The first of many developer blogs has just been posted! Check below for a quick bullet point recap. However I strongly suggest checking over the full post! Patch 1.0.4 is currently targeted for the fourth week in August.
- Magic find and gold find will no longer be averaged in multiplayer games.
- Monster health will now be a flat increase of 75% health (per player), regardless of the difficulty in multiplayer.
- No more enrage timers on elites.
- Elites will no longer heal to full health
- They are increasing the health of normal monsters (but increasing the drop of magic or rare items by a factor of four), and lowering the health of champions and rares to shrink the gap between them.
- They are adjusting fire chains and shielding, and REMOVING Invulnerable Minions.
- They want to make all items that drop be good, however this is not something they can fully do in 1.0.4. However weapons of ilvl 61 and 62 can now roll damage that extends all the way to top ilvl 63 weapons
- To help with the dual-wielding and two-handers, they will be adding a new set of stronger affixes
- Reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%
- Legendary changes will have its own blog post
- MANY more blogs to come covering the buffing of unused skills, and big improvements to wd pets.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(Well, we're getting closer to 1.0.4, and while it's still a few weeks away we're going to start hitting you fast and furious with blogs aimed at explaining the upcoming changes. To kick things off, I wanted to provide an overview of some of the larger systems changes and game improvements.
Let's get started!
So Happy Together
While many people are playing co-op, it’s still a minority of games. Ideally we would like players who want to play solo to be able to solo, and players who want to play co-op to play co-op. At the moment though playing solo is the clear choice, even for those who would prefer co-op with some of their friends.
The change we made back in 1.0.3 to remove the bonus monster damage per additional player was a great start, but we can clearly go a bit further. The first change we’re making in 1.0.4 for co-op is to remove averaging in multiplayer games of Magic Find and Gold Find. You’ll benefit from your full Magic Find stat, independent of other players in the game. We originally added Magic Find averaging so optimal play did not involve people stacking what we call “adventure stats” to the detriment of their party. While this may re-emerge as a problem, we think the current solution feels like too much of a penalty, and is doing more harm than good.
Along the same lines as the change in 1.0.3, we’re going to be lowering the health multiplier for monsters per additional player in co-op games. It’s going to be a flat 75% in 1.0.4 for all difficulty levels, as opposed to the scaling 75/85/95/110% it is now. This makes enemies far more manageable in co-op games, and rewards a co-ordinated group with a higher farming efficiency than playing alone.
Shrinking the Gap
"..in 1.0.4 we're going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs"
We know there are a lot of you out there that are really frustrated by the difficulty of some of the champion and rare packs, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs (Champions and Rares). The design intent of Champion and Rare packs is to provide a spike of challenge, but in general we feel like the gap is too big. Normal monsters die quickly and are usually just fodder, and Champions and Rares can feel like a brick wall. In general we’re looking to bring normal enemies up a smidge, and Champions and Rares down.
So, in 1.0.4 we’re increasing the health of normal monsters by approximately 5%-10% in Inferno, but also increasing the likelihood they drop magic or rare items by a factor of four. We’re correspondingly lowering the health of Champions and Rares by 10-25% and editing specific affixes to shrink the difficulty gap. We’re still working on those numbers, but that’s approximately what we’re shooting for.
To further reduce the gap between normal and Elite monsters, we’re adjusting some of the more frustrating monster affixes, such as Fire Chains and Shielding.* Of course there are some normal monsters that are massive spikes in difficulty too, and we’ll be making polish adjustments to a few of those as well, like reducing the damage of two-handed skeletons like Skull Cleavers.
Weapons Master
One of the general improvements we’d like to make to our item game addresses the difference between an item having a chance of being good vs. knowing the item isn’t going to be good before you even identify it. In other words, there’s a world of difference between an item having no chance of being good, and some chance of being good. It’s not something we’re going to be able to fully address in 1.0.4, but giving every dropped item a chance to be good is a long-term goal. One area we felt we could make immediate improvements for 1.0.4 was with weapons.
Weapon damage is the most important stat on a weapon. It can be disheartening to get a lot of weapon drops and you know before even looking at them that they have no chance of being good. To help give weapons a fighting chance, the raw damage value on all level 61 and 62 weapons will be able to roll damage that extends all the way to the top end of level 63.
We also want to close the gap between dual-wielding and two-handers, and so we’re improving two-handed melee weapons by creating a new set of stronger affixes to compensate for the loss of stats that can come from your offhand.
On the topic of two-handers, we’re also changing how damage is calculated on a few damage-over-time skills. Many skills have text like “Deals 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds”, which isn’t exactly clear as it can be interpreted a few different ways. It also made skill evaluation difficult, particularly for skills with long durations or cooldowns. We’re switching a lot of these skills to read “X% weapon damage over 5 seconds”. Many skills already follow this format, and understanding what the skill does is very clear. As the skills are converted there is an additional opportunity: when converting to this format, choosing a value for X depends on your weapon speed. So what we’ve done in most cases is assumed a high attack speed (at least 2.0 attacks per second), chosen a value of X, and then in many cases bumped the value even higher. A skill that currently does 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds, with a 2.0 speed weapon, will convert to at least 750% weapon damage over 5 seconds. The skill becomes easier to understand, is a small buff for most one-hand builds, and a big buff for two-hand builds.
Efficiency vs. Challenge
"We're removing Enrage timers and the "heal back to full" behavior from champion and Rare monster packs"
Rather than focus on whether or not you can beat an enemy, many players would rather figure out how fastthey can beat them. We’re removing Enrage Timers and the “heal back to full” behavior from Champion and Rare monster packs. We don’t think they fit well into the general philosophy of the game, which is more about trying to farm as efficiently as possible. You’re already incentivized to kill things quickly, if a pack happens to take you a long time it can just feel unfair to have the pack enrage, kill you, and then heal back to full. The original intent behind Enrage Timers was to have a few encounters that served as a “DPS check” that also add tension and excitement. Due to the randomness of Champion and Rare monsters, combined with a general philosophy of efficient farming, this was simply the wrong approach for us to take. The Enrage Timers feel more appropriate on bosses, where the setup, predictability and mechanics of the fight add the required context for the time limit.
We can’t get away from the Efficiency vs Challenge discussion without talking about death penalties. When we increased repair costs in 1.0.3 it was to make death meaningful. Efficiency is not only about how fast you kill things, but what efforts you’re putting into doing so. Dying should cut into efficiency, and that creates a meaningful challenge to stay alive in not only how you play, but the importance of how you’re designing your character. That said, we think repair costs are just a bit too high, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to be reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%.
Legendarier
We have improvements coming to Legendary items, and it seems like an important enough subject to give them their own blog. Stay tuned as Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers gives the rundown in the next week or two. As a general reminder though, existing items are not changing. The Legendary improvements are going to be for Legendaries dropped or crafted after the 1.0.4 patch goes live.
Stay Classy
"We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we're going to have a separate blog posts for each"
We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we’re going to have separate blog posts for each. But in general we’re looking at unpopular skills and asking ourselves a few questions:
The Outro
These are really just a few of the topline systems changes we’ll be making in 1.0.4, and we hope you’re looking forward to them as much as we are. We’ll of course have a lot more info coming at you in the weeks ahead on Legendary items, classes and more, as well as some interviews we’ll be holding shortly before the patch goes live – which, by the way, is currently targeted for the fourth week of August.
See you in-game!
*P.S. We’re getting rid of the Invulnerable Minions monster affix.
Wyatt Cheng is Senior Technical Game Designer on Diablo III, and as a member of Blizzard’s Beef Jerky Club is ordering jalapeno, habenero & ghost chili jerky this month.
Let's get started!
So Happy Together
While many people are playing co-op, it’s still a minority of games. Ideally we would like players who want to play solo to be able to solo, and players who want to play co-op to play co-op. At the moment though playing solo is the clear choice, even for those who would prefer co-op with some of their friends.
The change we made back in 1.0.3 to remove the bonus monster damage per additional player was a great start, but we can clearly go a bit further. The first change we’re making in 1.0.4 for co-op is to remove averaging in multiplayer games of Magic Find and Gold Find. You’ll benefit from your full Magic Find stat, independent of other players in the game. We originally added Magic Find averaging so optimal play did not involve people stacking what we call “adventure stats” to the detriment of their party. While this may re-emerge as a problem, we think the current solution feels like too much of a penalty, and is doing more harm than good.
Along the same lines as the change in 1.0.3, we’re going to be lowering the health multiplier for monsters per additional player in co-op games. It’s going to be a flat 75% in 1.0.4 for all difficulty levels, as opposed to the scaling 75/85/95/110% it is now. This makes enemies far more manageable in co-op games, and rewards a co-ordinated group with a higher farming efficiency than playing alone.
Shrinking the Gap
"..in 1.0.4 we're going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs"
We know there are a lot of you out there that are really frustrated by the difficulty of some of the champion and rare packs, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to shrink the gap between normal monsters and Elite packs (Champions and Rares). The design intent of Champion and Rare packs is to provide a spike of challenge, but in general we feel like the gap is too big. Normal monsters die quickly and are usually just fodder, and Champions and Rares can feel like a brick wall. In general we’re looking to bring normal enemies up a smidge, and Champions and Rares down.
So, in 1.0.4 we’re increasing the health of normal monsters by approximately 5%-10% in Inferno, but also increasing the likelihood they drop magic or rare items by a factor of four. We’re correspondingly lowering the health of Champions and Rares by 10-25% and editing specific affixes to shrink the difficulty gap. We’re still working on those numbers, but that’s approximately what we’re shooting for.
To further reduce the gap between normal and Elite monsters, we’re adjusting some of the more frustrating monster affixes, such as Fire Chains and Shielding.* Of course there are some normal monsters that are massive spikes in difficulty too, and we’ll be making polish adjustments to a few of those as well, like reducing the damage of two-handed skeletons like Skull Cleavers.
Weapons Master
One of the general improvements we’d like to make to our item game addresses the difference between an item having a chance of being good vs. knowing the item isn’t going to be good before you even identify it. In other words, there’s a world of difference between an item having no chance of being good, and some chance of being good. It’s not something we’re going to be able to fully address in 1.0.4, but giving every dropped item a chance to be good is a long-term goal. One area we felt we could make immediate improvements for 1.0.4 was with weapons.
Weapon damage is the most important stat on a weapon. It can be disheartening to get a lot of weapon drops and you know before even looking at them that they have no chance of being good. To help give weapons a fighting chance, the raw damage value on all level 61 and 62 weapons will be able to roll damage that extends all the way to the top end of level 63.
We also want to close the gap between dual-wielding and two-handers, and so we’re improving two-handed melee weapons by creating a new set of stronger affixes to compensate for the loss of stats that can come from your offhand.
On the topic of two-handers, we’re also changing how damage is calculated on a few damage-over-time skills. Many skills have text like “Deals 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds”, which isn’t exactly clear as it can be interpreted a few different ways. It also made skill evaluation difficult, particularly for skills with long durations or cooldowns. We’re switching a lot of these skills to read “X% weapon damage over 5 seconds”. Many skills already follow this format, and understanding what the skill does is very clear. As the skills are converted there is an additional opportunity: when converting to this format, choosing a value for X depends on your weapon speed. So what we’ve done in most cases is assumed a high attack speed (at least 2.0 attacks per second), chosen a value of X, and then in many cases bumped the value even higher. A skill that currently does 75% weapon damage for 5 seconds, with a 2.0 speed weapon, will convert to at least 750% weapon damage over 5 seconds. The skill becomes easier to understand, is a small buff for most one-hand builds, and a big buff for two-hand builds.
Efficiency vs. Challenge
"We're removing Enrage timers and the "heal back to full" behavior from champion and Rare monster packs"
Rather than focus on whether or not you can beat an enemy, many players would rather figure out how fastthey can beat them. We’re removing Enrage Timers and the “heal back to full” behavior from Champion and Rare monster packs. We don’t think they fit well into the general philosophy of the game, which is more about trying to farm as efficiently as possible. You’re already incentivized to kill things quickly, if a pack happens to take you a long time it can just feel unfair to have the pack enrage, kill you, and then heal back to full. The original intent behind Enrage Timers was to have a few encounters that served as a “DPS check” that also add tension and excitement. Due to the randomness of Champion and Rare monsters, combined with a general philosophy of efficient farming, this was simply the wrong approach for us to take. The Enrage Timers feel more appropriate on bosses, where the setup, predictability and mechanics of the fight add the required context for the time limit.
We can’t get away from the Efficiency vs Challenge discussion without talking about death penalties. When we increased repair costs in 1.0.3 it was to make death meaningful. Efficiency is not only about how fast you kill things, but what efforts you’re putting into doing so. Dying should cut into efficiency, and that creates a meaningful challenge to stay alive in not only how you play, but the importance of how you’re designing your character. That said, we think repair costs are just a bit too high, so in 1.0.4 we’re going to be reducing repair costs of high-end items by 25%.
Legendarier
We have improvements coming to Legendary items, and it seems like an important enough subject to give them their own blog. Stay tuned as Senior Game Designer Andrew Chambers gives the rundown in the next week or two. As a general reminder though, existing items are not changing. The Legendary improvements are going to be for Legendaries dropped or crafted after the 1.0.4 patch goes live.
Stay Classy
"We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we're going to have a separate blog posts for each"
We're making a metric-ton of changes to classes, so we’re going to have separate blog posts for each. But in general we’re looking at unpopular skills and asking ourselves a few questions:
- Does the skill have any control or readability issues that would make the skill less satisfying to use? If so – polish the skill more. A good example here is the Barbarian Rend ability – many people don’t use it because you can’t always tell which enemies are affected by the bleed and which aren’t.
- Does the skill fill a similar role as an extremely popular skill? If so, buff the skill to be competitive with the popular skill. For example, Bola Shot could be a solid skill, but simply doesn’t have the raw damage when compared to Hungering Arrow, so we’re buffing Bola Shot to be competitive.
- Does a skill have a dominant rune? If so, can we buff the underused runes to be more competitive? A good example here is the Wizard Hydra skill. The Venom Hydra is by far the most popular rune, and for good reason, so we are buffing the other runes to make them more competitive with Venom Hydra.
- Is the skill a resource spender? In general we have found that many resource spenders just don’t do enough for their resource cost. Here I would use the example of Wave of Light, which is a fairly significant expenditure of Spirit that doesn’t always seem worthwhile. Many damage-oriented resource spenders are receiving buffs in 1.0.4
- Would buffing the skill increase or decrease build diversity? Some skills when buffed cause other skills to become obsolete, so there’s a net decrease in build diversity - we’re more careful with those. Other skills, when buffed, add to the total pool of appealing skills, which increases build diversity. The most obvious example here is the Witch Doctor Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan, which are both receiving significant improvements in 1.0.4.
The Outro
These are really just a few of the topline systems changes we’ll be making in 1.0.4, and we hope you’re looking forward to them as much as we are. We’ll of course have a lot more info coming at you in the weeks ahead on Legendary items, classes and more, as well as some interviews we’ll be holding shortly before the patch goes live – which, by the way, is currently targeted for the fourth week of August.
See you in-game!
*P.S. We’re getting rid of the Invulnerable Minions monster affix.
Wyatt Cheng is Senior Technical Game Designer on Diablo III, and as a member of Blizzard’s Beef Jerky Club is ordering jalapeno, habenero & ghost chili jerky this month.
Prior to release, it was great to hear them proclaim the game would be terribly difficult, but I think everyone knew this was coming. Especially after seeing so many people whine about how hard it was.
I'm still hoping they have some better ideas coming down to improve game-play. If not, these nerfs will push even more people away from the game.
Try saying that without the 200mil worth of gear you bought from the AH.
I was lucky enough to find a pair of boots that I got 8mil for. I spread that wealth to boost up the three 60's I have.
I'm still struggling in A3 inferno, and have to continue to farm A2.
Maybe you get lucky on your drops, but I've found -3- legendaries since release, all of them low level.
I don't play the AH to flip items and max out on gold or anything, so the most I'll have on average is around 1 mil.
Sure makes the game a hell of a lot tougher
Well.. I agree somewhat, but when you read between the lines, I think what they are actually saying is this:
"Look guys, inferno was a bad idea - we meant it to be a flat always hard difficutly, we found out that wouldn't work in testing, but we knew we couldn't remove it because people would have a fit if we removed ANOTHER feature. A side problem was our original intent for END GAME was inferno - well with inferno not working out how we wan't we no longer have an end game - but we're working on that. Here are some changes to make the game play more like it should with out the concept of inferno - stay tuned for more changes to totally fix the game"
Thats what I read. I think the part of me that wants to see a hard game is sad at how easy a time I'll have on my monk in Inferno - It will be face melting hilarity.. but then.. thats what D2 was and I loved it! I don't need 5 min champ pack fights - I need fun REWARDING demon melting fun. I think this all sounds like a good first step to that goal.
The Weapon Damage on i lvl 61-62 increase thing is AWESOME. Not only will it make finding weapons more exciting, it will make crafting weapons worthwhile.
So, this is a great first step - I feel like this hits the nail on the head as far as a "look the game is messed up, we can't make it perfect fast (ie in 1 patch) but we are doing these things to make it as good as possible in its current state"
Bravo imo - looking forward to playing again.
When you are properly geared in Inferno, the champion packs HAVE TOO MUCH HEALTH. It takes forever to kill packs in Act 3 before you outgear it. Once you hit a point of gear, Inferno SHOULD be easy. Your character SHOULD feel like a god. That's what made D2 fun (for me at least). D3 was pretty lame because even when you got better gear, you'd kill stuff faster but you wouldn't feel very powerful. I think the HP nerf will help quite a bit with this. Do you really expect the game to remain difficult after you have end game gear? What does that mean to people that are trying to progress with normal gear?
Simply reducing the HP won't make the game that much easier for people that aren't overgearing the content. Stop crying.
agree 100%
So I take it you've missed the hundreds of videos showing people beating the game despite spending only 1 million gold on gear?
But nerfing monsters and buffing skills/items/MF will just make the game too easy, isn't it?
Someone didn't read all of the patch notes. They're also nerfing affixes that are "too hard," and some monster damage.
Personally, I don't have a huge issue with these changes (although I think they may have gone a little heavy on some of them), but you should probably know what the $#&% you're talking about before you tell others to quit crying.
You're right. Thing is, it took longer to get to Diablo 2's "level 99" cap, so that's why I think the endgame seemed longer in Diablo 2.
Indeed, Titan Quest, Borderlands and such face the same thing in the endgame, although Torchlight has the "infinity dungeon" thing, but it's kinda the same, really.
I hope that, in the future, they release content patches. But I doubt it, it's not sub-based, so I don't think they've got the funds to develop new dungeons and bosses along the line, before the expansion comes out.
Also amusing is that he splits progression power between characters (read: gold), and wonders why any single one of them isn't powerful enough yet to beat the game.
Logic isn't their forte.
What in the, I don't even.
Leveling to 99 is not "end-game." It's simply another grind. Stop using that word. It does not mean what you think it means.
Diablo 2 didn't have a sub, either, and they released content patches for that. Do you even think before you post?
Hehe, perspective on what? The fact that the game isn't really that hard (save for a nasty champion pack)?
Then just fix the champion packs. It doesn't take awesome gear to make Act 1-4 of Inferno trivial with any class. With great gear, which is still easy to get, you DO feel like a god in Inferno.
Oh the drama...
STFU. I farmed Act 1 prior to finishing the game and never ever ever have I ever sold anything for over 6.6 million, which was a BS plan for a legendary sword. I purchased wisely with small upgrades here and there and eventually I beat the game with mediocre to ok stats. Never have I flipped items or used the RMAH. My gear must be under 20 million right now. Even though the game is gear-oriented, it still takes some skill to beat it. Its been done with 200k gear, 1m gear and so on. And no, not only DH's did it. Check Newti's videos and go cry because you suck.
Now its been nerfed to the ground. Great fucking job.
B - the 75% is from the base hp.
I said "endgame", but it's clear it's a grind, as you just said. Indeed, Diablo 2's grind, in my opinion, took longer. What I'm saying is that Diablo 2 didn't have and endgame either, and I agreed with the poster that said taht we can't have raids or such here.
Diablo 2's "content" patches came further down the line (I think after the expansion, but I might be wrong), I don't think a Diablo 2 content patch was released 3-4 months after the game was released.
Do you even think before you bash other people? We're all on the same side here.
True, there's going to be a wide skill variance in any game. Ultimately not everyone is going to be happy so they'll try to make as many people happy as they can, as that'll bring in the most cash.