06-11-2012, 04:40 PM
(06-11-2012, 04:17 PM)Athenau Wrote: I have to disagree that D3 involves less player skill than D2. In D2 you could brute force your way through almost any encounter with potion spam and/or ridiculous gear (mass life leech, CTC life tap). In D3 the gameplay is much more about judicious use of your cooldown skills and (to a lesser extent) abusing terrain. It's true that a lot of boss fights in inferno come down to a gear check, but that's mostly a problem with inferno, not with the fundamental game design.
The change to how melee hits are registered are annoying and unnecessary, but in practice if you're playing melee it doesn't change much, because wasting time ducking in and out of attacks cripples your dps too much. Shift-clicking to hit enemies before they come into range and minimizing frontage are still staples of (non-tank) melee play. The addition of telegraphed attacks to regular mobs (which you can avoid) add another element of skill not present in D2.
D2 had plenty of telegraphed attacks you could avoid. It was called Tempting Fate. There's an interesting scale in D3 though. It seems like prior to Inferno, just about any build is viable (excepting maybe one that goes out of its way to have no synergy at all, but I don't think anyone could manage that by accident), but then when you get to Inferno, half or more of the skills fall by the wayside and suddenly become fodder. I've seen so many posts now that were "I switched off the skills that got me to Inferno to what person S said to use, and now my life is ten times easier."
I can't believe Blizzard admitted that they didn't do any testing after doubling the difficulty in Inferno. Although it shows in any case. Be interesting to see what kind of HC solo/group eventually pastes Inferno Diablo. Of course I imagine their next question will be "what now?"
I wonder if Blizzard wouldn't have been better served including Normal-Hell + another feature - say, PvP, and having added Inferno in an expansion, when it could have been balanced more thoroughly along with an additional act or something. Of course I suspect they'll probably add a fifth difficulty in an expansion anyhow, along with a raised level cap. I'm guessing they're planning two expansions, one to raise Lcap to 80 and another for 99/100. It's just too easy of a sell. Who wants to have a maxlvl 20/39/40 lower than their friends?