Heck, I went back and checked the MANUAL that I got in the battlechest and checked the multiplayer section in the Table of Contents and read it. IT CLEARLY STATES the differences of Single Player and Battlenet, and the fact that it HAS the Multiplayer part and is clearly shown IN THE MANUAL as well as on the game options screen...HOW was this confusing?
lol do you realize how many people don't RTFM
I'm well aware of that, but we're also talking about a playerbase that has been around for a while, back in the day when people DID read manuals, not this generation. Even without reading the manual, it's not confusing at all to figure out given what is presented in the game itself.
The interface has been changed so players can understand the combat system more. One of the things, or criticisms, that we had on the skills system from our more dedicated players really comes from the fact that they ARE more dedicated, or more savvy, players; they've really learnt a lot about the game's structure. What we found time and time again, internally, when we put even very hardcore players in front of the game, was they would not know how to interact with all the systems. They'd say 'It feels like there's a way that you want us to play, but you're not giving me any hints as to what that is.' It's almost like they're saying 'If I could put the skills in categories I'd be able to understand them.'
**WARNING! THIS POST IS GOING TO BE EXTREMELY LONG**
This...really irks me. The interface changes - and I'm going to focus mostly on the skill UI and even the skill hotbar a bit - that Blizzard has made ARE NOT helping gamers understand combat or making it easier for them to get into it. I decided to put aside my 'hardcore, dedicated side' and tried to look at this game from someone who has a much more limited understanding of all the little nuances and things of classes. For this example, I put myself into the shoes of a gamer who's had a little experience with games, so not totally in the dark, and is looking at Diablo III for the first time and checking it out. So, to do that I figured...let me pick one class and go at it 'blind' and see what I can learn from what information Blizzard has given me before I jump into the game proper just to get a few pointers or get some basic core concepts of the class to see if it's 'right' for me.
For this, I went with the Demon Hunter since I like ranged classes and I see the Demon Hunter uses bows and ranged weapons...ok, cool, so there's my starting point. Now, as a new gamer I want to know what the Demon Hunter class is all about and how she generally works and what to expect in game, obviously learning all the smaller, finer details as I go, but at least I can get some general concepts. So for that I go to the official Diablo III website and check out the Demon Hunter class page under the Game Guide section....simple enough so far. I learn a bit about the backstory, the weapons that DH's use, blah, blah, blah, BUT then I come across something that I deem VERY IMPORTANT...THE RESOURCES! I learn that the Demon Hunter uses both Hatred and Discipline to fuel her attacks with Hatred being a constant regenerating source for offensive power and Discipline which is used for more defensive measures and that to succeed I should use both of them hand-in-hand and not just focus on one. ...Ok, that seems fine and now I am starting to think, "I need to strike a good balance with the DH and manage my resources, but while that's all well and good, I want to see what skills she has to offer."
So from there I go to the Skill Calculator since it seems to make sense...if I want to see the skills, I should follow that link and check them out. I do and start playing around with the Calculator, reading the skills and seeing what they do, etc, etc. That's when I notice something else as I'm scrolling through the skills...I see some have a yellow background, some an organish-red background, and others a purple one. *gasp* WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?! I read a little closer and see that the yellow background skills have a "Generate: X Hatred", the orangish-red ones have a "Cost: X Hatred" and the purple ones have a "Cost: X Discipline" note attached to the descriptions RIGHT AT THE VERY TOP. Remembering from the previous DH page I was on, and the movie presented I realize that the yellow and orangish-red skills are obviously tied to my Hatred resource, and the purple ones are tied to Discipline, but why are the Hatred ones split into 'Generate' and 'Cost'?
So, I look at the skills a bit more and once again draw upon what I learned from the previous page I realize that as a DH I have skills that I use to GENERATE Hatred and other skills to SPEND it, and notice the SPENDERS are generally more powerful, and some might say more interesting skills. AHA! I GOT IT! To be an effective Demon Hunter, I not only have to balance Hatred and Discipline, BUT I need to make sure I balance my Hatred skills so I can regenerate my main attacking resource to fuel my stronger attacks and still put out a little damage. Ahhhhhhh, NOW we are getting somewhere, and thusfar it's all making sense to me with just a little bit of thought. With that in mind, I begin to happily look at the skills in the calculator and start messing around with potential ideas, along with dabbling in the Passive Skills to see if any of those can be helpful, too. However, the more I play around with the calculator the more I am starting to notice one thing that has me scratching my head.
From what I can see, the skills of the DH are already categorized into the three things I found out: Hatred Generators, Hatred Spenders, Discipline Skills. Why then, are these skills further sub-categorized into things like: Primary, Secondary, Defensive, Archery, etc? It seems rather excessive and why does it need to be done? Why can't it just be the three categories mentioned before and let me look them over and see what each skill is and let me make a judgment call? I mean, why do I as the player have to be told that 'Caltrops' is a Defensive skill when I can read the description and see that it's a trap that slows enemies down, which would then tell me that "Oh. Caltrops is a defensive tool, so I'll keep that in mind"? I notice this is done for many of the other skills and some categories like 'Devices' are mixing HG, HS, and Discipline moves all into one sub-category that, again, seems rather silly to me. It's starting to look like (to me) there is too much sub-dividing for the sake of doing so, and it's not helping me...it's beginning to confuse me.
Not only that, but let's take it a bit further and let's say that I've played the Beta and got a chance to play around with the skill selection tabs. I find myself getting a bit annoyed that I have to cycle through so many tabs to look at skills and I start to wonder, "Why didn't Blizzard just separate the DH skills into the three categories they've already assigned them and let me look at them with minimal amounts of hassle and having to juggle through so many seemingly silly subcategories?" Let's go one step further and say that as a newer player who read the DH stuff on Blizzard's website, got a lucky chance to try the stuff out in the Beta, and now I am reading that last sentence in the Jay Wilson quote. As this player, I am left scratching my head and saying, "Wait...WHAT? You HAD the Demon Hunter skills already categorized (and other classes as well) and made it quite clear what they do. They are ALREADY easy to understand. Your subcategories and subsequently the UI that is going along with them TURNS THEM INTO SOMETHING THAT IS MORE CONFUSING THAN IF YOU HAD JUST LEFT THEM ALONE." (capped for emphasis, not yelling)
After putting myself through this scenario and putting myself into a 'new player's shoes' so to speak (as best I could, heaven knows it ain't perfect) I cannot understand where Jay is coming from. Perhaps in the internal testing these 'hardcore players' didn't understand how to interact with your systems isn't because of their lack of knowledge. Maybe it's because the skill UI and systems are just so overly-complicated and convoluted and poorly thought out that maybe the word 'KISS' should've been used a bit more generously? Maybe when they were saying "If I could put the skills into categories THAT I CAN UNDERSTAND AND NOT INTO EXCESSIVE SUB-DIVIDED CATEGORIES THAT ARE JUST THAT...EXCESSIVE...MAYBE I'D GET THOSE 'HINTS' ABOUT HOW YOU WANT US AS GAMERS TO PLAY YOUR GAME." (Again, not shouting, just capped for emphasis.)
I think the biggest problem with the skill-UI system is that they decided to add the elective mode option and to have it off by default. Numerous times while playing the beta, people have asked me how I'm casting x + x spell because they're in the same category. The simple fact that they had to ask this question demonstrates the pure failure that is the skill UI. It wouldn't confuse new players if they kept their categories but at least had it displayed like the skill calc is online. The fact that the in-game UI is different than the skill calc on the official site is just mind-boggling. Whoever thought it was a good idea should be fired.
That's not even talking about the silly categories they made up. Most classes, the categories make 0 sense. Explosive blast is in the "Mastery" category. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? If they divided it into categories that made sense and helped new players better understand things it would be one thing... but that's not what they did. They confused everyone with the skill UI. Is it that hard to have 3 categories: Generator, Spender, and Defense?
On the topic of Bashiok's comments about the "best" loot being found in Hell. We don't actually know what loot he was referring to. If the highest tiers are only found in act3/4 of inferno, and these are bar none the best items in the game then yah, its contradictory. But i think it is fairly likely that there are quite a few "best" items that can be found in the tiers just below that which would make his statement true, but confusing and misleading.
Edit: Read through the large post above and will offer this. My understanding of what Jay said is that before they had all the seemingly pointless sub-categories, they were receiving feedback from testers that it wasn't clear enough. While I agree with you that the majority of us that are familiar with diablo at all, and even the larger group of just gamers that hasn't ever touched a diablo game before will probably figure it out eventually, I can only assume that the changes were made with respect to results Blizzard got during testing. I know its a flimsy excuse and is borderline "fanboy", I just can't really believe that these things which are pretty obvious to us outsiders weren't considered by the people making the game for 6.5 years.
Edit: Read through the large post above and will offer this. My understanding of what Jay said is that before they had all the seemingly pointless sub-categories, they were receiving feedback from testers that it wasn't clear enough. While I agree with you that the majority of us that are familiar with diablo at all, and even the larger group of just gamers that hasn't ever touched a diablo game before will probably figure it out eventually, I can only assume that the changes were made with respect to results Blizzard got during testing. I know its a flimsy excuse and is borderline "fanboy", I just can't really believe that these things which are pretty obvious to us outsiders weren't considered by the people making the game for 6.5 years.
Even the best of developers can make mistakes and can sometimes have their own vision clouded by what they see as being right, when in fact it may very well not be. Also, I don't see your comment as being 'fanboyish' at all, as it is a fair point, and I would hope that Blizzard devs did consider that. However, part of me just can't believe that testers found the basic ideas of 'spenders', 'generators', and 'defensive/whatever' combos that hard to understand, or whatever other categories they have for the classes like Witch Doctor and Wizard. If indeed these 'hardcore testers' had such problems then I would want to question Blizzard's use of the word 'hardcore' (which I might add I hate because it is such an overused word), and I would love to see exactly what these testers were testing and what skill UI they were using, etc, etc.
What I also cannot understand is that with the closed Beta they had a HUGE amount of feedback, far more feedback that, IMHO, was a much better sampling than what their internal testing groups could ever offer. Many people were fine with earlier patch UIs and I rarely saw any topics about people 'not getting' the divided, more simplified categories I mentioned. Heck, it was like that on Blizzard's Skill Calculator page and it wasn't hard to understand at all. The only real thing you had to do was read the tooltips for a few seconds, analyze what the text told you, and BOOM...you could tell what the ability was, whether it was offensive, defensive, enhancement skill, whatever. But I didn't hear any real complaints from the masses that were in the Beta...people were fine with it because IT WORKED.
When it changed...THAT'S when people started raising the roof, and rightfully so IMHO. ...You know, I honestly hate thinking like this, and I hate wanting to go this route, but I firmly believe that the Blizzard devs reworked the skill UI because - whether by their decision or someone higher up - HEAVEN FORBID SOMEONE HAS TO USE A FEW NEURONS AND THINK A BIT...they sub-divided it even FURTHER to cater to the lowest common denominator of gamers. Again, I REALLY hate thinking this, but from what I have seen with WoW and other developers doing this at times...it's like they HAVE to put as much hand-holding and 'simplification' into games as possible because again, heaven forbid someone be a little unsure for a few seconds and have to stop and THINK LOGICALLY about something. I know this is REALLY getting close to ranting, if it isn't already, but I just can't help but think it...instead of encouraging thinking and what not, Blizzard attempted to make it more simple. In an ironic twist they made it MORE convoluted, needlessly complex, and just plain ol' NOT user-friendly, which HURTS new and 'hardcore' gamer alike, and methinks Blizzard is getting just a bit too prideful to admit that they could have potentially made a mistake and might need to go back and fix it.
On the topic of Bashiok's comments about the "best" loot being found in Hell. We don't actually know what loot he was referring to. If the highest tiers are only found in act3/4 of inferno, and these are bar none the best items in the game then yah, its contradictory. But i think it is fairly likely that there are quite a few "best" items that can be found in the tiers just below that which would make his statement true, but confusing and misleading.
I think the problem that some people are having from this is that the term "tiers" doesn't really mean the same in D3 as it does in WoW. In WoW the higher the tier loot you have the better all the way up to the top tier which is normally the best gear you can get. The way I see tiers in D3 are going to be slightly different. According to this picture we got up to right around tier 1-2 in the beta. Let's take chest armor for example. We found a TON of leather doublets. We found grey ones, white ones, blue ones, and even yellow ones, but they were all Tier 1 chest armor. Now in end game, I guess we could be finding some cracked and inferior zero stat archon armor (T17 according to the picture) in Act 3 & 4 Inferno but that's not going to be nearly as good as some of our non-Tier BIS Set/Legendary items that have a small chance of dropping in Hell mode.
I'm well aware of that, but we're also talking about a playerbase that has been around for a while, back in the day when people DID read manuals, not this generation. Even without reading the manual, it's not confusing at all to figure out given what is presented in the game itself.
**WARNING! THIS POST IS GOING TO BE EXTREMELY LONG**
This...really irks me. The interface changes - and I'm going to focus mostly on the skill UI and even the skill hotbar a bit - that Blizzard has made ARE NOT helping gamers understand combat or making it easier for them to get into it. I decided to put aside my 'hardcore, dedicated side' and tried to look at this game from someone who has a much more limited understanding of all the little nuances and things of classes. For this example, I put myself into the shoes of a gamer who's had a little experience with games, so not totally in the dark, and is looking at Diablo III for the first time and checking it out. So, to do that I figured...let me pick one class and go at it 'blind' and see what I can learn from what information Blizzard has given me before I jump into the game proper just to get a few pointers or get some basic core concepts of the class to see if it's 'right' for me.
For this, I went with the Demon Hunter since I like ranged classes and I see the Demon Hunter uses bows and ranged weapons...ok, cool, so there's my starting point. Now, as a new gamer I want to know what the Demon Hunter class is all about and how she generally works and what to expect in game, obviously learning all the smaller, finer details as I go, but at least I can get some general concepts. So for that I go to the official Diablo III website and check out the Demon Hunter class page under the Game Guide section....simple enough so far. I learn a bit about the backstory, the weapons that DH's use, blah, blah, blah, BUT then I come across something that I deem VERY IMPORTANT...THE RESOURCES! I learn that the Demon Hunter uses both Hatred and Discipline to fuel her attacks with Hatred being a constant regenerating source for offensive power and Discipline which is used for more defensive measures and that to succeed I should use both of them hand-in-hand and not just focus on one. ...Ok, that seems fine and now I am starting to think, "I need to strike a good balance with the DH and manage my resources, but while that's all well and good, I want to see what skills she has to offer."
So from there I go to the Skill Calculator since it seems to make sense...if I want to see the skills, I should follow that link and check them out. I do and start playing around with the Calculator, reading the skills and seeing what they do, etc, etc. That's when I notice something else as I'm scrolling through the skills...I see some have a yellow background, some an organish-red background, and others a purple one. *gasp* WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?! I read a little closer and see that the yellow background skills have a "Generate: X Hatred", the orangish-red ones have a "Cost: X Hatred" and the purple ones have a "Cost: X Discipline" note attached to the descriptions RIGHT AT THE VERY TOP. Remembering from the previous DH page I was on, and the movie presented I realize that the yellow and orangish-red skills are obviously tied to my Hatred resource, and the purple ones are tied to Discipline, but why are the Hatred ones split into 'Generate' and 'Cost'?
So, I look at the skills a bit more and once again draw upon what I learned from the previous page I realize that as a DH I have skills that I use to GENERATE Hatred and other skills to SPEND it, and notice the SPENDERS are generally more powerful, and some might say more interesting skills. AHA! I GOT IT! To be an effective Demon Hunter, I not only have to balance Hatred and Discipline, BUT I need to make sure I balance my Hatred skills so I can regenerate my main attacking resource to fuel my stronger attacks and still put out a little damage. Ahhhhhhh, NOW we are getting somewhere, and thusfar it's all making sense to me with just a little bit of thought. With that in mind, I begin to happily look at the skills in the calculator and start messing around with potential ideas, along with dabbling in the Passive Skills to see if any of those can be helpful, too. However, the more I play around with the calculator the more I am starting to notice one thing that has me scratching my head.
From what I can see, the skills of the DH are already categorized into the three things I found out: Hatred Generators, Hatred Spenders, Discipline Skills. Why then, are these skills further sub-categorized into things like: Primary, Secondary, Defensive, Archery, etc? It seems rather excessive and why does it need to be done? Why can't it just be the three categories mentioned before and let me look them over and see what each skill is and let me make a judgment call? I mean, why do I as the player have to be told that 'Caltrops' is a Defensive skill when I can read the description and see that it's a trap that slows enemies down, which would then tell me that "Oh. Caltrops is a defensive tool, so I'll keep that in mind"? I notice this is done for many of the other skills and some categories like 'Devices' are mixing HG, HS, and Discipline moves all into one sub-category that, again, seems rather silly to me. It's starting to look like (to me) there is too much sub-dividing for the sake of doing so, and it's not helping me...it's beginning to confuse me.
Not only that, but let's take it a bit further and let's say that I've played the Beta and got a chance to play around with the skill selection tabs. I find myself getting a bit annoyed that I have to cycle through so many tabs to look at skills and I start to wonder, "Why didn't Blizzard just separate the DH skills into the three categories they've already assigned them and let me look at them with minimal amounts of hassle and having to juggle through so many seemingly silly subcategories?" Let's go one step further and say that as a newer player who read the DH stuff on Blizzard's website, got a lucky chance to try the stuff out in the Beta, and now I am reading that last sentence in the Jay Wilson quote. As this player, I am left scratching my head and saying, "Wait...WHAT? You HAD the Demon Hunter skills already categorized (and other classes as well) and made it quite clear what they do. They are ALREADY easy to understand. Your subcategories and subsequently the UI that is going along with them TURNS THEM INTO SOMETHING THAT IS MORE CONFUSING THAN IF YOU HAD JUST LEFT THEM ALONE." (capped for emphasis, not yelling)
After putting myself through this scenario and putting myself into a 'new player's shoes' so to speak (as best I could, heaven knows it ain't perfect) I cannot understand where Jay is coming from. Perhaps in the internal testing these 'hardcore players' didn't understand how to interact with your systems isn't because of their lack of knowledge. Maybe it's because the skill UI and systems are just so overly-complicated and convoluted and poorly thought out that maybe the word 'KISS' should've been used a bit more generously? Maybe when they were saying "If I could put the skills into categories THAT I CAN UNDERSTAND AND NOT INTO EXCESSIVE SUB-DIVIDED CATEGORIES THAT ARE JUST THAT...EXCESSIVE...MAYBE I'D GET THOSE 'HINTS' ABOUT HOW YOU WANT US AS GAMERS TO PLAY YOUR GAME." (Again, not shouting, just capped for emphasis.)
I <3 you.
Tanakeah, be at the chat http://www.forums.bestbuy.com/t5/Let-s-Talk-Games/Diablo-III-Developer-Chat/td-p/504917 and throw your question/statement directly at Jay, lets get this bs changed!
That's not even talking about the silly categories they made up. Most classes, the categories make 0 sense. Explosive blast is in the "Mastery" category. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? If they divided it into categories that made sense and helped new players better understand things it would be one thing... but that's not what they did. They confused everyone with the skill UI. Is it that hard to have 3 categories: Generator, Spender, and Defense?
Edit: Read through the large post above and will offer this. My understanding of what Jay said is that before they had all the seemingly pointless sub-categories, they were receiving feedback from testers that it wasn't clear enough. While I agree with you that the majority of us that are familiar with diablo at all, and even the larger group of just gamers that hasn't ever touched a diablo game before will probably figure it out eventually, I can only assume that the changes were made with respect to results Blizzard got during testing. I know its a flimsy excuse and is borderline "fanboy", I just can't really believe that these things which are pretty obvious to us outsiders weren't considered by the people making the game for 6.5 years.
Ditto.
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Even the best of developers can make mistakes and can sometimes have their own vision clouded by what they see as being right, when in fact it may very well not be. Also, I don't see your comment as being 'fanboyish' at all, as it is a fair point, and I would hope that Blizzard devs did consider that. However, part of me just can't believe that testers found the basic ideas of 'spenders', 'generators', and 'defensive/whatever' combos that hard to understand, or whatever other categories they have for the classes like Witch Doctor and Wizard. If indeed these 'hardcore testers' had such problems then I would want to question Blizzard's use of the word 'hardcore' (which I might add I hate because it is such an overused word), and I would love to see exactly what these testers were testing and what skill UI they were using, etc, etc.
What I also cannot understand is that with the closed Beta they had a HUGE amount of feedback, far more feedback that, IMHO, was a much better sampling than what their internal testing groups could ever offer. Many people were fine with earlier patch UIs and I rarely saw any topics about people 'not getting' the divided, more simplified categories I mentioned. Heck, it was like that on Blizzard's Skill Calculator page and it wasn't hard to understand at all. The only real thing you had to do was read the tooltips for a few seconds, analyze what the text told you, and BOOM...you could tell what the ability was, whether it was offensive, defensive, enhancement skill, whatever. But I didn't hear any real complaints from the masses that were in the Beta...people were fine with it because IT WORKED.
When it changed...THAT'S when people started raising the roof, and rightfully so IMHO. ...You know, I honestly hate thinking like this, and I hate wanting to go this route, but I firmly believe that the Blizzard devs reworked the skill UI because - whether by their decision or someone higher up - HEAVEN FORBID SOMEONE HAS TO USE A FEW NEURONS AND THINK A BIT...they sub-divided it even FURTHER to cater to the lowest common denominator of gamers. Again, I REALLY hate thinking this, but from what I have seen with WoW and other developers doing this at times...it's like they HAVE to put as much hand-holding and 'simplification' into games as possible because again, heaven forbid someone be a little unsure for a few seconds and have to stop and THINK LOGICALLY about something. I know this is REALLY getting close to ranting, if it isn't already, but I just can't help but think it...instead of encouraging thinking and what not, Blizzard attempted to make it more simple. In an ironic twist they made it MORE convoluted, needlessly complex, and just plain ol' NOT user-friendly, which HURTS new and 'hardcore' gamer alike, and methinks Blizzard is getting just a bit too prideful to admit that they could have potentially made a mistake and might need to go back and fix it.
I think the problem that some people are having from this is that the term "tiers" doesn't really mean the same in D3 as it does in WoW. In WoW the higher the tier loot you have the better all the way up to the top tier which is normally the best gear you can get. The way I see tiers in D3 are going to be slightly different. According to this picture we got up to right around tier 1-2 in the beta. Let's take chest armor for example. We found a TON of leather doublets. We found grey ones, white ones, blue ones, and even yellow ones, but they were all Tier 1 chest armor. Now in end game, I guess we could be finding some cracked and inferior zero stat archon armor (T17 according to the picture) in Act 3 & 4 Inferno but that's not going to be nearly as good as some of our non-Tier BIS Set/Legendary items that have a small chance of dropping in Hell mode.