that's fucking awesome. I have an MF set for Act 1 Inferno that is ~180 MF, and a full set of 280 mf for the lesser difficulties. Being able to pair some of that down, while also making my character stronger in the process is fucking awesome. An extra 100 levels of stats too?! Inferno will no longer be a brick wall.
Great update! can't wait, they just need to release it now!
and will the game be less boring to play, the same dungeons over and over and over? i doubt it. there is literally not a carrot on the planet that could lead me through that to paragon 1 let alone paragon 100.
where are the randomized dungeons that made replaying diablo 2 so fun? why isn't development being focused in a direction that would mean they don't even NEED a carrot for players to follow? instead they're on a track where they have to make the carrot bigger every update... for a company like blizzard, this really makes no sense.
Oh man, Jay Wilson did it again. Maybe this time Blizzard might actually have the balls to fire the man before he brings the entire company down with him. Funny he calls David Brevik a loser when he created the Diablo franchise, seems like Jay don't even know who he is.
IncGamers: You are very well known in the world of ARPGs, and I am going to ask you, Diablo 3 is probably the most anticipated PC title in 10 years. Whats your opinion on the final product?
David Brevik: Honestly, I think that they did a lot of the things the best they could, it was a very different game than I would have created, the team and personalities, the people, the talent and all the design philosophies of the people that worked on it in Irvine, we called them Blizzard South, those people have their own style and the their own way they like to design. It was very, very different from the Blizzard North.
So I think that when Blizzard South took over the development of Diablo 3 it was inevitable that they were going to create an experience that was in the Diablo theme but concentrated more towards the things that they liked to experience. Including more story and things like that.
When Blizzard North shut down they lost a ton of experience with why the Action RPG works and what about it works. Thats really difficult to recover from. They didnt have the experience of people that knew it well. This is why you do things with random levels for example, and so when you lose that experience you are going to create a very different experience in the end than we would have created.
IncGamers: As you created Diablo, how do you feel about it? Do you feel a little let down that the legacy has kind of been mashed up?
David Brevik: I have very mixed emotions about it (laughs). On one hand I am sad that people havent enjoyed Diablo because its a love, a passion, and its obvious people still have a giant love and passion for Diablo and they are speaking out about it because they have such love for it. That makes me feel great. I am sad because people are outraged and, you know, some of the decision they have made are not the decisions I would make and there have been changes in philosophy and that hasnt gone over very well. I think in that way I am a little sad. I am also a little happy, which I hate to say, it shows that the people that were involved in Diablo really did matter, and so I am happy that it has come to light that how talented that group was and how unique and special that group was. I am hoping that, as this happens very often in the industry, you see it with Call of Duty and things like that , when the people leave the game changes and it shows how critical people are in this industry.
Why don't this forum support the [hide] tag? Seriously.
I wish he had gone into more details. I played D2, but only single-player to finish the story mode. So I don't know what kept people playing for as long as some people did. But what are the differences between D2 and D3 that made D2's post-story gameplay that much better? Is it just a lack of AH?
Lack of AH is a big part of it. Gear is another part like he mentioned. Random dungeons is another. Boss farming was easier, cause you didnt have to travel very far to them. leveling to lvl 99 is another.
1.04 is going to be a huuuuuge change to the game. To a point where it was what the game should have been on release. Way more people would have been happy with it. But now, I doubt it will bring many people back, just because so many people are so bloody bitter and just done with the game.
There's a lot to it Bigjohn, some of it is fairly subtle. There's been some really good articles I've seen written on it, but I can't find them off-hand.
To my mind it has to do with a number of things. And it's not so much about the auction house, but the decisions that were made that seem to be geared towards driving users towards the auction house.
For instance - in Diablo 2 there was a really good challange/reward/feedback structure that saw the game get increasingly challenging until a player gained either a new item (through loot drops) or upgraded their character (leveling up). This meant that you'd have spikes in difficulty, followed by one of these events that would then lower the difficulty as a reward for success. This resulted in the player feeling rewarded for their hard work and getting a sense of accomplishment. This cycle is repeated throughout the game.
In Diablo III a lot of the elements that drove this loop have been hijacked to instead drive players towards the auction house. So for instance, it is seemingly very unlikely to find an item in Diablo 3 that will match your character's current power. This means that in order to get that difficulty spike to drop by getting new items like in D2, you have to instead go into the auction house, spend some gold, and buy an item. This removes the nice reward and sense of accomplishment from the actual gameplay, so instead of a solid challenge and reward loop you instead have these sort of awkward challenge humps followed by someone removing themselves from gameplay to go and buy an item outside of the game.
Anyways, there's more to it than that. That's just what I noticed during my play (about half through nightmare before I quit).
Its sad that the AH's intent was noble, yet it backfired. D2 didn't have an in-game AH, however there was ebay, and many other 3rd party sites opening people up to countless scams, hacks, etc. Having an in-game AH was brilliant i thought, since WoW's AH is so awesome, but it doesn't seem like a lot of that knowledge was shared or made it in to Diablo 3.
Its mentioned in an article too that D3 seems to be about grinding gold (resources) and not items, which can be very flat and boring. I don't find myself doing this, I'm still hunting for items, but its a little like winning the lottery. I wear MF gear and hope I get lucky to find some random thing I probably don't want.
I don't love absolutely everything about Diablo 3 (not a fan of the Blacksmith, not being about to find cool patterns for the blacksmith - lvl 25 sets, etc, insta-kill packs), it is a great game and does not deserve the amount of poison that people (fanboys and developers alike) are spewing at it.
this new patch seems great, and hope the fellow polycounters are hard at work making some new content want moreee!!!
I think Diablo 3 is a fun game, maybe not as addictive as D2. However I have changed as a gamer over the years so its hard to tell sometimes. I really hope they make changes to the itemization in the game. I have not found one single set or legendary item in the game. It makes me sad, because that was one of the greatest things about D2. You could collect these sets.
Oh man, Jay Wilson did it again. Maybe this time Blizzard might actually have the balls to fire the man before he brings the entire company down with him. Funny he calls David Brevik a loser when he created the Diablo franchise, seems like Jay don't even know who he is.
it's not just Jay, from the looks of it it's half the upper management at "Blizzard South".
Playing Diablo III needs to be a rewarding experience. The new legendaries are a big step in the right direction, as are tweaks to item drop rates. But I'm not convinced that we've gone far enough. If you don't have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner -- and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives -- then we haven't done our jobs right. Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we'll continue to address it.
Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.
Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.
The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.
While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?
We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it's the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we'll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you'll continue to help us do just that.
Saying that, I'd like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave's comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we're doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and for that I can't thank you enough.
I wonder what will happen with Jay after this embarrassing outburst. Also.. it seems like they are really trying to fix D3. We'll see how this wraps up i guess. I know a lot of people have stopped playing and will not bother reinstalling the game again. Shame.
The new paragon system is not that great, and i think it was created to avoid people from leaving the game... and the new legendaries.. err, it's impossible to get them if you don't play 24/7!. The AH is totally broken, and it's impossible to buy decent gear to lvl up well/stay in averno... and more lvl up the new paragon system. This is worst than a korean grinder, for sick people!
The solution for the AH is simple, not more than 5 euro for the RMAH, and 1 million as max price for all the items.
Diablo 3 sold a lot of copies due to Diablo 2, and that's a huge FACT. All the fans were expecting a better game (me included), but at the end it has been a total fiasco. All my friends killed diablo in normal mode, and "bye bye diablo 3, this is not a true successor for diablo 2".
I've returned to see the changes of 1.04, but i think i won't last much time, i have better games to play with.
And watching the new legendaries... i can see huge issues for the upcoming pvp (that should have been included since the first day, a shame). Another shame is that being a pc game... it should support surround sound, 5.1, 7.1... it's pathetic.
Take out the AH, reset everybody, make the skills a tree system again with an expensive reset cost, and implement PvP. Then I'll play Diablo 3 again. Otherwise I could give two shits.
I played through to act 2 inferno so yeah I have experienced what it is now and there's a reason why it is currently uninstalled on my machine.
I guess people don't think the big step in the right direction is working out.
I still have no interest in the game from comments. Once they start pvp i might look into it. But i don't think you get enough drops to make it worthwhile. In darksiders 2 you get good drops every other fight. That makes me happy, as i see my character develop and get better. This is not the case in D3, unless i spend lots of munni at th AH which i detest. Whats the point of playing when you can get that gear you are trying to get playing.
You know... i didn't think about it in that way. But its very true... i guess i won't be going back to it... i'll prbly wait to see what peoples reactions are.
So I gave the paragon system a chance, figured I would see how long it would take to actually get a level. Having people grind for 100 levels, surely they first 25~ levels would go quite quickly to encourage people to keep grinding. You know, give them a bite of the cake.
I did a Act 1 NV run seeing as it's the safest and fastest run for me. I can keep the dying to a minimum and get some gold (150k a round). I bought some new gear to update my char and I ended up having around 72-74k DPS. It took me roughly 30-40 minutes to complete the run and I ended up getting 53.5% XP. This is ABSURD, not counting that each level will probably require more XP it's gonna take you a minimum of 100 hours to get to paragon level 100.
Will the paragon system be the savior of Diablo 3? It will probably spike the user base for a while, but that's it. I'm pretty sure that most people will just try it and see a new thing they have to grind besides gear. Yes it is just a side bonus, but people wont view it as that. They will view it as something they have to grind too to be capable of grinding for items.
The only ones that really gets benefited from this is botters and the true hardcore grinders. But as I said, they should have allowed the players to taste the cake, make the first 25 levels take 2-5 hours and then spike the experience needed from 75-100. This will mean that pretty much everyone can enjoy at least 25 levels of paragon, the true grinders will still be unique in that they are probably the only ones having the higher levels of paragon.
Ive regressed to trolling this game. My barb build allows me to run ahead in act 4 inferno and drag several elite packs into the rest of my team. Very amusing if they have stacks already and start raging.
Ive regressed to trolling this game. My barb build allows me to run ahead in act 4 inferno and drag several elite packs into the rest of my team. Very amusing if they have stacks already and start raging.
Ive regressed to trolling this game. My barb build allows me to run ahead in act 4 inferno and drag several elite packs into the rest of my team. Very amusing if they have stacks already and start raging.
Can that barb even die?! I had so much resist and health regen on my monk I could just sit in front of elites and act one and not go below 3/4th health, with only a few health regen items.
it can, in act 4 inferno if there are more than 1 eliete pack. when Im not trolling I support tank, and improve surviveability for the whole team, all abilitys are team support, I heal with life per hit.
I tried playing a bit last night, just to see how it feels now after the patch. The gameplay itself definitely feels better. But the fun/addictiveness still isn't there. I still know that 99% chance that during my play session I won't see any significant upgrade drop. It's all about collecting yellows to sell on the AH so I can buy upgrades from the AH.
Which seems to have gotten worse. When I played last, it was just the regular AH. Now it seems hard to find actual upgrades on it for a reasonable price. The decent upgrades I used to find there, are now all on the dollar-AH, which I refuse to use.
Figured I'd stop beating around the bush with the AH and try to embrace it. Realized the game is about shopping, not about killing demons, and have been working that angle to have some fun. Working on an app to calculate prices for myself based on value of stats, level, ilvl, and quality for fun
I've started selling items on the RMAH, making a couple bucks here & there, which has added up to be quite a bit. Buying gold is cheap, 1 mil for about 1.27-1.50 usd, which you can make pretty easily off selling a few items for .25 - .50. Priced that low (if you calculate the 15% fee for your b/o), things sell pretty quick. I've tried keeping both gold and RMAH AH lists full, and have been making a steady stream of income.
I got lucky and sold a ring for 20 mil, which let me buy some lower level blacksmith set pieces. Those sell for 30-40k gold, but have been able to sell a few for .50-1.80 usd. When converting that $ to gold, its essentially made the items id sell for 30k worth 400k - 1mil gold with the $ to gold conversion. Every $10 usd i make, (so far has been about every day) I convert it to gold for either new BS plans or upgrades.
I don't care much about undercutting people, or people buying my items and marking them up (that ring i got 20 mil for was put back up for 30 mil & sold in a day), I'm just pricing things competitively and not crazy inflated so I can keep a steady stream of items selling. That ring was priced at about 70-250mil (ugh) from others. I try to price in the lower-middle range of an item's stat ranges, and sell very quickly. Takes some time to price items due to the not-so-awesome UI, but its worth it to be garunteed a sale.
I'm still having fun, i'll do some MF farming in Act 1 (cemetery, woods, butcher) and get a decent amount of XP, but leveling is much easier doing Act 3 with a group. I'll go back and do Normal & Nightmare Act 3 Siegebreaker - Azmodan runs, and usually get 2-3 legendaries worth 50-250k gold. I'm only 60(5) currently, but even with that, I have 305% w/ follower, and get showered with items to break down into mats. In a given run, i'll get 1 or 2 items at best that are worth selling, the rest go to funding the Blacksmith
Anyone still playing? my buddy got me back into it last week. havent played in a long time. like pre 1.03. but im really liking it again. He got me up to 60 with the new monster power system, which is awesome. Im paragon 12 now. Doing alkezier runs now, finally able to do them. hit 57k dmg this morning. If i get rid of some mf, i could hit 70, i think. with my wiz. MF is definitely not broken. You cant expect to find legendaries every run you do. I found a set ring last night. Found a good lengedary hat the other day that im actually wearing. Good roll on it. The legendarys are actually good now. You still need a good roll, but still. The loot is much better. The monster power system makes it much better. and the inferno machines are a good addition. though, i ahvent got one yet. but its something to work towards.
I'm one of the few of my friends to still play it. The game has gotten much more playable in Inferno after the patch and I was able to beat it with my demon hunter. I'm starting to get more into hardcore runs now.. first one lasted till act 1 nightmare
I'm one of the few of my friends to still play it. The game has gotten much more playable in Inferno after the patch and I was able to beat it with my demon hunter. I'm starting to get more into hardcore runs now.. first one lasted till act 1 nightmare
keep going! I got to act 4 hell on my monk before peetering out & getting bored, but was still some very memorable gameplay play again!
I need to try this shit out again, miss this game some
Im currently working through my softcore character. trying to get to plvl100, but I definitely want to play hardcore. especially in a group! but my friends have no interest in it
Went back last night and played some, i forgot how chunky and crunchy the game feels! Missed it I breezed through inferno act 4, and killed Diablo w/o ease, and he dropped a awesome 300 damage, ilvl 63 fist weapon -_-
Tried some MP adjusting, was having an ok time, but over compensated a little. MP6 was pretty hard with my current gear
will probably get the hardcore monk to 60 and wait for more new content, feels like too much of a game of ultra-craps to get good items.
Speaking of items, I was browsing the acution house. First page results with no filters for 1 handed weapons ranged from starting bids of 18M gold to 2B! Bit out of my price range. Kind of strange as I found items slightly lower in stats for a few thousand gold.
haha, nope, it is pretty terrible for the end of the game. In Inferno, its useless - and for the final boss of inferno, seems like a bug for an item have a damage range to drop that is that low ( ~ 7 acts prior stats).
I thought i remember reading that they stopped the items < ilvl 60 dropping in Inferno, but something is still fundamentally flawed with the weapon damage rolls. My mainhand is 1300ish, that i had to buy of the AH, and it was super easy at MP0. I'm not super geared, but can survive a lot, and have a nice full MF high dps set for lower act farming, and the game is still fun
Monks at 60 are so much fun, lots of options. Think i've used just about every skill in some build, but the ones im using now are the most fun for me.
Etotheric - i saw some 200 billion weapon yesterday, was an ilvl 63 weapon with similar stats to my current one, with a req level -18 property. Some lvl 42 person would destroy! Those kind of items are really cool, but there is no equivalent at lvl 60
The game still has the inherent problem of low replay value after Inferno. I went back after they nerfed Inferno and I was able to beat it last night. Quit playing right after that... no real reason to keep playing.
Monster Power and Paragon Level just don't do it for me. The game is way way way too linear to be fun for replay.
Besides pvp, what does d3 have that d2 didnt? D2, when released, was also very linear. Yes, the maps were more randomized, but the major improvements of that game came later on. The game everyone knows, loves and remembers, was not the game that was released.
I didn't start playing until Lord of Destruction came out, so they may have fixed a lot of things by then.
Randomization in levels is actually pretty important for replay. What makes D3 painfully more linear is the constant bombardment of dialogue, checkpoints, and back tracking to town for quests.
I want to just go out into the wilderness and kill shit for eternity. D2 was much closer to that than D3. I specificially remember that I wasn't having fun with the game until I finally reached Act 3 in D3. A1 and A2 were soooooo boring. Hardly any monsters. In D2 you encountered massive groups of enemies as soon as you hit the 2nd map in the first act.
Though D3 is pretty, I really do feel they lost a lot when they converted it from the gritty gothic style to the "Blizzard" style. One thing that really drew me in to D2 was the "realism" for it's time. Felt like it was more of an action horror game to some extent. The gritty gothic theme felt way more angel & demon than what it is now... feels more like cartoon fantasy than a visceral Heaven and Hell.
I agree with the structure of D3, it feels like they forced a lot of into set pieces due to story, which is something I don't really like. But so far, I am enjoying the combat a lot more than D2 and Torchlight 2.
Tried hardcore more during thanksgiving, I didn't make it far with the barbarian or voodoo chieftain.. will keep trying with the monk though. I do like the paragon stuff and the stacking magic find bonus when finishing champ / elite packs though - so I'll probably keep going with my main DH character every now and then
Replies
Great update! can't wait, they just need to release it now!
where are the randomized dungeons that made replaying diablo 2 so fun? why isn't development being focused in a direction that would mean they don't even NEED a carrot for players to follow? instead they're on a track where they have to make the carrot bigger every update... for a company like blizzard, this really makes no sense.
Oh man, Jay Wilson did it again. Maybe this time Blizzard might actually have the balls to fire the man before he brings the entire company down with him. Funny he calls David Brevik a loser when he created the Diablo franchise, seems like Jay don't even know who he is.
IncGamers: You are very well known in the world of ARPGs, and I am going to ask you, Diablo 3 is probably the most anticipated PC title in 10 years. Whats your opinion on the final product?
David Brevik: Honestly, I think that they did a lot of the things the best they could, it was a very different game than I would have created, the team and personalities, the people, the talent and all the design philosophies of the people that worked on it in Irvine, we called them Blizzard South, those people have their own style and the their own way they like to design. It was very, very different from the Blizzard North.
So I think that when Blizzard South took over the development of Diablo 3 it was inevitable that they were going to create an experience that was in the Diablo theme but concentrated more towards the things that they liked to experience. Including more story and things like that.
When Blizzard North shut down they lost a ton of experience with why the Action RPG works and what about it works. Thats really difficult to recover from. They didnt have the experience of people that knew it well. This is why you do things with random levels for example, and so when you lose that experience you are going to create a very different experience in the end than we would have created.
IncGamers: As you created Diablo, how do you feel about it? Do you feel a little let down that the legacy has kind of been mashed up?
David Brevik: I have very mixed emotions about it (laughs). On one hand I am sad that people havent enjoyed Diablo because its a love, a passion, and its obvious people still have a giant love and passion for Diablo and they are speaking out about it because they have such love for it. That makes me feel great.
I am sad because people are outraged and, you know, some of the decision they have made are not the decisions I would make and there have been changes in philosophy and that hasnt gone over very well. I think in that way I am a little sad.
I am also a little happy, which I hate to say, it shows that the people that were involved in Diablo really did matter, and so I am happy that it has come to light that how talented that group was and how unique and special that group was. I am hoping that, as this happens very often in the industry, you see it with Call of Duty and things like that , when the people leave the game changes and it shows how critical people are in this industry.
Why don't this forum support the [hide] tag? Seriously.
video. http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/interview-diablo-creator-david-brevik-discusses-his-feelings-on-diablo-3
some Blizzard peeps take offense. http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-3-developers-react-angrily-to-dave-brevik-interview
1.04 is going to be a huuuuuge change to the game. To a point where it was what the game should have been on release. Way more people would have been happy with it. But now, I doubt it will bring many people back, just because so many people are so bloody bitter and just done with the game.
To my mind it has to do with a number of things. And it's not so much about the auction house, but the decisions that were made that seem to be geared towards driving users towards the auction house.
For instance - in Diablo 2 there was a really good challange/reward/feedback structure that saw the game get increasingly challenging until a player gained either a new item (through loot drops) or upgraded their character (leveling up). This meant that you'd have spikes in difficulty, followed by one of these events that would then lower the difficulty as a reward for success. This resulted in the player feeling rewarded for their hard work and getting a sense of accomplishment. This cycle is repeated throughout the game.
In Diablo III a lot of the elements that drove this loop have been hijacked to instead drive players towards the auction house. So for instance, it is seemingly very unlikely to find an item in Diablo 3 that will match your character's current power. This means that in order to get that difficulty spike to drop by getting new items like in D2, you have to instead go into the auction house, spend some gold, and buy an item. This removes the nice reward and sense of accomplishment from the actual gameplay, so instead of a solid challenge and reward loop you instead have these sort of awkward challenge humps followed by someone removing themselves from gameplay to go and buy an item outside of the game.
Anyways, there's more to it than that. That's just what I noticed during my play (about half through nightmare before I quit).
Its mentioned in an article too that D3 seems to be about grinding gold (resources) and not items, which can be very flat and boring. I don't find myself doing this, I'm still hunting for items, but its a little like winning the lottery. I wear MF gear and hope I get lucky to find some random thing I probably don't want.
I don't love absolutely everything about Diablo 3 (not a fan of the Blacksmith, not being about to find cool patterns for the blacksmith - lvl 25 sets, etc, insta-kill packs), it is a great game and does not deserve the amount of poison that people (fanboys and developers alike) are spewing at it.
this new patch seems great, and hope the fellow polycounters are hard at work making some new content
I think Diablo 3 is a fun game, maybe not as addictive as D2. However I have changed as a gamer over the years so its hard to tell sometimes. I really hope they make changes to the itemization in the game. I have not found one single set or legendary item in the game. It makes me sad, because that was one of the greatest things about D2. You could collect these sets.
it's not just Jay, from the looks of it it's half the upper management at "Blizzard South".
Playing Diablo III needs to be a rewarding experience. The new legendaries are a big step in the right direction, as are tweaks to item drop rates. But I'm not convinced that we've gone far enough. If you don't have that great feeling of a good drop being right around the corner -- and the burst of excitement when it finally arrives -- then we haven't done our jobs right. Out of our concern to make sure that Diablo III would have longevity, we were overly cautious about how we handled item drops and affixes. If 1.0.4 hasn’t fixed that, you can be sure we'll continue to address it.
Part of the problem, however, is not just item drops, but the variety of things to do within the game. Many of you have stated that there needs to be more to the game than just the item hunt, and we agree completely. The Paragon system is a step in the right direction, giving meta-progress for your time in the game, but it does little to address the variety of activities you can do while playing. I don't think there’s a silver-bullet solution to this problem, but I do think we can make this aspect of the game better, and as such we're planning more than just PvP for the next major patch. Not trying to be coy, but we're still firming things up and will talk about this as soon as we can.
Difficulty has been a constant source of division when discussing the game. Some players believe Diablo has never been about crushing challenges, but more about efficiency and farming. Some players want a game that tests them to their limits. Neither player is wrong. As it stands, Diablo III simply does not provide the tools to allow players to scale the game challenge to something appropriate for them. We set Inferno as the high watermark and took a one-size-fits-all approach to game challenge. Later in the development of Diablo II, the 'players 8' command -- which let people set monster difficulty -- was added to address this issue, and we're considering something similar for the next major Diablo III patch to allow players to make up their own minds about how hard or how easy is right for them.
The Auction House has also proven to be a big challenge. It adds a lot of power for players to trade and acquire items. Getting a great Monk drop that you can trade for better gear for your Wizard is obviously a great benefit, but it does come with a downside. The Auction House can short circuit the natural pace of item drops, making the game feel less rewarding for some players. This is a problem we recognize. At this point we're not sure of the exact way to fix it, but we’re discussing it constantly, and we believe it's a problem we can overcome.
While these are some of the major issues with Diablo III, they aren't the only things we're looking at. On a daily basis we ask ourselves if the classes are satisfying to play, if rares and champions are fun to fight, if they’re tuned well relative to normal monsters. Can we make further improvements to social elements of the game? How can items be even better?
We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it's the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we'll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you'll continue to help us do just that.
Saying that, I'd like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave's comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we're doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and for that I can't thank you enough.
I wonder what will happen with Jay after this embarrassing outburst. Also.. it seems like they are really trying to fix D3. We'll see how this wraps up i guess. I know a lot of people have stopped playing and will not bother reinstalling the game again. Shame.
The solution for the AH is simple, not more than 5 euro for the RMAH, and 1 million as max price for all the items.
Diablo 3 sold a lot of copies due to Diablo 2, and that's a huge FACT. All the fans were expecting a better game (me included), but at the end it has been a total fiasco. All my friends killed diablo in normal mode, and "bye bye diablo 3, this is not a true successor for diablo 2".
I've returned to see the changes of 1.04, but i think i won't last much time, i have better games to play with.
And watching the new legendaries... i can see huge issues for the upcoming pvp (that should have been included since the first day, a shame). Another shame is that being a pc game... it should support surround sound, 5.1, 7.1... it's pathetic.
I played through to act 2 inferno so yeah I have experienced what it is now and there's a reason why it is currently uninstalled on my machine.
I still have no interest in the game from comments. Once they start pvp i might look into it. But i don't think you get enough drops to make it worthwhile. In darksiders 2 you get good drops every other fight. That makes me happy, as i see my character develop and get better. This is not the case in D3, unless i spend lots of munni at th AH which i detest. Whats the point of playing when you can get that gear you are trying to get playing.
I did a Act 1 NV run seeing as it's the safest and fastest run for me. I can keep the dying to a minimum and get some gold (150k a round). I bought some new gear to update my char and I ended up having around 72-74k DPS. It took me roughly 30-40 minutes to complete the run and I ended up getting 53.5% XP. This is ABSURD, not counting that each level will probably require more XP it's gonna take you a minimum of 100 hours to get to paragon level 100.
Will the paragon system be the savior of Diablo 3? It will probably spike the user base for a while, but that's it. I'm pretty sure that most people will just try it and see a new thing they have to grind besides gear. Yes it is just a side bonus, but people wont view it as that. They will view it as something they have to grind too to be capable of grinding for items.
The only ones that really gets benefited from this is botters and the true hardcore grinders. But as I said, they should have allowed the players to taste the cake, make the first 25 levels take 2-5 hours and then spike the experience needed from 75-100. This will mean that pretty much everyone can enjoy at least 25 levels of paragon, the true grinders will still be unique in that they are probably the only ones having the higher levels of paragon.
Just go play D2 or play something else... like Guild Wars 2
me.
Ive regressed to trolling this game. My barb build allows me to run ahead in act 4 inferno and drag several elite packs into the rest of my team. Very amusing if they have stacks already and start raging.
You sound genuinely hateable.
my crowning troll is letting everyone get killed by nightmare diablo's clones and then run around and burn out there stacks.
Can that barb even die?! I had so much resist and health regen on my monk I could just sit in front of elites and act one and not go below 3/4th health, with only a few health regen items.
Which seems to have gotten worse. When I played last, it was just the regular AH. Now it seems hard to find actual upgrades on it for a reasonable price. The decent upgrades I used to find there, are now all on the dollar-AH, which I refuse to use.
I'm not sure what they can do to fix that.
I've started selling items on the RMAH, making a couple bucks here & there, which has added up to be quite a bit. Buying gold is cheap, 1 mil for about 1.27-1.50 usd, which you can make pretty easily off selling a few items for .25 - .50. Priced that low (if you calculate the 15% fee for your b/o), things sell pretty quick. I've tried keeping both gold and RMAH AH lists full, and have been making a steady stream of income.
I got lucky and sold a ring for 20 mil, which let me buy some lower level blacksmith set pieces. Those sell for 30-40k gold, but have been able to sell a few for .50-1.80 usd. When converting that $ to gold, its essentially made the items id sell for 30k worth 400k - 1mil gold with the $ to gold conversion. Every $10 usd i make, (so far has been about every day) I convert it to gold for either new BS plans or upgrades.
I don't care much about undercutting people, or people buying my items and marking them up (that ring i got 20 mil for was put back up for 30 mil & sold in a day), I'm just pricing things competitively and not crazy inflated so I can keep a steady stream of items selling. That ring was priced at about 70-250mil (ugh) from others. I try to price in the lower-middle range of an item's stat ranges, and sell very quickly. Takes some time to price items due to the not-so-awesome UI, but its worth it to be garunteed a sale.
I'm still having fun, i'll do some MF farming in Act 1 (cemetery, woods, butcher) and get a decent amount of XP, but leveling is much easier doing Act 3 with a group. I'll go back and do Normal & Nightmare Act 3 Siegebreaker - Azmodan runs, and usually get 2-3 legendaries worth 50-250k gold. I'm only 60(5) currently, but even with that, I have 305% w/ follower, and get showered with items to break down into mats. In a given run, i'll get 1 or 2 items at best that are worth selling, the rest go to funding the Blacksmith
375 + the mf of the merc, but nothing. The mf in this game is broken
keep going! I got to act 4 hell on my monk before peetering out & getting bored, but was still some very memorable gameplay
I need to try this shit out again, miss this game some
Punish#1219
Im currently working through my softcore character. trying to get to plvl100, but I definitely want to play hardcore. especially in a group! but my friends have no interest in it
I also spent some time with my barbarian on inferno. I wasn't dying so much
it's the game D3 should have been. talking just about gameplay here.
Tried some MP adjusting, was having an ok time, but over compensated a little. MP6 was pretty hard with my current gear
will probably get the hardcore monk to 60 and wait for more new content, feels like too much of a game of ultra-craps to get good items.
I want to get a monk to 60. I think i`ll get my friend to rush me. Takes like an hour with MP10. ha. But firs tI want to get my damn hellfire ring
I thought i remember reading that they stopped the items < ilvl 60 dropping in Inferno, but something is still fundamentally flawed with the weapon damage rolls. My mainhand is 1300ish, that i had to buy of the AH, and it was super easy at MP0. I'm not super geared, but can survive a lot, and have a nice full MF high dps set for lower act farming, and the game is still fun
Monks at 60 are so much fun, lots of options. Think i've used just about every skill in some build, but the ones im using now are the most fun for me.
Etotheric - i saw some 200 billion weapon yesterday, was an ilvl 63 weapon with similar stats to my current one, with a req level -18 property. Some lvl 42 person would destroy! Those kind of items are really cool, but there is no equivalent at lvl 60
Monster Power and Paragon Level just don't do it for me. The game is way way way too linear to be fun for replay.
Fun game for sure, but not what D2 was.
Randomization in levels is actually pretty important for replay. What makes D3 painfully more linear is the constant bombardment of dialogue, checkpoints, and back tracking to town for quests.
I want to just go out into the wilderness and kill shit for eternity. D2 was much closer to that than D3. I specificially remember that I wasn't having fun with the game until I finally reached Act 3 in D3. A1 and A2 were soooooo boring. Hardly any monsters. In D2 you encountered massive groups of enemies as soon as you hit the 2nd map in the first act.
Though D3 is pretty, I really do feel they lost a lot when they converted it from the gritty gothic style to the "Blizzard" style. One thing that really drew me in to D2 was the "realism" for it's time. Felt like it was more of an action horror game to some extent. The gritty gothic theme felt way more angel & demon than what it is now... feels more like cartoon fantasy than a visceral Heaven and Hell.
Tried hardcore more during thanksgiving, I didn't make it far with the barbarian or voodoo chieftain.. will keep trying with the monk though. I do like the paragon stuff and the stacking magic find bonus when finishing champ / elite packs though - so I'll probably keep going with my main DH character every now and then