theBanger
24-07-2008, 06:30
There are many skills which people debate, but one type of skill stands out, in fact the whole tree stands out, and seeing as how nobody has yet mentioned these and they're in need of drastic change I decided that this should be posted, because I believe these skills can be salvaged.
This tree is the martial arts tree.
The main mechanism that I don't like is the charge and release idea. Why is it that I have to stop kicking ***, when I use my skill, just to build it up agen, and go right back to the same dilemma? A frenzy barbarian doesn't make just one attack and go right back to square 1. He gets going, and as long as he can continually hack through his enemies, he goes even faster! And this looks really fun! While my martial arts assassin has to recharge her attack each time she uses it. Which is slow, and boring.
When placed in a hack&slash game, the most important part, especially in a series like Diablo, is to keep the action going. In a turn based combat system, like most RPGs, a charge/release system is a great idea, it promotes the user to use strategy, and tactics, that the normal limitations of these systems can't provide.
But when used in a game like Diablo, this charge/release thing becomes more of a hindrance. In an action game I want to beat things up and move to the next room, and I want to do these things fast. In these games, there is a certain adrenalin that builds up, and the slowness of the current martial arts tree takes away from that. You want to keep this feeling going, keep the blood pumping. I always felt that this sort of blood pumping feeling is what made these games so much fun. And that is, of course, the most important part of any game, otherwise it's not really a game at all.
In my idea for these skills, they will work for you much the same way a frenzy barbarian's frenzy works, or a feral rage werewolf, or a maul bear, all of whom keep there bonuses, and are rewarded for continuous aggression, which leads to more killing, and leads to more fun.
So for this system you would start your charge move much the same way, each hit will start giving you the bonus. But refreshing the timer requires a recharge move. So say I hit once with Tiger Strike, I would then have X seconds until it runs out. Now you need to use one of the possible "recharging moves", to set that timer back up. So normal attack or one of the dragon moves is the only way to reset the timer. This should have the feel of constantly switching your charge move for a recharge move to give a sort of flowing fighting feel, which is more martial art'ish. The theory here is that once you get your charges started, you don't want to stop, meaning you constantly run around killing more enemies.
Finishing moves would become the recharge moves, which would reset the timer on all of your charges, without having the troubles of recharging each individual charge. These moves will also carry your charge bonuses, meaning that if you build up all of your charges you could be doing some serious pummeling. This would still require a lot of work to build up, and should be challenging enough to keep going. And because this challenge is more of a "hit as many as you can as fast as you can" compared to ,"hit 3 times before you get your move" I see this as a good thing. Of course these finishing moves become better the more points you have into them, meaning balancing your points in this tree will require proper build planning and thought.
Any way, I had a day off and thought of all this crap, too much free time I guess. I figure that if I want to see changes in D3, I better start posting them now before it becomes too late.
And BTW, this isn't exclusive to just the assassin. It's really just my rant about why I think the current martial arts system sucks, and how I would change it, which would be to take a page from frenzy and build off of it.
Hate Me.
This tree is the martial arts tree.
The main mechanism that I don't like is the charge and release idea. Why is it that I have to stop kicking ***, when I use my skill, just to build it up agen, and go right back to the same dilemma? A frenzy barbarian doesn't make just one attack and go right back to square 1. He gets going, and as long as he can continually hack through his enemies, he goes even faster! And this looks really fun! While my martial arts assassin has to recharge her attack each time she uses it. Which is slow, and boring.
When placed in a hack&slash game, the most important part, especially in a series like Diablo, is to keep the action going. In a turn based combat system, like most RPGs, a charge/release system is a great idea, it promotes the user to use strategy, and tactics, that the normal limitations of these systems can't provide.
But when used in a game like Diablo, this charge/release thing becomes more of a hindrance. In an action game I want to beat things up and move to the next room, and I want to do these things fast. In these games, there is a certain adrenalin that builds up, and the slowness of the current martial arts tree takes away from that. You want to keep this feeling going, keep the blood pumping. I always felt that this sort of blood pumping feeling is what made these games so much fun. And that is, of course, the most important part of any game, otherwise it's not really a game at all.
In my idea for these skills, they will work for you much the same way a frenzy barbarian's frenzy works, or a feral rage werewolf, or a maul bear, all of whom keep there bonuses, and are rewarded for continuous aggression, which leads to more killing, and leads to more fun.
So for this system you would start your charge move much the same way, each hit will start giving you the bonus. But refreshing the timer requires a recharge move. So say I hit once with Tiger Strike, I would then have X seconds until it runs out. Now you need to use one of the possible "recharging moves", to set that timer back up. So normal attack or one of the dragon moves is the only way to reset the timer. This should have the feel of constantly switching your charge move for a recharge move to give a sort of flowing fighting feel, which is more martial art'ish. The theory here is that once you get your charges started, you don't want to stop, meaning you constantly run around killing more enemies.
Finishing moves would become the recharge moves, which would reset the timer on all of your charges, without having the troubles of recharging each individual charge. These moves will also carry your charge bonuses, meaning that if you build up all of your charges you could be doing some serious pummeling. This would still require a lot of work to build up, and should be challenging enough to keep going. And because this challenge is more of a "hit as many as you can as fast as you can" compared to ,"hit 3 times before you get your move" I see this as a good thing. Of course these finishing moves become better the more points you have into them, meaning balancing your points in this tree will require proper build planning and thought.
Any way, I had a day off and thought of all this crap, too much free time I guess. I figure that if I want to see changes in D3, I better start posting them now before it becomes too late.
And BTW, this isn't exclusive to just the assassin. It's really just my rant about why I think the current martial arts system sucks, and how I would change it, which would be to take a page from frenzy and build off of it.
Hate Me.