OH I think comparisons to WoW are absolutely justified and beyond that...extremely healthy for Diablo 3...so thanks for bringing them into the spot light...Arguments otherwise have almost no merit, because in my mind when I view WoW and speak of WoW, I see a game that has attracted some of the most hardcore professional elitist jerk raid master 5000's ever born. And it did so with a big enough bone for them to chew on for years, never mind the sub fee and how many hundreds of millions of dollars it made along the way. I would predict you have about 10 times the play time and about 10 times the skill in WoW as I do, so you and I could probably harp on about it over drinks for hours on end...Along side that, WoW created a piddly little child's adventure while they trip over their shoelaces on the way up through Razor Fen Downs. In short when I view wow I see the strengths of it, that were not respected nearly as much as they should have been, and could have been, with the departments probably being within shouting distance...
WoW was the embodiment of a game that invited 5 year olds and within the exact same game engine and rule-set demanded players to devote, if they so wished it, several thousand actual hours logged in game, and god only knows how many out of game doing calculations and discussing arena comps.
And you are very correct in being wary of making things easy and perhaps making them to easy and drawing a line of distinction. And you are correct about it being hard to level either from 1-60 or from 1-100. But you are only correct WITH that wariness and WITH that consideration and WITH this discussion. Wariness and consideration and discussion that the team down in California either never had or completely failed to capitalize on.
I am not correct when I assert they need to take element X from WoW or difficulty Y. But I am correct when I choose to discuss and draw from it and think about it....the elements that one can be correct on, are things like your statement of "interesting" and my statement of "exciting"
if the devs realized this, We would not all be wearing the same boring as fuck predictable endgame set with emeralds in our weapons with zero alternative, with piles of skills and runes sitting almost completely ignored for months if not years on end, when the entire foundation of Diablo 3 is the exciting growth and exploration of skills and items. Everyone dressing the same way farming infinite paragon levels that grant +5 dexterity 2 thousand times in a row forever...as if thats how far APRGs have come in the past 15 years....such a ridiculous premise should have been laughed out of the meeting room years before the game ever hit the shelf.....to think we just barely got here.....just think about that.
I've said this before and I will say it again. it makes me sick and sad to see how easily the playerbase drums up good ideas that easily destroy the shit baked into D3, and your video does exactly that; you and your cronies, and the mods here and the pro players over there and the devoted fans over in official GD, they come up with amazing ideas and have great debates and coin up these ideas that would serve D3 until the end of time....and here we all sit waiting for Blizzcon to give us a tavern talk that will almost certainly be a let down.
for some reason the devs allowed the absolute entirety of levels 1-69 both inside and outside of seasons to become completely trivialized. it is boring and predictable and pointless. So yes you are correct in your assessment that the only solution is endgame...it appears they have sadly made it so...
I think D3 just doesn't get enough frequent updates. It's a grinding game, fine but blizzard just kinda gives it the dicking and d3 is now basically a small side project (especially now because they are launching overwatch).
The game get's easy once you are past a certain level and just revolves about farming paragon levels (zzzzzZZZZZzzzzZZ) and everyone just get's fed off after a couple of weeks. No one buys the game. Not enough financial incentive to make regular new content. Hell we can't even play it offline. I'm not even going to bring up all the botting/exploit shitstorms. There is not enough new content in between seasons + the game is too expensive.
The problem really is how easy the made most of the game, leaving a tiny fraction of it (when you consider the entirety of content in the game) - most of it. And they can't go back now and make gear HARDER to get or make leveling HARDER, people would QQ to no end. So that tiny fraction (grift progression) needs to increase in scope and complexity.
As for the frequency of updates, aside from new game sales and 'paying it forward' so people will buy the next xpac, Blizz doesn't make any money from continuously patching the game. People seem to think they pay for a game once and are entitled to free lifetime updates, when that simply doesn't make sense from a business standpoint (if you get paid do a job, you don't keep doing it for free after it's complete just because you got paid once).
This is why I (along with quite a few others) have been asking for micro transactions for over a year now. Stash tabs, cosmetics, character slots, etc.
I think everyone agrees it's no longer about the loot, but unfortunately at this point there is NO solution to this particular problem. I talked about it in the video - the whole progression process became quicker and quicker with each patch because people whined and Blizz caved. There is only a solution to replay value via non-loot. You know how ancient items were introduced by Blizzard to put some feelers out there and see how people responded? Paramount QQ about 'I didn't get mine'. And the funny thing is, now they made ANCIENT items easier to get via the cube. Can you IMAGINE what would happen if Inferno-drop rate legendary gear was introduced?? Pssh. Game would be done. Nah, you can kiss the loot hunt goodbye.
In the quotes above you mention that
1. you cant make the game "harder" or getting gear harder or people would QQ to no end...
2. the whole progression process became quicker and quicker with each patch because people whined and Blizz caved. and that any regression back to that challenge would be met with ENDLESS whining...
One has to contend with the fact that if the creators of D3 shaped the game around pleasing its players then it would cease to exist.
Why?
For 2 reasons:
1. Because at a primal level the whole world wants things to be "easier" and to be acquired with less effort. who doesn't enjoy acquiring things and acquiring wealth and sleeping more and eating better and doing less work for it all....its almost as basic and expected as breathing....
2. roleplaying games at their absolute core are about taking any concept in your mind and expanding it into a convoluted number system. getting stronger performing tasks to greater effect. in D3's case you level slowly and develop stats and stumble over better and better items.
Making things easier on players and rewarding them sooner...takes the fibre of the roleplaying game and flushes it down the toilet.
on top of that, streamlining and simplifying the number system and boiling it down into damage healing and toughness....steers the game away from players who admire the layered number systems above, namely, RPG fans....and towards those who don't really give a shit. namely the huge majority of gamers the world over....
This is why there was this subtle coat of "frustration paint" over the game when items and leveling was so boring and flavorless...because Blizzard was built on the backs of players who enjoy roleplaying strategy anything basically...they don't want to just hit max level in a few hours, have the end game set placed at their feet so they can go smash some zombies...they generally want something more...
This is basically why the devs have so ferociously tried for the past 3+ years to pile back on the sugar and the spice. they have made leveling and items and character development more and more and more flavourful with the umpteen patches since the release and since the expansion...
But they are not geniuses for doing it. They are numpties for taking so long to realize.
And now even its most devoted fans are making videos like the one above and websites like the whole D3cab situation in an attempt to right the ship.
I am still confused as to why this is considered cheating. I didn't use the exploit, I was working when I heard about it, scheduled with my friends to do the exploit, then found it an hour later that they were going to hotfix it and punish the exploiters. Too bad for me.
However, I don't see this as an exploit, much less a cheat. How is using game mechanics to your advantage cheating? A similar example from WoW(Vanilla): UBRS drakes; line of sighting their aoe by stacking your 40 man raid in a corner of a door jam. This is using game mechanis: line of site, and a doorway, to progress. This was just a strat. How is it any different than than the blood shard thing? It isn't.
Also, another example of exploiting game mechanics: having set bonuses for 1 class whose damage stats are separate multipliers as opposed to other classes set pieces being additive bonuses. This set up a certain class, DH, to be the best dps where the other classes couldn't compete because their set bonuses were additive and not separately multiplicative. Should all DH's from season 2 get punished for exploiting a bug in game mechanics to their advantage?
As a side note, capping the max bloodshards that drop to 250 for every rift level above, what is it? like 45 or something? to fix the bloodshard bug is ridiculous; as evidenced by my ridicule.
Also, I think there may be a bug with wizards and slow time bubble damage and pain enhancer gem. See guys doing crazy damage from that gem with the time bubble buff when they have 2.2 million stat sheet dps buffed not counting elemental damage modifiers, and no +physical damage. If anyone else could test this out, I don't have a wizard, to see what is going on, that would be great.
This is actually pretty fascinating. The only reply I can muster is that I takes all the intellect of a human mind to decipher the answer to that question "will I get banned?".
Rather than blather on about stories winding all the way back to Everquest and Ultima Online, And how once upon a time a pro gamer Athene triple checked a crazy boss "strategy" with a GM AND screen-shotted the conversation AND STILL had the kill wound back and nullified,
I'll just say answering the question "will I get banned?" is more of a craft than a science.
When I view the blood shard situation in this thread, I'm not even the least bit surprised to hear that bans were issued, because of how my mind processes all the little aspects of it.
I'm also not at all surprised to hear the poem of silly fuck ups associated with the list of previous exploits and "situations" as the came up in D3...
was the D2 closed battle net overrun with hacks and dupes? I only ever played offline on a LAN but remember them selling the closed battle net to players in the wake of Diablo 1 fireballs up your ass while you are shopping at Griswolds.....
did the server side "closed" battle net become overrun with dupes and cheating? I'm curious
From what I gather there was 2 versions of D2. One version was the "open battle net and one was the closed batttle.net.
one of these versions was meant to be completely hack and dupe free, by storing many files on the server in california and not allowing them to be hacked up....So my question is....did this "closed battle.net" system become compromised and totally overrun by cheaters and botters?
or were they always able to keep it legitimate?
I only ever played D2 100% offline........so was the secure version of the game actually secure?
I don't see how you can claim that D2 had a larger vareity of stats, especially after the introduction of legendary affixes and legendary gems into D3. In D2 there were countless useless stats that you never wanted on your gear. The actual "good" stats were usually shared across the board with all classes and builds.
That's the easiest claim one can make. D2 had a larger variety of stats for a number of reasons. First of all it was being compared to D1. And in terms of itemization and item flavour, the worst day of D2 Classic beat the living fuck out of the very best day D1 + its Hellfire expansion.
how do you take this fight to D3? You take the best day of D2 and compare it to the worst day of D3. and D2 the underdog this time around ended up beating the fuck out of D3 as well. is that an unfair challenge?
OK lets look at the best day of D3 compared to the best day of D2.
D3 has been out since 2012, almost 3 years. and in that time D3 has been playing catch-up non stop. They are not blessing the players with new legendary gems and cool items, they are putting that shit back into the game after they deleted it all.
you do not delete all the runes and all the horadric cube recipes and all the jewels and let the players stew and fester for 2 fucking years, and then spoon feed them a few legendary gems and act as if you just re-invented the wheel....
Just because there were useless stats in D2 does not mean that the concept of MORE stats is worse than the concept of LESS. in fact the concept of
less stats has an especially negative effect on Diablo 3 because, "that's all players do".... they "hunt for items with stats on them"
Its a matter of perspective, the D3 team did not do good deleting crushing blow and deleting jewels and deleting the Enigma teleport weapon that everyone used...
They did BAD. why?
Because crushing blow was a IDEA of specialization and something other than the carbon copy bullshit of smart loot. it was an IDEA against 10 thousand yellow pieces of boring shit that are just mainstat/ vitality/ pick up radius/ armor over and over and over again to infinity....
Jewels were an IDEA of weapon augmentation.
Enigma is an IDEA of a wild wacky legendary item that allows a character to do something out of the ordinary, and that's what they are scrambling to put back into the game, the very IDEAS. because the IDEAS those items and gems represented were completely fucking eradicated in D3.
Ans that's exactly what should never have been removed in the first place. in fact those are the very first ideas that should have been strengthened and enhanced.
it does not mean that crushing blow is the missing piece of the puzzle and that "D3 sux" because it is absent. it does not mean that "crushing blow rulez!!"
The devs should have thought outside of the square...instead of focusing on what Crushing blow represented?
they had it in D2, then they deleted it in D3, then they put it back in...... then they deleted it again...........all the while nobody says a fucking word about the talisman system....its pure toilet paper....great job!
^ And this is what I don't understand. The game did not come with any guarantee, written anywhere, of future content or updates or anything of the sort. The game was released a certain way and if you didn't like that, you shouldn't have bought it. In the future, you can wait for reviews or gameplay videos or whatever else to make an educated decision on whether you want to buy a game, but feeling entitled to free content - which is exactly what a lot of players expect - is just silly. I'm sure they'll continue to feel that way and complain, but that's not how you institute change.
An exquisite and laser focused back and forth between you two. Micro-transaction games, at least the "properly" designed ones, indeed use the micro transactions to "accelerate" victory. It's an optimum line to lay upon. Hearthstone is a shining example of this. All the cards can be slowly gained over time, or more quickly gained by spending cute little piles of money. If Diablo 3 included a big ol' cash shop that offered a truck load of cosmetic features that you had the option of purchasing....well that would just be amazing. it would eliminate that stance people take about how "D3 owes nothing to anyone", by injecting money into the game which ideally would be used to improve things even further.
Role-playing games are not carved into existence based on guarantees. They are created by a pretty deep seated passion for excellence. The whole "don't like don't buy it stance", it's a rather cold and soulless way of looking at the bigger picture, and in doing so you risk never understanding peoples' disappointment; I understand that disappointment fully.
The problem is, those in charge do not seem to understand.......
If the developers take that position of "we made the game, if you don't like it, don't buy it........" It's the quality of the GAME that suffers in the end.
[quote]lso what was very cool about D2, was the fact that the most expensive items were indeed yellow rare items, which could generate many different affixes that made this item godlike and very expensive. In D3 there is no depth in itemization. The only upgrade you can get is 20 main atribute or 10% more critical hit damage, which doesn't encourage you to further grinding/farming/exping whatever you feel like doing.
I really think people overestimate the itemization system in D2, especially when it came to rares. Sure it was nice that rares *could* be godly (ala rare circlets), but it was mostly getting +3 to your specialized skill tab. The other stats were no more interesting than All Res and other stats from D3. I loved D2, don't get me wrong, but it's itemization had tons of problems as well, and I know I mostly played it because I liked the repetition at that stage in my life.
I'm not at all saying that D3 doesn't need some itemization work, or that a suggestion like the one in the OP wouldn't be awesome and welcome. But when people try to analyze why D2 was successful, I often see more flaws that would bug me today than I see examples of how to move forward in D3. The thing I like about the proposed system is that it can also function as sort of a "rune word" type system, using existing items to combine into either something with the potential to be better (like better stats), or used to create a totally new item from the old ones (essentially the same as adding runes to a socketed white item). I do, however, hope they don't make the new items soooo OP (like enigma) that it overshadows the other items in the game. Powerful but not overly silly would be ideal.
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D2s itemization was in comparison to D1. in fact the entire template of character advancement was in comparison. in that regard and in the regard of itemization exclusively D2 beat the fucking daylights out of D1, offering more of any "thing" you can name.
I think overall they threw out FAR to many babys with that bathwater when it was D3s time to shine. its just like you mention;
rune word systems or an offshoot, adding items that are a hat tip to Enigma by being powerful of not ridiculously OP...
if I were at the meeting about starting to make D3 id cry tears of joy over this wonderful foundation that had been built up.
instead it felt like the head honcho waddled in and said:
"i don't like this....I don't like that....get rid of this...get rid of those....delete that....DELETE these...."
Uuuugh.
I just cannot for the life of me say that I'm glad they got rid of charms so that my inventory was untouched. or that I'm glad they got rid of enigma because it was broken OP....or I'm glad that I don't have to assign levels to skills because "cookie cutter"
To me it feels like they eradicated the "ideas" within those above elements which would have potentially brought so much flavour to the game.....
people are angry and disappointed that so many things were taken out of the game, and then wedged back in later. on top of that, it's no guarantee that the newer iterations were superior than what was present several years ago in D2.
The ideas you mentioned: Paragon levels, monster power and enchanting, are not revolutionary concepts by any stretch. they represent character growth through fighting, selectable stats and item enhancement.
I feel based on what I know about role-playing games, that to say that these things serve as examples of ways that the game was tailored to meet the demands of the player-base and that were given graciously after the game was purchased....it all sounds pretty dishonest to me. I feel that they could have been and should have been much more intriguing and robust from day 1.
Although "never" is a pretty strong word, based on what we have experienced in the past few years, I feel sadly that this term applies; not only will this idea in all likelihood NOT be grafted into the game after any length of time, I highly suspect no similar idea will make an appearance either. if anything even remotely close comes to the game, it will be years before we see it like you say...
combing weapons, and sentient weapons and weapon customization and so on...are not generally ideas left to be discovered or unveiled at this point. players are always so nice and diplomatic at times, and are frustrated and explain their frustration so kindly and they eloquently describe what they long for in game. The brutally angry players and the passionate players and the diplomatic players and the MVPs and the forum heavyweights and the mods; they would all be happy with the same thing: more shit to find and more possibilities. I think I can make this assessment because people are gathering dozens of the same items over and over again.....
but it's not happening any time soon it seems. Be nice about it or be angry......we will be waiting for years on top of the years we have been waiting not for the possibility, but for the CHANCE of a possibility.
Nice idea. I dont think the order you add items (aside from the last item) should matter. It just makes the system overly complicated.
The idea in this entire thread doesn't exist and will in all likelihood never exist, so there is no point announcing ways or suggestions in which parts of it should be dumbed down......
It's thinking like that that lead to the creation of this thread, and the many like it before, in the first place;
The desire for MORE options and MORE exploration and MORE possibility. Not LESS. Role-playing games only exist because ideas are expanded upon over time. dungeon and dragons alone peppers players with piles of text books to explain rules and lore. Personally I'm absolutely stunned that Jaetch and god knows how many others. Others have managed to remain SOO optimistic for SOO long.....
While it is possible for one to explain how wildly diverse items are in Diablo 3, its easy to cite dozens of items that make your eyes grow wide with wonder over how they might promote certain abilities, or how much gear as improved when it comes to how interesting items can be, Overall I think they are missing the mark by a long assed mile....
"BiS" only applies to all characters and is only an absolute all the time if they only have one thing to do. In D3's case everyones job is "do damage".
Ideas of specialization, are sadly lacking. They the ideas, were little tiny seedlings when the game was released. and how .....years later........are tiny little budding blades of grass, when they should be a bloody forest. Bonus damage to demons appears on about 1 weapon. or is it 2 weapons?
% rates of proc effects like freeze or charm were listed in single fucking digits....
Healing spells are as scarce as can be. taunt abilities were and still are, in my opinion tragically lacking.
It took years for cooldown reduction to drip into the game.
these concepts were VILIFIED due to the fact that they were harvested from MMORPGs, and this lynching was so ingrained in everyones behavior and thought?
they lost sight of the bigger picture.
The mysticism and the god like power that the character were hopefully supposed to have. And much of that progress could have been harvested off of the backs of virtually every role playing game you can name.
So here we are years into the games release, a full fledge expansion well under way, and every character is slogging away looking for the same items.
just. like. vanilla.
Several runes are regarded as pure useless shit, and sit idle and unused overall.
just. like. vanilla.
Legendary items have been through SEVERAL teardowns and rebuilds. SEVERAL. and they are still in a state of limbo. still being worked on.
Hell just yesterday, I found out that we have to wait....several months for one of the two end game monk sets to be improved so that it was even desirable???
It is so hard to explain this without becoming frustrated.
It's a merry go round we have been on since 2012. Players enter the game and they split in two groups.
One group wishes and wants for more to think about as far as how to increase character power. As they grow upset the other group rises up to justify.....whatever is currently in place. they coin catch phrases, they cite data, they describe philosophy.
And when that side wins out, and it absolutely does for a long list of reasons that I don't have the strength to yap on about, the game sits idle and admires itself in a mirror.
are we really so divided that we can't agree that several skills should be the centrepiece of combat scenarios and instead are laughed at?
That hundreds of legendary items are laughed at, that overwhelmingly certain rune combinations are adopted at the complete abandonment of countless others?
Are we really so divided that next phase items come with 200 mainstat 500 average damage and a golden border and the reception of those changes range from glacier cold to the surface of mercury?
are we really that divided that some people wish that a game about items and characters had more to do with the intricacies of items and characters?
its sickening to me. it's sickening to know that it would only flesh out and strengthen the quality of the game, and its literally categorized as "troll nonsense. just mindless game bashing negativity jeered by onlookers and ignored by Hype-men with blue text...
When i run into another monk...another player, a fan of the game, who wants to go "loot trade" with me and we are looking for the exact same fucking set, because its best in slot.....and this happened yesterday..
its sickening in a way....just beyond comprehension that some players view this state of the game as oh so admirable.
I simply cannot describe it on paper in text with enough clarity.... and everyone knows Ill find another person doing the exact same thing next week.
if its not the Furnace you crave its the RRoG or the SMK. or Kridershot.......
So I can't claim with certainty that my position is the correct one. and that diversity is a thing that is to be HATED. but when I see how many ideas end up in the toilet and retain that knowledge and the knowledge and experiences in the past 20+ odd years of role playing game exposure....I see a missed opportunity. I HATE it.
I DO NOT see that Diablo 3 is in good shape. Not by a long shot, and not compared to what possibly could be in terms of item, character and ability development and design.
its disappointing to say the least
I dont want to go home and look for SWK like every other monk on earth....i don't want to grind away another 10 thousand monsters just so i can ditch my just completed Raiment because it fucking blows a goat. I don't want to wear a fucking RRoG.
but i have no goddamn fucking choice. and i'm not even wetting my toes on a greater rift higher than 19 or 20....but thats irrelevant. its irrelevant in the face of the argument that overall, everyone wears the same shit and uses the same skills.
every barbarian leaping around like a fucktard, every demon hunter dropping turrets, and every Monk spamming monkey clones...is not some mathematically disproven fallacy. its the state of the game.
I have no choice because diversity is as substantial as a paper bag. I wish i could be optimistic, but unfortunately Seven Sided Strike is laughed at like a clown and im wearing the same items as everyone else on earth. I just dont even understand it.
Why is everybody saying the pvp in d2 was soo great ...
I played d2 for almost 10 years, and the thing which annoyed me the most was the pvp.
it made no sense..
You either were oneshotted, or you moved around in circles all the time.. how was that fun and engaging...?
it was actually the same as brawling is now, except you went out of town and not in a different zone. and you had maybe 2 seconds to react instead of zero now.
still it was far from a good experience from my point of view
Well a few thoughts that spring to mind is:
1. Many people really enjoyed it. I personally did not even set foot on the battle net so thats the depth of my experience in D2 PVP. but from what i've read and heard it was not some universally dispised feature in the game.
2. Those who did not enjoy it in D2 did not have to pay any attention to it.
3. Those who want to enjoy it today in D3, Are discouraged from enjoying it or prevented.
So that seems to be the heart of peoples' frustration: they are asking D3, why discourage, why prevent, why drag your feet?
Diablo 2's PvP system was full of holes and issues, but it only ends up being a thing that can be improved...
count and list as many flaws about it as you can and it doesn't tarnish the actual idea of player vs player combat interaction in a 3/4 isometric.
Just like so many games in the past, you put two human minds on a little static battlefield and what happens next is an astronimcal amount of variables and situations, chess does it, league of legends does it, magic the gathering does it. etc etc etc etc. They expand on the concept of human mind pitted against human mind in creative ways.
Same with the AH and crazy legendary weapons.
Even though D2 had broken items duped all to shit and used by damn near everyone every class, and the D3 AH was a sterile piece of shit drowning in boring little objects that cost 2 billion gold.....both of those concerns do not tarnish the "ideas" of fascinating items or competitive trading platforms...those ideas can absolutely flourish if implemented in the correct way.
they are still worth discussing if that makes sense.
Food for thought indeed. I've been rattling and prattling about this on Official Forums.....The jist, of it to me is that they are squandering unthinkable potential not exhibiting PVP in the D3 engine, in the actual game. Diablo 2's legacy was basically built on the back of its player vs player combat. Hit detection notwithstanding, Diablo 3 has such fine tuned player control it arguably eats LoL for breakfast.
They gave us brawling...sure..but you'd think they do so much as give a god-damn Score board??....they did not even do that.
Tomorrow Im gonna hunt around the internet for some un-official D3 PVP organizations...I've glanced at them a time or two...they have gone so far as prohibited certain runes against certain comps....its interesting to look into they are doing what they can with what they have...
when I dipped my toes into the brawling arena it basically took 500 hours of gear/spec knowledge and compressed it onto a postage stamp and stuck it to my forehead....it was like a whole new thing for about 15 minutes......
I'd love to carry on and articulate this idea...but its my fucking bedtime
I love your highlight of those games like LoL and counter strike....and I love your mention of how those new games both have competition and very little new content....and Im sure you will already be aware of this statement but let me say it anyway and see what you think:
The competition in those games IS the content. its the human minds playing within the games an exponentially unfolded game of rock paper scissors.
same with chess monopoly, MTG, Settlers of Catan,...Star-bound....according to their painfully drawn out development.....
WoW arena, Hearthstone....STARCRAFT.......thats whats so absolutely stunning;
that these competitive games, a whole fleet of some of the best in existence...made by the same company no less.............
Are wholeheartedly shunned by Diablo 3...just completely gone..........
just disgusting if you ask me. DISGUSTING.
I cant even think of a game that was a bigger overall let down.....no matter how kind I become, no matter how diplomatic a tone I try to adopt....no matter how rational......its just so tragic that D3 took the route it did............PVP with legitimately less features that Atari Tank Battle.
and I did not even set foot in D2 PVP....and I was without question the worst WoW arena player you ever met. But I have so much respect for the concepts......
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OH I think comparisons to WoW are absolutely justified and beyond that...extremely healthy for Diablo 3...so thanks for bringing them into the spot light...Arguments otherwise have almost no merit, because in my mind when I view WoW and speak of WoW, I see a game that has attracted some of the most hardcore professional elitist jerk raid master 5000's ever born. And it did so with a big enough bone for them to chew on for years, never mind the sub fee and how many hundreds of millions of dollars it made along the way. I would predict you have about 10 times the play time and about 10 times the skill in WoW as I do, so you and I could probably harp on about it over drinks for hours on end...Along side that, WoW created a piddly little child's adventure while they trip over their shoelaces on the way up through Razor Fen Downs. In short when I view wow I see the strengths of it, that were not respected nearly as much as they should have been, and could have been, with the departments probably being within shouting distance...
WoW was the embodiment of a game that invited 5 year olds and within the exact same game engine and rule-set demanded players to devote, if they so wished it, several thousand actual hours logged in game, and god only knows how many out of game doing calculations and discussing arena comps.
And you are very correct in being wary of making things easy and perhaps making them to easy and drawing a line of distinction. And you are correct about it being hard to level either from 1-60 or from 1-100. But you are only correct WITH that wariness and WITH that consideration and WITH this discussion. Wariness and consideration and discussion that the team down in California either never had or completely failed to capitalize on.
I am not correct when I assert they need to take element X from WoW or difficulty Y. But I am correct when I choose to discuss and draw from it and think about it....the elements that one can be correct on, are things like your statement of "interesting" and my statement of "exciting"
if the devs realized this, We would not all be wearing the same boring as fuck predictable endgame set with emeralds in our weapons with zero alternative, with piles of skills and runes sitting almost completely ignored for months if not years on end, when the entire foundation of Diablo 3 is the exciting growth and exploration of skills and items. Everyone dressing the same way farming infinite paragon levels that grant +5 dexterity 2 thousand times in a row forever...as if thats how far APRGs have come in the past 15 years....such a ridiculous premise should have been laughed out of the meeting room years before the game ever hit the shelf.....to think we just barely got here.....just think about that.
I've said this before and I will say it again. it makes me sick and sad to see how easily the playerbase drums up good ideas that easily destroy the shit baked into D3, and your video does exactly that; you and your cronies, and the mods here and the pro players over there and the devoted fans over in official GD, they come up with amazing ideas and have great debates and coin up these ideas that would serve D3 until the end of time....and here we all sit waiting for Blizzcon to give us a tavern talk that will almost certainly be a let down.
for some reason the devs allowed the absolute entirety of levels 1-69 both inside and outside of seasons to become completely trivialized. it is boring and predictable and pointless. So yes you are correct in your assessment that the only solution is endgame...it appears they have sadly made it so...
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In the quotes above you mention that
1. you cant make the game "harder" or getting gear harder or people would QQ to no end...
2. the whole progression process became quicker and quicker with each patch because people whined and Blizz caved. and that any regression back to that challenge would be met with ENDLESS whining...
One has to contend with the fact that if the creators of D3 shaped the game around pleasing its players then it would cease to exist.
Why?
For 2 reasons:
1. Because at a primal level the whole world wants things to be "easier" and to be acquired with less effort. who doesn't enjoy acquiring things and acquiring wealth and sleeping more and eating better and doing less work for it all....its almost as basic and expected as breathing....
2. roleplaying games at their absolute core are about taking any concept in your mind and expanding it into a convoluted number system. getting stronger performing tasks to greater effect. in D3's case you level slowly and develop stats and stumble over better and better items.
Making things easier on players and rewarding them sooner...takes the fibre of the roleplaying game and flushes it down the toilet.
on top of that, streamlining and simplifying the number system and boiling it down into damage healing and toughness....steers the game away from players who admire the layered number systems above, namely, RPG fans....and towards those who don't really give a shit. namely the huge majority of gamers the world over....
This is why there was this subtle coat of "frustration paint" over the game when items and leveling was so boring and flavorless...because Blizzard was built on the backs of players who enjoy roleplaying strategy anything basically...they don't want to just hit max level in a few hours, have the end game set placed at their feet so they can go smash some zombies...they generally want something more...
This is basically why the devs have so ferociously tried for the past 3+ years to pile back on the sugar and the spice. they have made leveling and items and character development more and more and more flavourful with the umpteen patches since the release and since the expansion...
But they are not geniuses for doing it. They are numpties for taking so long to realize.
And now even its most devoted fans are making videos like the one above and websites like the whole D3cab situation in an attempt to right the ship.
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This is actually pretty fascinating. The only reply I can muster is that I takes all the intellect of a human mind to decipher the answer to that question "will I get banned?".
Rather than blather on about stories winding all the way back to Everquest and Ultima Online, And how once upon a time a pro gamer Athene triple checked a crazy boss "strategy" with a GM AND screen-shotted the conversation AND STILL had the kill wound back and nullified,
I'll just say answering the question "will I get banned?" is more of a craft than a science.
When I view the blood shard situation in this thread, I'm not even the least bit surprised to hear that bans were issued, because of how my mind processes all the little aspects of it.
I'm also not at all surprised to hear the poem of silly fuck ups associated with the list of previous exploits and "situations" as the came up in D3...
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was the D2 closed battle net overrun with hacks and dupes? I only ever played offline on a LAN but remember them selling the closed battle net to players in the wake of Diablo 1 fireballs up your ass while you are shopping at Griswolds.....
did the server side "closed" battle net become overrun with dupes and cheating? I'm curious
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From what I gather there was 2 versions of D2. One version was the "open battle net and one was the closed batttle.net.
one of these versions was meant to be completely hack and dupe free, by storing many files on the server in california and not allowing them to be hacked up....So my question is....did this "closed battle.net" system become compromised and totally overrun by cheaters and botters?
or were they always able to keep it legitimate?
I only ever played D2 100% offline........so was the secure version of the game actually secure?
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That's the easiest claim one can make. D2 had a larger variety of stats for a number of reasons. First of all it was being compared to D1. And in terms of itemization and item flavour, the worst day of D2 Classic beat the living fuck out of the very best day D1 + its Hellfire expansion.
how do you take this fight to D3? You take the best day of D2 and compare it to the worst day of D3. and D2 the underdog this time around ended up beating the fuck out of D3 as well. is that an unfair challenge?
OK lets look at the best day of D3 compared to the best day of D2.
D3 has been out since 2012, almost 3 years. and in that time D3 has been playing catch-up non stop. They are not blessing the players with new legendary gems and cool items, they are putting that shit back into the game after they deleted it all.
you do not delete all the runes and all the horadric cube recipes and all the jewels and let the players stew and fester for 2 fucking years, and then spoon feed them a few legendary gems and act as if you just re-invented the wheel....
Just because there were useless stats in D2 does not mean that the concept of MORE stats is worse than the concept of LESS. in fact the concept of
less stats has an especially negative effect on Diablo 3 because, "that's all players do".... they "hunt for items with stats on them"
Its a matter of perspective, the D3 team did not do good deleting crushing blow and deleting jewels and deleting the Enigma teleport weapon that everyone used...
They did BAD. why?
Because crushing blow was a IDEA of specialization and something other than the carbon copy bullshit of smart loot. it was an IDEA against 10 thousand yellow pieces of boring shit that are just mainstat/ vitality/ pick up radius/ armor over and over and over again to infinity....
Jewels were an IDEA of weapon augmentation.
Enigma is an IDEA of a wild wacky legendary item that allows a character to do something out of the ordinary, and that's what they are scrambling to put back into the game, the very IDEAS. because the IDEAS those items and gems represented were completely fucking eradicated in D3.
Ans that's exactly what should never have been removed in the first place. in fact those are the very first ideas that should have been strengthened and enhanced.
it does not mean that crushing blow is the missing piece of the puzzle and that "D3 sux" because it is absent. it does not mean that "crushing blow rulez!!"
The devs should have thought outside of the square...instead of focusing on what Crushing blow represented?
they had it in D2, then they deleted it in D3, then they put it back in...... then they deleted it again...........all the while nobody says a fucking word about the talisman system....its pure toilet paper....great job!
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Role-playing games are not carved into existence based on guarantees. They are created by a pretty deep seated passion for excellence. The whole "don't like don't buy it stance", it's a rather cold and soulless way of looking at the bigger picture, and in doing so you risk never understanding peoples' disappointment; I understand that disappointment fully.
The problem is, those in charge do not seem to understand.......
If the developers take that position of "we made the game, if you don't like it, don't buy it........" It's the quality of the GAME that suffers in the end.
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I'm not at all saying that D3 doesn't need some itemization work, or that a suggestion like the one in the OP wouldn't be awesome and welcome. But when people try to analyze why D2 was successful, I often see more flaws that would bug me today than I see examples of how to move forward in D3. The thing I like about the proposed system is that it can also function as sort of a "rune word" type system, using existing items to combine into either something with the potential to be better (like better stats), or used to create a totally new item from the old ones (essentially the same as adding runes to a socketed white item). I do, however, hope they don't make the new items soooo OP (like enigma) that it overshadows the other items in the game. Powerful but not overly silly would be ideal.
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D2s itemization was in comparison to D1. in fact the entire template of character advancement was in comparison. in that regard and in the regard of itemization exclusively D2 beat the fucking daylights out of D1, offering more of any "thing" you can name.
I think overall they threw out FAR to many babys with that bathwater when it was D3s time to shine. its just like you mention;
rune word systems or an offshoot, adding items that are a hat tip to Enigma by being powerful of not ridiculously OP...
if I were at the meeting about starting to make D3 id cry tears of joy over this wonderful foundation that had been built up.
instead it felt like the head honcho waddled in and said:
"i don't like this....I don't like that....get rid of this...get rid of those....delete that....DELETE these...."
Uuuugh.
I just cannot for the life of me say that I'm glad they got rid of charms so that my inventory was untouched. or that I'm glad they got rid of enigma because it was broken OP....or I'm glad that I don't have to assign levels to skills because "cookie cutter"
To me it feels like they eradicated the "ideas" within those above elements which would have potentially brought so much flavour to the game.....
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The ideas you mentioned: Paragon levels, monster power and enchanting, are not revolutionary concepts by any stretch. they represent character growth through fighting, selectable stats and item enhancement.
I feel based on what I know about role-playing games, that to say that these things serve as examples of ways that the game was tailored to meet the demands of the player-base and that were given graciously after the game was purchased....it all sounds pretty dishonest to me. I feel that they could have been and should have been much more intriguing and robust from day 1.
Although "never" is a pretty strong word, based on what we have experienced in the past few years, I feel sadly that this term applies; not only will this idea in all likelihood NOT be grafted into the game after any length of time, I highly suspect no similar idea will make an appearance either. if anything even remotely close comes to the game, it will be years before we see it like you say...
combing weapons, and sentient weapons and weapon customization and so on...are not generally ideas left to be discovered or unveiled at this point. players are always so nice and diplomatic at times, and are frustrated and explain their frustration so kindly and they eloquently describe what they long for in game. The brutally angry players and the passionate players and the diplomatic players and the MVPs and the forum heavyweights and the mods; they would all be happy with the same thing: more shit to find and more possibilities. I think I can make this assessment because people are gathering dozens of the same items over and over again.....
but it's not happening any time soon it seems. Be nice about it or be angry......we will be waiting for years on top of the years we have been waiting not for the possibility, but for the CHANCE of a possibility.
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It's thinking like that that lead to the creation of this thread, and the many like it before, in the first place;
The desire for MORE options and MORE exploration and MORE possibility. Not LESS. Role-playing games only exist because ideas are expanded upon over time. dungeon and dragons alone peppers players with piles of text books to explain rules and lore. Personally I'm absolutely stunned that Jaetch and god knows how many others. Others have managed to remain SOO optimistic for SOO long.....
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"BiS" only applies to all characters and is only an absolute all the time if they only have one thing to do. In D3's case everyones job is "do damage".
Ideas of specialization, are sadly lacking. They the ideas, were little tiny seedlings when the game was released. and how .....years later........are tiny little budding blades of grass, when they should be a bloody forest. Bonus damage to demons appears on about 1 weapon. or is it 2 weapons?
% rates of proc effects like freeze or charm were listed in single fucking digits....
Healing spells are as scarce as can be. taunt abilities were and still are, in my opinion tragically lacking.
It took years for cooldown reduction to drip into the game.
these concepts were VILIFIED due to the fact that they were harvested from MMORPGs, and this lynching was so ingrained in everyones behavior and thought?
they lost sight of the bigger picture.
The mysticism and the god like power that the character were hopefully supposed to have. And much of that progress could have been harvested off of the backs of virtually every role playing game you can name.
So here we are years into the games release, a full fledge expansion well under way, and every character is slogging away looking for the same items.
just. like. vanilla.
Several runes are regarded as pure useless shit, and sit idle and unused overall.
just. like. vanilla.
Legendary items have been through SEVERAL teardowns and rebuilds. SEVERAL. and they are still in a state of limbo. still being worked on.
Hell just yesterday, I found out that we have to wait....several months for one of the two end game monk sets to be improved so that it was even desirable???
It is so hard to explain this without becoming frustrated.
It's a merry go round we have been on since 2012. Players enter the game and they split in two groups.
One group wishes and wants for more to think about as far as how to increase character power. As they grow upset the other group rises up to justify.....whatever is currently in place. they coin catch phrases, they cite data, they describe philosophy.
And when that side wins out, and it absolutely does for a long list of reasons that I don't have the strength to yap on about, the game sits idle and admires itself in a mirror.
are we really so divided that we can't agree that several skills should be the centrepiece of combat scenarios and instead are laughed at?
That hundreds of legendary items are laughed at, that overwhelmingly certain rune combinations are adopted at the complete abandonment of countless others?
Are we really so divided that next phase items come with 200 mainstat 500 average damage and a golden border and the reception of those changes range from glacier cold to the surface of mercury?
are we really that divided that some people wish that a game about items and characters had more to do with the intricacies of items and characters?
its sickening to me. it's sickening to know that it would only flesh out and strengthen the quality of the game, and its literally categorized as "troll nonsense. just mindless game bashing negativity jeered by onlookers and ignored by Hype-men with blue text...
When i run into another monk...another player, a fan of the game, who wants to go "loot trade" with me and we are looking for the exact same fucking set, because its best in slot.....and this happened yesterday..
its sickening in a way....just beyond comprehension that some players view this state of the game as oh so admirable.
I simply cannot describe it on paper in text with enough clarity.... and everyone knows Ill find another person doing the exact same thing next week.
if its not the Furnace you crave its the RRoG or the SMK. or Kridershot.......
So I can't claim with certainty that my position is the correct one. and that diversity is a thing that is to be HATED. but when I see how many ideas end up in the toilet and retain that knowledge and the knowledge and experiences in the past 20+ odd years of role playing game exposure....I see a missed opportunity. I HATE it.
I DO NOT see that Diablo 3 is in good shape. Not by a long shot, and not compared to what possibly could be in terms of item, character and ability development and design.
its disappointing to say the least
I dont want to go home and look for SWK like every other monk on earth....i don't want to grind away another 10 thousand monsters just so i can ditch my just completed Raiment because it fucking blows a goat. I don't want to wear a fucking RRoG.
but i have no goddamn fucking choice. and i'm not even wetting my toes on a greater rift higher than 19 or 20....but thats irrelevant. its irrelevant in the face of the argument that overall, everyone wears the same shit and uses the same skills.
every barbarian leaping around like a fucktard, every demon hunter dropping turrets, and every Monk spamming monkey clones...is not some mathematically disproven fallacy. its the state of the game.
I have no choice because diversity is as substantial as a paper bag. I wish i could be optimistic, but unfortunately Seven Sided Strike is laughed at like a clown and im wearing the same items as everyone else on earth. I just dont even understand it.
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Well a few thoughts that spring to mind is:
1. Many people really enjoyed it. I personally did not even set foot on the battle net so thats the depth of my experience in D2 PVP. but from what i've read and heard it was not some universally dispised feature in the game.
2. Those who did not enjoy it in D2 did not have to pay any attention to it.
3. Those who want to enjoy it today in D3, Are discouraged from enjoying it or prevented.
So that seems to be the heart of peoples' frustration: they are asking D3, why discourage, why prevent, why drag your feet?
Diablo 2's PvP system was full of holes and issues, but it only ends up being a thing that can be improved...
count and list as many flaws about it as you can and it doesn't tarnish the actual idea of player vs player combat interaction in a 3/4 isometric.
Just like so many games in the past, you put two human minds on a little static battlefield and what happens next is an astronimcal amount of variables and situations, chess does it, league of legends does it, magic the gathering does it. etc etc etc etc. They expand on the concept of human mind pitted against human mind in creative ways.
Same with the AH and crazy legendary weapons.
Even though D2 had broken items duped all to shit and used by damn near everyone every class, and the D3 AH was a sterile piece of shit drowning in boring little objects that cost 2 billion gold.....both of those concerns do not tarnish the "ideas" of fascinating items or competitive trading platforms...those ideas can absolutely flourish if implemented in the correct way.
they are still worth discussing if that makes sense.
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They gave us brawling...sure..but you'd think they do so much as give a god-damn Score board??....they did not even do that.
Tomorrow Im gonna hunt around the internet for some un-official D3 PVP organizations...I've glanced at them a time or two...they have gone so far as prohibited certain runes against certain comps....its interesting to look into
when I dipped my toes into the brawling arena it basically took 500 hours of gear/spec knowledge and compressed it onto a postage stamp and stuck it to my forehead....it was like a whole new thing for about 15 minutes......
I'd love to carry on and articulate this idea...but its my fucking bedtime
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The competition in those games IS the content. its the human minds playing within the games an exponentially unfolded game of rock paper scissors.
same with chess monopoly, MTG, Settlers of Catan,...Star-bound....according to their painfully drawn out development.....
WoW arena, Hearthstone....STARCRAFT.......thats whats so absolutely stunning;
that these competitive games, a whole fleet of some of the best in existence...made by the same company no less.............
Are wholeheartedly shunned by Diablo 3...just completely gone..........
just disgusting if you ask me. DISGUSTING.
I cant even think of a game that was a bigger overall let down.....no matter how kind I become, no matter how diplomatic a tone I try to adopt....no matter how rational......its just so tragic that D3 took the route it did............PVP with legitimately less features that Atari Tank Battle.
and I did not even set foot in D2 PVP....and I was without question the worst WoW arena player you ever met. But I have so much respect for the concepts......