Really Awesome Skills Please =)

[Nightblaze1]

What made Diablo 2 so satisfying and fun for me?

It was partly the loot, partly the grittyness and you just have to hand it to the cool monsters. However, what made Diablo 2 so fun for me, was running around with my Sorceress firing off frozen orbs and absolutely annihilating everything on and off my screen, summoning a zerg unit of skeletons with my Necromancer literally taking up my screen, turning into a freaking werewolf and spawning volcanoes with my Druid or setting the ground alight from fire traps with my Assassin. All these abilities were extremely satisfying, overpowered and just hundreds of hours of entertainment.

So, what I ask for that TQ kind of lacked, is awesome and crazy skills like those we all know and love from D2. This is what I miss with D3, the closest I have gotten so far is the lightning orb ability from the DH, which is pretty epic.

So please Crate, please give me some bloody kick-ass skills so I can destroy everything I see. I like a challenge, but once I hit the high levels, I should really feel my character progressing and becoming OP. ARPG games aren't really about the challenge at all, they are about absolutely destroying hordes of monsters and acquiring tons of loot. It wasn't the challenge that made D2 fun, it was the opposite, obliterating hordes of monsters with your crazily OP characters!

Please and Thank you.

[JOCool]

Yeah sometimes the focus tends to shift to balancing every single class and every single skill to the point where the differences aren't that different anymore and it becomes cookie cutter. I don't mind if one weapon, one affix, one ability, or one class becomes OP. If it were a competitive PVP game then yeah, make it a challenge and as balanced as possible, but since it is not - let me be OP or find that perfect thing that makes me OP and don't nerf it (but fix bugs of course)!

Thx,
~J

[Nightblaze1]

Bumping this thread, as I feel it should be addressed more than just two posts then ignored. =)

[Aicus]

Having overpowered skills and gears trivialize the game content.

You might enjoy it for some time but 3-shot a boss for the 10th times will make you feel that it is totally meaningless to play the game anymore because no matter what challenges you encounter, the answer will always be "stand there, spam your awesome skills, collect loot and look pretty".

Most people want a game that makes them feel that they are awesome and powerful but not to the point of being overpowered.

However, if you are talking about visual effects only, then I agree that it should look awesome and maybe a little bit over exaggerated because summoning a lightning bolt as big as 1/5 of the screen to strike your enemies always looks so much more awesome than 1 scrawny bolt of lightning that strikes and spread to nearby enemies.

[Nightblaze1]

Originally Posted by Aicus

Having overpowered skills and gears trivialize the game content.

You might enjoy it for some time but 3-shot a boss for the 10th times will make you feel that it is totally meaningless to play the game anymore because no matter what challenges you encounter, the answer will always be "stand there, spam your awesome skills, collect loot and look pretty".

Most people want a game that makes them feel that they are awesome and powerful but not to the point of being overpowered.

However, if you are talking about visual effects only, then I agree that it should look awesome and maybe a little bit over exaggerated because summoning a lightning bolt as big as 1/5 of the screen to strike your enemies always looks so much more awesome than 1 scrawny bolt of lightning that strikes and spread to nearby enemies.

I'm sorry but Diablo 2 will strongly disagree with you. Diablo 2 had more than it's fair share of OP characters and skills, but it still continues to be played even today. It acts as a prime example of what people do and don't want in an ARPG, and I can tell you, the majority of players want a game where they can destroy everything. However, I did offer a solution for this problem where there will be players that want a greater challenge (that should be seeking it in a game other than an ARPG), and to satisfy them is where difficulty levels can come into play. A player who wants to absolutely smash everything can do so on easy, and a player that wants to really push themselves to achieve can play on hard.

A difficulty system shouldn't be hard to implement, and really, why would more options and freedom for the player base be a bad thing? There are very few negatives to letting a player choose what difficulty they want to play with.

[Josho]

The most boring class I ever played in D2 was my frozen orb sorc. It was fun getting to the point of unlocking frozen orb from a min-max perspective (before respeccing) due to the challenge that was afforded to me. But after that, all I had to do was spam frozen orb and watch all sorts of chaos. And for the friend who was playing with me, he just sat back and told me how the game was getting pretty stale with me spamming frozen orb, he had nothing to do except tidy up the odd straggler.

If there is going to be Overpowered skills, then it makes sense to put them on a long cooldown and give the player a decision point as to when it should be used. After all, a character is the gear that is equipped, their abilities as well as the skill of the person playing the game.

[Flashburn]

A frozen orb sorc was my favourite, mainly because I'm a lazy gamer and I like stuff to die without having to click on each and every mob

That's my point, every gamer is different , some want a hard game, some just want to play and move onto the next game, others want to spend the next six months farming loot and trying out different builds.

I don't think there is anything wrong with awesomely powerful skills but I think there should be some investment, some work to get them. Take for instance D3, don't get me wrong the skills are beautiful eye candy but you want homing arrows with no mp cost? Okay there you go , level 2, oh so you want them multi piercing? No problem level 4. Wow that was easy, I somehow feel cheated.

Frozen orb is a good example from D2, it was level 30, you struggled to face Diablo before level 30 (and even then the mana cost and lack of mastery wouldn't justify it's use.), you had to work to get that powerful skill, I liked that part.

I don't think timers do anything other than make toons run around and avoid getting hit playing the intensely frustrating cool down mini game.

[eisprinzessin]

Originally Posted by Josho

If there is going to be Overpowered skills, then it makes sense to put them on a long cooldown and give the player a decision point as to when it should be used. After all, a character is the gear that is equipped, their abilities as well as the skill of the person playing the game.

Originally Posted by Flashburn

I don't think there is anything wrong with awesomely powerful skills but I think there should be some investment, some work to get them. [...]

I don't think timers do anything other than make toons run around and avoid getting hit playing the intensely frustrating cool down mini game.

Originally Posted by medierra

Since the cooldown on energy potions will be significantly increased giving energy management some meaning, I think we may be able to reduce or remove some of the shorter skill cooldowns. The longer cooldowns, however, play an important role in balancing "uber-skills". Without cooldowns I couldn't really include such powerful skills in the game without creating massive imbalances. Other skills that have longer cooldowns but aren't quite "uber skills" may not break gameplay but they would become the 1 skill that certain classes relied on to the exclusion of everything else. [...]

You will definitely see some classes in GD that are less weapon reliant and have a greater variety of skills with no to very low cooldown so that they can fire off a lot of skills continually. [...]

The uber-skills will obviously be balanced through long cooldowns, but in the meantime you can use your regular skills. You will still be required to make the decision when to use your most powerful skills ... If I was able use them always, they wouldn't be awesome for long.

[Sampe]

One thing what made D2 good was that you could easily make any class with any skill tree beat the game with ease. All you needed in order to do that though, was in some cases thousands and thousands of boss runs. Having OP items and skills is OK if you balance it by making them hard to get.

[Nightblaze1]

Originally Posted by Flashburn

I don't think there is anything wrong with awesomely powerful skills but I think there should be some investment, some work to get them. Take for instance D3, don't get me wrong the skills are beautiful eye candy but you want homing arrows with no mp cost? Okay there you go , level 2, oh so you want them multi piercing? No problem level 4. Wow that was easy, I somehow feel cheated.

I completely agree, there should be a lot of investment before you can use these OP skills. They should be end-game skills that you don't get until your on the last difficulty or something. This is what makes them really rewarding and awesome to use!