Mod note: This thread was split from a discussion from another thread. It's off-topic to the 2.1 release date discussion which was the intention of the thread, but it is an important and interesting discussion to be had. So... posts above this one are taken fromthis thread.
I was very much looking forward to Legendary Gems. I do not like the new upgrade rules. It's taken something I really was excited for and made it such that I'm completely indifferent about them. Such a shame.
Wyatt is quickly becoming one of my least-favorite people out there. He's so fucking out-of-touch it's not even funny.
I mean the anti-diablo crowd can bitch and moan all they want. If you dont like it, play another game. New content for free is new content for free. Me and plenty I know in my clan as well as other clans im friendly with cant wait.
I was very much looking forward to Legendary Gems. I do not like the new upgrade rules. It's taken something I really was excited for and made it such that I'm completely indifferent about them. Such a shame.
Wyatt is quickly becoming one of my least-favorite people out there. He's so fucking out-of-touch it's not even funny.
He is by far the Dev I come to dislike the most, I don't think he plays the game higher than Torment II. He often admits to being a "math guy" but the biggest issue with D3 balance is the lack of synergy. Adding a 0 or dropping a 0 is kinda meaningless in the grand scheme of things, items and skills need a ton more synergy.
I don't think Travis day did a good job with loot 2.0. The music department, gameplay and art direction has always been great with D3, however, the meat and potatoes have been lacking. Yoyo balance continues to be a big problem with this game but I believe this is more of a Blizzard problem company wide than just a D3 problem.
He is by far the Dev I come to dislike the most, I don't think he plays the game higher than Torment II. He often admits to being a "math guy" but the biggest issue with D3 balance is the lack of synergy. Adding a 0 or dropping a 0 is kinda meaningless in the grand scheme of things, items and skills need a ton more synergy.
I don't think Travis day did a good job with loot 2.0. The music department, gameplay and art direction has always been great with D3, however, the meat and potatoes have been lacking. Yoyo balance continues to be a big problem with this game but I believe this is more of a Blizzard problem company wide than just a D3 problem.
There are a few accusations in this post which is why I'd like to point a few things out. Please, if you attack developers on a personal level, inform yourself before you make such statements about them:
1) Most of the devs (and CMs) do in fact play on lower/mid Torment levels, as they admitted several times. One reason for this is because they don't have the time to play as much as some of us (developer of a triple AAA game can easily become a 50-100 hours/week job), but also because the overwhelming majority of players does not play Torment 6 either. By playing casually they're experiencing what the majority of players is experiencing. They still have all the knowledge of the "endgame players" as they regularly look at the data of the game (everything is logged, of course).
2) Yes, many builds/items lack synergy. However, why you think the "math guy" is responsible for this is something I don't get. It's like sending a complaint email to the Amazon database team because you dislike the shopping cart UI. Wyatt explained in detail how the new items were brainstormed in his playtest with Jaetch (VoD here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/12981548/). There is never a single person responsible for a specific item fail or an overhaul mistake in itemization; not Travis, not Wyatt, not Josh. It's a team.
3) Again, if you think anyone did not a good job with loot 2.0 then this is Blizzard as a whole. "Travis didn't do a good job with loot 2.0" is like saying "this one developer from Apple didn't do a good job with iOS 12".
4) "Yoyo balance" is something that is part of every Blizzard game. And it is part of every other game that is considered to be relatively "balanced". The alternative is "imbalance", as in, it never gets fixed and one class/unit/item/skill is broken from day 1 till the end of the game. The reason we have yoyo balance is because Blizzard always fixes things and swings things around. You can never have perfect balance (unless you give every class similar skills such that you just change color/name but keep the mechanics and numbers). If you name any game that has "perfect balance" it's only due to the perception of the game, for example, if it's a very short-lived game like Mobas or played by only a few people. If a million people play a game for hundreds of hours, there will always be some combinations of skills and items that comes across as "imbalanced". The only thing you can do is to try and make the gap as small as possible.
This entire balance issue was actually mentioned by a blue poster a few weeks ago. It's really Utopian to believe you can ever have 5 builds for 6 classes and all those are absolutely equally balanced for the same task.
Constructive criticism is okay, but this notion of attributing general game design features to a single name just to be able to blame someone (Jay, Josh, Travis, Wyatt, ... they were all victims at some point in history) has to stop at some point. It's just not how game development works (or actually any development, for that matter). If you're dissatisfied with Diablo 3 then name it, totally fine - but stop the namecalling.
Sorry but I disagree, Mr. Day spearheaded loot 2.0 and honestly, it wasn't nearly what was promised. You need to take the fan glasses off, you can go back and look for his posts about his vision of 2.0 loot and how he talked about how the game must move away from:
Stacking Crit hit chance, Crit Hit damage, fixing loot to not be auto salvaged before the item is ID'ed were all stuff he planned to address with loot 2.0.
All three of these still happen on a regular basis. Itemization is only marginally better than what it was in Vanilla, this is fact.
Wyatt Cheng has been out of touch since day one, it is clear to see that he plays a much different Diablo 3 than the players do. I would even throw Don Vu's name into the hat as well as being out of touch.
Maybe calling these guys out is what is needed, nobody is saying these guys aren't talented game designers, what is being said is they're grossly out of touch.
Again, Travis Day DID NOT SPEARHEAD loot 2.0. This has nothing to do with "fan glasses". In fact, many fans hailed Travis and said "Travis for D3 game director", "Travis is the only one who understands us" when he made the blue posts. Now you're saying "Travis is the one responsible for loot 2.0.". Both statements were/are completely wrong (there was also a CM post saying that Travis only communicated what was discussed internally much much earlier.)
Travis Day is not the one who single-handedly initiated and implemented loot 2.0.The entire Diablo dev team started working on the expansion early on. Just because Travis was the one who made a few blue posts that we on the outside saw as the first mentioning of loot 2.0 does not mean that it was his idea.
Name calling is not needed. What is needed is to understand how development works. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't shoot the individual worker. It's a development *team*. Every design decision in Diablo 3 is backed up by multiple people. Just stop saying "they're out of touch" or whatever.
Seriously, if your thinking would be that of the majority of people, we wouldn't have any communication with the developers anymore. You realize that developers are human beings and not some kind of Borg collective? You will always have a single person saying things, but no developer ever said "oh, I thought it would be cool to implement a weapon like this, so I went ahead and did it". It's always "we thought it would be cool to do X"; if they have an idea they throw it into one of the meetings and discuss it before implementing.
Besides, if *you* disagree with the current development direction, then that's your problem, but many people like where the game is going, and by saying "out of touch" you're implying that the game developers are making a game that you don't like. Many people do like it, however. "Get over it". Sorry.
Again, Travis Day DID NOT SPEARHEAD loot 2.0. This has nothing to do with "fan glasses". In fact, many fans hailed Travis and said "Travis for D3 game director", "Travis is the only one who understands us" when he made the blue posts. Now you're saying "Travis is the one responsible for loot 2.0.". Both statements were/are completely wrong (there was also a CM post saying that Travis only communicated what was discussed internally much much earlier.)
Travis Day is not the one who single-handedly initiated and implemented loot 2.0.The entire Diablo dev team started working on the expansion early on. Just because Travis was the one who made a few blue posts that we on the outside saw as the first mentioning of loot 2.0 does not mean that it was his idea.
Name calling is not needed. What is needed is to understand how development works. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't shoot the individual worker. It's a development *team*. Every design decision in Diablo 3 is backed up by multiple people. Just stop saying "they're out of touch" or whatever.
Seriously, if your thinking would be that of the majority of people, we wouldn't have any communication with the developers anymore. You realize that developers are human beings and not some kind of Borg collective? You will always have a single person saying things, but no developer ever said "oh, I thought it would be cool to implement a weapon like this, so I went ahead and did it". It's always "we thought it would be cool to do X"; if they have an idea they throw it into one of the meetings and discuss it before implementing.
Besides, if *you* disagree with the current development direction, then that's your problem, but many people like where the game is going, and by saying "out of touch" you're implying that the game developers are making a game that you don't like. Many people do like it, however. "Get over it". Sorry.
Just stop saying "they're out of touch" or whatever.
I think it's basically a fact that Wyatt is out-of-touch at this point.
He's made several cringeworthy statements that prove his "vision" simply doesn't mesh with what players want. The most recent was when he said he didn't want to go back and fix stat stick legendaries but would prefer just to add more. To me that's a major problem. It shows that he, as a developer, really doesn't understand the game he's making, or at least why *we* want more Starmetal Kukiris and less Angel Hair Braids.
I don't agree that the entire development team is "out-of-touch" because, clearly, they didn't follow his "lead" on that subject. So, someone, somewhere, realized that what he said was not only stupid but wouldn't really resonate with *us* if they went down that path. But it still strikes me that someone so high up could be that.... blockheaded.... about such an important subject. It shouldn't require Josh to take him into his office and paddle his ass to get him in line on something like that.
I still can't even understand what would spur on the initial comment.
Note: I split the discussion from the other thread because I think it's off-topic to the 2.1 release date discussion which was the intention of the thread, but it is an important and interesting discussion to be had. So... posts above this one are taken from this thread.
I think it's basically a fact that Wyatt is out-of-touch at this point.
He's made several cringeworthy statements that prove his "vision" simply doesn't mesh with what players want.
I hope no one minds that I split the thread and you're now the OP (and I had to edit your post). Tried to get an initial sum-up post in here (see post #10) but the forum software fooled me, once again.
Anyways, I have a question on what you said right there. Can you point me to the exact instances of "cringeworthy statements"? I went through what he said (I think it's all on Reddit, right?) and can't see anything "cringeworthy", nor anything that "doesn't mesh with what players want". Maybe I just missed something. Please point me to the instance where he's out of touch :-)
I don't have time to right now... I'm juggling quite a bit of work-related stuff IRL.
The one I'm referring to was a few weeks prior to the 2.1 PTR (I think). Wyatt made it very clear that *he* didn't see it necessary to revisit old legendaries and that his solution would be just to introduce more (presumably less-sucky) legendaries and leave the old ones alone. I know there was a thread here where Ruksak, specifically, voiced his displeasure with that statement.
Blizzard, as a whole, quickly made it known that they wanted to do the opposite. Probably because Wyatt's statement was just THAT stupid. It was so glaringly contrary to what we wanted... hell, it was so glaringly contrary to what Josh sold us on with 2.0 and RoS that I imagine someone had to give him a dressing-down over it.
Well but then he made one statement where he was out-of-touch and his fellow D3 development team members made sure that it was just one individual out of touch and the team would not follow up on those "out-of-touch" ideas. In fact, all his recent posts clearly state that he is not "out-of-touch" but exactly wants what the community wants, if you dig through his Reddit posts. I'll try to dig up the old post now, but still - everyone makes mistakes or posts a brainfart every once in a while. As long as you realize your mistake and don't stay on the path to darkness, it only helps to prevent doing similar mistakes in the future. In fact, most changes in 2.1 are exactly the opposite to what you say what Wyatt had in mind months ago, so no harm done.
It's like the AH: make the mistake once and it does never happen again ;-) As long as you learn from your mistakes, it's even better than never have made it in the first place.
Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHOVLyQFzjo (19:45 ish). Didn't find the bluepost where they backed off on this but doesn't matter, because what he said there is not what happened in 2.1, so no point in holding this against him forever. Like I said, his recent posts sound entirely different. He's "back in touch" ;-)
CD CC are needed because players like big number, maybe you don't, but majority of players (myself included) love it. Hows it exciting when you have a new shiny piece of gear and you DPS move from 100 to 105? 5m upgrade however, would blow people mind.
Salvage before ID is a problem, yes, but it's also a nature of progression. Once you played enough, you know what you need and do not need. What you don't need is automatically trash, no? Ideally, they can keep power disparity really really small but would that solve anything? If item A has merely 1% less stat than item B, would you keep item A? Or you still salvage it?
I mean the anti-diablo crowd can bitch and moan all they want. If you dont like it, play another game. New content for free is new content for free. Me and plenty I know in my clan as well as other clans im friendly with cant wait.
Shaggy is not the "anti-Diablo crowd". His passion is admirable. I don't agree with him 100%, we've had at it a few times, but the dude wants D3 to reach it's potential.
Just stop saying "they're out of touch" or whatever.
I think it's basically a fact that Wyatt is out-of-touch at this point.
He's made several cringeworthy statements that prove his "vision" simply doesn't mesh with what players want. The most recent was when he said he didn't want to go back and fix stat stick legendaries but would prefer just to add more. To me that's a major problem. It shows that he, as a developer, really doesn't understand the game he's making, or at least why *we* want more Starmetal Kukiris and less Angel Hair Braids.
I don't agree that the entire development team is "out-of-touch" because, clearly, they didn't follow his "lead" on that subject. So, someone, somewhere, realized that what he said was not only stupid but wouldn't really resonate with *us* if they went down that path. But it still strikes me that someone so high up could be that.... blockheaded.... about such an important subject. It shouldn't require Josh to take him into his office and paddle his ass to get him in line on something like that.
I still can't even understand what would spur on the initial comment.
I fully support this post.
Wyatt has caused me to recoil on several occasions due to off-putting statements. Don't ask me to recall all of them at this time, but I did take note that he was saying things that didn't jive. The most profoundly silly thing he ever said was the comment about not reiterating shit legs and just making new. Which, even from a dev logistics stance, was .....fucking dumb. Why task designs artists with making new graphics, art, lore and all the things one must do to create a new leg, when you could just add to existing ones as well as creating some new ones?
I think this episode is the most memorable. That was just bad from Wyatt and thanks god the whole team didn't agree with him and started working on adding more legendary affixes on stat sticks or at least make them roll decently (hi blackthorne's amulet).
I wouldn't say they are "out of touch" but their decisions are quite questionable. We got hammered by build diversity and still few sets total are viable for high end gameplay. Josh, while he made the game a lot better, was spamming us about how legendaries should be powerfull and we have a bunch of stat sticks (something that's being fixed after 5 months).
But i think it's just Blizzard being Blizzard, they release a product when they feel like it's decent (not perfect), and then patch it slowly, which is annoying....
Note: I split the discussion from the other thread because I think it's off-topic to the 2.1 release date discussion which was the intention of the thread, but it is an important and interesting discussion to be had. So... posts above this one are taken from this thread.
Thank you alot for cleaning the other thread up,
OT: the only thing i think they are out of touch atm is PvP, but let's be honest, they never were, i've been a pvp advocate since day 1 even with it's clear imbalances, but still i have faith in the devs, they did deliver the game we play (some just comment on it) with an awesome engine/animations etc etc, there is still alot of room for improvements in the future, keep it optimistic guys. ^^
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Oh, I'm well prepared.
I was very much looking forward to Legendary Gems. I do not like the new upgrade rules. It's taken something I really was excited for and made it such that I'm completely indifferent about them. Such a shame.
Wyatt is quickly becoming one of my least-favorite people out there. He's so fucking out-of-touch it's not even funny.
Yeah! So much to do! I'm so excited! More fuel to the Diablo 3 fire
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Wiberg-21958/hero/35061489
I don't think Travis day did a good job with loot 2.0. The music department, gameplay and art direction has always been great with D3, however, the meat and potatoes have been lacking. Yoyo balance continues to be a big problem with this game but I believe this is more of a Blizzard problem company wide than just a D3 problem.
1) Most of the devs (and CMs) do in fact play on lower/mid Torment levels, as they admitted several times. One reason for this is because they don't have the time to play as much as some of us (developer of a triple AAA game can easily become a 50-100 hours/week job), but also because the overwhelming majority of players does not play Torment 6 either. By playing casually they're experiencing what the majority of players is experiencing. They still have all the knowledge of the "endgame players" as they regularly look at the data of the game (everything is logged, of course).
2) Yes, many builds/items lack synergy. However, why you think the "math guy" is responsible for this is something I don't get. It's like sending a complaint email to the Amazon database team because you dislike the shopping cart UI. Wyatt explained in detail how the new items were brainstormed in his playtest with Jaetch (VoD here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/12981548/). There is never a single person responsible for a specific item fail or an overhaul mistake in itemization; not Travis, not Wyatt, not Josh. It's a team.
3) Again, if you think anyone did not a good job with loot 2.0 then this is Blizzard as a whole. "Travis didn't do a good job with loot 2.0" is like saying "this one developer from Apple didn't do a good job with iOS 12".
4) "Yoyo balance" is something that is part of every Blizzard game. And it is part of every other game that is considered to be relatively "balanced". The alternative is "imbalance", as in, it never gets fixed and one class/unit/item/skill is broken from day 1 till the end of the game. The reason we have yoyo balance is because Blizzard always fixes things and swings things around. You can never have perfect balance (unless you give every class similar skills such that you just change color/name but keep the mechanics and numbers). If you name any game that has "perfect balance" it's only due to the perception of the game, for example, if it's a very short-lived game like Mobas or played by only a few people. If a million people play a game for hundreds of hours, there will always be some combinations of skills and items that comes across as "imbalanced". The only thing you can do is to try and make the gap as small as possible.
This entire balance issue was actually mentioned by a blue poster a few weeks ago. It's really Utopian to believe you can ever have 5 builds for 6 classes and all those are absolutely equally balanced for the same task.
Constructive criticism is okay, but this notion of attributing general game design features to a single name just to be able to blame someone (Jay, Josh, Travis, Wyatt, ... they were all victims at some point in history) has to stop at some point. It's just not how game development works (or actually any development, for that matter). If you're dissatisfied with Diablo 3 then name it, totally fine - but stop the namecalling.
Stacking Crit hit chance, Crit Hit damage, fixing loot to not be auto salvaged before the item is ID'ed were all stuff he planned to address with loot 2.0.
All three of these still happen on a regular basis. Itemization is only marginally better than what it was in Vanilla, this is fact.
Wyatt Cheng has been out of touch since day one, it is clear to see that he plays a much different Diablo 3 than the players do. I would even throw Don Vu's name into the hat as well as being out of touch.
Maybe calling these guys out is what is needed, nobody is saying these guys aren't talented game designers, what is being said is they're grossly out of touch.
Travis Day is not the one who single-handedly initiated and implemented loot 2.0.The entire Diablo dev team started working on the expansion early on. Just because Travis was the one who made a few blue posts that we on the outside saw as the first mentioning of loot 2.0 does not mean that it was his idea.
Name calling is not needed. What is needed is to understand how development works. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't shoot the individual worker. It's a development *team*. Every design decision in Diablo 3 is backed up by multiple people. Just stop saying "they're out of touch" or whatever.
Seriously, if your thinking would be that of the majority of people, we wouldn't have any communication with the developers anymore. You realize that developers are human beings and not some kind of Borg collective? You will always have a single person saying things, but no developer ever said "oh, I thought it would be cool to implement a weapon like this, so I went ahead and did it". It's always "we thought it would be cool to do X"; if they have an idea they throw it into one of the meetings and discuss it before implementing.
Besides, if *you* disagree with the current development direction, then that's your problem, but many people like where the game is going, and by saying "out of touch" you're implying that the game developers are making a game that you don't like. Many people do like it, however. "Get over it". Sorry.
He's made several cringeworthy statements that prove his "vision" simply doesn't mesh with what players want. The most recent was when he said he didn't want to go back and fix stat stick legendaries but would prefer just to add more. To me that's a major problem. It shows that he, as a developer, really doesn't understand the game he's making, or at least why *we* want more Starmetal Kukiris and less Angel Hair Braids.
I don't agree that the entire development team is "out-of-touch" because, clearly, they didn't follow his "lead" on that subject. So, someone, somewhere, realized that what he said was not only stupid but wouldn't really resonate with *us* if they went down that path. But it still strikes me that someone so high up could be that.... blockheaded.... about such an important subject. It shouldn't require Josh to take him into his office and paddle his ass to get him in line on something like that.
I still can't even understand what would spur on the initial comment.
Anyways, I have a question on what you said right there. Can you point me to the exact instances of "cringeworthy statements"? I went through what he said (I think it's all on Reddit, right?) and can't see anything "cringeworthy", nor anything that "doesn't mesh with what players want". Maybe I just missed something. Please point me to the instance where he's out of touch :-)
The one I'm referring to was a few weeks prior to the 2.1 PTR (I think). Wyatt made it very clear that *he* didn't see it necessary to revisit old legendaries and that his solution would be just to introduce more (presumably less-sucky) legendaries and leave the old ones alone. I know there was a thread here where Ruksak, specifically, voiced his displeasure with that statement.
Blizzard, as a whole, quickly made it known that they wanted to do the opposite. Probably because Wyatt's statement was just THAT stupid. It was so glaringly contrary to what we wanted... hell, it was so glaringly contrary to what Josh sold us on with 2.0 and RoS that I imagine someone had to give him a dressing-down over it.
It's like the AH: make the mistake once and it does never happen again ;-) As long as you learn from your mistakes, it's even better than never have made it in the first place.
Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHOVLyQFzjo (19:45 ish). Didn't find the bluepost where they backed off on this but doesn't matter, because what he said there is not what happened in 2.1, so no point in holding this against him forever. Like I said, his recent posts sound entirely different. He's "back in touch" ;-)
Salvage before ID is a problem, yes, but it's also a nature of progression. Once you played enough, you know what you need and do not need. What you don't need is automatically trash, no? Ideally, they can keep power disparity really really small but would that solve anything? If item A has merely 1% less stat than item B, would you keep item A? Or you still salvage it?
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Wyatt has caused me to recoil on several occasions due to off-putting statements. Don't ask me to recall all of them at this time, but I did take note that he was saying things that didn't jive. The most profoundly silly thing he ever said was the comment about not reiterating shit legs and just making new. Which, even from a dev logistics stance, was .....fucking dumb. Why task designs artists with making new graphics, art, lore and all the things one must do to create a new leg, when you could just add to existing ones as well as creating some new ones?
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Care to link your profile? I wanna see a pro's.
Please stop using the term "what players want" and phrase it "what i want", because most disagree.
I wouldn't say they are "out of touch" but their decisions are quite questionable. We got hammered by build diversity and still few sets total are viable for high end gameplay. Josh, while he made the game a lot better, was spamming us about how legendaries should be powerfull and we have a bunch of stat sticks (something that's being fixed after 5 months).
But i think it's just Blizzard being Blizzard, they release a product when they feel like it's decent (not perfect), and then patch it slowly, which is annoying....
OT: the only thing i think they are out of touch atm is PvP, but let's be honest, they never were, i've been a pvp advocate since day 1 even with it's clear imbalances, but still i have faith in the devs, they did deliver the game we play (some just comment on it) with an awesome engine/animations etc etc, there is still alot of room for improvements in the future, keep it optimistic guys. ^^
Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...