A lengthy forum post written by DrothVader - MVP on the state of RoS during the F&F beta.
I'll provide the link to the thread on the battle.net forums as well as post it here with a spoiler tag so it doesn't create a huge wall of text. Link to the forum post:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11307900907
Now, I say all of this with no ill will towards anyone. I don’t mean to cause any unrest, or upset people, but I feel what I have to say has to be said for the future of Reaper of Souls.
I speak for nobody but myself, and I am being absolutely 100% truthful when I say that I am disappointed with Reaper of Souls since the Friends and Family push ended. I spoke so highly of the development of Diablo III and how many amazing improvements were coming down the pipeline, but I fear I might have spoken too soon.
There are some really great and amazing features that have come out in the last push. One of them being able see what type of elemental damage each skill does instead of having to guess. That is a very welcomed addition. Even then, there are a lot of great things this expansion adds which are Rifts and Bounties.
Rifts have so much amazing potential that I feel is absolutely wasted. The core design behind them is great. I love being able to play randomized dungeons with randomized enemies. But even after a while, that can get boring and stale. Not quite as stale as it would be if you were doing something like CotA runs, but still it gets pretty monotonous after a while. Then there’s literally no incentive to finish the dungeons which makes them feel unpolished and bland. On top of that, they’re no more rewarding than a bounty run anyway which makes them even more underwhelming. All of that said though, I still welcome rifts anyway.
I was so excited when I played the Friends and Family push. Sure, there were quite a few bugs that still needed ironed out, but overall the progression felt good. It felt natural… Now, the droprates on Legendaries might have been a little too high, but it didn’t need adjusted much. Maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of what they were during the F&F.
Now when I play I don’t have that feeling of the next greatest drop being around the corner… I have this feeling that I am never going to be able to find anything worthwhile. Also, given the fact that Legendaries almost never drop, any that does isn’t worth using because I was able to find a better rare in the meantime thanks to Enchanting. Now every time I am even lucky enough to find one, I have to think to myself “Is it really worth making a 10% or even higher concession in DPS just so shrines last 5 times longer?” More often than not, that answer is no. So now when I do find a Legendary, it has to be more powerful than the rare I had obtained…
These droprates are awful. So awful in fact that the BoA model is no longer justifiable which is a complete shame given how hard I fought for BoA. I was among the first, if not the very first who publicly advocated on a consistent basis that the top end of gear needed to be BoA. I know this model can and will work, but not like this.
Now I see even in the latest push the droprates were still not raised… The justification for this being that gambling can now produce a Legendary.
So you’re forcing 2 things upon the playerbase now.
1) In order to enjoy anything remotely close to a good droprate you have to buy RoS. 2) Bounties are THE MOST important thing you can do in game… again…
Since shards don’t increase past expert, what motivation would there be to even play past expert in the first place?
You have such an amazing base for a game, but it is a continual disappointment given how little consideration there is for psychologically motivating a player to continue playing your game.
Someone almost 2 years ago gave this analogy (I believe it was Wyatt) and I feel it is very appropriate. Keep in mind I’m paraphrasing from memory as I cannot remember where I read it.
If you feed the Monkey too much juice, it will become fat and lethargic. However, if you feed the Monkey too little juice, it will starve to death.
The thing you want to do in this case is to feed the Monkey (IE players) enough to not make them fat, but also keep them from feeling starved.
You have very consistently been given feedback that the droprates are not high enough to justify playing the game. Perhaps this is what you’re testing for? How much you can starve the players of drops until they just throw in the towel and quit your game?
With the game as it is now and your justification for low droprates being that you can gamble for them, I would not expect this game to last more than just a few months. As I said, with droprates as low as they are now, there is absolutely no justification for BoA. In addition, elites only drop between 1 – 3 pieces of gear whereas before they used to drop between 3 – 5… If you kept the same roll chance for a Legendary, you have nearly HALVED the droprate on Legendaries… You guys need to look at the whole picture with your changes. If you keep changing 1091823098 variables at once without seeing how each one interacts with each other, you’re not gathering any meaningful data. With all of these changes happening at once, it’s like all of the time spent researching droprates was wasted.
In addition to all of that, when you changed the damage output of some spells, you justified it by reducing the chance to find Health Potions and Health Globes… So now it feels even WORSE because I have less healing coming in and I will at some point be forced to buy potions because they don’t drop enough to sustain my inventory. This is yet another situation where the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction.
I advocated for BoA for so long because I wanted a game that was rewarding, but wasn’t influenced by a global market. Right now it seems the game is catering towards those who dedicate their whole life to this game and given that’s what, about 0.1% of your playerbase do you really expect the game to succeed like that?
Players who play this game 10+ hours a day for a year will NEVER be satisfied with whatever model you put forth. You should make your game more enjoyable for the other 99.9% of the playerbase. You know, the ones who will actually refer their friends and say “Hey, come play this great game with me!”
As it stands right now, even though I preordered my physical CE the very first day that gamestop was taking preorders I am contemplating cancelling and applying that money elsewhere.
You have a chance to redeem this title, and I feel like you’re squandering it…
Now as I said, I say none of this with ill will towards anyone. I say this because if all of this is left unsaid the game might be doomed to the same failures it made with Vanilla. Please, do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Stop trying to artificially extend the life of the game by giving us this masochistic grind for the sake of having a grind. Instead, give us reasons to play the game multiple times like you would in a ladder.
RoS is probably your last chance before the rest of your playerbase jumps ship. Now that you’ve upset all types of players with RoS (Those who traded and those who enjoy finding stuff on their own) if you don’t get it right with RoS it may not be recoverable.
I’ll try and force myself to test RoS for a little bit longer, but any hope I have of the game getting better is dwindling.
I hope what I have said doesn’t strike a nerve, because this is more of a plea. Please save RoS.
I'm a huge fan of the Diablo universe(mainly the lore-side of it) and games. I was really looking forward to RoS, pre-ordered the CE and all! But now I'm starting to think whether I should cancel that pre-order due to all of the negative feedback it's getting during the PTR and Beta. However, there's still 2 months until it get's released so I've got high hopes that the issues will get ironed out. *Fingers Crossed*
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Yeah i agree with the MVP. I think some of their idea are great, hell im not against BoA. The problem is they dont seems to have planned this around BoA much and really only listens to the streamers that put hundreds of hours into the game as their basis (probably since they make up most of the vocal beta invites).
The truth is for a normal gamer, that does not survive only on gaming, RoS has huge flaws. Mainly that some of their best ideas are tied to the loot and said loot does not drop in a reasonable manner right now, even with the blood shards. In the present Beta patch, drop rates are lower than they are live for the average MP5-6 player farming and thats with an auction house present.
Add to that, they tied "build diversity" into items, items that have very marginal chances to drop as is. Realisticly there wont be a diversity for most players, youll use the build for which you found the gear for (if you find any that is). Im stuck using my lvl 60 manticore on the beta, nothing i find even come close with the rerolled damage. The passive crit damage and 2 socket is beyond anything i find and the legendary that has a proc that could be more useful, are not anywhere in sight, it could be 500h, 600h, 3000h, hell never. I cannot trade to reach a goal.
This problem can only be accentuate as they add more legendary, which is another big problem, the legendary pool is just too big for random BoA to work with the current drop. It unrealistic to believe most players will remain in the game to farm thousands of hours to mabye find what they want. Thats without even taking into account youll find many clone of the less rare legendary.
As is now, even using exploits at the shrine to spawn hundreds of elite pack instantly, people barely found anything. There has to be a middle ground between fill your bags with legendary in a single run (beta original drops) and find a legendary once per 500 elite pack (right now). This has to be found before release as well, because right now this game is not gona be appealing to the majority of potential buyers, which do not stream diablo 3 for 8 hours a day.
If they wanted to go BoA, with such a diverse loot, they should have went for a more borderland style loot, in that the good stuff drop randomly from a certain boss, monster or event. This way its still rare and random, but you know where to look at for something. If you wanna waste 50h to farm azmodan for that one bow he drops, you know that eventually youll have it, could take a while because its random, but eventually youll get there.
If they dont wanna tie loot to certain things, than they seriously need to rethink BoA, because this only stop people from having goals ever and make any clone gear = useless. Theres no way around that.
If they dont want to have trade or more predictable loot table, than they need to increase the drops dramaticly, because realisticly majority of your drops will be useless clones that you will delete instantly. People really arent gona keep playing for that.
I'm all bummed because I can't comment on the Bnet forums... only in PRT D=
But I agree wholeheartedly with the OP of that thread. Having only been able to watch videos on bounties and rifts, I have to say that while I find the notion of both very appealing, only bounties seem actually *fun*. I still don't understand why the required monsters to spawn the rift boss is so low compared to how many floors regularly spawn. Two proposed changes to rifts;
1) Players need to clear 90% of the total monsters spawned in the Rift, but the amount that is as well as how many floors is random and hidden. This will make Rifts last longer for sure, which is why I think the reward for killing the Rift boss defiantly needs to be upped.
2) Possibly make the next level locked until 90% of the previous level's monsters are killed. Instead of a total amount needed for the Rift boss, the last of the randomly spawned levels will have a concealed shrine, so just like the previous floors the player needs to kill around 90% of the monsters before the shrine is active, and then the player can spawn the boss.
Either / or of the changes, or maybe a combination of both, I think would feel a LOT better than just zerging the first 1-2 floors within a couple minutes, killing the Rift that doesn't drop anything close to great loot, and leaving the rest of the floors untouched.
Also, being only in the PTR we get an even shorter end of the stick when it comes to drop rates for legendaries. Since us PTR people don't get to gamble any shards, we are stuck with the extremely low rate. I'll keep with my original mindset of agreeing with BoA, I really think it will help the game in the long run, but the drop rate HAS to be raised, or it's just no fun at all. There are hundreds of legendaries to be found, and they will have to be found multiple times to try for good rolls on them. It's just no fun currently.
Again I agree with the OP, it feels like Blizzard is making the same mistake as they did in Vanilla; trying to artificially raise the longevity of the game by making good loot almost non-existant. This was the reasoning that back in vanilla, legendaries were pretty bad and rares were a LOT better the majority of the time. On paper it sounds good; there's always a chance of better loot. But in practice, and I only speak for myself here, I want legendaries to drop, and it's ok that they are really good and the chance of a finding a better version of the same legendary is low. That's why you put in more than one legendary per slot, so while I might not be looking for a STAT upgrade of the same slot if I've already gotten lucky on that slot, but I am always on the lookout for a side-grade, or a legendary with a different, unique and fun affix.
TLDR; I completely agree, the idea of rifts are awesome but there needs to be a better incentive to complete the whole rift, and better loot for defeating the rift boss. And the legendary drop rate NEEDS to be raised, if BoA is to remain the model.
Please do share the thread. It needs as much visibility as it can get.
I talk to the other MVPs pretty regularly and most of the points that were made are concerns shared by many, many, many players. These concerns must be addressed.
My pre-order is still there and I don't plan on canceling it at all. However, that's not to say I'm not worrying about the myriad of issues Blizzard still needs to fix before the game launches.
What's worrying, is the radio silence from Blizzard about any thread that is not in the "what's your favorite gear color? :happysmile:" category.
I commented about something similar in the voting about the community legendary power. What's the point when, at the current drop rates, 99% of the players will likely never see it, lol. Drop rates are only the tip of the iceberg, though; the state of RoS, considering how close to release we are, is indeed worrisome.
Edit: These issues are also exactly why I haven't purchased RoS yet. I probably will at some point, but I'm in no rush in light of the lack of recent developments.
You know what Is the real worry here? the fact that I agree with every thing mentioned in this thread (and I thought it was only me) I really want this game to succeed and to enjoy like I did D2 but it eludes me so far. It seems that for every good thing that comes out of this game, we the player get penalized two fold for it.
Not every one will have the luxury of playing full time in Torment (besides what is the point when Normal gives the same rewards at the moment which is sad. In D2 when you got to higher difficulty's you at least had the fulfillment of looking towards better rewards, bigger the boss better the loot but bosses now are to be avoided. Since latest patch came out I played the other night for more then 6 hours and found one leg (crap) and experience gained is virtually non-exsistant.
I am not trying to compare D2 to D3 but don't say reward us with playing and then not reward us....proof is in the pudding.
I hope that some things change for the better and sooner then later........give me a will to play please!!
It is certain that this post is written by a harm heart player, but that post has nothing worthy left after filtered by logic and facts.
1. Low drop rate
Does anyone still remember what they said about F&F? "You have nothing left to player after farming for 3 days ! This game sucks!" And now they say "I can't get a exciting legendary every next corner. This game sucks! ", and what? He doesn't even play pass EXPERT and he expects a pile of legendary drop?
I play on PTR at T3 now, and get averagely 1 legendary per hour even though there is NO high-monster-density rifts, NO gambling, NO cache rewards and NO bounty reward. So I don't think the droprate is low now.
Remember, the fact is: What some players want now, is the droprate of MP10 (what they are playing at now live) at MP3/4 (Master/Torment1). Now what do you think ?
2. Bloodshards:
And the dear poster said there is no need to play pass expert because Bloodshards are everything... It certainly DOES NOT remind me of countless complains about "Bloodshards are useless!", and finallymake BLZ allow legendary items to be acquired from gambling. Whoever only play Expert and thinks something useless very valuable... I really don't think he is that "expert".
3. And droprates droprates and... starving monkey?
The droprate of F&F is like MP20, and now he has only MP1 (is expert difficulty really as hard as MP1?) droprate. Sure,any human can't adapt instantly.But before complains, he should think, is it because he is starving now, or he was too full?
Surely there are a lot of things need to improved about RoS, too many that can't even be counted with one or two hands.
But how can a post that complains about droprates only because: "They want droprates of MP10 (live) or MP20 (F&F) at MP 1/4" move you like this?
I've been losing faith for a while now. Blizzard takes great ideas and implement them really poorly. What's the point of giving feedback if they are going to butcher it >_>
I've made and seen countless threads about how to improve random events, exploration, endless dungeon/wave, challenge (etc). They take those cool ideas and give birth to something mediocre. I've expressed my concerns about bounties for a long time now as well. Their lasted decision only makes bounties the uncontested champion. Bounties, as they are right now, are toxic for the game.
Bounties are like Rifts. You do the strict minimum and leave that place. How hard is it to add incentive to explore areas or complete the Rift?
Torment 1 is certainly not comparable to MP3, first of all. Maybe MP9ish? Just look at mob hps and damage. So to ask for at least live drop rates for that same difficulty is not unreasonable. And you are indeed quite fortunate to be getting 1 an hour. Myself, I average 1 in about 3 hours on the PTR, whereas on live I average 4 to 5 an hour. Considering the much larger legendary pool to choose from, and this difference in drop rates, getting anything useful has some pretty slim chances. On top of that, in order to try rerolling stats on the ones that are kept, we need legendaries to salvage as well. I'm not looking for F&F rates, just some sort of compromise between those rates and current PTR rates.
On top of all that, we have the well publicized rates that were stated by Josh, 6 times the legendaries as we see on live. That was probably overstated, but we're at less than live now. What happened?
I'm not a fan of Droth ( get the impression he is looking down his nose at people), but his post is very good. TheTias post in the same thread is a work of art though. I also noticed Jaetch chimed in.
I know it sounds like a crackpot conspiracy theory...but it almost seems like they are actively trying to sabotage their own game. Maybe they are looking for a huge tax write off or something.
It is certain that this post is written by a harm heart player, but that post has nothing worthy left after filtered by logic and facts.
1. Low drop rate
Does anyone still remember what they said about F&F? "You have nothing left to player after farming for 3 days ! This game sucks!" And now they say "I can't get a exciting legendary every next corner. This game sucks! ", and what? He doesn't even play pass EXPERT and he expects a pile of legendary drop?
I play on PTR at T3 now, and get averagely 1 legendary per hour even though there is NO high-monster-density rifts, NO gambling, NO cache rewards and NO bounty reward. So I don't think the droprate is low now.
Remember, the fact is: What some players want now, is the droprate of MP10 (what they are playing at now live) at MP3/4 (Master/Torment1). Now what do you think ?
2. Bloodshards:
And the dear poster said there is no need to play pass expert because Bloodshards are everything... It certainly DOES NOT remind me of countless complains about "Bloodshards are useless!", and finallymake BLZ allow legendary items to be acquired from gambling. Whoever only play Expert and thinks something useless very valuable... I really don't think he is that "expert".
3. And droprates droprates and... starving monkey?
The droprate of F&F is like MP20, and now he has only MP1 (is expert difficulty really as hard as MP1?) droprate. Sure,any human can't adapt instantly.But before complains, he should think, is it because he is starving now, or he was too full?
Surely there are a lot of things need to improved about RoS, too many that can't even be counted with one or two hands.
But how can a post that complains about droprates only because: "They want droprates of MP10 (live) or MP20 (F&F) at MP 1/4" move you like this?
You should refrain from commenting on the status of the Beta with only PTR experience. The difference between Level 60 Torment 3 and Level 70 Torment 3 is night and day for one thing. You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that drop rates differ between the non-Torment difficulties. They don't. Since gambling is now the most efficient way to get legendaries, people are just split-farming bounties on Expert (the lowest, and thus fastest difficulty to get the most shards on) or Normal (for pure speed), and then sitting in town spam clicking a vendor's inventory. It's not fun in the least.
People aren't upset that you can now gamble for legendaries, we're upset that it was used as an excuse to not increase the terrible legendary drop rate. More than any other point, it should be a huge red flag that drop rates are lower than the current LIVE servers, but loot is now BoA.
"We made low drop rates because of gambling"
where have I heard that before??
"We made low droprates because of the AH"
It worked so well the first time.
"We made low drop rates because of gambling"
where have I heard that before??
"We made low droprates because of the AH"
It worked so well the first time.
At least there's an outrage. Perhaps they will listen this time.
I don't have access to the Beta, sadly, but I am seriously reconsidering whether or not I will buy the game. They keep adding salt to the injury. They keep doing stupid moves after stupid moves.
I think this is kinda fit the dev team goal. Everyone is using different gears and builds, no more cookies cutter builds.
The problem is they completely remove my goals playing this game. Let me say that I'm planning to play a fire skills Demonhunter now but the fact is I can't plan anythings. All I can do is play the game, pick up the loots, fool around the skills base on the loots I've got, move forward to higher difficult. That's it. Actually brainless. Yes, I probably can play all the builds if I spend enough time on this game, but what's the points? It likes I want to go to Paris, I buy a fly ticket and go to airport, have a fly then having fun in Paris. But now I can't go Paris like this, I buy a fly ticket go to airport, take a fly then I'm in Tokyo, yes sure it's fun place, but I want to go to Paris! Finally after all the flying beyond counting, I got to Paris. After few weeks, I want to go to Tokyo this time 'cause Paris isn't as fun as I though. Guess what, I need to take those totally unpredictable fly again. Great. How many times I need to travel around the world before I get to the place I wanted?
I think this is a very hard problem right now, it can't be fixed with number changing, higher drop rate or lower drop rate, no essential difference. Right now everything is individual due to BoA, the real thing I'm looking for is a way to somehow translate the thing I don't want or I don't need to something I'm asking for. Of course, it's not trading. That's obviously. A better and more complicate crafting system maybe, only time can tell.
What's worrying, is the radio silence from Blizzard about any thread that is not in the "what's your favorite gear color? :happysmile:" category.
It's the weekend. We're not going to see a response until at least Monday, perhaps a day or two longer since there are a lot of points in the thread they'll need to respond to.
I have not played beta, but boy you guys are scaring me
Everything you guys are saying really IS scary. No trading = BoA = never finding goodloot? That formula shouldn't seem to be rocket science or solving world hunger
A secondary issue here is the times Blizzard takes to fix stuff.
Let say, the game ships with some important design failures, we unfortunately cannot say anymore: "it's OK, Blizzard will patch it ASAP because 110% of the users are pointing it as a problem that must and can be fixed in a timely manner".
We all know how much time Blizzard took to fix minor(like, id all) stuff, this lack of feedback transformed into action, is sadly a deal breaker.
So, it's not only about the state of the game when it releases, but what happens after that is what scares, at least me, most.
Link to the forum post:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11307900907
Now, I say all of this with no ill will towards anyone. I don’t mean to cause any unrest, or upset people, but I feel what I have to say has to be said for the future of Reaper of Souls. I speak for nobody but myself, and I am being absolutely 100% truthful when I say that I am disappointed with Reaper of Souls since the Friends and Family push ended. I spoke so highly of the development of Diablo III and how many amazing improvements were coming down the pipeline, but I fear I might have spoken too soon. There are some really great and amazing features that have come out in the last push. One of them being able see what type of elemental damage each skill does instead of having to guess. That is a very welcomed addition. Even then, there are a lot of great things this expansion adds which are Rifts and Bounties. Rifts have so much amazing potential that I feel is absolutely wasted. The core design behind them is great. I love being able to play randomized dungeons with randomized enemies. But even after a while, that can get boring and stale. Not quite as stale as it would be if you were doing something like CotA runs, but still it gets pretty monotonous after a while. Then there’s literally no incentive to finish the dungeons which makes them feel unpolished and bland. On top of that, they’re no more rewarding than a bounty run anyway which makes them even more underwhelming. All of that said though, I still welcome rifts anyway. I was so excited when I played the Friends and Family push. Sure, there were quite a few bugs that still needed ironed out, but overall the progression felt good. It felt natural… Now, the droprates on Legendaries might have been a little too high, but it didn’t need adjusted much. Maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of what they were during the F&F. Now when I play I don’t have that feeling of the next greatest drop being around the corner… I have this feeling that I am never going to be able to find anything worthwhile. Also, given the fact that Legendaries almost never drop, any that does isn’t worth using because I was able to find a better rare in the meantime thanks to Enchanting. Now every time I am even lucky enough to find one, I have to think to myself “Is it really worth making a 10% or even higher concession in DPS just so shrines last 5 times longer?” More often than not, that answer is no. So now when I do find a Legendary, it has to be more powerful than the rare I had obtained… These droprates are awful. So awful in fact that the BoA model is no longer justifiable which is a complete shame given how hard I fought for BoA. I was among the first, if not the very first who publicly advocated on a consistent basis that the top end of gear needed to be BoA. I know this model can and will work, but not like this. Now I see even in the latest push the droprates were still not raised… The justification for this being that gambling can now produce a Legendary. So you’re forcing 2 things upon the playerbase now. 1) In order to enjoy anything remotely close to a good droprate you have to buy RoS.
2) Bounties are THE MOST important thing you can do in game… again… Since shards don’t increase past expert, what motivation would there be to even play past expert in the first place? You have such an amazing base for a game, but it is a continual disappointment given how little consideration there is for psychologically motivating a player to continue playing your game. Someone almost 2 years ago gave this analogy (I believe it was Wyatt) and I feel it is very appropriate. Keep in mind I’m paraphrasing from memory as I cannot remember where I read it. If you feed the Monkey too much juice, it will become fat and lethargic.
However, if you feed the Monkey too little juice, it will starve to death. The thing you want to do in this case is to feed the Monkey (IE players) enough to not make them fat, but also keep them from feeling starved. You have very consistently been given feedback that the droprates are not high enough to justify playing the game. Perhaps this is what you’re testing for? How much you can starve the players of drops until they just throw in the towel and quit your game? With the game as it is now and your justification for low droprates being that you can gamble for them, I would not expect this game to last more than just a few months. As I said, with droprates as low as they are now, there is absolutely no justification for BoA. In addition, elites only drop between 1 – 3 pieces of gear whereas before they used to drop between 3 – 5… If you kept the same roll chance for a Legendary, you have nearly HALVED the droprate on Legendaries… You guys need to look at the whole picture with your changes. If you keep changing 1091823098 variables at once without seeing how each one interacts with each other, you’re not gathering any meaningful data. With all of these changes happening at once, it’s like all of the time spent researching droprates was wasted. In addition to all of that, when you changed the damage output of some spells, you justified it by reducing the chance to find Health Potions and Health Globes… So now it feels even WORSE because I have less healing coming in and I will at some point be forced to buy potions because they don’t drop enough to sustain my inventory. This is yet another situation where the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction. I advocated for BoA for so long because I wanted a game that was rewarding, but wasn’t influenced by a global market. Right now it seems the game is catering towards those who dedicate their whole life to this game and given that’s what, about 0.1% of your playerbase do you really expect the game to succeed like that? Players who play this game 10+ hours a day for a year will NEVER be satisfied with whatever model you put forth. You should make your game more enjoyable for the other 99.9% of the playerbase. You know, the ones who will actually refer their friends and say “Hey, come play this great game with me!” As it stands right now, even though I preordered my physical CE the very first day that gamestop was taking preorders I am contemplating cancelling and applying that money elsewhere. You have a chance to redeem this title, and I feel like you’re squandering it… Now as I said, I say none of this with ill will towards anyone. I say this because if all of this is left unsaid the game might be doomed to the same failures it made with Vanilla. Please, do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Stop trying to artificially extend the life of the game by giving us this masochistic grind for the sake of having a grind. Instead, give us reasons to play the game multiple times like you would in a ladder. RoS is probably your last chance before the rest of your playerbase jumps ship. Now that you’ve upset all types of players with RoS (Those who traded and those who enjoy finding stuff on their own) if you don’t get it right with RoS it may not be recoverable. I’ll try and force myself to test RoS for a little bit longer, but any hope I have of the game getting better is dwindling. I hope what I have said doesn’t strike a nerve, because this is more of a plea. Please save RoS.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Please do share the thread. It needs as much visibility as it can get.
I talk to the other MVPs pretty regularly and most of the points that were made are concerns shared by many, many, many players. These concerns must be addressed.
My pre-order is still there and I don't plan on canceling it at all. However, that's not to say I'm not worrying about the myriad of issues Blizzard still needs to fix before the game launches.
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Man that thread really brought me down on the whole RoS thing. Seems like they have some work to do before March 25th.
What's worrying, is the radio silence from Blizzard about any thread that is not in the "what's your favorite gear color? :happysmile:" category.
You know what Is the real worry here? the fact that I agree with every thing mentioned in this thread (and I thought it was only me) I really want this game to succeed and to enjoy like I did D2 but it eludes me so far. It seems that for every good thing that comes out of this game, we the player get penalized two fold for it.
Not every one will have the luxury of playing full time in Torment (besides what is the point when Normal gives the same rewards at the moment which is sad. In D2 when you got to higher difficulty's you at least had the fulfillment of looking towards better rewards, bigger the boss better the loot but bosses now are to be avoided. Since latest patch came out I played the other night for more then 6 hours and found one leg (crap) and experience gained is virtually non-exsistant.
I am not trying to compare D2 to D3 but don't say reward us with playing and then not reward us....proof is in the pudding.
I hope that some things change for the better and sooner then later........give me a will to play please!!
It is certain that this post is written by a harm heart player, but that post has nothing worthy left after filtered by logic and facts.
1. Low drop rate
Does anyone still remember what they said about F&F? "You have nothing left to player after farming for 3 days ! This game sucks!" And now they say "I can't get a exciting legendary every next corner. This game sucks! ", and what? He doesn't even play pass EXPERT and he expects a pile of legendary drop?
I play on PTR at T3 now, and get averagely 1 legendary per hour even though there is NO high-monster-density rifts, NO gambling, NO cache rewards and NO bounty reward. So I don't think the droprate is low now.
Remember, the fact is: What some players want now, is the droprate of MP10 (what they are playing at now live) at MP3/4 (Master/Torment1).
Now what do you think ?
2. Bloodshards:
And the dear poster said there is no need to play pass expert because Bloodshards are everything... It certainly DOES NOT remind me of countless complains about "Bloodshards are useless!", and finallymake BLZ allow legendary items to be acquired from gambling. Whoever only play Expert and thinks something useless very valuable... I really don't think he is that "expert".
3. And droprates droprates and... starving monkey?
The droprate of F&F is like MP20, and now he has only MP1 (is expert difficulty really as hard as MP1?) droprate. Sure,any human can't adapt instantly.But before complains, he should think, is it because he is starving now, or he was too full?
Surely there are a lot of things need to improved about RoS, too many that can't even be counted with one or two hands.
But how can a post that complains about droprates only because: "They want droprates of MP10 (live) or MP20 (F&F) at MP 1/4" move you like this?
I've been losing faith for a while now. Blizzard takes great ideas and implement them really poorly. What's the point of giving feedback if they are going to butcher it >_>
I've made and seen countless threads about how to improve random events, exploration, endless dungeon/wave, challenge (etc). They take those cool ideas and give birth to something mediocre. I've expressed my concerns about bounties for a long time now as well. Their lasted decision only makes bounties the uncontested champion. Bounties, as they are right now, are toxic for the game.
Bounties are like Rifts. You do the strict minimum and leave that place. How hard is it to add incentive to explore areas or complete the Rift?
(double post apparently)
Torment 1 is certainly not comparable to MP3, first of all. Maybe MP9ish? Just look at mob hps and damage. So to ask for at least live drop rates for that same difficulty is not unreasonable. And you are indeed quite fortunate to be getting 1 an hour. Myself, I average 1 in about 3 hours on the PTR, whereas on live I average 4 to 5 an hour. Considering the much larger legendary pool to choose from, and this difference in drop rates, getting anything useful has some pretty slim chances. On top of that, in order to try rerolling stats on the ones that are kept, we need legendaries to salvage as well. I'm not looking for F&F rates, just some sort of compromise between those rates and current PTR rates.
On top of all that, we have the well publicized rates that were stated by Josh, 6 times the legendaries as we see on live. That was probably overstated, but we're at less than live now. What happened?
A secondary issue here is the times Blizzard takes to fix stuff.
Let say, the game ships with some important design failures, we unfortunately cannot say anymore: "it's OK, Blizzard will patch it ASAP because 110% of the users are pointing it as a problem that must and can be fixed in a timely manner".
We all know how much time Blizzard took to fix minor(like, id all) stuff, this lack of feedback transformed into action, is sadly a deal breaker.
So, it's not only about the state of the game when it releases, but what happens after that is what scares, at least me, most.