First off I'd like to caveat that this is a no-cry zone. So if you happened upon my thread with the intention of spouting your grievance against Jay Wilson, Blizzard, or just want to vent about how disappointing Diablo 3 is to you: stop reading now, see the gif, and follow it's advice.
Now, for the adults still with us, let's get to the topic at hand: Itemization choke points. What do I mean by that? Good question. What i'm referring to are the good-roll rares that we're all after. Primary stat + Vit + some extremely good combination of secondary stats like crit, crit dmg, (formerly) IAS, LoH etc.
As most of us are aware, starting around act2-3 (class dependent) of inferno it simply isn't enough to have your primary stats at a healthy level. At some point you need the major damage scaling of crit or you need the sustain of LoH in order to tackle elites with any consistency. Unfortunately, you soon realize this isn't something you can tack on to your current gear-set. You need those high end items and there is no substitute.
Of course, these items are not a common occurrence. Thus the formation of a choke-point. Presuming (and this is simply hypothetical, do not over-analyze my anecdotes and made-up statistics) for a moment there are 1 million players in act2 inferno and attempting to gear up for act3/4, there is probably enough gear out there to allow 50% of them to progress; however, that figure probably shrinks to around 5-10% if your idea of progression means being able to go back and farm the content without the same level of duress.
All of this brings me to the topic of debate: The way I see it, there are two scenarios which could play out in the coming patches to allay this issue (and I assume one of them will happen given what already happened to IAS):
1. Blizzard continues to down-tune overly effective secondary stats and nerf the later acts of inferno. This addresses the issue by broadening the number of rares which fall into the acceptable range of stats; however, it also waters down the meta-game of itemizing your character to perfection.
2. Blizzard allows these relatively lofty itemization benchmarks to remain mostly untouched, but dramatically increases higher ilvl drop rates such that more of these "good," items come into the economy. This addresses the issue by pushing the later inferno item supply closer to the player demand; however, it also devalues items on the whole and exacerbates natural inflation.
To my mind, a combination of the two seem to be the preferable choice. That being said, I would like to hear the opinions of others on the matter.
I think blizzard is riding a fine line of itemization much more than people realize. People want to progress. They want to progress at a rate linear to the amount of time they play. But the randomization of drops can leave people feeling like they're wasting their time.
I'd be surprised if blizzard does something with crit damage scaling without giving something else to the players to itemize for. If they release a new stat, expect to see some changes, but aside from that, I don't think they will risk watering down what is already a pretty bland system.
The problem with solution #2 is that it's becoming more common for people to hit a point where they can farm all acts comfortably, and they don't feel any reason to keep gearing up and "win more." The influx of cheap "mid tier" rares is catapulting new inferno players to levels of progression that used to take weeks to achieve. Rushing new players to this point is probably not something blizzard wants to do, as they risk people realizing there isn't much of an "endgame" in sight. PvP is slated for what, patch 1.1?
Blizzard has stated that their next focus will be on class balance / tuning. I don't think itemization will be addressed in the near future.
Blizzard has stated that their next focus will be on class balance / tuning. I don't think itemization will be addressed in the near future.
I'd like to hit on a few points you brought up, but i've got a dinner to attend. Sufficed to say, i'm going to at least point out that this is a muddy conclusion to make. Primarily because class balance/popularity effects itemization demand and secondarily because D3 is far more gear-driven than D2. ie. A rebalanced WD who could pet-tank act3 inferno pulls the bottom out of the Int/Vit/LoH market.
The two, imo, are very much intertwined. If they want to affect class balance in a meaningful way, itemization balance is going to have to be part of that process.
Anyhow, thanks for the input. Hopefully i'll be back to post more later tonight.
Well, we have seen a few trends in "flavour of the month" itemisation already in D3, all followed by quick nerfs. Example being the 0 Vit + max life regen Force Armour Wizards of week 1, followed by the IAS stacking trend.
There are others of course but none spring to mind off the top of my head - but the result of those nerfs were classes completely reorganising the stats they aim for.
Simply put, classes tend to have a couple of purely viable builds which require a very specific line up of stats. However, some, as you pointed out can be extremely good - Crit is definately the new favourite.
Due to this, a lot of items become redundant due to not having all of the stats people want, and some items become incredibly valuable due to having perfect stats, even if they are low rolled.
Maybe I'm just reiterating your point to go over properly in my head - I'm tired and not really thinking clearly.
I guess you first proposed solution would work. Try to make all stats as equally valuable (the ones that matter that is, not Pickup Range, etc) so that as long as an item is high rolled, it'll be good.
The problem with that is a lot of people will immediately think they are nerfed and just whine about it. Regardless of whether things are better or not, people will feel nerfed if their favourite stat gets tuned properly.
The second solution will probably be more preferable to most people, however, it will allow people to quickly progress, much faster than currently, and as Kinch said, people will quickly realise there's no need to get better if they can clear Act 4 and then they'll quit.
I'm really not sure what Blizzard could do about it. I think some stats will always be better than others and due to that, the items that roll Primary Stat + Vit + OP Secondary Stats will always be prefered and so there will always be a bottle-neck while upgrading.
Hmm... No idea if I answered you question or point or not - but it's 4.15am so I'm going to bed.
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And may the odds be ever in your favour. Emmo#2406
No matter what happens, there will ALWAYS be better secondary stats. The people who have already cleared Diablo on Inferno and are still playing are doing so for either other classes, HC, or prep for PvP (or any combination of the above). Just like in WoW, as situations change the gearing will change. As time goes on, more of the important gear will be running around the economy much more quickly than the player base will be growing, so the problems will be alleviated.
This is true, at least, for anyone who is willing to trade in both Gold and in Currency. Note that you don't have to actually spend any of your OWN cash, just make sure to sell decent items to be able to get good ones. I've done enough selling in the sub-$5 range that when I'm ready to make the PvP gear-out I will be able to.
To me, one of the big problems is the lack of diversity of useful affixes. If you look at D2's items, there were many 'paths' towards the desired 'end'. What I mean is that there were many affixes that pretty much ended up doing the same thing (like increasing your damage, or giving you +max life), so even if you didn't happen to roll affix A on that bow, you rolled affix B, which does a similar thing; and I could go on until affix Z, because D2 was wonderful in that respect, it had loads of different affixes. And diversity is key to avoid boredom. If you look at D3, different things are affected by very few affixes. So if your bow happens to not roll Dex, it's almost useless (at least in high level play). This is a clear contrast with what happened in D2.
This pretty much sums up how I feel. The gameplay of D3 is above par and inferno is actually challanging if you don't AH your way to victory but the items feel fairly stale to me. I really do get the impression of bottlenecking with melee in inferno. Its a difficult problem because there isn't a solution to it that won't alter some aspect of the game somewhat significantly but as it stands the items bore me...I don't get any feeling of excitement out of identifying rares as they will only ever be very specific marginal upgrades to base stat, vit, all resist with a few exceptions like LoH or Crit
To me, one of the big problems is the lack of diversity of useful affixes. If you look at D2's items, there were many 'paths' towards the desired 'end'. What I mean is that there were many affixes that pretty much ended up doing the same thing (like increasing your damage, or giving you +max life), so even if you didn't happen to roll affix A on that bow, you rolled affix B, which does a similar thing; and I could go on until affix Z, because D2 was wonderful in that respect, it had loads of different affixes. And diversity is key to avoid boredom. If you look at D3, different things are affected by very few affixes. So if your bow happens to not roll Dex, it's almost useless (at least in high level play). This is a clear contrast with what happened in D2.
I wish they would take their itemization more seriously, I found a nats hand xbow with 144 str on it. I understand the reasons and view points of random is random; however, what I don't understand is class items having worthless stats on them. I know I am not alone on this. When there is an item that only a class can use like hand xbows I don't want to see such a garbage stat no matter how much armor that 144 str gives (144 armor lawl) that armor will not do you any good.
What needs to happen fast is a quick fix to itemization in terms of class items. How would you make such a change? Easy. Remove the str affix from hand xbows (for example) because with the removal of that affix there will still be plenty of other garbage stats that will benefit you more like the insanely nerfed life steal in inferno or Int, I'd take Int over str any day because of the resistances int can provide.
It doesn't have to be the way that it is, this game could have been a lot better if activisonblizzard were more focused on game play decisions than making money and in the long run make more money. Instead of catering to the casuals, them telling us how to have fun and insulting our intelligence. Itemization is one step along with hiring people to test future games that are not retarded. Force armor and smoke screen would not have been a problem if they addressed it before the game launched. Every day I play Diablo 3 I feel as if we are beta testing.
I wish they would take their itemization more seriously, I found a nats hand xbow with 144 str on it. I understand the reasons and view points of random is random; however, what I don't understand is class items having worthless stats on them. I know I am not alone on this. When there is an item that only a class can use like hand xbows I don't want to see such a garbage stat no matter how much armor that 144 str gives (144 armor lawl) that armor will not do you any good.
What needs to happen fast is a quick fix to itemization in terms of class items. How would you make such a change? Easy. Remove the str affix from hand xbows (for example) because with the removal of that affix there will still be plenty of other garbage stats that will benefit you more like the insanely nerfed life steal in inferno or Int, I'd take Int over str any day because of the resistances int can provide.
I have my hands folded and I'm praying that the "legendary fixes" include not throwing totally-useless stats on an item. The D2 legendaries were done pretty decently - set stats with a range. The D3 legendaries with their "X random properties" is just stupid and it creates a ton of dead loot. People should be happy to see legendaries and not fearful that their 2h mace might have int on it. The idea that the best of the best rares should outpace legendaries and sets works only if the VIABLE legendaries/sets aren't super rare to begin with. But with how the stat randomization works there are tons of absolutely fuckin terrible legendaries/sets out there. That's a huge problem.
The idea of a set/legendary is that it's a known quantity and that's one of the reasons that it's not the outright BiS item. Right now, sets and legendaries are almost as random as rares themselves. Very big flaw in the itemization.
To the OPs original point about gear bottlenecking, I'm not really sure there's much to do about it. We'll never really know until the sets/legendaries are fixed because they were clearly intended to have a larger role in itemization than they currently do, and that leaves a pretty large gap that's only filled by rares which are.... quite random. As it stands we are currently playing with only a portion of the gear that we were supposed to have which only makes the problem seem bigger than it should be.
I'm really not sure what Blizzard could do about it. I think some stats will always be better than others and due to that, the items that roll Primary Stat + Vit + OP Secondary Stats will always be prefered and so there will always be a bottle-neck while upgrading.
That operates on the assumption that we continue to have a bi-polar relationship between 90% of secondary stats and ~the~ secondary stats (crit and LoH namely), but I agree if things stay more or less as-is the whole population will be farming act1 and gaming the AH to compete for the necessarily small chunk of available loot that is up to act3 farm quality.
No matter what happens, there will ALWAYS be better secondary stats. The people who have already cleared Diablo on Inferno and are still playing are doing so for either other classes, HC, or prep for PvP (or any combination of the above). Just like in WoW, as situations change the gearing will change. As time goes on, more of the important gear will be running around the economy much more quickly than the player base will be growing, so the problems will be alleviated.
This is true, at least, for anyone who is willing to trade in both Gold and in Currency. Note that you don't have to actually spend any of your OWN cash, just make sure to sell decent items to be able to get good ones. I've done enough selling in the sub-$5 range that when I'm ready to make the PvP gear-out I will be able to.
1. The vaunted "pre-nerf," crowd had some useful bugs working in their favor and while I consider the achievement impressive, it should not be used as a justification for the status quo. Those same character's, for the most part, cannot repeat kill anything in act3/4 with the gear they had for obvious reasons.
2. The predominant ias stacking theme at the time was cheap. You didn't need other stats.
3. As time goes on more perfect gear precipitates into the economy, but with the added tier of the RMAH, and the (as you mentioned) predication of people to make alts, the rate at which the population's demand is met could be very slow.
To me, one of the big problems is the lack of diversity of useful affixes. If you look at D2's items, there were many 'paths' towards the desired 'end'. What I mean is that there were many affixes that pretty much ended up doing the same thing (like increasing your damage, or giving you +max life), so even if you didn't happen to roll affix A on that bow, you rolled affix B, which does a similar thing; and I could go on until affix Z, because D2 was wonderful in that respect, it had loads of different affixes. And diversity is key to avoid boredom. If you look at D3, different things are affected by very few affixes. So if your bow happens to not roll Dex, it's almost useless (at least in high level play). This is a clear contrast with what happened in D2.
I wish they would take their itemization more seriously, I found a nats hand xbow with 144 str on it. I understand the reasons and view points of random is random; however, what I don't understand is class items having worthless stats on them. I know I am not alone on this. When there is an item that only a class can use like hand xbows I don't want to see such a garbage stat no matter how much armor that 144 str gives (144 armor lawl) that armor will not do you any good.
What needs to happen fast is a quick fix to itemization in terms of class items. How would you make such a change? Easy. Remove the str affix from hand xbows (for example) because with the removal of that affix there will still be plenty of other garbage stats that will benefit you more like the insanely nerfed life steal in inferno or Int, I'd take Int over str any day because of the resistances int can provide.
Agreed, although that by itself leaves the contested slot secondaries to continue in competition. It's a good analogy for the itemization system as a whole though.
Blizzard said: Inferno will be extremly hard to finish. And that is all right. Just imagine the future of D3, if every teenager during the summer holliday would finish inferno act4 with all 5 classes. As you lvl up to 60 in 2 days easy, means you are at inferno act1, and another week to finish it. Would be a joke, and in 3 month, you would play this game alone... I accept blizz's choice and decision to make inferno rly hard. DON'T NERF IT!
There is a key difference between rote difficulty: A test of player skill vs. an impacted gear-check: A test of player's in-game and out of game currency. Furthermore, simply beating act4 is not an accomplishment. Many have done just that in less than ideal gear. The accomplishment is to be able to repeat that process with more efficiency as time goes on. If more secondary stats were viable, it's quite likely this would occur. In the present situation, it's entirely up to chance. Slot machines aren't really hard.
To the OPs original point about gear bottlenecking, I'm not really sure there's much to do about it. We'll never really know until the sets/legendaries are fixed because they were clearly intended to have a larger role in itemization than they currently do, and that leaves a pretty large gap that's only filled by rares which are.... quite random. As it stands we are currently playing with only a portion of the gear that we were supposed to have which only makes the problem seem bigger than it should be.
Ideally, for me, Blizzard realizes how many issues making Inferno "just like" the other difficulties (with the only difference being massive scalability and different graphics for items) and makes sure to start planning their expansion with a review of the whole Inferno concept.
The bottleneck should happen at Hell -> Inferno. That's where the chokepoint should be imo. Once you're inside Inferno it should be all about enjoying the game (to add to variety, they could've allowed free boss killing and Act jumping without losing the NV buff, which is another feature many want) and testing/perfecting different builds, and not about brickwalls.
Ideally, for me, Blizzard realizes how many issues making Inferno "just like" the other difficulties (with the only difference being massive scalability and different graphics for items) and makes sure to start planning their expansion with a review of the whole Inferno concept.
The bottleneck should happen at Hell -> Inferno. That's where the chokepoint should be imo. Once you're inside Inferno it should be all about enjoying the game (to add to variety, they could've allowed free boss killing and Act jumping without losing the NV buff, which is another feature many want) and testing/perfecting different builds, and not about brickwalls.
Bottleneck should happen everywhere. There would be literally no people playing again if there was no bottleneck inside inferno.
I feel like things are fine as is. The way things works now is that say you're almost ready to get into act1 inferno, you have to farm quite a bit of gear in hell act 4 to get upgrade. For example for just throwing numbers out there let's say you have to farm act4 hell for 8 hours before you find a reasonable upgrade.
After a few days of farming you eventually upgrade your gear so now you can farm act1 with ease. The higher chance at higher lvl means you're seeing more higher level items and higher potential to give better upgrade. This also nets you to about 8 hours of farming until the next reasonable upgrade.
Then after a few days you also start to become gear enough to do act2, the same thing repeats. You spend more time to find smaller upgrade.
Now once you're at act3-4 difficulty, the game kinds of stop there since it's the hardest difficulty in the game. At this point your gear becomes close to the "best" possible, so it now takes significantly more time to find that 90+ percentile of rolls in your perfectly rolled gears. But hey, that's what it takes to be at the top 10% of the game.
The million dollar question, as I see it: what is your acceptable time-table for gearing a character into a set that would allow you to farm most, if not all, of the content?
While it's hard to make apples to apples comparisons to Diablo 2, consider for a while that it took a significant amount of hours to gear a character from scratch into a viable farmer - that's not even to say what it took to gear a character up for "best in slot," especially in the later years where runewords were crazy hard to get at a decent stat roll (even the best runeword items had huge gaps between the best and worst rolls).
I think part of the problem is we're 2 months in, and people have this expectation from so many other games that they should be geared to the teeth right now, when that's exactly what this game isn't.
I think part of the problem is we're 2 months in, and people have this expectation from so many other games that they should be geared to the teeth right now, when that's exactly what this game isn't.
I can obviously only speak for myself, but as a D2 player for the last decade I have no expectation to be anywhere near geared out from just drops at this point. I for one am all for the keeping of Inferno as nerf free as possible although I don't forsee that as a real possibility based off it already seeing one de-clawing. The thing that I just can't seem to pull myself away from however is that, as I perviously explained, the loot at the top-end seems very generic to me..so much so that I find it almost a waste of my time to pursue. In D2 I could farm for items for months on end because there were entertaining gear drops, even if i never saw them the understanding that I could was what kept my attention. Conversely, in D3 I feel like the gear I have now is just a slightlly more watered down version of the gear I'm hunting for and personally that is nearly the kiss of death. I really wish I could add anything constructive but the truth is I really can't think of a good fix for the problem without overhauling secondary stats which would essentially take gearing in a totally different direction and alienate a large chunk of the user base, obviously a poor idea.
Bottleneck should happen everywhere. There would be literally no people playing again if there was no bottleneck inside inferno.
I don't mind bottlenecks, I love them. I loved in the first 2-3 days how I was kind of "stuck" in Hell, and then afterwards in act 1 of Inferno, and then in Act 2. The problem is we have 3 whole difficulties that should have those, and then the Inferno concept.
Then again, my issue with that is how they killed the "flat difficulty" concept of "always challenging". I can faceroll Act 1, literally not even using all my skills. I can clear Act 2 with some deaths to unlucky affix rolls. I can kind of clear Act 3 with some help or if I get lucky with champ affixes.
Result: Act 1 is boring as hell. Act 2 is "just right" (except I hate it and its monsters), and Act 3 is next to impossible (with my high chance of getting Invul Minions + Horde + Nightmarish, I swear to you I got 4 of these today). I almost don't want to play my Wizard anymore getting upgrades to my gear would take at least 5-10 mil. I don't really like Act 2's theme, and playing Act 1 is like playing Normal difficulty all over again.
I'm sure that's not what they wanted when they thought of the Inferno concept.
That's also the reason why guys like Kripparian can claim that they "cleared" the game and "there's nothing else to do", because Inferno gave them a false sense of progression. If you didn't have to "progress" through Inferno, there wouldn't even be a point in killing Diablo in it (except for the achievement), which would be great and teach these "I can beat the hardest challenge in the game therefore I'm awesome"-kids who are too used to WoW mechanics what Diablo 2 was about (110% not about killing Ball in Hell).
I think part of the problem is we're 2 months in, and people have this expectation from so many other games that they should be geared to the teeth right now, when that's exactly what this game isn't.
I can obviously only speak for myself, but as a D2 player for the last decade I have no expectation to be anywhere near geared out from just drops at this point. I for one am all for the keeping of Inferno as nerf free as possible although I don't forsee that as a real possibility based off it already seeing one de-clawing. The thing that I just can't seem to pull myself away from however is that, as I perviously explained, the loot at the top-end seems very generic to me..so much so that I find it almost a waste of my time to pursue. In D2 I could farm for items for months on end because there were entertaining gear drops, even if i never saw them the understanding that I could was what kept my attention. Conversely, in D3 I feel like the gear I have now is just a slightlly more watered down version of the gear I'm hunting for and personally that is nearly the kiss of death. I really wish I could add anything constructive but the truth is I really can't think of a good fix for the problem without overhauling secondary stats which would essentially take gearing in a totally different direction and alienate a large chunk of the user base, obviously a poor idea.
On a related note (and someone else posted it already, but I can't recall who or where right now), a big problem with "gearing" is the requirement for most classes and playstyles to run with All Resistance. It severely hinders variety in itemization, and eliminates a huge portion of otherwise good items from being valuable to anyone.
I'm in the same boat you are on fixes; I'm sure if I sat down and spent multiple hours brainstorming I could come up with something, but that's also not what I'm paid for. I can appreciate people who have rational arguments for or against game changes, but I can also recognize when people are being unrealistic, even if I don't have an alternative solution.
I don't doubt the game will eventually work itself out over the coming months (because the same uproars were taking place when D2 released and was first being patched up, yet where is it now?), so I'll probably stick around for a while, even if it's in a 'play 'til I'm bored then play something else for a while and come back' capacity.
I'm sure that's not what they wanted when they thought of the Inferno concept.
That's also the reason why guys like Kripparian can claim that they "cleared" the game and "there's nothing else to do", because Inferno gave them a false sense of progression. If you didn't have to "progress" through Inferno, there wouldn't even be a point in killing Diablo in it (except for the achievement), which would be great and teach these "I can beat the hardest challenge in the game therefore I'm awesome"-kids who are too used to WoW mechanics what Diablo 2 was about (110% not about killing Ball in Hell).
The million dollar question, as I see it: what is your acceptable time-table for gearing a character into a set that would allow you to farm most, if not all, of the content?
The problem is that question implies there is any kind of appreciable gain over time. Outside of gold, which accrues very slowly relative to the quickly inflating prices of good equipment, you're guaranteed nothing for your time. You have a go at the dice for each rare you find in inferno and the chance of you meeting your gear requirement to meet the next road-block is entirely up to fate. You either find the equipment you need (astronomically lucky) or you find equipment of a similar value (still very very lucky) and sell it to fund your own AH upgrading.
Given the pace that I have come to enjoy over the last few weeks I estimate that making a few million gold a week is average for most people. At that pace you're talking about perhaps 1-2 upgrades a month if you spend all you have on one character and that's assuming there isn't more inflation to come.
On a related note (and someone else posted it already, but I can't recall who or where right now), a big problem with "gearing" is the requirement for most classes and playstyles to run with All Resistance. It severely hinders variety in itemization, and eliminates a huge portion of otherwise good items from being valuable to anyone.
I'm in the same boat you are on fixes; I'm sure if I sat down and spent multiple hours brainstorming I could come up with something, but that's also not what I'm paid for. I can appreciate people who have rational arguments for or against game changes, but I can also recognize when people are being unrealistic, even if I don't have an alternative solution.
I don't doubt the game will eventually work itself out over the coming months (because the same uproars were taking place when D2 released and was first being patched up, yet where is it now?), so I'll probably stick around for a while, even if it's in a 'play 'til I'm bored then play something else for a while and come back' capacity.
Agreed, the emphatic disparity between resistances singular and the almighty AR are a big issue, although i'm inclined to think this one is permanently broken unless One With Everything is changed first.
It's good to see others pondering along the same lines. I too, have a lot of hope for the near future patches. But I think it's great to get ideas out in the open anyhow. You never know who is reading.
Personally, I just believe that this game is entirely too gear dependant. Right now to farm end game content you have to have extremely good gear, and choose from one of the two "working" specs for your particular class. I don't necessarily think that continuing to nerf the difficulty or increase rare drops is going to solve the problem. Characters themselves need to innately be more powerful so that gearing increases your power/survivability as opposed to being the sole measure of whether you live or die. I honestly don't see that philosophy changing though, because they're in too deep atm.
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Now, for the adults still with us, let's get to the topic at hand: Itemization choke points. What do I mean by that? Good question. What i'm referring to are the good-roll rares that we're all after. Primary stat + Vit + some extremely good combination of secondary stats like crit, crit dmg, (formerly) IAS, LoH etc.
As most of us are aware, starting around act2-3 (class dependent) of inferno it simply isn't enough to have your primary stats at a healthy level. At some point you need the major damage scaling of crit or you need the sustain of LoH in order to tackle elites with any consistency. Unfortunately, you soon realize this isn't something you can tack on to your current gear-set. You need those high end items and there is no substitute.
Of course, these items are not a common occurrence. Thus the formation of a choke-point. Presuming (and this is simply hypothetical, do not over-analyze my anecdotes and made-up statistics) for a moment there are 1 million players in act2 inferno and attempting to gear up for act3/4, there is probably enough gear out there to allow 50% of them to progress; however, that figure probably shrinks to around 5-10% if your idea of progression means being able to go back and farm the content without the same level of duress.
All of this brings me to the topic of debate: The way I see it, there are two scenarios which could play out in the coming patches to allay this issue (and I assume one of them will happen given what already happened to IAS):
1. Blizzard continues to down-tune overly effective secondary stats and nerf the later acts of inferno. This addresses the issue by broadening the number of rares which fall into the acceptable range of stats; however, it also waters down the meta-game of itemizing your character to perfection.
2. Blizzard allows these relatively lofty itemization benchmarks to remain mostly untouched, but dramatically increases higher ilvl drop rates such that more of these "good," items come into the economy. This addresses the issue by pushing the later inferno item supply closer to the player demand; however, it also devalues items on the whole and exacerbates natural inflation.
To my mind, a combination of the two seem to be the preferable choice. That being said, I would like to hear the opinions of others on the matter.
I'd be surprised if blizzard does something with crit damage scaling without giving something else to the players to itemize for. If they release a new stat, expect to see some changes, but aside from that, I don't think they will risk watering down what is already a pretty bland system.
The problem with solution #2 is that it's becoming more common for people to hit a point where they can farm all acts comfortably, and they don't feel any reason to keep gearing up and "win more." The influx of cheap "mid tier" rares is catapulting new inferno players to levels of progression that used to take weeks to achieve. Rushing new players to this point is probably not something blizzard wants to do, as they risk people realizing there isn't much of an "endgame" in sight. PvP is slated for what, patch 1.1?
Blizzard has stated that their next focus will be on class balance / tuning. I don't think itemization will be addressed in the near future.
I'd like to hit on a few points you brought up, but i've got a dinner to attend. Sufficed to say, i'm going to at least point out that this is a muddy conclusion to make. Primarily because class balance/popularity effects itemization demand and secondarily because D3 is far more gear-driven than D2. ie. A rebalanced WD who could pet-tank act3 inferno pulls the bottom out of the Int/Vit/LoH market.
The two, imo, are very much intertwined. If they want to affect class balance in a meaningful way, itemization balance is going to have to be part of that process.
Anyhow, thanks for the input. Hopefully i'll be back to post more later tonight.
There are others of course but none spring to mind off the top of my head - but the result of those nerfs were classes completely reorganising the stats they aim for.
Simply put, classes tend to have a couple of purely viable builds which require a very specific line up of stats. However, some, as you pointed out can be extremely good - Crit is definately the new favourite.
Due to this, a lot of items become redundant due to not having all of the stats people want, and some items become incredibly valuable due to having perfect stats, even if they are low rolled.
Maybe I'm just reiterating your point to go over properly in my head - I'm tired and not really thinking clearly.
I guess you first proposed solution would work. Try to make all stats as equally valuable (the ones that matter that is, not Pickup Range, etc) so that as long as an item is high rolled, it'll be good.
The problem with that is a lot of people will immediately think they are nerfed and just whine about it. Regardless of whether things are better or not, people will feel nerfed if their favourite stat gets tuned properly.
The second solution will probably be more preferable to most people, however, it will allow people to quickly progress, much faster than currently, and as Kinch said, people will quickly realise there's no need to get better if they can clear Act 4 and then they'll quit.
I'm really not sure what Blizzard could do about it. I think some stats will always be better than others and due to that, the items that roll Primary Stat + Vit + OP Secondary Stats will always be prefered and so there will always be a bottle-neck while upgrading.
Hmm... No idea if I answered you question or point or not - but it's 4.15am so I'm going to bed.
And may the odds be ever in your favour.
Emmo#2406
This is true, at least, for anyone who is willing to trade in both Gold and in Currency. Note that you don't have to actually spend any of your OWN cash, just make sure to sell decent items to be able to get good ones. I've done enough selling in the sub-$5 range that when I'm ready to make the PvP gear-out I will be able to.
This pretty much sums up how I feel. The gameplay of D3 is above par and inferno is actually challanging if you don't AH your way to victory but the items feel fairly stale to me. I really do get the impression of bottlenecking with melee in inferno. Its a difficult problem because there isn't a solution to it that won't alter some aspect of the game somewhat significantly but as it stands the items bore me...I don't get any feeling of excitement out of identifying rares as they will only ever be very specific marginal upgrades to base stat, vit, all resist with a few exceptions like LoH or Crit
I absolutely agree with you.
What needs to happen fast is a quick fix to itemization in terms of class items. How would you make such a change? Easy. Remove the str affix from hand xbows (for example) because with the removal of that affix there will still be plenty of other garbage stats that will benefit you more like the insanely nerfed life steal in inferno or Int, I'd take Int over str any day because of the resistances int can provide.
It doesn't have to be the way that it is, this game could have been a lot better if activisonblizzard were more focused on game play decisions than making money and in the long run make more money. Instead of catering to the casuals, them telling us how to have fun and insulting our intelligence. Itemization is one step along with hiring people to test future games that are not retarded. Force armor and smoke screen would not have been a problem if they addressed it before the game launched. Every day I play Diablo 3 I feel as if we are beta testing.
I have my hands folded and I'm praying that the "legendary fixes" include not throwing totally-useless stats on an item. The D2 legendaries were done pretty decently - set stats with a range. The D3 legendaries with their "X random properties" is just stupid and it creates a ton of dead loot. People should be happy to see legendaries and not fearful that their 2h mace might have int on it. The idea that the best of the best rares should outpace legendaries and sets works only if the VIABLE legendaries/sets aren't super rare to begin with. But with how the stat randomization works there are tons of absolutely fuckin terrible legendaries/sets out there. That's a huge problem.
The idea of a set/legendary is that it's a known quantity and that's one of the reasons that it's not the outright BiS item. Right now, sets and legendaries are almost as random as rares themselves. Very big flaw in the itemization.
To the OPs original point about gear bottlenecking, I'm not really sure there's much to do about it. We'll never really know until the sets/legendaries are fixed because they were clearly intended to have a larger role in itemization than they currently do, and that leaves a pretty large gap that's only filled by rares which are.... quite random. As it stands we are currently playing with only a portion of the gear that we were supposed to have which only makes the problem seem bigger than it should be.
That operates on the assumption that we continue to have a bi-polar relationship between 90% of secondary stats and ~the~ secondary stats (crit and LoH namely), but I agree if things stay more or less as-is the whole population will be farming act1 and gaming the AH to compete for the necessarily small chunk of available loot that is up to act3 farm quality.
1. The vaunted "pre-nerf," crowd had some useful bugs working in their favor and while I consider the achievement impressive, it should not be used as a justification for the status quo. Those same character's, for the most part, cannot repeat kill anything in act3/4 with the gear they had for obvious reasons.
2. The predominant ias stacking theme at the time was cheap. You didn't need other stats.
3. As time goes on more perfect gear precipitates into the economy, but with the added tier of the RMAH, and the (as you mentioned) predication of people to make alts, the rate at which the population's demand is met could be very slow.
Interesting point.
Agreed, although that by itself leaves the contested slot secondaries to continue in competition. It's a good analogy for the itemization system as a whole though.
There is a key difference between rote difficulty: A test of player skill vs. an impacted gear-check: A test of player's in-game and out of game currency. Furthermore, simply beating act4 is not an accomplishment. Many have done just that in less than ideal gear. The accomplishment is to be able to repeat that process with more efficiency as time goes on. If more secondary stats were viable, it's quite likely this would occur. In the present situation, it's entirely up to chance. Slot machines aren't really hard.
Excellent point.
The bottleneck should happen at Hell -> Inferno. That's where the chokepoint should be imo. Once you're inside Inferno it should be all about enjoying the game (to add to variety, they could've allowed free boss killing and Act jumping without losing the NV buff, which is another feature many want) and testing/perfecting different builds, and not about brickwalls.
Bottleneck should happen everywhere. There would be literally no people playing again if there was no bottleneck inside inferno.
After a few days of farming you eventually upgrade your gear so now you can farm act1 with ease. The higher chance at higher lvl means you're seeing more higher level items and higher potential to give better upgrade. This also nets you to about 8 hours of farming until the next reasonable upgrade.
Then after a few days you also start to become gear enough to do act2, the same thing repeats. You spend more time to find smaller upgrade.
Now once you're at act3-4 difficulty, the game kinds of stop there since it's the hardest difficulty in the game. At this point your gear becomes close to the "best" possible, so it now takes significantly more time to find that 90+ percentile of rolls in your perfectly rolled gears. But hey, that's what it takes to be at the top 10% of the game.
While it's hard to make apples to apples comparisons to Diablo 2, consider for a while that it took a significant amount of hours to gear a character from scratch into a viable farmer - that's not even to say what it took to gear a character up for "best in slot," especially in the later years where runewords were crazy hard to get at a decent stat roll (even the best runeword items had huge gaps between the best and worst rolls).
I think part of the problem is we're 2 months in, and people have this expectation from so many other games that they should be geared to the teeth right now, when that's exactly what this game isn't.
I can obviously only speak for myself, but as a D2 player for the last decade I have no expectation to be anywhere near geared out from just drops at this point. I for one am all for the keeping of Inferno as nerf free as possible although I don't forsee that as a real possibility based off it already seeing one de-clawing. The thing that I just can't seem to pull myself away from however is that, as I perviously explained, the loot at the top-end seems very generic to me..so much so that I find it almost a waste of my time to pursue. In D2 I could farm for items for months on end because there were entertaining gear drops, even if i never saw them the understanding that I could was what kept my attention. Conversely, in D3 I feel like the gear I have now is just a slightlly more watered down version of the gear I'm hunting for and personally that is nearly the kiss of death. I really wish I could add anything constructive but the truth is I really can't think of a good fix for the problem without overhauling secondary stats which would essentially take gearing in a totally different direction and alienate a large chunk of the user base, obviously a poor idea.
Then again, my issue with that is how they killed the "flat difficulty" concept of "always challenging". I can faceroll Act 1, literally not even using all my skills. I can clear Act 2 with some deaths to unlucky affix rolls. I can kind of clear Act 3 with some help or if I get lucky with champ affixes.
Result: Act 1 is boring as hell. Act 2 is "just right" (except I hate it and its monsters), and Act 3 is next to impossible (with my high chance of getting Invul Minions + Horde + Nightmarish, I swear to you I got 4 of these today). I almost don't want to play my Wizard anymore getting upgrades to my gear would take at least 5-10 mil. I don't really like Act 2's theme, and playing Act 1 is like playing Normal difficulty all over again.
I'm sure that's not what they wanted when they thought of the Inferno concept.
That's also the reason why guys like Kripparian can claim that they "cleared" the game and "there's nothing else to do", because Inferno gave them a false sense of progression. If you didn't have to "progress" through Inferno, there wouldn't even be a point in killing Diablo in it (except for the achievement), which would be great and teach these "I can beat the hardest challenge in the game therefore I'm awesome"-kids who are too used to WoW mechanics what Diablo 2 was about (110% not about killing Ball in Hell).
On a related note (and someone else posted it already, but I can't recall who or where right now), a big problem with "gearing" is the requirement for most classes and playstyles to run with All Resistance. It severely hinders variety in itemization, and eliminates a huge portion of otherwise good items from being valuable to anyone.
I'm in the same boat you are on fixes; I'm sure if I sat down and spent multiple hours brainstorming I could come up with something, but that's also not what I'm paid for. I can appreciate people who have rational arguments for or against game changes, but I can also recognize when people are being unrealistic, even if I don't have an alternative solution.
I don't doubt the game will eventually work itself out over the coming months (because the same uproars were taking place when D2 released and was first being patched up, yet where is it now?), so I'll probably stick around for a while, even if it's in a 'play 'til I'm bored then play something else for a while and come back' capacity.
QFT
The problem is that question implies there is any kind of appreciable gain over time. Outside of gold, which accrues very slowly relative to the quickly inflating prices of good equipment, you're guaranteed nothing for your time. You have a go at the dice for each rare you find in inferno and the chance of you meeting your gear requirement to meet the next road-block is entirely up to fate. You either find the equipment you need (astronomically lucky) or you find equipment of a similar value (still very very lucky) and sell it to fund your own AH upgrading.
Given the pace that I have come to enjoy over the last few weeks I estimate that making a few million gold a week is average for most people. At that pace you're talking about perhaps 1-2 upgrades a month if you spend all you have on one character and that's assuming there isn't more inflation to come.
Agreed, the emphatic disparity between resistances singular and the almighty AR are a big issue, although i'm inclined to think this one is permanently broken unless One With Everything is changed first.
It's good to see others pondering along the same lines. I too, have a lot of hope for the near future patches. But I think it's great to get ideas out in the open anyhow. You never know who is reading.