Diablo 3 Skill Trees

[bushwhacker2k]

Was anyone else freaked out when they saw the skill trees?

I want D3 to stay as far away from WoW as possible... if they start mixing WoW and D3 then it will only corrupt the game and make it more suited for the less-intelligent masses. (No offence to any less-intelligent mass out there)

[drazac]

Havent much payed attention lately.. what did they do with the skill tree??(personally D2 skill tree is by far the best skill tree i have ever seen in a RPG game... the superb thing is when each spell gives bonuses to other corresponding spells... so even low level spells can give bonus to high lvl spells and vice versa... the man who thought of this is freakin genius)

i have faith in Blizz that they will do things right.. but i dont like their attitude towards the fans: when 40000 plp say artwork is to cartoony you don't post a picture of Diablo logo with cheerfuller clouds and unicorns and rainbows.. YOU LISTEN WHAT FANS ARE SAYING (their official answer was: we tried to make it more gray but prioritizing of enemies was almost impossible cause they were to dark.. i mean WTF, can u make enemies more bright while keeping the rest gray.. they have done it D2, dont tell me it cant be done in D3)
Next, when plp say don't put automatic distribution of attributes its we who will decide which point goes where... they say, we are keeping it
Now it seems they have done something with the skill tree... they WOWed it?

[AvatarOfLight]

I don't entirely agree "give the fans what they want".
If Blizzard did that we'd have several million people running around with Ashbringers in wow.

A good designer knows what will keep the fanbase enthusiastic and going better than the fanbase itself. They haven't failed in that so far, as I see it.

On top of that, Designers shouldn't always be slaves to the fanbase.
If they can do what THEY want and make money/decent game for others, good for them!

[Siberys]

Honestly the skill tree is the least of my worries considering the attribute system auto-leveling your character.

[flix]

Autoleveling based on character class I presume? More strength and health for the Barbarian, more energy for Wizard? I haven't gotten my hopes up for this game, and now I'm glad, since it's getting further and further from it's roots. Different isn't always better. Walk-over health orbs dropped by enemies reek of FPS, while autoleveling of stats takes out what little role-playing was present in the series. Not mention the cartoony graphics. "Diablo II was actually very colorful" the devs say. Well, ok, and I admit that DI was kind of monotonous in its darkness. But the issue isn't color vs. grey, it's that the damn graphics look like cartoons a la Warcraft III (have never played WoW). What happened to the grim and gritty edge? I've seen very little about this game to get me worked up. I'm afraid to even look up what's been done to the skill trees.

A good designer knows what will keep the fanbase enthusiastic and going better than the fanbase itself. They haven't failed in that so far, as I see it.

I agree that devs should not be slaves to the whim of fans, but I also don't think that a lot of what fans are complaining about regarding DIII are really whims, but pretty significant concerns. Most of the enthusiasm for this game is generated by the strength of the previous games, and the fact that fans have been clamoring for DIII for ages. When every new development makes the majority of fans groan and cringe though, this is not a good thing.

[Xzeihoranth]

I can see auto-leveling of stats being a major weakness. Whenever I made a sorc (or ANY character) in D2 (level 90+ sorcs got up to about 10-12 since 1.09) i NEVER put even 1 point into energy...i always let SOJ's or something else give me enough mana/mana regen to get through easily. All vital/stre for every character