Teleport just ruins PvM in Hell

human_being wrote: 7 hours ago

Agree with your points, just in general. I would love to do a deep dive into why

Teleport in D2 is so awful and why I think it happened in the first place. Maybe a subject for another time.

However, I love that you mentioned power and speed (and the appeal of OP), because that's what keeps coming up in of all of these conversations. I know it feels awesome to be incredibly powerful, but there's a reason why game designers do not design with a player mindset. If you let players direct your game, they will always want more power, always want more rewards, always want things to be easier (which is just the other side of "more power").

In a sense, it's the role of the game designer to protect players from their own impulses. I know it sounds patronizing, but seriously, it's like having a kid. They will always want more candy, but if you keep giving it to them they will: feel like shit, be poorly nourished, barf it all right up, it won't even feel tasty anymore. There's a thin balance between giving players enough of a challenge that they want to keep going and giving them enough power that they get to feel AWESOME. And you need a bit of both. Also, don't feel so defensive about your rewards: that can always be adjusted. Not having

Teleport doesn't mean not having rewards, it just means there are now more ways to get to them (instead of zip-lining to them being so far and away the best thing to do that everything else vanishes).

So, when these discussions arise, it's tempting from a player perspective to just say "well, don't just take power (speed is just another version of that) away from me, that sucks", to feel protective of what you've accrued. But listening to that too much leads to the game turning into Cookie Clicker: basically, no longer a game.

For

Teleport specifically, but this applies to too much power in general: having your game (unintentionally) revolve around players skipping the game takes away all the capacity designers have to provide any structure. Terrain no longer exists, just like enemies no longer exist if you deal too much damage or take too little. And once that happens, the game doesn't exist anymore and you, as a designer, have no tools to fix that. Had the game been designed with "terrain doesn't matter" from the start, then maybe you would have something cool to do with

Teleport in the end game, but it was all just a bad accident.

EDIT: Sorry, that came out a bit rambly. Not sorry enough to trim it down, though.

mikelessar wrote: 9 hours ago

human_being wrote: 1 day ago

I whole-heartedly agree that Enigma, in the current state of the game, is just a straight up design blunder. If it were up to me, all versions of

Teleport would have a 1-2 second cooldown and no one will convince me that is not the objectively correct game design choice. But it's too late for that, the game is what it is. With that said, the main issue I see here is that you're comparing your progress to others'.

If you're playing by yourself, who cares? I use Enigma on only one character (even though I have more on others and could definitely craft one per character) because I feel that character's play benefits from it. For the rest, it doesn't matter, I don't feel pressured to

Sacrifice my fun/aesthetic preferences for some notion of potential farming efficiency that brings me no joy.

About the appeal of speed and "power" in general:
OP skills or game mechanics (

Teleport, Static and

Blessed Hammer back in LoD, now Mosaic and some Lock skills) are always very tempting to use, firstly because of the raw power they give you (this is a

Key element of gaming, feeling "powerful" in a small little world while you often feel "overwhelmed" in the real world) and secondly because of how much easier they make things. And when you have a limited amount of time at hand like in a ladder season and you want to accomplish some goals (e. g. getting rich enough to make a Metamorphosis for your runeword Chronicle), then having an Enigma just feels good.

varangium wrote: 2 hours ago

Diablo is at its core a slot machine.

Teleport = more slot machine pulls faster = more fun

human_being wrote: 7 hours ago

Agree with your points, just in general. I would love to do a deep dive into why

Teleport in D2 is so awful and why I think it happened in the first place. Maybe a subject for another time.

However, I love that you mentioned power and speed (and the appeal of OP), because that's what keeps coming up in of all of these conversations. I know it feels awesome to be incredibly powerful, but there's a reason why game designers do not design with a player mindset. If you let players direct your game, they will always want more power, always want more rewards, always want things to be easier (which is just the other side of "more power").

In a sense, it's the role of the game designer to protect players from their own impulses. I know it sounds patronizing, but seriously, it's like having a kid. They will always want more candy, but if you keep giving it to them they will: feel like shit, be poorly nourished, barf it all right up, it won't even feel tasty anymore. There's a thin balance between giving players enough of a challenge that they want to keep going and giving them enough power that they get to feel AWESOME. And you need a bit of both. Also, don't feel so defensive about your rewards: that can always be adjusted. Not having

Teleport doesn't mean not having rewards, it just means there are now more ways to get to them (instead of zip-lining to them being so far and away the best thing to do that everything else vanishes).

So, when these discussions arise, it's tempting from a player perspective to just say "well, don't just take power (speed is just another version of that) away from me, that sucks", to feel protective of what you've accrued. But listening to that too much leads to the game turning into Cookie Clicker: basically, no longer a game.

For

Teleport specifically, but this applies to too much power in general: having your game (unintentionally) revolve around players skipping the game takes away all the capacity designers have to provide any structure. Terrain no longer exists, just like enemies no longer exist if you deal too much damage or take too little. And once that happens, the game doesn't exist anymore and you, as a designer, have no tools to fix that. Had the game been designed with "terrain doesn't matter" from the start, then maybe you would have something cool to do with

Teleport in the end game, but it was all just a bad accident.

EDIT: Sorry, that came out a bit rambly. Not sorry enough to trim it down, though.

mikelessar wrote: 9 hours ago

About the appeal of speed and "power" in general:
OP skills or game mechanics (

Teleport, Static and

Blessed Hammer back in LoD, now Mosaic and some Lock skills) are always very tempting to use, firstly because of the raw power they give you (this is a

Key element of gaming, feeling "powerful" in a small little world while you often feel "overwhelmed" in the real world) and secondly because of how much easier they make things. And when you have a limited amount of time at hand like in a ladder season and you want to accomplish some goals (e. g. getting rich enough to make a Metamorphosis for your runeword Chronicle), then having an Enigma just feels good.