Bashiok on Class-Specific Drops - Hellforge

I was disappointed to not see this mentioned anywhere! Mostly because I wanted to talk about it


We don’t want to bias the drop system into only giving you items you want or can use, it would be a trading and economic killer. We want to encourage trading and encourage people to see worth in items even if they can’t use them - give them to friends, use them for other characters, sell them, trade them, etc.

Along those lines but somewhat off-topic we do now have some restrictions on weapon types usable by each class. It’s been part of the game for a while now. Allowing every class to use every weapon type was actually going to require a huge amount of time and effort and it would have meant cutting out or cutting into other features. We evaluated really how often people would want to have their class holding a weapon type that (traditionally) contradicted their class-style versus that work going in to other features - specifically having a lot more skills and a lot more skill-rune effects. We made the obvious choice which is making sure there are a ton of awesome skills and rune effects to choose from.

Because I can see the conclusions being jumped to RIGHT NOW in my old cranium - let me state that weapon types do not dictate stats. At least not wholly (barbarians can’t use staves so there’s no point in allowing fury related stats on them). We understand that the game is about variation, customization, and experimentation in class builds. We’re not World of Warcraft, we’re not looking to make weapon stats “optimal” for the types and classes that will use them. Which is to say, we’re not going to put specific stats in specific amounts on each weapon of a specific type because we’re making assumptions about what each class wants out of their stats. We want variation, and experimentation, and all that good stuff. These restrictions don’t affect those goals, it really just means you probably won’t see a wizard lugging around a two-handed axe. Kind of a bummer, but then think about what it affords us to work on with more and better looking skills, a more robust rune-skill system, etc. We want to spend our time and effort on what makes sense to making the game better.

I'm going to be blunt here, I'm really not a fan of how some of these changes are shaping up. D2X Class specific items were one thing, they were fairly limited and more of a flavor addition than a restriction.This just seems like an unnecessary restriction based on the fact that, according to Bashiok, it would've "required a huge amount of time and effort".

For me, the main thing that made D2 one of my favorite games of all time was the character building. Getting that stat allocation just right. Finding that perfect weapon to support an off-the-wall build (bear sorc, shout barb). Well, now that stat allocation is gone completely, and classes are flat out restricted out of using items 'not made for their style of play'.. where is the flavor? The disparity between builds, the unique characters? According to Bashiok it is going to come through the trees and skill runes, which to me sounds an awful lot like the talent trees and glyph system in World of Warcraft. And we all know how much creativity that brought to the table.