A message from Rob Pardo regarding Jay Wilson.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(This thread saddens me greatly. I know that the Battle.net forums have earned a reputation for rough justice, but I do not believe justice is being served by how people are speaking about Jay’s departure from Diablo III.
I am very proud of the Diablo franchise and what the team was able to accomplish with Diablo III. As a gamer I have enjoyed the game and played for many, many nights with friends and family. I’m not, however, going to use that as an excuse. The Diablo community deserves an even better game from Blizzard and we are committed to improving it. We have a talented team in place and have no intention of stopping work on Diablo III until it is the best game in the franchise.
I’m the only person in this thread who has actually worked with Jay. I hired Jay to head up the Diablo project and had the pleasure of getting to work with him, both in building the team and designing the game. He has great design instincts and has added so much to the franchise with his feel for visceral combat, boss battles, and an unparalleled knack for making it fun to smash bad guys. I’ve worked with many, many designers at Blizzard and Jay is one of the best. He has a great career at Blizzard ahead of him and I guarantee that you will enjoy Jay’s game designs in future Blizzard games.
If you love Diablo as much as we do, then please continue to let us know how you feel we can improve the game. If you still feel the need to dish out blame, then I would prefer you direct it at me. I was the executive producer on the project; I hired Jay and I gave him advice and direction throughout the development process. I was ultimately responsible for the game we released and take full responsibility for the quality of the result.
I am very proud of the Diablo franchise and what the team was able to accomplish with Diablo III. As a gamer I have enjoyed the game and played for many, many nights with friends and family. I’m not, however, going to use that as an excuse. The Diablo community deserves an even better game from Blizzard and we are committed to improving it. We have a talented team in place and have no intention of stopping work on Diablo III until it is the best game in the franchise.
I’m the only person in this thread who has actually worked with Jay. I hired Jay to head up the Diablo project and had the pleasure of getting to work with him, both in building the team and designing the game. He has great design instincts and has added so much to the franchise with his feel for visceral combat, boss battles, and an unparalleled knack for making it fun to smash bad guys. I’ve worked with many, many designers at Blizzard and Jay is one of the best. He has a great career at Blizzard ahead of him and I guarantee that you will enjoy Jay’s game designs in future Blizzard games.
If you love Diablo as much as we do, then please continue to let us know how you feel we can improve the game. If you still feel the need to dish out blame, then I would prefer you direct it at me. I was the executive producer on the project; I hired Jay and I gave him advice and direction throughout the development process. I was ultimately responsible for the game we released and take full responsibility for the quality of the result.
Dyes for Legendary Items
Legendary items will finally be able painted! For now, only with the vanishing dye though!
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(We’re working on getting Vanishing Dyes for Legendary items into 1.0.7. We intend for them to have the same slot restrictions as dyes traditionally have, so you’ll be able to use Vanishing Dye on say, your Legendary shoulders or helmet, but not items such as your weapons.
We hope this change will be available for testing on the PTR in a future build, but that may not possible. We’ll keep you updated.
I'm sure adding color to every legendary skin would take time. Vanishing dye at least would be a lot easier to do which is why it would be able to make it into 1.07. They will do color in the long run though I'm sure.
We’re definitely working on making all dyes work for Legendary items. It’s not a quick-fix, though; as Fearophobias surmised, our artists actually need to go back and redo the textures on all the Legendaries in order to make them dye-compatible.
Since we know this process will take some time, we wanted to make sure that players could at least use Vanishing Dye for now (it was the most-requested dye for Legendaries that we’ve seen to date).
We hope this change will be available for testing on the PTR in a future build, but that may not possible. We’ll keep you updated.
I'm sure adding color to every legendary skin would take time. Vanishing dye at least would be a lot easier to do which is why it would be able to make it into 1.07. They will do color in the long run though I'm sure.
We’re definitely working on making all dyes work for Legendary items. It’s not a quick-fix, though; as Fearophobias surmised, our artists actually need to go back and redo the textures on all the Legendaries in order to make them dye-compatible.
Since we know this process will take some time, we wanted to make sure that players could at least use Vanishing Dye for now (it was the most-requested dye for Legendaries that we’ve seen to date).
Hellfire Rings to be Salvageable in 1.0.7
After some time and discussions the Hellfire Rings will now be salvageable into normal Legendary materials.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(The plan is to have Hellfire Rings salvage into normal Legendary crafting materials in 1.0.7 (not organs, see below). That change isn't live on the PTR right now, but will be in a future build.
Here's an earlier response I provided on the topic of Hellfire Rings > demonic organs. The reasoning still holds true:
Here's an earlier response I provided on the topic of Hellfire Rings > demonic organs. The reasoning still holds true:
We've definitely discussed the possibility of allowing Hellfire Rings to salvage into component pieces, and have debated your feedback quite heavily as a part of that process. While we understand why players would like Hellfire Rings to salvage into demonic organs (or even Keywarden keys), we don't think that's the right way to go right now since it would essentially let you skip some encounters completely. It's something we may revisit in the future, though, once the event has been around for a longer period of time.
Bonus Blizzard Comic Contest Entry
A bonus winner for Blizzard's Comic contest!
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(We challenged you to submit your comic creations to the Blizzard Comic Contest, and your entries never fail to amuse and amaze us. The following comic from Brandon Millward (Valkors) and Nils-Petter Norlin (Colonel Panic) was selected as an honorable mention in our ongoing contest.
Keep those comics coming, and you might be the next artist to take home a prize! Also, be sure to set aside some time to check out our Warcraft and StarCraft comic sections.
Keep those comics coming, and you might be the next artist to take home a prize! Also, be sure to set aside some time to check out our Warcraft and StarCraft comic sections.
Curse Blizzard News
Here are the latest news presented in video by our very own Evan!
i never liked to follow drama that forums trolls make.
And if they didn't ask for player feedback, you'd be here complaining your ass off that Blizzard doesn't listen to it's players. So don't even go there.
Posting here contradicts what both of you say though...
On the topic of the Rob Pardo response, I think it's good of him to point out to people that it isn't actually Jay that calls the shots. Maybe he's making himself a meat shield, but he's got some guts in doing it. Good on him!
Also 1.07 has some nice things in it, I think it will be a good patch.
The game has improved, maybe at a slower pace than we would have liked, but it's a slow process.
I find this game fun to play, in D3 I enjoy all the classes while in D2 I didn't like much some of them.
Unfortunately some of the choices they made in the beginning is going to limit how much they can meddle with the game.
Like stats on items: "players will just read the internet and follow guides" or "be upset for making mistakes in allocating points" were two of the preferred arguments against points allocation; now all you need is to read the internet and to buy items....VERY different;
Or GoldAH (which developer said "we didn't figure how much AH would affect how fast players get powerful items" or something like that?)....many players did figure and spoke about the problem, but Blizzard didn't take notice.
I bet it's going to be difficult to handle those two.
About Mr.Wilson...what am I to say...he may be a great game designer but he could do with a "PR managing" intensive course, really.
He has a talent for upsetting players, I'd say.
And I'd like to know who was the person, Jay or else, who uberfailed Legendaries (in an item hunting game where stats on items make most of the difference, no less!!!) on release.
Come on, don't be shy, we won't eat you....maybe.
While i played WoW from BC and played at a high level even ranking at one point in time as a top 100 warlock based on WowProgress. I suppose I would be considered one of those garbage casuals to you. The reality is, I have a life outside of the game, and still enjoy playing. So while my passion is in HM Raiding and grinding for weeks on end, why should I be relegated to "Garbage" status because I have children that occupy more of my time. Generally speaking, the things that are wrong with WoW isnt necessarily the game play but more so the elitist attitude of a minority of the community. In the raid finder option, it was generally the elitist asses that would grief players and afk in the middle of fights then return for loot rolls. The casual player base doesnt generally have the knowledge base to make the type of decisions that tend to ruin the game. As far as D3, while it was not what I expected, I have enjoyed the game play with my friends and family. Would I like to have seen some changes, sure. But at the same time, if you have leveled one of each class, and geared them out. You have gotten your 49.95's worth of gameplay. The fact that Blizz continues to make improvements, when in essence they do not need to, is a plus in itself. Just my opinion, which matters for a whole lot of nothing.
And seeing as they appear to be now looking for a new, I stress the word new, game director, you might just be wishing Jay was back pretty soon, because they can hire literally anyone, with god knows what kind of history in the game industry. They might hire a designer who has worked in the gaming industry for over 20 years yet most of the games produced by his team ended up gathering dust at the store shelves. I say better the devil you know...
As for the complaints about them needing us to give them feedback on how to fix the game, you apparently have absolutely no clue what it is to critique your own work. When I work on translating texts, it usually takes another person to read it and check if everything sits just right because of what I tend to call author-blindness. You may feel that there is something off, something doesn't seem right but no matter how much you go through the material, you just can't put your finger on it. I spent years playing Diablo 2 yet I still don't know what it is about Diablo 3's itemization that makes it worse, or rather what it is about Diablo 2's itemization that makes it feel so right. Is it the fact that it's habitual, it's something familiar that I've played around with for years, is it nostalgia and skewed view on the past, is it simply an aversion to change? I don't know. What I do know is that what worked 11 years ago will not necessarily work now, and a game that would just be a reiteration of Diablo 2, only with better graphics and an improvement here or there would not exactly be the game I, and many others, have been waiting for all these years, and hardly a game that will become part of gaming history. Not to mention of course that the best way to critique a game is to play it. I very much doubt that after programming and designing the game for so long and still working on it god knows how many hours a day, they have much time and desire to keep playing it in their free time out of the office.
Back to Diablo 3, yes I agree there is some flaws. No matter what the very small elitist (and LUCKY, due to getting the gear drops to DO it) playerbase says about the nerfing, Inferno was overtuned at launch. I consider myself to be an above-average gamer at least, and that was literally brick-walled back then, unless you got that rarer-than-hell drop that let you break through that brick wall, which was amplified by the fact you virtually needed items that dropped from past said wall, while being unable to get past it. I got friends that quit, and still have not come back, because of that difficulty ramp-up. But, like many gamers, comparing what they wanted out of a game when they loved Diablo 2 to now with Diablo 3, a decade later, it's not the same (no matter how much people say they want Diablo 3 to just be Diablo 2 with better graphics). Immediate issue my friends claim why they don't like Diablo 3? World of Warcraft. Being part of an MMO for the last 5 years has changed their interest-level in games. Mindless farming item-hunts are not interesting to them anymore. And I get that. It took me almost a week to get that answer out of them, but I understand that. It's not that the game was designed bad, it's that other games have impacted them to a degree that their tastes have changed that much.
Jay Wilson may have been the man driving the bus, but he wasn't the one making all the bus route plans. The fact that a portion of this game's community (which, I actually feel dirty about calling myself a part of) feels the need specifically to single out Wilson and attack him for any and every design decision, and blame him for the fact that Diablo 3 isn't the game you wanted, but the game the company designed (btw: They are the ones paid to develop games, you aren't. As a budding programmer myself, I can tell you: It is not as easy as you might think it is). The fact alone that they actually do take and use our feedback, and keep in mind that just cause we make a suggestion, doesn't mean it will be right for the game's overall design or may clash with other design goals they have, but let's face it: Most game developers don't give a rat's ass what the playerbase thinks, as long as they got their money. Think EA cares? SquareEnix (see: Final Fantasy XIII and XIV)? Activision (yes, I know they are linked to Blizzard, but they are separate, and really, what has changed with CoD since Modern Warfare)? They are in it to pull in the money, and hope their playerbase just keeps swallowing down the content they produce.
Before Diablo 3 launched, I believe it was Bashiok who outright said that players need to lower their expectations, and not to over-hype a game they expected to be so much more. Yes, it's a beloved franchise, but really, no developer is going to live up to the expectations of 90% of their playerbase when they sell literally millions of copies of the game the first week. And when people got exactly that, they lash out at the developers? Really? Are we all that immature? And I'm not meaning about bugs/balance issues that made it through Beta to Live. I mean about "the story is crap!" and "the skill system doesn't feel like Diablo!" and things that hell, over half of you knew about from the Open Weekend Stress Test, and then still turned around and bought the game anyways.
Seriously, some portions of the gaming community needs to grow up, or just GTFO. I miss the days when being a gamer was looked down upon. We had more respect for those that provided us with countless hours of entertainment. With gaming so mainstream now, if you don't game, you aren't "cool" (got no idea how many weird looks I get when people find out I don't play any CoD games). Get off your own freaking hype and realize that while yes, they want our feedback, it takes time to see changes and it may not be the best idea, no matter how good you think it is. You aren't all-knowing in what is best for the game, you merely know what you want to see from the game. Pretty sure if they made it so when you placed your banner down in-game it would spawn a Legendary item every time, someone would STILL complain, either because it was too easy OR because they couldn't get the one they want. There is no way to please everyone.
Rob Pardo should have replace Jay Wilson BY THEN. So, yeah, I blame you. As I'll blame you if the new place where Jay Wilson was moved is on the same position he couldn't perform in Diablo 3, but just in another game. I hope it's something more on par with Wilson's capabilities.
Sorry, overneathe, but you're way off.
Rob wasn't hired until '97 - meaning he missed War 2 by a good margin, and, also he didn't have a design role on Diablo II, no one in Irvine did. He was on the "strike team", which was basically elite QA, but far from design.
I don't mind revisionist history from the fanbois here, but expect a little more from you.
That would be Andrew Chambers. He was the guy that made light of David Brevik's chance of success after D3's successful launch in Jay's infamous "FTL" facebook post.
There's a lot of fail to spread around D3's development team. Jay takes the fall, and rightfully so, for being dim-witted enough to act like everything was perfectly ok after release.
As long as I'm doing some historical clean-up, might as well cover this, someone recently had them mixed up.
There are two Andrew/Andy Chambers, and they've both been associated with both Games Workshop properties and have both worked at Blizzard in the past decade (confused yet?).
Mobygames even conflates them, and wikipedia calls Andy the current "creative director" at Blizzard, which is ridiculous.
Andrew Chambers currently works on the D3 team, and worked with Jay at Cryptic, including a credit on "Homeworld", which is fondly remembered by many gamers.
http://www.blizzplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/blizzcon-2011-andrew-chambers.jpg
Andy Chambers is a writer who worked on Games Workshop's titles, most notably WH40K. He worked as a writer on SC2, but left Blizzard years ago after working there for only a few years.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/f/fa/AndyChambers.jpg/100px-AndyChambers.jpg
He's British, and a little older than Andrew.
I know this confusion was keeping many of you up at night, YWIA.
I can see it now:
Cliffy B. has decided to step down. He hates each and every one of you.
Sincerely,
Rob Pardo
...and then another eight months later!
Shigeru Miyamoto has also decided to step down. He also hates all of you.
Sincerely,
Rob pardo
Yes, there are failures from all over the team, which doesn't mean their failures were their fault. Look how Wyatt Cheng could improve the game with a little more help and a lot of time. Yes, he is to responsible for making a lot of crap at launch, but not on his own volition. The fact that he ALONE made every skill of the game and most of interactions between them (monsters and players alike) would result in an OBVIOUS disaster. And who decided to dump the responsibility of a TEAM to a LONE developer?
Not to mention that error 37 was an oversight that I really doubt B.net programmers didn't alert Jay Wilson of the risk. BUT (RM)AH was the highest priority in Wilson's head, so fuck those loser players.