventual gold-cost cap. In MMO's, this seems reasonable because of the immense amount of time involved in getting a chr. to high levels, for the average player. In games like D3, it's not as extreme...which is why I think if Blizz allows respecs, that there should be some method of limitation. Either thru the difficulty idea, or number of times, or quests, or whatever.

[angshuman]

Agreed. I don't like the idea of re-specing in any game in general. It detracts from the satisfaction of building a solid character. In MMO's you could argue that it would be too severe to not allow it, but in a game like Diablo I don't like the idea at all.

[Humodour]

Nor do I.

 

But I've heard some valid arguments for things like once-only respeccing, or stat-only respeccing. One argument is that you can invest in and enjoy early game skills without having to worry about if they are useless later on, because you know you have a quest-based respec you can do. So many skills in Diablo 2 are actually really fun and powerful early on, but are never used because they don't have late-game power... so generally the character just limps through early game.

 

But if it's about late-game respecs so you can try a new character, I'm fully against it.

[tripleRRR]

I would prefer respecs. Though at considerable cost.

[Humodour]

Here's an interview with Leonard Boyarsky about where he's taking Diablo 3's backstory and world history.

 

http://au.pc.gamespy.com/pc/diablo-iii/885172p1.html

 

It looks excellent. I can't really think of somebody better placed to positively influence Diablo III.

[Tigranes]

Ah, I see. I had experience with respec in Guild Wars: you had to earn respec 'points' as you levelled up or something, so you couldn't just rebuild allt het ime. You actually had to wait quite a while. I think it worked quite well. It allowed you to mainly undo very small screwups, and every once in a long long while, completely remake your character (i.e. I managed to play a fire sorc and ice sorc, etc, with one character, which is nice).

 

It's interesting how Boyarski is pushing the "Diablo Evolved" language in his interviews - I wonder how hardcore Diablo fans are reacting to this, especially with Boyarski's background. Are they worried about things being clogged up?

[Magister Lajciak]

Here's an interview with Leonard Boyarsky about where he's taking Diablo 3's backstory and world history.

 

http://au.pc.gamespy.com/pc/diablo-iii/885172p1.html

 

It looks excellent. I can't really think of somebody better placed to positively influence Diablo III.

 

Great interview - thanks for posting it! I can't wait to get hold of this game!

[Blarghagh]

Edit: Also, the only person in this thread who complained about cartoonish art was Starwars and even he didn't do it too much. The complaints center on D3 taking only or mostly the bright coloured parts of D2 without the dim or washed out parts. It is hard to tell yet so the discussion is sorta on hold. At least on my part.

 

I'm pretty sure I claimed that it was cartoonish, but I did not complain. I dig Blizzard's style, but I honestly do not see where everybody is coming from when they praise this new footage for it's realism and darkness. It's just higher poly WarCraft III with some dirt thrown on the colourful textures and some ambient lighting to hide that. I love how it looks, but everyone going "finally a non-cartoony blizzard game" is just imposing something on it.

 

Anyway, anybody hear any official word yet about that seemingly one-hit-kill where the big beastie EATS the Barbarian?

Edited July 2, 2008 by TrueNeutral

[Musopticon?]

That one-hit-kill is supposedly just a death animation unique when battling the siege monster. If the monster hits a killing blow and the parameters are right(e.g the character did not die from being hit by a shockwave or by a back hoof), the animation plays out. It's not an attack per se, just a nifty animation sequence.

[Moatilliatta]

I'm pretty sure I claimed that it was cartoonish, but I did not complain. I dig Blizzard's style, but I honestly do not see where everybody is coming from when they praise this new footage for it's realism and darkness. It's just higher poly WarCraft III with some dirt thrown on the colourful textures and some ambient lighting to hide that. I love how it looks, but everyone going "finally a non-cartoony blizzard game" is just imposing something on it.

 

 

If you can't see the difference between those pictures then I don't know what to say.

 

Are you sure that you don't mean stylish? Blizzard want the game to be stylish as you can see from the Barb wearing an armour that looks cool more than it protects.

 

But I've heard some valid arguments for things like once-only respeccing, or stat-only respeccing. One argument is that you can invest in and enjoy early game skills without having to worry about if they are useless later on, because you know you have a quest-based respec you can do. So many skills in Diablo 2 are actually really fun and powerful early on, but are never used because they don't have late-game power... so generally the character just limps through early game.

I agree that this could easily work, though I must admit that I would rather that Blizzard cut down on the number of skills and spent more time on actually making them good throughout the entire game.

[Hell Kitty]

If you can't see the difference between those pictures then I don't know what to say.

 

Surely a human male would be a better comparison?

[Moatilliatta]

If you can't see the difference between those pictures then I don't know what to say.

 

Surely a human male would be a better comparison?

Sure. But it was hard to find a human male with low amounts of armour on him and I got lazy. I then choose a gnome because they have a speciel place with me since I played gnomes in WoW and they are the only worth that cartoony-art-style has in my eyes.

[Tale]

I still miss my green eyepatch wearing Warlock.