Pls remove purify from this game

[Meddle]

If you dont like them just dont do it, do the ones you like and let the others alone, the devs will change this if they feel its necessary.
If they created such a great mod like this they will know if this needs to be changed or not.
For me its fine, it feels like this makes all the builds more equivalent, instead of one doing the boss in seconds and the other struggling because it doesnt have the necessary skills, now they all have the same skill, kinda simple but its there.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27216

^ this is the hardest boss in the game, i have yet to clear it myself but have no motivation to, for many reasons.

according to all the people who believe neutralizing all purpose of Diablo franchise design which is negating item impact and time investment in finding / farming said items and utilizing "purify" mechanics, seems like the solution here is to make Samael, the "hardest" and endgame boss of median, a purify boss also. Lol

"purify" as a concept, is not a good design for diablo 2 endgame, it's as simple as that. it has its pluses. it's definitely more enabling and "balanced" by definition, but that doesn't make it good in philosophy. Understand the difference, please.

Certain classes have definite advantages, that should be addressed. Certain builds have great advantages using Purify, that should be addressed. at the end of the day, it's as simple as that.

Samael doesnt require purify(where did you even heard that?) and barbs do that uber about in 1 minute while other classes struggles to do it at all.

So you have an hardest uber that doesnt have purify mechanic and it creates a bigger gap between builds/chars. If it was a purify battle every char would be pretty much equal.

So your argument is invalid.

Edit: I think valthek fight is one of the best if not the best uber in the game. It literally gives same items and skills for every char and the fight itself is 15 minute max and really not that hard. You almost have no differences between chars/builds since they use same skill and item. What else do you want? I think its a great design and really fun to do.

Uldy is one of my favourite ubers as well. It takes a lot of time (75min in my case) but i think its not a cancer fight. You just need some patient. And pretty much every build/char can run them.

Compared to what they were before sigma, A LOT of the ubers are really nice right now and i hope will get even more improved over time.

waiting for you to edit your post again after you understand his argument *grabs popcorn*

[SwineFlu]

Give me back mah Startled Witch with Zealots and Hives and Secret Chrysaor, that was some well designed ubers for sure

[demonshalo]

Purify just means that your damage output is being approximately set to a constant. Basically it's only proportional to your skill if you neglect "rng" (bosses moving around, teleporting away) which is the whole point of purify. With this information it should be obvious what to do. There is no "bis" gear for every content in median, and there never will be. Deal with it.

Let me try to clarify:

1. There is no skill to it. Skill comes in if you are doing HC, calling anything else skill is a joke.

2. From a game design point of view, disabling / revoking weeks long progress that the player has engaged in is not a good idea for end-game content. It cheapens your progress and all your effort until that point. Which, sadly enough, is almost all of the late game.

3. The RNG factor is not a small thing you can just neglect especially in terms of frustration it causes the player.

4. This has nothing to do with gear. The issue is that this is not what RPGs are. You are supposed to be role playing a character/build. Rendering all of them into the same build by removing what makes each of them special is the antithesis of what an RPG should be.

Besides, what is the point really? all RPGs have hard to deal with bosses: Samael, uber elder and so on. Purify is just lazy as a mechanic that is an admission of the inability to balance things. Otherwise, why are so many bosses using that one mechanic?

So you have an hardest uber that doesnt have purify mechanic and it creates a bigger gap between builds/chars. If it was a purify battle every char would be pretty much equal.

So your argument is invalid.

lol.

You have it backwards, the fact that barb can do that so easily shows how little control the development team has over the balancing of characters and gameplay. Once purify is out the picture, suddenly you can see with extreme clarity why it was implemented in the first place. It is because of their lack of ability to balance things that they have to rely on purify. For Christ sake, TU6 guide anyone?...

It isn´t that purify is a good mechanic; it´s that without that mechanic the devs cannot balance things. So they rely on it to surface level "fix" whatever inherit problems exist with balancing. And even then, it fails because barb is still much better than amazon, pally or any other char (almost always) at doing all content with or without purify. To support this further, you can see the "just respec for this boss" mentality which is basically people telling you: because things are not balanced, you have to rely on breaking the ROLE PLAYING in a Role Playing Game, in order to accomplish a set goal.

This is not said with contempt or "hate" for the dev team. It just is mighty shitty that no amount of feedback over the years have help convinced anyone that the ideas that are currently in the game are lacking and completely unbalanced. Adding a character disabling skill to the mix does not solve things, it only further proves that their inability to balance without it is the main issue.

Wanna dig further? okay... why the heck was OW "need" for like years for a lot of bosses? How do caster builds apply OW exactly? The fact that this was not even considered or even controlled for to enable casters to at least have an equal or at least "a" chance is mind boggling to me.

Worst of all: It doesn´t even fit the lore of the game

[Marco]

- many endgame quests need some reworking for sure, namely things like uldyssian AI and his HP. Witch needs a bit of work because desynch.
- other purify fights such as valthek are great (current death bug aside). Laz is great too. (aiming is hurd)
- we have focused endless amount of hours reworking all ubers. did you see changelog? there were more problematic quests to address, especially those gimmicky ones who are reachable by a larger amount of playerbase, such as butcher / cof / jday which were just bad and got a full remake.
- we invested a lot of work also on on purify ubers and endgame, such as removal of heroic shield and greatly reduced length of some purify battles. but these quests cannot be balanced overnight and simply remove shield and expect no impact on ladder economy.
- by inception, a lot of these purify ubers were created this way due to damage spike issues in 2012 and limited HP cap where any lack of invul shield would mean a trivial battle 100% of the times. Also a lot of mechanics are the way they are due to limitations in the engine, such as uldy AI. MXL has so much content that we have to set priorities and not everything can be addressed right away. Anyway, more design tips plz.
- that said using "philosophy should be X" as your primary argument makes you look pretty dumb

gl!

[inori92]

i don't want to invest more time into this as there isn't much point, but i will try to clarify one last time.

1. Purify gameplay in the current end-game usually involves running around in circles while surviving 1 hit KO's or lethal damage, and shooting your shot every 5 seconds. This isn't a good design, end-game fights should not be "stack as much survivability as possible and shoot this blob for 15 minutes". Diablo is a grind for items at its core. Negating effort of acquiring said items, as part of its natural design, is counter-intuitive. In an attempt to balance, it defeats purpose. There are better alternatives. Zorun Tzin is a good way to use purify, and retains purpose of game concepts.

2. Barbs and to an extent Paladins are far superior than other classes in covering most game content. Better synergy, better skills, much more viability and universal flexibility of builds. Barbarians in particular have much easier access to highly coveted skills also - Ancient's hand on helm crafts, Stormblast, stances. This is simply broken, and the game should address it by either nerfing numbers, or bringing other classes to similar levels. To use an extreme example, why would anyone ever play a melee claw sin over a deathgaze barb at ANY point in the game? Both melee classes, one far superior over the other.

demonshalo just posted while i wrote this, he seems to explain it in more detail

The game has design flaws. It's a great mod. It expands a lot of Diablo's themes very well, brings back the JSP days of thriving economy, Sigma literally just released and not everything can be perfect. However, the flaws are there. It's important to note it when you see it. This game can be much more successful in not only drawing newer playerbase, but keeping it also. There are hiccups and walls placed in locations where they don't belong or make sense, and I don't get the feeling the game is trying too hard to be edgy or special in some way, so they should be addressed.

[tempmail]

- many endgame quests need some reworking for sure, namely things like uldyssian AI and his HP. Witch needs a bit of work because desynch.
- other purify fights such as valthek are great (current death bug aside). Laz is great too. (aiming is hurd)
- we have focused endless amount of hours reworking all ubers. did you see changelog? there were more problematic quests to address, especially those gimmicky ones who are reachable by a larger amount of playerbase, such as butcher / cof / jday which were just bad and got a full remake.
- we invested a lot of work also on on purify ubers and endgame, such as removal of heroic shield and greatly reduced length of some purify battles. but these quests cannot be balanced overnight and simply remove shield and expect no impact on ladder economy.
- by inception, a lot of these purify ubers were created this way due to damage spike issues in 2012 and limited HP cap where any lack of invul shield would mean a trivial battle 100% of the times. Also a lot of mechanics are the way they are due to limitations in the engine, such as uldy AI. MXL has so much content that we have to set priorities and not everything can be addressed right away. Anyway, more design tips plz.
- that said using "philosophy should be X" as your primary argument makes you look pretty dumb

gl!

Does this mean that eventually, when your done working on the stuff that is on your priority list, you will finally remove Purify fights? Because at least I personally agree with most of what demonshalo said and I do hope that eventually purify will be removed.

[ChuckNoRis]

the original poster is actually right , yet he got 4 negs

oh , wait , it happens to me all the time too . priceless community

yes, Sigma needs months (if not years) of extra polish in order to shine bright, but for the moment we can only use what we got , which is better than nothing .

[Marco]

rant

Does this mean that eventually, when your done working on the stuff that is on your priority list, you will finally remove Purify fights? Because at least I personally agree with most of what demonshalo said and I do hope that eventually purify will be removed.

not all, but I'd at least start with uldy

[demonshalo]

- many endgame quests need some reworking for sure, namely things like uldyssian AI and his HP. Witch needs a bit of work because desynch.
- other purify fights such as valthek are great (current death bug aside). Laz is great too.
- we have focused endless amount of hours reworking all ubers. did you see changelog? there were more problematic quests to address, especially those gimmicky ones who are reachable by a larger amount of playerbase, such as butcher / cof / jday which were just bad and got a full remake.
- we invested a lot of work also on on purify ubers and endgame, such as removal of heroic shield and greatly reduced length of some purify battles. but these quests cannot be balanced overnight and simply remove shield and expect no impact on ladder economy.
- by inception, a lot of these purify ubers were created this way due to damage spike issues in 2012 and limited HP cap where any lack of invul shield would mean a trivial battle 100% of the times. Also a lot of mechanics are the way they are due to limitations in the engine, such as uldy AI. MXL has so much content that we have to set priorities and not everything can be addressed right away. Anyway, more design tips plz.
- that said using "philosophy should be X" as your primary argument makes you look pretty dumb

gl!

None of this addresses the main issue though. And as you say, dmg inflation is a problem. But the way to fix it is Purify. That´s just a cheap trick to mitigate for the structural problems that exist. You may think that it is sufficient and that´s fine. But what some of us are arguing here is that it clearly isnt the way to go.

Again, you are in charge. You will do as you see fit. However, these things have been pointed out for years now and clearly whatever philosophy is in place is not working out at least for a portion of the player base that has been frustrated by it for god knows how long. Do with that whatever you want keep one thing in mind please that if your game frustrates people more than it gives them joy even though they try their best to love it, maybe that´s an indication that things are not right.

[Marco]

so youre saying we havent been working on these “structural” problems, namely damage rework, magic/phys viability, and many others?

As far as purify goes, as I said, it cannot be removed overnight and there were more uber changes higher on the priority list