Penny Arcade covers both sides of the argument though:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->For my part, and I’m not, like, The Lord or anything, but the gulf between able to install a Spawn copy of the game and not being able to play offline at all seems pretty deep. Don’t really know what else to tell you. I saw that Blizzard came out with a <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36402/Blizzard_VP_Surprised_Over_Response_To_Diablo_III_Online_Requirement.php%E2%80%9D" target="_blank"><i>response</i> response</a>, expressing their surprise at the consumer reaction, when this is more or less how consumers react every single time they learn the precise circumference of their golden leash.
By <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/01/diablo-3-to-feature-player-to-player-real-money-auction-house-fo/" target="_blank">their own admission</a>, Diablo isn’t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you’re playing with someone who has duped items or whatever, all it means is that you will be more likely to defeat Satan. Without a means to gain advantage over another, “cheating†as a concept becomes substantially more opaque. Who is the cheated party, precisely? Satan the Devil? ###### him, who cares.
Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn’t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream.
There, now don’t you feel better?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think I may have misrepresented my own stance on this in previous posts. My apathy towards Blizzard's various Diablo 3 "features" stems not from agreement, but from weariness. In days past I would probably have been aflame with fervour, but I have seen too much, my youthful exuberance has been smothered with the stained pillow of reality. As customers we have but one voice, that of our currency, and that voice consistently says "yes" to everything Blizzard does. Why should they listen to our pleading cries of "no, no" as they rape us, when deep down they KNOW we want it?
I can feel quite good about it given that I don't actually see the appeal in any blizzard games.
I tried torchlight to see if I would like diablo, honestly don't care for it at all. The controls don't work very well, RPGs need a much slower pace as a rule because you have all of the different abilities you can use, otherwise they just become very mediocre action games.
I do however like shadowgrounds, which is a top down action shooter with a bit of RPG development, and a very good one at that, I also like alien shooter, much in the same vein.
I think top down games work much better as shooters rather than conventional special ability based RPGs. I don't get why blizzard makes so much money when all of their games are really dated and bleh. WoW is based around grinding for eighty or so levels, compared to guild wars which basically throws level 20 and maxed gear at you and then just lets you pvp and collect extra skills and explore the world as much as you like. Diablo seems very much inferior to other top down action games which streamline the formula so that it works better at a faster pace, and starcraft is exactly what you'd expect from a game made a decade or so ago.
Just seems odd to me that they'd make so much money off such uninspired games.
The sad thing is, neither we nor they will even know if these measures will cost them sales. Lots of people will say they won't buy it, a lot probably will anyway, and there's no way of knowing after release how many people who would have bought it didn't, or how many people who wouldn't have bought it (and just pirated it instead), will wind up buying it because they have to. As I said earlier, I'm definitely in the boycott camp, and I will not cave, because while I'm interested in the game, I'm not a desperate fanboy. I will wait until the price falls to what I think a somewhat crippled game that's somewhat insulting to consumers should cost.
Penny Arcade also recently discussed the 3DS and why it's not doing so hot. We're living in a world where mobile games are $1. We're also living in a world where steam sales have AAA games for $10, and awesome indie games for $5. No way I'm ever paying $60 for a game unless I'm blown away by both the product and the company's conduct and respect for its customers.
Apparently the current D3 version doesn't even have skill trees. Not enough time to balance those. Which is like removing any tech buildings from RTS or weapons from an FPS... I mean... what the hell?
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1868565:date=Aug 12 2011, 04:00 PM:name=Panigg)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Panigg @ Aug 12 2011, 04:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868565"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Apparently the current D3 version doesn't even have skill trees. Not enough time to balance those. Which is like removing any tech buildings from RTS or weapons from an FPS... I mean... what the hell?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> That's... Odd, to say the least o.o
More of an inside source, but 100% reliable. Could be that it was just the build they had but as far as things look right now this is supposed to be final. Not sure yet tho.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
edited August 2011
that would be unfortunate.
I seem to remember that the skill trees were in the demo at BlizzCon a couple years back (the year they announced Cata), but I don't remember perfectly tbh.
The saving grace COULD be that they might be focusing more heavily on the rune system instead (where you rune up spells so they do different things).
Meh, I'll still be buying it, I'm a sucker for 3d rogue likes.
I just can't wrap my head around the idea that they're releasing D3 without them. But if anything Bobby Kotick could probably be held responsible for such a thing.
Lets hope this is just some weird joke and the final will have the skill trees in.
I dunno, I'd kinda welcome the loss of skill trees. I've never liked them :p
I prefer it when you just play the game instead of having to stop every level to open the talent calculator and make sure you're not screwing yourself over with your horribly uninformed choices... only to find out the thing you read up on doesn't quite work the way you imagined so you're stuck with something you don't like anyway. joy! In D2 there was no respec either so your character was now rubbish... FOREVER!!! :p
That's one of the things I definitely felt PSO did right: levels are just a nice thing that goes up in the background and pumps your stats up. No messing around on your part with that. You want to tweak your stats or customise? there's stuff you can do but you can do it in your own time outside of combat and without slowing everyone else down :3
<!--quoteo(post=1868837:date=Aug 14 2011, 05:19 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Geminosity @ Aug 14 2011, 05:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868837"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In D2 there was no respec either so your character was now rubbish... FOREVER!!! :p<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Having just finished D2 I'll just point and say that's not true. At least with the LoD expansion and latest patch so it might not have been the case earlier. If you go to the witch in the first chapter after killing Anduriel she will ONCE reset both your stats and skills, which is hardly enough to be satisfied imo.
I hope however Blizzard does it makes it more useful and less frustrating than the original skilltree (for above post's reasons).
Heh, the game's had a lot of weird things patched in since my own days of Diablo-ing were past, respec being just one of them. I got curious after you posted about it though and looked it up: seems it appeared in the v1.13 patch, which was released on March 2010... a long, loooong time after I stopped playing. It's kind of impressive to think how long Blizzard has given technical support for the game though and that enough people are still playing it to merit that kind of stuff :3
Comments
I don't really mind always online DRM.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->For my part, and I’m not, like, The Lord or anything, but the gulf between able to install a Spawn copy of the game and not being able to play offline at all seems pretty deep. Don’t really know what else to tell you. I saw that Blizzard came out with a <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36402/Blizzard_VP_Surprised_Over_Response_To_Diablo_III_Online_Requirement.php%E2%80%9D" target="_blank"><i>response</i> response</a>, expressing their surprise at the consumer reaction, when this is more or less how consumers react every single time they learn the precise circumference of their golden leash.
By <a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/01/diablo-3-to-feature-player-to-player-real-money-auction-house-fo/" target="_blank">their own admission</a>, Diablo isn’t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you’re playing with someone who has duped items or whatever, all it means is that you will be more likely to defeat Satan. Without a means to gain advantage over another, “cheating†as a concept becomes substantially more opaque. Who is the cheated party, precisely? Satan the Devil? ###### him, who cares.
Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn’t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream.
There, now don’t you feel better?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think I may have misrepresented my own stance on this in previous posts. My apathy towards Blizzard's various Diablo 3 "features" stems not from agreement, but from weariness. In days past I would probably have been aflame with fervour, but I have seen too much, my youthful exuberance has been smothered with the stained pillow of reality. As customers we have but one voice, that of our currency, and that voice consistently says "yes" to everything Blizzard does. Why should they listen to our pleading cries of "no, no" as they rape us, when deep down they KNOW we want it?
######, that felt good to write.
I tried torchlight to see if I would like diablo, honestly don't care for it at all. The controls don't work very well, RPGs need a much slower pace as a rule because you have all of the different abilities you can use, otherwise they just become very mediocre action games.
I do however like shadowgrounds, which is a top down action shooter with a bit of RPG development, and a very good one at that, I also like alien shooter, much in the same vein.
I think top down games work much better as shooters rather than conventional special ability based RPGs. I don't get why blizzard makes so much money when all of their games are really dated and bleh. WoW is based around grinding for eighty or so levels, compared to guild wars which basically throws level 20 and maxed gear at you and then just lets you pvp and collect extra skills and explore the world as much as you like. Diablo seems very much inferior to other top down action games which streamline the formula so that it works better at a faster pace, and starcraft is exactly what you'd expect from a game made a decade or so ago.
Just seems odd to me that they'd make so much money off such uninspired games.
Penny Arcade also recently discussed the 3DS and why it's not doing so hot. We're living in a world where mobile games are $1. We're also living in a world where steam sales have AAA games for $10, and awesome indie games for $5. No way I'm ever paying $60 for a game unless I'm blown away by both the product and the company's conduct and respect for its customers.
That's... Odd, to say the least o.o
Source = random forum or something more official?
I seem to remember that the skill trees were in the demo at BlizzCon a couple years back (the year they announced Cata), but I don't remember perfectly tbh.
The saving grace COULD be that they might be focusing more heavily on the rune system instead (where you rune up spells so they do different things).
Meh, I'll still be buying it, I'm a sucker for 3d rogue likes.
Lets hope this is just some weird joke and the final will have the skill trees in.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ForceSC2strategy&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_290351#p/c/3/NVTVMqtmxPU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ForceS...c/3/NVTVMqtmxPU</a>
I prefer it when you just play the game instead of having to stop every level to open the talent calculator and make sure you're not screwing yourself over with your horribly uninformed choices... only to find out the thing you read up on doesn't quite work the way you imagined so you're stuck with something you don't like anyway. joy! In D2 there was no respec either so your character was now rubbish... FOREVER!!! :p
That's one of the things I definitely felt PSO did right: levels are just a nice thing that goes up in the background and pumps your stats up. No messing around on your part with that. You want to tweak your stats or customise? there's stuff you can do but you can do it in your own time outside of combat and without slowing everyone else down :3
Having just finished D2 I'll just point and say that's not true. At least with the LoD expansion and latest patch so it might not have been the case earlier. If you go to the witch in the first chapter after killing Anduriel she will ONCE reset both your stats and skills, which is hardly enough to be satisfied imo.
I hope however Blizzard does it makes it more useful and less frustrating than the original skilltree (for above post's reasons).
I got curious after you posted about it though and looked it up: seems it appeared in the v1.13 patch, which was released on March 2010... a long, loooong time after I stopped playing. It's kind of impressive to think how long Blizzard has given technical support for the game though and that enough people are still playing it to merit that kind of stuff :3