By their very design, skill trees build from lesser to greater as a reward for investment in the tree. As the character levels, additional, more powerful skills open up. This encourages saving of skill points for these more powerful skills and often means that the lower levels are simply minimal-investment grinds to more powerful abilities. In addition, there is no recourse if you make a mistake and assign a point incorrectly. Too bad, roll again, thanks for playing!

In contrast, the D3 skill system is more tactical. The scarcity of active slots (6) means you have to select from among the bank of skills. The rune system provides a little bit of push-pull, enabling a small amount of customization. The fact that you can swap skills means you can try different combos and see what suits you best. Take your archer (Demon Hunter) and swap from primarily bow skills to traps and turrets, all without having to reroll and level up *another* of the same class.

I’m not saying one is better than the other. They’re just different sides of the same coin, different offerings with different results.

Personally, I hated running around as a Sorcerer in D2, waiting until level 30 to get my main ability (Frozen Orb). To me, it felt like I spent my entire first playthrough waiting for the game to begin since every spell I used was a placeholder for the real deal. Plus, it got really painful right around levels 27-29, when your single-point spells could barely kill an enemy. Not much fun until you hit 30.

In DIII, initially I thought it was a bummer that I didn’t get to assign attribute points, but eventually came to realize that in the scheme of things assigning those points is largely irrevelant with the way the loot system works. And although I don’t hate skill trees, gaining incremental advances (i.e. my primary skill is now 2% better!) isn’t any better than with the way DIII’s skill and rune system work (and you have even more choices if you go free elective.) Lastly in prior Diablo’s by the time I made my last character (usually a caster) I was sufficiently burnt out that that character class never really progressed. Now I can fully explore two or three different classes, or try hardcore, and/or nightmare, etc. I don’t see my time with DIII limited (aka replayability) because of character building or the lack thereof (I never made two of one class anyway.) I’ll probably end up with as many hours invested in D3 as I did Skyrim, yet the two games are completely different gaming experiences.

(And no I’m not a Blizz fanboy, the Diablo series is the only game I play from the them.)

I know I’m one of the people in your hive mind that’s been gushing about GW2 and DIII. Make no bones about it – I really do think these two games are the cat’s pajamas. But among my own collection of gaming friends – the hive mind, if you will, there are a number of people that are hugely enthusiastic about The Secret World – a game I’m decidedly unenthused about. And as well – quite a few that really fell in love with Tera – a game that I thought was okay, but didn’t really draw me in. And I regularly gush about City of Heroes – a game for which the vast majority of my brethren don’t share the slightest similar passion for.

I have, at various times, felt strongly inclined to write – just as you have – about why, for example, I’m already pretty sure I won’t like The Secret World. And I did, even, write a bit about why I was meh on Tera. But honestly, whenever I’m of a different mindset than my peers, I’ve endeavored to, instead of writing negatively about something I might not like, to instead just write more positively about the stuff I do like. So when you see me going on about Diablo III, or GW2, or CoH, it’s not really out of any effort to convince others that “Hey I like this you should too”, but really more out of my opinion that I think people would rather read, and share in on, and perhaps live vicariously through – the things that you _are_ passionate about, rather than read about the things that you aren’t – even if those reasons are *very good reasons!*, lol.

But in general, I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment in this post. Now _stay awhile, and listen_, while I explain to you why you’re wrong about D3..

Quests gave me really nice upgrades as well.

Of course, I may look at it differently because I didn’t think in TL I picked up gargabe regularly. ^^