Balancing in Diablo

[Fragbait]

After having played Diablo, Hellfire, Diablo 2 and Lord of Destruction, I come to the conclusion that all games are not balanced perfectly.
Some character classes are always stronger / weaker than others.

Question is: Is it possible and also desirable to balance 3 / 5 / 7 character classes perfectly in a game like Diablo?

It's interesting, because I think many players don't even want to play the strong characters and kind of like the 'underdog' characters.
Especially in here, in the lurkerlounge, there's a general considering of cookie-cutters = cheesy prevalent.
Perhaps it would also take the spice out of the game when every character class is equaly difficult to play?
I mean, perhaps the whole whining like 'barbs are way to strong!' and 'character class X needs better skills' is particularly completely pathetic because balancing this would make the game boring, and first of all these whiners would stop playing it...

Just a thought. People that want to play the game won't stop to do so if their character class is a little weaker than others.
Let the ladder runners run and the cookie-cutters cut.
My 2 cents.


Greetings, Fragbait

[WarBlade]

After having played Diablo, Hellfire, Diablo 2 and Lord of Destruction, I come to the conclusion that all games are not balanced perfectly.
Some character classes are always stronger / weaker than others.

Question is: Is it possible and also desirable to balance 3 / 5 / 7 character classes perfectly in a game like Diablo?

Yes. But not with all of the features of DII.

Consider of a moment comparing Whirlwind with Freezing Arrow. They both have a similar area of effect so I think it's concievable these two skills could be made to balance. Now toss in Frozen Orb and Vengeance just for a laugh. One has a huge area and one is single hit. :huh:

In light of that I don't really think the game can even come close to remotely balanced until skill mechanics are changed to the point where all classes have similar options available to them.

Perhaps it would also take the spice out of the game when every character class is equaly difficult to play?
I mean, perhaps the whole whining like 'barbs are way to strong!' and 'character class X needs better skills' is particularly completely pathetic because balancing this would make the game boring, and first of all these whiners would stop playing it...

Depends on what the whining is about. I think players have a right to resent the botched up Javelin/Spear tree or Defensive Aura tree since basically these things are too messy when compared with some other classes who have excellent options all over three trees. Hopefully 1.10 will sort much out, but I'm apprehensive too. LoD certainly fixed up some balance issues in the skills department, but ultimately added plenty more with the items. :unsure:

[Elric of Grans]

Hail WarBlade,

"Consider of a moment comparing Whirlwind with Freezing Arrow. They both have a similar area of effect so I think it's concievable these two skills could be made to balance. Now toss in Frozen Orb and Vengeance just for a laugh. One has a huge area and one is single hit."

Not a bad choice of comparisons, but do not forget that if the game were made perfectly balanced, you would not have the case of a massive area of effect attack and a single-hit attack both being classified as equal: the skills in those areas would have been selected by their balanced ideas. Of cause, that would make for a damned boring game too: who wants a game where every class plays the same? Trouble is, the only way to gain perfect balance is to make them play the same.

Imperfection: we bicker if there is too much, but we do have a certain tolerance to it. Perfect is a lovely word, but it is merely an idea that can never be reached; excellence is something that can be achieved though, and I believe Blizzard proved that with the original Diablo - WarCraft II as well, to really give them some credit :) Excellence is also potentially possible with Diablo II, but we shall have to wait to see how 1.10 develops. Diablo and WarCraft II both had their problems, but boy were they good! I still play Diablo on occation, and if I am going to play an RTS multiplayer, it will most likely be WarCraft II!

To answer Fragbait, my answer is no: there is no way a patch can perfectly balance the classes of Diablo II. Many of the flaws would likely go all the way back to the design stage, and without starting the planning of DII again, they could not correct them all. If Blizzard were to release a Diablo III, I would hope that lessons would have been learned, and they would be looking more closely right from the earliest stages. However Diablo II cannot be balanced. More balanced? Yes, but not totally balanced.

[Fragbait]

Hail Elric,

To answer Fragbait, my answer is no: there is no way a patch can perfectly balance the classes of Diablo II. Many of the flaws would likely go all the way back to the design stage, and without starting the planning of DII again, they could not correct them all. If Blizzard were to release a Diablo III, I would hope that lessons would have been learned, and they would be looking more closely right from the earliest stages. However Diablo II cannot be balanced. More balanced? Yes, but not totally balanced.

Have I talked about an upcoming patch? At least I haven't intended to, I was just pondering generally. It seems impossible to totally balance the game in yet another patch to me, too. I was just, you know, questioning the whole issue.

As to what concerns Diablo - well, if Diablo is balanced then DiabloII is. I mean, what are we grumping about some minor balancing problems. Why are there so many Sorcs and Amas up in the ladders? Some class has to be. One-Hit-Kills? Adds some spice, that's for sure. In Diablo 1, you could lose all your items when you got killed and didn't manage to pick them up again; just yesterday I managed to get myself stair-trepped in NM/Hell and had to give up that Massive LWB and the Jade Plate with my Rogue...
But well. That added SPICE! I think Diablo II is already pretty well balanced, and with the exception of the hacks that Blizzard painfully needs to address, there are no real problems spoiling the fun of thousands of gamers. Any further patching is just the cream on the cake, and is done because the game is sort of their 'baby', as bolty once pointed out.
I think it is good that there are some things that are not balanced too excellently. Diablo 1 had them, too, and was / is a great game. I wish though, that due to the sorceress' inability to effectively cast several types of spells (like fire, ice, lightning and poison at a decent damage rate) they had made the monsters not immune to some things, but 90%/95% resistant to it. Why shouldn't the mosters resistance be capped, too... :D
So far -

Greetings, Fragbait

[--Pete]

Hi,

Is it possible and also desirable to balance 3 / 5 / 7 character classes perfectly in a game like Diablo?

I don't think that "perfect" balance is possible or desirable. It is not possible because there will always be the individual preference issue. Even if all the classes were balanced in some theoretical sense, there will always be people who prefer and play better in one style or another. It is not desirable because players should have the choice to make the game harder or easier. One can always make the game (somewhat) harder by adopting self imposed restrictions. Choice of class should be a consideration in that decision.

However, I do think that it is both possible and desirable to balance the classes within a reasonable degree. If one imagines a difficulty scale, the hardest class should be about twice as hard as the easiest. Admittedly, such a difficulty scale would be greatly warped by equipment. It would still be good to make the "power" of the least difficult class with the greatest equipment possible no more than twice that of the most difficult class with run of the mill equipment. That would mean balancing the gear as well as the classes, and that is a bigger shortcoming in D2 than it was in D1.

Finally, the game should be balanced in terms of the character versus the monsters. Achieving high level should be difficult because the monsters are difficult even for an optimal character with ideal gear played by an excellent player. Even better would be to have the monsters be difficult for a party of such characters. And that is a balance that Buzzard has consistently failed to achieve.

--Pete

[Kevin]

Finally, the game should be balanced in terms of the character versus the monsters.  Achieving high level should be difficult because the monsters are difficult even for an optimal character with ideal gear played by an excellent player.  Even better would be to have the monsters be difficult for a party of such characters.  And that is a balance that Buzzard has consistently failed to achieve.

--Pete

I agree with this statement and I am just going to ramble off some stuff on it, and propose some thoughts about fixing it, that may or may not work since I haven't thought about it enough. Your statement raises the question of what is hard, what is tedious, and what is annoying? Since this is a game, things need to be hard yet still be fun. There are lots of ways that game could be made very hard, but would it still be fun to play?

I'm going to use some of the cliche examples, that most of us know about, but they still illustrate the point. Izual has (or had) the most hitpoints in the game. He was never considered hard, just tedious to whack away at though in terms of time, it was hard to kill him since it took a lot of time. Monsters that can one hit kill you are generally not considered hard, even though if you are dead it is hard to kill them, they are considered annoying because with some classes, namely meleers, there aren't a lot of built in ways to deal with them. Sure everyone can use a bow and stand back and plink, but then you are going into the realm of tedious as well, many consider this not viable. It has been shown that pretty much any variant can beat the game on Hell difficulty if you do this or this or this but to most that isn't really a fun way to play. Sure having a 30 minute battle with a monster every once in awhile can be quite enjoying, but for most that isn't. The game is designed to be fast paced, to many that is where the fun is it. If you remove too much of that, you lose the game.

LE's are another that you have to carry around specific gear just to deal with in many cases. I want to believe that the FE/CE damage carrying on the bolts is a bug and will be removed because no other elemental enchanted boss has that, and that makes them annoying. MSLE's are the same way. They are hard for most people, but they aren't fun.

Now, Hephasto in pre-LOD D2, was about a 50/50 split on hard and still fun. For me at least half of the time he would have mods that made him dangerous, but not to the point where he would one hit kill you, or you couldn't defeat him. But half the time he had mods that just made him close to impossible to deal with, so you avoided him. He was close, and I still miss the strong version of him.

But things need to be done so that you aren't just whacking away at a monster that can't hurt you and so that you aren't constantly running away from a monster that can kill you just by looking at you funny. You need to be in danger of dieing but you need to be able to do something about it besides "just don't ever get hit", you need some reaction time. Now, a zero vitality, no +life gear build or similar should have to worry about one hit kills. If you designed your char to only have 250 HP in Hell then you should die a lot, and even in one hit.

So, that to me seems to say that monsters should deliver smaller amounts of damage in fairly rapid blows as opposed to huge amounts of damage in a single blow. This would make mobs harder, if you are getting hit rapidly for smaller chunks you have to worry about getting stunned and not being able to get away. Block lock and such aren't annoying with such an easy weapon switch to turn them off so you can take some hits and run. Some monsters need to be able to actually chase you, so you can't just run from everything. But you still need to be able to run from some stuff so you can seperate and conquer. Monster level curve has to have something done with it so that defence and AR mean something again. This would also give you a choice between walking away from an engagement so you still have defence and blocking, or running with 0 defence and 1/3 blocking. That puts another strategic element back in the game that is largely ignored now.

If you up the power of minions and lower the power of a boss I think you are going in the right direction as well. This makes seperation more critical and lowers the one hit kill probability.

Not sure what should be done about ranged attackers. I don't think ranged magic is currently too out of whack packs of ranged attackers that do elemental damage genearlly don't kill you on that first burst, but they do mess you up. You still generally have time to retreat and deal, and while you can slip up a little you still have to use some strategy to deal with them. Maybe I just play the wrong character types though and they could be out of whack. But ranged physical attacks seem weak. Since you have the ability to avoid them, I am not sure that whole high speed lower damage really works. But you don't want to turn them into one hit killers either. Faster projectile speed for some of them maybe?

I don't know I would like to see general ideas on how to balance out the player vs monster issues. I know equipment comes into this as well, but I think you can still have the discussion without it focusing on equipment. Maybe assume that in hell it is feasable to get 40% to all resists without too much sacrificing, but you will have to lose something to get to 75%. I knew that would be a problem when I starting the ramblings, the equipment is so tied into how hard the game is. I mean getting a zon to L70 and Act III NM without placing a single skill point pretty much shows that equipment is more important than skills for some of the classes.

Eh, I just felt like rambling on it. I'm sure there are problems with what I wrote, and I welcome discussion and criticism.

[Tuy]

Question is: Is it possible and also desirable to balance 3 / 5 / 7 character classes perfectly in a game like Diablo?

Well, I play Seven Lances, a mod for LoD, which is pretty much as close to balanced as I think the game can possibly get. To answer your question I don't think it's possible to balance the game perfectly, but that mod does come very close.

[gekko]

Finally, the game should be balanced in terms of the character versus the monsters.  Achieving high level should be difficult because the monsters are difficult even for an optimal character with ideal gear played by an excellent player.  Even better would be to have the monsters be difficult for a party of such characters.  And that is a balance that Buzzard has consistently failed to achieve.

Ahh, but it's more challenging and intricate than you seem to believe. Personally, I think blizzard put too much emphasis on a few elements: equipment, as was mentioned already, is one, character level vs monster level is another. One hit kill monsters is yet another. The worst part is these problems virtually ALL hurt melee characters much worse than ranged characters.

The clvl/mlvl curve is the worst in this regard. A ranged character has flavours: physical or magical. A magical ranged attacker has no need to worry about AR or % to hit, and thus, the curve barely affects them. Physical attackers also get off easy because of the uber-weapons they can get. With even decent gear, a bowazon can sweep through hell with -50% resist all without dying a single time - probably without being hit, if she's careful. The bowazon avoids the curve because she can pump dexterity with little regard for other stats. Melee characters do not have this luxury. They must invest in vitality, strength and dexterity. Now, weapon masteries and good AR bonuses on most combat skills gives the barb a fairly easy time hitting enemies, but other melee characters don't always have the stacking AR bonuses. The real reason the curve is a problem, however, is because it is impossible to avoid running into it without tedious leveling. A straight run throug the game WILL leave you far behind the monster curve. And for 1.10, blizz plans on making lvling past 70 much harder. Ouch for melee characters in hell.

The one-hit kill combinations are similar in that they are far more of a problem for melee than for ranged characters. It should be obvious to anyone that requiring some characters to go toe-to-toe with a bad guy who can turn their screen dark with a single hit puts those characters at a disadvantage.

And, finally, the equipment. I truly wonder what blizzard is thinking when it comes to the new elite weapons. The problem, of course, is how to "balance" the game when one character has these items and another doesn't. How does the game remain challenging for the character who has the new elite lightsaber while still possible or the one with the old, normal lightsaber?

The balance issue has been beaten to death -- "balance" in a game is a myth. As was mentioned, the only way to balance the game is to have each and every character play the same.

gekko

[--Pete]

Hi,

Ahh, but it's more challenging and intricate than you seem to believe.

Since I didn't say anything about how difficult it would be to do, this statement is crap. Indeed, I believe that it is hard to do. I also believe that Buzzard made no real attempt (as in actually designing the game) to do it.

The worst part is these problems virtually ALL hurt melee characters much worse than ranged characters.

Well, duh. Ever notice how the history of warfare seems to progress through stages of ever more efficient ranged attack? Ever consider that that may be because ranged attack -- the ability to strike without getting hit back -- is a big advantage? Figuring out ways around this is one of the basic challenges to balancing a game that has both ranged and melee attacks. Buzzard did that to a small extent by limiting the visual range and thus artificially limiting the attack range. However, more needs be done.

The balance issue has been beaten to death -- "balance" in a game is a myth. As was mentioned, the only way to balance the game is to have each and every character play the same.

If it bores you, then just ignore threads about it. And, yes, *perfect* balance is impossible. Seems I said so in my post above. But there's a world of difference between *perfect* balance and adequate balance. And lots of room for intelligent discussion on what adequate balance is.

--Pete

[gekko]

And lots of room for intelligent discussion on what adequate balance is.

Fine -- then describe what you mean by balance. Balanace is a term that gets tossed around alot here, but few people bother to say what they feel would be balanced. Also, I believe I did give a fair description of what I think makes balancing difficult and what the issues are.

Same leveling speed? PvP characters? Getting through hell without super powerful equipment? Safety?

When I said it's more intricate than you believe, I was refering to how you seem to think that adequate balancing is possible, and yet you offered no real insight on what that would entail. You mentioned that leveling should be hard because monsters should be "difficult even for an optimal character with ideal gear played by an excellent player." And I addressed this. How do you make a monster challenging for the player with the great gear while still possible for the one without it? That gap will make any attempt to balance the game futile.

"If one imagines a difficulty scale, the hardest class should be about twice as hard as the easiest."

Again, harder at what? There are too many opinions and too many aspects to balance by using a "difficulty scale" (not to mention the fact that different players will find different characters more or less difficult based on their experience, style, and preference).

"Since I didn't say anything about how difficult it would be to do, this statement is crap."

Simply put, no, it wasn't "crap." The mere fact that you think balancing is possible with diablo without some MAJOR overhauls says to me that you don't understand how difficult it is.

Don't be so quick to smash someone who doesn't agree with you. You say you want intelligent discussion? Then take a step back and think before you post.

gekko

[--Pete]

Hi,

The mere fact that you think balancing is possible with diablo without some MAJOR overhauls says to me that you don't understand how difficult it is.

I think the game needs to be thrown out and redone from scratch. But unlike some idiots, I think an adequate job of balancing can be done. And I said enough in my initial post so that anyone with a brain would get a clue.

--Pete

[gekko]

And I said enough in my initial post so that anyone with a brain would get a clue.

Don't insult me because I disagreed with you. You claim to want intelligent conversation, but the moment someone disagrees with you, you resort to personal attacks. Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something? I still can't figure out why you keep resorting to insults -- you clearly have some good points, but they get burried when all I can see is someone calling me an idiot.

gekko

[channel1]

The only point to balancing the characters is for PvP play. Even then, it would be a lot more interesting to have a system where cunning and strategy would count more than balancing characters for toe-to-toe combat.

In PvM, it is reasonable that some classes will be more difficult to play than others. D2/X doesn't really go far enough there. Every class SHOULD have situations that are extremely difficult for that class to handle, while another class could breeze through it. An example is monsters with physical immunity. Barbarians should have a hard time with them, while the Sorceress can defeat the physical immune casually.

There isn't even much point in balancing the game for the time it takes to play. So what, if a Barbarian can solo Normal difficulty at Level 19 (my record), and do it in 5 hours of play, while a Necromancer has a hard time doing it at Level 26 after 20 hours of play? It's a different game for each class, and that's what is important.

It's much too late for them to change D2/X so that EVERY character has some adversaries that are designed to present an ALMOST insurmountable challenge for that class, while being nothing special for other classes to beat. Even more difficult would be to create situations designed to present a greater challenge for certain combinations of classes within a party. It would be pretty cool, though. :)

I would have loved to see Class-specific tasks in D2/X, even Team-specific tasks. It won't happen this time around, and probably not next time either. Maybe in Diablo 4?

-rcv-

[kandrathe]

The only point to balancing the characters is for PvP play.

I disagree.

Even then, it would be a lot more interesting to have a system where cunning and strategy would count more than balancing characters for toe-to-toe combat.

I agree.

Adequate balance is only important in DII, because almost all the skill is in choosing skill points, and equipment. If actual user skill was required, then skill and equipment balance becomes less important overall. So a Grandfather in the hands of an incompetent is as worthless as any sword you can buy from Charsi.

Compare the combat key choices in DII to say Tekkan Tag Tournament, or heck any FPS. Your choices are basically "Do I continue to swing/fire, or do I run away?" You can also switch equipment, with the 'W' key. Most of the time I use one index finger for clicking the right mouse button. Sometimes, if I use an Amazon I also use the shift key. Then, for some builds you may need to switch skills occasionally.

I would love it if the top ladder players were ones that bought all their equipment in the shops, but just really had great gaming skills.

Then, you must consider non-melee classes. I would remove or nerf most of the AOE spell you can spam from a distance, or cast then run away from, make them only effect the area near the caster and only while they concentrate on the spell. Make all missile weapons, and missile spells require real aiming.

I'm not advocating an interface that requires an ergonomic game controller, just maybe a few things. Say dodge, parry, thrust, aim high, or low, and block with shield.

Here is how I would theoretically adequately balance the game. First you need to consider each player class, and the variations on how they might be built. Consider the average likely and best equipment available for that variation.
Next, compare apples to apples. Have your play testers measure the time and difficulty it takes to accomplish an Act with a given build. If one seems out of balance, have more people attempt that same assignment to validate it wasn't just one person’s inability to out think the game. Do this from Act 1 normal thru Act 5 Hell difficulty. If a skill, or a monster, or a piece of equipment seems to be far too powerful, then nerf it. Now do the same thing for PvP. Now make sure you haven't broken PvM.

And, also just maybe it can be considered skill to decide not to go up against the PI SS ES MSLEB FECE enchanted boss. If everything were safe and easy, it would be boring. I dislike the 1 hit kill monsters as much as I dislike the silver bullet items that kill monsters in 1 blow. But, if everything were average it would also get boring. In order for the game to be interesting, there needs to be extremes. I would rather that the players skill trees, and equipment were excluded from them.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Adequate balance is only important in DII, because almost all the skill is in choosing skill points, and equipment. If actual user skill was required, then skill and equipment balance becomes less important overall. So a Grandfather in the hands of an incompetent is as worthless as any sword you can buy from Charsi.

That is a major concern. However, when the best item of a type (say swords) is hundreds of times better than the worse, and hundreds of times better than none, then the game *will* devolve into an equipment race. Ideally, again looking at just the one handed sword class of weapons, a character should be able to do about twice as much damage with the worse sword (a plain dagger) as with none. There should be only another factor of two with the best possible sword. All skills and other attributes combined should not increase that more than another factor of two. All that, of course, at a given clvl. The biggest thing that determines the power of a character should be clvl, followed by distribution of skill and attributes, followed by type of equipment. The present situation is just the opposite.

I'm not advocating an interface that requires an ergonomic game controller, just maybe a few things. Say dodge, parry, thrust, aim high, or low, and block with shield.

Sorry, what you are talking about here is mouse skill, not game skill. If you want to play arcade/console fight games, that's fine. Personally, I don't. Keep the flavor of the game as it is, but make the order of taking out the monsters important. Make character position important. Make tactical moves like advancing and retreating to spread the monsters important. Of course, all that would require an interface where what you see is actually what the server thinks. That leaves D2 pretty much out in the cold.

Next, compare apples to apples. Have your play testers measure the time and difficulty it takes to accomplish an Act with a given build. If one seems out of balance, have more people attempt that same assignment to validate it wasn't just one person’s inability to out think the game. Do this from Act 1 normal thru Act 5 Hell difficulty.

Yes! But, before that is done, get someone that actually knows how to use a spreadsheet and analyze a game to look at how various builds will work out. Yeah, that is only a theoretical view and the actual play might be different. However, it at least gives you a reasonable baseline to work from. With as many variables as D2 has, randomly tweaking knobs will never give a balanced game.

Also, any given combination of map layout and monster types might make a given level more difficult for one class (or build) or another. So your advice to play the level multiple times is very important. The balance should be *on average* and not for every individual case. There should always be cases that are easier and ones that are harder for each class and build.

In order for the game to be interesting, there needs to be extremes.

I would say that "extremes" is one of the drawbacks of D2 as it presently is. Specifically the extremes of packs of meaningless monsters interspersed with the occasional near impossible boss. As you say, "I dislike the 1 hit kill monsters as much as I dislike the silver bullet items that kill monsters in 1 blow." What the game should require is a constant flexibility on the part of the player to be able to handle a constantly changing mix of monsters on constantly varying terrain. Somehow, with less numerical variation, D1 seemed to achieve this better than D2 has. The "randomness" of D2 seems to be of no significance -- every game is different but every game *feels* the same.

--Pete

[Drasca]

For me, there was something that wavered between challenge and tedium, and that was poison damage. That was an outlet around equipment, around the issues of cl/ml to-hit/be-hit, and I enjoy such outlets because they emphasize player ingenuity rather than treasure hoarding. As much as the equipment in D2 was 'nice' at times, it was the skills and qualities independent of equipment which enabled any of my D2 characters to go through the game. Here I'll present mini-story of how I to take rules to an extreme--How I got around the equipment, and character level issue.

Specifically...
[Begin story of one option outside the equipment and leveling rat race]

If anyone recalls Poison throwing potions, Poison damage would slowly drain monster life while negating regeneration. Throwing potions at shops would provide a ranged outlet to do this with. I took this to an extreme with a challange: to defeat all Act Bosses out single-handedly with the lowest character level Paladin I could.
[This happened before it was nerfed in vendors. No more throwing potions of all things, a big mistake for blizzard--taking away non-equipment dependant outlets]

There were advantages to below low cl with the current rules,

Ability to achieve high blocking % easily
--(makes a whole lot of sense a newbie Paladin could block better with far less dexterity, unless the character magically "grew" in size proportion with their hitpoints).

Poison throwing potions could not miss on contact
-getting around the whole to-hit issue

No concern for experience gain
-except to avoid it
--Additional character level would decrease the high blocking % advantage to low cl

No need to buy healing potions
-Town portal scrolls are cheaper for healing than healing potions
-Healing potions would also only be ineffective

I was portaled directly to the End-act bosses and bought the endless supply of shop vendor Poison throwing potions.

I ran around, ducked and weaved around Boss AI behaviour, all the while maintaining constant poison damage. There was set damage per second, higher difficulty (nightmare/hell), It was heart-pounding and thoroughly enjoyable to know this tactical option was available for all my characters--since a lowly cl 1-13 could take on Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo & Baal in Normal difficulty through Hell dififculty. It took... well less time than for me to level a character from 0-30, but around 2 hrs I think for some of the later bosses. I enjoyed being a legitmate Patriach in Hell.

I guess Blizzard thought this was too powerful (of all things), so throwing potions were nerfed everywhere, unavailable in shops.

The lesson in all this? In Balance, I enjoy options that allow one work outside the rat race of equipment and power.

[kandrathe]

Sorry, what you are talking about here is mouse skill, not game skill. If you want to play arcade/console fight games, that's fine. Personally, I don't. Keep the flavor of the game as it is, but make the order of taking out the monsters important. Make character position important. Make tactical moves like advancing and retreating to spread the monsters important. Of course, all that would require an interface where what you see is actually what the server thinks. That leaves D2 pretty much out in the cold.

Yes, I see your point about mouse skill. At least they would then allow us to give basic commands to our hirelings, and somewhat sentient summons (Valkerie, Shadows, maybe Golems).

[--Pete]

Hi,

At least they would then allow us to give basic commands to our hirelings, and somewhat sentient summons (Valkerie, Shadows, maybe Golems).

I'd like it if they could set those hirelings up to use scripts and give us the ability to write the scripts. If we could define multiple scripts for a hireling and then select the script we want executed at any time by a hot key, that would make for a great blend of strategy and tactics that was more than just a test of the twitch muscles. :)

--Pete

[Guest]

You could tell the hireliing to back off an LEB, or to attack your target, or maybe to run away.

[whereagles]

I don´t belive perfect balancing is possible, but I do belive it is possible to do better with the existing skills.

In theory that could be done by requiring that all skills make about the same damage over the same period of time. In such a way however that lev 30 skills end up doing more than low-level ones (otherwise you just dump all into a lev 1 skill and blaze through normal/NM).

In practice this turns out to be tremendously difficult. One reason is the existance of some weapons that deal damage at particularly high rates, making it very hard for spellcasters to keep up. Couple that to effects like amplify damage, crushing blow and the like, which casters don't have, and you'll see that with this state of affairs, stuff can happen like uber spellcaster with skills that have enough damage to compete with cruel ethereal elite weapons (like firewall), or physical damage chars with can't kill squat because they weren't lucky enough to get their uber weapon and nice jewels to boot, etc.

All in all, I think a great deal of the problem comes because the weapons have a too-wide range of damage. A weapon is either uber (and your char gets uber too) or lame (and your char is hopeless).