Any class could of had 2 stereotypical builds. One focused on big numbers (crit/crit dmg), and one focused around smaller numbers (Hit fast, but maybe not as much per hit as the other build but more hits). Nerfing a stat like IAS limits the later of those builds which limits viable options for other possible builds. It makes no sense to nerf something just because people choose to stack it. Whats next? If the majority of people start running around with 70k-80k Hps are they gonna nerf vitality? Where does it end?
Another point of view. Nerfing a stat like IAS does not limit it as a viable option when stacking it previously was a clear winner. Now instead of IAS being clearly better, crit change, crit damage and other stat are also "competitive".
The hardcore players and the gold farmers destroyed this game, now it became unplayable for me and other casual players because it takes forever to find good playable stuff, and this nonsense farming is just plain stupid. This game will lost 99% of it population in one year or even more
Just to let you know the hardcore people have never liked "casuals" to play inferno. They want inferno to be catered for elite players only and would repeatedly use names like "carebears", "noobs", etc. to describe player like you. Now with the inferno nerf, seemingly not enough to cater to the more casual players still and yet has angered the more hardcore/elite players.
I have always wondered if it is possible for Blizzard to please all their customers.
It's sad people get so excited about patches when they totally forget that this game should not have been this broken to begin with. Sure I can forgive oversights here and there but this is the first time I have played a Blizz game that felt more broken than polished. This is 2012, not Diablo 2, which mind you came out ages ago. And don't even try to defend Blizz cause they had/still have the resources, time and blueprints from previous games to make this game awesome.
Remember the old joke? I don't have to out run the lion, I just have to out run you. Blizzard doesn't have to please every consumer. They just need to please their customers better than other game companies. Call me a fanboy if you want but I still havn't find a game company that can produce better games than Blizzard. Wake me up when you find one.
I can understand some disappointment, but seriously, this post, after Blizzard telling us all the intended fixes, is simply retarded.
I appreciate your response, thoughtful, but I didn't expect the anger. A forum afterall is for discussion. I thought my original post was no less thoughtful. I respect your opinion but there is one point I have to disagree, regarding items.
You said that, " Everyone knows that loot in Diablo games is random, so why would they waste advertising time talking about it."
This shows a poor understanding of what the players want. Players in D2 were not excited about the random loots, while functional were not what they were farming for. Players remembered the unique items because they were fun and exciting and what they would like to farm for. E.g. Windforce. I still think Blizzard didn't understand this completely, hence we have these poorly designed legendaries. They have dropped the ball on this one.
They may come to the realization now and will be making the changes necessary and I do hope they succeed (for my sake as well so I have more fun things to play with)
Just to start off I would like to say I am having fun with D3 right now but I am not a hardcore gamer. I have only spent about 50 hours into the game. But I have been reading the forum a lot and reading Blizzard's response to different posts. Diablo 3 is not a complete failure like some people suggested. Blizzard did test their game, a lot, unlike some other people who would like to imply otherwise. But at the end of the day, they did make some mistakes. Just a few, not many, but those mistakes lead to the out cry you hear today.
1) They did not prepare for the popularity of the game so their server team did not prepare sufficiently for launch. IMO, given their years of experience with WoW, this shouldn't happen and it seems like a mistake that amatuer company would make. No excuse.
2) They focus on the wrong thing with Inferno. Before launch, they kept saying how hard Inferno would be. It seems that they were trying to make Inferno as hard as possible. So hard in fact, that they themselves could not complete it. (And if they could not, how in the hell could they test the content properly?) That was wrong. If they have followed their own philosophy in making games, by focusing on fun, they would not have landed in the hot water that they are in right now.
Wrong assumptions:-
Hard = fun
But in reality hard doesn't always means fun, if it leads to frustration, tediousness, less build diversity and less excitement.
They of course also assume their player base taking months to reach inferno so having months to react to change things if it goes wrong. But of course it only take weeks for the players to reach inferno. Targeting hard instead of fun leads to all the trouble that it is in.
For normal, nightmare and hell difficulty though, they are targeting fun and people are having fun. How? By focusing on content that allows for build diversity.
3) Blizzard did not appreciate the importance of item/loot plays in Diablo. Why did I say that? Pre-release, they spent so much time talking about skills, runes, build diversity and even inferno but had hardly showed off their items that they designed. It is obvious to me now that they did not spend enough time on it. If they did, they would have showed them off pre-release.
This is strange and unexcusable though. Any fans of the franchise can tell you that the excitement of item drops was what kept the game going for many years. Why did they not focus more of their time at this part of the game?
Having said that though, Diablo 3 is top notch in other areas of the game, gameplay, pacing, atmosphere, lore, etc. But given their huge followings, they are of course held to a much higher standard than an average game. And without this followings, they could not have hoped to achieve the record sales that they did.
This is a good topic. Have you posted it on battlenet?
I want to add one thing: in "design concept" Blizz states that they want to encourage different builds to be playable and viable, but I can't see how any of intended changes will do that for a wizard. FA will still be the one and only most viable skill for a wizard and you got no options to change it with something whatsoever.
I think they will encourage build diversity through multiple patches. First step:- Inferno nerf, Second Step:- Improve itemization. Third step:- Class skill rebalance - focusing on buffing under utilized skils
I've posted this on the battle.net forums, but I figured I might as well post it here as well:)
I’d like to take the time and share my experience of D3 so far. Blizzard has shown through all the blue posts, the reddit Q&A, and recent patches that they care about and want community feedback. I would therefore like to give mine. I will focus my feedback on gameplay in the higher difficulties, because, well, that’s where I’m at right now.
I’m not here to teach game design, because I’ve never actually designed a game, and I have never taken any classes on the subject. I can only discuss my personal experience with Diablo 3, so that’s what I’m going to do. Some of what I write here might have been repeated in other threads, because other people might have had experiences that are similar to mine.
I will for the most part, focus on my negative experiences. So by being clear, I’ll start off by saying that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the game. Learning new skills and putting together new builds with those skills is very fun and addictive.
I’m currently in act 4 on Inferno. I really enjoy the fact that this difficulty level is hard, but I don’t like how it is hard. For me as a player, sometimes it’s the feeling that I have little control over some phenomena that is frustrating.
Some deaths are unavoidable. A group of elites kill me, and the only sensible way of beating them (to me, at least) seems to be acquiring better gear. In some ways, I do not mind this. Getting new items, and finding out that previously unbeatable mobs can now be beaten is fine. It makes new items feel like they’re worth something. For me, this is good, since I play this game for two reasons: (1) having fun killing monsters, and (2) finding precious new loot.
What puts me off a little bit however, is that the game might be a little too focused on ‘’get better gear to beat new monsters’’ way of doing things. Let me get back to my reasons for playing the game. It makes finding new items more fun, but having fun killing monsters less fun.
I understand that items become more valuable when they are necessary for beating something. And I want items to be valuable. What puts me off a little bit is that after you acquire the gear, things start to be easy.
When the way of beating something was, in many ways, through passive damage and mitigation, and not through active use of skills, it becomes easy once you acquire what you need of passive stats. Let me get back to the feeling of control. When it’s difficult because you can’t control whether or not you take damage, it becomes easy once you start to take damage.
I’m afraid that the game as a whole starts to become easy once I acquire really, really good items. I want there to be more once I’ve achieved that. I’m not calling for an entire redesign of the inferno difficulty into something where items don’t matter, because that would seem to counter some of the purpose of the game: finding new items.
I would like there to be encounters where what I do, as in how I control my character never stops being important. I want to be rewarded by playing good, not only by having good items. In the future, I’m scared that acquiring good items make my strategic choices not matter.
These are my thoughts on the game difficulty. They might be a little rushed, and I’m sorry about that. I’m a little busy trying to balance reading for exams and playing the game:P I do hope that I get some points across. If you want me to try to explain things more clearly, I’d be happy to!
Thank you for reading:-)
Nice read. I guess your sense of control all depends on what class you play and what class you choose. Demon Hunter uses a lot of smoke screen to avoid damage. That is a good form of control (not crowd control but as in controling your own fate through the use of a skill) Now the challenge is that many demon hunters feel the need to spec into that skill to survicve which promotes cookie cutter build. So I guesss the answer is to promote the use of many more such skills.
The problem as I see it is that in inferno they over nerfed crowd control which are class skills that require player active use, hence fun. But the effect of stun is reduce, slow is reduced, life leech is reduced and so on. So I would suggest to bring the fun back by making crowd control more effective in inferno.
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Another point of view. Nerfing a stat like IAS does not limit it as a viable option when stacking it previously was a clear winner. Now instead of IAS being clearly better, crit change, crit damage and other stat are also "competitive".
Just to let you know the hardcore people have never liked "casuals" to play inferno. They want inferno to be catered for elite players only and would repeatedly use names like "carebears", "noobs", etc. to describe player like you. Now with the inferno nerf, seemingly not enough to cater to the more casual players still and yet has angered the more hardcore/elite players.
I have always wondered if it is possible for Blizzard to please all their customers.
Remember the old joke? I don't have to out run the lion, I just have to out run you. Blizzard doesn't have to please every consumer. They just need to please their customers better than other game companies. Call me a fanboy if you want but I still havn't find a game company that can produce better games than Blizzard. Wake me up when you find one.
I appreciate your response, thoughtful, but I didn't expect the anger. A forum afterall is for discussion. I thought my original post was no less thoughtful. I respect your opinion but there is one point I have to disagree, regarding items.
You said that, " Everyone knows that loot in Diablo games is random, so why would they waste advertising time talking about it."
This shows a poor understanding of what the players want. Players in D2 were not excited about the random loots, while functional were not what they were farming for. Players remembered the unique items because they were fun and exciting and what they would like to farm for. E.g. Windforce. I still think Blizzard didn't understand this completely, hence we have these poorly designed legendaries. They have dropped the ball on this one.
They may come to the realization now and will be making the changes necessary and I do hope they succeed (for my sake as well so I have more fun things to play with)
1) They did not prepare for the popularity of the game so their server team did not prepare sufficiently for launch. IMO, given their years of experience with WoW, this shouldn't happen and it seems like a mistake that amatuer company would make. No excuse.
2) They focus on the wrong thing with Inferno. Before launch, they kept saying how hard Inferno would be. It seems that they were trying to make Inferno as hard as possible. So hard in fact, that they themselves could not complete it. (And if they could not, how in the hell could they test the content properly?) That was wrong. If they have followed their own philosophy in making games, by focusing on fun, they would not have landed in the hot water that they are in right now.
Wrong assumptions:-
Hard = fun
But in reality hard doesn't always means fun, if it leads to frustration, tediousness, less build diversity and less excitement.
They of course also assume their player base taking months to reach inferno so having months to react to change things if it goes wrong. But of course it only take weeks for the players to reach inferno. Targeting hard instead of fun leads to all the trouble that it is in.
For normal, nightmare and hell difficulty though, they are targeting fun and people are having fun. How? By focusing on content that allows for build diversity.
3) Blizzard did not appreciate the importance of item/loot plays in Diablo. Why did I say that? Pre-release, they spent so much time talking about skills, runes, build diversity and even inferno but had hardly showed off their items that they designed. It is obvious to me now that they did not spend enough time on it. If they did, they would have showed them off pre-release.
This is strange and unexcusable though. Any fans of the franchise can tell you that the excitement of item drops was what kept the game going for many years. Why did they not focus more of their time at this part of the game?
Having said that though, Diablo 3 is top notch in other areas of the game, gameplay, pacing, atmosphere, lore, etc. But given their huge followings, they are of course held to a much higher standard than an average game. And without this followings, they could not have hoped to achieve the record sales that they did.
I think they will encourage build diversity through multiple patches. First step:- Inferno nerf, Second Step:- Improve itemization. Third step:- Class skill rebalance - focusing on buffing under utilized skils
Nice read. I guess your sense of control all depends on what class you play and what class you choose. Demon Hunter uses a lot of smoke screen to avoid damage. That is a good form of control (not crowd control but as in controling your own fate through the use of a skill) Now the challenge is that many demon hunters feel the need to spec into that skill to survicve which promotes cookie cutter build. So I guesss the answer is to promote the use of many more such skills.
The problem as I see it is that in inferno they over nerfed crowd control which are class skills that require player active use, hence fun. But the effect of stun is reduce, slow is reduced, life leech is reduced and so on. So I would suggest to bring the fun back by making crowd control more effective in inferno.