It doesn't have to be said that Diablo 2 has had a very admirable lifespan and is still actively played to this day.

What keeps D2 interesting to play after so many years isn't really the world or the storyline.everything becomes old eventually.

Diablo 2 offers a massive degree of customisation for the character from a number of different angles.

D3 looks to continue this but as we already know the game will evolve and become its own game rather than a better looknig version of D2.

Moving from D2 to D3 we are losing the potential to customise in certain ways :

-Manaul Stat Point allocation
-Freedom to equip almost any item we wish (as far as your stats placement allows)
-Runewords (as we know it in D2)

In addition to the above we are going to have ~20 active skills and double that in non actives.

Im sure Im not the only one to worry that this is going to massively cut the number of potential builds we can experiment with. My understanding of Blizzards reasoning is that sometimes in D2 you made a build and it turned out to be bad. Well for a lot of players, a lot of the fun was trying to make these wacky builds work, planning item loadouts etc to give the best chance of success for Pat/Mat.

The other important point there is that in D2 it hurt badly as there were no respecs. Given that is not the case in D3 it seems a little heavy handed to control say..what weapons a player chooses to use all for the sake of protecting the casual gamer. Truth be told if they try something that doesnt work. its not hard for them to swap to a more effective weapon. Preventing the more focused players from even trying these cool things simply because you assume half the gaming population are too stupid to figure out simple things is detrimental to the games longevity in my opinion.

I concede maybe with armor classes its makes sense to not allow a sorc to wear full plate. But with weapons..hey if I want to try build a wizard that uses a shield and sword to kill stuff isnt it a cool choice to have as a player?



Looking at what D3 offers in return.

We have the skill rune system..changing how spells worl slightly. In some cases it will be more drastic and will indeed change the way the skills are used. But others I think will be a more aesthetic choice and wont really effect how you use a spell (going by some of the things I've seen /read so far on them).

We also have the talisman which as of yet we have no further info on. I also remember way back that Blizzard said there would be a system to alter stat to replace the manual point system. This may yet be the talisman..or even an entirely new unnannouced system.

No doubt D3 is going to be a great game, but with a slightly smaller pool of active skills to call upon and a tighter control on what items your hero can even use, do you guys think D3 will offer the freedom and customization in terms of potential buildsto keep you playing this game as long as D2?

I don't have the energy to read all of this today. Can someone give me some bullet points of concerns which haven't been previously addressed? :)

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Q u o t e:
How will the above mentioned work?

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Uhhh... ???

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Q u o t e:
P.S. Go back to WoW

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Judging by post count I'm not sure you've earned the right to say such things.

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Q u o t e:


Forgive me if I misinterpreted your tone but I can't help but think your post is lavished with sarcastic undertones.

Im sure you do get tired of reading topics on the same thing numerous times which I admit may be frustrating, however its a bit disconcerting for boards mods to what seems to be disuading any attempt at logical discussion here.

To summarise the thread for you, I wanted to discuss if the difference between D2 & D3 in terms of customization options would affect the games longevity (a thread I havn't really seen about too much and one I feel is quite a valid subject for debate).

The intelligent among us managed that nicely (Thanks to you lot), others simply saw phrases like manual-stats etc and went into auto-response mode discussing them which wasnt the purpose of this thread.

The post below yours pretty much sums up that crowd..completely missing the focus of the discussion.

If your post was sincere then you have your summary anyway :)

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You know, being Friday you'd think I would be in a better mood, right?

We've repeated a mantra of "If there isn't enough character customization, then we'll add more". Character customization is one of a handful of major design goals that make Diablo games what they are. If there's not enough, or they suck, we'll keep working on them until it's right.

I would disagree that the three systems you listed are actually good, deep, productive, and/or fun forms of character customization. It's been discussed a lot before. Some of the old-timers are a bit jaded, and I'll be personally ensuring they never get into another beta test again if they don't straighten up (!) but it's one of those things, we've been here every day for years and so some of these topics which have been gone over a lot sort of raise bad attitudes. I apologize.

Take a step back. Everyone is getting too focused on what is right or wrong.

This is a discussion forum. If you aren't able or at least willing to look at all arguments and points of view as acceptable (if even only to the person making them) and carry on a discussion, then please log out.