Warning: Monsters can enter town

[Archon_Wing]

This would be especially bad if someone tried to grief hardcore gamers.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5...627?page=1
http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comment...le-kind-of

I have a headache right now. Why aren't towns safe zones again? What kind of geniuses thought that maybe your start location shouldn't have you get instagibbed?

[FoxBat]

I have a headache right now. Why aren't towns safe zones again?

Same reason mid-quest checkpoints drop you in the open world... designers didn't test or think through hardcore much.

[Archon_Wing]

Even not counting hardcore, I've never seen a game where it's possible to die before you can do anything.

[Sirian]

--designers didn't test or think through hardcore much.

Speaking as a game developer, this is most often the reason for shortcomings in games. Not as much goes on in development as fans would like to believe. Teams include a lot of artists, as well. More artists than any other type of position. Designers and programmers tend to be just a handful. Blizzard might be able to fund more, but they have limits too.

This is not to say that developers do not try. They do, and they care a lot about their work. Many of them are extremely good at what they do, and nearly all are competent.

The problem is that the nuances of the game overlap in to so many permutations, there is far too much to track. Budgets and limited development resources dictate that only so many man hours will be applied to a game, and it takes more hours than you think to write code. Again, Blizzard might have the funding to stretch this a bit, but they still have a finite pool from which to draw.

Testing can only turn up so many issues. The work of a handful or (in the best cases) dozens of testers is never going to hold a candle to tens or hundreds of thousands of rabid fans, many of whom network their results, playing the game when the game has shipped.

Not all of the features can be thoroughly tested and iterated. A game is lucky if even its core gameplay on default settings gets that kind of treatment -- and if outlying options and settings are refined at all, after their initial design and implementation.

I don't consider Diablo online Hardcore to be all that well designed. It's just that Blizzard's competition tends to do even worse, so a lot of players pool here, feeling that it's the best available gaming option. It is not easy to make a good game. There are countless ways to screw up.


- Sirian

[smegged]

--designers didn't test or think through hardcore much.

Speaking as a game developer, this is most often the reason for shortcomings in games. Not as much goes on in development as fans would like to believe. Teams include a lot of artists, as well. More artists than any other type of position. Designers and programmers tend to be just a handful. Blizzard might be able to fund more, but they have limits too.

This is not to say that developers do not try. They do, and they care a lot about their work. Many of them are extremely good at what they do, and nearly all are competent.

The problem is that the nuances of the game overlap in to so many permutations, there is far too much to track. Budgets and limited development resources dictate that only so many man hours will be applied to a game, and it takes more hours than you think to write code. Again, Blizzard might have the funding to stretch this a bit, but they still have a finite pool from which to draw.

Testing can only turn up so many issues. The work of a handful or (in the best cases) dozens of testers is never going to hold a candle to tens or hundreds of thousands of rabid fans, many of whom network their results, playing the game when the game has shipped.

Not all of the features can be thoroughly tested and iterated. A game is lucky if even its core gameplay on default settings gets that kind of treatment -- and if outlying options and settings are refined at all, after their initial design and implementation.

I don't consider Diablo online Hardcore to be all that well designed. It's just that Blizzard's competition tends to do even worse, so a lot of players pool here, feeling that it's the best available gaming option. It is not easy to make a good game. There are countless ways to screw up.


- Sirian

Seems as though you've mellowed somewhat over the years as a game developer Sirian . As a programmer I can attest to the fact that no matter what form of software development is going on, there are countless permuatations of posssibilities to use your software that you simply just don't think of. People have the idea that game developers know exactly how their game will be used but the truth of the matter is that thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of users will be able to dredge up bugs that exploit the corners of your code that you had forgotten even existed. Most people can only think of around 7 things at one time. Games these days have millions of lines of code. Even extremely well developed software has bugs in it.

The lack of focus on hardcore does not surprise me. For the developers it's easy to implement, but they're going to focus almost exclusively on the part of the game that the vast majority of their codebase will play - softcore. Still, now that it's known about, it will probably be patched soon.

[LavCat]

I have a headache right now. Why aren't towns safe zones again? What kind of geniuses thought that maybe your start location shouldn't have you get instagibbed?

In WoW, with very few exceptions, towns are not safe zones.

[RiotInferno]

As a programmer I can attest to the fact that no matter what form of software development is going on, there are countless permuatations of posssibilities to use your software that you simply just don't think of. People have the idea that game developers know exactly how their game will be used but the truth of the matter is that thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of users will be able to dredge up bugs that exploit the corners of your code that you had forgotten even existed. Most people can only think of around 7 things at one time. Games these days have millions of lines of code. Even extremely well developed software has bugs in it.

As a programmer, I'm glad people here tend to understand that, unlike the official forums, where everyone wants things fixed now, and perfectly.

Even though I've only been a "professional" software engineer for a few years, I now have quite a bit more patience with game developers. After a few launches of any software product, you learn that there's always something that happens that just didn't come up in testing.

I'm glad this place is still the same as I remember it from years back.

[kandrathe]

What they ^^^ said. I've been involved with developing software systems since the late 1970's. Some of my early work (way back at the advent of C++) was on consumer packaged games. There is usually a separation of concerns between writing the code, and testing the code. Programmers (myself included) seem to develop blind spots for where their code breaks. That leaves the responsibility for finding the bad stuff to the Software Quality group. They tend to rank problems from critical (crash), to game breaking, to annoying, to minor, to cosmetic. I could easily see where from a testing POV, this really didn't come up as any type of issue on the radar for software testing. These days, testing isn't having bunches of player testers attempt to level one of every character from beginning to end in all modes. It is much more ordered, with a list of checks for Pass or Fail. I wasn't in the Beta, but it might have come up as an issue then if someone found it, reported it, and any developer was in a position to listen. I don't know.

For a product, like Diablo III, they focused on squashing all the critical, and game breaking bugs before release, leaving quite a few annoying, minor, and cosmetic issues to deal with as subsequent patches. Consider the major issues of the past three weeks, and that they are certainly focused on fixing those bugs first where the entire server crashes, and our character data gets rolled back to the last physical disk save.

I'm sure they will get to this annoyance eventually.

[Mavfin]

Yeah, WoW and SC2 have shown them that no public test server, no beta, and no internal test team can come up with all the different things multiple millions of users will. Some things, like the multiple-turn-in in one session quest exploits, are stuff no testing team would have thought about.

For example, there was no real way to test the gold AH in full scale. They built it for the projected sales, and the projected sales were wrong. They're scrambling to get a handle on it, and they will. The game has not yet been released for three weeks, and people are already proclaiming its failure and/or death? Really? I expected better of the Lounge.

[Archon_Wing]

I have a headache right now. Why aren't towns safe zones again? What kind of geniuses thought that maybe your start location shouldn't have you get instagibbed?

In WoW, with very few exceptions, towns are not safe zones.

Well, it's kind of a failure to forget what they were programming for. Did they allow you to be instantly killed as the level started? If so, that's trash design, and goes beyond programming errors.

No situation in Diablo 1 or 2 would have allowed for this.

Yeah, WoW and SC2 have shown them that no public test server, no beta, and no internal test team can come up with all the different things multiple millions of users will. Some things, like the multiple-turn-in in one session quest exploits, are stuff no testing team would have thought about.

For example, there was no real way to test the gold AH in full scale. They built it for the projected sales, and the projected sales were wrong. They're scrambling to get a handle on it, and they will. The game has not yet been released for three weeks, and people are already proclaiming its failure and/or death? Really? I expected better of the Lounge.

I understand that but this is a rather huge oversight that breaks the game. I don't care about balance issues. They can be ironed out later. This though is a bit worse than your average skill being underpowered. And certainly, everyone being aware of the past... 17 years of griefing would have had no idea? And please, some of us may proclaim certain things are failures such as the current state of hardcore, but I or nobody else has declared the entire game a failure. I gave them praise for when they deserved it over features like the AH and booed when they didn't. Simple as that. And yes we understand stuff is going to be fixed.

[RiotInferno]

I have a headache right now. Why aren't towns safe zones again? What kind of geniuses thought that maybe your start location shouldn't have you get instagibbed?

In WoW, with very few exceptions, towns are not safe zones.

Well, it's kind of a failure to forget what they were programming for. Did they allow you to be instantly killed as the level started? If so, that's trash design, and goes beyond programming errors.

No situation in Diablo 1 or 2 would have allowed for this.

I do have fond memories of getting stair-killed repeatedly in D1.
It usually went like this: "I wonder what's down these stairs... omgalksdjtalkdsraoieru! dead!" It's good to see D3 has returned to it's roots.

That being said... I think not having a safe-zone in town is sort of ridiculous. Sometimes, you just need a place to run to, to get away from invulnerable teleporting illusion fire-chains bosses.

[Quark]

As far as I'm aware, monsters can't transition period. That means this is only ever a possibility in Act 1 - which has buildings you can enter. I don't see what's so terrible about this. Better than some arbitrary wall that could potentially be used for exploiting monsters.

"Oh, near impossible combo? I'll just kite back to town and get hits in from safety".

[Kevin]

As far as I'm aware, monsters can't transition period. That means this is only ever a possibility in Act 1 - which has buildings you can enter. I don't see what's so terrible about this. Better than some arbitrary wall that could potentially be used for exploiting monsters.

"Oh, near impossible combo? I'll just kite back to town and get hits in from safety".

As was mentioned in the first post the issue is with hardcore. If I need to AFK I go back to town. Now I have to go back to town and zone into the inn in a public game. It also means a HC toon should never join a public game that is in Act I because you could lose your toon just from joining and zoning into town as has been reported several times. It means pretty much nothing for softcore as you mention.

[kandrathe]

In WoW, with very few exceptions, towns are not safe zones.

Towns... Well, not even the nearest cemetery. As sometimes happened, I would attempt to traverse a zone way above my level. Die and find my corpse is camped by "skull" monsters who don't let me take a step before one shotting me again. So... rez at the cemetery??? Also, depending on the zone, not always safe. Eventually, after a frustratingly long time, one can inch their way to safety. Or, switch to a high enough level Alt or petition a friend who can clear the way.

For now the best Hardcore tip I've seen is to always begin at a quest point you know is safe. Don't just resume game. Better to repeat some clearing, than to get dumped into the middle of an elite champ pack at your checkpoint.

Easy solution -- Make players immune after transitioning (into game, into zone, TP) from damage (or delivering damage) for 30 seconds (or however long it takes to make a TP).

[Archon_Wing]

As far as I'm aware, monsters can't transition period. That means this is only ever a possibility in Act 1 - which has buildings you can enter. I don't see what's so terrible about this. Better than some arbitrary wall that could potentially be used for exploiting monsters.

"Oh, near impossible combo? I'll just kite back to town and get hits in from safety".

Sorry, I don't think dying upon joining a game is very fun because someone decides to pull a prank. And you can't attack from town anyways, so honestly the idea that could be an exploit by any sensible measure is a terrible joke. Not that we're even talking about kiting to town to exploit monsters in the first place for any legitimate purpose.

It benefits no one to have this active, except griefers. And this is easier than actually player killing people.

So currently, the only way to not get cheesed is to reset the quest every time you start. How tedious.

[Treesh]

And you can't attack from town anyways, so honestly the idea that could be an exploit by any sensible measure is a terrible joke. Not that we're even talking about kiting to town to exploit monsters in the first place for any legitimate purpose.

In beta, you couldn't use your skills in town. In live, you can. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up right clicking on a town NPC instead of left clicking and firing off whatever is on my right mouse button, although I couldn't tell you for sure if it's just graphical or actually firing now that I think about it.

[Mavfin]

In beta, you couldn't use your skills in town. In live, you can. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up right clicking on a town NPC instead of left clicking and firing off whatever is on my right mouse button, although I couldn't tell you for sure if it's just graphical or actually firing now that I think about it.

I had an elite pack right across the bridge in the back of Tristram. I retreated into town, rather than run into another pack, and ran them around the horn a bit, and yes, I could damage them in town just fine. Having your skills available in town makes sense, since there's no longer any 'hostile' in PvE areas. Or, at least in the 'towns' that mobs can walk into through a door. Act 1 and Act 3 would qualify for this. In fact, the Act 3 one has mobs spawn in town when you start a quest. I know, Act 4's town is the same as act 3, but all the doors and portals are closed, other than TP and waypoint.

[Lissa]

As far as I'm aware, monsters can't transition period. That means this is only ever a possibility in Act 1 - which has buildings you can enter. I don't see what's so terrible about this. Better than some arbitrary wall that could potentially be used for exploiting monsters.

"Oh, near impossible combo? I'll just kite back to town and get hits in from safety".

Technically Act 3 as well with the stuff in the "courtyard" area and the stuff coming up from the areas below.