DiabloFans

There are two reason I would say this is not a problem. The first is that seeing a build is only step 1; understanding it is step 2 (usually not that hard a step following step 1), but implementing its use effectively is step 3, and just because you can see it and know what you should do doesn't mean you will be good at carrying it out. The other reason is that this game is in no way a competition, so even if people are "cheating off your homework," it doesn't impact you in any way. If you want to be playing by yourself or just with friends, and never even tell anyone outside that group when you beat Inferno w/ your Hardcore unorthodox build, then in all likelihood, no one will even know to look at your build out of the millions of characters.

I would say that the game is going to be 60-70% about build + skill (depending on your build, what fraction of that is skill and what fraction is just choice of ability will vary), and 30-40% about gear. Gear can and will be a bottleneck for progression at times, but there are plenty of people you'll be able to hand a perfectly-geared character to who won't be able to get out of act 1 Inferno, certainly not w/o a lot of practice.

Quote from Khrull777

Jay Wilson mentioned that at first they did have character customization, but took it out because:

#1. The customization wasn't very visible when wearing armor, so it was a waste of time.
#2. It became a time barrier to hitting "Start" and start playing.

I believe both of those explanations, and they seem quite reasonable. I have a friend who is a game designer at a different company, and I can imagine that #2 is, in fact, actually a huge deal to them.

Quote from Slayerviper

I get the whole "I need to change how I look" but how often are you going to stare all teenage girl like at your character in the face?

Well, we will be playing with these characters for ungodly numbers of hours, so, on average... a lot...?

Quote from Slayerviper

I don't know much about the "witch doctor culture" but I've never heard of a white one.

You've also never heard of someone summoning Meteors or firing beams of energy from their hands, launching anything that can be called a "rain of arrows" (or of vengeance) with a single bow twang, or escaping their enemies by summoning a wall of zombies or swarm of locusts. As I said before, this is about appealing to deeply-ingrained cultural stereotypes, a common practice among movie directors and every other branch of the entertainment industry.

Quote from Slayerviper

Quote from karsen88

Playing D&D years ago we got to pick our race/class/gender/ etc. Is that not the norm? When a player starts D&D are they told they will play a 57 year-old middle eastern female cleric named "Verellia"?

Say you wanted to be an bard and you pick an Orc... well you get the picture it just doesn't quite work.

I've never played D&D being given a pre-constructed character, but, esp with a limited degree of background, that might be a fun way to play. Nor have a made an orcish bard, but I tend to be a min/maxer. Some of my friends would definitely appreciate playing in this way.

Words: We do not farm.

Inside Blizzard, they had to form a very specialized QA testing team in order to test inferno, because most people in the company couldn't function in the inferno difficulty. They then took the data and information from that QA team and they doubled the difficulty.

While it is possible that people will clear inferno and not consider it too serious of a challenge, testers, prior to the difficulty ramp up, were dying in the tens to twenties of times per rare packs, not even mentioning bosses before, they cleared an act.
These QA testers were the best D3 players Blizzard had internally, and they were dying, alot, and often, and then they doubled the difficulty after they finished most of it, but there have already been confessions that no one internally has cleared inferno. Remember that, even with the capability to clear have gear handed to them, and before they doubled the difficulty that's getting shipped, no one was still able to do a full clear of inferno.

For most people, the inferno difficulty of D3 is going to be difficult. Don't delude yourselves with what was seen in the beta playthroughs, because that content was what they give as the 'demo' of the game. That super easy tutorial that is supposed to reign in casual cash filled pinata customers, who most likely drop the game before they even finish normal.
We may see an inferno clear in a few months, we may see one in four or five months. We won't know until we see it, but unless you've been doing some super retro gaming speed runs with your eyes closed and one hand behind your back, you will find inferno challenging.

people copying other peoples builds is trivial. to me what matters is coming up with your own builds and understanding every skill and recognizing the synergies between them. when you come up with a particular play style and use the skill calculator to make that particular play style viable is so rewarding.

what you also discover when you do this is that you dont get tunnel vision to one particular class because they have the most obvious build. when i decided i wanted to play D3 i only wanted to play just one class and the rest looked boring/weak, but know i'm excited for every single class because i know there true potentia,l something i wouldn't have gotten if i just looked online for cookie cutter builds instead of doing it on my own.

Quote from Wolves_

... what stops people who doesn't understand the game from just stealing builds and being in par with him? ...

Skill.

You can buy the same guitar and amp that Slash uses, but it doesn't mean you can play the same way.

This amazes me that they went this route and not the more traditional way that would make people happy.

THIS WHOLE PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED WITH THE FOLLOWING:
1) Portrait displays character name
2) Highlighting portrait shows Battle Tag
3a) Chat Box shows Character Name.
3b) Or show BOTH
"[Time:Stamp:Here] CharName<BattleTag>: This is how we make people happy Blizzard!"

It's not complicated, and I'm sure 99% of the player base would find this solution acceptable.

I might die before release from smashing my head into the desk after reading so many idiotic threads.

Quote from Khrull777

Ctrl-C, CTRL-V from Blue Tracker:

With some information out may or maynot be correct about how hard monsters hit in Inferno will WD pets still be viable?
JayWilson:Yes, pets scale pretty well in inferno. You do have to refresh them, but they are useful for tanking mobs

So, all we have to be concerned about is pets accidentally pulling in mobs. I'm sure Blizzard has this one figured out, be pretty glaring omission otherwise.

wow awesome. this makes me feel A LOT better about them. esp if you get the 3 trinity of passives to keep them alive. jungle fort Zhandler Bad med

Ctrl-C, CTRL-V from Blue Tracker:

With some information out may or maynot be correct about how hard monsters hit in Inferno will WD pets still be viable?
JayWilson:Yes, pets scale pretty well in inferno. You do have to refresh them, but they are useful for tanking mobs

So, all we have to be concerned about is pets accidentally pulling in mobs. I'm sure Blizzard has this one figured out, be pretty glaring omission otherwise.

It really bothered me in the beta when I could not see the character names. It just seems stupid. I don't feel like naming a character is important anymore. I used to do a bunch of mythology research before creating names, but now I don't know what I'll do.

I rarely bother voicing my concern over something, but for this I will definitely be making threads on the official forums in the weeks following release. It matters to me that character names matter.

why is this not getting through to people

Some like it because this is an easy way to keep track of a player. This is not being argued. Infact, it is a welcomed change.

The point of contention is how its being done.

I dont want to be identified in game by the same name regardless of what character i am playing. I want to be called ZYX when in one character and ABC while on another. It is after all the point of a name.

It has been said time and again in this thread alone. There are many options that blizz could have taken, they chose one that is obviously a quick fix to a "problem" (the problem being its too dificult for some of you to keep track of your friends).

Explain to me:
Why cant you have character names be linked to the account?...

Once the account is on your friends list you should be able to see which ever character they are on regardless of whether or not it was the initial character you added. Send a tell to the account name and it gets automatically routed to which ever character that person is logged into. This system is called DNS look it up on google if you need it, it is how the entire internet works.

I don't understand why this change could be seen positively in any light.

It would make sense if battle tags were unique but they aren't... so no, displaying the battle-tags won't help you spot someone you may have played with in the past. All this change does is make character names worthless. Would it be that hard to display the character name and on mouse over display the battle-tag?

Heck, you could even combine the two in the chat and I'd still be happy. At least we'd see character names.

Krishna (xxxbattlemasterxxx): hey how's it going?
Conan (xxxleetman2000xxx): Pretty good you?