"We don't feel like paying QA testers to test patches before they are released. Therefore we get free testers using the PTR." - fix'd
I've always been one against PTR's, just like Betas. Companies used to actually beta test things internally... now they just use players to do it for free. I mean... yeah sure the top end players its great for, they have nothing to do in the current patch of the game since they've done it all and are probably bored. But for the vast majority its a waste of time they could be using to get better at live and improve gear that they actually get to keep. Not to mention I only ever get lucky with drops on PTRs, getting tons of good items that I'll never get to keep, while I get shit on in live my whole life. Never once ID'd an SoJ (without the manald/nagel "bug" from classic), never once got a good elite unique besides Shako. Played for 6 years, most of the day almost everyday.
It's not a waste of time if you don't play it. The PTR isn't for you, there's no reason for you to be mad about it. If you think that the patch would come out faster if they only did internal testing, you're 100% wrong.
Never said I was mad... just stated my opinion on the matter lol. I never said a patch would be quicker without the PTR either...
"We don't feel like paying QA testers to test patches before they are released. Therefore we get free testers using the PTR." - fix'd
I've always been one against PTR's, just like Betas. Companies used to actually beta test things internally... now they just use players to do it for free. I mean... yeah sure the top end players its great for, they have nothing to do in the current patch of the game since they've done it all and are probably bored. But for the vast majority its a waste of time they could be using to get better at live and improve gear that they actually get to keep. Not to mention I only ever get lucky with drops on PTRs, getting tons of good items that I'll never get to keep, while I get shit on in live my whole life. Never once ID'd an SoJ (without the manald/nagel "bug" from classic), never once got a good elite unique besides Shako. Played for 6 years, most of the day almost everyday.
No monthly fee doesn't mean no profit, they get those 60 bucks after all, which isn't much to some high rollers on the RMAH.
Companies say what their customers want to hear. Mythic also wrote they didn't like buff bots. Talking and acting are two very separate things.
Your last passage is too complicated, not that I couldn't understand it, but we can simplify that, actually, I already did that(see one of the above posts).
Imagine you play with one friend, who is a Monk and does nothing but follow you with Mantra of Conviction active (and looting). It doesn't suddenly take ages to kill stuff and mobs aren't really harder since Blizz removed the bonus damage.
Ok boss w/e you say, I know for a fact that I can't kill shit when someone else is there and I'm alone doing damage. Sure if you have 100k dps it shouldn't be an issue, but not all of us farm up billions of gold to gear things.
And I mean I CAN still kill things, but its a massive kite and takes forever and a day.
and its not a "we don't like blah blah bots" that blizzard is saying. Of all gaming companies Blizzard has been one of the few that actually bans massive amounts of players for violating ToS, and running a character without needing to interact with the client is against ToS, and people do get banned for it, for example AH bots. They can do this because not only are they so huge, but many of the players will just buy another copy and keep playing because the games they make are addictive.
Yeah, I did kind of forget about the RMAH revenue they get, but dude 60 bucks for one player does not go very far for server operating costs (ie electricity, connectivity, hardware replacements), plus paying employees, developers, etc. It isn't even enough to pay a single employee for just one day*... I've personally never bought or sold a single item on the RMAH, and that is likely to never change. They won't ever see more than 60 bucks from me, and I'll play D3 for probably 6 years like I did D2 and LoD before I switched to WoW. Certainly does NOT cover my fair share of operating costs.And these "buffbots" won't be paid for past the 60 bucks, you'll be lucky to even see them in better than 20 million gold sets of gear.
*: and how long were they working on D3 BEFORE it came out? The 12 million copies they sold probably barely covered development costs and the initial investment in server tech. Cinematic artists get 34 an hour, and it certainly isn't fast making those sick cinematics. Software engineers get between 80k-100k a year, and they worked on the game for years. Take a look at how much some of them make... http://www.glassdoor...ries-E24858.htm and they had a lot of people working on the game.
This.
I already thought about so-called "buffbots"(dual-boxed chars that only buff the main char) of the past. Blizzard would only need to implement an /autofollow command to sell many extra boxes, I'd say
Can't imagine many normal players shelling out the extra 60 bucks just to have an extra buff or two on follow, making things harder for themselves solo. As well as the performance decrease as many people don't have the computing power for two simultaneous clients. MOST people are playing on old vid cards, don't have SLI or CrossFire, and probably only two cores max. (most people I know are still on core 2 duo's)
Blizzard also would never, because it would allow someone to double the loot they get too without the effort, since everyone has their own loot... as well as enabling public game follow bot leeches... at least with multiboxing programs it isn't easy to setup or play with, and provides CONSTANT nuisance having to regroup and whatnot. (having to tab between clients to find the one you need to fix... etc)
Well, my "most important" gaming background is Dark Age of Camelot, in which this behavior was very prominent. Due to game mechanics some character types could almost double the performance of others while requiring virtually no care. Many players went that route, "normal" players were at a disadvantage because of it (heavy pvp-focused game) but the publisher never did a thing against its bonus earnings(monthly subs).
Do you think, Blizz is different?
You use monthly subs as part of the argument .. there are no monthly subs for D3. So yes they would care because its more strain on the server that isn't being paid for monthly. (granted the servers were originally handling like 10 million and are now down to like 2 million so they could probably handle it)
Blizzard is also 100% against the use of a game client/character without any interaction required. (multiboxing gets around this because you are actually controlling the character through mirrored keystrokes.) This has been stated many times in blue posts about multiboxing.
Obviously the company for DAOC didn't care enough to "fix" the issue because it made them money. The game is also more pvp oriented... where d3 is entirely pve oriented with some lame little place you can go and have bromance with the other lamers that want to go there.
And, in DAOC things weren't made harder by having that extra character for a buff. In D3 monster life goes up, and if you aren't one of the uber players with insane DPS then its likely more than you can handle. The passive buffs aren't exactly enough to make up for the increases to monsters, either. For example I play with some of my RL friends. On the character I use with them I can solo MP0 and MP1 without an issue, but add just one extra person and it barely seems like I'm hurting mobs if they aren't around doing damage too. And elites? forget about it I'm toast. (before you bash me, this is a character I play exclusively with them, and isn't all decked out in AH gear as we wanted to all play characters with only gear we found together, etc. I'm sitting at 35k dps selfbuffed)
Conclusion As it stands, whatever Monster Power you are currently doing, when 1.08 hits, do it multiplayer. If you have a 200KDPS character, you can afford to have 3x130K DPS characters (ignoring any multiplayer benefits you may receive, including increased protection from damage from shouts)
Actually, I believe the most important buff in multiplayer is Mantra of Conviction/Overawe. +48% damage for the 3 other players (as long as they target monsters around the monk) is just huge (and I wouldn't be surprised to see it nerfed soon unfortunately).
This.
I already thought about so-called "buffbots"(dual-boxed chars that only buff the main char) of the past. Blizzard would only need to implement an /autofollow command to sell many extra boxes, I'd say
Can't imagine many normal players shelling out the extra 60 bucks just to have an extra buff or two on follow, making things harder for themselves solo. As well as the performance decrease as many people don't have the computing power for two simultaneous clients. MOST people are playing on old vid cards, don't have SLI or CrossFire, and probably only two cores max. (most people I know are still on core 2 duo's)
Blizzard also would never, because it would allow someone to double the loot they get too without the effort, since everyone has their own loot... as well as enabling public game follow bot leeches... at least with multiboxing programs it isn't easy to setup or play with, and provides CONSTANT nuisance having to regroup and whatnot. (having to tab between clients to find the one you need to fix... etc)
In Diablo everyone is the main damage dealer. Blizzard has acknowledged all the little drawbacks of playing with other people, thus their buffs this patch. There are also advantages to multiplayer that don't necessarily show up in theorycrafting though:
- Group buffs and enemy debuffs have a multiplicative value based on the number of players. Stuff like Mantras, War Cry, etc are viable choices in solo play, so just imagine how good they are in a 4 player team.
- More targets on the screen means monster attention is divided, making it easier to DPS uninterrupted without kiting and using defense skills.
In other words, four players are more than the sum of their solo DPS. The advantages of co-op in 1.0.8 will be so great that it won't take much for another player to justify the +50% monster HP their presence adds.
If you want to make the benefits when playing as a group as you would by playing alone, you cannot have the mentality that 'everyone is the main damage dealer' because someone you want the group benefits. While mantras are fine, I strongly believe in building a character up in a way that its capable of doing everything well instead of specializing at one thing and performing poorly at the rest, which makes all the defensive auras useless.
The point you made about having more people makes it less likely to get surrounded and die is fine, but like I said, some benefit more than others. Melees shouldnt have to run around because something wants to kill a dying wizzard, just like a wizzard shouldnt have to permafreeze something while melees kill monsters on the spot.
And the benefits of multiplayer mode is restricted to only the additional magic find, which does not justify playing slower and killing less than they would alone.
The benefits of playing together are massive, if you can't see that I don't know what to tell you. In 1.0.8 monster have only 250% health with theoretically 400% group DPS, +30% XP/MF/GF, group buffs, distributed aggro, etc. Four equally geared players playing as one would probably farm twice as fast. Even taking into account weaker teammates with coordination problems, they would have to be pretty darn bad to make you worse off than playing alone.
Dude can't even spell Wizard right and you actually take him seriously? lol
There are tons of extras in there and I suggest you read through it thoroughly but the best parts of the patches are crafting, brawling and monster power. The change to the XP gains was huge too for those of us that want to level up faster. There is a lot to catch up on bud so get gaming!
All you NEED to know is brawling is gay, monster power = harder hits, more life, more loot. I haven't played since you did.
Its not good equal to what the game could have had. If you see how many that bought it, and then see that only 1/12 is playing the game, its not so good. The numbers is high yes, and it is really much, no shit on that, but the active player base could be much higher if it were done right. Many top games has more than this, and i consider Diablo series to be on of the top games.
You also need to factor in how many copies of the game were purchased at the behest of a recently banned AH bot, so they could bot and get banned again while hopefully making enough money to cover another copy of d3 and turn a profit. Since you are taking total sales and comparing to to current playerbase, you should look at other games that have had huge banwaves for bots and hacks and see how the numbers compare. Starcraft 2 I can think of, World of Warcraft is another. Sure many of the numbers are people that quit and don't play, but you can't guarantee that any number that isn't still playing is someone who got banned, someone who quit, or even a multiboxer that doesn't want to pay for multiple accounts anymore, etc.
The real issue with the auction house isn't the fact that it exists. The real issue with it was how there are no "realms", like with World of Warcraft and other games where auction houses are perfectly successful and don't take away from the game. The issue is, millions upon millions of players all posting to the same place. you get literally hundreds if not thousands of the same items... basically it just floods the market because so many are selling and not as many are buying those big ticket items. Even worse was the enormous amount of absolutely junk ass shit. Just because you got a legendary and saw 300 million prices on the AH doesn't mean yours was worth 300 million, and a lot of people didn't understand that. Add to that the fact that the game was riddled with bots (easy autoit ones you don't have to pay for) for a considerable period of time, and it fucks up how much gold is worth. People claim "but you don't even have to play to get the best items". Well you still need to level to 60... and you still need to earn the gold to buy those items. If you choose to buy stuff on the RMAH... so what? I just don't see how that "ruined" the game. People just need a scapegoat, kind of like how the president of the USA is to everyone.
I think it simply could have been handled by making things account bound once you equip, or making the highest end items bind to account/character, such as all level 60 legendary or even just legendary in general. That way the market doesn't CONTINUE to get flooded, as things are used up. (such as with World of Warcraft and other games with successful auction houses) But as it is now, every single item that goes up has the potential to be sold again at some point, and the pool of items just gets larger and larger as more drops and gets discovered... which hurts gold even more because as there are more and more items, the gold is worth less and less. Simple Supply and Demand people... Have to bind items... just have to. Things HAVE to get used up.
It won't do much to help curb duplication if blizzard doesn't track down who gets it and remove the original that doesn't get bound to an account. I mean you at least get a dupe out of it, for the average player this is cool, you get to sell your awesome 6L awesome weapon and keep it for your character at the same time.
just saying, bliz will not ban botters ... and if they do? well botters already got lots of gold selling items in RMAH, and have a bunch of other accounts botting and on and on and on and on ...
Yep, they "got lots of gold" selling items on the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE. Botting gives you enough gold by itself, you sell the items on the RMAH to make RL money and to have enough money to buy another copy of D3 when you get banned.
Let me first premise by saying Witch Doctor was the first class I leveled, so it's near and dear to me! But alas, I've decided to explore other aspects of the game after hitting a wall with him. Now I haven't been back since 1.03 other than an hour or two here and there, I feel it's a bit of an uphill battle when playing him. Currently I have a Monk with a Wizard on the way.
But with 1.04 and developer blogs soon to come out, I'm hopeful that I'll have good reason to come back and visit the WD as I think it is probably the most interesting class to play. Here are some things that I'm looking forward to, and I'm looking to see what other people are hoping to see Blizzard acknowledge about this class overall.
Animations: While the witch doctor has some of the neater animations (raining toads anyone!??) they're all far too long, even with a ceremonial blade or fast 1h. In inferno I feel sometimes that while running from Fast affixes or just faster moving creatures, stopping to cast grasp/wall of zombies runs a risk of taking damage sort of defeats the purpose of casting the abilities in the first place.
Mana: At this point after playing a monk fully through inferno and a wizard into hell (I actually play and not farm Leorics manor for each difficulty). Resource management on those classes just feels so much more natural. Diablo 2 felt like resource spending game, Diablo 3 feels like resource generation game. This point has been argued so heavily that if Blizzard doesn't make some kind of change -- whether it be in skill mana adjustment or a buff elsewhere -- I'd say it's clear that they don't play WD nearly as much as Barbarian (which seems to be the most well thought-out.
Pets and summoning: For a class that has 3 passives dedicated to pets, 1 of which is unlocked at level 45, this is lacking. Where the witch doctor has so much potential in the pet department it certainly falls short. But this has been acknowledged by Blizzard during their AMA (I think, if it wasn't there it was a blue tracker). Especially considering that the promotional video for the WD in the days before release featured "foul beasts" at your disposal, it would only seem right for this to be buffed. As it is, having sacrifice and zombie dogs on your bar is close to pointless at most difficulties.
Overall build variety: The truth is that you can get through this game with pretty much any build no matter how crazy. I'm sure somewhere there's someone angling to prove that pets can work with a toad of hugeness/spider queen build and will be posting within the next few days a youtube of them soloing various champion packs. There's just simply a lack of variety and at the end of the day most people are just increasing the amount of splinters they've shot. WD may be the least played class, but he's got the best lungs -- you don't blow that many darts through 4 acts and 4 difficulties without having nice lung capacity.
These are actually pretty general things that I would imagine Blizzard will be looking at and I hope they do. The class is really fun with some really cool abilities they just seem all over the place. I would really like to start playing him again and seeing more people doing the same.
Because Barbarians were in the previous 2 games, they've had time to develop the class. Of course the other classes are very similar to other classes in the previous game, but are unique in their own way and I think they lost a bit of direction. Honestly the odd one out in the mix is the Witch Doctor, which is similar to the necro from d2.
I've always been one against PTR's, just like Betas. Companies used to actually beta test things internally... now they just use players to do it for free. I mean... yeah sure the top end players its great for, they have nothing to do in the current patch of the game since they've done it all and are probably bored. But for the vast majority its a waste of time they could be using to get better at live and improve gear that they actually get to keep. Not to mention I only ever get lucky with drops on PTRs, getting tons of good items that I'll never get to keep, while I get shit on in live my whole life. Never once ID'd an SoJ (without the manald/nagel "bug" from classic), never once got a good elite unique besides Shako. Played for 6 years, most of the day almost everyday.
And I mean I CAN still kill things, but its a massive kite and takes forever and a day.
and its not a "we don't like blah blah bots" that blizzard is saying. Of all gaming companies Blizzard has been one of the few that actually bans massive amounts of players for violating ToS, and running a character without needing to interact with the client is against ToS, and people do get banned for it, for example AH bots. They can do this because not only are they so huge, but many of the players will just buy another copy and keep playing because the games they make are addictive.
Yeah, I did kind of forget about the RMAH revenue they get, but dude 60 bucks for one player does not go very far for server operating costs (ie electricity, connectivity, hardware replacements), plus paying employees, developers, etc. It isn't even enough to pay a single employee for just one day*... I've personally never bought or sold a single item on the RMAH, and that is likely to never change. They won't ever see more than 60 bucks from me, and I'll play D3 for probably 6 years like I did D2 and LoD before I switched to WoW. Certainly does NOT cover my fair share of operating costs.And these "buffbots" won't be paid for past the 60 bucks, you'll be lucky to even see them in better than 20 million gold sets of gear.
*: and how long were they working on D3 BEFORE it came out? The 12 million copies they sold probably barely covered development costs and the initial investment in server tech. Cinematic artists get 34 an hour, and it certainly isn't fast making those sick cinematics. Software engineers get between 80k-100k a year, and they worked on the game for years. Take a look at how much some of them make... http://www.glassdoor...ries-E24858.htm and they had a lot of people working on the game.
Blizzard is also 100% against the use of a game client/character without any interaction required. (multiboxing gets around this because you are actually controlling the character through mirrored keystrokes.) This has been stated many times in blue posts about multiboxing.
Obviously the company for DAOC didn't care enough to "fix" the issue because it made them money. The game is also more pvp oriented... where d3 is entirely pve oriented with some lame little place you can go and have bromance with the other lamers that want to go there.
And, in DAOC things weren't made harder by having that extra character for a buff. In D3 monster life goes up, and if you aren't one of the uber players with insane DPS then its likely more than you can handle. The passive buffs aren't exactly enough to make up for the increases to monsters, either. For example I play with some of my RL friends. On the character I use with them I can solo MP0 and MP1 without an issue, but add just one extra person and it barely seems like I'm hurting mobs if they aren't around doing damage too. And elites? forget about it I'm toast. (before you bash me, this is a character I play exclusively with them, and isn't all decked out in AH gear as we wanted to all play characters with only gear we found together, etc. I'm sitting at 35k dps selfbuffed)
Blizzard also would never, because it would allow someone to double the loot they get too without the effort, since everyone has their own loot... as well as enabling public game follow bot leeches... at least with multiboxing programs it isn't easy to setup or play with, and provides CONSTANT nuisance having to regroup and whatnot. (having to tab between clients to find the one you need to fix... etc)
You also need to factor in how many copies of the game were purchased at the behest of a recently banned AH bot, so they could bot and get banned again while hopefully making enough money to cover another copy of d3 and turn a profit. Since you are taking total sales and comparing to to current playerbase, you should look at other games that have had huge banwaves for bots and hacks and see how the numbers compare. Starcraft 2 I can think of, World of Warcraft is another. Sure many of the numbers are people that quit and don't play, but you can't guarantee that any number that isn't still playing is someone who got banned, someone who quit, or even a multiboxer that doesn't want to pay for multiple accounts anymore, etc.
I think it simply could have been handled by making things account bound once you equip, or making the highest end items bind to account/character, such as all level 60 legendary or even just legendary in general. That way the market doesn't CONTINUE to get flooded, as things are used up. (such as with World of Warcraft and other games with successful auction houses) But as it is now, every single item that goes up has the potential to be sold again at some point, and the pool of items just gets larger and larger as more drops and gets discovered... which hurts gold even more because as there are more and more items, the gold is worth less and less. Simple Supply and Demand people... Have to bind items... just have to. Things HAVE to get used up.
Yep, they "got lots of gold" selling items on the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE. Botting gives you enough gold by itself, you sell the items on the RMAH to make RL money and to have enough money to buy another copy of D3 when you get banned.
Oh, so right after you've applied the patch.
Wizard = Sorc
DH = Amazon
Witch Doctor = Necro
Monk = Paladin
Barbarian = Barbarian.
Expect an expansion soon with 2 new class types that resemble Druids and Assassins.