What I'd like to see would be some type of 'purity' mode where there is no ability to trade or use the AH, you just have to use the items you find. That'd be pretty interesting I think.
Well, I was close to ask a refund but considering I played ~100 hours I guess it would not have been very fair towards Blizzard.
Anyway I'm very disappointed by the game and ended by deleting the game. Maybe I was just expecting too much from the successor of diablo 2, from a game that took twelve year to develop and something that was going to wear the title of my most loved game ever !
I guess I'll just wait for an extension or some equivalent to D2 LOD 1.9 patch to play it again. More likely I'll just forget about it and switch to Torchlight 2. I already played the beta and I loved it every bit of it
I don't know where to start. I think I would have kept playing and farming the butcher in inferno with my monk (cause I can't survive act 2) if only the stuff I could find would lead to an improvement over the stuff I already have but it's not the case. The best gear you can drop in act 1 drop is not even sufficient for act 1 itself
Gold AH ruined the game for me and it's even worse with the real money AH. It's flooded with tons and tons of items, most of them are worth a gold value that is beyond any normal gamer capacity. I managed to sell few stuff and got myself 3 millions PO but that was not even close to pay me a gear that could let me play through act 2 inferno :poly117:
Not to mention the legendary items are totally worthless, and even if they're going to be buffed in the next patch, you're most likely not be able to drop them yourself. I dropped 1 ultra crappy legendary and 2 poor set item but that's all. In 100 hours :poly122: !
Anyway, all you have to do is hunting for magic or rare items with +main stat, +vitality, +res and that's .. all ? This is maybe the worst item randomization I every saw in an ARPG.
I played billions of hours of diablo 2 and I loved the fact I could farm endlessly because I knew that I was going sometime soon to drop an ultra awesome rare item that was worth a very defined and stable cost and that, even if it was useless for my character, I could trade it for something worth equipping :poly142:
I also could farm any boss, including the weak one like Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, or even the Invoc to find keys, and still be able to drop very good items.
Andariel was surely not the one that could drop the most of stuff, but for example, she was the mob that has the most chance to drop soj, and that only single thing was worth killing her ! :poly124:
In Diablo 3 there is no point farming bosses because they don't drop any good stuff (The 3 legendary items I managed to drop were looted on random chests...). You're constantly aiming for stacking 5 nephalem valor and hunting for champ/rare mobs :poly118:
The characters and skills also disappointed me a bit in diablo 3
I mean the monk is very cool to play, I loved it. It's a shame it's the weakest class. You have a lot of crowd control, it has a very fast gameplay and you're constantly dodging stuff, teleporting somewhere and waiting for the low cooldown ninja style abilities to pop up to try to survive but, somehow, I expected more.
Your mostly spamming a non-innovative spell and dodging stuff by walking. Ever saw a witch doctor casting anything but zombie bears ? DH that weird shadow arrow ? I mean it's fine to spam a spell, you do that all the time in diablo 2 or torchlight, but I was expecting a diversity and skills that, when cast along with others, would bring deep gameplay mechanisms.
Anyway, why the hell would Blizzard restrict you to use only 6 skills ?! Why would they delete the skill tree ? I don't even see the point of doing a second monk, and every time I play with a monk I'm thinking, "hey he uses the same skills as me !". Since you don't choose your abilities and their strength, there is no point not choosing the best option. I was kinda excited by the rune system but it's mostly a joke. The first rune does holy damage, the second does fire damage and a chance to stunt and provides new visual effects, the third one does cold damage with a cool blue looking laser and it goes on with almost every skills and runes... That's all.. ? :shifty:
One word with the level of difficulty. I started using the gold AH when I reached mid hell. I could have keep going on without buying gear but I became bored when I realized that the difficulty is mostly built around the champs and rares mobs. The classic mobs are not that strong really, even in act 2 inferno, where I'm stuck, I own standard mobs. But when I face a champ pack, I have to quit. Seriously. No way to complete a quest just because of 3 champs. Somehow, even end act bosses are quite easy compared to most of rare/champ mobs.
About the art. It was sometime really really good and sometimes disappointing.
I mean most of the places were amazing. I was very disappointed by the whole act 3 though. And.. no hell ? That was bad...
When I first finished the game in normal mode, I took a look in the achievement list and saw that I missed a lot of stuff. Lot of rare PNJs, events and monsters. But then I found most of them, and I was like.. hum.. that's all ?
There is no excitement finding rare events or places, they just look the same. Only difference is that they are titled differently. :poly122:
Some events brings new assets, like temples and nice env props but not that much, really. They could have bring stuff to a whole different level. I imagined being able to find a very unique underground passage and fighting a very unique monster with unique gameplay mechanisms and look or something like that.. :poly121:
I don't know, not just only a monster with a different texture and name on it and being a bit bigger than the others...
That specific point quite surprised me too. I saw a lot of model being reused with only a different texture and it became quite boring. I really expected more diversity. Not to mention skeletons and zombies.. I mean ok it's great, they're part of the RPG history but can we please move onto something else and find some original monsters ? :poly127:
The environments were mostly fine, some of them were visually stunning ! Wow :poly142: ! But strangely I felt trapped in a very close world, like there's no pleasant open places to farm and kill mobs by dozens. Yeah, I think I was kinda surprised how the environment felt very "indoor" and closed.
One word about the cinematic. That is maybe the best aspect of the game. I literally cried (just a bit ) during the first cinematic when Tyrael shouted "We were meant for more than this !" and started tearing it's wings apart. Just awesome ! :poly115:
Storytelling... I remember I was so excited when I first played diablo 2 by it's storytelling. Ok it was not that great, but honestly that was so dark and kinda cool. I was shacking and all when I first found tal rasha tomb and seriously the whole mephisto, diablo, baal thing was just awesome. In diablo 3 I find they tried to put to much stuff into it and I felt like flooded with quests, story and events. I also wondered how they would bring Diablo back to life but I was so disappointed when I found out. It's quite ridiculous, really. He just ressurect out of nowhere at the end of act 3 and that's all, just because one human bitch betrayed everyone after you killed azmodan, which was supposed to kill the evil for ever ? And, please.. you didn't have to do the little blacksoul stone thing falling from the sky when Diablo is dying, haha ! Expansion scenario anyone ? :poly140:
What else ? I played with a lot of nice guys but to me the community is somehow kinda bad. I fell like being trapped in a crappy MMORPG where guys things you need to be skilled to own diablo or something. I don't know...
Finally, I was depressed by how's diablo 2 end life turned out. It was torn apart by farming bots and item seller so I was naturally very angry and frustrated when I found that, like three weeks after it was release, diablo 3 was owned by bots too. That maybe was the killing thing and the point that made finally made me deleting the game. Sure I could still play solo, inside my own bubble, but diablo always have been a multiplayer game and what's the point farming when bots set the whole game economy and totally owns the AH ?
Not to mention the online DRM, no linux support (sucks to play through wine..), "social" gaming crappy thing, real money AH.
Also, I miss Matt Uelmen so much.
Don't miss understand me. I'm not crying child and all, it's just not what I expected. I begin to think that Blizzard has the worst development ever. One game like that doesn't take twelve year to develop Sure there's tons of work but I think they went back and forward and a lot of think, a little too much.
Diablo 3 is far from being a bad game but, yes, I'm very disappointed. It just not the game I expected. I had a bit of fun playing it though.
I guess this means its time to concentrate on art again . . .
D3 is an awesome game. My only real problem with it is feeling very underpowered as a melee class. I guess they're fixing that, though. Removing extra monster damage per party member made a huge difference.
I think you should've asked for a refund regardless of the 100 hours of play. It lets ActiBlizz there f'ning things up. But thats just me. Looking at the bnet forums it's a mess of fanboy's and people legitimately with the game.
Rwolf > well I prefered to keep the game and my money. At least I'm still able to play it in the futur, once the game will be improved with patches and extensions.
I wrote a more complete criticism here : http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5837074457#1 It was kinda fun to examine the game in every aspect, and that way I could spent a few hours practising my english
Btw, did I play ever played with you ? I think I had you in my friend list or something.. I don't know, your nickname reminds me someone, maybe I'm wrong. And now I don't have diablo 3 anymore to check it
I think jmt found the neck, I found the belt, and the rest was off the gold AH. I bought most of it a couple weeks ago. I'm not super into math and theory crafting, so I just went for a balance of damage and survival. The resists and health really help farming a lot, almost nothing one shots me at this point so it's a lot easier.
And seriously, the complaint "AH IS SO INFLATED OMG I CANT AFFORD ACT 2 GEAR". No. That is false. If you are a barb, then you will have to spend the most, but every other class shouldn't have too much of a problem. If you make this claim, then I am going to assume you don't properly know how to use the AH. Over the course of this week, I helped my monk friend gear up. He hit 60 pretty recently, and as I mentioned before we got him up to about 400 resists with about 400k gold. Since then we spent about 3 million gold on his gear, and it was enough for Act 4. He is at 808 resist (using the passive "One with Everything"), 53k health, and 9k dps.
If you are trying to get the best gear in the game, then ya it's going to be expensive. But if you know how to search you can find some pretty great bargains. Just type in the stats you want, set a max buyout, then start looking from the lowest buyout and up. If it's too expensive for you, lower the stats a bit and search again.
whats your battle tag, nasty? You`re in Van, so Im guessing your on US servers?
add me. punish#1219 Im not in inferno yet, but maybe we can play eventually.
Also, playing my Barb a bit, I just killed the spider chick before azmodan, and she dropped a recipe for me! First one ive found! Its for the entire set of "Cain's Honor". A level 23 set. 4 pieces. 2 bonus = 2% attack speed, and 3 bonus is 10 MF. Its actually a pretty cool set, for that level.
Just sold something on the RMAH for £30, but I'm not sure what it was. "Cunning Veil", sounds like a helmet. But I don't know what stats it had. Wish the history would show the stats of the items!
I'm not quite sure what I'm farming for, now that inferno Diablo is dead and act 4 is relatively farmable. Could get better gear so I die less, but... duno, feels like I've "completed" the game At least on the monk.
But if that crappy helm sold for £30 (well, it can't have been that crappy, but I don't remember getting something really awesome that was on par with my gear), that means that I could likely get more than £30 per item on my monk if I sold all my gears.
Witch Doctor on hardcore is pretty fun, got into some really panicky moments! The talent they've got that "revives" themselves means its pretty much impossible to perma-die from anything but a boss (since you can't escape)
And seriously, the complaint "AH IS SO INFLATED OMG I CANT AFFORD ACT 2 GEAR". No. That is false.
Feels like bnet forums. how nice you already have the good gear... I think I spent 3-4 mill to get past belial w/ my barb. Now I've hit the act 3 wall.
Although you statement is partially correct. I've spent 600k on my DH to get too act three. But thats w/ tanks tolerating me getting 1 shot all the way.
I would need to see photo evidence if 3 mill can get you into act4. especially barb. I'm increasing sceptical of anything affordable, viable (stuff w/ low bids comes out now and then, but keeps surpassing one mill mark)
also I think I'm doing something wrong w/ my DH. 2000 Dex. 4 +15% attack speed items, 1000 dps bow, but only 42-45k dps? Is crit dmg/chance this missing piece?
@Rwolf, Barb will definitely be the hardest to gear, no question about it. The 3 million figure I threw out was for a monk already at 400 resist with a decent weapon. But, here are some examples of what we bought him. Paid 500k/ring, bought two of them. The stats were 40 dex, 70 vit, 30 arcane resist and 30-40 all resist (arcane resist was the other resist he was stacking). We got a helm with 100 vit, 40 arcane, 40 all resist for about 100k. I think those were the most expensive pieces as far as I can remember. For range clases, especially DH, just stack dps and then add survival as you can afford it.
42-45k dps for a DH is pretty good (assuming that is before sharpshooter). For passives you should be using sharpshooter, archery, and steady aim. If you are 45k dps BEFORE sharpshooter, you should be good to get through act 4. You will die a lot, but you can do it. Adding crit damage (through passives and on your gear) will make your dps go really high, but won't be a true representation of your dps.
I was playing my barb lvl 30 barb yesterday. Found 3 Legendary items! 1 in normal, 2 in nightmare. My buddy i was playing with was pissed. haha. 1 was the plans for Cain's Honor, lvl 23 set. then a hat and an offhand for a WD. They are actually good items too. My buddy is actually using them on his WD.
Wow, I just read THIS THREAD and I'm glad I did so I just wanna warn you. Apparently people are using scripts to cancel the trade exactly as you are putting in the item in the trade window causing you to drop it on the ground. Obviously this don't work all the time, but not fun if it would happen to one. Don't know if you can bypass this by simply right clicking items to move them to the trade window instead of dragging.
Also heard about other scripts where as if you accept the trade before the buyer hasn't they will use a script to lower the cash amount to a minimum and accept the trade in an instant. Don't know if this one works. Really sounds like a HUGE mistake by Blizzard to not simply remove ones accept if the gold amount is changed.
The latest client patch notes can be found here.
Hotfixes made in addition to changes in patch 1.0.2c can be found here.
Table of Contents
General
Battle.net
Classes
Items
Crafting
Followers
Bosses
Monsters
Bug Fixes
General
To prevent monsters from being unintentionally kited into town from other areas of the game, portals have been placed at both ends of the bridge from New Tristram to The Weeping Willow. Towns have always been intended to be a safe haven from combat, and this change will help keep the denizens of New Tristram safe from the dangers that lurk beyond its walls.
The real-money auction house is now available for Chilean, Argentinian, and Brazilian currencies
Battle.net
General
Friends will now sort alphabetically by name within the Friends List, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
The Quick Join menu will now also sort alphabetically by name, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
Chat settings and preferences will now be saved whenever you log out
Reporting another player using the Report > Spam option will now mute that player for the duration of your gaming session
Bug Fixes
Using the /who command in a heavily populated chat channel should no longer cause the client to crash
The "Invite to Party" button should no longer become grayed-out if a player:
Declines a party invite
Requests a party invite and then declines it
Accepts a party invite, but immediately then leaves the party
The character screen should now always display the display the correct act and quest information
If Real ID has been disabled for a Battle.net account, attempting to add a Real ID friend in Diablo III will now prompt the player with the following error message: "Battle.net is unable to add friends because you have Real ID disabled."
Classes
Barbarian
Active Skills
Ignore Pain
Skill Rune – Contempt for Weakness
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
Overpower
Skill Rune – Crushing Advance
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
The tooltip has been updated to represent that both melee and ranged damage are reflected
Weapon Throw
Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be slowed: "Hurl a throwing weapon at any enemy for 100% weapon damage and Slow the movement of the enemy by 60% for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Passive Skills
Relentless
Now reduces the Fury cost of all skill by 75%, down from 100% (the 50% damage reduction remains unchanged)
Demon Hunter
Active Skills
Cluster Arrow
Skill Rune - Dazzling Arrow
Tooltip now displays the correct type of weapon damage dealt by Dazzling Arrow: "Enemies hit by grenades have a 55% chance to be stunned for 2 seconds and changes the damage to Physical." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Grenades
Skill Rune - Stun Grenades
Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Hurl grenades that have a 25% chance to Stun enemies for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Bug Fixes
Caltrops
Skill Rune – Jagged Spikes
Effect will now only stack up to 10 times on a single target
Elemental Arrow
Skill Rune – Nether Tentacles
Tentacles will now only hit each target once
Monk
General
Monks can now use spears, two-handed weapons, and two-handed swords
Active Skills
Serenity
Skill Rune – Instant Karma
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
Seven-Sided Strike
Skill Rune - Sustained Attack
Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Reduces the cooldown of Seven-Sided Strike to 23 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Mantra of Retribution
Damage will now cap based on the maximum Life of the target
Bug Fixes
Near Death Experience
Fatal damage absorbed by Serenity will no longer trigger Near Death Experience
Witch Doctor
Active Skills
Summon Zombie Dogs
Skill Rune – Leeching Beasts
Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Your Zombie Dogs heal 50% of the damage they deal as Life divided evenly between themselves and you." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Wizard
Active Skills
Diamond Skill
Skill Rune – Mirror Skin
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the amount of damage absorbed by Diamond Skin
Magic Weapon
When activated, a buff icon will now appear that displays the amount of time remaining
Meteor
Skill Rune - Star Pact
Now deals damage as Arcane instead of Fire
Passive Skills
Paralysis
Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Lightning damage dealt to enemies has up to a 8% chance to Stun the target for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Items
General
+ Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and armor have been reduced by 50%
This change does not apply to quivers
High-end items (items level 61-63) will now drop in all Acts of Inferno and Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty
The new approximate drop rates are as follows:
Hell - Act III and Act IV
iLvl 61: 9%
iLvl 62: 1.9%
iLvl 63: 0%
Inferno - Act I
iLvl 61: 17.7%
iLvl 62: 7.9%
iLvl 63: 2.0%
Inferno - Act II
iLvl 61: 18.6%
iLvl 62: 12.4%
iLvl 63: 4.1%
Inferno - Act III and Act IV
iLvl 61: 24.1%
iLvl 62: 16.1%
iLvl 63: 8.0%
Please see the Patch 1.0.3 Design Preview for more information and specific details
Repair costs have been increased for item levels between 53 and 63
Magic Find will no longer be considered when looting objects in the environment such as chests, barrels, vases, pots, and corpses
The item quality of all components needed to craft the Staff of Herding, as well as the Staff of Herding itself, have been changed from Common to Legendary (i.e. their item names will appear orange in color)
The Staff of Herding can no longer be salvaged or dropped
Crafted items that are dropped on the ground due to a player’s inventory being full can no longer be seen or picked up by other players
Unique monsters in Hell and Inferno difficulty are no longer guaranteed to drop two Magic items when slain
Weapon racks will no longer drop weapons 100% of the time
Destructible objects no longer have a chance to drop items, and will only have a small chance to drop gold when destroyed
Weapons and Armor
"Balanced" superior items (i.e. Balanced Short Sword) will now grant a percent attack speed increase that only affects the weapon itself, rather than a flat increase to attacks per second that affected both equipped weapons when dual-wielding
Crowd Control Reduction from items and skills will now reduce the percentage value of Slow, Chill, and Attack Speed debuffs rather than reducing how long the debuff lasts
For example: previously, if you were debuffed by a 60% slow that lasted for 2 seconds while wearing gear that provides 20% Crowd Control Reduction, your movement speed would be reduced by 60%, but only for 1.6 seconds. Now, the same amount of Crowd Control Reduction will reduce the Slow effect to 48%, but the effect will remain for the full 2 second duration.
Manticore now has one additional bonus affix
User Interface
Minimum damage and Maximum damage values will now display separately in an item's tooltip (i.e. "+2-4 Damage" will now display as "+2 Minimum Damage” and “+2 Maximum Damage")
Tooltips for items on the ground will now show comparison stats
Resist values will now be taken into effect when calculating the Protection comparison stat (the Protection value is an average protection estimate of all your resists)
When comparing a two-handed weapon against two currently-equipped one-handed weapons, the game will now simulate the removal of both one-handed weapons (instead of simply removing the main-hand weapon, which resulted in an inaccurate comparison)
When selling items to a vendor, the most recently sold items will now always display at the bottom of the Buyback tab
Bug Fixes
Items level 50 and above will now display their item level in the tooltip
Damage Over Time (DoT) skills will now properly benefit from items with the +Critical Chance affix
Legendary items with the +Attack Speed bonus will now correctly provide a bonus to attack speed
Please note that this fix will only affect new Legendary drops. Existing Legendary items will be addressed in future patch.
Players wearing +Life on Kill items should no longer receive a benefit from this affix when "killing" friendly monsters (e.g. when a witch doctor re-summons a Spider Queen while another Spider Queen is still active)
Fixed a bug with linking items with socketed gems in chat
Fixed a bug where vendors would occasionally not have any items for sale
Fixed a bug where selling more than 12 items to a vendor and then buying back 1 of those items could cause multiple items to disappear from the Buyback tab
Fixed a bug where swapping a 1-slot item (i.e. a ring) with 2-slot item (i.e. a weapon) in the second or third tab of a player’s stash would sometimes cause the 2-slot item to be filtered incorrectly to the first tab
Fixed a bug that was causing Collector's Edition dyes to sell for the same price regardless of stack size
Crafting
General
The gold and material crafting costs for all items level 1-59 have been reduced by 50% to 75%
Blacksmith
The gold cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50%
The number of Pages of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Blacksmithing, or Tomes of Secrets required to level the Blacksmith has been reduced
Base levels now require 1 page/tome, down from 5
Milestone levels now require 2 pages/tomes, down from 5
The number of Pages of Blacksmithing and Tomes of Blacksmithing required to craft items level 1-59 has been reduced
Items with 3 affixes no longer require Pages of Blacksmithing or Tomes of Blacksmithing to craft
The gold cost of crafting items with 4 affixes and 5 affixes (including items in Inferno difficulty) has been reduced
Weapon crafting costs have been reduced
The chance for level 60 items to produce Legendary crafting materials when salvaged has been reduced
Jeweler
The gold and material cost to combine gems ranks 2-8 has been reduced
Combinations for these ranks now only require 2 gems, down from 3
The gold cost to combine each rank of gems is now as follows:
Rank 2 - Flawed: 10 gold (down from 500 gold)
Rank 3 - Regular: 25 gold (down from 750 gold)
Rank 4 - Flawless: 40 gold (down from 1250 gold)
Rank 5 - Perfect: 55 gold (down from 2000 gold)
Rank 6 - Radiant: 70 gold (down from 3500 gold)
Rank 7 - Square: 85 gold (down from 7500 gold)
Rank 8 - Flawless Square: 100 gold (down from 20,000 gold)
Followers
General
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where the maximum Life of your followers was being displayed as different values in different parts of the game UI
Enchantress
Skills
Mass Control
Radius reduced from 15 yards to 8 yards
If Enchantress also has Reflect Missiles trained, Mass Control will no longer accidentally hex the player when both skills are activated
Skill will now correctly target enemies in all circumstances
Bosses
General
Bosses have had their pathing improved
The quality of the item for the fourth stack of Nephalem Valor from bosses has been slightly reduced
Skeleton King
Abilities
Will now summon Skeletal Archers in Hell and Inferno difficulties
The Warden (mini-boss)
General
Now has Fast and Molten affixes, in addition to Jailer
In Inferno difficulty, the Warden will also gain the Desecrator affix
Butcher
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the corner panel fires in the Chamber of Suffering were doing twice as much damage as intended
Ghom
Abilities
Gas Cloud
Radius of Gas Cloud has been slightly reduced
Slowing effect has been removed
The amount of damage dealt by Gas Cloud when first entering the cloud has been reduced, but the amount of damage incurred for remaining in the cloud has been increased
In Inferno difficulty, Gas Clouds will last longer, spawn 2 at a time, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more quickly
Maghda
Bug Fixes
Punish Dust projectiles can no longer be reflected
Zoltun Kulle
General
Zoltun Kulle will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes, using his Ceiling Collapse ability more often and for much higher damage
Abilities
Ceiling Collapse
Can now be cast at a player from any range
Fireball
Fireball attack now moves slower
Can now be cast at a player from any range
Teleport
Will now Teleport and run away from the player less often
Will now occasionally Teleport to the player
Belial
General
Belial will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes in his final phase, increasing the number of green pools dropped across the entire encounter platform
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug that was causing Belial to use his breath attack away from the player rather than towards the player under certain circumstances
Siegebreaker
General
Overall damage has been reduced
No longer vulnerable to Confuse and Charm effects
Will now drop a health globe every 25% health mark (i.e. at 75%, 50%, and 25% health)
Now enrages after 4 minutes
In Inferno difficulty, Siegebreaker will now gain the Reflects Damage affix
Cydaea
Abilities
Spiderlings
Spiderlings will now have an easier time hitting players, but their damage has been reduced by 20% to compensate
In Inferno difficulty, Spiderlings will now live longer, be more spread out, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more often
Rakanoth
General
In Inferno difficulty, Rakanoth will now become much more aggressive after 3 minutes
Izual
General
Health pool has been increased
The number of Oppressors that join the fight has been reduced from 4 to 2
Will no longer target Followers or Tyrael as frequently
Abilities
Base Attacks
Base attack damage has been lowered
No longer does Cold damage on top of base attacks
Charge
Charge damage has been reduced
Knockback has been removed
Will Charge slightly more often, but will only target players
Frozen Bombs
Frozen Bomb damage has been reduced
Bombs will now explode faster
Only 8 Bombs will now spawn around the player rather than 12
Bombs will spawn at Izual's feet less often
Frost Explosion
Frost Explosion damage has been reduced by 70%
Duration of freeze has been increased
Damage dealt to players while frozen will now break the effect
Players can now use defensive cooldown while frozen
Players can no longer avoid being frozen by doing high amounts of amount to Izual
Bug Fixes
Izual will no longer spawn twice if a player skips his introductory cut-scene
Diablo
Bug Fixes
Damage Over Time (DoT) effects will now be properly cancelled when Diablo becomes invisible and casts Shadow Clones in Phase Two
Diablo "Stomp" ability is now correctly classified as a debuff instead of a buff
Fixed a bug that was causing pets to not attack Shadow Clones
Monsters
General
Champions, Rares, and Uniques have had their pathing improved
Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality
Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced
Colossal Golgor base damage has been reduced
Herald of Pestilence tentacle attack damage has been reduced
Soul Ripper and Soul Lasher damage has been reduced and both monsters will now run away less often
Wasps in Act II, Mage Constructs in Act II, and Winged Mollocks in Acts III and IV will now run away less
Succubus monsters will now run away less and for a shorter distance
The health pools of Woodwraiths in the Highlands now match the health pools of Woodwraiths in the Fields of Misery
Lacuni and Scavenger Rares and and Champions will now un-burrow when called by their allies
Bloodclan Warriors no longer knockback when buffed and attack slightly slower
Morlu no longer have the Invulnerable Minions, Health Link, or Fire Chains affixes
Plagued, Arcane Enchanted, and Electrified monsters no longer have resistance to Poison, Arcane, and Lightning damage (respectively)
Leaders of Invulnerable Minions packs have had their health pools reduced
Mortar monsters can now hurl projectiles farther, but their minimum range has also been increased by 100%
Bug Fixes
Interrupting a monster attack before it lands will now properly trigger its cooldown
Treasure Goblins will now drop gold piles for all nearby players
Lacuni Warrior Rares and Champions will now reset their enrage timer correctly in Inferno difficulty
The Succubus "Blood Star" debuff will no longer affect the player if the damage from the projectile is dodged/blocked/etc
The damage from the Succubus “Blood Star” debuff will now scale based on the current cost of a player's skill, even if the cost is reduced by items or skill runes
Monsters with the Extra Health affix should no longer gain more health every time players leave and join the game
Monsters with the Reflects Damage affix will no longer reflect Follower damage back to the player
Monsters with the Health Link and Knockback affixes will no longer knockback friendly monsters
Fixed a bug that was causing Champion Wallers to occasionally create walls at their location rather than the player's location
Fixed a bug where Sandwasp projectiles could sometimes become invisible
Bug Fixes
General
The experience bar for characters at level cap on a Guest Pass account will now display 0/0 experience. If the account holder upgrades to the full game, their characters will be at 0/41000 experience towards the next level.
The speed of the animation that plays when resurrecting another players should no longer scale with your attack speed
Attempting to cast a skill while spamming the Town Portal hot key will now correctly interrupt the Town Portal cast and animation
Players who use Town Portal while in a tar pit will no longer keep the tar pit debuff after being teleported
It is no longer possible for players in Hell difficulty to skip to Inferno difficulty by creating and leaving Public Games
It is no longer possible to prevent character death in a single-player game by pausing the game in one game client and then logging into the same account from a different game client
Fixed a bug where The Lyceum in the Southern Highlands was not appearing
Fixed a bug where players could switch their offerings in the Trade window right before clicking "Accept" and, due to high latency, the game would not always be able to verify that both players were accepting the same offerings
Fixed a bug that was allowing players to temporarily pick up items that belonged to another account
Fixed a bug that was causing players to become stuck when using a banner to port to another player that was in an "un-walkable" location (i.e. to a barbarian in the middle of performing Leap)
Fixed a position desync bug (aka "rubberbanding") that could happen when some movement skills (Strafe, Whirlwind, Tempest Rush) ended because the player ran out of the appropriate resource
Fixed several issues where a player's character would get stuck or "rubberband" while moving if their movement speed was slowed in any way
Several performance improvements have been made to both the PC and Mac client
Auction House
Item tooltips in the auction house will now correctly reflect stat bonuses provided by socketed gems
Items with class-specific affixes should now display the class restriction properly
It should no longer be possible for players to purchase a stack of items so large that it cannot be sent to their stash
The data displayed in each auction house tab should now properly reset when logging out
Mortar monsters can now hurl projectiles farther, but their minimum range has also been increased by 100%
Since EU don't seem to have gotten the patch yet, could someone test how further they can cast? Does this mean it's not possible to be at X distance to avoid them firing mortars at you as a DH?
Since EU don't seem to have gotten the patch yet, could someone test how further they can cast? Does this mean it's not possible to be at X distance to avoid them firing mortars at you as a DH?
Also how much easier is it to tank?
Joy.... If getting one shot off screen, and broken hit boxes weren't enough for my DH...
my DH lost 12k dps from the nerf... down from my briefly acquired 50k.... (about 60% as)
So I can tank better now, guess I can get more damage gear, other classes don't do as much dps but i guess they can get a few pieces of tank gear and survive with the current NPC damage nerf. The game normalizes more and more all the time. Lacks more and more flavor each patch.
I'm just gonna say it, this games a train wreck. A diablo game needs to do 1 thing above all else, make it enjoyable to grind for loot, that's it. That needs to be priority #1 and it feels like they're just now figuring that part out after years and years of development.
The fundamental problem with their developement process:
They're tuning things to be balanced before making it interesting. They're layering more and more systems on top of each other and with every patch they are making this game harder and harder to have any sort of fun or longevity because things are built around the current state of the game (which is inherently bland). There are far larger issues looming over the game than item farming exploits.
It's like the titanic is sinking and instead of fixing the boat they're wiping the windows, as if no one with any overall design sense has any ownership of the game and everyone is just standing on the side powerless watching it sink, "yep, i figured this game was going to suck if we balanced it to make money". I'm sure they've raked in a bit of money with the auction house, but is it worth it? How much is the reputation of a company like blizzard worth?
Sorta feels like the death of superman. That comic sold millions of comics, also marked DC selling out and killing the franchise.
What I think I'm going to do with my monk is build my dex and crit chance really high, and use the perk that does 30% dodge off of the crit chance (mines at 25% now) and the dodge montra, I should be dodging like 70% at that point or more.
You couldn't put a value at something like Blizzard's reputation. It was WAY to high, but sadly they sold out to the green ones and as a company will suffer unless they do something radical. Like fire Jay Wilson and give out a free/cheap expansion. There's no point in trying to fix this sinking ship it will just cost them to much and be to pointless, better to start a "new" and hope it's not to late to repair the damage that's been done.
So I can tank better now, guess I can get more damage gear, other classes don't do as much dps but i guess they can get a few pieces of tank gear and survive with the current NPC damage nerf. The game normalizes more and more all the time. Lacks more and more flavor each patch.
So, out of curiosity, where are you in the game right now? Most of these changes to monsters apply only to inferno. I don't think the changes make the game "flavorless" , unless you enjoyed dying a lot.
I'm just gonna say it, this games a train wreck. A diablo game needs to do 1 thing above all else, make it enjoyable to grind for loot, that's it. That needs to be priority #1 and it feels like they're just now figuring that part out after years and years of development.
The fundamental problem with their developement process:
They're tuning things to be balanced before making it interesting. They're layering more and more systems on top of each other and with every patch they are making this game harder and harder to have any sort of fun or longevity because things are built around the current state of the game (which is inherently bland). There are far larger issues looming over the game than item farming exploits.
It's like the titanic is sinking and instead of fixing the boat they're wiping the windows, as if no one with any overall design sense has any ownership of the game and everyone is just standing on the side powerless watching it sink, "yep, i figured this game was going to suck if we balanced it to make money". I'm sure they've raked in a bit of money with the auction house, but is it worth it? How much is the reputation of a company like blizzard worth?
Sorta feels like the death of superman. That comic sold millions of comics, also marked DC selling out and killing the franchise.
A little melodramatic don't you think? First, your main point seems to be that the AH and RMAH have ruined the game, and it was a decision made out of greed. Blizzard has stated multiple times that the AH and RMAH were primarily design choices, not financial. Whether you believe them or not is up to you, but that is the only information we have on the subject, everything else is conjecture. Second, it's clear you are not enjoying the game, so with that kind of outlook it's not surprising that you feel this way about the patch. From my perspective, this patch contains many changes that are quite radical. The biggest change in my opinion is a combination of the monster nerf, boss buff, and repair bill increase. Those three changes have MASSIVE implications for the game, especially hardcore.
Also, do you have any suggestions of what could be done better?
I think you should've asked for a refund regardless of the 100 hours of play. It lets ActiBlizz there f'ning things up. But thats just me. Looking at the bnet forums it's a mess of fanboy's and people legitimately with the game.
You couldn't put a value at something like Blizzard's reputation. It was WAY to high, but sadly they sold out to the green ones and as a company will suffer unless they do something radical. Like fire Jay Wilson and give out a free/cheap expansion. There's no point in trying to fix this sinking ship it will just cost them to much and be to pointless, better to start a "new" and hope it's not to late to repair the damage that's been done.
@Rwolf, if you are losing 200k in repairs, then you are further in the content than you should be, hence the dying.
Anyways, on a more positive note, I'm pretty happy with the patch, despite DH's no longer being OP. Nether tentacles was "fixed" or whatever, and IAS has been thoroughly nerfed. I had been preparing for it though, and bought a bunch of high dex, vit, all resist gear. Act 2 goblin farming seems better than ever with the gobs now dropping ilevel 63 once in a while.
I'll try to be less melodramatic. I'm in act 3 inferno. I'm finding that i can tank the game absolutely no problem and if i found the right DPS to suppliment me I'd have no problem at all advancing. But I just have no urge to. The biggest issue with the game i'd have to say is a lack of dynamic progression which stems from 3 core faults:
1 lack of talents
2 item diversity.
3 absolute linear difficulty progression
Each one of these issues exacerbates the problem exponentially, creating a stale game in the end. It doesn't feel quite like you're playing a diablo game with a slot machine where at any moment a unique item will drop that will let you tear through the next 4 acts like a champ. Or compel you to instantly reroll a new character to try out a new item you just found with a build that's perfect for it. It feels like you're playing against a spreadsheet where you need X more vitality and Y more resist all to make it to the next act. Worst of all the best way to get those stats are by trading on the auction house. There is a massive database integrated into the game to show you just how unspectacular your items are. Before you reach a point in the game where you need to use the auction house to progress, it's actually sorta fun to find these items, but that quickly changes.
Because "trash" mobs are now largely trivialized because the core drops are on elites, it's not satisfying to mow through large waves of enemies. And because difficulty is tuned for elites to be the gatekeepers, large droves of enemies don't really feel as though they've been balanced to offer a challege, there's just filler, nothing more, something there to die on the way to get to the important monsters.
How would i make the game better? I would gut all this overbalancing nonesense. Balance the game organically. Throw in cool stuff, make rare unique packs that are easy to kill, maybe rare ones that even give 5 nephalim right off the bat. Put in items that greatly augment skills, a sword that reduces the cooldown on leap to 2 seconds, crazy awesome stuff like that.
To offset the rediculous farming players would be able to achieve with said changes i would adopt a new itemization model. The more unique and rare loot a player recieves, the less odds they'd have of getting more. The average player wouldn't notice a difference, in fact it could be tuned to give casual players an even better shot at getting loot since they don't have much time to play. As an added bonus this system would encourage farmers to buy more copies of the game so they could farm more rare items once they tapped out their drop rates on one account.
Just my 2 cents though, everyone seems to know how they'd make the perfect game
Quick edit: I do think the patch made the game better, it is more enjoyable to a wider range of players, I just feel it's not opening up channels to truly make this game engaging for months to come at a level of fun that a blizzard title generally exhibits.
Again Sgt, your well geared post patch... And you said it yourself, my DH should be good to act IV, but die alot.
Patch made my barb doable in Act III, but still dies due to Champions/Elites. Since it's dooable, and your past the point of no return your priced in, much like a poker game.
at the point I can't progress without farming lower levels. I only got 2 mill (thats dwindling quickly) and I need a few mill to get some better gear for Act III.
I can farm w/ my demon hunter in the actIII tower sniping spot, but that's infeasible either now. Since I hardly get any good items for ah out of 5-10 runs. The farming spot that requires you to die = lost profit due to repairs.
Yet to try act II, But if the risk/reward is now feasible, that's the only thing positive I would hafta say about this patch.
I rather die lots and not progress and pay a tiny repair bill, rather than tote around with a carrot on a stick going broke along the way.
Next to nothing from destructible objects means significantly less gold for me, as I actually enjoyed breaking everything in sight. I didn't do any vase/ash farming, but the extra gold was a nice.
Compound that with drastically increased repair costs and the fact that I'm running a barb means I'll likely make very little gold on runs. I will die often enough to rare/champs, as I've yet to find a reasonable way of dealing with certain affix combos.
Still at work, so won't be able to test till tonight, but I think I may have to go back to act one and face-roll it endlessly if I hope to farm enough gold for upgrades.
It's fun as hell and even the people complaining about it have dumped dozens of hours into it that they enjoyed, and most people's gripes tend to be focused around the fact that it isn't capable of literally infinite entertainment, and does not obsolete all other games in some twisted concept of "Good."
Blizzard has stated multiple times that the AH and RMAH were primarily design choices, not financial. Whether you believe them or not is up to you, but that is the only information we have on the subject, everything else is conjecture.
Just to play devil´s advocate, let´s assume that Blizzard did put the RMAH in to generate extra money. Do you really think they would ever announce that or admit it publicly?
@crazyfingers Fair enough man, well articulated post. I don't completely agree, but I see where you are coming from.
The longevity of the game is definitely a concern, but I think PvP will probably add a lot in that department. There are also achievements and hardcore mode though, which are pretty massive time sinks. Hopefully they will also add some more content before the next expansion, like another act or a new area.
you think pvp will add a lot to the game when power can literally be bought?
what good is pvp when the guy with the most money will always have the upper hand?
I have absolutely no desire to PvP in the game. It's bad enough that skill is rarely ever required in the PvE game. I'm okay with it, as I don't mind the gear grind.
Better gear = win in PvE, and I really don't see how that's going to change in PvP.
Just to play devil´s advocate, let´s assume that Blizzard did put the RMAH in to generate extra money. Do you really think they would ever announce that or admit it publicly?
I do not think they would explicitly state that it was for profit. I also don't think they would ask their employees to straight up lie about it, and say it was a design decision. If it was a financial thing, I think they would just avoid the subject.
My personal opinion/theory is that it truly did originate from the designers, and obviously none of the execs were going to discourage it. If it was purely financial, and they ARE lying, then that is unfortunate, but I will need some proof or first hand knowledge or something before I bring out the pitchfork and torch.
Something I think a lot of people who are really against RMAH fail to realize is that the 3rd party market for gold and items is extremely, extremely destructive. In World of Warcraft, one of the ways for a lot of gold sellers to obtain the gold is by stealing accounts, and cleaning them out. Also, these sites also straight up scam people, by just blatantly taking their money.
It's also legitimately making the game more enjoyable for a lot of people. It's just a matter of time/money. Some people really want to play the game, but don't have hours and hours to farm. They can spend $100 or w/e and keep progressing through the game, and it's fun for them. Right now, I have time to play, therefore gold is more valuable to me. I've found a few items that I'm sure I could have sold for $10 or whatever, but I just want to get more items, so the RMAH isn't really a factor to me. If some guy on my friends list wants to spend $1000 on a full set of best in slot gear to beat Diablo, w/e. If it's making him happy then go for it.
Long-winded answer to a simple question, but you totally baited me haha.
I'm not gonna argue if you find the game fun or not, because I can't. If you enjoy this game you enjoy it and no one can change that. I'm simply asking what is it that's so good about this game, what is it that you enjoy? That's what I wanna know.
PvP is a huge question mark. There's not a lot known about it (at least I haven't seen much about it), but I think it's safe to assume it will be pretty unbalanced at first. The buying of gear to win in PvP is probably going to be annoying, but it was inevitable. Like I have said many many times, people would be using real money to buy items regardless of the RMAH. It happened all the time in WoW. People buy accounts, or items, or for people to "carry" them to a certain rating so they could buy the items.
I just assume that it will add some replay to the game because it's Blizzard and they will keep improving it until it is fun. But if day one pvp is a circus I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Yay ZacD, finally someone mentions the art ON A GAME ART FORUM lol. It really does look amazing. I particularly enjoyed Act 2's art. Zoltun Kulle's archives are probably my favourite enviro in the game.
A big part of it for me is being able to progress through the game and get awesome gear with my friends. I've raided in WoW a lot, and if you've ever done it you probably know what I mean. With WoW raiding, if you want to do all the endgame bosses and get the best loot, you HAD to do it with at least a 10 man raid (which used to be at least 25 or 40 people before the most recent expansion). This meant playing at scheduled times (usually 2-3 nights/week for about 2-4 hours/night), putting up with people you didn't like, being held back when people weren't showing up or sucking, etc. In Diablo I am literally able to progress as fast as I like, and it doesn't matter as much who is around. I can go solo, I can play with my gf, we can add another friend or two, it's all good. No matter what we can play together and usually have a pretty good time.
The drop in and out online is also amazing. You meet another WoW player in real life, there is like, almost NO chance you will play together. To play together in WoW, you would need to be on the same server, same faction, and then roughly the same level or gear to be doing anything relevant. In Diablo, all you really need is to own the game, and you can play together. I think that's a hugely underrated feature.
Well played Act II for a few hours... Nice to see rare drops on elites (w/ 5 valor stack), still crap tho. Almost profitable gold wise, but a few tough elites negated any gains. To sum it up, playing act II I can break even, with a chance on finding gear by the looks of it.
Game enjoyment = Decreasing...
Zac, at least we didn't try Azmoddan post patch lol, we be broke the amount of times we died.
Yeah, no more corpse hopping, I was hoping to unlock act 4, for some reason I lost the act 3 unlock for inferno. I really like that you are not forced to play multiplayer or single player, it works great both ways. I'm really happy I have 2 items that don't break, and I think I'll pick items that have the unbreaking over ones that don't if they are around the same price.
Replies
Here is my humble opinion :poly124:
Well, I was close to ask a refund but considering I played ~100 hours I guess it would not have been very fair towards Blizzard.
Anyway I'm very disappointed by the game and ended by deleting the game. Maybe I was just expecting too much from the successor of diablo 2, from a game that took twelve year to develop and something that was going to wear the title of my most loved game ever !
I guess I'll just wait for an extension or some equivalent to D2 LOD 1.9 patch to play it again. More likely I'll just forget about it and switch to Torchlight 2. I already played the beta and I loved it every bit of it
I don't know where to start. I think I would have kept playing and farming the butcher in inferno with my monk (cause I can't survive act 2) if only the stuff I could find would lead to an improvement over the stuff I already have but it's not the case. The best gear you can drop in act 1 drop is not even sufficient for act 1 itself
Gold AH ruined the game for me and it's even worse with the real money AH. It's flooded with tons and tons of items, most of them are worth a gold value that is beyond any normal gamer capacity. I managed to sell few stuff and got myself 3 millions PO but that was not even close to pay me a gear that could let me play through act 2 inferno :poly117:
Not to mention the legendary items are totally worthless, and even if they're going to be buffed in the next patch, you're most likely not be able to drop them yourself. I dropped 1 ultra crappy legendary and 2 poor set item but that's all. In 100 hours :poly122: !
Anyway, all you have to do is hunting for magic or rare items with +main stat, +vitality, +res and that's .. all ? This is maybe the worst item randomization I every saw in an ARPG.
I played billions of hours of diablo 2 and I loved the fact I could farm endlessly because I knew that I was going sometime soon to drop an ultra awesome rare item that was worth a very defined and stable cost and that, even if it was useless for my character, I could trade it for something worth equipping :poly142:
I also could farm any boss, including the weak one like Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, or even the Invoc to find keys, and still be able to drop very good items.
Andariel was surely not the one that could drop the most of stuff, but for example, she was the mob that has the most chance to drop soj, and that only single thing was worth killing her ! :poly124:
In Diablo 3 there is no point farming bosses because they don't drop any good stuff (The 3 legendary items I managed to drop were looted on random chests...). You're constantly aiming for stacking 5 nephalem valor and hunting for champ/rare mobs :poly118:
The characters and skills also disappointed me a bit in diablo 3
I mean the monk is very cool to play, I loved it. It's a shame it's the weakest class. You have a lot of crowd control, it has a very fast gameplay and you're constantly dodging stuff, teleporting somewhere and waiting for the low cooldown ninja style abilities to pop up to try to survive but, somehow, I expected more.
Your mostly spamming a non-innovative spell and dodging stuff by walking. Ever saw a witch doctor casting anything but zombie bears ? DH that weird shadow arrow ? I mean it's fine to spam a spell, you do that all the time in diablo 2 or torchlight, but I was expecting a diversity and skills that, when cast along with others, would bring deep gameplay mechanisms.
Anyway, why the hell would Blizzard restrict you to use only 6 skills ?! Why would they delete the skill tree ? I don't even see the point of doing a second monk, and every time I play with a monk I'm thinking, "hey he uses the same skills as me !". Since you don't choose your abilities and their strength, there is no point not choosing the best option. I was kinda excited by the rune system but it's mostly a joke. The first rune does holy damage, the second does fire damage and a chance to stunt and provides new visual effects, the third one does cold damage with a cool blue looking laser and it goes on with almost every skills and runes... That's all.. ? :shifty:
One word with the level of difficulty. I started using the gold AH when I reached mid hell. I could have keep going on without buying gear but I became bored when I realized that the difficulty is mostly built around the champs and rares mobs. The classic mobs are not that strong really, even in act 2 inferno, where I'm stuck, I own standard mobs. But when I face a champ pack, I have to quit. Seriously. No way to complete a quest just because of 3 champs. Somehow, even end act bosses are quite easy compared to most of rare/champ mobs.
About the art. It was sometime really really good and sometimes disappointing.
I mean most of the places were amazing. I was very disappointed by the whole act 3 though. And.. no hell ? That was bad...
When I first finished the game in normal mode, I took a look in the achievement list and saw that I missed a lot of stuff. Lot of rare PNJs, events and monsters. But then I found most of them, and I was like.. hum.. that's all ?
There is no excitement finding rare events or places, they just look the same. Only difference is that they are titled differently. :poly122:
Some events brings new assets, like temples and nice env props but not that much, really. They could have bring stuff to a whole different level. I imagined being able to find a very unique underground passage and fighting a very unique monster with unique gameplay mechanisms and look or something like that.. :poly121:
I don't know, not just only a monster with a different texture and name on it and being a bit bigger than the others...
That specific point quite surprised me too. I saw a lot of model being reused with only a different texture and it became quite boring. I really expected more diversity. Not to mention skeletons and zombies.. I mean ok it's great, they're part of the RPG history but can we please move onto something else and find some original monsters ? :poly127:
The environments were mostly fine, some of them were visually stunning ! Wow :poly142: ! But strangely I felt trapped in a very close world, like there's no pleasant open places to farm and kill mobs by dozens. Yeah, I think I was kinda surprised how the environment felt very "indoor" and closed.
One word about the cinematic. That is maybe the best aspect of the game. I literally cried (just a bit
Storytelling... I remember I was so excited when I first played diablo 2 by it's storytelling. Ok it was not that great, but honestly that was so dark and kinda cool. I was shacking and all when I first found tal rasha tomb and seriously the whole mephisto, diablo, baal thing was just awesome. In diablo 3 I find they tried to put to much stuff into it and I felt like flooded with quests, story and events. I also wondered how they would bring Diablo back to life but I was so disappointed when I found out. It's quite ridiculous, really. He just ressurect out of nowhere at the end of act 3 and that's all, just because one human bitch betrayed everyone after you killed azmodan, which was supposed to kill the evil for ever ? And, please.. you didn't have to do the little blacksoul stone thing falling from the sky when Diablo is dying, haha ! Expansion scenario anyone ? :poly140:
What else ? I played with a lot of nice guys but to me the community is somehow kinda bad. I fell like being trapped in a crappy MMORPG where guys things you need to be skilled to own diablo or something. I don't know...
Finally, I was depressed by how's diablo 2 end life turned out. It was torn apart by farming bots and item seller so I was naturally very angry and frustrated when I found that, like three weeks after it was release, diablo 3 was owned by bots too. That maybe was the killing thing and the point that made finally made me deleting the game. Sure I could still play solo, inside my own bubble, but diablo always have been a multiplayer game and what's the point farming when bots set the whole game economy and totally owns the AH ?
Not to mention the online DRM, no linux support (sucks to play through wine..), "social" gaming crappy thing, real money AH.
Also, I miss Matt Uelmen so much.
Don't miss understand me. I'm not crying child and all, it's just not what I expected. I begin to think that Blizzard has the worst development ever. One game like that doesn't take twelve year to develop
Diablo 3 is far from being a bad game but, yes, I'm very disappointed. It just not the game I expected. I had a bit of fun playing it though.
Thanks for reading
D3 is an awesome game. My only real problem with it is feeling very underpowered as a melee class. I guess they're fixing that, though. Removing extra monster damage per party member made a huge difference.
[ame="
I wrote a more complete criticism here : http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5837074457#1 It was kinda fun to examine the game in every aspect, and that way I could spent a few hours practising my english
Btw, did I play ever played with you ? I think I had you in my friend list or something.. I don't know, your nickname reminds me someone, maybe I'm wrong. And now I don't have diablo 3 anymore to check it
Don't think so, don't have many ppl on my list
And seriously, the complaint "AH IS SO INFLATED OMG I CANT AFFORD ACT 2 GEAR". No. That is false. If you are a barb, then you will have to spend the most, but every other class shouldn't have too much of a problem. If you make this claim, then I am going to assume you don't properly know how to use the AH. Over the course of this week, I helped my monk friend gear up. He hit 60 pretty recently, and as I mentioned before we got him up to about 400 resists with about 400k gold. Since then we spent about 3 million gold on his gear, and it was enough for Act 4. He is at 808 resist (using the passive "One with Everything"), 53k health, and 9k dps.
If you are trying to get the best gear in the game, then ya it's going to be expensive. But if you know how to search you can find some pretty great bargains. Just type in the stats you want, set a max buyout, then start looking from the lowest buyout and up. If it's too expensive for you, lower the stats a bit and search again.
add me. punish#1219 Im not in inferno yet, but maybe we can play eventually.
Also, playing my Barb a bit, I just killed the spider chick before azmodan, and she dropped a recipe for me! First one ive found! Its for the entire set of "Cain's Honor". A level 23 set. 4 pieces. 2 bonus = 2% attack speed, and 3 bonus is 10 MF. Its actually a pretty cool set, for that level.
I'm not quite sure what I'm farming for, now that inferno Diablo is dead and act 4 is relatively farmable. Could get better gear so I die less, but... duno, feels like I've "completed" the game
But if that crappy helm sold for £30 (well, it can't have been that crappy, but I don't remember getting something really awesome that was on par with my gear), that means that I could likely get more than £30 per item on my monk if I sold all my gears.
Witch Doctor on hardcore is pretty fun, got into some really panicky moments! The talent they've got that "revives" themselves means its pretty much impossible to perma-die from anything but a boss (since you can't escape)
Feels like bnet forums. how nice you already have the good gear... I think I spent 3-4 mill to get past belial w/ my barb. Now I've hit the act 3 wall.
Although you statement is partially correct. I've spent 600k on my DH to get too act three. But thats w/ tanks tolerating me getting 1 shot all the way.
I would need to see photo evidence if 3 mill can get you into act4. especially barb. I'm increasing sceptical of anything affordable, viable (stuff w/ low bids comes out now and then, but keeps surpassing one mill mark)
also I think I'm doing something wrong w/ my DH. 2000 Dex. 4 +15% attack speed items, 1000 dps bow, but only 42-45k dps? Is crit dmg/chance this missing piece?
@Rwolf, Barb will definitely be the hardest to gear, no question about it. The 3 million figure I threw out was for a monk already at 400 resist with a decent weapon. But, here are some examples of what we bought him. Paid 500k/ring, bought two of them. The stats were 40 dex, 70 vit, 30 arcane resist and 30-40 all resist (arcane resist was the other resist he was stacking). We got a helm with 100 vit, 40 arcane, 40 all resist for about 100k. I think those were the most expensive pieces as far as I can remember. For range clases, especially DH, just stack dps and then add survival as you can afford it.
42-45k dps for a DH is pretty good (assuming that is before sharpshooter). For passives you should be using sharpshooter, archery, and steady aim. If you are 45k dps BEFORE sharpshooter, you should be good to get through act 4. You will die a lot, but you can do it. Adding crit damage (through passives and on your gear) will make your dps go really high, but won't be a true representation of your dps.
SS at full buff is about 80k
Also heard about other scripts where as if you accept the trade before the buyer hasn't they will use a script to lower the cash amount to a minimum and accept the trade in an instant. Don't know if this one works. Really sounds like a HUGE mistake by Blizzard to not simply remove ones accept if the gold amount is changed.
Just wanted to warn you.
1.03 is live.
If this means barrels and stuff... That makes me a sad panda... That is one of the best parts of diablo. Finding amazing stuff in barrels.
Brace for butthurt.
Seems like a decent patch overall, and the health reduction on invulnerable uniques is a godsend.
I was a speedy barb...
edit:
Diablo III Patch 1.0.3 - v.1.0.3.10057
The latest client patch notes can be found here.
Hotfixes made in addition to changes in patch 1.0.2c can be found here.
Table of Contents
General
Battle.net
Classes
Items
Crafting
Followers
Bosses
Monsters
Bug Fixes
General
To prevent monsters from being unintentionally kited into town from other areas of the game, portals have been placed at both ends of the bridge from New Tristram to The Weeping Willow. Towns have always been intended to be a safe haven from combat, and this change will help keep the denizens of New Tristram safe from the dangers that lurk beyond its walls.
The real-money auction house is now available for Chilean, Argentinian, and Brazilian currencies
Battle.net
General
Friends will now sort alphabetically by name within the Friends List, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
The Quick Join menu will now also sort alphabetically by name, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
Chat settings and preferences will now be saved whenever you log out
Reporting another player using the Report > Spam option will now mute that player for the duration of your gaming session
Bug Fixes
Using the /who command in a heavily populated chat channel should no longer cause the client to crash
The "Invite to Party" button should no longer become grayed-out if a player:
Declines a party invite
Requests a party invite and then declines it
Accepts a party invite, but immediately then leaves the party
The character screen should now always display the display the correct act and quest information
If Real ID has been disabled for a Battle.net account, attempting to add a Real ID friend in Diablo III will now prompt the player with the following error message: "Battle.net is unable to add friends because you have Real ID disabled."
Classes
Barbarian
Active Skills
Ignore Pain
Skill Rune – Contempt for Weakness
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
Overpower
Skill Rune – Crushing Advance
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
The tooltip has been updated to represent that both melee and ranged damage are reflected
Weapon Throw
Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be slowed: "Hurl a throwing weapon at any enemy for 100% weapon damage and Slow the movement of the enemy by 60% for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Passive Skills
Relentless
Now reduces the Fury cost of all skill by 75%, down from 100% (the 50% damage reduction remains unchanged)
Demon Hunter
Active Skills
Cluster Arrow
Skill Rune - Dazzling Arrow
Tooltip now displays the correct type of weapon damage dealt by Dazzling Arrow: "Enemies hit by grenades have a 55% chance to be stunned for 2 seconds and changes the damage to Physical." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Grenades
Skill Rune - Stun Grenades
Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Hurl grenades that have a 25% chance to Stun enemies for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Bug Fixes
Caltrops
Skill Rune – Jagged Spikes
Effect will now only stack up to 10 times on a single target
Elemental Arrow
Skill Rune – Nether Tentacles
Tentacles will now only hit each target once
Monk
General
Monks can now use spears, two-handed weapons, and two-handed swords
Active Skills
Serenity
Skill Rune – Instant Karma
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
Seven-Sided Strike
Skill Rune - Sustained Attack
Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Reduces the cooldown of Seven-Sided Strike to 23 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Mantra of Retribution
Damage will now cap based on the maximum Life of the target
Bug Fixes
Near Death Experience
Fatal damage absorbed by Serenity will no longer trigger Near Death Experience
Witch Doctor
Active Skills
Summon Zombie Dogs
Skill Rune – Leeching Beasts
Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Your Zombie Dogs heal 50% of the damage they deal as Life divided evenly between themselves and you." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Wizard
Active Skills
Diamond Skill
Skill Rune – Mirror Skin
The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the amount of damage absorbed by Diamond Skin
Magic Weapon
When activated, a buff icon will now appear that displays the amount of time remaining
Meteor
Skill Rune - Star Pact
Now deals damage as Arcane instead of Fire
Passive Skills
Paralysis
Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Lightning damage dealt to enemies has up to a 8% chance to Stun the target for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Items
General
+ Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and armor have been reduced by 50%
This change does not apply to quivers
High-end items (items level 61-63) will now drop in all Acts of Inferno and Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty
The new approximate drop rates are as follows:
Hell - Act III and Act IV
iLvl 61: 9%
iLvl 62: 1.9%
iLvl 63: 0%
Inferno - Act I
iLvl 61: 17.7%
iLvl 62: 7.9%
iLvl 63: 2.0%
Inferno - Act II
iLvl 61: 18.6%
iLvl 62: 12.4%
iLvl 63: 4.1%
Inferno - Act III and Act IV
iLvl 61: 24.1%
iLvl 62: 16.1%
iLvl 63: 8.0%
Please see the Patch 1.0.3 Design Preview for more information and specific details
Repair costs have been increased for item levels between 53 and 63
Magic Find will no longer be considered when looting objects in the environment such as chests, barrels, vases, pots, and corpses
The item quality of all components needed to craft the Staff of Herding, as well as the Staff of Herding itself, have been changed from Common to Legendary (i.e. their item names will appear orange in color)
The Staff of Herding can no longer be salvaged or dropped
Crafted items that are dropped on the ground due to a player’s inventory being full can no longer be seen or picked up by other players
Unique monsters in Hell and Inferno difficulty are no longer guaranteed to drop two Magic items when slain
Weapon racks will no longer drop weapons 100% of the time
Destructible objects no longer have a chance to drop items, and will only have a small chance to drop gold when destroyed
Weapons and Armor
"Balanced" superior items (i.e. Balanced Short Sword) will now grant a percent attack speed increase that only affects the weapon itself, rather than a flat increase to attacks per second that affected both equipped weapons when dual-wielding
Crowd Control Reduction from items and skills will now reduce the percentage value of Slow, Chill, and Attack Speed debuffs rather than reducing how long the debuff lasts
For example: previously, if you were debuffed by a 60% slow that lasted for 2 seconds while wearing gear that provides 20% Crowd Control Reduction, your movement speed would be reduced by 60%, but only for 1.6 seconds. Now, the same amount of Crowd Control Reduction will reduce the Slow effect to 48%, but the effect will remain for the full 2 second duration.
Manticore now has one additional bonus affix
User Interface
Minimum damage and Maximum damage values will now display separately in an item's tooltip (i.e. "+2-4 Damage" will now display as "+2 Minimum Damage” and “+2 Maximum Damage")
Tooltips for items on the ground will now show comparison stats
Resist values will now be taken into effect when calculating the Protection comparison stat (the Protection value is an average protection estimate of all your resists)
When comparing a two-handed weapon against two currently-equipped one-handed weapons, the game will now simulate the removal of both one-handed weapons (instead of simply removing the main-hand weapon, which resulted in an inaccurate comparison)
When selling items to a vendor, the most recently sold items will now always display at the bottom of the Buyback tab
Bug Fixes
Items level 50 and above will now display their item level in the tooltip
Damage Over Time (DoT) skills will now properly benefit from items with the +Critical Chance affix
Legendary items with the +Attack Speed bonus will now correctly provide a bonus to attack speed
Please note that this fix will only affect new Legendary drops. Existing Legendary items will be addressed in future patch.
Players wearing +Life on Kill items should no longer receive a benefit from this affix when "killing" friendly monsters (e.g. when a witch doctor re-summons a Spider Queen while another Spider Queen is still active)
Fixed a bug with linking items with socketed gems in chat
Fixed a bug where vendors would occasionally not have any items for sale
Fixed a bug where selling more than 12 items to a vendor and then buying back 1 of those items could cause multiple items to disappear from the Buyback tab
Fixed a bug where swapping a 1-slot item (i.e. a ring) with 2-slot item (i.e. a weapon) in the second or third tab of a player’s stash would sometimes cause the 2-slot item to be filtered incorrectly to the first tab
Fixed a bug that was causing Collector's Edition dyes to sell for the same price regardless of stack size
Crafting
General
The gold and material crafting costs for all items level 1-59 have been reduced by 50% to 75%
Blacksmith
The gold cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50%
The number of Pages of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Blacksmithing, or Tomes of Secrets required to level the Blacksmith has been reduced
Base levels now require 1 page/tome, down from 5
Milestone levels now require 2 pages/tomes, down from 5
The number of Pages of Blacksmithing and Tomes of Blacksmithing required to craft items level 1-59 has been reduced
Items with 3 affixes no longer require Pages of Blacksmithing or Tomes of Blacksmithing to craft
The gold cost of crafting items with 4 affixes and 5 affixes (including items in Inferno difficulty) has been reduced
Weapon crafting costs have been reduced
The chance for level 60 items to produce Legendary crafting materials when salvaged has been reduced
Jeweler
The gold and material cost to combine gems ranks 2-8 has been reduced
Combinations for these ranks now only require 2 gems, down from 3
The gold cost to combine each rank of gems is now as follows:
Rank 2 - Flawed: 10 gold (down from 500 gold)
Rank 3 - Regular: 25 gold (down from 750 gold)
Rank 4 - Flawless: 40 gold (down from 1250 gold)
Rank 5 - Perfect: 55 gold (down from 2000 gold)
Rank 6 - Radiant: 70 gold (down from 3500 gold)
Rank 7 - Square: 85 gold (down from 7500 gold)
Rank 8 - Flawless Square: 100 gold (down from 20,000 gold)
Followers
General
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where the maximum Life of your followers was being displayed as different values in different parts of the game UI
Enchantress
Skills
Mass Control
Radius reduced from 15 yards to 8 yards
If Enchantress also has Reflect Missiles trained, Mass Control will no longer accidentally hex the player when both skills are activated
Skill will now correctly target enemies in all circumstances
Bosses
General
Bosses have had their pathing improved
The quality of the item for the fourth stack of Nephalem Valor from bosses has been slightly reduced
Skeleton King
Abilities
Will now summon Skeletal Archers in Hell and Inferno difficulties
The Warden (mini-boss)
General
Now has Fast and Molten affixes, in addition to Jailer
In Inferno difficulty, the Warden will also gain the Desecrator affix
Butcher
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the corner panel fires in the Chamber of Suffering were doing twice as much damage as intended
Ghom
Abilities
Gas Cloud
Radius of Gas Cloud has been slightly reduced
Slowing effect has been removed
The amount of damage dealt by Gas Cloud when first entering the cloud has been reduced, but the amount of damage incurred for remaining in the cloud has been increased
In Inferno difficulty, Gas Clouds will last longer, spawn 2 at a time, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more quickly
Maghda
Bug Fixes
Punish Dust projectiles can no longer be reflected
Zoltun Kulle
General
Zoltun Kulle will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes, using his Ceiling Collapse ability more often and for much higher damage
Abilities
Ceiling Collapse
Can now be cast at a player from any range
Fireball
Fireball attack now moves slower
Can now be cast at a player from any range
Teleport
Will now Teleport and run away from the player less often
Will now occasionally Teleport to the player
Belial
General
Belial will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes in his final phase, increasing the number of green pools dropped across the entire encounter platform
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug that was causing Belial to use his breath attack away from the player rather than towards the player under certain circumstances
Siegebreaker
General
Overall damage has been reduced
No longer vulnerable to Confuse and Charm effects
Will now drop a health globe every 25% health mark (i.e. at 75%, 50%, and 25% health)
Now enrages after 4 minutes
In Inferno difficulty, Siegebreaker will now gain the Reflects Damage affix
Cydaea
Abilities
Spiderlings
Spiderlings will now have an easier time hitting players, but their damage has been reduced by 20% to compensate
In Inferno difficulty, Spiderlings will now live longer, be more spread out, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more often
Rakanoth
General
In Inferno difficulty, Rakanoth will now become much more aggressive after 3 minutes
Izual
General
Health pool has been increased
The number of Oppressors that join the fight has been reduced from 4 to 2
Will no longer target Followers or Tyrael as frequently
Abilities
Base Attacks
Base attack damage has been lowered
No longer does Cold damage on top of base attacks
Charge
Charge damage has been reduced
Knockback has been removed
Will Charge slightly more often, but will only target players
Frozen Bombs
Frozen Bomb damage has been reduced
Bombs will now explode faster
Only 8 Bombs will now spawn around the player rather than 12
Bombs will spawn at Izual's feet less often
Frost Explosion
Frost Explosion damage has been reduced by 70%
Duration of freeze has been increased
Damage dealt to players while frozen will now break the effect
Players can now use defensive cooldown while frozen
Players can no longer avoid being frozen by doing high amounts of amount to Izual
Bug Fixes
Izual will no longer spawn twice if a player skips his introductory cut-scene
Diablo
Bug Fixes
Damage Over Time (DoT) effects will now be properly cancelled when Diablo becomes invisible and casts Shadow Clones in Phase Two
Diablo "Stomp" ability is now correctly classified as a debuff instead of a buff
Fixed a bug that was causing pets to not attack Shadow Clones
Monsters
General
Champions, Rares, and Uniques have had their pathing improved
Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality
Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced
Colossal Golgor base damage has been reduced
Herald of Pestilence tentacle attack damage has been reduced
Soul Ripper and Soul Lasher damage has been reduced and both monsters will now run away less often
Wasps in Act II, Mage Constructs in Act II, and Winged Mollocks in Acts III and IV will now run away less
Succubus monsters will now run away less and for a shorter distance
The health pools of Woodwraiths in the Highlands now match the health pools of Woodwraiths in the Fields of Misery
Lacuni and Scavenger Rares and and Champions will now un-burrow when called by their allies
Bloodclan Warriors no longer knockback when buffed and attack slightly slower
Morlu no longer have the Invulnerable Minions, Health Link, or Fire Chains affixes
Plagued, Arcane Enchanted, and Electrified monsters no longer have resistance to Poison, Arcane, and Lightning damage (respectively)
Leaders of Invulnerable Minions packs have had their health pools reduced
Mortar monsters can now hurl projectiles farther, but their minimum range has also been increased by 100%
Bug Fixes
Interrupting a monster attack before it lands will now properly trigger its cooldown
Treasure Goblins will now drop gold piles for all nearby players
Lacuni Warrior Rares and Champions will now reset their enrage timer correctly in Inferno difficulty
The Succubus "Blood Star" debuff will no longer affect the player if the damage from the projectile is dodged/blocked/etc
The damage from the Succubus “Blood Star” debuff will now scale based on the current cost of a player's skill, even if the cost is reduced by items or skill runes
Monsters with the Extra Health affix should no longer gain more health every time players leave and join the game
Monsters with the Reflects Damage affix will no longer reflect Follower damage back to the player
Monsters with the Health Link and Knockback affixes will no longer knockback friendly monsters
Fixed a bug that was causing Champion Wallers to occasionally create walls at their location rather than the player's location
Fixed a bug where Sandwasp projectiles could sometimes become invisible
Bug Fixes
General
The experience bar for characters at level cap on a Guest Pass account will now display 0/0 experience. If the account holder upgrades to the full game, their characters will be at 0/41000 experience towards the next level.
The speed of the animation that plays when resurrecting another players should no longer scale with your attack speed
Attempting to cast a skill while spamming the Town Portal hot key will now correctly interrupt the Town Portal cast and animation
Players who use Town Portal while in a tar pit will no longer keep the tar pit debuff after being teleported
It is no longer possible for players in Hell difficulty to skip to Inferno difficulty by creating and leaving Public Games
It is no longer possible to prevent character death in a single-player game by pausing the game in one game client and then logging into the same account from a different game client
Fixed a bug where The Lyceum in the Southern Highlands was not appearing
Fixed a bug where players could switch their offerings in the Trade window right before clicking "Accept" and, due to high latency, the game would not always be able to verify that both players were accepting the same offerings
Fixed a bug that was allowing players to temporarily pick up items that belonged to another account
Fixed a bug that was causing players to become stuck when using a banner to port to another player that was in an "un-walkable" location (i.e. to a barbarian in the middle of performing Leap)
Fixed a position desync bug (aka "rubberbanding") that could happen when some movement skills (Strafe, Whirlwind, Tempest Rush) ended because the player ran out of the appropriate resource
Fixed several issues where a player's character would get stuck or "rubberband" while moving if their movement speed was slowed in any way
Several performance improvements have been made to both the PC and Mac client
Auction House
Item tooltips in the auction house will now correctly reflect stat bonuses provided by socketed gems
Items with class-specific affixes should now display the class restriction properly
It should no longer be possible for players to purchase a stack of items so large that it cannot be sent to their stash
The data displayed in each auction house tab should now properly reset when logging out
Since EU don't seem to have gotten the patch yet, could someone test how further they can cast? Does this mean it's not possible to be at X distance to avoid them firing mortars at you as a DH?
Also how much easier is it to tank?
Joy.... If getting one shot off screen, and broken hit boxes weren't enough for my DH...
my DH lost 12k dps from the nerf... down from my briefly acquired 50k.... (about 60% as)
I'm just gonna say it, this games a train wreck. A diablo game needs to do 1 thing above all else, make it enjoyable to grind for loot, that's it. That needs to be priority #1 and it feels like they're just now figuring that part out after years and years of development.
The fundamental problem with their developement process:
They're tuning things to be balanced before making it interesting. They're layering more and more systems on top of each other and with every patch they are making this game harder and harder to have any sort of fun or longevity because things are built around the current state of the game (which is inherently bland). There are far larger issues looming over the game than item farming exploits.
It's like the titanic is sinking and instead of fixing the boat they're wiping the windows, as if no one with any overall design sense has any ownership of the game and everyone is just standing on the side powerless watching it sink, "yep, i figured this game was going to suck if we balanced it to make money". I'm sure they've raked in a bit of money with the auction house, but is it worth it? How much is the reputation of a company like blizzard worth?
Sorta feels like the death of superman. That comic sold millions of comics, also marked DC selling out and killing the franchise.
So, out of curiosity, where are you in the game right now? Most of these changes to monsters apply only to inferno. I don't think the changes make the game "flavorless" , unless you enjoyed dying a lot.
A little melodramatic don't you think? First, your main point seems to be that the AH and RMAH have ruined the game, and it was a decision made out of greed. Blizzard has stated multiple times that the AH and RMAH were primarily design choices, not financial. Whether you believe them or not is up to you, but that is the only information we have on the subject, everything else is conjecture. Second, it's clear you are not enjoying the game, so with that kind of outlook it's not surprising that you feel this way about the patch. From my perspective, this patch contains many changes that are quite radical. The biggest change in my opinion is a combination of the monster nerf, boss buff, and repair bill increase. Those three changes have MASSIVE implications for the game, especially hardcore.
Also, do you have any suggestions of what could be done better?
This kind of stuff is adorable
Anyways, on a more positive note, I'm pretty happy with the patch, despite DH's no longer being OP. Nether tentacles was "fixed" or whatever, and IAS has been thoroughly nerfed. I had been preparing for it though, and bought a bunch of high dex, vit, all resist gear. Act 2 goblin farming seems better than ever with the gobs now dropping ilevel 63 once in a while.
I'll try to be less melodramatic. I'm in act 3 inferno. I'm finding that i can tank the game absolutely no problem and if i found the right DPS to suppliment me I'd have no problem at all advancing. But I just have no urge to. The biggest issue with the game i'd have to say is a lack of dynamic progression which stems from 3 core faults:
1 lack of talents
2 item diversity.
3 absolute linear difficulty progression
Each one of these issues exacerbates the problem exponentially, creating a stale game in the end. It doesn't feel quite like you're playing a diablo game with a slot machine where at any moment a unique item will drop that will let you tear through the next 4 acts like a champ. Or compel you to instantly reroll a new character to try out a new item you just found with a build that's perfect for it. It feels like you're playing against a spreadsheet where you need X more vitality and Y more resist all to make it to the next act. Worst of all the best way to get those stats are by trading on the auction house. There is a massive database integrated into the game to show you just how unspectacular your items are. Before you reach a point in the game where you need to use the auction house to progress, it's actually sorta fun to find these items, but that quickly changes.
Because "trash" mobs are now largely trivialized because the core drops are on elites, it's not satisfying to mow through large waves of enemies. And because difficulty is tuned for elites to be the gatekeepers, large droves of enemies don't really feel as though they've been balanced to offer a challege, there's just filler, nothing more, something there to die on the way to get to the important monsters.
How would i make the game better? I would gut all this overbalancing nonesense. Balance the game organically. Throw in cool stuff, make rare unique packs that are easy to kill, maybe rare ones that even give 5 nephalim right off the bat. Put in items that greatly augment skills, a sword that reduces the cooldown on leap to 2 seconds, crazy awesome stuff like that.
To offset the rediculous farming players would be able to achieve with said changes i would adopt a new itemization model. The more unique and rare loot a player recieves, the less odds they'd have of getting more. The average player wouldn't notice a difference, in fact it could be tuned to give casual players an even better shot at getting loot since they don't have much time to play. As an added bonus this system would encourage farmers to buy more copies of the game so they could farm more rare items once they tapped out their drop rates on one account.
Just my 2 cents though, everyone seems to know how they'd make the perfect game
Quick edit: I do think the patch made the game better, it is more enjoyable to a wider range of players, I just feel it's not opening up channels to truly make this game engaging for months to come at a level of fun that a blizzard title generally exhibits.
Patch made my barb doable in Act III, but still dies due to Champions/Elites. Since it's dooable, and your past the point of no return your priced in, much like a poker game.
at the point I can't progress without farming lower levels. I only got 2 mill (thats dwindling quickly) and I need a few mill to get some better gear for Act III.
I can farm w/ my demon hunter in the actIII tower sniping spot, but that's infeasible either now. Since I hardly get any good items for ah out of 5-10 runs. The farming spot that requires you to die = lost profit due to repairs.
Yet to try act II, But if the risk/reward is now feasible, that's the only thing positive I would hafta say about this patch.
I rather die lots and not progress and pay a tiny repair bill, rather than tote around with a carrot on a stick going broke along the way.
Compound that with drastically increased repair costs and the fact that I'm running a barb means I'll likely make very little gold on runs. I will die often enough to rare/champs, as I've yet to find a reasonable way of dealing with certain affix combos.
Still at work, so won't be able to test till tonight, but I think I may have to go back to act one and face-roll it endlessly if I hope to farm enough gold for upgrades.
It's fun as hell and even the people complaining about it have dumped dozens of hours into it that they enjoyed, and most people's gripes tend to be focused around the fact that it isn't capable of literally infinite entertainment, and does not obsolete all other games in some twisted concept of "Good."
Just to play devil´s advocate, let´s assume that Blizzard did put the RMAH in to generate extra money. Do you really think they would ever announce that or admit it publicly?
The longevity of the game is definitely a concern, but I think PvP will probably add a lot in that department. There are also achievements and hardcore mode though, which are pretty massive time sinks. Hopefully they will also add some more content before the next expansion, like another act or a new area.
what good is pvp when the guy with the most money will always have the upper hand?
I have absolutely no desire to PvP in the game. It's bad enough that skill is rarely ever required in the PvE game. I'm okay with it, as I don't mind the gear grind.
Better gear = win in PvE, and I really don't see how that's going to change in PvP.
I do not think they would explicitly state that it was for profit. I also don't think they would ask their employees to straight up lie about it, and say it was a design decision. If it was a financial thing, I think they would just avoid the subject.
My personal opinion/theory is that it truly did originate from the designers, and obviously none of the execs were going to discourage it. If it was purely financial, and they ARE lying, then that is unfortunate, but I will need some proof or first hand knowledge or something before I bring out the pitchfork and torch.
Something I think a lot of people who are really against RMAH fail to realize is that the 3rd party market for gold and items is extremely, extremely destructive. In World of Warcraft, one of the ways for a lot of gold sellers to obtain the gold is by stealing accounts, and cleaning them out. Also, these sites also straight up scam people, by just blatantly taking their money.
It's also legitimately making the game more enjoyable for a lot of people. It's just a matter of time/money. Some people really want to play the game, but don't have hours and hours to farm. They can spend $100 or w/e and keep progressing through the game, and it's fun for them. Right now, I have time to play, therefore gold is more valuable to me. I've found a few items that I'm sure I could have sold for $10 or whatever, but I just want to get more items, so the RMAH isn't really a factor to me. If some guy on my friends list wants to spend $1000 on a full set of best in slot gear to beat Diablo, w/e. If it's making him happy then go for it.
Long-winded answer to a simple question, but you totally baited me haha.
I just assume that it will add some replay to the game because it's Blizzard and they will keep improving it until it is fun. But if day one pvp is a circus I wouldn't be surprised at all.
A big part of it for me is being able to progress through the game and get awesome gear with my friends. I've raided in WoW a lot, and if you've ever done it you probably know what I mean. With WoW raiding, if you want to do all the endgame bosses and get the best loot, you HAD to do it with at least a 10 man raid (which used to be at least 25 or 40 people before the most recent expansion). This meant playing at scheduled times (usually 2-3 nights/week for about 2-4 hours/night), putting up with people you didn't like, being held back when people weren't showing up or sucking, etc. In Diablo I am literally able to progress as fast as I like, and it doesn't matter as much who is around. I can go solo, I can play with my gf, we can add another friend or two, it's all good. No matter what we can play together and usually have a pretty good time.
The drop in and out online is also amazing. You meet another WoW player in real life, there is like, almost NO chance you will play together. To play together in WoW, you would need to be on the same server, same faction, and then roughly the same level or gear to be doing anything relevant. In Diablo, all you really need is to own the game, and you can play together. I think that's a hugely underrated feature.
Game enjoyment = Decreasing...
Zac, at least we didn't try Azmoddan post patch lol, we be broke the amount of times we died.