He actually played D2, at least is what he said in a interview, what do we really need is someone from the old Blizzard North, the guys who invented the diablo franchise and developed the first 2 games.
Btw yes Diablo 3 sold 10m copies, but at least 6-8m were sold for the name of the franchise and the hype created on it, not for how the actual game was.
The guys who invented the Diablo franchise wanted it to be claymation turn-based. Blizzard bought them and said "make it real time and put actual models in it".
Do you believe these would've been the right decisions to start off the franchise with?
I don't have an opinion if any of the decisions for the original Diablo were right or wrong, but these are the facts.
That said, I think Jay had an incredibly difficult task. The expectations for D3 were well outside the realm of reality. And the worst part about it is that nobody knew exactly what they wanted - D2 was flawed in a lot of ways and should certainly have been improved on, but very few games have ever done it, certainly not to the extent that people wanted. I think a lot of the controversial decisions they made did work out very well, but they still failed to foresee a lot of missteps at launch and Jay is accountable for that.
I'd disagree with this.
The expectations that fans had were very much attainable, but it was a complete swing and miss because of the development team and leaders. From the very start the development team had a very off putting attitude towards their fanbase. It reminded me of whenever they were explaining their rationale behind the stat points being automatically assigned, and essentially they said, "We just don't think it's fun to do that kind of stuff." when it came to manually assigning stat points.
They always had a "We know what fun is more than you people do." attitude about them. Just about everything in the design choice for the game came from this misguided sense of self importance. They know better than the fans. They know better than the team that worked on Diablo 2. They went away from a proven formula because they thought they knew better, and it bit them in the ass.
I mean when it takes you over a year to have *any* PvP at all when it was expected near launch is inexcusable. Again, they claim because it's not fun. They've obviously been great standard bearers of fun thus far (that's sarcasm, for anyone that can't tell) and are once again telling us what is or isn't fun.
It wasn't until I played Path of Exile that I realized how much of the charm of D2 was missing from Diablo 3. Here I am playing an indie game that feels like a building block of Diablo 3 (can you imagine that game with Blizzard's resources/manpower?) This isn't a plug by any stretch of the imagination, but there are aspects from that game that literally build on what was in D2 and makes it better, and I find myself wondering why Blizzard couldn't just do something like that rather than sitting there trying to reimagine everything. Just about everything right down to the art style has just lost it's identity from Diablo 2, and it's a real shame.
Diablo 3 is a fun enough game in it's own way, but it has no staying power. It's not fun over long periods of time, and everything from the itemization, the auction house, the skill system, to the game mechanics itself are either sub par or feel off.
Good luck to Jay in future projects.
Im not stuck in the 90s, so I can enjoy D3 for what it is and not grasp at an old, outdated, "good-for-its-time" relic.Im certain D3 will be better than D2 ever was.
Lots of the good stuff from the 90s havent been implemented though, and thats a big mistake.
No Ladder
No runewords.
No PvP until 1.7
Only 4 players max instead of 8? big mistake.
heavy gold inflation as there is no gold sinks, or alternative currencies
Very little reason to team up Removal of the usability og gold and magic find + a stupid cap. No manual stat distribution as you are leveling up.
No infinite dungeon system.
Too much emphasis on weapon dmg and primary stats, which forces you to focus on only specific stats. No funny weapons/items with special skill abilities(D2 teleport spell on a runeword comes to mind)
Poor combat against botters, resulting in a heavily inflated economy. Little reason to level a new char as you can change your skills at a whim.
The four marked ones I don't really agree with or I thought they sucked in D2.
Removal of the usability og gold and magic find + a stupid cap.
Magic find/gold on gear is boring, paragon cap is better than D2.
No manual stat distribution as you are leveling up.
Never known what was so freaking great about that, it's like people saying the old wow talents were better, there's 1 or 2 optimal choices and the one with google gets it.
No funny weapons/items with special skill abilities(D2 teleport spell on a runeword comes to mind)
They added a lot of this with the legendary patch, but I guess it could be more.
Little reason to level a new char as you can change your skills at a whim.
Good? Seriously you can't have stuff like that in a modern game with a big audience, try demon's souls/dark souls on the highest difficulty.
Well, sure. Any genius is welcome to have bad ideas during the planning stages.
Is this a reply to me?
I don't know about planning stages, but two of the leads on the game agreed and the whole other part of the team disagreed. Looks like if Blizz didn't take control of Condor the game would've just continued the way they started it. Condor even tried protesting over the phone with Blizz, but the decision was final and they didn't like it.
Point I'm making is not all good decisions came out of North. And by all means not all good ones were from Blizzard (likely). So far the only real successful game from ex-North employees is Torchlight (Arenanet has no North employees from what I recall). Two of the "Big Four of North" are there - the Schaefer brothers. They're doing absolutely great and kudos to them. Dave Brevik is making a Marvel MMO, after his journey in Flagship, then Ping0, then Turbine was unsuccessful and Bill Roper made Champions Online after which got hired by Disney.
The others from North that left formed Castaway and fell to bankruptcy some years later. :/
Well, sure. Any genius is welcome to have bad ideas during the planning stages.
Is this a reply to me?
I don't know about planning stages, but two of the leads on the game agreed and the whole other part of the team disagreed. Looks like if Blizz didn't take control of Condor the game would've just continued the way they started it. Condor even tried protesting over the phone with Blizz, but the decision was final and they didn't like it.
Point I'm making is not all good decisions came out of North. And by all means not all good ones were from Blizzard (likely). So far the only real successful game from ex-North employees is Torchlight (Arenanet has no North employees from what I recall). Two of the "Big Four of North" are there - the Schaefer brothers. They're doing absolutely great and kudos to them. Dave Brevik is making a Marvel MMO, after his journey in Flagship, then Ping0, then Turbine was unsuccessful and Bill Roper made Champions Online after which got hired by Disney.
The others from North that left formed Castaway and fell to bankruptcy some years later. :/
Whatever happened they still made Diablo 1 and 2. That's fact. Whatever disagreements that happened during development is irrelevant because the end product was so good. Jay Wilson and Diablo 3 however...
Whatever happened they still made Diablo 1 and 2. That's fact. Whatever disagreements that happened during development is irrelevant because the end product was so good. Jay Wilson and Diablo 3 however...
You seem to have completely missed the part where I said Blizzard made a lot of the decisions for Diablo 1 and 2. Especially after the games went heavily into development. What we're seeing now is about the same leadership (talking producers and executives here) that were on top of D1 and D2. The only people that left were the ones that wanted the turn-based style Diablo, for a game that is so popular nowadays for its action. All the other guys are still on the team - producers, game designers, level designers, sound designers, story, hell even the music is from the same guy.
The most major component of the game - the action, was introduced by the same people that are in Blizzard today. And Jay Wilson does not call all the shots. Seriously, I know it's hard to imagine a flat development team, but all decisions in Blizzard are mutually agreed upon. Even the GAH and RMAH were called upon by the same people that were head of the first 2 games. It's a financial decision to which Jay has no word, except for the implementation.
Honestly, the first thing the guys did when they were "freed" from Blizzard, by quitting themselves, was Hellgate London. Why is this so overlooked? Nothing was stopping them from creating the absolute best RPG out there. Something to blow the entire market away. What happened?
That said, I think Jay had an incredibly difficult task. The expectations for D3 were well outside the realm of reality. And the worst part about it is that nobody knew exactly what they wanted - D2 was flawed in a lot of ways and should certainly have been improved on, but very few games have ever done it, certainly not to the extent that people wanted. I think a lot of the controversial decisions they made did work out very well, but they still failed to foresee a lot of missteps at launch and Jay is accountable for that.
I'd disagree with this.
The expectations that fans had were very much attainable, but it was a complete swing and miss because of the development team and leaders. From the very start the development team had a very off putting attitude towards their fanbase. It reminded me of whenever they were explaining their rationale behind the stat points being automatically assigned, and essentially they said, "We just don't think it's fun to do that kind of stuff." when it came to manually assigning stat points.
They always had a "We know what fun is more than you people do." attitude about them. Just about everything in the design choice for the game came from this misguided sense of self importance. They know better than the fans. They know better than the team that worked on Diablo 2. They went away from a proven formula because they thought they knew better, and it bit them in the ass.
I mean when it takes you over a year to have *any* PvP at all when it was expected near launch is inexcusable. Again, they claim because it's not fun. They've obviously been great standard bearers of fun thus far (that's sarcasm, for anyone that can't tell) and are once again telling us what is or isn't fun.
It wasn't until I played Path of Exile that I realized how much of the charm of D2 was missing from Diablo 3. Here I am playing an indie game that feels like a building block of Diablo 3 (can you imagine that game with Blizzard's resources/manpower?) This isn't a plug by any stretch of the imagination, but there are aspects from that game that literally build on what was in D2 and makes it better, and I find myself wondering why Blizzard couldn't just do something like that rather than sitting there trying to reimagine everything. Just about everything right down to the art style has just lost it's identity from Diablo 2, and it's a real shame.
Diablo 3 is a fun enough game in it's own way, but it has no staying power. It's not fun over long periods of time, and everything from the itemization, the auction house, the skill system, to the game mechanics itself are either sub par or feel off.
Game design is not a democracy. It's the job of a game designer to make the tough decisions for the good of the game. This is nothing new, the D3 dev team has been more open than most from the start(that's why these discussions even happened in the first place). Besides, you make it sound as if the fans were a united front clamoring for stat point distribution, but they aren't. I was happy to see stat points go, along with a number of other things from D2 like skill specs, potion chugging, etc.
They lacked Metzen (morhaine?) as a writer, and I am sure many other people as talented as him at blizzard. When you think about it, all sarcasm aside, what a terrible idea to lay off the original diablo developpers. As it was to release d3 with such itemisation. There is something happening at blizzard for many years now, and it smells baaad.
I partially agree. But Metzen was responsible for killing off Cain in the manner that many fans did not like. As I said, not all good decisions came by Blizz by all means. But Metzen was the one that wrote the story for D1 and D2 and it was, in my opinion, universally praised.
Some things just happen to be great and no one man is the worst or best developer responsible for it.
Oh and they weren't fired by the way, they quit. They were invited to continue working within Blizzard but were not fond of it.
Well actually for the first game it was Metzen and 3 of the original North employees. For the second it was Metzen, 1 old, 3 new and 1 developer that is still doing it for D3 with him. For the third it was him, the 1 that continued and 3 new. All 3 were led by Metzen.
Interesting.
Can't say I'm making any conclusions from it though.
Game design is not a democracy. It's the job of a game designer to make the tough decisions for the good of the game. This is nothing new, the D3 dev team has been more open than most from the start(that's why these discussions even happened in the first place). Besides, you make it sound as if the fans were a united front clamoring for stat point distribution, but they aren't. I was happy to see stat points go, along with a number of other things from D2 like skill specs, potion chugging, etc.
The proof is in the pudding. There's a reason the game is regarded the way it is.
I dunno who is at fault, but when the team goes 2-14, the coach gets fired. This game looked so damn great in 2010, right after Blizzcon w/ the super crazy fun PvP. Runes as items, Mystic and enchants, saphires and diamonds, Nephalem Cube, soul bound top end gear. And then they went backwards. They tried to be too much like D2. If I wanted a watered down D2, I'd play that crap fest Torchlight. D3 was going to be a better game, and someone got gun shy. Whether it was Jay or someone else, Jay didn't have the guts to stick w/ the good decisions initially instead of iterating the fun out. PvP is in utter shambles. They had separate PvP modes w/ altered stats/mechanics that would allow the designers to balance separately, and they scrapped that. They had so many good things in their hands, and they second guessed themselves to death. Indecisiveness does fault the manager, in the end.
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The guys who invented the Diablo franchise wanted it to be claymation turn-based. Blizzard bought them and said "make it real time and put actual models in it".
Do you believe these would've been the right decisions to start off the franchise with?
I don't have an opinion if any of the decisions for the original Diablo were right or wrong, but these are the facts.
http://www.diablofan...ten-sneak-peek/
Ha. Bagstone.
I'd disagree with this.
The expectations that fans had were very much attainable, but it was a complete swing and miss because of the development team and leaders. From the very start the development team had a very off putting attitude towards their fanbase. It reminded me of whenever they were explaining their rationale behind the stat points being automatically assigned, and essentially they said, "We just don't think it's fun to do that kind of stuff." when it came to manually assigning stat points.
They always had a "We know what fun is more than you people do." attitude about them. Just about everything in the design choice for the game came from this misguided sense of self importance. They know better than the fans. They know better than the team that worked on Diablo 2. They went away from a proven formula because they thought they knew better, and it bit them in the ass.
I mean when it takes you over a year to have *any* PvP at all when it was expected near launch is inexcusable. Again, they claim because it's not fun. They've obviously been great standard bearers of fun thus far (that's sarcasm, for anyone that can't tell) and are once again telling us what is or isn't fun.
It wasn't until I played Path of Exile that I realized how much of the charm of D2 was missing from Diablo 3. Here I am playing an indie game that feels like a building block of Diablo 3 (can you imagine that game with Blizzard's resources/manpower?) This isn't a plug by any stretch of the imagination, but there are aspects from that game that literally build on what was in D2 and makes it better, and I find myself wondering why Blizzard couldn't just do something like that rather than sitting there trying to reimagine everything. Just about everything right down to the art style has just lost it's identity from Diablo 2, and it's a real shame.
Diablo 3 is a fun enough game in it's own way, but it has no staying power. It's not fun over long periods of time, and everything from the itemization, the auction house, the skill system, to the game mechanics itself are either sub par or feel off.
CyberPunk RP Nexus
The four marked ones I don't really agree with or I thought they sucked in D2.
Removal of the usability og gold and magic find + a stupid cap.
Magic find/gold on gear is boring, paragon cap is better than D2.
No manual stat distribution as you are leveling up.
Never known what was so freaking great about that, it's like people saying the old wow talents were better, there's 1 or 2 optimal choices and the one with google gets it.
No funny weapons/items with special skill abilities(D2 teleport spell on a runeword comes to mind)
They added a lot of this with the legendary patch, but I guess it could be more.
Little reason to level a new char as you can change your skills at a whim.
Good? Seriously you can't have stuff like that in a modern game with a big audience, try demon's souls/dark souls on the highest difficulty.
Is this a reply to me?
I don't know about planning stages, but two of the leads on the game agreed and the whole other part of the team disagreed. Looks like if Blizz didn't take control of Condor the game would've just continued the way they started it. Condor even tried protesting over the phone with Blizz, but the decision was final and they didn't like it.
Point I'm making is not all good decisions came out of North. And by all means not all good ones were from Blizzard (likely). So far the only real successful game from ex-North employees is Torchlight (Arenanet has no North employees from what I recall). Two of the "Big Four of North" are there - the Schaefer brothers. They're doing absolutely great and kudos to them. Dave Brevik is making a Marvel MMO, after his journey in Flagship, then Ping0, then Turbine was unsuccessful and Bill Roper made Champions Online after which got hired by Disney.
The others from North that left formed Castaway and fell to bankruptcy some years later. :/
Ha. Bagstone.
hope...
we shall see...
Whatever happened they still made Diablo 1 and 2. That's fact. Whatever disagreements that happened during development is irrelevant because the end product was so good. Jay Wilson and Diablo 3 however...
You seem to have completely missed the part where I said Blizzard made a lot of the decisions for Diablo 1 and 2. Especially after the games went heavily into development. What we're seeing now is about the same leadership (talking producers and executives here) that were on top of D1 and D2. The only people that left were the ones that wanted the turn-based style Diablo, for a game that is so popular nowadays for its action. All the other guys are still on the team - producers, game designers, level designers, sound designers, story, hell even the music is from the same guy.
The most major component of the game - the action, was introduced by the same people that are in Blizzard today. And Jay Wilson does not call all the shots. Seriously, I know it's hard to imagine a flat development team, but all decisions in Blizzard are mutually agreed upon. Even the GAH and RMAH were called upon by the same people that were head of the first 2 games. It's a financial decision to which Jay has no word, except for the implementation.
Honestly, the first thing the guys did when they were "freed" from Blizzard, by quitting themselves, was Hellgate London. Why is this so overlooked? Nothing was stopping them from creating the absolute best RPG out there. Something to blow the entire market away. What happened?
Ha. Bagstone.
Game design is not a democracy. It's the job of a game designer to make the tough decisions for the good of the game. This is nothing new, the D3 dev team has been more open than most from the start(that's why these discussions even happened in the first place). Besides, you make it sound as if the fans were a united front clamoring for stat point distribution, but they aren't. I was happy to see stat points go, along with a number of other things from D2 like skill specs, potion chugging, etc.
yep
I partially agree. But Metzen was responsible for killing off Cain in the manner that many fans did not like. As I said, not all good decisions came by Blizz by all means. But Metzen was the one that wrote the story for D1 and D2 and it was, in my opinion, universally praised.
Some things just happen to be great and no one man is the worst or best developer responsible for it.
Oh and they weren't fired by the way, they quit. They were invited to continue working within Blizzard but were not fond of it.
Ha. Bagstone.
Interesting.
Can't say I'm making any conclusions from it though.
Ha. Bagstone.
The proof is in the pudding. There's a reason the game is regarded the way it is.
CyberPunk RP Nexus