DiabloFans

Hopefully not, but we are not able to give an ETA yet though.

atleast can you tell us @ is it soon™ or not soon™ ?
If I have to pick one I would have to go with the classic soon™

Ehhh. While the advice "don't play in Hardcore public games" may be valid in a number of situations, we recognize that this is a legitimate issue for Hardcore players and want to address it ASAP -- ideally in a way that doesn't impact co-op play (or impacts it as minimally as possible).

Right now, we're looking to remove the 10-second movement lockout whenever a Vote Kick is passed from both Hardcore and Normal modes. While we realize this solution may allow players to exploit the Vote Kick function to avoid death, it's not a very reliable survival technique and we feel that it's a better alternative than players losing a character they've invested a lot of time into due to griefing. We'll definitely be keeping on an eye on this, though, and will consider other solutions if necessary.

I don't know yet if this is something that can be addressed via hotfix; it may be a fix that we need to implement with a client-side patch. We're still working out the details, and I'll provide an update once there's any more info to share.

Do you guys also think that those who have been using such an exploit should be banned immediately?
While we think these players are poor sportsman and secretly hope they don't get any cool presents for Christmas this year, we don't feel like we should seek any unilateral account action at this time. We're more concerned about correcting the issue and improving the gameplay experience for our Hardcore players -- something we which hope to accomplish with the removal of the 10-second movement lock out.

it seems people are not following what is happening,
they removed the stasis lock on characters when they get vote kicked.....
as in you still wait 10sec to get kicked you are just free to move and activate abilities.....
Correct.

If your solution is getting rid of the 10 second countdown and you are worried it might create ways for people to exploit it, why make such a drastic change when you can just finesse what you already have?
It's not a very drastic change overall, and we're happy to consider other solutions. This particular choice seemed the most logical for the situation because it allowed us to address the issue while minimally impacting players (in both Normal and Hardcore). It's also something we believe we can act on fairly quickly and get into the 1.0.7 patch.

Also, the hardcore disconnect issue is a severe one that needs to be addressed. Here are my (well reasoned I believe) thoughts on the matter:

Auto-pause, ala SC2, is the golden bullet here. The only thing that exploit can do, really, is just allow pausing in multiplayer, as far as I'm concerned, which is so much less of a drawback than the sheer unfairness of the current DC protocol.

If auto-pause is not possible, DC detection at least needs to be stepped up. Currently, a DC can take up to 50 seconds. The 10 second countdown is not even the problem. If it was just kept to a 10 second countdown (maybe with 10 seconds TOPS for DC detection), that is much more survivable. Up to 50 seconds is just prohibitive to gear against what with the possibility of multiple arcane beams and multiple desecrator stacks.
Thanks! And understood. I'll pass this on.

While you did act on it quickly once complaints started moving to the General Discussion forum this issue has been on the hardcore forum for a long time. Many Hardcore players feel that no blue's ever even look on the Hardcore forum, and they seem to be correct since the only way to get a response is to complain on the General Discussion forum.
Fair point, and noted. It's something I'll make sure our team works to improve on this year. I agree we could do better about communicating in other forums.

You heard it here from a blue! Exploiting parts of the game won't get you banned. Although bot discussion and the random "I should have botted" statement that people like to throw out (even in a comical context) warrants a ban from the forums. Awesome!
Clever, but not all situations are equal. We're still evaluating what's best and definitely reserve room for Customer Support to make judgment calls on a case-by-case basis, but at the moment we'd like to avoid dropping the banhammer across the board.

Thanks for taking the time to craft such a constructive and well-intentioned thread. We really do appreciate the passion of Diablo III players like yourself, and you have some very fair points and feedback, so /highfive for that!

And how an old game had systems inspired already to lead into multiple diversities and that game is full of skill trees and is immensively popular, so those telling me skill trees & stat points is outdated, tell that to a 12 year old game still surviving and is massively going on updates still. It's only outdated if your skill trees/stats don't actually offer any equality between power & variation.
While we enjoyed allocating stats and having intricate skill trees in Diablo II (as well as the benefits they provided), we ultimately feel the current stat and skill system is better for Diablo III. We heavily iterated on the skill trees and stat points in Diablo III for quite some time, but we felt that they simply didn’t fit the direction we wanted to go with the game. They added artificial complexity to the game, but didn’t actually add much in the way of customization. They also often rendered a remarkable penalty, in that if you mis-allocated a stat point or skill the wrong way, or simply wanted to change it at a later point in time, you were out of luck, as you were locked to your original choice.

We strongly feel that in general, players will know whether or not they like a particular skill or play style only after they’ve had a chance to try it out for themselves. And while there definitely is some intrigue and fun to permanently committing yourself to a particular character design, it’s not what we envision for Diablo III. We want players to be able to experiment and find a combination of skills and runes that they enjoy and that fit them the best. We also don’t believe that the current skill system would really benefit from a free allocation of stats, either. We think that players can achieve a sizable level of customization through runes, and that this system fits in much better with the overall design of the game.

You speak of rares or magics and you'll just get laughed at, all everyone talks about is Legendary this that, mempo skorn, manticore blah blah, I haven't played and read enough to know that's all is being mentioned mainly for items and things, which still isn't even fully viable on the new Monster Power...? And one last thing I know Rares are still somewhat useful just as cheap trash gear now until you find your first Legendary and such, but past that you never look back really
If you haven’t played in a few months, you might have missed out on some of the item improvements we’ve made along the way. In terms of patch 1.0.4, you might want to check out the blog we did regarding Legendary Item Improvements as well as the various overall item improvements we made in patch 1.0.5.

Regarding the death timer: The incrementing death timer is actually being removed in 1.0.7.

Paragon Levelling - This is just an extension of your grind, I wouldn't call it an improvement as well, it's just an "illusion" of accomplishment past level 60 which grants nothing but extra "auto-allocated" stats. At first when I saw it being put in I was tempted to re-login and play, but to find out it's just more automated stats even, made it pointless. But after having the thought of just main stat & vit, why doesn't my Paragon levels just tunnel all those stats gained directly into main stat?
It is just a weaker form of levelling from 1-60, just without skills being unlocked. sigh...
The Paragon system was designed as a way to help address Magic Find/gear-swapping and the Magic Find stat in general along with offering an end-game character progression grind. The Diablo III end-game is fundamentally for people who enjoy making their character feel more powerful, investing time into slaughtering hordes of enemies, and hunting for loot. The Paragon system provides players with a predictable reward they can work towards. But for us, grinding alone is not enough. We like that there are still random item drops, you can change your build if you get bored, and it's all designed to complement a fluid combat system.

Infernal Machine - Serves like an event in any MMO it's a scavenger hunt and doesn't seem to thrilling just watching videos and streamers do it. I'm being honest here, it really feels lik an event being held in an MMO, except those FREE MMO's give these kinds of things seasonally and at a higher rate Diablo 3 will ever gain.
In terms of free additional content, we’d love to add more events similar to Infernal Machine to the Diablo universe, but whatever we add needs to fit within the scope of the game and needs to be weighed against other design costs. D3 isn’t an MMO, so it’s not going to receive regular content additions like an MMO (in terms of frequency and reward structures), but we’re definitely keeping our options open for the future, so don’t hesitate to let us know what interests you!

FFXIV:ARR For example the DIRECTOR even said to take WoW as a base test and improve on that and make it into their own style, and to study market trends to see what worked and get player feedback and ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH PLAYERS in a LARGE scale not just a few random select individuals, through FORUMS, SOCIAL MEDIA, BLOGS & FREQUENT POSTS.
Pertaining to engaging in conversations with the players: we aim to do just that, and we’re dedicated to improving on this further. I for one am extremely active on our official social media channels (especially Twitter and Facebook), and have recently started branching out to other communities to try and connect a bit more there as well (including Reddit and DeviantArt). One of the things I think that it’s key to realize, however, is that while part of our job is indeed to be a presence on the forums and communicate with all of you, part of that job also entails stepping away from the forums so that we can gather feedback, communicate with the developers, attend meetings, moderate, draft up social media, write blogs: the whole shebang. The behind-the-scenes portion of our job isn’t easy to see, but hopefully the numerous improvements that have been made over the passing months shows that we’ve been listening and passing along feedback, and we plan to continue doing just that.

"Regarding the death timer: The incrementing death timer is actually being removed in 1.0.7."
could we please pick a direction and stick with it? sorry to complain but i had to get it out.
We feel that as the game has evolved and stands now, there are sufficient penalties associated with character death, so the incrementing death timer it doesn’t feel necessary anymore.

What's she's really saying is "Be glad we did anything for you. Regardless of what you may think, the changes were great and the game is big fun. Item choices are interesting, stat allocation is spot on, and if you can't see that then.. well, you're just not doing it right."
Yeah it’s… not really cool to try and paraphrase my words in order to twist the sentiment of my post. :-/

Design decisions are made with a lot in mind, and it’s an ongoing development process that often involves a lot of people. While I can try to offer insight into why we’ve made or are considering certain design decisions, at the end of the day, people’s opinions on it will undoubtedly vary from person-to-person, and since the folks here at Blizzard are gamers just like you, you can bet this passionate bunch has some varied opinions about all sorts of things relating to Diablo III.

While there are aspects of the game you’re bound to jive with, there are undoubtedly others that simply might not be your cup of tea (or blood, since we’re talking about slaying demons here). If you’ve noticed something that you think could be improved, we truly do want to hear about it, but bear in mind that while a lot of feedback we receive sounds really neat (and believe me, I’ve seen some incredibly awesome ideas floating around here), that doesn’t mean we have the bandwidth to do it all, nor that we necessarily believe that certain ideas are best for Diablo III. But as I’ve said before, we’re down to continue to improve it and make it the best game we possibly can.

Regarding that last part I'm glad to hear you're socially active among the venues that most people check and see, but the forums here are equally as important, if not even more. It's quite disheartening to see these threads & many other things go without any response for pretty much half a month each time.

I know you all have to attend meetings conferences design shakedowns and whatnot, I'm not oblivious to that for sure, but it'd nice to get a check-in from you and the other CMs maybe once a week, daily is just asking too much. I've seen Blizzard's studio and HQ(pretty bold statement I guess), seen development teams and gone through development cycles, game design classes & studios and I know that job is extremely demanding from customers(i.e the players) and highly stressful with crazy crunch time and OT during certain phases of milestones and the like. But a simple drop-in weekly would be nice rather than silence for half a month to something else.

Maybe even just rumor debunking would be nice, or small tidbits of why the blog posts are delayed or something. Not asking for miracles or lies here just some communication.
With the exception of our holiday break and whatever time each of us take off for events or vacations throughout the year, we’re here, and we’re busy. Each week we have numerous blogs that go up concerning a variety of topics, and pretty much every weekday one or more of us are actively posting updates to our social media sites as and posting here on the forums. While what we post on might not always be the issue that concerns you most, I can assure you we don’t go months without posting (I’ve posted about a half a dozen times here today, and Lylirra is very active as well). But when time and schedule allows, I’m personally trying to squeeze in more time to post here and elsewhere on the “interwebs.”

As I said though, we’re definitely interested on continuing to improve communication with the community. One of the things we’re looking into is a better method to make sure that important “Blue” posts are highlighted, since I suspect many inadvertently are overlooked (which explains some of the repeat questions I see so often).

Reading Older Topics
We do. Keep in mind, though, that it takes time for us to respond (sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes even days), and we can't respond to every thread. This forum also moves rather quickly, so threads undoubtedly move around to different pages over time.

Many players are also inclined to reply to threads where a Blue poster has already posted a reply, which is why those particular threads often linger on the first page longer than others. (Blue Tracker / Official Tracker)