You could also ‘save scum’ in MP to ‘acquire’ the items of anyone in your game. It was a great way to get the ultra rares, unless you happen to pair with that person again (or anyone else who did the same), because it borked the game trying to have the same items on multiple players.
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Cutscenes aren’t the only way to tell a story, back in the dark ages (1980s) we had this thing called “text” that we “read” kinda like a “book”.
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That doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not it had a campaign. A campaign is traditionally defined by being single player and having a story. That’s the only criteria, and D1 meets both.
It did. Go into the Cathedral, find out what the hell (HEYO) is going on, and stop it. A terse story is still a story.
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And still noone is hurt by it 
. Picking a mastery is not the big choice people make out of it and even say it can be redone fast. If so why is it there in the first place outside of hurting uninformed people? There is no benefit for having static unchangable masteries 
.
At the end of the day it’s not an important matter and I think the people who will get mad about locked masteries are neglectable in the big picture.
Story isn’t the same thing as a campaign. When I played Monkey Island or Grim Fandango, not once did I think “That was a great campaign”.
To me, campaign is main quests vs side quests. If you have those, then you have a campaign, which is following the main quests to the end, while optionally doing side quests.
And D1 didn’t really have either. Sure, it had a story, in the same way FromSoftware games also have one, but I can’t think of D1 as a campaign.
Again, this isn’t something that is fixed in stone. This isn’t some definition that is indisputable. It’s just the way I look at things. It’s no more right or wrong than any other. It’s also irrelevant to this discussion, which seems to like being sidetracked 
There is no benefit to having static unchangeable classes either. So why aren’t people asking for that?
There are many things in almost every game that are locked that have no benefit. No benefit, that is, other than making the game the dev’s game.
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And that is where you are objectivly wrong. You don’t have to agree with the other side, but ignoring it doesn’t make it not exist.
I know you have been part of a lot of these discussions, not only this thread in particular.
But what I just quoted above shows me, that you are not willing to see the other side of the argument. There have been a lot more specific and deeper discussions about this in the past.
Some of the main arguments havn’t even been brought up here because they have been discussed 1000 times already in the past.
It is absolutely ok to have your opinion about it, but compeltely ignoring the other side of the argument is just either ignorant or you are just unable to see people having vastly different opinions than you.
Having the ability to respec mastery would make the game worse for me. To put it in your words, it would hurt me and my enjoyment of the game.
Just to recap some of my personal main arguments that I have brought up here or in past discussions:
- Characters will feel a lot more replaceable. Having certain skills, passives will just become some clicks in some menues
- The most efficient tactics (for some builds) will evolve into some weird speccing between different masteries for leveling and endgame
There are even more that others have brought up in the past too.
A lot of the statements by you really show that its pure black & white, right & wrong for you.
This is not how this works, like it or not.
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Here, make your own game, with no locked choices in it…
Zamn!
You do be setting us up with the worst engine on the market though. At least post a Godot or Unreal link, not this Unity nonsense XD.
For real though, the “Go make your own game” line of thought is a little goofy. The “Feedback and Suggestions” forums are here for providing “Feedback and Suggestions” and a part of that is saying when things feel bad even if the devs have said they don’t plan to change them. This is what gets them to plan to change things.
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You do realize that LE is made in Unity, right?
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I think a lot of masteries are not all that special when it comes to their base skill/passive, Forge guard is just defences+forge strike(a meh skill), paladin is mostly just the aura(which is usually run only for defences being better than forge guard), beasmaster raptors suck, shaman storm totems are weaker than other totem types(usually they actually go tree form and spam thorn totems), sorcerer wants big mana costs and its meteor is too costly to actually be used(in a game where generating mana is a pain in the ass, even for mage, the best mana generator in the game), necromancer waiths are generally just worse than volatile zombies(as in the generic class skill is better than the specialisation skill), bladedancers dancing strikes really doesn’t fit with the shadow creation theme
Most of the masteries are picked for a slight statistical bonus and to unlock the 25+ point passives/skills - not because of the mastery having a specific core identity
I have to disagree hard on this one.
Certainly not every build will utilize what makes the mastery special and some builds might soley take a mastery because of better passive nodes.
But regardless of what a specific build utilizes, my main point was that Masteries are very distinct. You can literally see if somebody is a Void Knight or a Paladin most of the time.
So thematically they are definitely very distinct for the most part.
If you go for pure stats and numbers they might not differ that much, but still masteries open up more possibilities.
A lot of your statement seems to come from a power/balancign standpoint. I agree that not every mastery is as exciting to the same extent.
Again I think there is the meta/numbers person speaking I assume.
I personally do pick masteries because of theme and I just wanna make some specific build with some theme/archtype. And then within that mastery I can go wild and do different things.
Not every build will utilize the exclusive skills from a mastery, but I would also see that as a upside because most of the exclusive skills are very thematic, but they are not mandatory or fit in every single build. But if you do pick one of these exclusive skills most of them feel very good and fit the theme/archtype of the given mastery.
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It should also be noted that those passives in the last half of the mastery are also quite different from each other and allow things that you can’t do with other classes. It’s true that not all masteries are balanced properly yet, but, for example, necros have some huge minion bonuses that you can’t get with the other 2 masteries.
Some of the older masteries have sort of been forgotten, for now, but the point of that half of the mastery is that it’s thematically appropriate and distinguishable from the others. It allows for a different playstyle from the others.
And I think that is something the devs have addressed as a target for refinement – to make masteries distinctive, and rewarding as decisions. Not simply “Well, I wanted a Druid, but Shaman is more powerful”. But that both would be distinctive, and equally ‘powerful’ as choices in their own right. Kind of how you would look at Void Knight and Paladin, currently. Each is equally powerful, in their own niche. And no one would ever choose one or the other, simply because one was always the more powerful… but is equally powerful when selective for the chosen playstyle.
Actually, it kinda did.
Thete were 2 non-optional quests that were required to complete the game & numerous optional quests (aka, side quests). Granted, 2 isn’t many for the “main quests”.
Because Necro is the minion-specific Acolyte mastery?
But yes, the older masteries will get a rework at some point “soon” (most likely post-1.0).
did you just miss me outright LISTING the skills/mastery passives and noting why a lot of them need a rework to the exclusive skill/passive IN SPECIFIC? If you are going to claim that the skills I listed are not in fact bad for mastery or the mastery passives are not in fact too generic/underwhelming - then I suggest you do so with something more than a general assertion that you disagree. Why do you think raptors are ok? Why do you think forge guard passive is interesting/better than paladin aura?
Just because there are standout masteries with interesting mastery passives/skils like Runemaster or druid or lich - does not change the fact that the majority of masteries have either a very generic passive, a weak unique skill or in the case of forge guard, BOTH. I want each mastery to have both a good core skill and a decent unique passive, it doesn’t all need to be as amazing as runemaster, but I do want them to get something that makes it feel like something more than just “the tanky version of sentinel”(which incidentally forge guard ISN’T because paladin exists).
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History repeats itself again and again. As it seems we don’t get a finished or polished 1.0 experience and some people are simply okay with it and can’t see any issues with this. LE is playable but balancing is all over the place and playing some masteries is plain bad when otehrs are far more effective and good compared to masteries that might be fun but a worse in every department or need far better gear to come online while other masteries faceroll the content.
I don’t how some people are okay with this outside of defending the state of the game because of reasons. LE is far away from a not so good Wolcen release but is it good to release an unfinished unbalanced and unpolished game these days? From my point of view? Nah!
TBF, I don’t think it’s reasonable to compare skills with passives.
Yeah, the devs know this & are working on it.
What is “release” nowadays? From my point of view, it’s been “released” (as in available & playable) for years now.
How is this different from PoE? Every single season they nerf some stuff to the point where it’s unplayable and they boost some stuff to the point where it becomes obligatory meta. There has never been a single season in PoE where you could any skill/class combo and have it be competitve with every other.
Hell, the number of “dead” builds from previous patches is way higher than the number of active builds that are at least decent.
Is it always actually unplayable or is it just “unplayable” (ie, not brutally OP anymore). I remember when melee used to be considered “unplayable” but Mathil did fine with it. This has made me a bit less sympathetic to cries of “but this is unplayably bad” (in PoE at least, though I did use a 2h melee Rogue to kill the Dragon Emperor which was the highest mono at the time).