Welfare uniques in D3, a discussion about difficulty lvl and loot system

[eyetriforce]

Welfare uniques in D3 ?

pretty long post read this part only if you like to read about my d2/gameing
ideas and my thought on the difficulty and loot system of D3, a Summary at the
bottom.

Im sure alot of you guys plays WoW, all the kids playing it aside it is
a good game. I played D2HC since the classic days and then onto LoD and i
Enjoyed D2 like no other game before and ive been playing since the birth
of games basicly Pong ect :p Anyhow enough about me, The online adventure
game i played after d2 got hacked up totaly (about the time the hacked
runeword items appeared) Was WoW, no other game could get me interested
between D2 death and WoW so i guess Blizzard realy makes games that appeals
to me, But now it seems like Blizzard witch to me always been the hardcore
game company making perfectly balanced sick hard games is trying to change
what to me has been what i love the most about them...The hardcore:ness.

Im sure you all heard WoW players complain about wellfare epics, and well
i hate to agree with whiny forum kids but this once i realy back them up.
Blizzards philosofy seems to have changed from beeing hardcore, makeing
challangeing games to a more we want to fit in with EVERYONE type everyone
is supposed to beable to play Blizzards new "highend" content so for "highend"
gamers everything highend now feels like no challange at all and thus the
love and fun for the game gets lost.

The Topic for this post is abit wrong since i not only wanna beg to Blizzard
to make D3 a game where highend items is very hard to get, But i also wanna beg
Blizzard to make the game hard...VERY HARD. D2 was lovely even if Blizzard wanna
be more casual friendly from now on, stick to Normal->Hell and Normal->Hardcore
Difficulties in D3 so casuals AND hardcore players will have fun with it.

What realy fired me up to write this was what i read in the Q/A post about D3.
The sofar announced loot/item changes, that they changed it to personal loot
could be better for the game it would be nice tho if you still could see what
the other players could get so you could cheer for them when finding something rare
ect. But what realy scares me is well the topic of this post, i realy pray to the
Blizzard gameing gods that the classspecific item drops dosnt make gearing up to easy.
I dont wanna start playing D3 and in 1-2 months seeing all classes decked up in full
highend gear. In D2 you realy had to work your *** off to get items, okey the random
factor is there a guy could kill Baal once on hell and get a Grandfather sword ect
but still i realy loved the loot system of d2, alot of items was so sick rare and
others that wasnt mega rare was still hard to get, remembering me doing mephisto and
baal runs for like 5days straight for the Stormshield i wanted to have for a D2XHC PvP
competition, Okey i admit i was mad pissed off but then again when you finaly got it
no christmas ever as a child could make you feel as happy as those digital brown/golden
letters saying "monarch" at the corpse of Baal.

Hard to defeat bosses = 200 times more rewarding than 1-10 shotting bosses down.

Hard to get highend loot = 200 times more rewarding than getting what you want to easy.



To wrap my post up before my wall of text crits everyone for 9999:

Please Blizzard make the difficulty in d3 extremely hard, or add the options for players
to beable to choose difficulty and also normal/hardcore modes like d2.
(call me a nerd but honestly dont think i ever been so scared in real life as you could get
playing Diablo2 HC mode on hell and all of a sudden seeing extra fast fanatism stygian Dolls
running towards you, and this is why ALOT of players loved d2 it was so freaking hard and scary
had to be on your toes all the time or it was R.I.P)

And please Blizzard make it hard to get the perfect gear setup, to me the classspecific drops
seems to make it a hell of a lot easyer to get all the loot you need but hey you maybe lowered
the drop chance or something to make up for it ? I realy hope so, so it dosnt turn out like WoW
is today.
Also class´specific drops will probably turn down the "tradegame" that so many people
loved d2 for, No more "WTT occulus for Areats face" and ect, if your not rerolling i guess.
(dont know how many hours i spent in the official d2xHC trade channel but im guessing it
was a matter of months in total play(chat) time and again call me a nerd but i loved every single
minute of it)

Anyhow thx for reading.

triforce over and out.

P.s excuse my bad english D.s

[Rcuhljr]

You're assuming that because they made one game in a manner, they'll make all their games in that manner. WoW is a mmorpg and it survives on keeping a gentle difficulty curve and keeping people interested. D3 can frustrate someone all it wants, they've already payed for it. I have a little more faith in blizzard then that, since they've never let me down in a game.

[eyetriforce]

Yeah and i feel the same...almost. Blizzard has never let me down eighter EXCEPT for the late WoW patches, and i guess thats the reason for my post i love WoW but to compare the love i got for WoW with D2 well then its like comparing a regular chick to Jessica Alba.
Blizz has been kickass for many many years but the latest trend for them is to be more casual friendly and i just am so sick worried that it will continue on from late wow patches to D3.

[Malrenn]

I support the main idea of the OP.
Sugar and Diablo dont mix. Keep it tough and gritty, make it hard to reach max level, no more cheesy boss runs to gain levels fast and keep the rare loot rare.
There are many general concepts that will work in D3 just as well as they did in D2 and I hope the majority make it over to the new game.

[Sakura]

Well, I agree with you to some extent, but not entirely. What makes the D2 item system alot better than WoW's is that everyone, casual or hardcore can get items. Ofcourse, being a devouted gamer rather than a casual one will be in your favour when it comes to gear, it still doesn't limit casual people from getting good items aswell. Which is what I think is great about D2. In WoW, most of the players simply can't get the best items because they're not spending enaugh time with the game.

D2 has alot more to do with luck since the item system is based on a random factor. But if you play alot more than your casual peers, you'll still be able to get better items than them, because you can do alot more traiding with what you find. I had a perfect BotD back in the day, and it's not such an easy item to achive. Which is another thing you might remember from D2, the % (quality) of the item greatly influenced the valvue. So alot of people were seen with the same items, but those really devouted would more than often have perfect editions of those items.

[Rcuhljr]

Blizz has been kickass for many many years but the latest trend for them is to be more casual friendly and i just am so sick worried that it will continue on from late wow patches to D3.

... Clear Sunwell then tell me blizzard isn't making a hard game. Sunwell is the least casual friendly instance I've seen. (Not arguing certain parts of Naxx like 4H which I considered poorly designed)

[stillman]

Keep in mind D2 is only easy because of cheaters and hacks. If it weren't for the duped runewords, being successful in hell mode would be more of a challenge. It is not Blizzard's fault the game is too easy; it's the player's fault.

[mondry]

... Clear Sunwell then tell me blizzard isn't making a hard game. Sunwell is the least casual friendly instance I've seen. (Not arguing certain parts of Naxx like 4H which I considered poorly designed)

I have to agree, having played both games they are vastly different and probably shouldn't be compared. At one point in time in WoW it was practically impossible to improve your gear without being in a hardcore raiding guild. Me being a hardcore player, though I had a lot of friends unable to progress in the game because they didnt have the time to raid 7-8 hours a night 5 days a week.

Anyway, an MMO with a monthly subscription and a PLAYER BASE full of newbs and casual players HAS to do something like "welfare epics" to have these people continually subscribe. The gear still isn't better then what "hardcore" players are gonna be able to get, but I can understand the frustration. Quite frankly WoW is a very newb friendly game, not just casual, however it still has its niche for hardcore raiders.

As someone else said, in Diablo II, because items are not soul bound and the drop factor is almost entirely based on luck, both casual players and hardcore players benefited from the system. It was like playing the lottery, you kill mephisto on hell 1 time and it was possible to get a good item with value on the trade market, but if you killed him 1000 times the chance of getting something good was almost guaranteed.

Probably the most important thing though is that in diablo II you could get the best items in the game simply playing by yourself. You didn't need a huge raid or any thing like that.

What exactly would be a "welfare" unq in diablo III though, I mean D2 had "exceptional" weapons / armor that usually weren't outstanding but were more common to get because more monsters simply had a chance to drop them. Like getting a leviathan for completing some barbarian quest chain?

[Zarniwoop]

The things that will need to be addressed in design that will change the game more than anything besides character balance and coolness.


1. Teleport. Teleport was the difference between being a successful, fast magic finder and just being another class.

2. Do they want to keep the same difficulty? If so, they MUST include something that matches the stopping power of the only 4 difficult mobs in D2 - Oblivion knights for melee, gloams for everyone, undead dolls for everyone, and the rare, almost bugged named pack of fanatical electrically enhanced doom. That's the way it is.

Unless they simply make all the mobs much more dangerous and allow no way to avoid all danger outside those 4 situations, it's going to be a really easy game outside the bosses.


3. How do they scale the difficulty in multiplayer games? I tend to not trust many people on bnet, so I really only play with a few people here and one buddy, so I am only partially interested here.

4. Will they make areas of the game that are truly difficult for the achievers? Maybe extra bits like uber tristram?

5. How do they get across to new players, that D2 is historically a game that gets really hard, really fast without frustrating them? I know most of us are saying, PLEASE GIVE US THE SAME LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY OR MORE, but they will really look at this. I hope they go for a hint system that can be toggled instead of easing the difficulty.

[dontbelievethehype]

I played diablo 2 pre hacks and it really isn't that hard of a game. In soft core mode it was really quite easy and simple.

Hardcore made things harder, but still not super hard.

Maybe i feel this way because I came from an Everquest upbringing.

I really think truely hard games are a thing of the past.

[Rcuhljr]

Maybe i feel this way because I came from an Everquest upbringing.

I really think truely hard games are a thing of the past.
dontbelievethehype is online now Report Post Reply With Quote

LoL everquest was never hard, it was tedious and full of time sinks.

Nethack was hard, everquest was slow.

[Omikron8]

ah it's one of those "you need to WORK HARD for your items"

you MMO types won't be satisfied until you destroy every genre of videogames with your "hardcore" attitude

i play diablo and action RPGs in general because

1) i can reach max level in a few days (not days /played)

2) i can get any item i want by myself

3) i never have to cooperate with anyone ever except for trading

are you angry that blizzard's announcement of a new game didn't involve ANOTHER MMO ? can't you be satisfied with wrath of the lich king coming soon ?

i suppose this is how you want diablo 3 to be

1) 1v1 monster combat for 60 seconds each

2) long travel times

3) absolute garbage drops from monsters and quests regardless of level

4) being forced to sit 4+ hours with random people for a chance at an item reward

5) grinding for months for a chance to progress your character at max level

___________________

the more casual blizzard makes diablo 3 the better because in the end it will have a ton of replayability, and grinding XP and reputation for months is not replayability

i think videogame developers and in particular MMO developers have forgotten that games are meant to be FUN, do you remember that word ? FUN !?

you want me to treat a game as a second job ? gladly but first you will have to pay ME, not the other way around (buying the game)

[dontbelievethehype]

I love the way diablo works, and I havn't played an MMORPG for years, I just don't have the time.

I just hope that Diablo has some degree of diffaculty while remaining fun to play.

[sicilian]

I think Diablo 2 had the perfect balance of casual vs. hardcore options, and I'll use two examples to illustrate this. My sister and I both love D2, we've been playing it (off and on of course) since it came out.

She never plays as the male characters, but has beaten normal level with all three female characters. She likes the early levels the best because everything you find is useful. She's beaten Nightmare once (with an assassin I believe), but never really had an interest in playing through Hell. It was too hard for her, and it was more fun for her to play through normal with another class instead.

I, on the other hand, though not as hardcore as many, really love the challenge of having to plan a character from level 1 to be viable in Hell. I've beaten Hell difficulty with a Skelemancer, a Frenzybarb, and a Wind Druid. I was lucky enough to be teamed up with a friend for the only time Diablo Clone was spawned in my game, and got to say I beat him too.

Beyond me, there are people who play on Hardcore mode, or beat Hell with every class or multiple builds in every class, or people that pull the ultimate challenge and beat Uber Tristram.

There are three distinct levels of difficulty and committment, all resulting in an equal love for the game. None of the three types above take anything away from the other two with their play style. My sister didn't hate the game because she couldn't beat it on Hell. She still got to experience every area in the game, progress through the whole story, and make use of all the high end skills for her characters.

I hope they maintain this type of variety if nothing else. Where anyone can beat the game, but there are plenty of challenges and things to explore for those who really want to devote the time to it.

[Temple Guard]

I tend to agree with "Omikron8" and "sicilian". If a game is not hard and challenging for me, I don't really want to play it. I played Angband a lot in the past and spent months until I could finally beat that game. It took me even longer to get the best out of D1 and D2 in the past.

But the times have changed. I have a 40 to 50 hours a week job, a girlfriend and some friends who like to do things beside playing computer games. The 24/7 gaming times are over for me. I don't want D3 to be an easy game, but I want to have a chance beating the game without 1000+ hours of play. I am also not interested in getting involved in a huge guild where you are required to play at a certain time for several hours. I want a game that I can play alone or together with some friends from time to time and still get to try different characters who can reach a decent level over a few weeks.

What I want is a game with the difficult levels of D2. They worked perfect for me when I had a little more time at hand, but I am sure they are not too hard with less time.

I don't want D3 to be a Sissy game, but it should be accessible and fun for players with no more than 20 hours playing time each week.

[tetracycloide]

Blizzards philosofy seems to have changed from beeing hardcore, makeing
challangeing games to a more we want to fit in with EVERYONE type everyone
is supposed to beable to play Blizzards new "highend" content so for "highend"
gamers everything highend now feels like no challange at all and thus the
love and fun for the game gets lost.

Apparently your point being that content isn't fun unless some people never get to experience it? I mean I can see where you're coming from, I love being superior and condecending.

Giving every player equal access to gear reguardless of time investment would open up the opportunity to restric access to gear based on actual player skill. You do touch on this, a hard boss is very satisfying to kill because it was a challenge to do so. However a hard boss with D2 drop rates would be terrible. Can you imagine 2 hour kill times on a boss for just one shot at a .0000002% chance to spawn the item you need?

The anihilus and torch were steps in the right direction, if it weren't for the poor PvE balance that made those events trivial to a select few builds, in that they were difficult challenges that guaranteed (with a small margin of stat variance) a specific item drop. I really hope mechanics like this see a return in D3 and the absurdly low drop rate, 5 days of farming, 4000+ kills for one item, mf, bull **** goes the way of the dodo.

[Burst Cancel]

You adjust for casual gamers using shallower early-game learning curves and higher difficulty levels. Nobody gets cut out of any 'content' (you can beat the game on normal/easy mode, and thus experience all 'content'), and the high-end players always have something to do (Hell difficulty, HC, 1000+ hour itamz grinding, etc.).

If everyone can cruise through the game on the highest difficulty level, then the highest difficulty level obviously wasn't high enough. Any game that shows no difference between 100 hours played and 1000 hours played just doesn't have enough headroom to be a good game.

[tetracycloide]

There's more to a good game than hours played. Protal is easily the shortest game I've ever played and it's still among the best as far as design and gameplay are concerned.

You're really contradicting yourself, you can't have a game that has multipul difficulty levels that are all the same content and also have a game that's different between 100 hours and 1000 hours played. If you're constantly playing through the same content on diffierent difficulty levels it all looks the same no matter how long that character has been played.

Furthermore as a 'hardcore gamer' I find your stipulation that 'hardcore' gamers want a game that forces them to replay the same content multipul times and log thousands of hours for tedious grinds spurious. Having more time to play doesn't make a 'high-end' player it just means you have more free time. Rewards based on player skill would be far more rewarding than completing a 1000+ hour MF grind that any idiot with a mouse and 1000+ hours of playtime could have done.

[Koyen]

ah it's one of those "you need to WORK HARD for your items"

i suppose this is how you want diablo 3 to be

1) 1v1 monster combat for 60 seconds each
2) long travel times
3) absolute garbage drops from monsters and quests regardless of level
4) being forced to sit 4+ hours with random people for a chance at an item reward
5) grinding for months for a chance to progress your character at max level

i think videogame developers and in particular MMO developers have forgotten that games are meant to be FUN, do you remember that word ? FUN !?

you want me to treat a game as a second job ? gladly but first you will have to pay ME, not the other way around (buying the game)Those are a words of someone who, i truely believe, never spent a day of his life playing true old-school MuD.

People nowadays want "easy life" way too much even at gaming. Generation X i guess...sad and pathetic

[Spens]

You're assuming that because they made one game in a manner, they'll make all their games in that manner. WoW is a mmorpg and it survives on keeping a gentle difficulty curve and keeping people interested. D3 can frustrate someone all it wants, they've already payed for it. I have a little more faith in blizzard then that, since they've never let me down in a game.

War3 was much more newb friendly than War2
LOD was much more newb friendly than D2
D2 was much more newb friendly than D1.

It isn't one game. It is a trend. Go back and play Diablo 1 and compare it to LOD.

Diablo 3 will be significantly easier (and in games like this that usually means time consuming) than Diablo 2. Until Blizzard makes a game that has been more challenging than the previous one, it is pretty safe to assume Diablo 3 will be newbified.

[BlackWinterDay]

ah it's one of those "you need to WORK HARD for your items"

you MMO types won't be satisfied until you destroy every genre of videogames with your "hardcore" attitude

i play diablo and action RPGs in general because

1) i can reach max level in a few days (not days /played)

2) i can get any item i want by myself

3) i never have to cooperate with anyone ever except for trading

are you angry that blizzard's announcement of a new game didn't involve ANOTHER MMO ? can't you be satisfied with wrath of the lich king coming soon ?

i suppose this is how you want diablo 3 to be

1) 1v1 monster combat for 60 seconds each

2) long travel times

3) absolute garbage drops from monsters and quests regardless of level

4) being forced to sit 4+ hours with random people for a chance at an item reward

5) grinding for months for a chance to progress your character at max level

___________________

the more casual blizzard makes diablo 3 the better because in the end it will have a ton of replayability, and grinding XP and reputation for months is not replayability

i think videogame developers and in particular MMO developers have forgotten that games are meant to be FUN, do you remember that word ? FUN !?

you want me to treat a game as a second job ? gladly but first you will have to pay ME, not the other way around (buying the game)

This is an excellent post and I completely agree.

[Flekov]

In my opinion, the less they change from the fundamental loot system in diablo 2, the better. The ONLY thing that was bad about the economy in diablo 2 was the eventual hacking and duping problems. I really think that blizzard will best serve the fan base by not doing anything radical with the looting system, which includes not changing the way loot drops for everyone. Ninja looting is one of the things that makes the game fun, and one of the challenges and therefore more rewarding and fun parts of the game is finding small groups of people that you can trust with MF runs and other such ventures, where you come up with a fair looting system. To me a lot of fun is sapped from the game if you eliminate any loot competition.

[Burst Cancel]

There's more to a good game than hours played. Protal is easily the shortest game I've ever played and it's still among the best as far as design and gameplay are concerned.

You're really contradicting yourself, you can't have a game that has multipul difficulty levels that are all the same content and also have a game that's different between 100 hours and 1000 hours played. If you're constantly playing through the same content on diffierent difficulty levels it all looks the same no matter how long that character has been played.

Furthermore as a 'hardcore gamer' I find your stipulation that 'hardcore' gamers want a game that forces them to replay the same content multipul times and log thousands of hours for tedious grinds spurious. Having more time to play doesn't make a 'high-end' player it just means you have more free time. Rewards based on player skill would be far more rewarding than completing a 1000+ hour MF grind that any idiot with a mouse and 1000+ hours of playtime could have done.

We actually agree, you just misinterpreted what I was saying.

My assumption is that player skill increases between 100 hours played and 1000 hours played. If there's no room for improvement between 100 hours and 1000 hours, then the game is designed poorly. If veterans and newbies are indistinguishable, the game can't be challenging (this is pretty much inherent).

As such, hours played has a lot to do with a good game. It's true that some people pick things up faster than others, but ultimately your skill at a particular game is going to be heavily influenced by how much you've played it. Those crazy guys you see on YouTube playing Tetris like robots didn't do that with 10 hours of gametime. Same goes for the guys doing SB runs on DMD mode in Devil May Cry. This sort of skill is the result of time investment, plain and simple.

So, I'm not advocating 100 hours of grind vs. 1000 hours of grind. Rather, I'm advocating games that actually have headroom (by virtue of, e.g., good mechanics) for 1000 hours of meaningful play and constant player improvement.

[Rcuhljr]

War3 was much more newb friendly than War2
LOD was much more newb friendly than D2
D2 was much more newb friendly than D1.

It isn't one game. It is a trend. Go back and play Diablo 1 and compare it to LOD.

Diablo 3 will be significantly easier (and in games like this that usually means time consuming) than Diablo 2. Until Blizzard makes a game that has been more challenging than the previous one, it is pretty safe to assume Diablo 3 will be newbified.

Diablo was not harder then LoD, having to individually repair each item is not 'hard' it's annoying. Hell difficulty d2 is deadlier then anything in diablo 1. Hell I could kill the butcher at level one without taking a hit by closing a door in his face and shooting him with a bow through a grate. I've died many more times in d2 then I ever did in D1.

Good interface and usability != newb friendly. The levels of micromanagement and available combinations in WC3 >>>> WC2. It's a more difficult game to master, but if offers you better controls to do it with, that doesn't make it 'newbified'

I'm probably wasting my breath since your busy lecturing someone about how you had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to school.

[Omikron8]

Those are a words of someone who, i truely believe, never spent a day of his life playing true old-school MuD.

People nowadays want "easy life" way too much even at gaming. Generation X i guess...sad and pathetic

I want the easy life ? So from my perception of gaming you can deduce how i believe in every area of real life ? You are quite the clever one there

Here's another way to think of it: changing priorities, those things that grant real life rewards are given higher priority, those that don't (like gaming) are given less

[sicilian]

I'm probably wasting my breath since your busy lecturing someone about how you had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to school.

With NO shoes! ;)