human_being wrote: 2 days agoAgree 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: 2 days agoAbout the appeal of speed and "power" in general:human_being wrote: 3 days agoI 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.
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.
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Can be used to make Runewords:
Diablo is at its core a slot machine. Teleport = more slot machine pulls faster = more fun
Disagree about both the characterization (abstraction into meaninglessness; many games are "at their core" a slot machine, but the fun isn't in pulling the lever but in having a mechanism more compelling than a lever) and the conclusion (fun (whatever that is) isn't directly proportional to pulls). Additionally, you can have more pulls in many ways, not only this particular one, which has a slew of other issues (some of which have already been mentioned).
varangium wrote: 2 days agoDiablo is at its core a slot machine. Teleport = more slot machine pulls faster = more fun
human_being wrote: 2 days agoAgree 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: 2 days 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.
Yeah, if your definition of "more fun" is just bypassing the gameplay, map boundaries, and making YT vids like "1000 Andariel runs" or "1000 Mephy runs", etc. then sure, but that's more of a fulfillment based on personal objectives not real gameplay enjoyment. But If your definition of fun is encouraging more playthrough and people clearing acts as a party, like you'd do in Normal Act 1-3 runs early ladder with a full party hacking through everything with teamwork, then encouraging ppl to abuse Enigma and Teleport to bypass objectives isn't better for the game.
In the past... like 20 years ago when I was a young teenager, everyone would skip Act 3 relics, you could just kill Trav and it was bugged where you could get Durance WP2; they patched that, now you need to get the Relics, that's a good thing. Now with the new Terror Zones you're required to kill all enemy minions to unlock the boss, also a good thing.
This thread has been straw man'd into oblivion, but this was my original take:
1) No I don't think Enigma or Teleport needs to be removed
2) We should take the idea of Terror Zone (clearing everything) and impose that to Quest restrictions, like can't enter dungeons and places till area is cleared. Not all but some.
3) Enigma should have ilvl req of like 95-99, so ppl can't throw it on half way through Nightmare in every new character, it's just a late game gem for PvP/PvM
And one last thing, to people who "don't like when people tell them how we should play the game"... that's literally what the Forum is for, when it comes to balance discussions. Everyone saying nerf Mosaic and Echoing Strike is directly or indirectly telling the people currently abusing those characters "I don't like how your character is playing the game, let's change it". It doesn't mean the devs will do anything usually they don't.
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