Just to start off I would like to say I am having fun with D3 right now but I am not a hardcore gamer. I have only spent about 50 hours into the game. But I have been reading the forum a lot and reading Blizzard's response to different posts. Diablo 3 is not a complete failure like some people suggested. Blizzard did test their game, a lot, unlike some other people who would like to imply otherwise. But at the end of the day, they did make some mistakes. Just a few, not many, but those mistakes lead to the out cry you hear today.
1) They did not prepare for the popularity of the game so their server team did not prepare sufficiently for launch. IMO, given their years of experience with WoW, this shouldn't happen and it seems like a mistake that amatuer company would make. No excuse.
2) They focus on the wrong thing with Inferno. Before launch, they kept saying how hard Inferno would be. It seems that they were trying to make Inferno as hard as possible. So hard in fact, that they themselves could not complete it. (And if they could not, how in the hell could they test the content properly?) That was wrong. If they have followed their own philosophy in making games, by focusing on fun, they would not have landed in the hot water that they are in right now.
Wrong assumptions:-
Hard = fun
But in reality hard doesn't always means fun, if it leads to frustration, tediousness, less build diversity and less excitement.
They of course also assume their player base taking months to reach inferno so having months to react to change things if it goes wrong. But of course it only take weeks for the players to reach inferno. Targeting hard instead of fun leads to all the trouble that it is in.
For normal, nightmare and hell difficulty though, they are targeting fun and people are having fun. How? By focusing on content that allows for build diversity.
3) Blizzard did not appreciate the importance of item/loot plays in Diablo. Why did I say that? Pre-release, they spent so much time talking about skills, runes, build diversity and even inferno but had hardly showed off their items that they designed. It is obvious to me now that they did not spend enough time on it. If they did, they would have showed them off pre-release.
This is strange and unexcusable though. Any fans of the franchise can tell you that the excitement of item drops was what kept the game going for many years. Why did they not focus more of their time at this part of the game?
Having said that though, Diablo 3 is top notch in other areas of the game, gameplay, pacing, atmosphere, lore, etc. But given their huge followings, they are of course held to a much higher standard than an average game. And without this followings, they could not have hoped to achieve the record sales that they did.
I agree with one thing , they were so focused on Inferno that they forgot they have nightmare and hell , nightmare / hell .. way too easy , unlike in diablo 2.
Honestly,
- Their skill system blows. I look at it and I see clear best choices, when you are in inferno you have very little room to play around also.
- Auto stats pretty much did ruin the game. This made items have much much bigger importance, which fails because their itemization blows so bad.
- Lack of variety in items, uniques are worthless and provide no actual unique affixes, they are just beefed up magics.
- No PvP as of yet, fact they are sticking their hands in the PvP scares the hell out of me, they can't even comprehend and handle the "core" foundation of Diablo how are they going to handle an "after thought" feature?
- Inferno while passable, is just cheap. Demon / Dark souls is hard until you learn how to play and learn the motions like a good old NES game. D3, you can learn everything, but it won't matter a damn bit if you got lesser gear or a bad roll.
- Leech blows, I want life leech and mana leech. I want to be able to build my guy so I can have unlimited resource. The Amazon outshines the DH by a ton in this factor. I don't want to be forced to use 7 different skills because the developers think it creates fun. It doesn't, forcing me to play a game I was already accustom to for over a decade in a different manner isn't fun. Why do they even have leech in the game? It is worthless thus far ha.
I agree with one thing , they were so focused on Inferno that they forgot they have nightmare and hell , nightmare / hell .. way too easy , unlike in diablo 2.
lol, WAT?
Nightmare in D3 is harder then anything short of the Ubers in D2.
the game is perfect for them bcoz for inferno u need items, itemization is bad so u need the ah, in the ah prices are stupid so u need the rmah then blizzard gets rich
D2 was faceroll easy - but it also had its cheap unfair moments. Immune bosses anyone?
D3 Nightmare was also faceroll easy. I had a hard time in Hell with my Barb because I steamrolled Nightmare so hard I went to hell still using most gear I used to kill normal Diablo.
Just sell a bunch of your items on the RMAH if you are bored. I did. I figure I can always get gear again later if I want to play again. Already made $140ish (after paypal cut) and still have another $100 or so of items on the ah. The game payed for itself so w/e. Though TBH I was pretty well geared
Honestly,
- Their skill system blows. I look at it and I see clear best choices, when you are in inferno you have very little room to play around also.
- Auto stats pretty much did ruin the game. This made items have much much bigger importance, which fails because their itemization blows so bad.
- Lack of variety in items, uniques are worthless and provide no actual unique affixes, they are just beefed up magics.
- No PvP as of yet, fact they are sticking their hands in the PvP scares the hell out of me, they can't even comprehend and handle the "core" foundation of Diablo how are they going to handle an "after thought" feature?
- Inferno while passable, is just cheap. Demon / Dark souls is hard until you learn how to play and learn the motions like a good old NES game. D3, you can learn everything, but it won't matter a damn bit if you got lesser gear or a bad roll.
- Leech blows, I want life leech and mana leech. I want to be able to build my guy so I can have unlimited resource. The Amazon outshines the DH by a ton in this factor. I don't want to be forced to use 7 different skills because the developers think it creates fun. It doesn't, forcing me to play a game I was already accustom to for over a decade in a different manner isn't fun. Why do they even have leech in the game? It is worthless thus far ha.
I can probably list crap all day, but yea.
I have to disagree with you on almost all counts. I feel the new skills system is head and shoulders above the older point based system. Yes, it needs some balance work, and yes, it does have some let downs in certain areas. Same thing with auto stats. I have yet to see a convincing argument as to why being "allowed" to spend your points however you want, but actually having to put them in one build, otherwise you're super gimped later.
I like the variety of items so far, but I will say I wish Uniques had some unique affixes. Although if memory serves, the only thing really unique about uniques was they either had the best + to skills, or gave you skills from other classes. Regular items could do the former, but I believe only uniques gave the later, and even then, I only can think of a handful of extra skills that people used, and those were the overpowered Rune Words. Other wise, uniques were just the super obvious best. I think that's just as bad as them being no better then rares in general. I'd prefer a middle ground - the very best rares are the best, but Uniques either give you a unique option (I'd love to see a unique that gives a monk barb's leap skill, for example), or are generally better, except for that 1 in a million super rare perfect item.
PvP, well, considering everything I've heard from people who played it said it was awesome, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. We'll see though.
Inferno is cheap, atm. But they have acknowledged this, have said they will change it, and, imo, probably expected it to be unbalanced. They did so because they figured that hard for them is easy for their best fans. In which case, I'm glad they started super hard, instead of having to be begged to make it hard. But, in the end, they basically did not test it, because they purposely made it too hard. I guess they went just a tad overboard.
Leech is also underpowered. I believe they also acknowledged this, and are planning to look into and fix this.
I also agree they messed up the servers. I don't know how or why. Maybe they just gave it to the incompetent intern. Or maybe they grossly underestimated sales (due to incompetent marketing dept).
Finally, I think they messed up the WD's mana. Don't get me wrong, he's my favorite class, but I just think that mana is boring and generic, and without mana pots, I think it just shows that it's a rather broken system, if the goal is to get people "into the action." Personally, I want them to expand on his Blood Ritual passive, and somehow make his mana related to his HP (maybe turn mana into stamina - skills are powered by his HP, but he has a limited stamina, preventing him from spamming anything?)
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I wish they would have focused more on items and made them a bit more interesting. The fact that lvl 50 stuff can drop in Act 4 Inferno is very disappointing to me. There are plenty of crappy lvl 60 item drops but when I get a lvl 50 item with awesome rolls... I just get pissed off.
Inferno... they're trying to fix it, we'll see how that goes. I think they got too emotional with Inferno. They got upset when people kept saying it'll be too easy so they just made it over-the-top cheap instead of fun.
//edit:: Also, another HUGE disappointment was/is the state of the AH. I'm not talking about what the AH did to the game but rather how poorly it was designed and how often it malfunctions or is taken offline. What's even more mind boggling is that the same company has a very nicely done AH with WoW and yet they had this many problems with the Diablo AH? It's hard to imagine how that happened.
I will just make my comprhensive response to this post. Understand, it is my opinion (with some fact thrown in), I am only speaking for myself - but i feel the detractors in this post are speaking for (1) a minority, and (2) lack even basic ability to track the community and the game they comlain of, otherwise they would know that Blizzard feels the same way about many of these issue as the folks crying here.
Hannibal777 -
(1 - not opinion) You do not know anything about the economics of server/systems management, thus making this complaint invalid. The cost for the amount of hardware required for the initial 48 hour period would have been ridiculous, considering it would have had to be leased and insured for at least a month - more for good hardware. And buying it just to sit on it is stupid and a waste, and thus, again, not a valid solution.
(2) The original Diablo had 3 difficulties, and most of the playerbase acknowledged that even Hell was easy. Inferno was added for hardcore players who wanted something crazy in difficulty. Everyone (even Blizzard) agrees that Inferno mode isn't hard ATM, but cheap. It didn't get much testing because, again as they acknowledged, they wanted it to start way hard, and tune it down from there. Them testing it wouldn't have been valid, due to the fact that, after testing it for months/years, difficulty information would have been anecdotal at best. And having players beta test it would have removed what should have been excitment from those it was intended for.
For many, hard *IS* fun. With the current broken state, your comment is valid for 95% of the players. Since it is being addressed, your just (1) stating the obvious, and (2) stirring the shit.
(3) Again, why would they play up the least common attribute of the game? Everyone knows that loot in Diablo games is random, so why would they waste advertising time talking about it. And in regards to loot from Act 4 Hell and beyong, again, they are addressing it. Once people can actually get upgrades to move forward in Inferno, and get legendaries that don't suck, this issue goes away.
AetherMcLoud -
(1) It is currently cheap and unfair, and slated to be fixed appropriately.
(2) there absolutely should be items with completly lame stats - these get sold for cash, or salvaged for crafting. Random *GOOD* loot everytime would be more lame, as then you would get upgrades constantly, have little to sell other players, no need for crafting, and no drive to continue farming. Think - then type.
(3) Only a few active builds due to broken Inferno difficulty - again, being fixed, after which many more builds will be viable. Maybe not in the beginning, when you first get there from Hell - but seriously, if you can't be bothered with a gearing curve and having to use different builds as you advance through it, you shouldn't be in Inferno anyways.
Ultrazerg -
No easier than D2 was. Gear came to easily, and required very little farming to get to the end. You only farmed significantly for BiS items, or to try and trade them, or farm for other classes.
Kulin -
The good 'ole "just like WoW" argument. Except, it isn't. Most of the old devs left. Some of made "Hellgate: London" - clearly the pinnacle of this genres development. I don't know the devs minds, but the stat changes were prolly in some way related to crafting again. If the piece was better for more builds, there would be less salvaging, and more stuff on the AH, which impairs the use of 2 game systems. The graphics are perfectly fine for the type of game - good enough to convey all the information needed, performs well enough as to not cause hitches or behavior that gets you killed, and basic enough that 7+million people can play it. However, it can't see it looking like WoW at all - and I justed logged in there to check.
Adon -
(1) How so? Through Hell, you can make tons of viable builds. And come 1.0.3 more builds will be viable in Inferno, providing to make an effort to get geared up (via farming or AH, at your discretion). And it is hands-down better than D1/D2, where you had tons of choice, but most weren't meaningful at all, and everyone used the same/similar builds at endgame anyways, so i am not sure what point your trying to make here.
(2) and (3) Auto-stats didn't hurt anything, broken itemization for Inferno is an issue, though. And with it being fixed, that issue goes away. Legendaries being addressed will also fix the issue with them.
(4) If it wasn't ready, why would you want it any sooner? Not to mention, if they launched D3 at the level of readiness it was, think who much less ready PvP was. Besides which, you seem to think PvP is a core game system - they have stated it is not. Game won't be balanced for it, gear won't be changed for it, the only effort towards balance being matchmaking against people in similar gear, and similar matchmaking scores.
(5) A above addressed - it's broken, not cheap. Cheap implies it is intended to be this way, which, if you followed any info on the game, you would know it was not.
(6) Again, follow the news of the game you'r bashing. They have already stated LoH is intended for lower levels of gear, while LL is intended for higher levels of gear, and intended to feel overpowered and allow easy farming.
You probably could list crap all day, but that's exactly what your list is - crap.
KdLol -
(1) Loot issues in regards to drop rates are being addressed - in regards to having crap stats, they are for salvage/selling. You don't get good loot all the time, it is a farming game. If you came in not expecting that, you are in the worng game.
GonFreekz -
Pure conjecture - the current need to use the AH being related to them intentionaly causing it is rumormongering; besides which, if the case, why would they be fixing it?
Ruppgu -
Again, with someone who reads these forums to complain, but doesn't bother reading them to understand anything going on from Blizzards angle. If they are fixing the difficulty, and fixing the drop rates/qualities, then why would you still be stating they intended to do it that way.
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I can understand some disappointment, but seriously, this post, after Blizzard telling us all the intended fixes, is simply retarded. There are people that have some need to sit on the forums and post non-stop about how the game could be better. Well, folks, this ain't Bioware, and they won't sacrifice their artistic integrity (thanks! EA) to do what their crybaby players wan't. They will work to adjust the game to meet their expectations while making all the systems *they* want in *their* game accessible to their players. If you don't ike the game they made, don't play it. But you should really make some effort to research what you are crying about before starting yet another post on the failures of the game, and looking like a jackass just needing to throw their two cents in.
I agree with one thing , they were so focused on Inferno that they forgot they have nightmare and hell , nightmare / hell .. way too easy , unlike in diablo 2.
lol, WAT?
Nightmare in D3 is harder then anything short of the Ubers in D2.
D2 is literally faceroll easy.
I hope you're trolling.
I hope YOUR trolling, it has been a commonly accepted fact that D2 is NOT HARD, even after many patches trying to make it harder, the simple fact remains, you can EASILY outlevel the content.
Most people just powerlevel to 60 or 80 in a day or two when rolling a new character now, its been like that for YEARS.
I dont think I died in PVE D2 even once in the last 6+ YEARS, I cannot recall the last time I had a HC character die in D2.... (In PvE)
I will just make my comprhensive response to this post. Understand, it is my opinion (with some fact thrown in), I am only speaking for myself - but i feel the detractors in this post are speaking for (1) a minority, and (2) lack even basic ability to track the community and the game they comlain of, otherwise they would know that Blizzard feels the same way about many of these issue as the folks crying here.
Hannibal777 -
(1 - not opinion) You do not know anything about the economics of server/systems management, thus making this complaint invalid. The cost for the amount of hardware required for the initial 48 hour period would have been ridiculous, considering it would have had to be leased and insured for at least a month - more for good hardware. And buying it just to sit on it is stupid and a waste, and thus, again, not a valid solution.
lol.... funny how your "FACT" isn't true. I work for an online tax company and guess what we do when the tax season rolls around.... WE PUT UP MORE SERVERS BECAUSE THE DEMAND WILL BE HIGHER THAN NORMAL. It's not "ridiculous", it's required to make money in this industry. Please don't play the money card when it comes to servers. When you expect a high amount of traffic you put more temp servers online. Blizzard is just in an interesting place where they can get away with crappy service because it's expected by a lot of their fan boys.
I will just make my comprhensive response to this post. Understand, it is my opinion (with some fact thrown in), I am only speaking for myself - but i feel the detractors in this post are speaking for (1) a minority, and (2) lack even basic ability to track the community and the game they comlain of, otherwise they would know that Blizzard feels the same way about many of these issue as the folks crying here.
Hannibal777 -
(1 - not opinion) You do not know anything about the economics of server/systems management, thus making this complaint invalid. The cost for the amount of hardware required for the initial 48 hour period would have been ridiculous, considering it would have had to be leased and insured for at least a month - more for good hardware. And buying it just to sit on it is stupid and a waste, and thus, again, not a valid solution.
lol.... funny how your "FACT" isn't true. I work for an online tax company and guess what we do when the tax season rolls around.... WE PUT UP MORE SERVERS BECAUSE THE DEMAND WILL BE HIGHER THAN NORMAL. It's not "ridiculous", it's required to make money in this industry. Please don't play the money card when it comes to servers. When you expect a high amount of traffic you put more temp servers online. Blizzard is just in an interesting place where they can get away with crappy service because it's expected by a lot of their fan boys.
Thats cute that you think your online tax company gets anywhere near the volume and stress of Diablo 3's servers. Or has anywhere near the complexity of game software.
Yes, Blizzard dropped the ball a bit, but they exceeded the full year sales projections by 1.5 MILLION players in the first WEEK. I would like for you to show me any servers anywhere that have been hit THAT hard all at once, kinda hard to hold Blizzard to a standard that does not even exist yet.
BTW... please don't be a total fan boy and disregard all of the current issues with the game just because Blizzard says they plan on fixing them in a future patch. You can't do that until after they make the changes and the community gets to see what sort of effect the changes had on the game.
I'm happy that they plan on adjusting Inferno damage and buffing legendary's. Do we know that this change will be enough to make more builds viable? no. Do we know if they'll be adding interesting stats to legendary's? Again, the answer is no, we only know that they will be "buffing" them. For all we know it could be as lame as increasing their primary stats. People will still have the compliant that the loot in D3 is pretty boring.
I'm pulling for Blizzard because I think if they fix Inferno in a way that A) Allows more builds, B.) Allows more strategy (no more 1 shots) and C) Allows better drops (imo this won't happen because lvl 50 gear will still drop in Act 4 inferno which is my compliant) then this will be an amazing game. Even better if they add some interesting stats onto the gear.
TLDR: We'll see how future patches affect the current mainstream complaints, but to completely disregard current complaints with "Blizzard will soon fix that!" is just a bit crazy.
I will just make my comprhensive response to this post. Understand, it is my opinion (with some fact thrown in), I am only speaking for myself - but i feel the detractors in this post are speaking for (1) a minority, and (2) lack even basic ability to track the community and the game they comlain of, otherwise they would know that Blizzard feels the same way about many of these issue as the folks crying here.
Hannibal777 -
(1 - not opinion) You do not know anything about the economics of server/systems management, thus making this complaint invalid. The cost for the amount of hardware required for the initial 48 hour period would have been ridiculous, considering it would have had to be leased and insured for at least a month - more for good hardware. And buying it just to sit on it is stupid and a waste, and thus, again, not a valid solution.
(2) The original Diablo had 3 difficulties, and most of the playerbase acknowledged that even Hell was easy. Inferno was added for hardcore players who wanted something crazy in difficulty. Everyone (even Blizzard) agrees that Inferno mode isn't hard ATM, but cheap. It didn't get much testing because, again as they acknowledged, they wanted it to start way hard, and tune it down from there. Them testing it wouldn't have been valid, due to the fact that, after testing it for months/years, difficulty information would have been anecdotal at best. And having players beta test it would have removed what should have been excitment from those it was intended for.
For many, hard *IS* fun. With the current broken state, your comment is valid for 95% of the players. Since it is being addressed, your just (1) stating the obvious, and (2) stirring the shit.
(3) Again, why would they play up the least common attribute of the game? Everyone knows that loot in Diablo games is random, so why would they waste advertising time talking about it. And in regards to loot from Act 4 Hell and beyong, again, they are addressing it. Once people can actually get upgrades to move forward in Inferno, and get legendaries that don't suck, this issue goes away.
AetherMcLoud -
(1) It is currently cheap and unfair, and slated to be fixed appropriately.
(2) there absolutely should be items with completly lame stats - these get sold for cash, or salvaged for crafting. Random *GOOD* loot everytime would be more lame, as then you would get upgrades constantly, have little to sell other players, no need for crafting, and no drive to continue farming. Think - then type.
(3) Only a few active builds due to broken Inferno difficulty - again, being fixed, after which many more builds will be viable. Maybe not in the beginning, when you first get there from Hell - but seriously, if you can't be bothered with a gearing curve and having to use different builds as you advance through it, you shouldn't be in Inferno anyways.
Ultrazerg -
No easier than D2 was. Gear came to easily, and required very little farming to get to the end. You only farmed significantly for BiS items, or to try and trade them, or farm for other classes.
Kulin -
The good 'ole "just like WoW" argument. Except, it isn't. Most of the old devs left. Some of made "Hellgate: London" - clearly the pinnacle of this genres development. I don't know the devs minds, but the stat changes were prolly in some way related to crafting again. If the piece was better for more builds, there would be less salvaging, and more stuff on the AH, which impairs the use of 2 game systems. The graphics are perfectly fine for the type of game - good enough to convey all the information needed, performs well enough as to not cause hitches or behavior that gets you killed, and basic enough that 7+million people can play it. However, it can't see it looking like WoW at all - and I justed logged in there to check.
Adon -
(1) How so? Through Hell, you can make tons of viable builds. And come 1.0.3 more builds will be viable in Inferno, providing to make an effort to get geared up (via farming or AH, at your discretion). And it is hands-down better than D1/D2, where you had tons of choice, but most weren't meaningful at all, and everyone used the same/similar builds at endgame anyways, so i am not sure what point your trying to make here.
(2) and (3) Auto-stats didn't hurt anything, broken itemization for Inferno is an issue, though. And with it being fixed, that issue goes away. Legendaries being addressed will also fix the issue with them.
(4) If it wasn't ready, why would you want it any sooner? Not to mention, if they launched D3 at the level of readiness it was, think who much less ready PvP was. Besides which, you seem to think PvP is a core game system - they have stated it is not. Game won't be balanced for it, gear won't be changed for it, the only effort towards balance being matchmaking against people in similar gear, and similar matchmaking scores.
(5) A above addressed - it's broken, not cheap. Cheap implies it is intended to be this way, which, if you followed any info on the game, you would know it was not.
(6) Again, follow the news of the game you'r bashing. They have already stated LoH is intended for lower levels of gear, while LL is intended for higher levels of gear, and intended to feel overpowered and allow easy farming.
You probably could list crap all day, but that's exactly what your list is - crap.
KdLol -
(1) Loot issues in regards to drop rates are being addressed - in regards to having crap stats, they are for salvage/selling. You don't get good loot all the time, it is a farming game. If you came in not expecting that, you are in the worng game.
GonFreekz -
Pure conjecture - the current need to use the AH being related to them intentionaly causing it is rumormongering; besides which, if the case, why would they be fixing it?
Ruppgu -
Again, with someone who reads these forums to complain, but doesn't bother reading them to understand anything going on from Blizzards angle. If they are fixing the difficulty, and fixing the drop rates/qualities, then why would you still be stating they intended to do it that way.
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I can understand some disappointment, but seriously, this post, after Blizzard telling us all the intended fixes, is simply retarded. There are people that have some need to sit on the forums and post non-stop about how the game could be better. Well, folks, this ain't Bioware, and they won't sacrifice their artistic integrity (thanks! EA) to do what their crybaby players wan't. They will work to adjust the game to meet their expectations while making all the systems *they* want in *their* game accessible to their players. If you don't ike the game they made, don't play it. But you should really make some effort to research what you are crying about before starting yet another post on the failures of the game, and looking like a jackass just needing to throw their two cents in.
Wow, what a nice post. Did not expect to see such coherent text on Diablofans forums. Almost exactly what I was thinking when reading some of the previous posts you replied to.
Ruppgu - I am not a fanboy, I agree the game has issues. What I don't like is people being unconstructive, or simply downright uneducated, in their posts. If patch 1.0.3 had come out, and not solved any of the issue, *THAT* would have been a good time for a post like this. Now, 4 weeks after launch, discussing issues that are not only old, beaten, and tired, but slated to be fixed, is just wasting peoples time. It implies the OP has an axe to grind, or simply out to inspire negative sentiment against blizzard.
Mr Tax Man - adding a few - even 10 or 15 - servers to your tax company is nowhere near the same scale of investment. The financial firm I worked for as a server admin probably spent more in research on server scaling and logistics of handling bursts in user activity than you earn in a year - unless you work for H&R Block, in which case you *may* be close.
EDIT: The crappy drops are there for a reason, I believe. (1) to provide crafting materials, and (2) to generate gold. Admittedly, only 2 is at all useful currently, with the cost and general fail rate of crafting currently, but I expect it will get improved.
I can understand some disappointment, but seriously, this post, after Blizzard telling us all the intended fixes, is simply retarded.
I appreciate your response, thoughtful, but I didn't expect the anger. A forum afterall is for discussion. I thought my original post was no less thoughtful. I respect your opinion but there is one point I have to disagree, regarding items.
You said that, " Everyone knows that loot in Diablo games is random, so why would they waste advertising time talking about it."
This shows a poor understanding of what the players want. Players in D2 were not excited about the random loots, while functional were not what they were farming for. Players remembered the unique items because they were fun and exciting and what they would like to farm for. E.g. Windforce. I still think Blizzard didn't understand this completely, hence we have these poorly designed legendaries. They have dropped the ball on this one.
They may come to the realization now and will be making the changes necessary and I do hope they succeed (for my sake as well so I have more fun things to play with)
Not angry, merely frustrated. Like I said previously, there have been a month of these posts already, so new ones rehashing the same content just become a waste of space that other more relevant content could occupy. Especially because i am lazy, and only click on links from the front page
I will revise my stance regarding loot - Legendaries could have been "legendary" without being OP BiS pieces, like they were in D2. Just having them be close enough that a choice could be made between perfect magic/rare items would have helped tremendously. Hopefully the update will bring them to this level, where they can server some purpose other than "well worth vendoring".
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1) They did not prepare for the popularity of the game so their server team did not prepare sufficiently for launch. IMO, given their years of experience with WoW, this shouldn't happen and it seems like a mistake that amatuer company would make. No excuse.
2) They focus on the wrong thing with Inferno. Before launch, they kept saying how hard Inferno would be. It seems that they were trying to make Inferno as hard as possible. So hard in fact, that they themselves could not complete it. (And if they could not, how in the hell could they test the content properly?) That was wrong. If they have followed their own philosophy in making games, by focusing on fun, they would not have landed in the hot water that they are in right now.
Wrong assumptions:-
Hard = fun
But in reality hard doesn't always means fun, if it leads to frustration, tediousness, less build diversity and less excitement.
They of course also assume their player base taking months to reach inferno so having months to react to change things if it goes wrong. But of course it only take weeks for the players to reach inferno. Targeting hard instead of fun leads to all the trouble that it is in.
For normal, nightmare and hell difficulty though, they are targeting fun and people are having fun. How? By focusing on content that allows for build diversity.
3) Blizzard did not appreciate the importance of item/loot plays in Diablo. Why did I say that? Pre-release, they spent so much time talking about skills, runes, build diversity and even inferno but had hardly showed off their items that they designed. It is obvious to me now that they did not spend enough time on it. If they did, they would have showed them off pre-release.
This is strange and unexcusable though. Any fans of the franchise can tell you that the excitement of item drops was what kept the game going for many years. Why did they not focus more of their time at this part of the game?
Having said that though, Diablo 3 is top notch in other areas of the game, gameplay, pacing, atmosphere, lore, etc. But given their huge followings, they are of course held to a much higher standard than an average game. And without this followings, they could not have hoped to achieve the record sales that they did.
- Their skill system blows. I look at it and I see clear best choices, when you are in inferno you have very little room to play around also.
- Auto stats pretty much did ruin the game. This made items have much much bigger importance, which fails because their itemization blows so bad.
- Lack of variety in items, uniques are worthless and provide no actual unique affixes, they are just beefed up magics.
- No PvP as of yet, fact they are sticking their hands in the PvP scares the hell out of me, they can't even comprehend and handle the "core" foundation of Diablo how are they going to handle an "after thought" feature?
- Inferno while passable, is just cheap. Demon / Dark souls is hard until you learn how to play and learn the motions like a good old NES game. D3, you can learn everything, but it won't matter a damn bit if you got lesser gear or a bad roll.
- Leech blows, I want life leech and mana leech. I want to be able to build my guy so I can have unlimited resource. The Amazon outshines the DH by a ton in this factor. I don't want to be forced to use 7 different skills because the developers think it creates fun. It doesn't, forcing me to play a game I was already accustom to for over a decade in a different manner isn't fun. Why do they even have leech in the game? It is worthless thus far ha.
I can probably list crap all day, but yea.
99% of the item combinations are utterly, +str + dex + int all in 1 item
What keeps everyone plays the game is lootz, if the lootz are bad, then ppl will get disappointed and stop playing it.
lol, WAT?
Nightmare in D3 is harder then anything short of the Ubers in D2.
D2 is literally faceroll easy.
D3 Nightmare was also faceroll easy. I had a hard time in Hell with my Barb because I steamrolled Nightmare so hard I went to hell still using most gear I used to kill normal Diablo.
I have to disagree with you on almost all counts. I feel the new skills system is head and shoulders above the older point based system. Yes, it needs some balance work, and yes, it does have some let downs in certain areas. Same thing with auto stats. I have yet to see a convincing argument as to why being "allowed" to spend your points however you want, but actually having to put them in one build, otherwise you're super gimped later.
I like the variety of items so far, but I will say I wish Uniques had some unique affixes. Although if memory serves, the only thing really unique about uniques was they either had the best + to skills, or gave you skills from other classes. Regular items could do the former, but I believe only uniques gave the later, and even then, I only can think of a handful of extra skills that people used, and those were the overpowered Rune Words. Other wise, uniques were just the super obvious best. I think that's just as bad as them being no better then rares in general. I'd prefer a middle ground - the very best rares are the best, but Uniques either give you a unique option (I'd love to see a unique that gives a monk barb's leap skill, for example), or are generally better, except for that 1 in a million super rare perfect item.
PvP, well, considering everything I've heard from people who played it said it was awesome, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. We'll see though.
Inferno is cheap, atm. But they have acknowledged this, have said they will change it, and, imo, probably expected it to be unbalanced. They did so because they figured that hard for them is easy for their best fans. In which case, I'm glad they started super hard, instead of having to be begged to make it hard. But, in the end, they basically did not test it, because they purposely made it too hard. I guess they went just a tad overboard.
Leech is also underpowered. I believe they also acknowledged this, and are planning to look into and fix this.
I also agree they messed up the servers. I don't know how or why. Maybe they just gave it to the incompetent intern. Or maybe they grossly underestimated sales (due to incompetent marketing dept).
Finally, I think they messed up the WD's mana. Don't get me wrong, he's my favorite class, but I just think that mana is boring and generic, and without mana pots, I think it just shows that it's a rather broken system, if the goal is to get people "into the action." Personally, I want them to expand on his Blood Ritual passive, and somehow make his mana related to his HP (maybe turn mana into stamina - skills are powered by his HP, but he has a limited stamina, preventing him from spamming anything?)
Inferno... they're trying to fix it, we'll see how that goes. I think they got too emotional with Inferno. They got upset when people kept saying it'll be too easy so they just made it over-the-top cheap instead of fun.
//edit:: Also, another HUGE disappointment was/is the state of the AH. I'm not talking about what the AH did to the game but rather how poorly it was designed and how often it malfunctions or is taken offline. What's even more mind boggling is that the same company has a very nicely done AH with WoW and yet they had this many problems with the Diablo AH? It's hard to imagine how that happened.
Hannibal777 -
(1 - not opinion) You do not know anything about the economics of server/systems management, thus making this complaint invalid. The cost for the amount of hardware required for the initial 48 hour period would have been ridiculous, considering it would have had to be leased and insured for at least a month - more for good hardware. And buying it just to sit on it is stupid and a waste, and thus, again, not a valid solution.
(2) The original Diablo had 3 difficulties, and most of the playerbase acknowledged that even Hell was easy. Inferno was added for hardcore players who wanted something crazy in difficulty. Everyone (even Blizzard) agrees that Inferno mode isn't hard ATM, but cheap. It didn't get much testing because, again as they acknowledged, they wanted it to start way hard, and tune it down from there. Them testing it wouldn't have been valid, due to the fact that, after testing it for months/years, difficulty information would have been anecdotal at best. And having players beta test it would have removed what should have been excitment from those it was intended for.
For many, hard *IS* fun. With the current broken state, your comment is valid for 95% of the players. Since it is being addressed, your just (1) stating the obvious, and (2) stirring the shit.
(3) Again, why would they play up the least common attribute of the game? Everyone knows that loot in Diablo games is random, so why would they waste advertising time talking about it. And in regards to loot from Act 4 Hell and beyong, again, they are addressing it. Once people can actually get upgrades to move forward in Inferno, and get legendaries that don't suck, this issue goes away.
AetherMcLoud -
(1) It is currently cheap and unfair, and slated to be fixed appropriately.
(2) there absolutely should be items with completly lame stats - these get sold for cash, or salvaged for crafting. Random *GOOD* loot everytime would be more lame, as then you would get upgrades constantly, have little to sell other players, no need for crafting, and no drive to continue farming. Think - then type.
(3) Only a few active builds due to broken Inferno difficulty - again, being fixed, after which many more builds will be viable. Maybe not in the beginning, when you first get there from Hell - but seriously, if you can't be bothered with a gearing curve and having to use different builds as you advance through it, you shouldn't be in Inferno anyways.
Ultrazerg -
No easier than D2 was. Gear came to easily, and required very little farming to get to the end. You only farmed significantly for BiS items, or to try and trade them, or farm for other classes.
Kulin -
The good 'ole "just like WoW" argument. Except, it isn't. Most of the old devs left. Some of made "Hellgate: London" - clearly the pinnacle of this genres development. I don't know the devs minds, but the stat changes were prolly in some way related to crafting again. If the piece was better for more builds, there would be less salvaging, and more stuff on the AH, which impairs the use of 2 game systems. The graphics are perfectly fine for the type of game - good enough to convey all the information needed, performs well enough as to not cause hitches or behavior that gets you killed, and basic enough that 7+million people can play it. However, it can't see it looking like WoW at all - and I justed logged in there to check.
Adon -
(1) How so? Through Hell, you can make tons of viable builds. And come 1.0.3 more builds will be viable in Inferno, providing to make an effort to get geared up (via farming or AH, at your discretion). And it is hands-down better than D1/D2, where you had tons of choice, but most weren't meaningful at all, and everyone used the same/similar builds at endgame anyways, so i am not sure what point your trying to make here.
(2) and (3) Auto-stats didn't hurt anything, broken itemization for Inferno is an issue, though. And with it being fixed, that issue goes away. Legendaries being addressed will also fix the issue with them.
(4) If it wasn't ready, why would you want it any sooner? Not to mention, if they launched D3 at the level of readiness it was, think who much less ready PvP was. Besides which, you seem to think PvP is a core game system - they have stated it is not. Game won't be balanced for it, gear won't be changed for it, the only effort towards balance being matchmaking against people in similar gear, and similar matchmaking scores.
(5) A above addressed - it's broken, not cheap. Cheap implies it is intended to be this way, which, if you followed any info on the game, you would know it was not.
(6) Again, follow the news of the game you'r bashing. They have already stated LoH is intended for lower levels of gear, while LL is intended for higher levels of gear, and intended to feel overpowered and allow easy farming.
You probably could list crap all day, but that's exactly what your list is - crap.
KdLol -
(1) Loot issues in regards to drop rates are being addressed - in regards to having crap stats, they are for salvage/selling. You don't get good loot all the time, it is a farming game. If you came in not expecting that, you are in the worng game.
GonFreekz -
Pure conjecture - the current need to use the AH being related to them intentionaly causing it is rumormongering; besides which, if the case, why would they be fixing it?
Ruppgu -
Again, with someone who reads these forums to complain, but doesn't bother reading them to understand anything going on from Blizzards angle. If they are fixing the difficulty, and fixing the drop rates/qualities, then why would you still be stating they intended to do it that way.
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I can understand some disappointment, but seriously, this post, after Blizzard telling us all the intended fixes, is simply retarded. There are people that have some need to sit on the forums and post non-stop about how the game could be better. Well, folks, this ain't Bioware, and they won't sacrifice their artistic integrity (thanks! EA) to do what their crybaby players wan't. They will work to adjust the game to meet their expectations while making all the systems *they* want in *their* game accessible to their players. If you don't ike the game they made, don't play it. But you should really make some effort to research what you are crying about before starting yet another post on the failures of the game, and looking like a jackass just needing to throw their two cents in.
I hope YOUR trolling, it has been a commonly accepted fact that D2 is NOT HARD, even after many patches trying to make it harder, the simple fact remains, you can EASILY outlevel the content.
Most people just powerlevel to 60 or 80 in a day or two when rolling a new character now, its been like that for YEARS.
I dont think I died in PVE D2 even once in the last 6+ YEARS, I cannot recall the last time I had a HC character die in D2.... (In PvE)
lol.... funny how your "FACT" isn't true. I work for an online tax company and guess what we do when the tax season rolls around.... WE PUT UP MORE SERVERS BECAUSE THE DEMAND WILL BE HIGHER THAN NORMAL. It's not "ridiculous", it's required to make money in this industry. Please don't play the money card when it comes to servers. When you expect a high amount of traffic you put more temp servers online. Blizzard is just in an interesting place where they can get away with crappy service because it's expected by a lot of their fan boys.
Thats cute that you think your online tax company gets anywhere near the volume and stress of Diablo 3's servers. Or has anywhere near the complexity of game software.
Yes, Blizzard dropped the ball a bit, but they exceeded the full year sales projections by 1.5 MILLION players in the first WEEK. I would like for you to show me any servers anywhere that have been hit THAT hard all at once, kinda hard to hold Blizzard to a standard that does not even exist yet.
I'm happy that they plan on adjusting Inferno damage and buffing legendary's. Do we know that this change will be enough to make more builds viable? no. Do we know if they'll be adding interesting stats to legendary's? Again, the answer is no, we only know that they will be "buffing" them. For all we know it could be as lame as increasing their primary stats. People will still have the compliant that the loot in D3 is pretty boring.
I'm pulling for Blizzard because I think if they fix Inferno in a way that A) Allows more builds, B.) Allows more strategy (no more 1 shots) and C) Allows better drops (imo this won't happen because lvl 50 gear will still drop in Act 4 inferno which is my compliant) then this will be an amazing game. Even better if they add some interesting stats onto the gear.
TLDR: We'll see how future patches affect the current mainstream complaints, but to completely disregard current complaints with "Blizzard will soon fix that!" is just a bit crazy.
Wow, what a nice post. Did not expect to see such coherent text on Diablofans forums. Almost exactly what I was thinking when reading some of the previous posts you replied to.
Mr Tax Man - adding a few - even 10 or 15 - servers to your tax company is nowhere near the same scale of investment. The financial firm I worked for as a server admin probably spent more in research on server scaling and logistics of handling bursts in user activity than you earn in a year - unless you work for H&R Block, in which case you *may* be close.
EDIT: The crappy drops are there for a reason, I believe. (1) to provide crafting materials, and (2) to generate gold. Admittedly, only 2 is at all useful currently, with the cost and general fail rate of crafting currently, but I expect it will get improved.
I appreciate your response, thoughtful, but I didn't expect the anger. A forum afterall is for discussion. I thought my original post was no less thoughtful. I respect your opinion but there is one point I have to disagree, regarding items.
You said that, " Everyone knows that loot in Diablo games is random, so why would they waste advertising time talking about it."
This shows a poor understanding of what the players want. Players in D2 were not excited about the random loots, while functional were not what they were farming for. Players remembered the unique items because they were fun and exciting and what they would like to farm for. E.g. Windforce. I still think Blizzard didn't understand this completely, hence we have these poorly designed legendaries. They have dropped the ball on this one.
They may come to the realization now and will be making the changes necessary and I do hope they succeed (for my sake as well so I have more fun things to play with)
I will revise my stance regarding loot - Legendaries could have been "legendary" without being OP BiS pieces, like they were in D2. Just having them be close enough that a choice could be made between perfect magic/rare items would have helped tremendously. Hopefully the update will bring them to this level, where they can server some purpose other than "well worth vendoring".