05-06-2003, 12:42 PM
Very nice analysis, Jondifool. It seems that those goals by Blizzard where not mandatory goals to be achieved at all cost, but rather "guidelines".
* providing a more interesting play experience (more variety, greater challenge)
The first part, more variety, can come from variation in individual monsters (random resistances, for example) and from encouraging players to play in different areas. This could be achieved by rebalancing the experience and drop rates : I would gladly play a lot in Act 1 if it meant having half-decent drops and experience.
Greater challenge can also come from monsters variations, harder to kill monsters (immunities, HPs, damage...), and better AI. All those things have been hinted at by Blizzard in the past.
* enough new rewards to peak the interest of all the players
As you said, it should come not only from adding uber and insanely hard to find items, but also by having easy to find or make (crafting recipes, doable runewords) decent items for the less MF-driven players. Both goals are not at all impossible to meet at the same time, and this is one of the areas where I'm fully confident Blizzard will deliver. For example, 1.09 has lots of very nice unique items you can hope to find in a lifetime (end-game items even for medium-skilled players, if not uber gear), as well as a handful of very nice runewords (like Lionheart, Smoke, or Honor). We obviously need more of those as well as decent rares.
* not nerfing anything
I think there should be a distinction between pure nerfs and bug fixes. For example, removing the GA/Pierce interaction will obviously be regarded as a nerf by many people. But this is actually (from Isolde's words, IIRC) a bug fix.
Making cows Lightning-immune would also be regarded as a "nerf" by boring cowazons and Nova sorcs. The global efficiency of a skill is determined by its stats, its interactions with other skills, and the variety of situations where you can use it. So even if no skill is "nerfed" per se (ie the stats stay the same), the "more challenging" environment will obviously change the way some skills are used, making some of the top skills less useful, ie a "nerf" in the global sense.
* not make it impossible for non-uber characters
This is Sirian's "gap" complain, and it's a very valid one. "Uber" can be said about gear, and about skill combos. This mean that the game should be fine-tuned for both restraining uber-gear, and for making "variant" characters (ie those not using the "best" skills).
For me, the main problem of the "gap" is with bosses. Beating a CE/MSLEB with a melee character not loaded with absorb gear is ranging from hard to impossible. Dolls and Nhilathak are also pains for many otherwise good characters.
The difficulty is that if you balance the game for a character equipped with "average" gear, and using a good variety of skills, then you make it a pure click-fest for characters able to deal 4 times the damage, with twice has many Hit Points, twice as much leech, and absorb gear.
I think this goal is possible to achieve for the new 1.10 Realms (depending on how it's difficult to find and equip the high-end items, and also on the security) and Single Player characters, but that it won't be possible in the existing environment of 1.09 chars.
* promote a greater variety in build styles
I believe this should be interpreted as "stop disgusting players from playing with variant characters", and it mostly goes with fixing the "gap" problem. IMHO, with some gear available, it's already very possible to have varied builds (and for some of the more gifted players around there, they can even remove the gear part). The problem is with "promoting". No matter how hard Blizzard tries (and I believe they try hard), I'm nearly certain that in less than one month we will see the first cookie-cutters builds. They may even be cursing necromancers, sword amazons, or ranged paladins depending on skill balance, but I'm certain that you will be labelled a "stUp1d n00bl4r" on Battle.net if you don't have one. This has nothing to do with Blizzard's ability at fine-tuning the game, but everything to do with the mentality of the average Internet gamer.
Making people depart from existing characters is definitely easy, all it takes is a few nerfs/fixes or a boost of skill/items. Look on how people rushed on making bowazons after 1.04 and the fixing of the infamous Bow Bug, or on how people started Firewall sorcs once the Bloody Foothills XP loop was discovered. What is hard is to make people depart in different directions. :)
* providing a more interesting play experience (more variety, greater challenge)
The first part, more variety, can come from variation in individual monsters (random resistances, for example) and from encouraging players to play in different areas. This could be achieved by rebalancing the experience and drop rates : I would gladly play a lot in Act 1 if it meant having half-decent drops and experience.
Greater challenge can also come from monsters variations, harder to kill monsters (immunities, HPs, damage...), and better AI. All those things have been hinted at by Blizzard in the past.
* enough new rewards to peak the interest of all the players
As you said, it should come not only from adding uber and insanely hard to find items, but also by having easy to find or make (crafting recipes, doable runewords) decent items for the less MF-driven players. Both goals are not at all impossible to meet at the same time, and this is one of the areas where I'm fully confident Blizzard will deliver. For example, 1.09 has lots of very nice unique items you can hope to find in a lifetime (end-game items even for medium-skilled players, if not uber gear), as well as a handful of very nice runewords (like Lionheart, Smoke, or Honor). We obviously need more of those as well as decent rares.
* not nerfing anything
I think there should be a distinction between pure nerfs and bug fixes. For example, removing the GA/Pierce interaction will obviously be regarded as a nerf by many people. But this is actually (from Isolde's words, IIRC) a bug fix.
Making cows Lightning-immune would also be regarded as a "nerf" by boring cowazons and Nova sorcs. The global efficiency of a skill is determined by its stats, its interactions with other skills, and the variety of situations where you can use it. So even if no skill is "nerfed" per se (ie the stats stay the same), the "more challenging" environment will obviously change the way some skills are used, making some of the top skills less useful, ie a "nerf" in the global sense.
* not make it impossible for non-uber characters
This is Sirian's "gap" complain, and it's a very valid one. "Uber" can be said about gear, and about skill combos. This mean that the game should be fine-tuned for both restraining uber-gear, and for making "variant" characters (ie those not using the "best" skills).
For me, the main problem of the "gap" is with bosses. Beating a CE/MSLEB with a melee character not loaded with absorb gear is ranging from hard to impossible. Dolls and Nhilathak are also pains for many otherwise good characters.
The difficulty is that if you balance the game for a character equipped with "average" gear, and using a good variety of skills, then you make it a pure click-fest for characters able to deal 4 times the damage, with twice has many Hit Points, twice as much leech, and absorb gear.
I think this goal is possible to achieve for the new 1.10 Realms (depending on how it's difficult to find and equip the high-end items, and also on the security) and Single Player characters, but that it won't be possible in the existing environment of 1.09 chars.
* promote a greater variety in build styles
I believe this should be interpreted as "stop disgusting players from playing with variant characters", and it mostly goes with fixing the "gap" problem. IMHO, with some gear available, it's already very possible to have varied builds (and for some of the more gifted players around there, they can even remove the gear part). The problem is with "promoting". No matter how hard Blizzard tries (and I believe they try hard), I'm nearly certain that in less than one month we will see the first cookie-cutters builds. They may even be cursing necromancers, sword amazons, or ranged paladins depending on skill balance, but I'm certain that you will be labelled a "stUp1d n00bl4r" on Battle.net if you don't have one. This has nothing to do with Blizzard's ability at fine-tuning the game, but everything to do with the mentality of the average Internet gamer.
Making people depart from existing characters is definitely easy, all it takes is a few nerfs/fixes or a boost of skill/items. Look on how people rushed on making bowazons after 1.04 and the fixing of the infamous Bow Bug, or on how people started Firewall sorcs once the Bloody Foothills XP loop was discovered. What is hard is to make people depart in different directions. :)