Diablo III

[Skyblade]

The solution is obvious: Don't remake Diablo II.

Seriously, the only thing they put any effort into at all was the skill setup (and the FMVs). And, granted, the result is awesome, and a much more enjoyable way to play.

Had they put that sort of effort into making the rest of the game evolve similarly, we wouldn't be in this mess.

And, frankly, I don't care about the game economy at all. I would prefer to be able to play the way I want, independent of market fluctuations or number of players (and, seriously, try getting anything off the AH once the initial rush dies down). I think the reliance on the economy simply hurts the gameplay in the long run, and, frankly, I think this was obvious even taking a cursory look at Diablo II, and I don't think Blizz has done anything to fix it. The AH certainly isn't a way. It doesn't put any limitations or controls on the economy, it just makes sure that Blizz gets a cut of all the transactions.

[Tavrobel]

I hate this game. I need a 60 Barbarian, a lot of money, for the auction house to work, and an upped Shaftstop.

BUT IT'S NOT IN THE GAME SCREW YOU STRING OF EARS

[Skyblade]

Patch 1.0.3 Blog

I'd just like to share my favorite part of this:

Bridging the Inferno Item Gap
The ilvl (item level) of an item determines the statistical budget for its power. The way the game is currently set up in Inferno, Act I drops ilvl 61 gear and below, Act II drops ilvl 62 gear and below, and Act III and IV drop ilvl 63 and below.
Unfortunately this has caused two main issues. The first is players who find an Act too difficult feel compelled to use the auction house in order to progress. The second is that certain classes, skills, and play styles are less gear dependent than others, so although great items are making their way into the game economy, people feel pigeonholed into a handful of viable strategies. For a lot of people they would rather do something frustrating or boring in Inferno Act IV (such as having Tyrael fight for them or breaking vases) for a chance at a "top-tier" upgrade, rather than fight hordes of monsters in Inferno Act I.

I find this absolutely hilarious, both because it is something I predicted back when we first heard about the Auction House, and because the "only a handful of viable strategies" problem was something painfully obvious to anyone who looked at Diablo II, and Blizzard only seems to just now realize that it presents a problem.

Not that I think Blizzard actually cares. If Diablo II shows us anything, it is that the people who are going to keep playing the game don't really care about balance or decent progression rates, and why should Blizz work to cater to people who actually just want to play the game as a game, rather than a second job?


And, while I'm at it, I'd like to point out that nerfing Attack Speed is going to make one of the few viable melee builds (Attack Speed + Life on Hit) go bye bye, so again, good luck to all the melee players out there.

Fortunately, I've already gotten over this game, and, frankly, I think I'm now completely over Blizzard. I probably should have been clued in by Cataclysm and Starcraft II, but it is clear that there is no innovation in their company. They remake a game, make it prettier, but don't bother evolving it or fixing any of the big problems.

[Tavrobel]

While I saw this earlier and am pretty pleased, but it's only marginally useful and already too late to save us from the scourge of people farming Act IV Inferno, getting rich on items that no melee class could realistically have access to without the use of a Wizard. It's pretty obvious that even 1% of people can ruin it for everyone else.

I am finding more and more that I hate Blizzard's design philosophy. There was a Reddit AMA in which they answered most of the questions that people asked. The most significant one was in determining how they came up with the pricing gold sinks, and they priced blacksmithing and gem costs based on the idea that this theoretical playthrough would not use the auction house. Ever. And this made me (again) seriously question the competency of Blizzard designers, who appear to have no care for their own economy, especially when the game is online only. If this game were single player, I would save-state scum, not care, and cheat my weasly little guts out.

But you see, now I have to care.

It's very questionable that Blizzard would play through the game and not consider their gold sink balance based on one of the most important aspects of their game, the auction house. Of course people are going to use it. If they don't it's because they haven't looked very hard at their own game; I myself have had to tell a bunch of friends how to use the auction house, and every single time, I give them a fresh set of weapons they're telling me "omg now I actually move on with this game." Such a statement is shocking, because that means that they are not finding items slightly above their own level in the areas that they are farming, which makes solo progression impossible and meaningless. It is not possible to go through this game solo untwinked, but the game is pointlessly more difficult in a group, and in fact, there are a number of mechanics that actively discourage it: increased damage on mobs per player, shared magic find, shared gold find

I'm also quite shocked that Blizzard has done very little in terms of fixing exploits. Nerfing Force Armor was a start, not the major crux of the operation. Wizards are still running around, and Monks have gear that is at least 10 times more expensive, and depreciates faster than Wizard gear. I am literally wearing millions in gold on my Monk, and it's still not enough to do Act II comfortably, and by comfortably, I mean without raising the revive timer to 30 seconds whenever I am breathed on by a champion pack. I die more to malaria than actually getting in a fight where blows are traded, and it's not even in the game.

They said that they wanted to encourage unconventional gameplay, but their items do not encourage or even provide an option for alternative gameplay. 1.2% chance to stun on hit, exciting! +1 to Battle Orders, totally boring, we can ditch that. Serves no gameplay purpose. Buffing legendaries by giving them bigger numbers will never be enough, unless they are the best items in the game, and suddenly, it's Diablo II all over again.

Despite what Blizzard has done right, they have managed to screw things up so badly during the design process, that whatever they had no idea what to do, they just lifted the mechanics straight from World of Warcraft. I don't play World of Warcraft, but I can tell you where most of the gameplay comes from. I'm not telling people not to enjoy the game, it's a decent game, but it's not up to my standards of what I should expect from Blizzard.

[CimminyCricket]

Tavrobel is handling this way better than he would have if this happened to his D2 account. xD

[Tavrobel]

Handling what? I already got my restore from Blizzard for my Monk. In fact, they were even able to restore it to a point from before I made some pretty poor auction house purchases, so they effectively gave me 600000 gold.

In the meantime, I have made a Demon Hunter, and the game up to Inferno was pathetically easy. I even cleared Act I Inferno in about 2 hours on my Demon Hunter, with the exception of the Butcher. I would've been able to kill the Butcher on my own, but I got fed up with accidentally double-Vaulting and position rubber-banding (thanks, servers). Melee just simply isn't viable, even after getting a ton of Life on Hit. I don't see how anyone can play through Inferno Act II, III, or IV as melee and actually manage to have fun if they have anything less than 40 million gold worth in equipment, this gold all coming from Wizard friends getting access to Act IV Inferno with an exploit, and managing to farm it enough to get items to sustain themselves in Act IV without this exploit.

Maybe one day, I could sit down and organize my thoughts on this game. Blizzard has managed to do some things right, but they have also managed to steal ideas from WoW, and they have also managed to fail spectacularly in areas of the game design in which they had no business in failing.

[Madame Adequate]

If I go full Chinese could I reasonably expect to make dosh from this electronic entertainment game?

[VeloZer0]

Seeing as you are competing against a labor pool with a much, much lower acceptable minimum wage I seriously doubt it. I remember when I first heard about gold farming in WoW and I ran the numbers to see if you could actually make money playing a game, worked out to a maximum of about $1/hr.

[Tavrobel]

If I go full Chinese could I reasonably expect to make dosh from this electronic entertainment game?

No-lifing, not more than a salaried wage; full-Chinese, and you could be richer than a South Korean Starcraft player. If the idea of having to sell items on third party resources because the $250 dollar limit on the Auction House is not enough intrigues you, then it could be worth investigating.

You may be competing against a large number of potential sellers, but there's more buyers than sellers, and each buyer is either buying a major-massive upgrade on one slot, or could be buying a lot of little upgrades. Either way you get the best of a consumer market: not only could you potentially provide big ticket items, but you can also market everyday commodities. And trust me, there is a very big market.

[Madame Adequate]

Thanks for the answers guys, but it turned out to be irrelevant because I was playing a guest pass when suddenly I couldn't log in to my single-player game that I wanted to play by myself in single-player all alone because the servers were down for maint.

The gameplay very nearly had me about to buy it, but instead I uninstalled on the spot.

[Tavrobel]

Uninstalled, game is ridiculously smurfing bad, and with the way that Blizzard has been handling the game, only makes me think that the game will get worse before it gets better. It will be years before it's worth playing, if it can even get there slowly. I think the hype was what was keeping me here for a month. This isn't the whole "I'm sick of it" like in Diablo II, this is a straight up "this game is a poor product and I would not recommend it for anyone at any price."

[Necronopticous]

I must agree.

[Bolivar]

Damn.

[Skyblade]

It's very questionable that Blizzard would play through the game and not consider their gold sink balance based on one of the most important aspects of their game, the auction house. Of course people are going to use it. If they don't it's because they haven't looked very hard at their own game; I myself have had to tell a bunch of friends how to use the auction house, and every single time, I give them a fresh set of weapons they're telling me "omg now I actually move on with this game." Such a statement is shocking, because that means that they are not finding items slightly above their own level in the areas that they are farming, which makes solo progression impossible and meaningless. It is not possible to go through this game solo untwinked, but the game is pointlessly more difficult in a group, and in fact, there are a number of mechanics that actively discourage it: increased damage on mobs per player, shared magic find, shared gold find

This statement is the crux of the entire gear issue.

90% of the gear drops in the game should not exist, period. Grey items just should not be there. They add nothing, and their sell price is so low they honestly aren't even worth that.

Of the other items, 50%, at least, will be sub-par, statwise, to your level.

And of the remainder of those, 95% of them will be either so poorly itemized as to be useless to everyone, or itemized for a different class.

Oh, and 50% of those good items will have inferior stats on them, such as a blue item two armor tiers above what you are wearing, but which has less Dexterity etcetera.

So, yeah, solo progression is impossible. The items don't, and with Diablo's gear setup, never will, no matter how much tweaking they do, drop reasonably.



If they wanted to make this game playable, they'd scratch the entire gear system and start over from scratch. All forged items would either use set stats, or allow you to pick which stats you wanted them to have. Random items would, rather than being completely RNG based, have set stat itemization and probably even have drop rates tied to the class you're playing. And they would get rid of greys completely.




But, yeah, horrible game, don't care about it anymore. Moving on.

[Madame Adequate]

Sounds like I've not missed much.

MEANWHILE, IN TORCHLIGHT