DiabloFans

PTRs are planned indeed :-)

So Vaneras, it must be a reasonably big patch with some serious tweaks if player testing is going ahead?
I am unfortunately not yet able to provide any specifics on the content that will be tested, but it does look to be a sizeable patch :-)

Also, the Diablo III PvP Update blog mentions that dueling is currently scheduled to release with patch 1.0.7, so hopefully (if all goes well) you guys should be able to get some testing done on that.

i'm starting to hate this game more and more >.>
Not a good feeling to have :-(

Please don't forget that it is never wrong to take a break from a game if you are not having a good time playing it... sometimes a break is all it takes for something to become enjoyable again :-)

I am still wondering why you do not better utilize PTRs. PTRs purpose is for in-game testing, right? So let us do the testing, jesus..!

Same goes with TDM, you guys made the decision on your own that PVP is not up to expectations, how about you let us make up our own opinion of it rather than just make your own assumptions.

Finally, how about a drawing board where you state what you are currently working on. A bit of transparency would not hurt anyone, would it? damage control?
You raise some good points, and these points have been raised by others as well, and I just want you to know that we are taking note of them. In regards to one about TDM, I believe I made a few comments on this not too long ago in another thread on that topic.

But to answer your question: Yes, the purpose of PTRs is for player-testing, and we will indeed use them for that purpose. (Keep in mind though, developers will not put content up for testing if they do not feel said content lives up to their design goals.)

In regards to transparency, this is a topic that we can agree that we should try to improve on. I honestly doubt that we will ever see something like developer journals or drawing boards as you suggest, mostly because of the heavy iteration process that constantly goes on in the development team, but it would be wrong of me to say that there is no room for improvement :-)

Just to clear things up - https://twitter.com/...412968469798913
(Diablo ‏We're still busy working on the details, but we're hoping to have it out in the next few days. )
This stands true, right?
I have not heard anything different since that tweet was made, so I believe this still stands true.

We don’t have a release date to share at the moment concerning patch 1.0.7, but it’s being worked on as we speak. In terms of the details surrounding dueling, we’re working on a preview of the system and the patch as a whole (the format is pretty similar to this, actually, including being written by a dev) that should address the bulk of your questions. We’d rather share the information with you once the patch preview is ready, though, rather than dole out bits and pieces.

Ooh. You did that thing where you use words I've used, but do it in a way that's intended to be really sarcastic and maybe even a little mean-spirited. That's cute.

Anyway. Yes, playing a Hardcore character is more or less done "at your own risk," with the acknowledgment that the character may die for a variety of reasons (some of which might be beyond your immediate control). And yes, for us to be able to maintain a feature like Hardcore we have to take a hard line about doing everything we can not to intervene in these characters' fates.

Game design isn't always black-and-white, though, and we reserve the right to make exceptions if we feel it will benefit the health of the game. This is one of those situations.

Lylirra, is a disconnect (whether it be server side or client side) a risk that "might be beyond your immediate control" and something that you choose not to intervene in? I think a simple auto-pause feature a la Starcraft would be a simple, unexploitable feature to avoid a DC death?
In general, yes. Disconnections are one of those variables that you'll need to assume is a risk when playing Hardcore. Even so, I've already passed along this post by Norc to our developers for their consideration (it's pretty similar to your feedback).

Do you know if it has been noted whether or not it can be fixed via hotfix or patch (client side)? I have a feeling it will most likely be via patch since it is not just Blizzards side.
It'll need to be a client-side patch. We're currently targeting for 1.0.7 (which doesn't have a release date that we can share just yet, but it's in the infamous realm of "soon").

First of all, I think you may have misunderstood what Jay is talking about, because you are kind of taking things out of context here :-)

The part of the interview you refer to, the part where Jay uses the words "perfectly executed", there he is talking about the Blizzard design philosophy and how we weigh the importance of innovation compared to the importance of perfect execution. If you watch the interview again, and pay special attention from 2:29 - 3:37, you will find him saying the following:

The criticism that we are not innovating, innovation is usually the word, I don't know of a Blizzard game that did not get that criticism. StarCraft II got it, Diablo II got it, when it came out people railed against it as being non-innovative and ugly. I remember that was a really... World of Warcraft... almost everyone of our games people say they're not innovative, and I feel the reason why is because they're looking for innovation to be in a big uppercut-punch-super feature. They're looking for some thing, one thing, that says to them, this is the next greatest thing ever. And, you know, we just think that that's the way to make games, like We think innovation comes in perfect execution. Like, we have a saying around the office; would you... if you had a choice between playing a perfectly innovative game, or a perfectly executed game, which would you do? And the answer for us is always perfectly executed, because an innovative game that is poorly executed is not a good game. But a game that is executed very, very well is always a great game.

Perfect execution is our goal when making games, and that is what he is trying to say with this.

Second of all; this interview was made and published before Diablo III released, so at that point we were not aware of the various issues and concerns that the players would come to have after the game was released. At that point in time, we were feeling confident that the quality of Diablo III was in a good spot and that players would get a solid experience, but nowhere did we claim that it would be the perfect game, and nowhere to this day have we acted or pretended that it is the perfect game.

Since the launch of Diablo III we have acknowledged that we underestimated the speed of which players consumed the game, and although there are still lots of players in the game, and lots of players who have yet to complete it, Diablo III still needs more things to keep people engaged and having fun.

also why do peoples posts get deleted, are we in some sort of dictatorship environment here?
Either you are resorting to hyperbole, or I do not think that dictatorship means what you think it means. We have rules and policies that we expect people to follow when making use of our services and playing our games, but does that make us dictators? I do not think so, but alas, I digress.

We delete posts that goes against the forum rules, and we lock threads that we feel do not make any valid contributions to our forums (typically we post an explanation why we locked a thread if it is not really obvious why we did it). We insist that people must be constructive when posting on our forums, but unfortunately not everyone knows what that means. For an example; posts full of personal attacks against Blizzard Employees are not constructive, posts full of rants, hyperbole, and sweeping statements are not constructive, posts designed as part of some campaign or idea to flood the forums with posts to cause unrest are not constructive - and that is why we lock or remove such posts... hopefully you get the gist of what I am trying to say here ;-)

As described in the very beginning of the forum guidelines, "this forum is here to provide you with a friendly environment where you can discuss all aspects of Diablo III with your fellow players." Does this mean that you are not allowed to voice your concerns and post negative feedback? No! In fact you are more than welcome to do so, but be constructive when you do so!

If you want to provide feedback but you do not know what we mean when we ask you to be constructive, then you may first want to spend some time reading the forum guidelines as well as the battle.net code of conduct to at least find out how not to post. If you already know how not to post, but still do not know what it means to be constructive, then perhaps this wiki page on constructive criticism may be of help to you.

not constructive you may say, but was jay wilsons facebook post constructive?
No, that was not constructive, and Jay is very much aware of that as you can maybe gather from his apology. Jay is only human, and just like everyone else he is prone to make mistakes. Jay made a mistake with his unfortunate outburst, and he apologised for it. You may not accept his apology for various reasons, and maybe you are not the type of person that easily forgive people for their mistakes, and that is okay too, but that does not make it acceptable to not be constructive when posting feedback and concerns on our forums.

I hope this makes sense to you, but if it does not, or if all you are really interested in doing is to find other players to high-five on how much you do not like Diablo III, then perhaps it is best to find somewhere else on Internet to do this... perhaps facebook ;-)

You claim to keep the forums clean, yet every time I go to the D3 website there are gold sellers littering the front page... and somewhere deep inside of me smiles - the world can see you are not doing your job.
To be honest I am not sure if you are actually being serious or simply posting out of spite, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and refer your attention to what I previously mentioned about constructive criticism. Anyways, if you are truly concerned about the gold spammers frequenting our forums, I can inform you that this is a topic we have addressed in another thread here:
http://eu.battle.net...ic/6297649913#7

If you only knew how many accounts we ban from the forums for gold spamming every single day... I actually do not have that number myself, but I can assure you that it is overwhelmingly many. These gold spammers typically use compromised accounts and bots to post, and that makes them quite tough to fight for human moderators as you can hopefully understand :-(