Due to many of our developers becoming flu-ridden zombies and needing to be quarantined so they could recover, we've had to postpone publishing the answers to your questions for the first round of Ask the Devs.
Rather than posting the answers this week (as originally scheduled), we'll now be posting them on Monday, February 11, around 10:00 a.m. PST. We sincerely apologize for the delay, and hope you can forgive us for our recent zombie outbreak.
That's pure hilarity. 3 devs?
Based on the questions the community asked (and voted up in popularity), there were certain developers we needed to reach out to in order to get meaningful answers -- in this case, our system design group.
The Diablo III team is pretty big, but it's made up of multiple working parts, and most of the designers tend to specialize. Certainly, not everyone on the team has been sick, but a tech artist, for example, wouldn't be the correct person to ask about the crafting costs for new Rare recipes. Similarly, a UI engineer isn't going to be able to pontificate on the reasons why we buffed certain Monk skills in 1.0.7, but not others. Unfortunately, it was our system designers that bore the brunt of what we've dubbed the "zombie plague" (they share an office, so it's not a big surprise that they also shared the same nasty flu strain).
We know it sucks that we had to postpone posting the developer answers by a few days. We don't like it, either. But rather than rush the responses or get someone else who isn't responsible for that specific area of design to try to provide answers, we decided to wait until the right people were back in the office. We wanted to make sure that your questions were given that level of attention and respect.
Is the situation ideal? No. Is it the end of the world? Maybe (I've watched enough movies to know this is usually how zombie apocalypses start). But if it is, it's not because the first Ask the Devs round of answers has been delayed until Monday.
Also, I thought that the questions should have been answered days ago. The reason we were told it would take this long was the need to translate it all into different languages and coordinate a release of information. Unless you guys were blowing smoke up our rectums on reddit....
It took us longer to get the responses, but the amount of time we need to get everything localized remains unchanged. That means we had to shift everything down a couple of days to accommodate the developers not being available (we originally wanted to post on Thursday, for example, but now we're going to post on Monday (note: we do observe weekends)).
Dueling Re-Named to Brawling
Blizzard has decided the name Brawling fits the feature slightly better.
After reviewing feedback from the PTR, we've decided to rename dueling to brawling—a title we feel is much more fitting for the system. Rather than wait to announce this in the official patch notes, we wanted to let players know ahead of time, in part to reduce confusion and in part to explain the reasons behind the change.
While the system we designed for 1.0.7 was developed in order to give players a fun way to beat each other up in Diablo III, we've come to realize that "dueling" wasn’t the best name for it. Sure, it allows players to pummel, stomp, immolate, and hex fellow Nephalem (over and over again, if they so choose), but it's not a traditional one-on-one duel. It’s something much more wild and open-ended, where you can engage in 3-person and even 4-person free-for-all skirmishes with few restrictions. The system is all about letting players fight for the sake of fighting—you don’t need to worry about objectives, rewards, or scoring, and that’s exactly what we love about it. But again, that’s not really dueling; it’s brawling!
There's a lot of power in a name, and we think that the idea of a brawl more accurately describes the system we created. Heck, the NPC we added is even called Nek the Brawler, so we feel this re-branding must have been foretold in one of Deckard Cain’s prophecies.
This change will be reflected in the patch notes, as well as in all related game text fields once 1.0.7 ships. We’ve no further changes planned for brawling at this time, but we’re excited to see what kind of havoc players will wreak in the Scorched Chapel once the patch is released.
I'm gonna go ahead and call it dueling, if you corporate types don't mind. Stop trying so hard to not be Diablo 2, it's kinda pathetic.
Most of the feedback we've been seeing from players has been in the context of what dueling was in Diablo II and how it exists in other games. Generally speaking, dueling in other games has always been something that you can do in the normal world at a moment’s notice (or at least initiate at a moment’s notice through a challenge). It’s something that only involves two people, and carries with it the expectation of formality and structure, and to a degree…fairness. That’s not really what dueling (now brawling) is about in Diablo III, and we want to make sure that the scope of the system isn't being misrepresented by its name.
Auction House Delays
Hi all, just dropping in to let you know we're still investigating the AH. I know that I was still seeing some delays on my own account. Good news is that we're not seeing any auctions just up and disappear. We'll update the messaging as we are able, for now we have this general messaging up. Thanks for hanging in there!
Thank god for disabling the Salvage confirmation. Assuming salvaging becomes worthwhile of course.
People on the forums are hilariously mad about the Brawling thing for some reason but I think it's a better name, for all the reasons they gave. I don't think it was ever officially called dueling in D2 anyway - most people associate that word with WoW-style duels.
Well, people are not angry because name was changed... people are angry because a lot of feedback was given on how to make the 'dueling' system more like a dueling system and better all around... instead of taking feedback and making a better 'dueling' system they just changed the name to brawling. Of course some didn't know that and just went and rage for raging, but the ones who were angry at first were for that reason.
Well, people are not angry because name was changed... people are angry because a lot of feedback was given on how to make the 'dueling' system more like a dueling system and better all around... instead of taking feedback and making a better 'dueling' system they just changed the name to brawling. Of course some didn't know that and just went and rage for raging, but the ones who were angry at first were for that reason.
Those people didn't understand the reason Blizzard implemented this system in the first place. Real PvP, with formal objectives and a lot of care going into the game design, is coming in the future. This is just intended as a way for people to beat on eachother D2-style in the meantime. They intentionally made it completely devoid of rules and structure so that people can figure out whatever metagame works best and do it themselves, just like they did in D2. If they implement more game structure, then next people are going to be asking about balance, and then they'll be asking about rewards, etc etc... Blizzard is working on that stuff, just not for 1.0.7. Depending on what happens they may or may not restructure Brawling with the PvP patch.
If there's one thing Brawling is really suffering from, it's the lack of a public games list so people can find Brawling games. That's a systemic change that would definitely take a lot of time though.
I don't think it was ever officially called dueling in D2 anyway - most people WoW players associate that word with WoW-style duels.
Fixed that for you.
Glad to see Blizzard is using their time and resources on important things.
If you haven't played WoW then you are in the minority. In fact most MMOs implement duels that way, and they did get a lot of feedback expecting those type of duels.
Would you guys really disable salvage warning? I'd rather leave that failsafe there, it's not that hard to spam click+enter instead of clicking after all.
Ideally they would add salvage buybacks, and then they wouldn't need the option in the first place.
Except it would be very weird to see the blacksmith put back together an item with the mats he just salvaged
"Wait, wait, wait... dude! You can just forge back this 1100 dps one handed axe with socket and 300 strength with like, one essence, one rare mat, free of charge. And yet... you charge me 100k gold, fifty essence and whatnot for random crap items?! Are you a demon?"
He just has a short term memory for enchantments. Give him a break, his wife is dead.
Ideally they would add salvage buybacks, and then they wouldn't need the option in the first place.
Except it would be very weird to see the blacksmith put back together an item with the mats he just salvaged
"Wait, wait, wait... dude! You can just forge back this 1100 dps one handed axe with socket and 300 strength with like, one essence, one rare mat, free of charge. And yet... you charge me 100k gold, fifty essence and whatnot for random crap items?! Are you a demon?"
Because instant salvaging makes any sense to begin with? A buyback system would be more logical because you would be trading him your trash for mats he already has on hand and he would just throw your junk on his pile of stuff to salvage, then if you made a mistake you would just pick it up from his pile of crap and give him the mats back.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Wise ElderIf nothing goes horribly wrong we may be lucky and see the patch go live next week. Meanwhile we found two new strings:
SalvageConfirmationToggle string1: Disable Salvage Confirmation Dialog
SalvageConfirmationTooltip string1: Disables the confirmation dialog that appears when salvaging rare quality items.
Ask the Devs Update
The answers to Ask the Devs have been postponed until Monday!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Rather than posting the answers this week (as originally scheduled), we'll now be posting them on Monday, February 11, around 10:00 a.m. PST. We sincerely apologize for the delay, and hope you can forgive us for our recent zombie outbreak.
That's pure hilarity. 3 devs?
Based on the questions the community asked (and voted up in popularity), there were certain developers we needed to reach out to in order to get meaningful answers -- in this case, our system design group.
The Diablo III team is pretty big, but it's made up of multiple working parts, and most of the designers tend to specialize. Certainly, not everyone on the team has been sick, but a tech artist, for example, wouldn't be the correct person to ask about the crafting costs for new Rare recipes. Similarly, a UI engineer isn't going to be able to pontificate on the reasons why we buffed certain Monk skills in 1.0.7, but not others. Unfortunately, it was our system designers that bore the brunt of what we've dubbed the "zombie plague" (they share an office, so it's not a big surprise that they also shared the same nasty flu strain).
We know it sucks that we had to postpone posting the developer answers by a few days. We don't like it, either. But rather than rush the responses or get someone else who isn't responsible for that specific area of design to try to provide answers, we decided to wait until the right people were back in the office. We wanted to make sure that your questions were given that level of attention and respect.
Is the situation ideal? No. Is it the end of the world? Maybe (I've watched enough movies to know this is usually how zombie apocalypses start). But if it is, it's not because the first Ask the Devs round of answers has been delayed until Monday.
Also, I thought that the questions should have been answered days ago. The reason we were told it would take this long was the need to translate it all into different languages and coordinate a release of information. Unless you guys were blowing smoke up our rectums on reddit....
It took us longer to get the responses, but the amount of time we need to get everything localized remains unchanged. That means we had to shift everything down a couple of days to accommodate the developers not being available (we originally wanted to post on Thursday, for example, but now we're going to post on Monday (note: we do observe weekends)).
Dueling Re-Named to Brawling
Blizzard has decided the name Brawling fits the feature slightly better.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
While the system we designed for 1.0.7 was developed in order to give players a fun way to beat each other up in Diablo III, we've come to realize that "dueling" wasn’t the best name for it. Sure, it allows players to pummel, stomp, immolate, and hex fellow Nephalem (over and over again, if they so choose), but it's not a traditional one-on-one duel. It’s something much more wild and open-ended, where you can engage in 3-person and even 4-person free-for-all skirmishes with few restrictions. The system is all about letting players fight for the sake of fighting—you don’t need to worry about objectives, rewards, or scoring, and that’s exactly what we love about it. But again, that’s not really dueling; it’s brawling!
There's a lot of power in a name, and we think that the idea of a brawl more accurately describes the system we created. Heck, the NPC we added is even called Nek the Brawler, so we feel this re-branding must have been foretold in one of Deckard Cain’s prophecies.
This change will be reflected in the patch notes, as well as in all related game text fields once 1.0.7 ships. We’ve no further changes planned for brawling at this time, but we’re excited to see what kind of havoc players will wreak in the Scorched Chapel once the patch is released.
I'm gonna go ahead and call it dueling, if you corporate types don't mind. Stop trying so hard to not be Diablo 2, it's kinda pathetic.
Most of the feedback we've been seeing from players has been in the context of what dueling was in Diablo II and how it exists in other games. Generally speaking, dueling in other games has always been something that you can do in the normal world at a moment’s notice (or at least initiate at a moment’s notice through a challenge). It’s something that only involves two people, and carries with it the expectation of formality and structure, and to a degree…fairness. That’s not really what dueling (now brawling) is about in Diablo III, and we want to make sure that the scope of the system isn't being misrepresented by its name.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hi all, just dropping in to let you know we're still investigating the AH. I know that I was still seeing some delays on my own account. Good news is that we're not seeing any auctions just up and disappear. We'll update the messaging as we are able, for now we have this general messaging up. Thanks for hanging in there!
/Araxom (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Ha. Bagstone.
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Curse PremiumPeople on the forums are hilariously mad about the Brawling thing for some reason but I think it's a better name, for all the reasons they gave. I don't think it was ever officially called dueling in D2 anyway - most people associate that word with WoW-style duels.
Well, the two known ways to invite a storm of vociferious disapproval on b.net are:
1. Do something that doesn't make sense
2. Do something that makes sense
Those people didn't understand the reason Blizzard implemented this system in the first place. Real PvP, with formal objectives and a lot of care going into the game design, is coming in the future. This is just intended as a way for people to beat on eachother D2-style in the meantime. They intentionally made it completely devoid of rules and structure so that people can figure out whatever metagame works best and do it themselves, just like they did in D2. If they implement more game structure, then next people are going to be asking about balance, and then they'll be asking about rewards, etc etc... Blizzard is working on that stuff, just not for 1.0.7. Depending on what happens they may or may not restructure Brawling with the PvP patch.
If there's one thing Brawling is really suffering from, it's the lack of a public games list so people can find Brawling games. That's a systemic change that would definitely take a lot of time though.
If you haven't played WoW then you are in the minority. In fact most MMOs implement duels that way, and they did get a lot of feedback expecting those type of duels.
He just has a short term memory for enchantments. Give him a break, his wife is dead.
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