Quote from miles_dryden
Quote from CardinalMDM
So, uh...anyone else checking out that "possible properties" list?
Reduce Cooldowns of all skills?
Reduce Resource cost of all skills?
And the widely demanded...SOCKET!? That's gonna make some people happy.
Also...funky new crafting materials, check that out!
If I remember right, they said adding a socket to items felt necessary, which is why they didn't give that ability to Haedrig. I'm guessing the fact that you have to drop a stat to get the socket balances it out?
But ya, this is a nice little preview of things to come.
They did say that, yeah, that adding a socket shouldn't be a chore. But like you said, this does seem to balance it out pretty nicely. On the one hand, if you have a piece in desperate need of a socket, and it only has stats you don't need, a socket is an easy choice. Then again, if you have a damn near perfect item, adding a socket might not be as good as the other choices presented.
Decision making!! I like it!
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The 2.0 pre-expansion patch is going to come out BEFORE Reaper of Souls releases. Meaning for a period of time, people will be able to acquire level 60 items that, at least for now on the PTR, have been kicking the junk out of some my best level 60 items in the live game, my Monk's Skorn notwithstanding. Thus, it's entirely plausible that if people put a fair and reasonable amount of time into playing the 2.0 patch before RoS releases, people will have a nice amount of Loot 2.0 Rares, possibly even a few legendaries, that ARE Enchantable, BEFORE Reaper of Souls raises the level cap to 70 and higher level items start dropping,
Meaning, unless there are people who are adamantly refusing to play the 2.0 patch and are insisting on ONLY playing Reaper of Souls, this feels like a major non-issue.
I plan on playing D3 with the 2.0 patch, and many of my characters are itching for Loot 2.0 upgrades. By the time I unlock the Mystic, and can even Enchant AT ALL, I may very well have most of my characters' items on board with Loot 2.0/expansion versions. Besides...Enchanting "Legacy" items isn't going to have nearly as much use as saving my materials for Enchanting level 70 versions anyway.
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Anyone care to recall the amount of stash space the almighty Blizzard North decided we'd need in D2 Classic? 24 blocks. That's it. 24 lousy blocks was apparently enough to them. Oh, but remember...that was before the innovative days of item stacking!!! Meaning, every potion, every little tiny gem chip, it all took up individual blocks of space. And what did Blizzard North do when they realized how moronic it was to only give us 24 blocks? They doubled it to a measley 48. Well aren't they nice.
In D3, inventory management got a serious update...no longer does a Polearm or Two-handed sword take up a bloody quarter of my pack. Also, in the process, we got an enormous stash by comparison to what D2 had. Is it enough now? Eh, I suppose not. Admittedly, I could afford to clean out a ton of stuff I don't need. Question is...will it be enough come RoS? That's a definite no.
Blizzard sees that, they see people want it, and they added in a fourth tab. Fine...not a massive earth-shattering victory, but can people at least be a little happy about it? More space = good thing.
By the way, gurg0, not really sure where you're getting that math from. You can't really count each characters 60 slot inventory, as no self-respecting D3 player runs around with 100% of their character's personal inventory filled 100% of the time. Maybe if they implemented inventory charms, like D2 had, though I highly doubt that's how charms will make their way into D3, if they do at all. Yes, I understand people are used to making "mule" characters, and even with a vastly increased stash, compared to D2, as well as a limit on how many characters one can create, people still make D3 mules. Unbelievable...
The real math is...we currently have 210 total "shared stash" slots, divided over 3 tabs. With an additional tab of 70 slots, we'll have 280, for an increase of 33%.
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As for people running around with +5 wooden sticks, that are actually Zweihanders...I don't think it works that way. The animation needs to be the same in order to transmog. So a Wizard, let's say, is carrying a Wand, they can't transmog the wand into an Azurewrath. However, if the account has uncovered a variety of Wand appearances, they can change the Wand to look like other Wands. If they're carrying a two-handed sword, they can unlock other two-handed sword appearances. But the image won't be that far off. And like others said, you can still inspect them to see what they're actually carrying.
In regard to seeing what other people have, and wanting it for yourself...my guess is that a lot of people will be transmogrifying most of their gear to look like the rarest stuff. it's a little like Banner rewards, as a way of showing off what Achievements you've completed.
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Truthfully, though, just seeing what they're carrying isn't always the most definite tell of what kinds of stats they have, what kind of damage they're doing, what kind of build their gear has emphasized. Especially now, since many legendary items apply Smart Loot aspects, as well as there being Enchanting to begin with...one person's Andariel's Visage may be almost completely different from another person's...and another person's Skorn may be entirely different from another person's.
So seeing what people have on their character's model is far less important than the items' stats themselves, and you still have to inspect those items through their profile to see what kinds of stats they have going for them.
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In his Inferno Friday video from last week, he mentioned how the devs removed the feature in Reaper of Souls where (at least for the Wizard) if a player kept casting resource spending skills, and ran out of resource, the game would default to the free primary skill a person had chosen on their active bar and cast that instead of just what he called "an empty cast," like a little Wand spark or swing. He felt that wasn't a fun change to make, since he and other players tend to be at zero resource most of the time.
I responded to his video by basically saying that the Tweet he pointed out from Nevalistis, that says the feature trivialized resource management, was pretty much right. Running out of resource should yield some level of consequence, and while it's more "fun" to pay more attention to battle and less to resource pools and cooldowns, managing what one can cast is part of the strategy and tactics of battle. The more streamlined the devs make battle, the more autopilot people can turn themselves onto when they play.
Archon's response to me, while respectful (which I appreciate), wasn't all that great. Pretty much all he said was that it wasn't a fun change and people are usually at zero resource. I wasn't too happy. In fact, I may still reply to his reply...if I feel like it.
In retrospect, I probably should've voted for someone else.
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And he seriously must have an army of peeps who wanna learn how to DDoS, because when I clicked on the link, 3rd from the top, that Bagstone lists, people totally spammed that topic with DatModz comments.
Voted for Archon. He's informative, easy to listen to, takes the game seriously, never gets arrogant about it, he's analytical but not overly critical, funny once in a while...guy's not a showman, he's just doing his thing. He cares about the game and shares stuff about it, shares his opinions and wants to hear from people. DatModz tries to be a celebrity, like he's on a 24/7 reality show. Not a fan.
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Personally, I like the idea. I loved finding the random merchants out in the world in the live game, typically because they sold Rares, which the town vendors didn't do. This was likely the case because of the Auction House, and Blizzard didn't want people becoming storefronts for gold selling, or turning the stumbling upon of one merchant in-game into real world money. Now, on the PTR, though, without the AH, vendors carry rares and better quality magic items, which is really nice.
From what I've heard, legendary and set plans require 1) a particular type of white item as a base, and 2) special crafting materials acquired from specific unique monsters found out in the world. As a result, crafted legendaries and sets can't be mass produced, so really...even if you find a vendor that sells an occasional legendary or set plan, and you buy whatever plan he offers at the time, you still need to farm the ingredients in order to craft any of those items.
Well...my hope is that Dane Bright stays in the game on release. Seems pretty cool. Hopefully it's legit. I have no way to tell, :-)
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Sure, there's some level of drop chance thrown in, which is hopefully raised per difficulty level like Monster Power did, but all in all, farming keys is a hell of a lot easier.
And there's also this. With the original Hellfire Ring, you could have two organs for ages, and still have to farm enough keys for all three portals to get ONE guaranteed chance at the portal you want, and if that particular organ doesn't drop, you're outta luck. But with the new system, faster key farming means holding onto more keys, as well as targeted portals to maximize the amount of chances to get exactly the organ you're missing.
Truthfully...this all seems like the Hellfire Ring Event/Quest/Thing is tuned up a whole hell of a lot. Yeah, there's still farming to do...gonna be unless they say "Start Hellfire Ring Quest...Kill X...Kill X Complete...Hellfire Ring Received."
I mean, when they originally patched in the Infernal Machine event, it was during a time when people wanted more content and activities to do. And it was specifically meant as something to take a long ass time to finish. Of course, most people with high end Auction House gear blew through it on MP10 in a friggin hour, and I'm sure the same thing will happen when Reaper of Souls releases, but...
The way they've changed the Event is good all around. Sorry, Finder. Not seeing where the downside is.
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So while legendaries and updated set bonuses will be huge game-changers, my feeling is that they won't be necessary.
Yeah...90%, and to my knowledge, no runes or charms either, so...no OP runewords in Classic.
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I would have no problem if Blizzard stacked...to bring it back to the topic at hand, :-) Mainly because it's a DoT kind of spell that hits a lot to cause damage, and since it stands still and costs a ton of AP, I agree that it should stack.
However, wildminz...one of the reasons people could spam spells in D2 was because of mana potions, which weren't a bad mechanic back in the day, but they were clearly pretty easy to abuse to, well...stack more damage than one should be putting out. In D3, if a person strengthens their character enough that they can spam spells a little bit, it's much different than in D2, when people could spam spells almost infinitely if they have enough potions.
Though, like I said, I do agree that Blizzards in D3 should stack. I can support that.
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My Wizard on the live game used Hydras a lot, mainly for elemental damage stacking. Not a deep or complex method, but somewhat effective.
I've found their main lure, though, to be that they have a very low casting cost (so they can essentially be moved around to where they're needed), and they stay up for, like, 15 seconds per cast. So while they don't do massive burst damage, like most Meteor options, if a Wizard wants to save Arcane Power for other spells, while still doing elemental damage of a particular type, a Hydra can be a smart way to go.
I will say, though, that as people start gaining more Paragon Levels in Reaper of Souls, and putting points into Maximum Resource and Reduced Resource Cost, Wizards are going to be casting insane amounts of Meteors.
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With all due respect, Zero, especially when it came to the Wizard, just buffing damage is about the last thing they did.
They did it with a lot of the Witch Doctor's DoT skills, because most of the WD's lure is huge amounts of Damage over Time, and most of the existing DoT build options for the WD were pretty pitiful. Now, at least, not only does the WD have a strong amount of powerful spell build options (my WD on the PTR can FINALLY hang with an all Spirit build, with no Primary spell, very happy about that), the WD can also have elemental synergies as well, which makes them great pairings with Wizards, but hardly OP.
So yes, they did "remove a mechanic" in Critical Mass, but they ended up adding so many better options in terms of mitigation...Dominance and Galvanizing Ward now producing shields (something the Monk is also great at doing...keeping up my PTR Monk's Mantra of Healing shield is a great way to restore life without having to depend on Breath of Heaven or Serenity), changing Blur to a flat damage reduction instead of just "melee damage," and I'm pretty sure some of the Primary spells have shields attached as well.
I'm not sure if the major components of the Demon Hunter or Barbarian have changed as drastically, but those classes at least have become WAY more diverse as a result of their skill rebalancing for the patch.
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On the PTR (and assuming, in the beta), when you leave a room and wait maybe a few seconds to a minute, then join the channel again, you'll be in a different numbered room. So if you're in General#22005, leave the room, wait a little bit, then rejoin General Chat, you might be in General#20054 instead. Which I love, because on the live game, you can leave and rejoin the channel infinitely and you'll still be in the same numbered room until you...
Hopefully this feature stays with the patch and they update the chat interface to push this live. It's a small QoL thing, but sometimes you just end up in a crummy room, and you don't want to turn off Chat or leave Chat entirely, you just want different people to Chat with. Especially in D3, like I said, kind of a small QoL thing, but I enjoy that a lot more about D3 than D2. Diablo 2, far as I know, doesn't let you stay in a chat channel when you're in game. You can keep whispering to people, but the chat box was enormous and filled up the top of the screen really fast.
D3's chat lets you play in a game while chatting in General channel, and the box doesn't take up too much of the screen.
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In case I didn't say this, Bagstone, I think part of the problem is that people have been so used to various routines from D2 that anything that goes against that model is seen as "bad." Plus, since so much "fun" was had from that kind of model, which involved repeatedly bulldozing the same zones and enemies, no one ever thought to question why such a model was unhealthy or flawed.
Love 'em or hate 'em, the D3 devs are some brave souls. They're taking a community of people spoiled on the mountains of loot they were getting from repeatedly facerolling bosses, and saying, "you have to work for your reward. No more handouts." I grew up rather spoiled by my parents, so I suppose in a subconscious attempt to make up for that, I at least like to work for imaginary loot in a game.
And ya know, I like the last line you say there the best, because it really highlights how contradictory people in this community can sometimes be. I'd be willing to bet there are some people still wondering why bosses aren't dropping better loot...yet, most of those people are also the folks who are saying there isn't enough content. So they want bosses to drop the best loot, but in the process, those bosses will become farming spots, and the amount of content will become less.
In regard to efficiency, my best guess is simple...Ladders. Many D3 players were active Ladder players in D2, and in Ladders, efficiency is a key factor. Honestly, in a Ladder scenario, or in Races like Path of Exile has, I totally understand "efficiency." However, when not in a Ladder or Race scenario, efficiency shouldn't be a factor.
I probably won't partake, but I do hope Ladders show up in D3 ASAP, for the sake of those who want to compete. It's a good PvPvE stepping stone, and lets the people looking for a reason for efficiency have a purpose. Meanwhile, folks who want to kick back and enjoy the slow progression to godliness can enjoy the game the way they want it as well.