On Immunities

Hello all,

I'd like to just take a moment to toss out an idea I've had about immunities in Diablo 3.

In Diablo 2 immunities were on practically every single mob on Hell difficulty. What this managed to do was totally halt any kind of casual solo play. Yes, it's true that there are ways around immunities, such as getting a merc with the ungodly weapwn of ungodliness that you had to run Baal five thousand times to get. However, for the casual player, it is simply unrealistic to expect them to be able to solo play.

What this inevitably leads to is a shutting out of the vast majority of the player base, which, in turn, leads to less expansions being sold and so forth.

Now, the reasoning behind immunities is to encourage group play. This is actually a fair goal, however immunities stand as a draconian method of forcing group play simply because a solo player cannot hope to achieve anything without a group of some kind.

This is my idea for encouraging group play, while at the same time maintaining the soloability of the game at large.

Instead of "Immunities" creatures will have "Affinities." These Affinities will apply to all the same things that Immunities applied to. (Fire, Cold, Ect.) What affinities do is that when a creature is hit with their affinity, they gain an ability or power of some kind which makes them a more difficult creature. For example: A Fire Affinity creature that is struck by a fire spell would have their attack damage increased, and would explode on death. The creature still recieves the damage, as normal, but while taking that damage is far more dangerous.

What this does is it creates creatures that are more dangerous for that specific element type, while at the same time allowing them to be still manageable for the solo player. A solo player will still appreciate help dealing with these types of mobs, but will not be so completely hampered by their existance that their game experience must completely grind to a halt.

Thoughts?|||Still prefer immunities. It exist since Diablo 1.

As for immunes, in SP, I simply re-roll the game, the map is always revealed so I can reach the area quickly still. As for fighting immunities, it is adapt or die.

Even my paladin still keep a point into Vengeance while barbs keep berserk. Do not worry anyway, D3 chars have large variety of attacks that can get over immunities. I think the Hammer of Ancients for example is a magical attack, just like Berserk so you can use em on immunes.

P.S.

Honestly I prefer immunities over the idea of yours still. We don't need 95% of the game monster turning into FE CE types. I had enough of instant kills from those and this ideas makes every monster a potential time bomb. Remember each monster eventually in hell mode WILL have more Hp than you.|||Well, immunities encourages diversity for builds and used skills. If they are none, everyone would have a blizzard pure sorc. No more blizzwall, no more blizzball. Everyone would use simple one spell. Boring.

Though I think some reduction of immunity madness could be done... for example less creatures could be fully immune, more could be just 95% resistant... But I think that immunities problem is not a big issue even for SP player. Solo game is more challenging, but it should be that way.|||Median XL, the mod for D2, makes it so monsters never have more than 1 kind of elemental immunity, so as long as you could use two different kinds of energy, you could fight them off somewhat effectively.

This particular idea sounds really good. As long as immunities aren't completely replaced, it would be awesome to have a handful of creatures with this power. Some kind of mechanical enemy getting faster when hit by lightning? Sounds fun. I just hope that the bonus requires a certain amount of damage, because a single charged bolt setting off a big beast doesn't sound fun or realistic.|||Immunities != Resistant

An enemy can be highly resistant to certain attacks without being immune and I believe they explicitly stated this is what they are looking at. IIRC immunes will be rare to non-existent in Diablo III as I think they should be. Combining that with the fact players will now have 4-5 main skills and I think it will work out nicely to add some variety and tactical skill choices while not reducing the game to 'oh I can't hurt these AT ALL, better find a new group to play with.'|||Quote:








Honestly I prefer immunities over the idea of yours still. We don't need 95% of the game monster turning into FE CE types. I had enough of instant kills from those and this ideas makes every monster a potential time bomb. Remember each monster eventually in hell mode WILL have more Hp than you.




Please remember that the Fire Affinity example was just that, an example. Obviously if they were capable of simply outright killing you on exploding, with consistency, it would be something that would need to be adjusted and balanced.




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I just hope that the bonus requires a certain amount of damage, because a single charged bolt setting off a big beast doesn't sound fun or realistic.




The simple fix would be to make it so larger hits do larger effects, while smaller hits have smaller effects. For example, if you hit him for 10 damage he'll get 1 extra damage added, but if you hit him for 1000 he'll get 100 extra damage added. And of course there will need to be a cap on how much extra power a mob will get from this, lest the whole thing become simply rediculous.


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Well, immunities encourages diversity for builds and used skills.




Immunities don't "encourage" diversity. They force diversity, which is extremely different and extremely lame. Affinities are far more likely to encourage diversity simply because an intelligent player will realize that hitting a creature that can double it's damage, or speed, or armor, or whatever the developers choose, is probably not a great idea if you have the option to avoid that altogether. You still have the option to take your chances, if you so choose, and you aren't dead in the water if that's the case.

I just find Immunities to be an extremely lazy and clumsy solution the problem of the endgame. It works, but it's like jamming a square peg into a circular hole, and ends up frustrating more than helping the gameplay.

Oh, and I reject, on a fundamental level, that rerolling the map is somehow a viable play strategy. I'll be far more likely to just exit the game entirely.|||Then I wager you have not tried playing much D2 or heck even Diablo 1 ! Immunities SHOULD remain for a very good reason.

Forced diversity to make changes in play style makes things interesting. If you are lazy to adapt then don't play the game duh. If everything was so easy everyone will be running the same blizz sorcs and orb sorcs over and over again. If you claim to be a casual player and want to make things easier, hardcore players will never find a challenge in the game again. A good game is meant to be challenging but not insanely difficult. Immunities challenge you, it forces you to think of new ideas instead of doing the same stuff over and over again.

Your concept of Affinities is flawed. Because despite monsters becoming faster or stronger when you hit them with the same elemental attack, they still take damage. A high end player can easily circumvent this problem, by you know, doing so much damage that the monster dies in 1 hit irregardless. Then everyone take that build and make the same carbon copies over and over again.



D2 and D1 have a heck a lot of immunities but players just adapt to the problem. Even players who never trade their whole life and play SP all the way have made it to hell and handle immunities just fine.

Learn to overcome, rather than make things easier.|||Why does that necessitate immune monsters over highly resistant monsters?|||Quote:








Immunities SHOULD remain for a very good reason.

Forced diversity to make changes in play style makes things interesting. If you are lazy to adapt then don't play the game duh.




Yet another "my playstyle is the only playstyle that should be allowed" post

And Blizz has already said that D3 will have no immunities, so those arguing that it's "essential to diabloness" are already out of luck.

I really like the affinities idea Original and interesting.|||Quote:








Yet another "my playstyle is the only playstyle that should be allowed" post

And Blizz has already said that D3 will have no immunities, so those arguing that it's "essential to diabloness" are already out of luck.





Yet another one who wants to "make it easy" crowd.

I never argued that it's "essential to diabloness" I merely mention that it forced a change of gameplay and forcing a change of gameplay is always good since it breaks up repetition and shake players from their comfort zone.

No immunities will have players using the same set of skills over and over again (A Blizz sorc/wiz dream), sure they might have 4 or 5 skills the player might use often (personally in D2, almost every char I use have at least 12 hotkeys) but some skills are always superior due to their tier or nature. This will shrink down the skill selections even lower.