Personal feedback with suggestions (0.9.5 serie)

Nice post, well structured and easy to read, gief moar liek this plox.
But I'll bring up some counterpoints to your imbalance section.

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BrecMadak wrote:

Enemy Critical Strike Damage Multiplier Reduction: 15% Reduced Critical Strike Damage Multiplier on you.
No words needed i think, as compared to our base Critical Strike Damage Multiplier being 150%, this number changes just nothing. Should be raised at least up to 40% or so.

There's 2 nodes right next to each other for 15% each.
Bumping them to 40% would make enemy crits (assuming no +crit dam on them) do 70% dam, less than a normal hit.
150% is a multiplier, not +150% additional damage.

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BrecMadak wrote:

Flask Recovery: 15% Inc. Life Recovery from Flasks.
If we have a flask that recovers 1k Life, this number would be 1150 now, +150 is like a joke. This should be at least 20% imo.

Again, there's 2 nodes right next to each other. Those 2 combined is more life recovery than the upgrade from Spectral to Divine.
This could be seen as getting the next tier of flask recovery before it is even added to the game.

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BrecMadak wrote:

Critical Strike Damage Multiplier: 15% Inc. Critical Strike Damage Multiplier.
Same as above, so low amount. Should be raised at least up to 30%

Marauder is not inteded to be crit damage dependant in my opinion. The Int and Dex sides are littered with them and I'd assume it's to offset their lower base damage.
You can pick them up and combined with the weapon specific ones and maybe even a Critical Damage support gem to reach 300%. That still hurts.

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BrecMadak wrote:

Stun Treshold Reduction: 5% Reduced Stun Treshold.
Same as above, insufficient number not worth getting. Should be at least 15%

I found 3 nodes on the map for a total of 15%. Also found another 16% when wielding maces for a total of 31%.
Stun is an odd mechanic in the sense that if you're constantly taking damage at the edge of the stun threshold, then these talents will likely make you unstunnable.
However, making them all 15% would mean 45% reduction, nearly twice the damage needed to stun.
Given Marauder's easy access to large lifepools, 15% should be enough to negate majority of stuns.

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BrecMadak wrote:

Stun Duration: 10% Inc. Stun Duration on Enemies.
Neither an exception. Could be raised to 15%. Same goes for 'Two Handed Stun Duration' passive as well. 15% is so low, could be raised to an at least 25%

25% is overkill. There's at least 4 nodes with +15% Two Handed Stun Duration, 3 nodes with +8%, 2 nodes with general +10% for a total of at least +104%.


Overall, it seems like you want to take only a few points in a talent group and then get "optimal benefit" from it.
This is not the right approach to the skill-forest. We're given ~70 points easily just by completing all 4 difficulties and if we could get big benefits everywhere with only a few points, our builds are determined by which few talents we didn't take, not what talents we chose to specialize in.
Losing granularity by condensing talents is a bad idea in my opinion. Your character goes from "terrible" for 15 levels to *BAM* 500% DAM CRITS.
You could argue it lessens the sense of progression but keystones, gem leveling and godly item drops already handle that.

@konfeta

D3 development team implemented Line of Sight a year ago when D3 was beateble already. It seems developers don't really agree with you here.

@BrotherLaz

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The difficulty in this game is wrong. Fighting monsters is trivially easy. But figuring out which builds are the best is very complicated.

This may be how Diablo 2 veterans want the game to be, but it should be exactly the other way round. The game should require much more mouse dexterity and split second decisions, while allowing players to get passives based on their own combat style instead of the mathematically highest dps build.

If you're rambo, the stun threshold passives should be better, if you like to divide and conquer you should need the damage passives to make your pokes kill faster. Right now monsters require so little thought to defeat that you just go for the best damage passives.

Agreed. These are exactly my thoughts. In the same time, that unnecessary complication won't exist only a few weeks after the release.

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permaximum wrote:

@konfeta

D3 development team implemented Line of Sight a year ago when D3 was beateble already. It seems developers don't really agree with you here.

@BrotherLaz

"

The difficulty in this game is wrong. Fighting monsters is trivially easy. But figuring out which builds are the best is very complicated.

This may be how Diablo 2 veterans want the game to be, but it should be exactly the other way round. The game should require much more mouse dexterity and split second decisions, while allowing players to get passives based on their own combat style instead of the mathematically highest dps build.

If you're rambo, the stun threshold passives should be better, if you like to divide and conquer you should need the damage passives to make your pokes kill faster. Right now monsters require so little thought to defeat that you just go for the best damage passives.

Agreed. These are exactly my thoughts. In the same time, that unnecessary complication won't exist only a few weeks after the release.

How can the game be to easy yet builds be to difficult? aren't they symbiotic? if they aren't how do you judge the effectiveness of a build apart from it's performance in the game environment?

To clarify..

If the game really is to easy, then shouldn't every build work? If every build works, how can it be hard to figure out how to spec your character? Something isn't adding up here..

Also "very complicated" isn't a bad thing necessarily.

Lastly,

What ARPG requires tremendous thought or "mouse dexterity" (whatever the hell that means). I've played pretty much all of them.. and really they involve pointing and clicking, and some hot key presses every now and then.

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GaiaCaT wrote:

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BrecMadak wrote:

Enemy Critical Strike Damage Multiplier Reduction: 15% Reduced Critical Strike Damage Multiplier on you.
No words needed i think, as compared to our base Critical Strike Damage Multiplier being 150%, this number changes just nothing. Should be raised at least up to 40% or so.

There's 2 nodes right next to each other for 15% each.
Bumping them to 40% would make enemy crits (assuming no +crit dam on them) do 70% dam, less than a normal hit.
150% is a multiplier, not +150% additional damage.

If 150% crit damage is a multiplier, are the passive skill crit damage reductions also multipliers?

Your math assumes they are absolute reductions (150% - 40% - 40% = 70%) rather than relative reductions/multipliers (150% * 60% * 60% = 60% (serial) or 30% (additive)). Either way, significantly less damage than a regular hit.

Using 2x 15% passives, assuming additive relative reductions (i.e. add up all reductions first, then multiply):

150% * (100% - 30% = 70%) = 105% damage

Slightly more than a normal hit but essentially neutralizing standard critical hits for 2 passive skill points.

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D3 development team implemented Line of Sight a year ago when D3 was beateble already. It seems developers don't really agree with you here.

Then it's probably an annoying gimmick there, nothing more.

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What ARPG requires tremendous thought or "mouse dexterity" (whatever the hell that means). I've played pretty much all of them.. and really they involve pointing and clicking, and some hot key presses every now and then.

Nox DEATHRAY SPELL* required mouse dexterity! One could argue that PvP also takes a non-insignificant degree of precision depending on the build.

As for tremendous thought, while it doesn't have to be on Starcraft level and whatnot, it would be a nice change of pace and a great way to evolve the genre.

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How can the game be to easy yet builds be to difficult? aren't they symbiotic? if they aren't how do you judge the effectiveness of a build apart from it's performance in the game environment?

He is talking about difficulty in execution rather than concept. As in, easy to come up with a build idea concept and make it, but having it hard to play in practice be the rule.


* @ GGG - Make a deathray spell. Seriously, laser spells are the best things ever.

The problem with random quests is that making a single quest takes a significant amount of time. To make a proper random quest system you would need to create hundreds of quests and a player would only see ~10% of them on any given playthrough. The idea is cool but at this point in development it just isn't feasible. We're just trying to get enough interesting quests for a single playthrough let alone dozens.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

How can the game be to easy yet builds be to difficult? aren't they symbiotic? if they aren't how do you judge the effectiveness of a build apart from it's performance in the game environment?

The skill tree is convoluted and the game requires a lot of arcane knowledge (eg divine orbs can only increase stats to the next breakpoint, and those are not documented anywhere). Therefore optimising your build is very hard.

But when you're finished tinkering with the skill tree, you just click on monsters and count how long it takes to kill them.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

What ARPG requires tremendous thought or "mouse dexterity" (whatever the hell that means). I've played pretty much all of them.. and really they involve pointing and clicking, and some hot key presses every now and then.

Correct. Modern games, however, do not. Even Skyrim, for all its pause-and-spam-potions retardation, at least adds the element of aiming and manual blocking. Hellgate London was on to something with its first person combat in 2007.

Boring clicking on monsters is a step back, the least they could do is give us some monsters that counter the generic run-up-and-click-wildly 'tactic'.

Hellgate had its own problems with ez-mode through Marksman skilltree and to a lesser extend with extreme ranged weapons.
Ricochet/Reflect/Homing Shot builds:
Just point in enemies' general direction, hold mouse button for a second or two and watch entire room explode.

Oh man, that was the best proc stacking build I ever saw in any game.

IIRC, the way those three added up, you effectively had bullets that bounced off walls and enemies into more enemies.

It was hilarious, 10% chance to "Convert Oxygen Into Bullets" mode.

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GaiaCaT wrote:

Hellgate had its own problems with ez-mode through Marksman skilltree and to a lesser extend with extreme ranged weapons.
Ricochet/Reflect/Homing Shot builds:
Just point in enemies' general direction, hold mouse button for a second or two and watch entire room explode.

Which in the relaunch of the game got absolutely obliterated as a balance issue. Ironic how stacking them created an ez-mode build and not allowing them to stack made the class subpar. Balance isn't so easily attained. The same applies to any game, it's a fine line.