Blizzcon Begins, Diablo 3 Wizard Class Unveiled 142
The trailer illustrating the new class showed actual gameplay demonstrating the Wizard's spells and abilities, some of which hearken back to the Sorceress in Diablo 2. Attacks such as Meteor and Chain Lightning seem to be returning, and several new spells were seen, including one invoking a spherical shield that seems to alter the flow of time within it, allowing the Wizard to dodge projectiles and approaching enemies with ease. Another spell sends tornadoes storming through the room. Here's Blizzard description of the class from their press release: "The wizard is a wielder of the elements and a master manipulator of time, who combats the hordes of the Burning Hells by launching environment-shattering lightning bolts, channeling explosive arcane energies, and creating pockets of space outside of the normal flow of time."
Simple things (Score:5, Interesting)
Your very own zerg unit, complete with matching creep. I thought it was an excellent example of how Blizzard is very good at taking simple ideas and making them work very well.
Re:How much for a Starcraft 2 beta seat? (Score:1, Interesting)
If you are serious, you are pathetic.
Re:Your sound card (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Totally new - the Wizard! (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you *can* have a sorceress in Diablo 2 using a sword. In fact, there are swords that are made specifically for spellcasters to use. The act 3 mercenaries are sword/shield and magic(though they very very rarely actually HIT anything with their sword).
The problem with this is that typically wizards/etc need to learn *how* to do all the crazy physics-defying things they do. That apparently takes time effort and money, leaving your character with much less time to devote to lifting very heavy things, running quite a bit and learning the best way to stab someone with an oversized knife.
So you'd expect they'd be kinda crummy at both.
Diablo 2 still lets you do that if you want, it just doesn't expect you to be as powerful as a pure frozen orb/meteor sorc or a pure fighter.
Sorceress' can hit things with their swords like Hexfire [battle.net], having buffed themselves with enchant [battle.net] and with energy shield [battle.net].
Druids can run around shapeshifted into a werewolf form, clawing and biting things all the while calling down Armageddon [battle.net]. Of course, the number of skill point you need to expend in order to be really good at both is very high, but you *can* do it...
Re:Totally new - the Wizard! (Score:3, Interesting)
Balance is a lot easier with classes.
"If I want my character to wield a sword *and* cast magic missile,
Are you willing to be half as good at both?
That's the problem. People want to do a lot, and then bitch when someone who specializes in something becomes better.
That said, If I created a game, it would have 1000 skills, and each would top at about 1000 points. At about 750 points, I would make it so you need other skills to compliment skills over 750.
Re:Totally new - the Wizard! (Score:3, Interesting)
See Median XL, a Diablo II mod. It's a sorceress ability.
Re:Totally new - the Wizard! (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you willing to be half as good at both?
Yes. I think that makes the choice of my skill progression *mean* something When I choose to make my swordsman/mage, I realize that I'm going to have to make an important decision about how to spend my precious skill points. That makes the choice matter and gives the game more depth.
As another poster mentioned, the problem with allowing this sort of game play is that people tend to nerf their characters. This is another game design rant of mine, but I'm on a roll so... I don't like the way game difficulty is done in most games. I don't want to have to guess what my optimal game difficulty is, or want to have to adjust it back and forth. I play alot of games, so I'm only rarely unable to beat any given game, even on harder difficulty settings, but on those occasions when I do feel the need to ratchet the game back - why should I have to? Many games have had auto-difficulty adjustments built in to many of them for some time now. Is it really that difficult a concept? Especially for a game like Diablo?
When a player is nearly dead, ease up. If they're wading through foes like an angry god, throw bigger baddies and drop health/mana less often. Keep the challenge tailored to the player - don't make the player step out of the game and change the challenge.
This solves the character nerfing issue for single/coop play quite nicely. If you're a pvp player, I have no sympathy if your mutt character can't go toe-to-toe with a specialist. That's what I would expect to have happen. If, for instance, you've got a total of, say, 50 skill points, which you've divided equally into casting and swordsmanship, it should be no surprise that you're not as powerful with the sword as the guy who dropped all 50 into swordsmanship. Use your character's superior combat flexibility and hope for the best - that's what it's there for! If you're not able to do that, you probably need to rethink your character's abilities.
Besides, it'd be kind of interesting to see what'd happen after a while with a hybrid, given the insane amount of time people end up devoting to these sorts of games. What happens when you've got each skill tree maxed out? Should death affect your accumulated skills?
I think these sorts of mechanics would make for an incredibly deep RPG - MMO or not.
Re:Oh boy! (Score:1, Interesting)
Lost Vikings, duh.
I guess you haven't heard the latest on Lost Vikings 3. People in Korea are already killing themselves over it to get a leg up on the competition.
Re:Totally new - the Wizard! (Score:2, Interesting)
READ:
http://rpgforumsonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20613 [rpgforumsonline.com]
Re:There was a racing game for the Xbox (Score:3, Interesting)
Oblivion also had dynamic dificulty, that could easily be abused.
Yep. Oblivion's auto-scaling was on a whole different level of crapola. Let me count the ways:
* When your skills increased, you increased in power. When your level increased, the enemies increased. If you simply avoided sleeping, the game became easier and easier. I normally don't mind obscure "exploits" in single-player games (I tend not to actively seek them out), but this was ridiculous.
* Certain missions (like the Kvatch mission) had NPCs that didn't scale up with the monsters. When I first played the game, I ran around and leveled up quite a bit before that mission. The enemies scaled up so bloody far above the guards it was an absolute massacre. I eventually realized one NPC was unkillable, so I hid in a corner while he fought, died, and was resurrected about a thousand times over the course of few hours.
* Since enemies (and rewards) level up with you, there's absolutely zero point to running around the world, delving into dungeons, and getting more powerful.
* Bandits eventually are routinely seen wearing *glass armor* (most expensive and best light armor in the game, worth many thousands of gold). Yet they still stop you and demand 100 gold, just like when they were wearing rags earlier in the game.
The point is, it's easy to say "scale difficulty with the player", but I think it's actually fairly hard to do in practice without potentially causing other issues. Oblivion just happened to be the poster-boy for this sort of system destroying an otherwise really cool game for me. I really wish they had just used the following simple rule to scale difficulty in the game: the farther you are from civilization, the harder the enemies get and the greater the rewards dropped.
At least I'm pretty certain Blizzard would never do anything this boneheaded...