Open letter to Blizzard...
#1
I have created a letter to Blizzard stating my issues with the game. If anyone is interested in the wall of text, it can be found here.
May the wind pick up your heels and your sword strike true.
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#2
(07-04-2012, 04:04 AM)Elric of Grans Wrote: I have created a letter to Blizzard stating my issues with the game. If anyone is interested in the wall of text, it can be found here.

I read that, and I disagree with about 90% of it.

I'm coming to the conclusion that my expectations and wants for the game are completely different from many here. So be it.

I shouldn't be surprised by that. Bolty and a few others extolled the virtues of perhaps an infinite dungeon like Torchlight had, which is a concept that bores me to tears. Torchlight itself, while fun for a few playthroughs and definitely worth the money I paid for it ($14.99, I think?), is something that was too boring after that to touch for over eight months. Brother Laz's mod for D2 had a lot of nice stuff in it, but, again, it was built on D2's skill point system, which was horribly flawed in that if you misplaced one, you had to reroll, and, for many builds, you held points till 30 or later to use them, and that wasn't much fun, either, to me. Removing that and attribute points is one of the best things they did from D2 to D3.

I wanted a game that actually made me think while playing it, not the faceroll god-mode sweeping up items of Torchlight, and that Diablo 2 ended up as. I hated in D2 when you'd read a guide posted here, and the first thing in it was 'Use this gear' and a list of uniques and runewords. I find it funny that people who thought nothing of trading for runewords and certain uniques now complain about the AH. As I've said elsewhere, I love the multiple-affix elites. It's a minigame unto itself to me. However, I'm content to use what drops, and/or buy something on the gold AH occasionally if I just can't get it to drop, but, I usually buy the cheapest thing I can find that will fill the bill, and don't worry about 'BiS'. I got tired of *that*(BiS) minigame in WoW a long time ago. Having said that, I'm also OK with gear checks. The gear checks, once again, do not require 'BiS', just occasionally you have to trade (AH) a piece or two to pass the check, or farm, depending on how long you want to take.

I also don't buy this 'forced to use AH' meme going around. I didn't buy the 'forced to' stuff in WoW, and I don't in D3, either. It's a CHOICE, like any other, that you can make, and it's completely your decision to make, and any effects on your game experience because of AH use or non-use are yours to bear. I make a choice to use it as a last resort, but, I also know that if I buy 'the best stuff' that I'll later cause disappointment to myself in that drops to upgrade the thing I bought will be basically nonexistent. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you buy great stuff off the AH and then complain that you can't get any good drops, I feel like you did that to yourself.

To each his own, of course. Nothing personal, but I hope your vision for D3 does not come to pass.
--Mav
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#3
(07-04-2012, 04:19 AM)Mavfin Wrote: Brother Laz's mod for D2 had a lot of nice stuff in it, but, again, it was built on D2's skill point system, which was horribly flawed in that if you misplaced one, you had to reroll, and, for many builds, you held points till 30 or later to use them, and that wasn't much fun, either, to me. Removing that and attribute points is one of the best things they did from D2 to D3.

There were three problems with D2's skill point system:

1) You were stuck with bad choices or forced to reroll;
2) It was very imbalanced; and
3) You often had to save tons of points until you hit level 30

Point 1 is a problem, I agree, but mostly because accidental misclicks could cause you to build your character sub-optimally. They could have fixed this by allowing you to change your most recent skill point allocation.

Point 2 is a bigger problem, if you think that every build should be identical. I however, did not mind this so much. I think that there should be optimal builds for each class, sub-optimal but workable builds and builds that are flat out terrible. The real problem was that there was no good way of knowing which builds were terrible until you tried them. "Attack rating" sounded like it was a good thing, but was almost entirely useless, given the MLvl system that D2 used. This could have been alleviated by better tooltips and more understandable game formulas (which is something D3 got very right).

Point 3 could have been solved by unlocking the ability to skip normal difficulty and start at level 30 in nightmare, once the player has beaten normal once. This would of course mean that the player had one less imbue and one less personalisation quest, but I think that this could have worked quite well. Certainly with the better mathematical model for D3 they could have implemented something similar - except that there's absolutely no point now because you have all your skills at maximum power all the time once you hit level 60.

There were lots of stupid things in Diablo 2. Lots and lots of them. The skill system though was certainly not one of them.
Disarm you with a smile Smile
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#4
(07-04-2012, 04:19 AM)Mavfin Wrote: I read that, and I disagree with about 90% of it.

I'm coming to the conclusion that my expectations and wants for the game are completely different from many here. So be it.

I shouldn't be surprised by that. Bolty and a few others extolled the virtues of perhaps an infinite dungeon like Torchlight had, which is a concept that bores me to tears. Torchlight itself, while fun for a few playthroughs and definitely worth the money I paid for it ($14.99, I think?), is something that was too boring after that to touch for over eight months. Brother Laz's mod for D2 had a lot of nice stuff in it, but, again, it was built on D2's skill point system, which was horribly flawed in that if you misplaced one, you had to reroll, and, for many builds, you held points till 30 or later to use them, and that wasn't much fun, either, to me. Removing that and attribute points is one of the best things they did from D2 to D3.

I wanted a game that actually made me think while playing it, not the faceroll god-mode sweeping up items of Torchlight, and that Diablo 2 ended up as. I hated in D2 when you'd read a guide posted here, and the first thing in it was 'Use this gear' and a list of uniques and runewords. I find it funny that people who thought nothing of trading for runewords and certain uniques now complain about the AH. As I've said elsewhere, I love the multiple-affix elites. It's a minigame unto itself to me. However, I'm content to use what drops, and/or buy something on the gold AH occasionally if I just can't get it to drop, but, I usually buy the cheapest thing I can find that will fill the bill, and don't worry about 'BiS'. I got tired of *that*(BiS) minigame in WoW a long time ago. Having said that, I'm also OK with gear checks. The gear checks, once again, do not require 'BiS', just occasionally you have to trade (AH) a piece or two to pass the check, or farm, depending on how long you want to take.

I also don't buy this 'forced to use AH' meme going around. I didn't buy the 'forced to' stuff in WoW, and I don't in D3, either. It's a CHOICE, like any other, that you can make, and it's completely your decision to make, and any effects on your game experience because of AH use or non-use are yours to bear. I make a choice to use it as a last resort, but, I also know that if I buy 'the best stuff' that I'll later cause disappointment to myself in that drops to upgrade the thing I bought will be basically nonexistent. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you buy great stuff off the AH and then complain that you can't get any good drops, I feel like you did that to yourself.

To each his own, of course. Nothing personal, but I hope your vision for D3 does not come to pass.

Agree with what you're saying here. Sorry, Elric, but I hope your D3 doesn't come to pass either. No hard feelings.
Eff
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#5
I just wish it were more like an action/tactical/RPG than farming and gear checks. I feel like almost every fight is totally one-sided one way or the other most of the time. The act bosses can be just about right when you're undergeared, barring Azmodan (at least playing ranged characters who start a significant distance away from his Doomball for it to be trivial - haven't been there in melee yet.) Ghom's another case where the melee/ranged fight is -very- different. But I want to be using my head more. Sometimes with some combinations, Jailer, Molten, Mortar, or Waller are interesting engagements. With other combinations, they're a set up for a one-sided possibly unavoidable beating if your class escape/mitigation skills are on CD.
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#6
The biggest problem with elite fights are mods that remove control from the player.

Vortex and _especially_ jailer are the prime culprits.

These need to be reworked. And invulnerable minions need to go entirely.
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#7
I am actually surprised anyone could disagree with most of it. At brief, my points were:
* Levelling-up is dull. I would like some meaningful interaction here.
* Item affixes are generally dull. The cool ones have low magnitude. Legendary/Set items were unpopular because they were not very powerful.
* Gear-checks reduce variety in gear. Players all need to meet a minimum of DPS/defence. As a result, modifiers that merely add flavour are unpopular, exasperating the point above.
* Nerfing drops from barrels, chests, etc is not fair on legitimate players who enjoy loot coming out of everything.
* Bosses are boring and weaker than Elites.
* Elites are an interesting concept, but need tweaking. The difference in power between Elites and whites is too great.
* Invulnerable Minions and enrage timers suck
* Inferno difficulty is a no-win situation for Blizzard, because there are too many different groups who want different things from it, so whatever Blizzard does will upset someone.

How could anyone possibly disagree with most of them?

To answer Mavfin's post in particular.
I stated I agree with the decision to remove stat-point allocation, and I stated I like the skill system they have in concept. It needs fixing, but they already know that and have said over and again they are working on it. In fact, they recently commented that a lot of balancing is due in 1.0.4. I would like to see something that made levelling-up meaningful, however. By level 30, you have all skills. In most skills (that people actually use), you also have the only Rune that actually matters (eg Poison Darts->Splinters, Smoke Screen->Lingering Fog, etc) by that point. This makes subsequent levels meaningless. If they were to dramatically improve Runes, that alone would go a long way to solving this issue. I am certainly not suggesting returning to Diablo 2, just making it something to get excited about.

I have no objections to difficulty and never stated that I want the game to be made into a faceroll. I said that gear-checks reduce all players to using the same kind of gear, but I never said I wanted a naked character to faceroll Inferno either. There is a middle-ground. Similarly, I said Elites need work, but I never said to eliminate them. There are situations that every player looks at, groans and parks or quits the game over. These situations need eliminating; the rest of the time, the concept is good. I also said I wanted more abilities added, to increase the variety and tactics. When every Elite in Inferno has four abilities, it does not take long to see every ability represented; you will VERY likely see one or two identical abilities from one Elite to the next. More variety is a good thing in this situation.

I do not believe I made any comment about the Auction House, beyond stating that min-maxers would rush to it for perfect items. That is not a criticism; it is a fact. If there is a streamlined and easy way for min-maxers to, well, min-max, they will use it and be happy for it. This has no reflection on the entire rest of the gaming populace as to whether or not they will use it. To answer on my personal views, I do believe you need it. I spent three weeks farming Inferno and was still using level 30-50 items because not a single item useful to my character had dropped. If after three weeks of straight farming you cannot progress through the game without using the Auction House, then I would suggest it is indeed required. Sure, I could continue farming and not make progress, but who considers that fun? Seriously, three weeks is acceptable?
May the wind pick up your heels and your sword strike true.
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#8
(07-05-2012, 02:38 AM)Elric of Grans Wrote: * Gear-checks reduce variety in gear. Players all need to meet a minimum of DPS/defence. As a result, modifiers that merely add flavour are unpopular, exasperating the point above.

The catch is that a game where mods that add flavor can be chosen instead of mods that add something useful is that it's not absolutely challenging. Pick the useful mods and you win. It's very similar to skill balance, up before inferno most things can work because you just aren't being challenged much. I don't see a real great solution here beyond making flavor mods "free" (this is how uniques/runewords often worked, so in an economy dominated by such, you'll have alot more flavor mods.)

I agree with most of your points but I'm basically willing to forgive alot of D3 flaws because this is the first ARPG where I felt my brain is actually required sometimes. Alot of people are upset about gear checks but for now I'm actually liking it. (full disclosure: yes I use the AH plenty.) I never would have considered farming without them, and NV hunting is so much more fun than pindle runs. There are a million things Blizzard could be doing better, but your average D2 clone has downright primitive combat tactics by compare, so there isn't much of an alternative out there for me right now.
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#9
Well, some things Blizzard got right, and people haven't even noticed or have a totally different view of the benefits.

See, one of the great things about the D2 stat/skill point allocation system was the amount of variety in builds and difference between characters -if you knew what you were doing.- To us here, that system could do no wrong. We all knew what we were doing except for brief periods after the game was totally overhauled (LoD, 1.10.) We got right back to it soon after that, though, too.

But for people, especially casual gamers, who didn't know the system? It was full of traps that would permanently ruin your character in some cases. Many skills were simply unviable. I wonder how many people put 20 points in Teeth (pre-1.10 when it gained a meaningful synergy) or Ravens and got to NM difficulty and figured out they made a very bad mistake? That could well be a deal breaker for a casual gamer. What if you didn't know target str/dex for endgame gear and over-spent on them not realising the returns were not worth it in most every case? Heck, for most builds, the amount of +mana available on gear made the entire Energy stat a trap. D3 solved all this by allocating stats automatically (and wisely removing their associated gear requirements) and by allowing infinite respeccing. Now if you try a skill and it's not viable, you can just switch to another.

The AH/RMAH? These are brilliant. Probably staples of gaming in years to come. Compare the system to D2 trading - even if you were trading with friends you knew and could trust, you still had to open a game up, both join, make sure you're in the same act, and so forth. If you were at all concerned about duped/hacked items, you couldn't even trade with the public at all. Gold was so useless there was the SoJ economy (which in turn had to be duped for enough of them to use as currency to exist.) The RMAH gives Blizzard a cut in exchange for much safer, less scam-laden trading than is usually possible for digital items. People were going to buy and sell items for real money anyhow, so just putting a secure interface directly into the game was smart.

Where they screwed up on this was twofold: 1) Instead of making AH/RMAH simply an easier way to manage trading, they built the entire game on reliance of the system, and then forced everyone online to where they always had AH/RMAH as an option so that they wouldn't have to balance drops for people who wanted to do silly things like one pass full clear. They could always defend the crappy drops by saying "That's what the AH is for, use it." 2) Selling gold in the RMAH - this kept the AH and RMAH from being separate. Things are so inflated on the AH that 20M is considered the baseline for the higher end L60 items. I've seen auctions up for 500M +. Sure, some of those are minimum bids, but I know some of them are real bids too. Numbers like that really devalue the gold you can get in game. Basically in order to get the amounts of gold needed to make high end gear purchases, you have to be selling high end gear to people who either bought gold, or have sold to people who have. Which means your entry into trading level gear is entirely luck dependent, and due to the incessant gear checks in the game, this means your progress is luck dependent.

I still haven't made it to Inferno, nor do I think I really care to, but from what I've heard between here and friends, I bet the difficulty is about spot-on, just for the wrong reasons. It should be about as hard as it is, but that difficulty should exist because of a skill barrier, not a gear barrier. Think Hell/Hell D1: even your most blatant cheaters could get screwed over. Even if they had 20M hp and an endless staff of apoc, one careless step and they could get stunlocked into oblivion. Conversely, people with enough skill could run characters loaded up with -cursed- items. D2 had stuff like Ember who had tiny defence and miniscule offence and could still finish 2/3rds of the game. Gear was good in those games, and gear could define a character (Burizons, anyone?) and yes it was possible to get gear that allowed for facerolling the game, but largely skill was a determining factor much more than gear. D3 reversing that and at the same time making the level cap attainable in one pass full clear was a recipe for disaster.
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#10
(07-05-2012, 02:38 AM)Elric of Grans Wrote: I am actually surprised anyone could disagree with most of it. At brief, my points were:
* Levelling-up is dull. I would like some meaningful interaction here.
* Item affixes are generally dull. The cool ones have low magnitude. Legendary/Set items were unpopular because they were not very powerful.
* Gear-checks reduce variety in gear. Players all need to meet a minimum of DPS/defence. As a result, modifiers that merely add flavour are unpopular, exasperating the point above.
* Nerfing drops from barrels, chests, etc is not fair on legitimate players who enjoy loot coming out of everything.
* Bosses are boring and weaker than Elites.
* Elites are an interesting concept, but need tweaking. The difference in power between Elites and whites is too great.
* Invulnerable Minions and enrage timers suck
* Inferno difficulty is a no-win situation for Blizzard, because there are too many different groups who want different things from it, so whatever Blizzard does will upset someone.

How could anyone possibly disagree with most of them?

I disagree with almost all of those actually. I don't think levelling up is dull, in fact quite the opposite. I have a great time levelling up and have levelled a few classes to 60 now, two classes I have twice at 60. I enjoy the grind of the levelling much more than 'end game' in what people see Inferno as. Once I'm 60, the majority of the game isn't fun for me any more and I start a new character.

As for items, I don't find them dull, though they aren't spectacular. I see them as non things. Having never found a legendary or set item, I can't speak for those. My interaction with gear and items is just a side thing which must be briefly looked at to support the levelling, so I never give it much thought, but I don't think they're *dull.*

As I said in another post, I didn't purchase anything for my first character until I was nearing the end of the game in Hell mode. Everything was give to me or found and I don't recall, previous to needing to purchase, ever thinking, wow I need something better. Even then, the things I bought weren't weapons or damage rings. I'm pretty sure it was chest item, boots, and a hat. I get pretty confused when people bring up things like this... don't things drop? Aren't your friends and you intertrading cool items? What's going on here?

There's always going to be something unfair to one or more type of player. I don't think things should drop from everything and I don't think masses of loot should drop from even half the things. I don't see people hiding the wealth of the world in an urn for you to find every time you reset a dungeon. Loot should mainly come from enemies you fight and specific treasure chests.

The bosses being weaker than Elites is the one thing I agree with you one. All the bosses in the game are so much easier than that invincible hoard desecration firechain I ran in to the other day. Shit like that, Blizzard. However, that being said, I think that Elites and even Rares should be hard. They should be very hard, and they are, but not harder than bosses. These are monsters who are the cream of the crop and the difference between whites should be vast. They don't become rares and elites by painting quaint pictures between chapters.

Now having only minor experience with Inferno, I can't talk too much on this issue, but I will say that no one should be able to solo Inferno. I just don't think it's something which should be done. In a game they've forced you to be online with, the hardest of the hard difficulty should be a group event. Like a raid in any other MMO (not just like in WoW or EQ2 or the like). I see Inferno as the Raid instance you take your friends in with. THe majority of complaints I hear about Inferno are from people trying to solo or sometimes duo Inferno and getting their ass handed to them. Yea, well that's fine. Take a full team in and have a blast. I did most of Act I with a full team of friends and it was almost acceptable. It wasn't hard, it just wasn't as fun, for me, as most people thought.

Maybe I'm just an odd one out, but hey. This is at least how I feel about it.
Eff
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#11
Great one, Elric. I agree with most of it. Overpowered elites, nerfs and the bad loot system are some of the greatest obstacles atm.
With great power comes the great need to blame other people.
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#12
(07-05-2012, 02:38 AM)Elric of Grans Wrote: <blank> is a no-win situation for Blizzard, because there are too many different groups who want different things from it, so whatever Blizzard does will upset someone.

This right there is the crux of the situation. Replace <blank> with just about anything and it's still correct.

I'm playing the same game as you, and yet I haven't had anything to complain about, aside from the fact that Inferno is hard. And that's not so much a complaint as it is a comment on the fact that I don't have nearly the time to play this game as I would have 12 years ago.

Can't please all of the people all of the time. Hell, with Blizzard's player base, you can't please half of the people half of the time.
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#13
(07-04-2012, 10:31 PM)Athenau Wrote: The biggest problem with elite fights are mods that remove control from the player.

Vortex and _especially_ jailer are the prime culprits.

These need to be reworked. And invulnerable minions need to go entirely.

It's funny because I don't have any issue with any of the champ/boss mods. I love all the devistating combinations that require me to time my skills and move during combat rather than just stand and shoot. The problem is that on many cases my loss of control is too frequent for my cool downs to handle. When a "horde illusion vortex arcane enchanted" boss comes around for instance, I just can't get control of my character long enough to avoid the multitude of lasers. And the way the game is balanced right now, if you cant do the WOW "don't stand in the fire noob" thing, you can't withstand the incoming damage.

So to me, Blizzard needs to pick from the following choices:
1) Make elemental damage extreme, so no matter what gear I have I will die if I get hit by it or at least react to it immediately. But give my character enough escape mechanisms and ways to do DPS without getting hit by the "goo" so I can have a chance to win.

OR

2) Tone down the incoming damage. So our characters are able to withstand a bit of damage while delivering our own DPS. Then remove some of the control impairing effects so I can't get "cheap" losses because "I got chain jailed in the fire".

I need a chance to succeed is what I'm saying. Either model is fine with me.
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#14
(07-05-2012, 04:06 AM)ViralSpiral Wrote: Where they screwed up on this was twofold: 1) Instead of making AH/RMAH simply an easier way to manage trading, they built the entire game on reliance of the system, and then forced everyone online to where they always had AH/RMAH as an option so that they wouldn't have to balance drops for people who wanted to do silly things like one pass full clear. They could always defend the crappy drops by saying "That's what the AH is for, use it."

It's fair to say that people feel forced to use the AH, but all the conspiracies about it being designed for the AH are getting old. The idea was that you were supposed to spend months of farming before beating Inferno. More time than the game has been out even. When Elric complained about no progress after three weeks, that's "working as intended." I'll bet the Blizzard test teams were also sharing drops at least, so that's slightly better progress than doing it solo or in public games. But they were clear they did not balance against a simulated auction house. (Then again, randomly doubling difficulty and not testing it indicates they didn't balance against anything.)

Blizzard both severely underestimated people's patience as well as the sheer convenience and power of the AH. They should have put in some checks or limits to mitigate it's power, and in fact they had considered BoE for a good while. But these should be chalked up to design mistakes and not some nefarious plot to force people into an RMAH that wasn't even up at release. It should also be noted that to my knowledge, Blizzard has never defended crappy drops with "use the AH", the official line is that it should be optional. (regardless of the truth of the matter)
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#15
Quote:It's funny because I don't have any issue with any of the champ/boss mods. I love all the devistating combinations that require me to time my skills and move during combat rather than just stand and shoot. The problem is that on many cases my loss of control is too frequent for my cool downs to handle. When a "horde illusion vortex arcane enchanted" boss comes around for instance, I just can't get control of my character long enough to avoid the multitude of lasers. And the way the game is balanced right now, if you cant do the WOW "don't stand in the fire noob" thing, you can't withstand the incoming damage.
Yes, the cooldowns of your escape skills are grossly out of whack with the frequency that you get vortexed or jailed. But really, they're dumb abilities and need to be changed. Jailer should be telegraphed like diablo's bone prison, so you have .5-1 second to react before you get snared. Vortex should be the same thing, or it should be a projectile (like ancient spear) that you can dodge.
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#16
(07-05-2012, 03:14 PM)Athenau Wrote: Yes, the cooldowns of your escape skills are grossly out of whack with the frequency that you get vortexed or jailed. But really, they're dumb abilities and need to be changed. Jailer should be telegraphed like diablo's bone prison, so you have .5-1 second to react before you get snared. Vortex should be the same thing, or it should be a projectile (like ancient spear) that you can dodge.

These are much better suggestions than just removing the abilities that would help add another level of player skill in. Right now it does take skill to use cool downs correctly and avoid some stuff, but having another level of options is good. Of course I don't want the only option to be manually dodging everything, that was a BAD thing in D2 that I agree with Blizzard was unfun. But if you can dodge the circle for jailer like a bone cage, then it's easier to save the escape skill for when you don't see it in the craziness and you get stuck on the desecrator/molten/plagued/arcane beam/whatever. It shouldn't be trivial to dodge them, but it should be possible.

The unique affix combinations is what makes the champs and elites fun. It's the best part of the game. Some of the combos do get crazy, but I don't want all it it just eliminated.

I think invulnerable minions should have a health link to the boss. Which makes sense in a game world situation too, the boss is casting something so they can't be hurt, relying on them to keep him safe, it should come with a vulnerability that is more than just them having less health. Something like 5% (or 10 or whatever it's a number that can be dialed in) of the damage to a minion is transferred to the boss. It's still optimal to damage the boss directly, but it's not the only option, since wizards and demon hunters really don't have ways to easily avoid the minions to get damage to the boss. Witch doctors have quite a few ground effect AoE and "arcing" direct attacks where they can attack around the minions, melee has the option to get in close and "stick" to the boss, but it's still way more dangerous as the minions are still hurting them and mitigation through killing them is no longer an option, but if the AoE's that all melee have are helping to kill the boss faster the ability isn't as broken. Of course this one specifically is possibly too broken to fix.


Now to address more of Elric's points.

I don't have much of an issue with whites being so much weaker than specials. D2 was along those models but erred on the side of everything being weak. D1 was a different beast in that whites were weak, but the ability to be swarmed was the danger. Both had the awful mechanic of potion spam. But I like having the uber power feeling you can get from plowing through white mobs in normal-hell. I do agree that it's anticlimatic for set bosses to be so much easier than champs/elites. I pay that price though because the champs/elites are fun (again normal - hell). I'm not sure you can make set bosses always be the challenge without trivializing one of the best features of D3

I find leveling up no less dull than D2. Often a D2 level meant nothing at all because you couldn't spend the skill point until a later level and dumping the 5 skill points into vitality (or whatever planned min str/dex) was not very interesting either. I often ignored levels completely in D1 and D2 until I had gotten 3 or 4 of them because it didn't matter. That can happen in D3 depending on what skills I want to use, but I'm generally pretty excited to level because of adding a new skill slot or being able to swap to a different build as I level because I want a different play style. For several skills changing a rune isn't just changing flavor it's almost a new skill. The witch doctor I think sees the most of this. I think the leveling experience changes based on class a fair bit, it can use some work, but I think they improved it over the older games.

I do agree that gear checks reduce the item variety. I think the better solution is not to get rid of the gear checks, because that would make content too easy, but to make other affixes have more value. I don't think you can look at those as two separate points.

The design idea for inferno missed the mark. Normal-Hell is a good game, you reach 60 somewhere in Hell, you kill Diablo, you've won. For me that is great. I get a few hundred hours of play time, I'm happy. I never felt compelled to grind to level cap, I never felt compelled to grind "the best gear". I understand that many many other D1 and D2 players weren't like that, there are a lot of reasons for that, they only liked one class, that got a lot of satisfaction from hitting the cap or finding that perfect item. For me there wasn't any content that needed it, why did I care? Having a reason to grind the gear, Inferno, seems like a good idea, but it doesn't work. Having any end game doesn't work. I thought it would, it thought it was a good element to borrow.

I think the problem for many is, if you have an end game it becomes the whole game. I can ignore it just fine, beating Hell is beating the game for me, and I have fun getting there. Pushing through Inferno gives a reason to keep playing that character, something I never had in D1 or D2. But people seem to be expecting thousands of hours of play from this game, not hundreds.

I don't know. They can't win. I think they built a very fun game. It plays more like D2 and feels more like D1 to me. That makes me happy.

You aren't going to please everyone, and I do hope they improve the game and keep people involved. It's more fun in multiplayer, just like D2 was, but at least I can play this one solo, something that I couldn't do in D2 because D2 was dull. I got a lot of play out of D2 because I played with others, without multi I would have played through with a toon or two and likely left it. Which still would have gotten me my value.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
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#17
Note for whatever it's worth that I never said Blizzard HAS defended drops with "use the AH", just that they could throw that line out because everyone has the option, as opposed to say D2 where you could technically (whether or not it would be a good idea) purchase and play the game without ever having internet access. Remember how badly single player drops were screwed in 1.07-08? Runewords weren't working on top of that. The game as it is, if there were a true single player option and people without internet played the game, you could brick wall in Hell easily, and Hell-worthy gear barely drops in Hell, much less NM. Being fair, I don't think you could brick wall in the early part of A1 so with enough patience you could theoretically farm past any such walls, and once you can make it to A3 Hell you can technically farm anything you might need for Inferno (although obviously unpatched this would take quite some time.)

So I won't say that the game could have been released impossible to complete if they had true single player, but it could be incredibly inconvenient if the AH weren't an option for some people. I could bet most anything it was easier to balance gear availability when everyone has access to the AH then if they had to worry about complaints from offline players. I'm not saying that balance was made so that people are forced to use the AH, but that it was balanced with the knowledge that everyone had access to the AH so that any complaints about one pass full clear or similar playing styles left them the outs of both "use the AH" or "farm moar" if they ever chose to use either line.
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#18
(07-05-2012, 02:30 PM)FoxBat Wrote: It should also be noted that to my knowledge, Blizzard has never defended crappy drops with "use the AH", the official line is that it should be optional. (regardless of the truth of the matter)

When Diablo III was released, it was not optional. Period. Of course, the only reason the AH worked in the first place was due to exploitation and abuse of bugs and/or game mechanics. With the latest patches (1.0.3, and the 06/28 hotfix) the AH is now entirely optional to advance. It's 100% possible to farm adequate gear in Act I Inferno - it just takes awhile, but "months" is far too high an estimate. With steady playing (10+ hours a week), I'd say a couple weeks tops. I'm lucky if I play one or two nights a week, for an hour or two, and already I've found... 2 or 3 upgrades - and I was at a point where I couldn't buy a single upgrade off the AH for less than a million, and oftentimes costing several million per piece.

Honestly, despite my current inability to progress through the Oasis in Act II, I think the gear rates in Inferno are finally where they need to be to allow people to progress at a reasonable pace (albeit much slower than normal). While I had been about ready to give up on D3 until at least 1.1, with the latest drop rate changes I'm finally finding farming Act I Inferno to be enjoyable. My biggest complaint, ironically, is how long it takes to find elite packs, especially in the open areas - but that's only because I'm over-geared for Act I (while still being under-geared for Act II).
Roland *The Gunslinger*
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