Skill preview feature proposal: dreamstate

[Brother Laz]

We know the pro/contra respecs arguments. Perhaps this idea will satisfy both:


Have an NPC that puts you into a trance/dreamstate/hallucination in which you are 30 levels higher than normal and you are dropped into the game (or a special arena) with monsters equal to your own level, picked from a representative subset of monster types. You get baseline higher level gear (or perhaps you can buy some with leprechaun money) and the proper skill and stat points for your level. Allocate them as you see fit and try out your build.

This service costs gold, and you drop back to the real world when you quit, die or the clock ticks down. You gain no experience and no drops in this state.

This would allow you to try out builds ahead of time, check if the skill description corresponds with the actual effect, judge how useful a skill may be and plan ahead.

This eliminates the 'I just want to try out a trapsin to see if it's any good', 'Volcano said 'creates a volcano', how the hell was I supposed to know it is so random?' and 'I didn't know everything would be immune to poison' arguments.

Leaving only the 'I'm too lazy to make a new build from scratch' and the 'what if they nerf my build?' arguments. We can toss out the first one, and the second one would only require some extra effort on Blizzard's part to avoid overnerfing (ahem Nova cough).


I've been vainly telling this to the HGL team, but as usual, they didn't listen. A lot of good it did them.

[ExtraStrongFireEnchanted]

Use single player character builder?

[Brother Laz]

'Get a hack' should not be the solution to anything.

[Mythor]

Leaving only the 'I'm too lazy to make a new build from scratch' and the 'what if they nerf my build?' arguments. We can toss out the first one, and the second one would only require some extra effort on Blizzard's part to avoid overnerfing (ahem Nova cough).And the "I didn't mean to click that button" argument.
And the "I prefer being able to change some skills if I want" argument.
And the "I just want to play an X spec today for fun" argument.
And the "I'm bored with my current build and don't want to relevel so it's respec or quit" argument.
And the "It doesn't function as well as I thought it would based on my experiences in the totally contrived world of the Dreamstate..."
I realise some of those are "lazy" or what have you, but nobody is forcing anyone to respec for those reasons, either. There's a lot of good reasons to have respec in the game and some poor ones.

The problem with your idea is that it puts the player in a contrived environment, not one that necessarily matches the situations your character is actually faced with. Whilst it would be somewhat useful, respec is a more sensible option, since it addresses many more problems, particularly ones that can't be partially solved by reading guides - eg. patches.
And it doesn't take a significant amount of time away from playing the game for real. You just go do your respec, pick your new skills and get back to it. Not futz around in some "dreamstate" trying out all the skills at once and ruining replayability. Cough cough.

And nerfing is an issue. Any reduction in power means a character has been fundamentally changed by a factor outside their control. Now, maybe a small change wouldn't deserve a free respec, but players should have the option of choosing for themselves if the change means they no longer want to have that skill.
There's no way to anticipate the size of a needed nerf, though. If there was then they could have balanced it right in the first place. If something needs to be reduced in power by 50% then it has to happen. It is, of course, important that they not make skills useless. But that is completely seperate to the respec argument.

I told numerous people - HGL devs and players (including you) - that HGL both needed and would eventually have some kind of respec option. I suspect the HGL team didn't listen to you any more than they listened to me because they were just as convinced as you are that they knew best.
Changed their tune, haven't they? Why haven't you?

"Dreamstate" would make for a nice mod (ie; autolevel to X) but as a game mechanic, respec is superior.

[Brother Laz]

And the "I didn't mean to click that button" argument.

I heard the Apple Lisa has this neat new thing called confirmation boxes.

And the "I prefer being able to change some skills if I want" argument.

Countered by the 'I prefer skill distribution to have some meaning' argument.

And the "I just want to play an X spec today for fun" argument.

Countered by the 'Then level up an X spec, we assume the game does not suck at level 10' argument.

And the "I'm bored with my current build and don't want to relevel so it's respec or quit" argument.

Countered by the 'If you don't want to relevel, they screwed up the early game, which is not a respec-related problem' argument.

And the "It doesn't function as well as I thought it would based on my experiences in the totally contrived world of the Dreamstate..."

The only differences would be more monster variety and different tilesets in the real world, and we're assuming neither is a hard counter to an ability because that would be bad design.

I realise some of those are "lazy" or what have you, but nobody is forcing anyone to respec for those reasons, either.

Remember how easy it was to dupe in D1? People said that it ruined their enjoyment of the game because it was just too easy to cheat. Of course, you can always not use the feature... in real life everyone will use it.

Whilst it would be somewhat useful, respec is a more sensible option, since it addresses many more problems, particularly ones that can't be partially solved by reading guides - eg. patches.

You mean overnerfing and introducing bugs? That would require patch discipline. You're asking for respecs because they can't properly rebalance skills in patches?

And it doesn't take a significant amount of time away from playing the game for real. You just go do your respec, pick your new skills and get back to it.

Even 10 minutes to try out a build is too much now?

Not futz around in some "dreamstate" trying out all the skills at once and ruining replayability. Cough cough.

...and getting no items or exp... It's hardly ruining replayability of a character development game if you can't develop your character in preview mode.

And nerfing is an issue. Any reduction in power means a character has been fundamentally changed by a factor outside their control. Now, maybe a small change wouldn't deserve a free respec, but players should have the option of choosing for themselves if the change means they no longer want to have that skill.

Blizzard should take care to avoid overnerfing, that's all there is to it. Nerfing a very overpowered skill to a decent skill is not a reason to respec because it wasn't meant to be very overpowered and you picked it solely because it was overpowered and imbalanced, qq.

I told numerous people - HGL devs and players (including you) - that HGL both needed and would eventually have some kind of respec option. I suspect the HGL team didn't listen to you any more than they listened to me because they were just as convinced as you are that they knew best. Changed their tune, haven't they? Why haven't you?

HGL levelling is slower than D2 by several orders of magnitude. It takes ages to level in HGL, and Nightmare is so poorly balanced that it will take endless grinding too.

Also, I did change my tune about respecs in HGL because the game was so utterly boring that no one wanted to replay it. Are you assuming the early game in D3 will be utterly boring? In that case, you have other things to lobby for than respecs.

"Dreamstate" would make for a nice mod (ie; autolevel to X) but as a game mechanic, respec is superior.

Considering you lack the attention span to play around for 10 minutes and instead prefer to 'keep playing', I doubt you'll be playing this game for years like the, oh, 50K people currently online.

[Approon]

Why this testing out stuff? :/

I mean a big part of the game (my opinion) is the leveling and trying skills combination out, i dont want to test everything out quickly. The time is what makes you happy when you created something successful, and if you know beforehand exactly what skills you want, its just a matter of rushing until you get something. Progressing along the way is what it fun. Every time i download a single player editor i get bored with the game i a day, simply becuase now i dont need to play the game to see what the game offer. The last skills of a character is a milestone that need to reached by hard work and thereby reward you with a devastating effect.

If you can test every single combination of skils there simply aint anyting the game can offer because you know how every magic looks and how devastating it can be on X level combined with Y other spells.
Then you hae nothing to look forward too in the game :D.

I say no no no no against respecs and "dream" states, simply because the progressing is the 60% of a Hack N Slash RPG.