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Cort

Member
Nov 4, 2017
4,349
Disregarding his opinion on shit like the Mothership Core, I dislike David Kim purely on his opinion on the Depth of Micro video, which was a video essay on the micro differences between SC1 and SC2. His response was:



A great candidate for Diablo 4 and simplifying items, I guess.
 

Fredo

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,033
The demo looks great. I hope they bring the Paladin and Amazon for the two remaining class slots.
 
Oct 2, 2018
3,902
you see that exsquitely rendered extended cutscene and then the ingame looks like... a diablo game. More of the same then.
 

SneakersSO

Banned
Oct 24, 2017
1,353
North America
That moment when you realize the FX for the the electric trap that gets laid by the legendary amulet is the exact same one used for the Sorcereress' ultimate move.

This game should've never been announced - it needs way more time in the oven.
 

Rygar 8Bit

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,832
Site-15
Disregarding his opinion on shit like the Mothership Core, I dislike David Kim purely on his opinion on the Depth of Micro video, which was a video essay on the micro differences between SC1 and SC2. His response was:



A great candidate for Diablo 4 and simplifying items, I guess.


Just replace all text on an item with a up or down arrow lol. No passives or anything that would just confuse people.
tenor.gif


That moment when you realize the FX for the the electric trap that gets laid by the legendary amulet is the exact same one used for the Sorcereress' ultimate move.

This game should've never been announced - it needs way more time in the oven.

They did the same with D3 and announced it like 4 years before it released.
 

irishonion

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,220
It's been a while, does d3 have bad cooldowns?

My high level wizard has 0 down time on spamming skills. They want to bring best parts of diablo 3 over, and gameplay of d3 was never the problem. Boring in the first levels? Seriously what type of game like this isnt like that?
 

Rygar 8Bit

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,832
Site-15
It's been a while, does d3 have bad cooldowns?

My high level wizard has 0 down time on spamming skills. They want to bring best parts of diablo 3 over, and gameplay of d3 was never the problem. Boring in the first levels? Seriously what type of game like this isnt like that?

People want it more in line with D1 & D2 and just let you spam the same spells that just eat mana instead of having to manage cooldowns.
 

F34R

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,985
I hope they release it in the next year, two max, or I'll be too old to play it lol.
 

Rubblatus

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
3,119
People want it more in line with D1 & D2 and just let you spam the same spells that just eat mana instead of having to manage cooldowns.
I mean, teleport has a legendary that was already revealed to do just that. Legendaries that have significant cooldown reduction off of conditional actions/other resources are a pretty common recurring thing in Diablo 3 so it's hard to get that upset over them existing.
 

Paz

Member
Nov 1, 2017
2,148
Brisbane, Australia
David Kim is an incredibly experienced and skilled designer. Starcraft 2 is literally one of the best balanced, if not the best, competitive games out there.

What is this garbage nonsense?


I have no idea about David Kim's abilities or influence, but many people would disagree with your comment about Starcraft 2. In general I totally agree with it being bad for folks to haphazardly blame an individual in the way the post you were replying to did.


It's not hard to balance something in a very simple manner but the complex and interesting mechanical balance of sc1 and wc3 has always been something sc2 struggled with, the main metas of each expansion really devolved into horrendous monotony like death balls or at its worst the swarm host era. It's in an acceptable place these days but the inherent game design in sc2 still holds it back from the peak of their previous rts efforts, it really feels like their whole approach to game systems and balancing changed with sc2 and the competitive side did suffer.

I was a semi pro wc3 player who competed internationally and know a ton of other pros from sc1/2 and wc3, I can tell you this opinion is not at all uncommon in the competitive rts community, though obviously there's no better option than sc2 for now (and traditional rts sort of died with sc2 lackluster performance) so it's the only real choice for folks in that space.

Anyway I've gone wildly off topic so apologies for that, as for diablo 4 I keep reading more stuff that paints it as a visually stunning successor to the approach that diablo 3 took to gameplay, I wasn't expecting the extreme complexity of path of exile which has a ton of its own drawbacks but I'm still holding out hope for some wild changes between now and launch.
 
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Fredo

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,033
I certainly hope it is a thing. And since you cant respec skill points, it seems like it could be.

And besides, seasons are confirmed.
You can't respec skill points? Even Diablo 2 implemented this. Why use hours of leveling a new character just to try a different set of skills? I felt like this limitation prevented players from exploring skills and instead forced them to choose cookie cutter builds from the Internet. Who is still asking for this other than some purists?
 

Shadout

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,801
You can't respec skill points? Even Diablo 2 implemented this. Why use hours of leveling a new character just to try a different set of skills? I felt like this limitation prevented players from exploring skills and instead forced them to choose cookie cutter builds from the Internet. Who is still asking for this other than some purists?
They say you cant respec skill points, BUT that you can over time farm enough skill points to max everything (you can get skill points from skill tomes). Remember here that skill points is the active abilities, not the trees.
The talent tree is freely respeccable at all times, and can of course not be maxed.

Also, 100% of what we see now is likely changed before release, but that should go without saying :D

My hope is that, while you can choose to play 1 character, and max all skills on it, it might actually be faster to simply lvl another character instead. That would seem like a decent middle-ground.
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,371
What's the point of skill points if you can max out every skill?
Progression element, This is why WoW Classic is more fun than BFA & has more players, this is why D2 is considered better than D3.
Blizzard started designing games like robots & took away choices because they are kind of redundant, but forget the human element of progression & putting in higher numbers feels good & rewarding.
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,371
You can't max every skill you get in Diablo 2
You can't in Classic either, but the point is they took away talent points in WoW & D3 because they thought it was redundant because you don't really change them at max level (D2 didn't have respec until years later) or just google the best build, they completely ignored the progression element & adding a new point every level was fun, they admitted they made a mistake when it comes to this at the Shadowlands panel.
 

IMBCIT

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,066
I have no idea about David Kim's abilities or influence, but many people would disagree with your comment about Starcraft 2. In general I totally agree with it being bad for folks to haphazardly blame an individual in the way the post you were replying to did.


It's not hard to balance something in a very simple manner but the complex and interesting mechanical balance of sc1 and wc3 has always been something sc2 struggled with, the main metas of each expansion really devolved into horrendous monotony like death balls or at its worst the swarm host era. It's in an acceptable place these days but the inherent game design in sc2 still holds it back from the peak of their previous rts efforts, it really feels like their whole approach to game systems and balancing changed with sc2 and the competitive side did suffer.

I was a semi pro wc3 player who competed internationally and know a ton of other pros from sc1/2 and wc3, I can tell you this opinion is not at all uncommon in the competitive rts community, though obviously there's no better option than sc2 for now (and traditional rts sort of died with sc2 lackluster performance) so it's the only real choice for folks in that space.

Anyway I've gone wildly off topic so apologies for that, as for diablo 4 I keep reading more stuff that paints it as a visually stunning successor to the approach that diablo 3 took to gameplay, I wasn't expecting the extreme complexity of path of exile which has a ton of its own drawbacks but I'm still holding out hope for some wild changes between now and launch.

I apologized for my post as it came off like a personal attack which it was not.

David Kim was the lead gameplay designer for SC2 which is why I singled him out in my post and while it is true that there are other factors in working in a team environment I only based my post off of the information we had.

Apologies once again if it came off as a personal attack.
 

diablogg

Member
Oct 31, 2017
3,266
You can't in Classic either, but the point is they took away talent points in WoW & D3 because they thought it was redundant because you don't really change them at max level (D2 didn't have respec until years later) or just google the best build, they completely ignored the progression element & adding a new point every level was fun, they admitted they made a mistake when it comes to this at the Shadowlands panel.

I see, I didn't quite get what you were arguing, makes more sense after your edit.
 

Rob

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,077
SATX
I don't know if it's intentional or not, but I really liked how in the announcement cinematic the sacrifices were upside down and could "see" the coming of Lilith.
 

Maple

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,714
I hope they release it in the next year, two max, or I'll be too old to play it lol.

They currently have nothing more than a glorified demo at this point. Some classes with basic skills, talents, and with some nice combat and such. That's really it. None of the underlying systems that power the game seem to be in place, or even designed at this point.

They have a good foundation, but it's going to be years before they have something ready for release. And they're going to take their time to make sure they get it right after the D3 launch debacle, which resulted in them spending the next few years erasing and redoing major design decisions.

Late 2021/early 2022 is my guess.
 

Dahbomb

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,610
Progression element, This is why WoW Classic is more fun than BFA & has more players, this is why D2 is considered better than D3.
Blizzard started designing games like robots & took away choices because they are kind of redundant, but forget the human element of progression & putting in higher numbers feels good & rewarding.
There are like a hundred different reasons why D2 is considered better than D3 and this isn't it because in D2 you don't have enough skill points to max out everything. Furthermore, in other ARPGs like PoE you don't have enough points to put in everything hell you don't even get enough skill points to get every single skill in your Ascendancy.

This effectively removes choice (because you will max out everything anyway) and it puts a cap on player progression. Once you have all the skill points then progression comes to a halt.

Edit: I think there is some confusion here. I am not contesting against skill points, I love skill points. I am talking about maxing out all of your skills, which is inherently against the design goals of these games. Ie. I can make a master of all type character which can do big damage with all skills because all skills are maximized rather than having a specialized build based on choices and sacrifices.
 

Deleted member 1190

User-requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,663
Ugh. I was super excited yestesrday. But the more I take in everything that seems to be going on with items and skills, the more and more unhappy I become.

I really hope they change it to something more along the lines of D2's than D3's. It's actually bumming me out, because the rest of the game looks so good.
 

F34R

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,985
They currently have nothing more than a glorified demo at this point. Some classes with basic skills, talents, and with some nice combat and such. That's really it. None of the underlying systems that power the game seem to be in place, or even designed at this point.

They have a good foundation, but it's going to be years before they have something ready for release. And they're going to take their time to make sure they get it right after the D3 launch debacle, which resulted in them spending the next few years erasing and redoing major design decisions.

Late 2021/early 2022 is my guess.
Yeah I'll be out of the game 2022 lol.
 

Paz

Member
Nov 1, 2017
2,148
Brisbane, Australia
I apologized for my post as it came off like a personal attack which it was not.

David Kim was the lead gameplay designer for SC2 which is why I singled him out in my post and while it is true that there are other factors in working in a team environment I only based my post off of the information we had.

Apologies once again if it came off as a personal attack.

All good, and yeah Kim has had various important roles within blizz, from memory he was a pro as well before joining them.

I just know that with teams that size and budgets that big it's very rare you can attribute something as significant as the overall balancing style to a single individual, maybe the creative director if they're really on the ball but even so I'm hesitant to label them for life based on the performance of one game.
 

Fugu

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,726
I mean, teleport has a legendary that was already revealed to do just that. Legendaries that have significant cooldown reduction off of conditional actions/other resources are a pretty common recurring thing in Diablo 3 so it's hard to get that upset over them existing.
People are upset because cooldowns result in a fundamentally different type of game than Diablo 1 and 2 were. For a lot of people, the less this game is like Diablo 3 the better so the fact that cooldowns were a part of it isn't really a response to the view that they're bad.
 

Fularu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,609
Progression element, This is why WoW Classic is more fun than BFA & has more players, this is why D2 is considered better than D3.
Blizzard started designing games like robots & took away choices because they are kind of redundant, but forget the human element of progression & putting in higher numbers feels good & rewarding.
Citation needed

And it'S a very vocal small mindset that keeps harping the "D2 is better than D3" narrative

Especially since D3 outsold D2 3 to 1
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,371
There are like a hundred different reasons why D2 is considered better than D3 and this isn't it because in D2 you don't have enough skill points to max out everything. Furthermore, in other ARPGs like PoE you don't have enough points to put in everything hell you don't even get enough skill points to get every single skill in your Ascendancy.

This effectively removes choice (because you will max out everything anyway) and it puts a cap on player progression. Once you have all the skill points then progression comes to a halt.
This flaw really only appears at the end game, designing a game purely around end game is an issue itself, i don't think it's fun to ruin casual players levelling & putting points into skills/talents they like just because it's redundant at end game.
I do agree being able to max everything out eventually is an odd choice, maybe one they will change.
 

Jeroen

Banned
Oct 20, 2019
8
User Banned (permanent): Alt-right rhetoric
Lead dev looks like he's in his 20's. We need a Diablo 2 neckbeard designing a Diablo game not these soyboys.
 

diablogg

Member
Oct 31, 2017
3,266
Citation needed

And it'S a very vocal small mindset that keeps harping the "D2 is better than D3" narrative

Especially since D3 outsold D2 3 to 1

While this is true it's important to remember that around the time of Diablo even selling 1-2 million on PC was considered a huge success. The whole industry has changed a whole lot since then, but the lasting impact of Diablo 2 is still felt.
 

Dahbomb

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,610
This flaw really only appears at the end game, designing a game purely around end game is an issue itself, i don't think it's fun to ruin casual players levelling & putting points into skills/talents they like just because it's redundant at end game.
I do agree being able to max everything out eventually is an odd choice, maybe one they will change.
I am all for the casual and progression experience but I do think that maxing everything out is never really a good thing in these games unless it's a straight on action game.

Citation needed

And it'S a very vocal small mindset that keeps harping the "D2 is better than D3" narrative

Especially since D3 outsold D2 3 to 1
I don't know what vocal minority you are talking about, we can make polls across every single gaming forum out there and they will all come to the same conclusion that not only is D2 is better than D3 but D2 had a much bigger impact not on the genre but gaming in general. You are likely to say way more D2s in best games of all time lists than D3. Yeah this is all subjective and opinion based but I would say that the people who think D3 is better are the ones in the minority.

Sales don't have much to do with it, it's not about popularity it's about quality.
 

Athreous

Alt Account
Banned
Aug 17, 2018
191
I wish we could have access to that blizzcon demo at home... :D
But well, while I understand that time is needed to create a great game, it would be ideal to release the game 2021 max... Or else it could become outdated, since gaming industry is evolving too fast.
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,371
Citation needed

And it'S a very vocal small mindset that keeps harping the "D2 is better than D3" narrative

Especially since D3 outsold D2 3 to 1
I won't get into D2 vs D3, but at the moment Classic is far ahead of retail, streaming for retail is as dead as Alliance mythic guilds, many servers for Classic WoW still have queue times as well, i don't know how long this will last though, Blizzard made a mistake of using 1.12 as a base, Classic is quite easy in this version & people are getting bored faster than they should.
 

Fularu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,609
I won't get into D2 vs D3, but at the moment Classic is far ahead of retail, streaming for retail is as dead as Alliance mythic guilds, many servers for Classic WoW still have queue times as well, i don't know how long this will last though, Blizzard made a mistake of using 1.12 as a base, Classic is quite easy in this version & people are getting bored faster than they should.
Streaming as a metric is completely flawed as a way to gouge playerbases for retail and classic.

Both are healthy and right now BfA has no streamable content of interest. Once 8.3 hits and the mythic race starts again, watch numbers swap.

Also it's crazy, I know, but people play both.
 

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,371
Streaming as a metric is completely flawed as a way to gouge playerbases for retail and classic.

Both are healthy and right now BfA has no streamable content of interest. Once 8.3 hits and the mythic race starts again, watch numbers swap.

Also it's crazy, I know, but people play both.
They do, but BFA is in a bad state right now, half of Shadowlands is just fixing BFA issues, which is welcomed.
 

Shadout

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,801
Edit: I think there is some confusion here. I am not contesting against skill points, I love skill points. I am talking about maxing out all of your skills, which is inherently against the design goals of these games. Ie. I can make a master of all type character which can do big damage with all skills because all skills are maximized rather than having a specialized build based on choices and sacrifices.
I completely agree with that.
Sadly Blizzard clearly dont want to force people to remake characters. And lots of people seem to not want being forced either.

What they are proposing for D4 is not perfect, but it sounds a lot better than what D3 does in terms of creating meaningful choices and character identity. Both goals will potentially be there this way, up until you have grinded heavily to max all skills. Unless they make it super easy to get skill points, in which case it would be completely pointless regardless.
 

Dahbomb

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,610
They don't have to make us remake characters, they can give us respec option (with a cost).
 

7thFloor

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,620
U.S.
What they are proposing for D4 is not perfect, but it sounds a lot better than what D3 does in terms of creating meaningful choices and character identity.
After absorbing all the info I could over the past couple of days, I feel the same way. And their attitude towards feedback has me feeling hopeful about the features that concern me.
 

Fredo

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,033
Maybe I misunderstood what they are doing with the skill points. If you can grind them and still max out all of those you want then it actually sounds okay.