Diablo 3's Ability System
Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 9:07PM Diablo 3 comes out in a couple weeks. I'm giving it the coveted award for "Biggest Comeback In System Design." Diablo 2's ability system was so bad that it's almost unbelievable, while the way Diablo 3 handles ability customization is one of the very best systems I've seen.
Diablo 2
Diablo 2 had talent trees where you spend points to unlock new abilities, very similar to how talent trees work in World of Warcraft. Also, you could allocate stat points into various different stats however you wanted as you leveled up. At first glance, these seem like ok things, but let's look at just how deeply problematic they really are.
Don't Use Points!
First, the best way to play Diablo 2 is have this big red "+" button on your screen almost the entire time, the one that says you have extra points to spend. The reason that will be on you screen for weeks is that you'd be a sucker to actually spend the points as you get them. You counter-intuitively (and unfunly) should stock up on those and spend them much later on. So the simple and fun thing to do (spend points as you get them) is just a trap for noobs.
Next, the whole system of allocating points in the first place didn't really customize anything. It was just a giant test of if you did your web research enough to know the only reasonable way to spend those stat points. You don't have to take my word for it either, let's see what Jay Wilson has to say. He was an avid Diablo 2 player, and the Game Director of Diablo 3 for the last 5 or 6 years.
Here's a written transcript of the relevant part, in case you don't want to watch the vid:
"You usually take as much strength as you need to get the armor that you're targeting, and that's usually around 120 or 220, depending on what type of armor. You take 75 dexterity because that's the amount you generally need for good block percentages. You take NO energy at all unless…there's like one type of build you can make on a sorceress that uses energy shield. And then you put everything else in vitality. That's a shitty customization system. That's just not a good system." --Jay Wilson, Diablo 3 Game Director on Diablo 2
Talent Trees
Next, there's the talent trees. There's two problems here, one medium sized and the other is one of the most mind-blowing fumbles in design out there. First the medium problem: it's pretty hard to make talent trees that give any real choice. They sure seem to allow choice, and in theory they really could, it's just very hard to balance it all so that there's a lot of good builds. Blizzard learned this in World of Warcraft, and I think we can see a clear progression in their thinking here. The first thought was that talent trees are great (and I was on board with this). Then there were too many talents that were "required" because they were so damn good, you couldn't pass them up. Stuff like +5% damage, you just have to take that compared to various utility skills. Blizzard reworked all the talents (well several times, but I mean one time specifically) to get rid of all those "required" talents. If something was just +damage, they mostly got rid of it as a talent. If a talent was an ability that was *necessary* for a class, they just gave you that ability outside the talent trees. So now what was left allowed for more flexibility in your choices.
I was on board with that, but it kind of didn't work that well in practice. Blizzard then gave it yet another try, trying to open up the reasonable choices even more. The next step in their progression in WoW talents was to get rid of the trees entirely, for the Pandaria expansion. In the new system, you will pick one of three possible talent powers every 15 levels. (Here's the Warlock one, for example.) Diablo 3 takes an even further step in this progression, but let's come back to that. There's one more thing about Diablo 2.
Start The Entire Game Over To Change Even One Damn Talent Point WTF
In Diablo 2, you can't respec your talents. Just think about that for a minute. If you spend a talent point wrong once, you have start over your entire character. What? Yes, really. If you want to try out a new ability and see what it even does...you have to start over your entire character. This is completely ludicrious. The best way to play the game is actually to download a hack that lets you set ability points to whatever you want instantly, just so you can see which build you might want to play, then go back to the real game. I've seen many players defend the lack of respec as "replayability" but that's not what replayability actually means. That's just an enormous time sink for no real reason and it severely damages the play experience. (Note that 9 years after Diablo 2's release, there was a respec thing you can do, if you jump through some hoops. Too little, too late.)
Years ago I saw several official Blizzard posts that defended a similar idea in World of Warcraft. Their claim was that the intentional difficulty (and originally, the complete inability) to respec talents was to create more diversity, and to make choices matter. This is really wrong-headed and actually the opposite of true. If you have a balanced system, you would not have any need to prevent everyone from switching their specs around. You're basically saying that you're happy that a lot of people are locked into bad specs they aren't happy with, because that means there are more different specs out there being played. What a terrible thing to inflict on your players. Again, you'll have varied specs out there if you actually have several viable ones and small or zero switching costs. Imagine if we made a fighting game and "balanced it" by saying you are stuck with whichever character you first pick! The big variety of characters played shows how great our balancing is right? (No.)
The no-respec mindset is actually counter-productive to the goal, too. When switching costs are really high (like creating your entire character over from scratch...) then no one really wants to experiment. It's too risky to do so, and it's better to go look up the cookie cutter build and go with that. So you get less variety, not more. The variety you do get is often from players who you pissed off by punishing them for mistakes or for exploring the system.
The good news is that Blizzard's thoughts on this have clearly changed over the years. WoW respecs got more permissive over time, and the next step in that progression is Diablo 3.
Diablo 3
Allocating stat points as you level up: gone. Great, this was busywork that contributed basically nothing, so the subtractive design makes the game more elegant overall.
Talent trees: gone. You have exactly 6 slots for abilities, and you can put whatever you want in those slots. There are approximately 24 abilities per class, so your build involves making meaningful choices about what to keep and what to leave out.
Runes: interesting new feature. I read that this system took far longer to design than any other system in Diablo 3, and I totally believe it. When I first saw the interface in the recent open beta test, I couldn't believe what I saw. I was so blown away, that I had to go read about it before clicking on anything because it appeared too good to be true. I think this actually happens a lot in design, where when you finally create / see / experience the "right answer," it seems so obvious, like it couldn't have been any other way, but it might have taken years for the designers to figure out that answer. Elegance is hard.
Here's how runes work. A rune is a modifier to an ability. Every ability (each of your class's 24 abilities) has 5 runes associated with it. And I don't mean the same 5 choices, these are custom for every single ability. You can only have rune selected for any given ability. So that means you have to choose if you want your Magic Missile to have 1) increased damage, 2) split into three shots instead of just one, 3) pierce through enemies and keep going, 4) generate mana ("arcane power"), or 5) track the nearest enemy and do slightly more damage. Here are the abilities for the Wizard, along with all their possible runes.
So the combination of possible builds here is ridiculously large, given that you fill each of 6 slots with one of 24 abilities AND for each of those 6 abilities you chose, you also choose one of 5 runes. Oh and you also choose any 3 out of 15 possible passive abilities for you class, so even more combinations.
Infinite Instant Free Respecs
Now here's the part that was too good to be true to me. You don't spend points on these runes. You don't muck around with them in your inventory. You don't commit to them and have to pay some annoying respec fee or something. At *any time* you bring up the ability menu, set which abilities you want, and for each one click on the rune you want. It's all in a nice menu with no hassles. Again: any time. With no cost. As much as you want. The only drawback is a three second cooldown so you don't do this in the middle of a fight. Wow!
As you level up, you automatically gain new abilities and runes. Gaining them requires no action on your part. And at any time, you can switch amongst any abilities and runes you have so far, eventually all of them. You can fully explore the system all you want. You can see what every ability does. You can try out any combination of abilities. The freedom is amazing and it shows newfound confidence from Blizzard. There is no need to slow the progress of people figuring out good builds: Blizzard is telling us that exploring builds basically *is* the game, so go for it.
Elective Mode
I do have one minor complaint here. Internally, Blizzard said they divided the abilities into different categories that helped them think about what's what, then they realized that players should be able to see these categories too. So they exposed them, and tied them to the 6 different slots you have. I think this worked really, really well. It makes the whole system easy to understand, elegant, and imposes an interesting restriction: that you can only have one ability from category one, one from category two, and so on. It would be absurd to think you don't have enough choices, because you actually have over 29 BILLION possible builds per class with that system.
But really, I think Blizzard had already done a lot of development that assumed you could choose multiple abilities from a category if you wanted. They were maybe already too far down that road. So while their new system is easy to understand, elegant, and has an interesting limitation, you can turn on "elective mode" in the menus to get a less elegant UI that lets you put any ability in any slot. And of course you have to because it's strictly better for you to remove that limitation. So yeah, too bad they couldn't have made the simpler concept with better UI and the category limitation work. But whatever, it's fine.
Nephalem Valor
There is one more surprisingly great thing about the Diablo 3 ability system. That you can respec at any moment as much as you want does create one problem. If you are super hardcore, you will have a different spec for like every encounter in the game once you have memorized it all and are farming for items. That means the best way to play is tedious once you reach that level of mastery. It would really suck to "fix" that by limiting the respec in any way though. Normal humans want to explore the system freely and I'm so blown away by this infinite, instant, free respec thing that we should NOT ruin that to address this hardcore problem.
Of the top of my head I thought, "Hmm, maybe have a separate mode where respecing sucks or something, let hardcore people play that." But Blizzard's answer is much better. The Nephalem Valor system kicks in at the max level (60). So before that, meaning your first run through the game, you really can respec all you want for free with no drawback at all. Go for it! Once you reach 60, you can get a buff called Nephalem Valor that can stack a few times, maybe up to 5. Each buff increases your gold find / magic find stats. Also, if you kill a boss with that buff on, the boss will drop extra loot. You get the buff by killing rare or champion monsters.
The genius part is actually how you lose the buff though. I think it lasts about 15 minutes, so you have to keep progressing to stay buffed. But you also lose it if you *leave the game* or if you *change your abilities or runes at all*. Ok think about that. If you plan to farm the same 3 minute segment of the game over and over and over, you can do that. But you'll be doing it without the buff so it won't be optimal to get rare items that way. Also, if you want to respec before every single encounter, you can. It's just that you won't have the buff so it won't be the optimal way to get items either. The optimal way to get items happens to line up with the fun way to play: to go an entire big run where you stick to one spec. This is a very clever way to solve the problem for the new player and the expert without really sacrificing anything.
Conclusion
Thanks to Jay Wilson and the rest of Blizzard. I think this ability system with 6 slots, the lack of tech trees, the 5 runes per ability, the infinite instant free respecs, and the valor buff system overall is a very solid design. I'd go so far to say that it advances the craft of game design, even. Blizzard has come a long way in designing these kind of systems, and I think they've finally nailed it.
Reader Comments (126)
Great write-up, David! Nothing to add, I agree on all points.
@Thundercles
It's worth pointing out that under the D2 system, you were actually allowed very few choices in the first few levels. For instance, as a sorceress, at level 2 you had 5 skill choices to choose from across all 3 trees. However, once you chose one of them, for each subsequent level up to the next skill tier, your skill choice was effectively limited to 1 or 2, since distributing points broadly would result in a poorly optimized character. On top of that, because of the incentive to hoard skill points (i.e. first-tier skills had no long-term value), your choices might narrow to zero, effectively. Our choices were constantly being limited by the "eat one marshmallow now -- or get two later" dynamic.
Contrast this with the D3 system, where every single level you're getting at least one new skill or rune (and up to 5 at certain levels). That's literally an explosion of player choice, and meted out much more consistently than the 5-levels-to-a-tier system of D2.
Your point, though, might be better summarized as "why can't we choose the order in which these rewards are doled out?" And that I would have a harder time responding to, honestly. There'd be issues, I'm sure, with implementing that, but not sure I see anything immediately game-breaking about it.
I am an admitted "old guard" Diablo 2 player, and I've done pretty much everything that is possible with it and enjoyed every minute (that turns into an hour, which somehow becomes a day!). I've also played the Diablo 3 beta quite a bit, and plan on playing the full game as soon as it comes out.
With that said, I do not find the the character building system in any way fun or compelling. I don't think that it's badly designed or flawed, it just isn't designed for me as a gamer (a feeling I'm getting for the development direction of Diablo 3 in general, and a lot of games coming out today).
What Blizzard, and you, Sirlin, seem to be missing, is that a lot of us like building characters. We want to start over. The feeling of a brand new, blank slate to customize and play how I want to is one of the main reasons I play RPGs in the first place. To slowly build my character and progress through the game, learning and improving (in my knowledge of the game and my skill at playing it), is the game.
This is not how Diablo 3 works. Every level 10 Monk is identical to every other level 10 Monk, and everyone's level 60 Wizard is the same as the hundred of thousands of others. There is no player ownership becomes there is no character building. There's "loadout" building, which is fun, don't get me wrong, but for me an RPG needs something deeper, that lets me take ownership of my avatar. So even if my Sorceress has almost the same skills and stats all the others, I'm the one who put them there. It's like saying "This is my rifle, there are many like it, but this one is mine."
Nobody is saying Diablo 2 was perfect, far from it. But a lot of the fun for me was that it wasn't perfect. It was messy and chaotic and fun. Diablo 3 feels extremely clean, focused, non-threatening, and terrified of letting anyone make a bad decision. And not really for me.
I'm not too worried about that. Even in the small amount of levels/skills in the open beta, I found myself playing a wizard in the same party as a different wizard who was using a completely different set. Take a look at how your different options actually increase in number more and more quickly as you level up:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/class/wizard/progression
I think you'll find people using very different builds very quickly
Great article. Before some hands on time with the open beta, I was really sceptical about the direction of D3 compared to its predecessor. On my first run through with the beta, I was convinced that Blizzard had gotten it wrong. Then I played about with it a bit more and it slowly dawned how much more freedom and choice I would have in making builds compared to D2. It was a real culture shock at first though. I really resented the lack of choice over skills in the beginning. I dare say any one who played D2 semi-seriously will have the same problems at first, but it all works so well they should find their opposition melting away pretty quickly!
"Anyone think Magic Find as an item property is another thing that should have died with D2?"
The implementation seems much better in D3 than D2. MF is shared across parties and when it comes to item drops from bosses and the like, each party member gets individual drops. It looks like another area where Blizzard are levelling the playing field somewhat between the casual and the hardcore player. You can still get lost in the MF game if you want to, but you can still pick up some decent items without prioritising it.
@Dom Camus: It would actually be quite easy for both sorceress players in question to have everything in common. Were this the case, that would be what you're stuck with. In D3, you can pause for a moment and change everything. How is this not simply better?
tinfoiltank, "Every level X Monk is the same as every other" is a really hollow complaint. It's backwards too. Actually the system here gives you literally billions of options so you can actually reasonable find a playstyle you like way, way, way more easily. And once you've found it, you are playing THAT build. You are not playing the billions of other builds at the same time. There are way, way more builds possible in this new system, so saying you prefer a system with fewer builds that you can't really try out is pretty backwards if you *want* customization.
So first, you can't play a 29 billion builds at once so no it's incorrect that you are the same as other monks. Then second, the Valor system means you'll be sticking to one build on a playthrough anyway.
Also, if you "like building characters" then I'd think you'd like a system that offers way more ways to build characters than one that offers only very few, and massive time sink punishments for switching. That would be like saying you "like building things with Legos" and so you want a Lego building block system where after you make something with your legos, you have to spend artificially more time to use those blocks in some other way. Like if only the Lego blocks were all forced-locked together for weeks, so that you don't have the same thing everyone else does. Imagine if anyone could build anything with their legos how identical it would all be!
Dude. Seriously.
You're praising Blizzard for coming up with a system of freely loadable builds when this thing has been available in Guild Wars for more than 5 years now? I open the Skills panel, hit Load Template, select one from the list of templates, and in 5 seconds flat, I'm ready to go with a completely new build, attributes and skills are different. For PvP characters, who are automagically max level characters, even gear templates are available. Here's a screenshot of loading a skill template, the greyed out ones are for other classes. For the record, the GW devs were heavily influenced by Magic: The Gathering, they talked about this in interviews.
Again, this has been around for 5 years (GW is 7 years old, but initially, there were some barriers to changing builds, which were removed later, and the Load/Save Template functions were inserted in Oct 2006, with the release of Nightfall) and played by millions of players (more than 7 million units sold). For me, Blizzard has finally caught up to what those ex-Blizzard employees, who started up ArenaNet, accomplished with their game. :) And it took the D3 devs several years! Runes were still item drops in last year's D3 beta builds... But I'm not complaining, it's good that they finally came to their senses. :)
Dude. Nice condescending comment. Seriously.
First, we aren't talking about Guild Wars, so what does that have to do with anything. Next, the point of Diablo3's system is the freely switchable ability slots + *the runes* + *the Valor system.* That every single ability has 5 runes (that you can switch any time) is pretty interesting, and the Valor system is an interesting solution to the problem of too much switching.
If you want to politely point out that Guild Wars also has freely switchable ability slots (which of course I know), you could do that without being a jerk about it. I think the handling of runes and the valor system are the most interesting parts, and the ability to freely switch ability slots is a nice step for the action-rpg genre, which I don't think Guild Wars is even a member of.
"So because non-elective mode wipes out sub-optimal choices, that's bad? Did you miss the explanation of illusion of choice? Closing doors is a good thing to do when those doors lead to traps for the user. That's the whole purpose of affordances and constraints in design, be it for a game, a power cord, an ATM, or any other product."
@Brized: Non-elective mode doesn't wipe out sub-optimal choices, though. You'd still be able to make sub-optimal builds in non-elective mode, like a wizard with no AoE spells. "Illusion of choice" doesn't really apply here either, since we're not talking about WoW or a competitive game. Here, non-optimal is not synonymous with non-viable. Did you miss where Jay made that obvious distinction between viable and optimal? In D3, if someone can have fun with their "nothing but long cooldowns" Barb that stinks in certain boss fights (because it's not optimal), the game is better for allowing them that option.
Closing doors when many of those doors lead to more fun or better gameplay is a bad thing to do. There aren't even really traps behind the "bad" doors, since there's no penalty or cost associated with making a bad build. This isn't D2 here. If your build stinks, you just pick some different skills and try again. Hell, elective mode is off by default anyway, so the inexperienced player already has the "trap" (not really) protection built-in.
The constraints of non-elective/simple mode would not be good for D3, so it's a good thing it's not set in stone and is only there for beginners.
@Sirlin:
I still think the tactical decision-making of letting me choose which rewards to get at each level is a more interesting game than just grinding until the game decides to give me what I want. If each level gives me some currency that I can spend on getting the game abilities that I want instead of just giving me new abilities, even if the choice is between two different abilities, even if the choice is (to the game mechanics) almost functionally meaningless, the choice brings with it some measure of satisfaction. Since you are a game designer, specifically a designer of games about smart decisions, I can understand why cutting out decisions that bring little to no significance to the game would make sense to you. It makes the game more efficient. However, I think it's a mistake to use the choice you have at level 30 (or whenever you unlock all skills) to counter any and all arguments about loss of choice.
The order that you get the skills (and their mods) is no longer a choice, however inane it used to be. It is entirely possible that the game and the genre are leagues better now that said choice got chucked out the window, but it still rubs me the wrong way. It's significant that such a choice removal would evoke an emotional response in me, despite the fact that I understand that the choice didn't matter and that it's all moot by level 30,
My friends have referred to the removal of meaningless choice in games as "dumbing the game down", such as the removal of customization options in subsequent iterations of Bioware and Bethesda RPGS (Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls). While it was the correct move to cut out choice bloat, it also results in a feeling that we are less "in control" of our characters, presumably because there is some fundamental aspect of humanity that enjoys picking A over B, or wearing a specific set of boots. Picking something lets us make it ours. When D3 gives me my skills instead of letting me choose them, I lose any strong attachment I had to the character's abilities, and thus to the character (since they really are little more than a set of abilities in Diablo). It may be more efficient, but it runs into weird psychological bullshit. Without the foolish little choices that tie us in, the grind in Diablo loses much of its pull.
I think it's worth noting that, while there are billions of options in a level 30 monk (or even 60, where you unlock the last rune), every monk has, through level 6 (i.e. the beta), pretty much 2 options: long range or short range spirit generator. For me, the beta lasted through level 9, which gave my second rune (for the long range thing) since the beta has only the two basic combo skills (in the real game, I would have obtained a third "primary button" skill). Oh, I also had the ability to choose between healing myself or stunning people. 4 hours, 9 levels, 6 skills, two runes, two skill slots with a choice.
Level 60 is probably great, but level 1-Killing the skeleton king felt like a drag.
@Sirlin: It's funny that you bring up building legos, since the funnest part of building legos for me was taking apart what I had built and building something completely different from scratch. And what I had built certainly couldn't be transformed into the same thing that somebody else had built in the space of 3 seconds. It takes time and effort to build what you want, and if you want to build something else you have to start again from scratch. That's what made it so rewarding for me as a kid.
Every level 60 Monk does not necessarily play like every other one game-to-game, but other than the 30 seconds or so it takes to swap the skills (and the random items you've found), what makes them unique? The character's name? For me to enjoy an RPG enough to sink a lot of time into, there needs to be more ownership of my character. And with the set-in-stone skill unlock progression, I can't even decide the path I want to take while building him.
Again, I'm not saying the game must be designed this way for it to be successful or fun, but after playing the beta I find it lacking the core element that made me spend so much time and feel such attachment with Diablo 2. In the interest of improving the skill system in all the ways you point out in your article, they've removed the sense of ownership I felt about my characters.
This system is definitely way better, and is going to promote a lot more experimenting. I remember how bored I got using the same two skills as a Barbarian in Diablo 2. What's worse is I put a few points in "Find Potion", knowing that it isn't "good", had a ton of fun using it, but still felt bad about it forever! WTF. And I certainly would have liked putting like 20 points in some weird skills just to "have fun" (20 point Find Potion = win??) and in this game you can do exactly that omg.
At a "high level" though the build variance still really really depends on the "seriousness" of the encounters, which is basically based on the difficulty of the encounter combined with the players' risk doing the encounter (which is mostly risk of wasting time since you don't lose XP or anything.)
For example: in League of Legends everyone is investing 35+ minutes of their time and it's very difficult obviously because you're playing against real people. So you're going to have people criticizing you if you buy the "wrong" items or get skill points in the "wrong" order. There are a ton of viable things you can do but because the game is so srs you get pigeonholed in your build.
Diablo 3's high level content is probably going to be difficult, but not like a WoW raid where you need to do everything perfectly and cast certain spells at certain times because this is Diablo and now WoW. The Nephalim Valor thing kind of adds a time commitment because once you're in a game you don't want to leave because that buff is important and if you leave you'll have to ramp it back up again. So bottom line- if high level Diablo 3 content is hard and you are stuck in games with people for 20 minutes you will get people saying "Hey Barbarian why don't you have XXX skill specced are you some kind of noob no wonder we're sucking so bad."
BUT you can still play with your friends/yourself, not care what other people think, do well with a weird build, play a different character, etc. I'm just noting the factors that can push people into using cookie cutter builds.
Okay, so the more permanent your character build decisions are, the more you get that "specialness" feeling, because no one else can instantly change their abilities to match your character. In practice though, with non-permanent build decisions people play more unique builds. It's just a fact that the more permanent build decisions are, the more people will gravitate towards cookie cutter builds. Even if the builds are cookie cutter, when some "Cookie Cutter Axe-Spec Barbarian" can't instantly change to match your "Cookie Cutter Polearm-Spec Barbarian" it makes you feel "specialness".
This "specialness" doesn't matter enough because the game actually has more unique builds and more variance with non-permanent character decisions. The "specialness" is a good trait that doesn't survive in Diablo 3 design because it comes with the cost of requiring more permanent build decisions which means less build variance.
The "specialness" is a good thing that feels good, and it works in some games, just not this one. In Puzzle Strike you pick a character and you can use three chips that no other character can use no matter how many resources they invest in that game. If you could exchange your character chips for the same ones your opponent has at any time and for free that would suck. Puzzle Strike games last maybe 20 minutes and Diablo 2's character build decisions last dozens upon dozens of hours so you can see why Puzzle Strike having permanent customization decisions isn't a problem, and for Diablo 2 it is a problem.
So tldr it feels good to invest in a character build that no one else can have unless they work for it too, but it feels better to have people actually playing unique character builds because character build decisions are non-permanent.
Johnny: yep that's pretty much how it works. High switching cost = everyone does cookie cutter. And on top of that, it also means groups are even more likely to reject you if you didn't go cookie cutter. So I'll take actual variety in builds over the illusion of variety from the "specialness" you mentioned, ha.
there is no end where you have every item or something and are finally ready to play the real game vs other people.
I would consider Inferno that "real game". Levels or gear will no longer save you, it's going to be a challenge regardless of how awesome your character is. It's not competitive, though, so the grind leading there seems less evil. Plus, (hopefully) you can pretty effectively speedrun things if you're awesome enough.
What Blizzard, and you, Sirlin, seem to be missing, is that a lot of us like building characters. We want to start over.
Okay, I can appreciate liking that you build a character progressively, having to validate each step on the way, to make sure you also stay alive while you head towards your target build.
But Diablo 2 progresses far too slow for that, something like a roguelike where total playthrough time is measured in minutes, not hours, would be a way better fit. Also, not spending points shouldn't even be a viable option, much less an optimal one - and yet in D2 it is.
Consider something else: you can still start over, if you want. It's just that the rest of us no longer have to. By the same logic, you could argue for making hardcore the only way to play.
It takes time and effort to build what you want, and if you want to build something else you have to start again from scratch.
As far as I understand, the "effort" part in D2 is mostly just staying fed and hydrated so you don't fall off your chair while clicking. So it's mostly just time. Which is why it's a bad idea: a literal waste of time.
Regarding the supposed removal of choices: the ones that were removed you had to make without even being able to adequately judge them really well (future utitlity is hard to estimate), and without being able to correct them easily (restart to respec). That is not a good mechanic, unless you want to make a statement about the harsh, unfeeling hostility of an alien universe (there is a game that does that, but D2 shouldn't be it).
Also, your choices in combat (which makes up the vast majority of the game) are greatly expanded. Instead of your go-to answer for every enemy being "throw fireballs at it, because I'm a fire mage", you get to figure out what skills you'll need for a given situation. The Nephalem Valor bonus makes it so that ideally, you want that "given situtation" to be dungeon-sized, or whatever.
what makes them unique? The character's name?
"The player" would've been an obvious answer. Look at Starcraft or Street Fighter, and you'll notice plenty of differences even between people playing the same race/character.
Hell, flip that on its head, and you're essentially saying that in D2, the player was irrelevant. You had a build, and that defined you - should that not be the other way around?
@johnny: Well, ideally, you can have both build variance and a sense of ownership, which is what I was hoping Blizzard was going to do with Diablo 3, and I feel is very possible with an extremely well-designed skill system. Diablo 2 is definitely not the best way to go about this, as I've said before, and I agree with you that it favors cookie-cutter mentality. However, I don't really think the Diablo 3 skill system is the answer to cookie-cutters, and I expect to see most players using the same several skill loadouts for each class, the only difference being they can swap between loadouts using the same character instead of switching characters. In my experience cookie cutter builds arise just because most players just want to be the best rather than experiment, so if (as a developer) you want variety in your character builds you need skill balance more than anything (which Diablo 2 lacks).
@pkt: I just don't get the hatred towards saving skill points, so I'll concede that it annoys some people and should be discouraged. But what I really don't understand is the underlying dislike you seem to have towards playing the game in general. How is playing the game itself a "literal waste of time?" I was in the minority on battle net, but I very much enjoyed the time "wasted" fighting through each act and spending my skill points wisely to ensure my character could handle everything. That was the best part! Sure, I can do that with Diablo 3 by starting a new character, but since the skill progression is always exactly the same, each class is going to be playing more or less the same way each time.
And what's wrong with a little hostility? Diablo 1 and 2 were clearly meant to be harsh, that was part of the fun (at least for me). But honestly, any build could get through normal difficulty, no matter how much experimentation you wanted to do, assuming the player himself was semi-competent.
Because yes, the player is important. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. But Starcraft and Street Fighter games last minutes, while Diablo 2 characters take hours (days, weeks!) to "finish". You say Diablo 2 progresses too slowly for a more demanding character build progress to work, and yet the easily mutable player avatars in Starcraft or SF seem to favor short gameplay experiences that lean heavily on player skill rather than character building. Huh.
I'd like to reiterate that I don't think the Diablo 3 skill system is badly designed or ruined the franchise. I just feel that Blizzard (and Sirlin, in this article) is ignoring the character ownership factor that made older RPGs so addictive and fun, which was, in part, created through seemingly "anti-fun" game mechanics.
@tinfoiltank For saving skill points, I don't like it because it subverts a lot of things and demonstrates problems with the system. Namely:
1. The behavior that 90% of players are going to do is wrong. That is, spending skill points. If you spend them as you get them, in almost every game out there you're going to make yourself stronger. In Diablo 2, this is exactly the wrong thing to do. The smart way to play is to look up someone elses build, then hoard points until you get high enough level to use them.
2. By saving points, you're essentially playing Act 1 and possibly longer with one hand tied behind your back. You're going to be using weak versions of minimal skills. It's not how the game is meant to be played.
3. Saving points for later skills demonstrates how useless the early skills are. You don't need them, and it's actively harmful to spend points on them. It's one thing to say that Glacial Spike obsoletes Ice Bolt or whatever, but it's another to say "the points you invested in Ice bolt are gone and useless now, and you can never get them back. Sucker."
If the older stuff remained useful it wouldn't be a problem, but you save points because it's totally obsoleted by the stuff you get later and spending more then the bare minimum penalizes you with no way to undo it short of rerolling.
I wouldn't have to save points if at level 30 I could say "oh I got that shiny skill now, I want to move my points around." THAT was the real heart of the problem.
I think what a lot of the people who complain about how the "progression" is worse in Diablo 3 because you don't get to choose which skills are unlocked, or because choices can be switched at any time, are missing is that the focus of Diablo 3 is almost entirely on the endgame. Blizzard specifically did not want to have 99 levels, of which 9-20 are a complete waste of time and energy, instead you get to 60 fairly quickly, and on Inferno the game gets very hard, so that your knowledge of your character and skill at making cool builds become IMPORTANT.
Tinfoiltank, you mentioned that "honestly, any build could get through normal difficulty, no matter how much experimentation you wanted to do, assuming the player himself was semi-competent" in Diablo 2, and focus on how in Diablo 2 you could play "through the game" multiple times in trying different crazy builds, and how building up those characters was your favorite part.
In Diablo 3, Normal difficulty is, simply not the actual game. Normal mode is specifically designed to be beatable by completely casual players. By the end of Normal, you will be level 30, and have all your base abilities (but not all your runes) and coincidentally, the game will actually become somewhat challenging. This is the point where experimentation actual matters for how well you do.
In Normal you experiment to find skills you like the feel and look of, and you start considering how you'll use them together. You probably beat it in a few hours. In Nightmare and up, that's where you need to actually test out builds to find one that are powerful and suit your playstyle, you start being challenged, needing decent gear, dying more. Hell will get you up to 60, and you'll have all your tool available to face the craziness that is Inferno (a mode so tough that supposedly no internal testers at Blizz have beaten it).
If you don't like the system, that's okay, but just understand that the intent is that you get your character to 60, because that's the point where build choices will really matter. So they want you to have that character at 60, and they want you to have the freedom to then modify that character to FACE the challenges of Inferno however you'd like.
If you had to slowly level to 60 each time you wanted to try your skill at Inferno with a new build, it would be a horrible, horrible slog.
@Tridus: A lot of those problems were at least semi-addressed by the synergy system and the 3 full respecs per character allowed in later patches. But I wholeheartedly agree that Diablo 2 had a lot of problems with it's skill build system, and saving points is one of them (a pretty minor one, in my opinion). The problem I have is that Diablo 3 addressed those problems by throwing out what made the Diablo 2 system fun for me, which makes it pretty far from "the best system ever," as Sirlin says.
@Answermancer: You're absolutely correct, which is why I'm disappointed. I'd rather the entire game be fun, rather than just the endgame (otherwise I'd just play WoW). If levels 1-59 are just a tutorial to try out the skills, then it's clearly not designed for gamers like me. But as someone who thoroughly enjoyed Diablo 2, is it that unreasonable to hope that its sequel would be?