Bashiok on Stat Points

I can understand their reasoning, but only to a point. the one thing that drives me mad with auto-stats, as I've experienced in WoW. is points being put into attributes that aren't useful to your class. eg. a Mage being given STR. when clearly STR does jack all when ur using spells, not melee, to deal damage. secondly, in my opinion, there is a formula that should never be broken. that being RPG=Freedom with point allocation. Can u imagine DND automaticly giving you stats. it seems to me that it will ruin a lot of fun for a lot of people.until WoW came along, ive never known or heard of a RPG that took away that function.and there is a reason for it. so for right now im extremely skeptical of this, however if they manage to pull it off in such a way that doesnt break the game i will be thrilled. so..heres hoping.

 

While I like the "what you do is what you're good at" to a certain extent, I'm glad it wont be that way in Diablo. 

These other systems better be awesome if they're going to replace being able to stat your character the way you want.

 

I am still very sceptical about the auto adding of statpoints.  A lot of the fun was building up what you liked best.  I guess we will just have to wait and see.

 

I still find this to be pretty gay. It's a sign of how popular Blizzard has become, their games can't have any mechanics that might piss people off. 

 

The main reason they're auto adding stat points is to give you diversity in end game. No longer will you be stuck with a Zealot whom you wish you rolled into a hammerdin. You can respec the characters. Should they allow you to respec stats then, too? Nah, blizzard dont want the players to have too much control.

 

Or you start another character, which was half the fun imo.

 

The only reason most people started new characters in Diablo 2 was simply because the game became very, very monotonous at the later stages. 

I'd much rather be attached to a single character in Diablo 3 that lasts a long time and allows me to go through procedurally generated encounters (as in Left 4 Dead) instead of having to create new characters to experience the game anew.

If Left 4 Dead's Director AI has shown us anything, it's that games can be incredibly fun despite limited content. It's something I'd love to see implemented into Diablo 3.  

 

Let me understand this:  THey are going to give you the ability to "increase" your stats ala Oblivion style? Like Jumping or Running?  Or when you level, they are going to do the WoW way and say, we decide how much your mage will get into STR?  Either way, that would not be very popular.  FOr me, who is looking forward to the game, disapointing.  I very much used to full custization for every character I make, at each level.  

Either way, game breaking for me.  half the fun is to try different things with characters and learn from the mistakes of the older ones.

 

No. That's not what they mean by the auto system. 

In Diablo 2, you had two separate systems: stats and skills. Every level, you'd have 5 points to spend in your stats and 1 point to spend in your skills. This allowed for a lot of 'min-maxing', where players would spend all of their stat points on Vitality and not much else, because the other stats just weren't as important once you had the stat requirements to equip items. This made the game grossly imbalanced, of course, as some characters would grossly overpower others based simply on their stat points. Other stats besides Vitality didn't matter anywhere as much, so the player with the highest Vitality would also be the strongest player regardless of everything else.   

In Diablo 3,  they've decided to take away the ability to control the stat points, so that every player is allotted a certain amount of stats per level based on the class template that they play. In this way, the player can't 'min-max' his or her character and become overly powerful based on his or her investment into a single stat point. Diablo 3 instead focuses on diversifying character types based on skills and "skill runes", which alter the effects of the skills you use. Skills are all divided into skill trees of a sort, so you still have to invest in a certain skill tree to get to the more specialized skills of that tree. This isn't to say that you can't mix and match, of course.

All it says is that the game probably be far more diverse when it comes to character building, and stats will play a very small role in determining whom the most powerful characters are. Suffice to say, I like this change. 

With regards to the post, Bashiok is responding to someone who asked why they couldn't implement an Oblivion-like system.  He says that it is too easy to game or exploit such a system, so that's not what they want to implement. 

 

AH.  Thanks.  So...the WoW system then?  Correct?

 

That's correct, at least with regards to the stats. 

Skills are handled entirely differently though the closest comparison could be the WoW talent trees. There are significant differences, however. Each skill tree has both 'major skills' and 'minor skills'. Major skills are like your main attacks, like fireballs, lightning strikes and what have you. The minor skills are basically passive modifiers that improve the effectiveness of your major skills.

Each major skill can also be enhanced with a "skill rune" modifier that you find as items in the game. A skill rune could come in the form of a "Rune of Striking", which impacts certain skills differently. It might for example cause your lightning to do critical damage, your fireball to explode, or your teleport to damage and stun enemies nearby each time you teleport.  You can only have one skill rune per skill, but you can swap them out as you please.