great. the new guys have to get up to speed, have to test the boundaries for new or unconventional stuff and have to adjust to the new work environment. it is already sad that there is no real patch for season 6 and i'd really like some heavy UI changes for the handling of overlapping seasonal => non-seasonal items.
but we will see in november. i personally don't think they will introduce a diablo 4, they normally don't kill off a big number that quick. also, what would a diablo 4 have to be to be anything different than diablo 3 and still stay true to the franchise? diablo 3 is great on its own, but you have to constantly work on it.
that leaves us with an expansion. it has to be an expansion, else there won't be a very big population in this game come 2017. if they announce diablo 2 lod hd, people will leave d3 in waves.
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ah, alrighty then. thanks! though it seems we could get rid of the cube altogether and incorporate the recipes in the crafting pane.
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if blizzard did the same thing with rift keys, there would be no problem whatsoever. but since you seem to have to fish for a suitable / beatable / record worthy GR, they should think about eliminating the need to fish and let the GR keys remain the way they are. how they would do that is beyond us and maybe them, too.
about the crafting mat storage: do i still have to open the pane, take out everything for a cube recipe by hand and press cube? i know it still serves the fantasy of the cube, but it is still just another window to open instead of taking the items out of the stash. i fail to see the QoL here.
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i wouldn't count set dungeons, empowered rifts or buff bars as content. you don't really create something meaningful which then translates to a more interesting story for a game.
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sure, i have played them all. back in the day when they were just released. diablo had great atmosphere and the addon piled onto that. diablo 2 was much bigger and had a lot to do. but diablo 3 narrowed it all down. this type of game just doesn't fly in the modern days.
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wow. those are some lazy answers.
- the paragon system is fine? the first iteration with a new portrait every ten levels meant something. now you hit 70 after a few hours in a new season and a few hours later you are already 150+ and don't even get a new frame after that. after 800 levels you just level on and on and on.. is that rewarding? is that some sort of progress? back then i could say "i try to reach paragon 30 tonight, only seven levels to go!" and it helped to motivate. now? not so much.
- they even speak about the "next rift". you just rift rift grift grift bounty bounty your way through lots of tall grass. going side by side through a dark dungeon whilst slaying mobs is dead anyway. sprinting barbs, vaulting demon hunters and blinking monks took all the danger of a dungeon.
- looking through to the bones of the game, they are implementing some items which set some flags. as TrueColdkil said: they manage. they don't add really meaningful stuff and add safe things like items and cosmetic rewards. it is sad.
so, the three follow-up answers aren't much better than the real Q&A. pity.
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while true, other divisions manage to implement new classes into their respective games on a regular basis with far more possible ramifications than in diablo 3. in diablo you could test a class on the ptr and do several data wipes to ensure it performs within a certain range, roll out the accompanying patch and finetune that via hotfixes if needed. and if it isn't possible, you aren't hurting anyone THAT much since the seasons reset roughly every three months.
WoW, overwatch, heroes of the storm or hearthstone on the other hand.. a new class is thoroughly checked before release and has a lot of potential to shake up many parts of the game. they also don't have that much time without the possibility to let the community play them in some form. and why don't they? because the diablo franchise doesn't get enough manpower and resources funneled their way. i for myself cannot believe that a class in diablo is in any way that much more complex than in any other game with comparable characters.
edit:
oh, and even if the necro is still in alpha: it is still awful to have THAT lame excuse of content for a 20 year anniversary..
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i said it time and time again: one strength and weakness of d3 always was that you could leave it for a year, return, read up on guides to select the correct runes and were good to go. sure, it is great to be able to jump right back into the action. it is also sad that nothing really changes in this game. how many times did the starcraft 2 login screen got revamped and refined until it got this great UI it is today? how often did they add content or allow content to be created by the community?
they don't have to implement the possibility for the community to create content in diablo. but you have a great customization option via the banners, portraits and whatnot. yet it is being squandered by mindlessly drawing portraits which obstruct paragon levels, don't fit the theme or are just plain ugly. they could add more achievements and link them to these cosmetic kind of things. they could do community events and i don't mean the buffs they didn't even follow through with. diablo 3 would really have benefitted from GMs which gave buffs for a weekend or declare a subzone for some rampage involving a special set of enemies. reality is: the game is utterly static and nothing gets changed on the fly like in WoW. relog, boom, winterveil is here and everything is decorated.
they didn't do anything for the graphics either. the textures on the big character you see in the login and menu screen were already ugly when the game went into beta. and since the problems with performance are located in the netcode, you could easily release a high res texture pack as an optional checkbox for better rigs. nope, it stays right at the release / slightly upgraded RoS level.
so, with that being ranted, what is it that the devs are doing? it is almost three months now since they showed a moving, fighting and spellwielding necromancer. why do they still need six months more to finish the polish and still can't give a definitive answer to the questions they got for their friggin' big Q&A? why do we still have to wait for the official pricing? because we will maul them for it. the micropaymancer being the first real content in many months, while the game still sucks in many parts (paragon system, rifts/grifts, item management, one character isn't worth anything), just shows the lack of passion the devs suffer from.
and once again: no, we don't have to be grateful that they give us some things "for free". they have over 30 million sold units and they got a lot from the RMAH. i am fairly positive that this exceeds the development costs and as i said somewhere else, it should be the passion of the devs to further improve their baby. if they improve upon it, they can make a quick buck for a new class on the side, no problems with that. if the class dlc is everything they are able to do with their skeleton crew, the game is in a dire state.
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Beotrix: look at their other games. there you can see lots of new content. you cannot call things like rifts content, since it is just another play mode. it was implemented after the people realized in vanilla, that the endgame is something like an alkaizer route. you min-max everything to achieve higher numbers.
higher numbers such as grift level on some leaderboards with an awful UI for every season where the whole progress gets rebooted. and you don't start something fresh. the last two seasons where practically the same game and patch level. you always have the possibility for all mobs in all of the zones from the whole game in a tidy tunnel and at the end you have a guardian. and you beat a timer. that got old quick and adding "content" like a challenge rift is the same old with a mutator.
so, either you are very easily pleased, have no real expectations how great a good diablo game could be or just are content enough with the ultra slow work of some devs.
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and the armory feature is just a bit of QoL and it got scratched from the latest patch. did blizzard actually say something about that?
oh and by the way, please stop with all the "for free" nonsense. you can play hearthstone and heroes of the storm for free. and still get a lot of updates and communication, events and tweaks based on feedback. it is not our fault that blizzard cut the only viable source of revenue (rmah) and go with no additional revenue income at all. they shouldn't add to diablo because we want it so or some of us even demand. they should add to this game out of passion for the franchise and if we can support it, we will. taking half a year or longer for a slightly different class while still trying not to pin a release date or price isn't really a cool way to maintain a franchise.
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new zones aren't needed. the cube "story" was shallow, short and not really memorable. new zones can be implemented, when they implement some overarching story like in an expansion. other than that? please don't release all the maps you scrapped while developing RoS..
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the fact that there are just four people mildly talking about the subject is astonishing as well. the necro q&a was one of the little glimmers of hope after all.
and no newspost on the main page for well over twelve hours after the q&a concluded. guess this is the next forum closing.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/5qf362/necromancer_qa_summary/
didn't read the whole thing yet, kinda don't know if i need to given that they don't talk about price and release.
edit:
okay, read it. jeez. Q&A. many Q, few definitive A. "don't know yet", "maybe", "that is the plan". as it stands now, they don't seem to have anything really working.
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nice. nearly one year for a micropaymancer. and sometime in between yet another season with yet the same stuff we will see a bit of QoL. grrreat!