Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

Aww, mind less blown.

Mex wrote:

Still, all I've learned in this past year regarding Blizzard is that they love talking up their game and their ideas, but they're not really delivering like they used to : P

I don't agree, but everyone can have their own opinion. I think expectations for D3 may have been blown out of proportion given the history D2 has, but D3 is the best hack-n-slash game I've played in years. Torchlight was fun, as was Titan Quest, but neither of them came anywhere close to the 300+ hours I poured into D3, and I still want to play more.

Blizzard makes mistakes, some of them pretty controversial, but they still produce some of the best games available on the market. I'd say they're more than delivering, especially for the measly $60 they ask for their games (WoW excluded).

ahrezmendi wrote:

Aww, mind less blown.

Mex wrote:

Still, all I've learned in this past year regarding Blizzard is that they love talking up their game and their ideas, but they're not really delivering like they used to : P

I don't agree, but everyone can have their own opinion. I think expectations for D3 may have been blown out of proportion given the history D2 has, but D3 is the best hack-n-slash game I've played in years. Torchlight was fun, as was Titan Quest, but neither of them came anywhere close to the 300+ hours I poured into D3, and I still want to play more.

Blizzard makes mistakes, some of them pretty controversial, but they still produce some of the best games available on the market. I'd say they're more than delivering, especially for the measly $60 they ask for their games (WoW excluded).

I'd like to say exactly what Ahrezmendi said. But since he already did, I won't.

Even with its: 1) Terri-bad story (worse on repeated viewings 2) Auction house problems (I suggest folks just don't use it -- except to make money), and 3) Slowly improving itemization, D3 is still the best all-around ARPG on the market right now. If Blizzard fixes itemization (a lot of the ideas in the blog post seem spot on), then this game might even have a chance of D2-level longevity.

It's a shame that they've been slow on fixing what could have been obvious problems, but at least they are fixing them. How often do you see this kind of post-game support outside of the MMO genre?

One thing I find with Blizzard promises of cool stuff coming soon™ is that it seems to leave me in a state roughly equal to frame 2 of this penny-arcade comic. This certainly happened to me once they started announcing the changes for 1.07, it pretty much killed my interest in playing until that hypothetical future when everything was awesome. Here it's happening again, I'd already decided to take a break anyway but the motivation to come back before this stuff is in the game is much lower now that they've promissed it eventually will be.

krev82 wrote:

One thing I find with Blizzard promises of cool stuff coming soon™ is that it seems to leave me in a state roughly equal to frame 2 of this penny-arcade comic. This certainly happened to me once they started announcing the changes for 1.07, it pretty much killed my interest in playing until that hypothetical future when everything was awesome. Here it's happening again, I'd already decided to take a break anyway but the motivation to come back before this stuff is in the game is much lower now that they've promissed it eventually will be.

While it's not Blizzard, I know the Kingdom of Loathing guys intentionally nerfed a lot of their game when they did a big overhaul some 4-5 years ago with the intent of loosening up the mechanics as time went on so they could keep a better pulse on exploits and broken synergies. I don't really think there's anything inherently wrong with that style of development. We're talking a large system with a large player base and it's hard to gauge ahead of time how people are going to respond to the game's systems. Better to keep a governor on the engine/throttle until you know it's safe to unleash the beast, lest you risk some sort of catastrophic system failure early on.

Or as Ken Levine said in an interview about BioShock's Rapture, "when people get into the mix, things get complicated."

Mex wrote:

Well, they're talking about adding it.

It's coming in 1.08 along with multi-crafting and monster density changes for Acts 1,2,4, and other improvements aimed at co-op play.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...

shoptroll wrote:
Mex wrote:

Well, they're talking about adding it.

It's coming in 1.08 along with multi-crafting and monster density changes for Acts 1,2,4, and other improvements aimed at co-op play.

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...

Wow, the monster density change is excellent, looking forward to it. I am currently super bored with the game (at Paragon level 74 or so), but maybe it will compel me to go back : )

I just logged in today to see how far I could get and I made it to Diablo... I can't get past his third phase though. dammit. They have made it more solo-able, I've noticed, but man. I thought I was doing so well. He didn't get me down past about half health in the shadow phase and then after I beat that, he just destroyed me.

The last section titled "Farm Monsters, Not the Auction House" caught my eye. I hope they fix that. It's the auction house that broke the game for me.

I will occasionally make a pass through the AH, but rarely find anything I am willing to actually pay for. I can't wait for the 1.08 patch. All I do these days is farm for keys to make more machines......

Haven't played in a week or so now. Any news on 1.8?

Not sure if this is a proper "walk back", but today Jay Wilson essentially admitted the AH was a bad idea. O_o

Gee, if only people had said anything about the potential dangers of the auction house at some point before the game went live...

Farscry wrote:

Gee, if only people had said anything about the potential dangers of the auction house at some point before the game went live...

Blizzard's hubris knows no bounds.

I think the actual root problem in Diablo 3 is itemization. People just turn to the Auction House as a way to remedy that. Blizzard can't possibly think that the Auction House is the actual source of D3's problems.

complexmath wrote:

I think the actual root problem in Diablo 3 is itemization. People just turn to the Auction House as a way to remedy that. Blizzard can't possibly think that the Auction House is the actual source of D3's problems.

Based on recent blog entries itemization is also an issue they've acknowledged again. So it's both the AH and itemization. Probably other things too.

People will always use the AH because it's the most convenient way to get good items. I think it's just used heavily now because the chances of getting a good item for yourself while playing are practically zero (at least in my experience).

I think the AH limits what you can do with itemization. Basically the AH causes a crowd source effect on item drops. You have to make things incredibly rare for a single player to find to keep the supply down on the AH where hundreds of thousands of players are pooling that drop chance. As a result, it forces players to the auction house instead of finding items by playing the game, turning Diablo 3 into an Ebay simulator instead of a dungeon crawl.

The AH was a huge mistake.

Well I think that Blizzard was right too about the AH limiting sketchy black market trading and duping. The problem is that the problems it created far outweighed the limited benefits and the limited effect of those benefits.

the company had a few assumptions about how the Auction Houses would work:...that only a small percentage of players would use it...It turns out that nearly every one of the game's players made use of either house, and that over 50 percent of players used it regularly.

That wouldn't have happened if the items you picked up were the appropriate level for you, but until you get to Hell Act III just about everything you pick up is for you five levels ago.

fangblackbone wrote:

Well I think that Blizzard was right too about the AH limiting sketchy black market trading and duping. The problem is that the problems it created far outweighed the limited benefits and the limited effect of those benefits.

Yeah, I'm not sure I cared about this. Maybe blizzard did. But thinking back to Diablo 2, did sketchy black market trading and duping affect me? No, not really.

The only issue I've ever had with duping in a Diablo game was Diablo 1. If you joined a game with another player, the server would resolve any duped items by deleting the duplicate(s?). This made trading a risky venture because you never knew if you were trading for a duped item that might spontaneously vanish if you played with the wrong person. Otherwise, no player actually suffers from duping or any glut of awesome items really. All that happens is that you end up with people in high difficulties who don't actually know how to play. Diablo 3 doesn't even have a ladder, does it?

I made it to level 60 tonight with my wizard in Hardcore mode. Next up, I need to do Inferno. I still have to finish Hell first though.

PWAlessi wrote:

I made it to level 60 tonight with my wizard in Hardcore mode. Next up, I need to do Inferno. I still have to finish Hell first though.

I have to imagine fighting Hell-difficulty Diablo with a hardcore character is completely nerve-wracking!

PWAlessi wrote:

I made it to level 60 tonight with my wizard in Hardcore mode. Next up, I need to do Inferno. I still have to finish Hell first though.

Could you stream? I want to watch and chew my fingernails off.

Farscry wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:

I made it to level 60 tonight with my wizard in Hardcore mode. Next up, I need to do Inferno. I still have to finish Hell first though.

I have to imagine fighting Hell-difficulty Diablo with a hardcore character is completely nerve-wracking!

I haven't done it yet, I've taken my time and am only now getting ready to fight Belial and finish act 2. I think that I am OP enough at this point to finish Hard though. (I hope). The nice thing about getting to 60 with a wizard is that you get the Unstable Anomaly passive that gives you back 45% of your life if you take life ending damage. I call it the "Get out of death free card"

Keithustus wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:

I made it to level 60 tonight with my wizard in Hardcore mode. Next up, I need to do Inferno. I still have to finish Hell first though.

Could you stream? I want to watch and chew my fingernails off.

I've never streamed before, but I can look into it.

PWAlessi wrote:
Keithustus wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:

I made it to level 60 tonight with my wizard in Hardcore mode. Next up, I need to do Inferno. I still have to finish Hell first though.

Could you stream? I want to watch and chew my fingernails off.

I've never streamed before, but I can look into it.

Twitch.TV and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) are an easy to set up and great solution.

ahrezmendi wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:
Keithustus wrote:
PWAlessi wrote:

I made it to level 60 tonight with my wizard in Hardcore mode. Next up, I need to do Inferno. I still have to finish Hell first though.

Could you stream? I want to watch and chew my fingernails off.

I've never streamed before, but I can look into it.

Twitch.TV and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) are an easy to set up and great solution.

I'm on a Mac. I think I have a setup, but I haven't tried it yet.

Just make sure to try it first on a normal character. You'd hate to lose a hardcore because the streaming CPU cycles have degraded your D3 performance.

Keithustus wrote:

Just make sure to try it first on a normal character. You'd hate to lose a hardcore because the streaming CPU cycles have degraded your D3 performance.

Yeah, good thinking!