Character Customization from WoW to D3

[:1]From what I have heard, 99% of character customization in Diablo 3 is going to come from itemization, and that your character's stats automatically level up. I am troubled by the similarity with this and World of Warcraft's character customization. In World of Warcraft, characters use "cookie cutter" builds that, in my opinion, take a lot of the fun out of creating a unique, or to the player, original character.

I hope the items are not simply "+1 to strength" type of items but rather more unique with powers of their own, otherwise you're simply going to be playing a World of Warcraft character in Sanctuary.

I'm sorry to say it, but this, along with the seemingly cartoonish character looks and green dungeons, are really souring me on Diablo 3, which is a shame because I loved Diablo 1 and 2 and was really looking forward to D3.

Quite frankly, I want literally zero aspects of World of Warcraft put into Diablo. No achievements. No resetting of talents/skills. No huge pauldrons or bright green dungeons. No tank/healer/dps threat-based tank and spank. No crappy dialogue or lame, contrived storylines ("There must always be a lich king!!!1!1!!"). No bosses that kill me by farting on me or have silly voices. No childish humor in general (Secret Cow Level excluded, of course). No Cookie-Cutter character builds. Please.

Yet I have a terrible feeling all this and more will be in Diablo 3.

I'm new to this forum, so sorry if this topic is super old.|||Erm...achievements, resets, pauldrons, etc didn't originate or gain popularity from WoW.

Tank, DPS, maybe dialogue (who actually stays a while and listens?), and especially cookie-cutters were all in Diablo since the beginning. WoW got it from Diablo.





With customization in items, one option is to hoard + str, life or mana items, but isn't the only way. You can still have items focusing on iDR, some on maxed ED%, spell ED%, speed, etc.



Optimization of those items is what leads to cookie cutters. No game can really be free of them. They're basically anywhere from a char having to fill that niche, or a lot of players following the trend set by someone who did something successful.





And yes, this topic is very old. The cartoony comment is one of the oldest, and was long since debunked. Newly released screen shots already show how ridiculous (no offense) that comment is. WoW was a cartoon--D3 is very different.|||Like Sass said, classes are nothing new and WoW was definitely not the first game to implement so many features associated with WoW - they've just been one of the most successful.

Expecting a gameworld like Diablo to have nothing in common with WoW - you're bound to be disappointed. Both games have you kill stuff with a medieval like feel, and item collection for the sake of improving one's character is a staple in sooo many games.

The funny thing about cookie-cutters is that people still don't always get them right, and even in d2, 10 years after release or so, people still ask the same questions.

Again, as Sass said, cookie-cutters are optimized builds - people will come up with them in any game that allows "customization". It only makes sense to optimize your character for what you use it for. But also remember, it doesn't mean everyone does the same thing - As powerful as an Hdin is and has been, they aren't the only class you see running around bnet, albeit they are the most common.|||Even without customization, that's cookie cutter galore :S IMO, there's no avoiding it.|||achievements and respecs are awesome ideas

and the game looks nothing like WoW and the devs are actively trying to create a horror atmosphere a la diablo 1

silly OP|||nevermind,...................|||So long as people continue to min-max, cookie cutter builds will remain, this is just the nature of some gamers, but nothing is stopping you from doing your own thing and distributing your skills in a way that, while not optimized, is still fun for you.

While you likely won't be able to make a singing bow barb in this game, that kind of customization matters little to the majority of players, who, believe it or not, roll a barbarian to hit things with big weapons, and let's be honest, that kind of customization was only ever appealing to players who needed to feel like a special snowflake when they posted a guide for how unconventional (useless) they could make their character.|||lol the op does not want cookie cutter builds cause they are in wow. maybe he never played D2 without all the cookie cutter characters it had. now that i think about it, every single game where characters level have had cookie cutter builds and i see no reason why it will stop. eventually the "best" will be found out and copied by many. more skills just prolong it but it will happen. the real players will be the ones with varient characters imo|||Cookie Cutter = common builds (and why these builds, because they are effective).

Don't matter if there's 1 or 10000000000000 different ways of customizing the cookie cutters will turn up if choice A will be better than choice B etc.

The only way to remove cookie cutters is to make choice A=B=C etc in usefulness but then you run the risk of making the choice meaningless.|||Clearly both Diablo and WoW have cookie cutter builds. What sets WoW apart here is the difficulty. The raiding game is balanced with the expectation that people use the mathematically best builds they can.

This isn't the case in Diablo (Because Diablo is a very different game...).

Diablo 2 was balanced around making experimental and somewhat weak builds useable, which of course meant that the cookie cutter builds where more than useful (aka. insanely good).

There is no reason to expect Blizzard would balance Diablo 3 around requiring the very best builds (in PvE anyway, PvP obviously is another matter), and as such, only the people who can't bother to try stuff out will use cookie cutter builds, just like in Diablo 2.