First of all, I don't care about PvP - never PvP'ed in all my years of D2 and never expect to do so in D3. But there's one thing I find kind of odd about this announcement.
"For us it comes to a few issues, one of which is depth. Simply fighting each other with no other objectives or choices to make gets old relatively quickly."
Sure. It may well get old relatively quickly. But you know what? For the people who do care about PvP, having no PvP, not even fights without objectives, that has already gotten really old.
Why not release a simple implementation - "fighting each other with no other objectives or choices" - and then work on iterating it?
Especially given that D3 PvP is certain to need a lot of shaking down - as many people have said already, it's a PvE game at core, with massive power inflation. It's going to take a lot of tweaking to make PvP playable. Why not do that tweaking while people are just fighting meaningless duels, so when you do add more in-depth PvP features, there's already a modicum of balance in there?
Sure, but then isn't that exactly why they're adding dueling in 1.0.7?
The actual D2 players:
The gamers from that era are no longer 18 or 19 years old, we're more like late 20s even 30s - we know how the world works, we've lived with absolute rubbish games back in the day and we appreciate the up and downsides of D3. We also know that Blizzard generally still provides the best quality and content when compared to any other game developer out there.
I think to this layer of gamers the game is ok. It's not brilliant yet, but it's definitely not something to cry about every day before sleep. 40-50 bucks is not something to cry about either, hell - beer for one night could cost way more than that. D3 is a potentially fantastic platform, give it some time and it will possibly develop into superb game, just like D2 did with LOD release - because lets face it original D2 was pretty damn boring.
The i played D2 gamers:
Yep they are early 20s or even below that, yet somehow despite the simplest calculus they played D2 for many years, even the original... These guys want INSTANT GRATIFICATION. They want to whine and cry and demand things - because lets face it - the modern society rewards whining and crying and demanding - that's the only thing they know and that's the only thing they will ever do.
They are the one and only mistake Blizzard ever made - listening to QQQQqqqQQQqqqQQqqqQQQ. Back in the day Blizzard never did bother with as much 'community management' or even really reading forums. They just released content and it was a simple decision - play it if you like, if you don't - there are many other games to choose from.
Today, because of all these QQs Blizzard actually made a step forward towards community and started working with the community (unlike any other game developer out there), and the only result of them trying to 'satisfy' the 'instant gratification generation' is the incessantly increasing amount of QQ. Because now...the QQers feel empowered! Blizzard did react to them a few times and that was their biggest mistake.
Hence there will always be 2 sides to this argument, and this argument is not based on the game itself, it is rather based on the perception of the world in general and the gap between generations. There will never be any agreement about it or any solution. If 'instant gratification' is not achieved = it's shit. End of story. Screw waiting, screw everything. I paid 40 bucks i want it NOW. While the rest of us are thinking 'wdf have we done to our younger generation? Should've sent them out to work at the age of 16 like we did instead'
Cool story bro.
Constructive, solid, and legal complaining is the only way one's opinion will be listened to by companies... by the way, is this post a huge whining post anyway? lol
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Working with adobe and/or java is like pushing a paper clip against a building and expecting it to move...
The way I see it is that WoW and SC2 are still top notch games for their genres. For some reason the team behind diablo isn't nearly as good, no idea why.
The actual D2 players:
The gamers from that era are no longer 18 or 19 years old, we're more like late 20s even 30s - we know how the world works, we've lived with absolute rubbish games back in the day and we appreciate the up and downsides of D3. We also know that Blizzard generally still provides the best quality and content when compared to any other game developer out there.
I think to this layer of gamers the game is ok. It's not brilliant yet, but it's definitely not something to cry about every day before sleep. 40-50 bucks is not something to cry about either, hell - beer for one night could cost way more than that. D3 is a potentially fantastic platform, give it some time and it will possibly develop into superb game, just like D2 did with LOD release - because lets face it original D2 was pretty damn boring.
The i played D2 gamers:
Yep they are early 20s or even below that, yet somehow despite the simplest calculus they played D2 for many years, even the original... These guys want INSTANT GRATIFICATION. They want to whine and cry and demand things - because lets face it - the modern society rewards whining and crying and demanding - that's the only thing they know and that's the only thing they will ever do.
They are the one and only mistake Blizzard ever made - listening to QQQQqqqQQQqqqQQqqqQQQ. Back in the day Blizzard never did bother with as much 'community management' or even really reading forums. They just released content and it was a simple decision - play it if you like, if you don't - there are many other games to choose from.
Today, because of all these QQs Blizzard actually made a step forward towards community and started working with the community (unlike any other game developer out there), and the only result of them trying to 'satisfy' the 'instant gratification generation' is the incessantly increasing amount of QQ. Because now...the QQers feel empowered! Blizzard did react to them a few times and that was their biggest mistake.
Hence there will always be 2 sides to this argument, and this argument is not based on the game itself, it is rather based on the perception of the world in general and the gap between generations. There will never be any agreement about it or any solution. If 'instant gratification' is not achieved = it's shit. End of story. Screw waiting, screw everything. I paid 40 bucks i want it NOW. While the rest of us are thinking 'wdf have we done to our younger generation? Should've sent them out to work at the age of 16 like we did instead'
It's a shame that I can only +1, because this deserves +1000.
The actual D2 players:
The gamers from that era are no longer 18 or 19 years old, we're more like late 20s even 30s - we know how the world works, we've lived with absolute rubbish games back in the day and we appreciate the up and downsides of D3. We also know that Blizzard generally still provides the best quality and content when compared to any other game developer out there.
I think to this layer of gamers the game is ok. It's not brilliant yet, but it's definitely not something to cry about every day before sleep. 40-50 bucks is not something to cry about either, hell - beer for one night could cost way more than that. D3 is a potentially fantastic platform, give it some time and it will possibly develop into superb game, just like D2 did with LOD release - because lets face it original D2 was pretty damn boring.
The i played D2 gamers:
Yep they are early 20s or even below that, yet somehow despite the simplest calculus they played D2 for many years, even the original... These guys want INSTANT GRATIFICATION. They want to whine and cry and demand things - because lets face it - the modern society rewards whining and crying and demanding - that's the only thing they know and that's the only thing they will ever do.
They are the one and only mistake Blizzard ever made - listening to QQQQqqqQQQqqqQQqqqQQQ. Back in the day Blizzard never did bother with as much 'community management' or even really reading forums. They just released content and it was a simple decision - play it if you like, if you don't - there are many other games to choose from.
Today, because of all these QQs Blizzard actually made a step forward towards community and started working with the community (unlike any other game developer out there), and the only result of them trying to 'satisfy' the 'instant gratification generation' is the incessantly increasing amount of QQ. Because now...the QQers feel empowered! Blizzard did react to them a few times and that was their biggest mistake.
Hence there will always be 2 sides to this argument, and this argument is not based on the game itself, it is rather based on the perception of the world in general and the gap between generations. There will never be any agreement about it or any solution. If 'instant gratification' is not achieved = it's shit. End of story. Screw waiting, screw everything. I paid 40 bucks i want it NOW. While the rest of us are thinking 'wdf have we done to our younger generation? Should've sent them out to work at the age of 16 like we did instead'
It's a shame that I can only +1, because this deserves +1000.
The actual D2 players:
The gamers from that era are no longer 18 or 19 years old, we're more like late 20s even 30s - we know how the world works, we've lived with absolute rubbish games back in the day and we appreciate the up and downsides of D3. We also know that Blizzard generally still provides the best quality and content when compared to any other game developer out there.
I think to this layer of gamers the game is ok. It's not brilliant yet, but it's definitely not something to cry about every day before sleep. 40-50 bucks is not something to cry about either, hell - beer for one night could cost way more than that. D3 is a potentially fantastic platform, give it some time and it will possibly develop into superb game, just like D2 did with LOD release - because lets face it original D2 was pretty damn boring.
I'm an "actual D2 player" - played D1 and D2 for many since their releases, and am in my 30s...
...and I think that D3 is technologically a step up from both games. But gameplay, no. It might beat D1 but doesn't come close to D2, in my opinion. D2 wasn't boring to me either, even before LoD.
And the story of D3 is just total shit. I could have written a better story putting a marker in-between my toes and spinning around on a large roll of wax paper completely drunk off my ass... and that's if you read it with the vomit still on the pages. The story is absolute trash.
And Diablo's voiceover is just completely terrible. People may say, "Oh, it' just a voiceover," but when you spent over a decade opening the seals of Chaos Sanctuary to hear the chilling, "Not even death can save you from me," the Diablo voiceover from D3 just doesn't cut it.
Let me not fail to at least mention the disaster that is itemization in D3.
I'm an "actual D2 player" - played D1 and D2 for many since their releases, and am in my 30s...
...and I think that D3 is technologically a step up from both games. But gameplay, no. It might beat D1 but doesn't come close to D2, in my opinion. D2 wasn't boring to me either, even before LoD.
And the story of D3 is just total shit. I could have written a better story putting a marker in-between my toes and spinning around on a large roll of wax paper completely drunk off my ass... and that's if you read it with the vomit still on the pages. The story is absolute trash.
And Diablo's voiceover is just completely terrible. People may say, "Oh, it' just a voiceover," but when you spent over a decade opening the seals of Chaos Sanctuary to hear the chilling, "Not even death can save you from me," the Diablo voiceover from D3 just doesn't cut it.
Let me not fail to at least mention the disaster that is itemization in D3.
I agree with your story assessment, but in terms of mechanics let's wait 3 years and see how well Diablo 3 evolves and then measure it against what the developers managed to do with Diablo 2 and its expansion. One reason for that: what most of us remember is _after_ all the glorious changes to Diablo 2 and we've mostly played the almost finished game for many, many years.
I'm an "actual D2 player" - played D1 and D2 for many since their releases, and am in my 30s...
...and I think that D3 is technologically a step up from both games. But gameplay, no. It might beat D1 but doesn't come close to D2, in my opinion. D2 wasn't boring to me either, even before LoD.
And the story of D3 is just total shit. I could have written a better story putting a marker in-between my toes and spinning around on a large roll of wax paper completely drunk off my ass... and that's if you read it with the vomit still on the pages. The story is absolute trash.
And Diablo's voiceover is just completely terrible. People may say, "Oh, it' just a voiceover," but when you spent over a decade opening the seals of Chaos Sanctuary to hear the chilling, "Not even death can save you from me," the Diablo voiceover from D3 just doesn't cut it.
Let me not fail to at least mention the disaster that is itemization in D3.
I agree with your story assessment, but in terms of mechanics let's wait 3 years and see how well Diablo 3 evolves and then measure it against what the developers managed to do with Diablo 2 and its expansion. One reason for that: what most of us remember is _after_ all the glorious changes to Diablo 2 and we've mostly played the almost finished game for many, many years.
This would be great, except that Diablo I or II didn't ship with such fundamental itemization flaws and a resulting lack of gameplay depth. D3 is over-simplified to the extreme. Waiting three years for PvP is fine, but waiting for changes that make a game about item farming about item farming and not farming for gold is too long.
I'm glad to see them step back from PvP in the hopes that they start working on the underlying issues that are currently plaguing the game.
This would be great, except that Diablo I or II didn't ship with such fundamental itemization flaws and a resulting lack of gameplay depth. D3 is over-simplified to the extreme. Waiting three years for PvP is fine, but waiting for changes that make a game about item farming about item farming and not farming for gold is too long.
I'm glad to see them step back from PvP in the hopes that they start working on the underlying issues that are currently plaguing the game.
It is completely normal for a game company to casualize their game in order to bring in better profits. In fact, right now, mostly the casuals are keeping this game alive and going, while the "hardcore old school players" go around forums complaining it didn't live up to expectations after spending 500+ hours on it. It if wasn't for the huge sales that even Blizzard couldn't predict themselves the dev team would likely be even smaller with people being assigned to other projects leaving the future of Diablo to a handful of devs. Yes, RMAH brings profits but I suspect they're about as much as keeping the servers up. Yes, the servers that are running for free without needing subscriptions to play the game while keeping the "paying" RMAH usage completely optional for the players.
And Diablo 2 didn't have problems? The first several patches were only bugfixes and they were going out for months. Huge exploits and game breakers and the like. I understand you don't remember those. It's been 11 years. In fact here it is: all patches up to patch 1.07 were in their majority bug fixes, equally split between minor and major bugs. 1.07 was the first proper balance patch. And yes, that was the version that the expansion came with. Which means there wasn't a single worth mentioning balance patch up until the expansion. And don't tell me that it was because "balance was simply fine" at the start. We both know that's bullshit. Not to mention how far less theorycrafting there was in gaming in general 11 years ago.
Only 1.04 brought some quality of life things but they can't even start to compare to super major features that we've seen for D3 so far, like Monster Power (which isn't a simple /player X command), Uber bosses, Paragon leveling, huge overhaul of legendary items and so on. So far all patch notes apart from 1.0.6 have been enormous.
I understand itemization is an issue for a lot of people but I suspect Blizzard is aware of this because of the, oh, just a few million topics posted about it every week. But do you expect such a major change to be fixed in a few months WHILE developing all the other features? How many people do you think work on this game? Because in my opinion it's no more than 20-25. And would've you been happier to see no major additions to the game while the devs toil away at fixing the itemization for a few months, knowing now that the player base is not happy with them?
Sure, people now will jump up and say "well this shit could've just been released this way instead of having to fix it post-launch". Of course they have, but they didn't. They've admitted the launch could've been handled better and we'll see if they've learned their lesson with the expansion release, but now no one has connection issues apart from their own ISPs' fault. They've admitted legendary items sucked majorly at launch and they fixed those. There were exploits and dupes and they've been working hard on them if you follow the news. Botters are being banned in major waves where the entire forums of said bot communities right now are saying they've been banned and complaining that they were "guaranteed" to never be by the bot creator. The end game was not enough at start and now we have a good amount of things to do end game with MP, ubers and paragon. Can there be more? Absolutely definitely. But these were additions that could be developed in a short amount of time and they were. Larger scale things require more development and I'm sure we'll see plenty of those in the coming months.
Now. If you want to complain that D2 was better in my eyes your arguments are beyond false. If you _truly_ believe that then I suggest you go play D2 because Diablo 3 will _never_ be its predecessor and you will _never_ be happy with it. That's how video games work. If you want to complain that Torchlight 2 and/or Path of Exile are better games then what the hell are you doing here? Why cause he commotion? Why be unhappy? Go play those games, no one is stopping you. Go be happy somewhere else if you're not over here. For the money people have invested in this game they've gotten hundreds of hours of gameplay, when the average for video games nowadays is 40, sometimes down to 20, for the same price. If the journey so far has really been that poor for you then do yourself a favor and just go be happy somewhere else.
p.s. the majority of this wasn't targeted at you Nymrael. Mainly just things plaguing me for a while. I suspect I'll have to make a few more of these posts in the near future of course but this seems like a good start.
For me, Diablo 3 has to improve a lot to be more than a mediocre game with lovely visuals. Blizzard needs to get down the high horse. They say now that they are not releasing stuff until it's perfect. Well, following that logic, Diablo 3 shouldn't have shipped.
No, I don't actually think that. But I do think that there were much more mistakes with the launch of Diablo 3 than it's visible. Scrapping PVP means the game didn't evolve as expected. That would not happen if Blizzard is more open. Team Deathmatch should have been released with launch and evolve with the game. "Laser focus" on balance could have been avoided without implementing a matchmaking system... But no, Blizzard obviously considers us too stupid to create our games. And that's what really bothers me. We have no (or very little) control of our experience. Implementing Monster Power means Blizzard recognized this. But it's just a little step. I don't expect to see a much more customize-able Diablo 3, because Blizzard thinks they can give us everything we need in the game. No, they can't, it's not possible.
Now. If you want to complain that D2 was better in my eyes your arguments are beyond false. If you _truly_ believe that then I suggest you go play D2 because Diablo 3 will _never_ be its predecessor and you will _never_ be happy with it. That's how video games work. If you want to complain that Torchlight 2 and/or Path of Exile are better games then what the hell are you doing here? Why cause he commotion? Why be unhappy? Go play those games, no one is stopping you. Go be happy somewhere else if you're not over here. For the money people have invested in this game they've gotten hundreds of hours of gameplay, when the average for video games nowadays is 40, sometimes down to 20, for the same price. If the journey so far has really been that poor for you then do yourself a favor and just go be happy somewhere else.
Because it's much more fun to act like a whiney little brat on the D3 forums and complain about how bad Blizzard is than it is to pick up TL2 and quickly realize that, despite its flaws, D3 really isn't as bad as anyone makes it out to be. That little bit of perspective could crush someone's reality, you know. Like I said, the D3 "community" is not the forums. The forums, including these, are littered with armchair quarterbacks - you know, overweight, balding, 62-year-old guys who all claim they could have made that TD pass that Brady botched, but in reality couldn't squeeze their asses into a football uniform let alone throw the ball more than five yards downfield. That is the D3 "community" as represented by the majority of the forums.
The title of this thread is a prime example. Sure I can understand that people are FRUSTRATED with Blizzard's decision to push PvP back more. It FRUSTRATES me too. But "Blizzard is a Joke" is hardly a good expression of said FRUSTRATION. It's an angsty, self-entitled, teenage response to "No, son, you can't have the car keys today." And that's why it's so easy to typecast people the way that TheDemokin did because, frankly, it's pretty difficult to believe that the "feedback" we see on a daily basis is actually coming from adults.
Just look at this thread. The people who are upset tend to communicate as if they dropped out of the 3rd grade (major trolling, calling Blizzard fags, incoherent thoughts, ranting and raving, rampant bad grammar and typos). It's VERY difficult to take that in as anything but a temper tantrum from a child. If you want to be taken seriously then voice your concerns in a manner which they can be taken seriously. If you want your concerns to be ignored then act like a troll. I am willing to bet that most people would find that there was much more serious discussion of the topic if the thread weren't one giant troll from the start.
I'm an "actual D2 player" - played D1 and D2 for many since their releases, and am in my 30s...
...and I think that D3 is technologically a step up from both games. But gameplay, no. It might beat D1 but doesn't come close to D2, in my opinion. D2 wasn't boring to me either, even before LoD.
And the story of D3 is just total shit. I could have written a better story putting a marker in-between my toes and spinning around on a large roll of wax paper completely drunk off my ass... and that's if you read it with the vomit still on the pages. The story is absolute trash.
I was giving your post a chance til you went the "I COULD DO THIS BETTER THAN BLIZZARD" route. The only thing that's "absolute trash" is the number of people who claim they could do X, Y, or Z, better than people whose salaries depend on them doing a decent job of it. If you walked into a starving artists convention and proclaimed that you could paint better than all of them they'd welcome you to give it a whirl and back that big mouth up with some big action. So, instead of claiming that you can write better stories, how about you go and get hired by a major game developer and write a better story for a game that sells 10+ million copies and really show us that you're not just blowing hot air around.
I'm an "actual D2 player" - played D1 and D2 for many since their releases, and am in my 30s...
...and I think that D3 is technologically a step up from both games. But gameplay, no. It might beat D1 but doesn't come close to D2, in my opinion. D2 wasn't boring to me either, even before LoD.
And the story of D3 is just total shit. I could have written a better story putting a marker in-between my toes and spinning around on a large roll of wax paper completely drunk off my ass... and that's if you read it with the vomit still on the pages. The story is absolute trash.
And Diablo's voiceover is just completely terrible. People may say, "Oh, it' just a voiceover," but when you spent over a decade opening the seals of Chaos Sanctuary to hear the chilling, "Not even death can save you from me," the Diablo voiceover from D3 just doesn't cut it.
Let me not fail to at least mention the disaster that is itemization in D3.
I agree with your story assessment, but in terms of mechanics let's wait 3 years and see how well Diablo 3 evolves and then measure it against what the developers managed to do with Diablo 2 and its expansion. One reason for that: what most of us remember is _after_ all the glorious changes to Diablo 2 and we've mostly played the almost finished game for many, many years.
While you suggest this for players - to be a positive position in their struggles with this game - I think this was the design philosphy from Blizzard all along. That's not an angry statement; afterall, they are a corporation.
I just watched the Blizzcon videos that another poster put in on this page - the videos highlighted the Traits system and of course Deathmatch. Traits, Charms, Enchanter - all scrapped because "they don't live up to the design standards for our game." I think that excuse has happened enough to sort of pull the curtain back on the real reason: We want these for an expansion.
Its not enough to just add an act or two, a new character class or two - they need new mechanics. They designed a good game. Its going to take two expansions to finally see it.
Remember these posts today. Three years from now when we look back on the entirety of this game, with all its features - we'll see the game they promised and made us wait for. Or rather made us buy.
I'm an "actual D2 player" - played D1 and D2 for many since their releases, and am in my 30s...
...and I think that D3 is technologically a step up from both games. But gameplay, no. It might beat D1 but doesn't come close to D2, in my opinion. D2 wasn't boring to me either, even before LoD.
And the story of D3 is just total shit. I could have written a better story putting a marker in-between my toes and spinning around on a large roll of wax paper completely drunk off my ass... and that's if you read it with the vomit still on the pages. The story is absolute trash.
And Diablo's voiceover is just completely terrible. People may say, "Oh, it' just a voiceover," but when you spent over a decade opening the seals of Chaos Sanctuary to hear the chilling, "Not even death can save you from me," the Diablo voiceover from D3 just doesn't cut it.
Let me not fail to at least mention the disaster that is itemization in D3.
I agree with your story assessment, but in terms of mechanics let's wait 3 years and see how well Diablo 3 evolves and then measure it against what the developers managed to do with Diablo 2 and its expansion. One reason for that: what most of us remember is _after_ all the glorious changes to Diablo 2 and we've mostly played the almost finished game for many, many years.
So, you really think in 2012, with all these other games out there nailing it the 1st time.....with less development time......and a Company as experienced in RPGs and ARPGs and Diablo......it should take 3 years to get it right??
It should have been a much more polished and complete experience already. Blizzard already learned their lessons from D2, they shouldnt be making the same mistakes. And if they do, it shouldnt take 3 years to fix them.
I don't think Blizzard is the same as they used to be, they don't feel like they are putting in the same time and effort as they used to. They are judging their success based on subscription fees and the RMAH, and as long as they continue to be a billion dollar company, they are not going to implement a lot of the changes the game needs immediately, because to them the game is a huge success.
It's about quantity here, not quality. Which is not what I expect from Blizzard.
Sure, but then isn't that exactly why they're adding dueling in 1.0.7?
Ha. Bagstone.
get over it.
1) Really bad at what they are doing (except the art, I love it)
or..
2) They are doing this because of rea$on$.
I tend to think it's the number 2.
Cool story bro.
Constructive, solid, and legal complaining is the only way one's opinion will be listened to by companies... by the way, is this post a huge whining post anyway? lol
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Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
It's a shame that I can only +1, because this deserves +1000.
the real shame is that you gave it +1
and
To barely 1/4 of what they hyped up the game to feature. It has barely 1/4 of what D2 had.
Amazing.. Really if you watch those videos and see what we all actually ended up with. W T F happen?
Was it all removed so that could just sell a bunch of expansion packs?
W T F happened..???
Those videos make the game look so awesome.. I WANT THAT GAME!!!...lol
I doubt any of this content will make it in the expansion pack. The content that got cut was probably "not up to Blizzard standards" HAHAHA
I'm an "actual D2 player" - played D1 and D2 for many since their releases, and am in my 30s...
...and I think that D3 is technologically a step up from both games. But gameplay, no. It might beat D1 but doesn't come close to D2, in my opinion. D2 wasn't boring to me either, even before LoD.
And the story of D3 is just total shit. I could have written a better story putting a marker in-between my toes and spinning around on a large roll of wax paper completely drunk off my ass... and that's if you read it with the vomit still on the pages. The story is absolute trash.
And Diablo's voiceover is just completely terrible. People may say, "Oh, it' just a voiceover," but when you spent over a decade opening the seals of Chaos Sanctuary to hear the chilling, "Not even death can save you from me," the Diablo voiceover from D3 just doesn't cut it.
Let me not fail to at least mention the disaster that is itemization in D3.
I agree with your story assessment, but in terms of mechanics let's wait 3 years and see how well Diablo 3 evolves and then measure it against what the developers managed to do with Diablo 2 and its expansion. One reason for that: what most of us remember is _after_ all the glorious changes to Diablo 2 and we've mostly played the almost finished game for many, many years.
Ha. Bagstone.
This would be great, except that Diablo I or II didn't ship with such fundamental itemization flaws and a resulting lack of gameplay depth. D3 is over-simplified to the extreme. Waiting three years for PvP is fine, but waiting for changes that make a game about item farming about item farming and not farming for gold is too long.
I'm glad to see them step back from PvP in the hopes that they start working on the underlying issues that are currently plaguing the game.
ppl still playing cuz they have fun no matter they saying.
i love D3
It is completely normal for a game company to casualize their game in order to bring in better profits. In fact, right now, mostly the casuals are keeping this game alive and going, while the "hardcore old school players" go around forums complaining it didn't live up to expectations after spending 500+ hours on it. It if wasn't for the huge sales that even Blizzard couldn't predict themselves the dev team would likely be even smaller with people being assigned to other projects leaving the future of Diablo to a handful of devs. Yes, RMAH brings profits but I suspect they're about as much as keeping the servers up. Yes, the servers that are running for free without needing subscriptions to play the game while keeping the "paying" RMAH usage completely optional for the players.
And Diablo 2 didn't have problems? The first several patches were only bugfixes and they were going out for months. Huge exploits and game breakers and the like. I understand you don't remember those. It's been 11 years. In fact here it is: all patches up to patch 1.07 were in their majority bug fixes, equally split between minor and major bugs. 1.07 was the first proper balance patch. And yes, that was the version that the expansion came with. Which means there wasn't a single worth mentioning balance patch up until the expansion. And don't tell me that it was because "balance was simply fine" at the start. We both know that's bullshit. Not to mention how far less theorycrafting there was in gaming in general 11 years ago.
Only 1.04 brought some quality of life things but they can't even start to compare to super major features that we've seen for D3 so far, like Monster Power (which isn't a simple /player X command), Uber bosses, Paragon leveling, huge overhaul of legendary items and so on. So far all patch notes apart from 1.0.6 have been enormous.
I understand itemization is an issue for a lot of people but I suspect Blizzard is aware of this because of the, oh, just a few million topics posted about it every week. But do you expect such a major change to be fixed in a few months WHILE developing all the other features? How many people do you think work on this game? Because in my opinion it's no more than 20-25. And would've you been happier to see no major additions to the game while the devs toil away at fixing the itemization for a few months, knowing now that the player base is not happy with them?
Sure, people now will jump up and say "well this shit could've just been released this way instead of having to fix it post-launch". Of course they have, but they didn't. They've admitted the launch could've been handled better and we'll see if they've learned their lesson with the expansion release, but now no one has connection issues apart from their own ISPs' fault. They've admitted legendary items sucked majorly at launch and they fixed those. There were exploits and dupes and they've been working hard on them if you follow the news. Botters are being banned in major waves where the entire forums of said bot communities right now are saying they've been banned and complaining that they were "guaranteed" to never be by the bot creator. The end game was not enough at start and now we have a good amount of things to do end game with MP, ubers and paragon. Can there be more? Absolutely definitely. But these were additions that could be developed in a short amount of time and they were. Larger scale things require more development and I'm sure we'll see plenty of those in the coming months.
Now. If you want to complain that D2 was better in my eyes your arguments are beyond false. If you _truly_ believe that then I suggest you go play D2 because Diablo 3 will _never_ be its predecessor and you will _never_ be happy with it. That's how video games work. If you want to complain that Torchlight 2 and/or Path of Exile are better games then what the hell are you doing here? Why cause he commotion? Why be unhappy? Go play those games, no one is stopping you. Go be happy somewhere else if you're not over here. For the money people have invested in this game they've gotten hundreds of hours of gameplay, when the average for video games nowadays is 40, sometimes down to 20, for the same price. If the journey so far has really been that poor for you then do yourself a favor and just go be happy somewhere else.
p.s. the majority of this wasn't targeted at you Nymrael. Mainly just things plaguing me for a while. I suspect I'll have to make a few more of these posts in the near future of course but this seems like a good start.
Ha. Bagstone.
No, I don't actually think that. But I do think that there were much more mistakes with the launch of Diablo 3 than it's visible. Scrapping PVP means the game didn't evolve as expected. That would not happen if Blizzard is more open. Team Deathmatch should have been released with launch and evolve with the game. "Laser focus" on balance could have been avoided without implementing a matchmaking system... But no, Blizzard obviously considers us too stupid to create our games. And that's what really bothers me. We have no (or very little) control of our experience. Implementing Monster Power means Blizzard recognized this. But it's just a little step. I don't expect to see a much more customize-able Diablo 3, because Blizzard thinks they can give us everything we need in the game. No, they can't, it's not possible.
Because it's much more fun to act like a whiney little brat on the D3 forums and complain about how bad Blizzard is than it is to pick up TL2 and quickly realize that, despite its flaws, D3 really isn't as bad as anyone makes it out to be. That little bit of perspective could crush someone's reality, you know. Like I said, the D3 "community" is not the forums. The forums, including these, are littered with armchair quarterbacks - you know, overweight, balding, 62-year-old guys who all claim they could have made that TD pass that Brady botched, but in reality couldn't squeeze their asses into a football uniform let alone throw the ball more than five yards downfield. That is the D3 "community" as represented by the majority of the forums.
The title of this thread is a prime example. Sure I can understand that people are FRUSTRATED with Blizzard's decision to push PvP back more. It FRUSTRATES me too. But "Blizzard is a Joke" is hardly a good expression of said FRUSTRATION. It's an angsty, self-entitled, teenage response to "No, son, you can't have the car keys today." And that's why it's so easy to typecast people the way that TheDemokin did because, frankly, it's pretty difficult to believe that the "feedback" we see on a daily basis is actually coming from adults.
Just look at this thread. The people who are upset tend to communicate as if they dropped out of the 3rd grade (major trolling, calling Blizzard fags, incoherent thoughts, ranting and raving, rampant bad grammar and typos). It's VERY difficult to take that in as anything but a temper tantrum from a child. If you want to be taken seriously then voice your concerns in a manner which they can be taken seriously. If you want your concerns to be ignored then act like a troll. I am willing to bet that most people would find that there was much more serious discussion of the topic if the thread weren't one giant troll from the start.
EDIT
I was giving your post a chance til you went the "I COULD DO THIS BETTER THAN BLIZZARD" route. The only thing that's "absolute trash" is the number of people who claim they could do X, Y, or Z, better than people whose salaries depend on them doing a decent job of it. If you walked into a starving artists convention and proclaimed that you could paint better than all of them they'd welcome you to give it a whirl and back that big mouth up with some big action. So, instead of claiming that you can write better stories, how about you go and get hired by a major game developer and write a better story for a game that sells 10+ million copies and really show us that you're not just blowing hot air around.
While you suggest this for players - to be a positive position in their struggles with this game - I think this was the design philosphy from Blizzard all along. That's not an angry statement; afterall, they are a corporation.
I just watched the Blizzcon videos that another poster put in on this page - the videos highlighted the Traits system and of course Deathmatch. Traits, Charms, Enchanter - all scrapped because "they don't live up to the design standards for our game." I think that excuse has happened enough to sort of pull the curtain back on the real reason: We want these for an expansion.
Its not enough to just add an act or two, a new character class or two - they need new mechanics. They designed a good game. Its going to take two expansions to finally see it.
Remember these posts today. Three years from now when we look back on the entirety of this game, with all its features - we'll see the game they promised and made us wait for. Or rather made us buy.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
So, you really think in 2012, with all these other games out there nailing it the 1st time.....with less development time......and a Company as experienced in RPGs and ARPGs and Diablo......it should take 3 years to get it right??
It should have been a much more polished and complete experience already. Blizzard already learned their lessons from D2, they shouldnt be making the same mistakes. And if they do, it shouldnt take 3 years to fix them.
I don't think Blizzard is the same as they used to be, they don't feel like they are putting in the same time and effort as they used to. They are judging their success based on subscription fees and the RMAH, and as long as they continue to be a billion dollar company, they are not going to implement a lot of the changes the game needs immediately, because to them the game is a huge success.
It's about quantity here, not quality. Which is not what I expect from Blizzard.
People are upset. Let them vent.
No need to be the fan boy rubbin' salt in their wounds.