Question on quest rewards

[vmxa]

This is more a rant than anything, but I was just wondering why you get one skill point from Act 1 regardless of the level.

In normal mode that is a huge boost so early in the game. Go to NM and it is not much. In hell mode, it is a real joke.


Worse yet is the figurine reward of 20 life. In normal that was swell, but in hell it is not even enough to bother using.

In Act V you get 2 skill points for the ancients, not bad in normal. Underwhelming in NM. Now come on in hell mode, 2 for that? What do you care about 2 skill points by the end of the game?

These should scale up. In effect the imbue does and so does the rescue of Anya as you get better stuff based on your improved character.

[Munkay]

Although I understand the mentality behind that, I also would argue that the reward is still just as important. I've never ran out of places to put skill points (especially with the addition of synergies in Lord of Destruction).

The 20 life becomes more than 20 life, when you take into acount hell players having high level oak sage, battle orders, or +%life gear. It indirectly ramps up in value.

Same thing goes with Anya's +10 resist all award. Resists are very important in hell, and a 'free' 10% is huge.

My friend and I have gone back and done every quest reward once we make it to act5 hell, after skipping the rewards the first time.

Cheers,

Munk

[vmxa]

True you can leverage the 20 up a bit, but 20 may represent 15 to 20% of your total life in normal act III. By Hell actIII it respresents maybe 3 or 4%.

You can use skill points for sure, but again they are not porportional. The skill in act 1 is maybe the second one you got in the game and is a huge boost. In NM it is one out of what 30 or more. In hell maybe 1 out of 80 or more. So the value to me is much smaller than the effort to get it.

Remember the task is not any less ardious in subsequent levels, just the reward is less.

Again it is not like anything will be done about it and it is too late for me.

[Munkay]

True you can leverage the 20 up a bit, but 20 may represent 15 to 20% of your total life in normal act III. By Hell actIII it respresents maybe 3 or 4%.

You can use skill points for sure, but again they are not porportional. The skill in act 1 is maybe the second one you got in the game and is a huge boost. In NM it is  one out of what 30 or more. In hell maybe 1 out of 80 or more. So the value to me is much smaller than the effort to get it.

Remember the task is not any less ardious in subsequent levels, just the reward is less.

Again it is not like anything will be done about it and it is too late for me.
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I don't agree with your logic. A skillpoint later in the game is just as important (in my mind more important) than early ones. Synergies play such a major role later on. The fact that its 1 out of 80 points doesn't take away from the fact that it can boost my entire attack by 7%. As you said the tasks are not any less arious in subsequent levels, but do remember they are not any more ardious either.

The fact still remains that if the rewards were greater, blizzard would merely rebalance the characters to be proportionally harder.

Cheers,

Munk

[vmxa]

So you feel that the 18th point in grizz is as significant to me as the 2nd?

The fact that I do not even need the grizz sort of belies that point IMO. Not to mention that by the time you are killing the ancients in hell, you probably have many skill points from items, would suggest that is not the case.

I mean it seem self evident to me that if you can kill the ancients in hell, you really do not need to do any more leveling. Yes it won't hurt you, but it is not a necessity.

[vmxa]

I forgot (and I recently did this one) to mention the rescue of the barbs.
Surely get a Ral/Tal/Ort is not to pleasing in hte higher levels? I mean I do not even pick those up when I find them.

I don't see getting a Zod, but some room exist without blowing the balance?

I am not looking for a big boost in these rewards. The life could go 20/30/40 or 20/40/60, just a bit. They could give one extra skill in the ancients for each level and maybe add a few attribute points for the act 1 quest. Not a differnece to the game play, but just a difference a recoqnition of the level change.

[adeyke]

In Act V you get 2 skill points for the ancients, not bad in normal. Underwhelming in NM. Now come on in hell mode, 2 for that? What do you care about 2 skill points by the end of the game?
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I'm not sure where you're getting this. The ancients give a certain amount of experience (different on different difficulties), capped at 1 level. Maybe you're thinking of Izual?

And I completely disagree with your post. The rewards are fine as they are. 1 skill point is still very significant for most characters, and the 20 life is still a nice boost. The rewards aren't supposed to completely unbalance the game. They're just a little extra boost.

I would ask, though, what your suggested boost to them would be. How much do you think they should give?

Personally, I'd just change the merc quest rewards, simply because they don't exist at all once you have a merc. Having a quest reward that doesn't even exist is not good.

[whathuh]

I forgot (and I recently did this one) to mention the rescue of the barbs.
Surely get a Ral/Tal/Ort is not to pleasing in hte higher levels? I mean I do not even pick those up when I find them.

I don't see getting a Zod, but some room exist without blowing the balance?

I am not looking for a big boost in these rewards. The life could go 20/30/40 or 20/40/60, just a bit. They could give one extra skill in the ancients for each level and maybe add a few attribute points for the act 1 quest. Not a differnece to the game play, but just a difference a recoqnition of the level change.
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As far as I can tell the ancients don't give any skill points unless you level up. I think that Izual's skill points could be increased, as well as his difficulty. If he was the only person who could drop Azurewrath, think of how awesome that could be. Or if he had a high chance to drop it. Especially if he actually USED it like valkyries do. As far as I can tell, the burning souls around izual are more dangerous than Izual himself, making the quest reward for killing him not much of a reward for a difficult fight, but gift for an endurance test.

I agree, no zod finding, but maybe make 3 bosses always spawn guarding the cages, making getting these guys 10x harder, and perhaps getting a free low class runeword giving no bigger than 10 in normal (ralorttal), 20 in nightmare (hellumfal), and 25 in Hell (amnralmalistohm). Granted, that may be a bit too much, but keep in mind this could be random (Call to Arms could happen like 5% of the time), and a new way to help blizzard give hints to find new runewords, as well as beef up single player's chances of getting better items.

[Munkay]

So you feel that the 18th point in gizz is as significant to me as the 2nd?

The fact that I do not even need the grizz sort of belies that point IMO. Not to mention that by the time you are killing the ancients in hell, you probably have many skill points from items, would suggest that is not the case.

I mean it seem self evident to me that if you can kill the ancients in hell, you really do not need to do any more leveling. Yes it won't hurt you, but it is not a necessity.
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Gizz? Grizz? You mind clearifying what you ment?

You do not 'need' synergies. You can technically beat hell mode without using boots, without having resists, without wearing rings, without charms, but you don't see me trying it. To clearify, synergies aren't boosted by +skill items.

I'll use my javazon as an example: I do not need to boost Charged Strike with synergy points. It works well enough by itself. But there are more synergy skills than possible available points if you want to use valkaries/decoy (4 synergies plus 20 to CS). I will never reach the limit of CS's damage potential, even if I hit level 99. Do I need the extra points? Technically not. Does each one make a huge difference? Yes. The higher I boost the base skill CS with + skill items, the more each synergy gives. This enables me to solo baal in 8 players solo safely, etc. Does each skill point make a difference? To the style of my play, yes. Whether its the 80th skill point, or the first, each one is equally important to my character build, and this is not the only build that is very skill point dependent (sorc's for another example).

It may be self evident to your gameplay style/goals, that you do not need to level anymore if you can kill ancients in Hell. But there is a wide variance to Diablo II players goals, and a wide variance in what they enjoy in Diablo II. Different strokes for different folks.

Cheers,

Munk

[vmxa]

Maybe I am confused about the ancient giving the points. I know Izual does, so I was likely transposing.

I know what the synergies is and it is good, but liek I said so what at that point? So if you are happy to get 20 life, the same as in hell and normal, ok.

Anyway I am not going to try to convince anyone, it is just my perspective.

[LochnarITB]

By Hell actIII it respresents maybe 3 or 4%.
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Ah, but how many times have you escaped an encounter by the skin of your teeth? That extra 3-4% can be that skin.

So the value to me is much smaller than the effort to get it.

This reads to me as someone expecting the game to be set up for power gamers. Like has been said by others, different strokes for different folks. When I play the Diablo brothers or any of the many variants of the genre, my sense of fun with the game is to clear every map, pop every container and complete every quest I can get my hands on. Maybe that speaks to my having played dungeon crawls for 30+ years. (? Wow, I'm old! I remember wasting study time [who needed to study??] playing such things on a 120 baud teletype in the back of the math lab.) It seems that the power gamer's only thrill is to build their character to uber skills level. "I had to waste an extra hit on that last bad guy. This character sucks!" That is the reason I have a hard time playing with most of the current D2 populace. "What do you mean you're at the waypoint already? I'm still sorting through the loot from that first mob we hit." :blink:

[adeyke]

Ah, but how many times have you escaped an encounter by the skin of your teeth?  That extra 3-4% can be that skin.
This reads to me as someone expecting the game to be set up for power gamers.  Like has been said by others, different strokes for different folks.  When I play the Diablo brothers or any of the many variants of the genre, my sense of fun with the game is to clear every map, pop every container and complete every quest I can get my hands on.  Maybe that speaks to my having played dungeon crawls for 30+ years. (? Wow, I'm old!  I remember wasting study time [who needed to study??] playing such things on a 120 baud teletype in the back of the math lab.)  It seems that the power gamer's only thrill is to build their character to uber skills level.  "I had to waste an extra hit on that last bad guy.  This character sucks!"  That is the reason I have a hard time playing with most of the current D2 populace.  "What do you mean you're at the waypoint already?  I'm still sorting through the loot from that first mob we hit."  :blink:
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Indeed. While I don't do the full-clearing, I do get every WP and every quest. That includes the truly pointless ones like the palace cellar WP and the Blood Raven quest in nightmare/hell. So being rewarded for doing this is just a nice bonus, not the reason for doing it.

If you do look at it in terms of effort vs. reward, though, the current skill/statfe rewards are really plenty. There's simply no substitution. The only way to get a skill point is by doing one of the quests or by gaining a level. Both of those can be done only a finite number of times. So there are a finite number of skill points available, and if you don't do the quests, you're permanently missing out on them.

[vmxa]

I clear everything as well. BTW you are not old, my daughter was born in 68 and I was using computers in the navy in 63. I remember acoustic modems at 300 baud as well.

[ShadowHM]

I clear everything as well. BTW you are not old, my daughter was born in 68 and I was using computers in the navy in 63. I remember acoustic modems at 300 baud as well.
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Hi

May I offer a suggestion? I suspect you are responding in threads by clicking on the 'fast reply' button. This means that your post will indeed be added to the bottom of the thread, but it can cause confusion for those of us who use the 'threaded' or Outline view. In this case, although it looks as if you were responding to LochnarITB, in fact it showed as a response to your own original question.

Instead, please use the 'reply' button at the bottom of the specific post you are responding to? Then your post would have shown as a response to LochnarITB, and you could have edited the quoted part to show that you were responding to his comments about being old, to boot.

Sometimes these threads can turn into several discussions, and use of the threaded mode helps considerably in keeping it straight.

[Munkay]

Ooo, there they are!

I knew some lurker had the rules and ettiquette somewhere. Thanks again for holding the links in your sig :). Now I can quote them again.

Cheers,

Munk

[gekko]

Indeed.  While I don't do the full-clearing, I do get every WP and every quest.  That includes the truly pointless ones like the palace cellar WP and the Blood Raven quest in nightmare/hell.  So being rewarded for doing this is just a nice bonus, not the reason for doing it.

If you do look at it in terms of effort vs. reward, though, the current skill/statfe rewards are really plenty.  There's simply no substitution.  The only way to get a skill point is by doing one of the quests or by gaining a level.  Both of those can be done only a finite number of times.  So there are a finite number of skill points available, and if you don't do the quests, you're permanently missing out on them.
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There's another major problem with increasing rewards for later difficulties. The entire game is based on linear increase to stats, etc. You gain 5 stat points and 1 skill point when you go from level 1 to level 2, and you gain 5 stat points and 1 skill point when you go from level 98 to level 99. Doesn't matter that it takes just a few ;) extra experience points for the latter, or the fact that you already have far more stat and skill points at level 98 than you do at level 1. The idea behind these level ups is that they're all important because they stack. So while the individual bonus from clearing the den of evil doesn't increase along with difficulty level, the overall boni your character has received throughout his/her life is much higher.

gekko

[Taem]

The thing I find the most disturbing is that some of the quests, since 1.09, are USELESS!!!

Suppose your character gets to level 6 and hires an Act I merc. Suddenly the Bloodraven quest looks rather pointless.

Same can be said for the reward involving the free Iron Wolves if you already have a merc equipped (which is almost impossible not too).

My hope/wish is for Blizzard to eventually change one or both of these quests to allow you to rearrange your statistics and/or skill point distribution when you complete the quest and go to said NPC. I really don't understand why they don't do this!

[vmxa]

Yes the free merc is not worth enough to care. It should be better, maybe free rehire.

Surely the quest at NM and Hell could give some additional or improved reward with no change to the balance.

I just feel that it is a bit deressing to know that I am going to get a Ral/Tal/Ort in hell. I would like to have something to look forward to getting. Ral/Tal/Ort in normal is fine, NM I would change one to something like Hel/Tal/Ort and Hell Hel/Gul/Ort. This is not going to impact the play of the game, but would be a pleasant change.

[Archon_Wing]

The thing I find the most disturbing is that some of the quests, since 1.09, are USELESS!!!

Suppose your character gets to level 6 and hires an Act I merc.  Suddenly the Bloodraven quest looks rather pointless.

Same can be said for the reward involving the free Iron Wolves if you already have a merc equipped (which is almost impossible not too).

My hope/wish is for Blizzard to eventually change one or both of these quests to allow you to rearrange your statistics and/or skill point distribution when you complete the quest and go to said NPC.  I really don't understand why they don't do this!
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Aye. There's really no incentive to do the Countess in Hell. Maybe for a rune or two, but the quest reward? BAH. -_- At least have the courtsey to drop bigger stacks of gold you cheap bastard!