10-26-2006, 08:40 AM
>A similar effect can be achieved in Diablo II by actually shopping at merchants. It's just that next to no one does this, so progressively better (but still terrible) weapon drops are picked up until the usable one comes along. Perhaps not as strong, but the effect is definitely still there.
Most players that gives up looking at merchants window do so for a very good reason. Probably for exactly the reason you just stated. That isn't to say it's totally useless, I sometimes shop at merchants to get some crafting materials, or just to look for mostly the humour value.
Under the current standard d2 patch system (read: runewords), I'd say if anyone wants to make merchants more attractive turn the clock back to the before time, in the long long ago. Make them sell normal quality items again. That includes exceptional\elite respective of the difficulty modes. I'm not saying ethereal\superior grade. Just plain white grade gear. (Obviously the chance of this happening in the next official patch is probably nil to less than zero.)
>The only real way to prevent this is to either
-make everything usable
Yeah, to some degree the 1.10 cube recipes addresses this, but it still ignores the bigger problem. Usability is not the only point, being useful is another. Not to mention imo there are too many affixes (and affix range) in D2 that are simply worse than negative, they're boring and doesn't really do anything meaningful. +1 mana??
They're usable in the sense that sure you can re-roll them, but with those kind of affix the ingredients needed to re-roll can be more valuable than the charm itself. (What are you giving up really by re-rolling a +1 mana charm?) It might be more interesting if that charm was useful like say it provides a substantial fire resistance, but by re-rolling you might get lightning resistance. It's not a jump of bad to good outright, rather it depends on the context. If you faced a large group of fire using enemy that previously useful res-fire charm is no longer so. But if you survived the inferno it's still useful against lightning using critters. I'm not saying it should be done like this literally, but you get the general idea.
Adding more content is not the only solution, adding context is also another way. Speaking of context although there are builds that relies more on character skills than items, I think it's fair to say a large part of D2 is very much item-centric.
-provide a large-scale customization/upgrade system
Again, this would be great if, it was done in a meaningful way.
>The other route is to make obscenely powerful items common, which doesn't seem to work very well unless the enemies have a scaling factor the likes of which I've never seen.
A potential side effect that I see is a spiral*. You know, kind of like D2 sometimes.;) I need powerful items to defeat monsters to get to higher areas, so I can obtain more powerful items to defeat stronger monsters in order to get to....zzzzzzzz.
Though done right, it would be close to the perfect never-ending game. Done not so right, it's just something else I do to cure my insomnia.
>Balance is difficult. I wouldn't be too hard on the programmers for not getting there, especially if you have to factor in some randomization.
I don't doubt it's difficulty, (and in the larger picture I actually think D2 came somewhat close, or at least good enough for what it is.) But I don't point the fault at the programming side. Many of the things discussed here to me falls under the design side of things. Many of the things here don't even need computers to be worked out on. It would definitely help, but not immediately necessary.
Let's take randomization of some maps. It's not totally random, since D2 does use a pattern in their level generation. But I'd hazard a guess that even by just looking at say, a map list, some grid paper, and some conceptual sketches the things Thecla mentioned would start to pop up. You don't need D2 to be fully programmed to realize that hmmm, maybe after a player goes through numerous grass fields in Act 1 all grass fields may start to look alike. And the Catacomb and Jail level looks so similar they start to blur into one after a while.
It was about a week ago that one of my Assasin was readying a fight against the Ancients, only to realize she stepped out into, the Frozen Tundra instead! Now that probably means 2 things:
1) Time for sleep. (but not before getting that damn waypoint)
2) Act 5 has snowy caverns, I get it. Yet they're all unique like a snowflake. Like one cavern has 1 extra stalagmite than the other, and that's what makes it oh so precious.
I just see randomization done in this way as another version of 'Fight 100 different enemies!' only to find out that it's really at best 10 enemies, with 10 different pallette swaps. Making more pallette swaps probably won't do anything substantial in terms of impact. Making 10 memorable and distinct areas would probably do more than 100 'different' areas.
>Interestingly enough, most of my favorite (so far as I can extend the term to Diablo II) areas are off the beaten path, and utterly unnecessary.
I don't find that surprising, when things are made mandatory the chance of it being enjoyable usually drops. Eg: Khalims Quest.