Earning Rewards

This post isn't terribly porn related.  As an apology, here's a link to Project Nemesis, which is a fantastic, FREE, webcomic with plenty of porn.  Comic reaches greatness around about the fifth or sixth one, so give it a chance if the first few don't excite.

Much like everyone else, I've been playing Diablo 3 this week.  Not as much as I'd like, but that's how it goes sometimes.  And much like everyone else, there's a lot I don't like.  (There's a lot I like too, don't fret!).  I want to focus on one tiny aspect today: the Identify scroll.  There isn't one.  Normal magic items are automatically identified, and higher level ones are identified by simply right-clicking on them.  To me, this is unrewarding.  It's fast, but there's no thrill to obtaining magic items.

Now, contrast this to Torchlight.  In Torchlight, there are identify scrolls (just like in Diablo 2).  You have to carry a stack of them around, and if you want to identify a magic item you have to find & click on your scrolls, then find & click on the item.  But you can also learn the Identify spell, at which point the process boils down to right-clicking on the item.  In case you missed it, it's the exact same mechanic I just described with Diablo 3.  But in Torchlight it feels like a reward, while in Diablo 3, it feels tedious.

So why is that?

I'm going to hypothesize that it's because in one game I had to put up with crap for a bit, and then I 'earned', the right to bypass this system.  Do you remember how awesome it was when you rescued Deckard in Diablo 2?  It wasn't terribly hard, nor did it take terribly long, but man, it felt great once ya finally had him unlocked.  Felt like ya actually accomplished something.

Now, what if the game had instead started with Deckard already standing in town casting free 'identify all' spells?  I'm going to bet folks would bitch about what a pain in the ass it was to walk back to town to identify, instead of rejoicing in how much nicer it got once Dekcard handled all the busywork.

So, tying this back to my game, remember in the last post how I was saying I wanted players to have to earn the separate classes?  The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that's the right choice.  That said, next release I'll open up the classes for fun & for testing, cuz I think it needs to be checked.  And hey, it's been like 6+ months since my last release, figure I better throw a few nice bones out there.  hahaah.

Til Next Time
DirtyC101