58 replies to this topic

[RTG_Sibcoe]

Hey Diablo Fans -

I wanted to share with you the latest episode of The State of Diablo 3:

Top 10 Fixes for Diablo 3

This episode focuses on the ideas Sibcoe and Ken have for improving the game experience and content, and we hope you enjoy it.  Let us know here on these forums, and in the channel, what you guys think needs improving the most.  

Thanks for watching, Happy New Year.

Cheers 0/

RTG Sibcoe
------------------
www.youtube.com/redteamgaming
www.twitter.com/redteamgaming
www.facebook.com/Sibcoe

Edited by RTG_Sibcoe, 02 January 2013 - 12:17 PM.

[Bagstone]

As mentioned in other forum threads, not everyone can always watch videos, and since this is a *forum* it would be nice if you could put a summary to your videos.

There's a thread where many people posted and discussed their top 10 fixes (http://www.diablofan...make-d3-better/) and the time it takes to listen to your video you can read that thread 5 times and get input from 20 people. Don't get me wrong, many people found your previous threads to be useful, but this really feels like you're just taking an interesting thread from this forum, put it into a (WAY TOO LONG) discussion, upload an audio file on a video platform, and gain clicks by using this forum as advertising.

If anyone could summarize which ten points out of the other thread these guys found to be their top 10... thanks!

Edited by Bagstone, 02 January 2013 - 07:09 PM.

[IgnatiusReilly]

I listened to a lot of this, but I agree, some time line would serve it well so you could jump to each item on the list or at least see what is being discussed.

Some of the stuff I didn't agree with at all, but some of it sounded solid, kind of par for any D3 discussion. Listening to this I've realized there are about a million directions you could take this game, and I'm starting to realize why Blizz is slow to implement things,because they kind of need to be sure it's going to work, because you can't be putting things in then ripping them out again when they fall flat on their face. Not PvP per se, but just additional content, gems, runes, etc. If you put something in and it breaks the game, or just makes no difference to anyone or whatever, it's not good for anyone, and it's just wasted content.

However, I wholly agree, they need to be more open with us. Some sort of idiot is running their PR over there and apparently never reads the forums, because they seem to think keeping us in the dark has some benefit to them. Even a monthly, bi-weekly update would do wonders for overall community health. Even if it's, like, "We don't have anything, but here's what we're thinking about these days."

Then again, sometimes they talk about things they want to do and it somehow turns into, "YOU PROMISED ROBOTS WITH LASERS!" And they're like, "No no, we were just thinking about that..." And the community throws a fit. But that's what PR is for, and they should learn to manage that kind of stuff. I imagine they've thought about doing all kinds of stuff, invested in it for a while, tested, found it was garbage and did away with it. Blizzard, being ridiculously rich, loves their iterative process. (Trolls may insert comment about game sucking anyway, here.) If they let us know about every little thing, it could be even more disastrous...so now I don't know what to think! lol

Edited by IgnatiusReilly, 02 January 2013 - 03:46 PM.

[Litheum]

Also agree as this is a Forum, a written explanation of the video would be nice.
I would like to give feedback, and everything, but I work a 14 hour day, and just don't have time after work to listen to videos.

I usually check these forums on lunch etc, I am sure I am not alone.
And as mentioned before, there already is a thread about "10 things to fix in D3".

[egervari]

I deleted our list after the show.

From memory, we had 6 honorable mentions:

- increase base movement speed to what 24% is now.
- ability to level up abilities/skills (yeah right)
- give a reason to group with players (more loot, more mf, more mob density, etc.)
- add more randomness (but take out stupid randomness)
- increase mob density in act 1/2. Give us reason to go to act 4
- fix the broken wizard class

The Top 10 list

10) give us a pvp system where we define the rules, rewards. Stop wasting 7+ months trying to design the perfect pvp system. let us just pvp and we'll build a system that comes out of it organically. Make use of ptr for pvp.

9) improve drop rates OR stop creating garbage items for garbage sake (i.e. tighten up properties, etc.)

8) cut the length of the journey to paragon 100 by 1/2 or 2/3. Or change how magic find works. And some other things we said.

7) add genuine gold sinks to the game (enchantments, socketing, buffs, etc.). Remove 15% tax bull****.

6) add more game modes - ladders, classic mode, etc.

5) improve itemization - have 15-30 legendaries per item slot that are designed around builds, uses for white items, magic items, more socketables like 20 different gems and random jewels, create healthy ecosystem of gems and depower emeralds.

4) add a crafting system that allows players to create items that don't drop and also incentivizes the destruction of items

3) add bind on equip

2) gives us something to do other than farming

1) blizzard needs to listen, interact and be honest with the community

Also, to our defense, I had a version of this top list on the official forums several days ago before we did the show - probably before it appeared on these forums as well.

As for improving things that don't work - I thought that was what the PTR was for...

Edited by egervari, 02 January 2013 - 04:47 PM.

[zeroRooter]

i felt this would happen... even during beta...

[maka]

I just listen to it while farming. There's nothing good (sound-wise) going on in D3, anyway.

[Bagstone]

egervari, on 02 January 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

I deleted our list after the show.

From memory, we had 6 honorable mentions:

- increase base movement speed to what 24% is now.
- ability to level up abilities/skills (yeah right)
- give a reason to group with players (more loot, more mf, more mob density, etc.)
- add more randomness (but take out stupid randomness)
- increase mob density in act 1/2. Give us reason to go to act 4
- fix the broken wizard class

The Top 10 list

10) give us a pvp system where we define the rules, rewards. Stop wasting 7+ months trying to design the perfect pvp system. let us just pvp and we'll build a system that comes out of it organically. Make use of ptr for pvp.

9) improve drop rates OR stop creating garbage items for garbage sake (i.e. tighten up properties, etc.)

8) cut the length of the journey to paragon 100 by 1/2 or 2/3. Or change how magic find works. And some other things we said.

7) add genuine gold sinks to the game (enchantments, socketing, buffs, etc.). Remove 15% tax bull****.

6) add more game modes - ladders, classic mode, etc.

5) improve itemization - have 15-30 legendaries per item slot that are designed around builds, uses for white items, magic items, more socketables like 20 different gems and random jewels, create healthy ecosystem of gems and depower emeralds.

4) add a crafting system that allows players to create items that don't drop and also incentivizes the destruction of items

3) add bind on equip

2) gives us something to do other than farming

1) blizzard needs to listen, interact and be honest with the community

Also, to our defense, I had a version of this top list on the official forums several days ago before we did the show - probably before it appeared on these forums as well.

As for improving things that don't work - I thought that was what the PTR was for...

Thanks for the list. Only partially agree on some of these. For example, BoE is part of WoW, not Diablo, please don't. There was also a blue post about it after it got removed from the beta; salvaging was meant as a function to take items out of the game, but this requires a working crafting system (I agree on that point).

Also, about the 15% tax system, this is absolutely necessary economy-wise to prevent extreme AH flipping (you need at least 20% benefit from flipping in order to make money).

Your very first and last points are two things that annoy me. 24% MS default? Dear god, did you ever play Diablo 1? Default MS in D1 felt like 20% of that in D3. This is similar to the "give us 5 pickup radius by default", "give me pew pew by default". Hell no. If you want to be faster, get the gear. There are people and builds that work fine with 0% MS on gear in D3 (and that are still fast enough). And about the last point: the typical Blizzard bashing topic again. Blizzard listens more, interacts more, and is more honest with the community than most other (if not all other) game companies. They don't meet people's expectations, but that's just because some people feel like Blizzard's dying as soon as they don't have a weekly email from Jay Wilson in their inbox, personally asking everyone "how are you doing, what's on your mind this week?"

[Shadout]

No AH fee would be terrible tbh. Needed as a gold sink and to prevent some of the flipping.

Bind on Equip could be interesting if done right.

Paragon farm time is fine imo, it should just be account-wide.

Bonus for multiplayer would SUCK. People should play together because they enjoy it, not feel forced to do it.

Edited by Shadout, 02 January 2013 - 07:12 PM.

[itirnitii]

I think that paragon shouldn't be account wide. Or better yet, make the MF/GF bonus account wide, but the stat bonuses not.

[Litheum]

egervari, on 02 January 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

From memory, we had 6 honorable mentions:

- increase base movement speed to what 24% is now.
- ability to level up abilities/skills (yeah right)
- give a reason to group with players (more loot, more mf, more mob density, etc.)
- add more randomness (but take out stupid randomness)
- increase mob density in act 1/2. Give us reason to go to act 4
- fix the broken wizard class

The Top 10 list

10) give us a pvp system where we define the rules, rewards. Stop wasting 7+ months trying to design the perfect pvp system. let us just pvp and we'll build a system that comes out of it organically. Make use of ptr for pvp.
9) improve drop rates OR stop creating garbage items for garbage sake (i.e. tighten up properties, etc.)
8) cut the length of the journey to paragon 100 by 1/2 or 2/3. Or change how magic find works. And some other things we said.
7) add genuine gold sinks to the game (enchantments, socketing, buffs, etc.). Remove 15% tax bull****.
6) add more game modes - ladders, classic mode, etc.
5) improve itemization - have 15-30 legendaries per item slot that are designed around builds, uses for white items, magic items, more socketables like 20 different gems and random jewels, create healthy ecosystem of gems and depower emeralds.
4) add a crafting system that allows players to create items that don't drop and also incentivizes the destruction of items
3) add bind on equip
2) gives us something to do other than farming
1) blizzard needs to listen, interact and be honest with the community

Thanks for the list.

10) PVP in some form would be better than nothing, I agree. I think even the duel system is gonna be too restricted, probably have to meet in town, and request/accept the duel....instead of just being able to duel where you want, when you want.

9) This is by far the #1 issue for me, the game just doesnt feel rewarding at all.

8) I agree, or give reasonsto play alts. The fun of alts for me is taken away because I feel like anything I do on any character besides my main is a waste of time because it doesnt add to his paragon.....i.e. my ability to farm.

7) 2nd biggest issue for me, the AH is so inflated, you can spend hours and hours in game, and alls you end up with is vendor trash and gold which you can get really good items with.....on the AH. I just want to be able to level and gear a character as quickly as my others without the AH. The AH should be there to fill in 2-3 items that just dont drop for you, or to get 1-2 items that rounds out your build perfectly.

6) I love Diabloprogress. Seeing where I stand within the community is great fun and a great challenge. I don't understand why Blizzard is so against it now. At least add achievements for paragon and MP level bosses/ubers so websites can track and post it. I think they really underestimate how these sites bring and keep customers to their games.  I dont know too many WOW players who don't know about the progression websites out there for guild progression, and didnt track their guilds progress.

5) Agree mostly, it is harder to balance all this, and makes the game unreasonably complicated....which is good for some, bad for others. More diversity would be nice without overdoing it.

4) Agree.

3) No thanks. I can see why this is a good idea, but I would rather have a true item sink that accomplishes the same goal. I agree things like hellfires should be binded, and maybe specific recipes, or "uber-type" quest rewards, as a way to incentivise players to do that content, but other than that I dont like binding.

2) Of course agree.

1) I do feel they don't put in as much effort to be transparent as other games, of course the recent PVP blog has me a bit salty right now though....so my opinion may be a bit biased against Blizz ATM.

Edited by Litheum, 02 January 2013 - 07:29 PM.

[JKlimek]

itirnitii, on 02 January 2013 - 07:21 PM, said:

I think that paragon shouldn't be account wide. Or better yet, make the MF/GF bonus account wide, but the stat bonuses not.

because you want a harder time grinding through levels 0-60?  Try putting a hellfire ring on a level 1 character, it's the same thing.

9) I absolutely disagree with.  They doubled the drop rates for legendaries and now they are worth nothing on AH unless you roll spectacularly.  Yellows are the new blues

8) I agree somewhat, but honestly I don't think Paragon levels were ever intended for most players to be able to finish.  At early levels, it fixes the MF/GF problem on equipment.  At higher levels it just provides a sense of accomplishment... all of those wasted hours of farming legendaries that aren't worth anything has paid off with some measurable exp points

7-4 and 2 are great

[RMrulz]

Bagstone, on 02 January 2013 - 09:03 AM, said:

As mentioned in other forum threads, not everyone can always watch videos, and since this is a *forum* it would be nice if you could put a summary to your videos.

There's a thread where many people posted and discussed their top 10 fixes (http://www.diablofan...make-d3-better/) and the time it takes to listen to your video you can read that thread 5 times and get input from 20 people. Don't get me wrong, many people found your previous threads to be useful, but this really feels like you're just taking an interesting thread from this forum, put it into a (WAY TOO LONG) discussion, upload an audio file on a video platform, and gain clicks by using this forum as advertising.

If anyone could summarize which ten points out of the other thread these guys found to be their top 10... thanks!

I couldn't have said it better myself.  Polite and to the point.

Edited by RMrulz, 02 January 2013 - 07:52 PM.

[Amcham]

How can there be a top 10 fixes needed for D3 without solving some basic issues.

FPS drops the first time you load the game while is loading everything into memory? Almost everyone i know that has played d3 moaned about this.

Skills that cause the game to bug out which require you to log out to fix. Making them almost unusable in hardcore.

As much as I would like new content for D3 were not getting any time soon. WoW is lucky to receive 2-3 major content patch's a year and that game has a subscription. We had ours with the Monster power patch. and eventually pvp once it comes. We've created this illusion that games need "end game content" if you want that play an mmo.

As an off the shelf game D3 is an awesome game. Some of the most fun you will have is leveling 3 mates through normal/nm/hell where skill sets are almost totally irrelevant and its just about having fun. if you use rubbish gear the game is just as difficult as inferno.

[woodballs]

Another great vid. Blizzard, pay attention to the community. You're being ridiculous.

[mbease]

Just want to say I enjoyed the video/podcast. Great job. I like most of your ideas.

[RTG_Sibcoe]

Hey Diablo Fans -

I want to thank you as a community, and part of the larger D3 community, for allowing us to post these community interest videos here.  I think video is an evolution in communication, and in conveying ideas to a large audience.  As a lover of text, I was amazed to discover how much I now depend on video for my information feed.  I want to thank the mods and community members for participating in these discussions from the videos, and I encourage the conversation to take place here, and on our YT channel.  

I don't expect everyone to agree with us 100% of the time, I do expect a polite and interesting discussion about ideas that will forward and develop Diablo 3, as a community, and as a game.  I love to read everyone's feedback, both constructive criticism and positive feedback.  

Going forward we will commit to providing a text list of the topics covered and main points in the thread here, for those who cannot avail themselves of video at that time.  We will also do our best to contribute to the discussion here.

Thanks again Diablo Fans, and community.  Here's to a stronger Diablo in 2013.  

Cheers 0/

RTG Sibcoe
------------------
www.youtube.com/redteamgaming
www.twitter.com/redteamgaming
www.facebook.com/Sibcoe

[egervari]

Bagstone, on 02 January 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

egervari, on 02 January 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

I deleted our list after the show.

From memory, we had 6 honorable mentions:

- increase base movement speed to what 24% is now.
- ability to level up abilities/skills (yeah right)
- give a reason to group with players (more loot, more mf, more mob density, etc.)
- add more randomness (but take out stupid randomness)
- increase mob density in act 1/2. Give us reason to go to act 4
- fix the broken wizard class

The Top 10 list

10) give us a pvp system where we define the rules, rewards. Stop wasting 7+ months trying to design the perfect pvp system. let us just pvp and we'll build a system that comes out of it organically. Make use of ptr for pvp.

9) improve drop rates OR stop creating garbage items for garbage sake (i.e. tighten up properties, etc.)

8) cut the length of the journey to paragon 100 by 1/2 or 2/3. Or change how magic find works. And some other things we said.

7) add genuine gold sinks to the game (enchantments, socketing, buffs, etc.). Remove 15% tax bull****.

6) add more game modes - ladders, classic mode, etc.

5) improve itemization - have 15-30 legendaries per item slot that are designed around builds, uses for white items, magic items, more socketables like 20 different gems and random jewels, create healthy ecosystem of gems and depower emeralds.

4) add a crafting system that allows players to create items that don't drop and also incentivizes the destruction of items

3) add bind on equip

2) gives us something to do other than farming

1) blizzard needs to listen, interact and be honest with the community

Also, to our defense, I had a version of this top list on the official forums several days ago before we did the show - probably before it appeared on these forums as well.

As for improving things that don't work - I thought that was what the PTR was for...

Thanks for the list. Only partially agree on some of these. For example, BoE is part of WoW, not Diablo, please don't. There was also a blue post about it after it got removed from the beta; salvaging was meant as a function to take items out of the game, but this requires a working crafting system (I agree on that point).

Also, about the 15% tax system, this is absolutely necessary economy-wise to prevent extreme AH flipping (you need at least 20% benefit from flipping in order to make money).

Your very first and last points are two things that annoy me. 24% MS default? Dear god, did you ever play Diablo 1? Default MS in D1 felt like 20% of that in D3. This is similar to the "give us 5 pickup radius by default", "give me pew pew by default". Hell no. If you want to be faster, get the gear. There are people and builds that work fine with 0% MS on gear in D3 (and that are still fast enough). And about the last point: the typical Blizzard bashing topic again. Blizzard listens more, interacts more, and is more honest with the community than most other (if not all other) game companies. They don't meet people's expectations, but that's just because some people feel like Blizzard's dying as soon as they don't have a weekly email from Jay Wilson in their inbox, personally asking everyone "how are you doing, what's on your mind this week?"

This is why I think its important to watch the shows. The reasons to support the points are in our shows already :/ I was a bit hesistant to list them for this reason :/

Edited by egervari, 02 January 2013 - 10:35 PM.

[overneathe]

egervari, on 02 January 2013 - 10:34 PM, said:

This is why I think its important to watch the shows. The reasons to support the points are in our shows already :/ I was a bit hesistant to list them for this reason :/

While it's absolutely understandable that people would better get your point watching the vid you have to take note your discussion is more than an hour long and some people don't have the time to go though it entirely. Considering the average Diablo gamer is 18-34 these people likely have jobs and other things to do in RL then listen to it (which I don't mind doing myself). It's a bit hard to get the forum crowd without text. It's what it's based on.

[Bagstone]

RTG_Sibcoe, on 02 January 2013 - 10:30 PM, said:

Going forward we will commit to providing a text list of the topics covered and main points in the thread here, for those who cannot avail themselves of video at that time.  We will also do our best to contribute to the discussion here.

Great! Thanks very much, I'm looking forward to it! (Well, two weeks vacation w/o Internet so I'll probably miss a few discussions but will read all of them once I'm back). Would really appreciate if we can have a back-and-forth discussion about the content of your videos. As much as I agree that the means of communication are subject to change these days, I'm a frequent visitor to these forums because I prefer the old-fashioned way of debating in written text rather than having Youtube channels, for a variety of reasons.

@egervari: To be honest, I thought so, but even if I could watch the videos now, it would take way too much time (the last few vids were all well more than an hour). Like Sibcoe said, not everyone has to agree with what you say, and so I don't expect anyone to agree with my comments - in fact, it's nice if people provide a different opinion. In the end, this is what makes for a good discussion. But it can only happen if as many voices as possible are heard, and in a pre-recorded video it's only a very limited number of voices ;-)

Anyways, all of the RTG videos sparked interesting discussions, and that's something the forum needs to thrive.

Edited by Bagstone, 02 January 2013 - 11:12 PM.