2) Valor buff. Diablo 3 was advertised as having a wide variety of skills that can be swapped in and out at any time, even in battle (with a small delay for use). This allowed greater variety in the abilities that champion mobs could have and provide greater challenges for the player. You also then provided a Valor buff that is supposed to encourage players to kill more champion packs. But oddly you choose to have the valor buffs be removed if the player changes their skills (or even moves a skill on the hot bar from one position to another). This goes against the entire design of the buff and the goal of having players kill as many champion packs as possible, Why was this decision made and with what logic? This was actually a decision we made based off player feedback. On the one hand, there's a lot of enjoyment in being able to swap your skills at will and tailor your builds to the environment around you. On the other, there’s also gameplay to finding a build that really works for you in a variety of situations.
During beta, we received a lot of feedback from players who wanted to be able to swap skills any time. We also had a large number of players who wanted to have a sense of their characters "build," or some sort of build identity -- especially at later levels. We understood both points of view, so with Nephalem Valor you can still swap a skill out at any time, but there is a penalty for doing so (i.e. losing your stack).
As sort of an aside, we know that it can be SUPER frustrating for players who use Elective Mode to lose an NV stack due to a poorly-placed click near your Skill bar. Because of this, we're looking to add an action bar lock for Elective Mode in an upcoming patch.
During beta you received a lot of feedback? Last I checked, beta lasted what felt like 20 minutes. How much feedback could people give on NV stacks during beta? This a completely absurd statement to anyone else? My gripe is that they are saying that beta feedback resulted in the decision. Shouldn't beta have also given them insight on major problems to fix before retail release?
The feedback was on skill swapping, NV was put in place to give incentive to not switch skills by giving a bonus to gold and magic find. That is what the blue post was getting at I believe.
2) Valor buff. Diablo 3 was advertised as having a wide variety of skills that can be swapped in and out at any time, even in battle (with a small delay for use). This allowed greater variety in the abilities that champion mobs could have and provide greater challenges for the player. You also then provided a Valor buff that is supposed to encourage players to kill more champion packs. But oddly you choose to have the valor buffs be removed if the player changes their skills (or even moves a skill on the hot bar from one position to another). This goes against the entire design of the buff and the goal of having players kill as many champion packs as possible, Why was this decision made and with what logic? This was actually a decision we made based off player feedback. On the one hand, there's a lot of enjoyment in being able to swap your skills at will and tailor your builds to the environment around you. On the other, there’s also gameplay to finding a build that really works for you in a variety of situations.
During beta, we received a lot of feedback from players who wanted to be able to swap skills any time. We also had a large number of players who wanted to have a sense of their characters "build," or some sort of build identity -- especially at later levels. We understood both points of view, so with Nephalem Valor you can still swap a skill out at any time, but there is a penalty for doing so (i.e. losing your stack).
As sort of an aside, we know that it can be SUPER frustrating for players who use Elective Mode to lose an NV stack due to a poorly-placed click near your Skill bar. Because of this, we're looking to add an action bar lock for Elective Mode in an upcoming patch.
During beta you received a lot of feedback? Last I checked, beta lasted what felt like 20 minutes. How much feedback could people give on NV stacks during beta? This a completely absurd statement to anyone else? My gripe is that they are saying that beta feedback resulted in the decision. Shouldn't beta have also given them insight on major problems to fix before retail release?
No they are saying they based the way NV works based on feedback that some players wanted a sense of "build" while others wanted to swap on the fly. I disagree with them... but thats what they are saying. They never should have removed skill points from the game
My point is that they worried about something that doesn't mean as much as the game being fully functional on release. Did they use beta to see if people liked the game or to see if the game worked as close to "functional" as possible? I know that optimally, both should be achieved or should at least be the goal, but were either of them even near achieved?
It's only an absurd response to you. The rest of us are reading it as intended. The feedback was based on skill swapping and not specifically about Nephalem Valor.
And as for the problems that should have been fixed for release... I guess that depends on what you are calling the major problems. If you are referring to the difficulty curve in Inferno, no. Beta shouldn't have helped with that. Remember, Blizzard stated that they tuned Inferno to the point of not being able to beat it themselves. If you are referring to the lag that people are getting... Well, maybe. Though it depends on who participated in the beta and who reported things. As for any other bugs, It all kind of depends on what was reported during the beta.
My point is that they worried about something that doesn't mean as much as the game being fully functional on release. Did they use beta to see if people liked the game or to see if the game worked as close to "functional" as possible? I know that optimally, both should be achieved or should at least be the goal, but were either of them even near achieved?
What part of the game isn't functional? Out of the box, the game works. It may not be what people were hoping for, but from a functionality standpoint, it seems just fine. Being a Software Test Engineer, things like this peak my interests.
My point is that they worried about something that doesn't mean as much as the game being fully functional on release. Did they use beta to see if people liked the game or to see if the game worked as close to "functional" as possible? I know that optimally, both should be achieved or should at least be the goal, but were either of them even near achieved?
What part of the game isn't functional? Out of the box, the game works. It may not be what people were hoping for, but from a functionality standpoint, it seems just fine. Being a Software Test Engineer, things like this peak my interests.
I'm referring to what was considered one of the worst game releases ever by many sources. I don't care about the NV stacks or skill swapping or any of that. I'm referring to beta being so short and seemed to have a severe lack of stress testing that caused the launch to be... well... poor. So many class changes were made in recent patches that have virtually made previous achievements for some DH's and Wizards pretty much worthless. Do your best to do the tedious balancing act before people actually beat the game. Don't wait for people to clear content and then be like "Oh guys, hey, they did that too easily, lets fix it!".
No they are saying they based the way NV works based on feedback that some players wanted a sense of "build" while others wanted to swap on the fly. I disagree with them... but thats what they are saying. They never should have removed skill points from the game
You see, the fad is that if you disagree with Blizzard you make snarky comments and miscomprehend their posts. You, as someone who disagrees with them, but still understands what they are saying... are the minority.
if you tell blizzard you want a Quater pounder with cheese they will come back with chicken chow mein
If you think Blizzard is that bad, why did you give them $60? (or whatever the price was in your country if not US).
If I thought a company was that bad, no way would I give them my money, but it doesn't seem to stop a bunch of you at all. You pay the money, then whine that Blizzard sucks, and has sucked for years.
And this isn't a subscription game, so you gave them all the money in one shot. No ongoing fees to give or not give. They've already gotten their profit from you.
(I'm not on the Blizzard-hating bandwagon myself. I have no problem with others not liking the game, or not liking Blizzard, but, ffs, if you think Blizzard is a horrible developer, *don't* pay them money then bitch. Just don't give them anything.)
There was no early release to reviewers or anything like that, so you can't really blame people for buying the game if they were hard core D2 fans and such.
A lot of people pre-purchased this game just because it was 'Diablo', you know.
But about those 60 bucks you are talking about, I think a LOT of people won't give Blizzard 60 bucks again after D3.
If by a LOT you mean perhaps 50-100K out of 6-7+ million, fine. It's probably not any bigger than that, if that big. Don't be thinking you're a majority.
The people I'm really mystified by are the ones who thought Blizzard was bad before they bought D3, and still bought it.
During beta you received a lot of feedback? Last I checked, beta lasted what felt like 20 minutes. How much feedback could people give on NV stacks during beta? This a completely absurd statement to anyone else? My gripe is that they are saying that beta feedback resulted in the decision. Shouldn't beta have also given them insight on major problems to fix before retail release?
Lasted 20 minutes? I had the beta for a few months, not for 20 minutes.
If you are talking about the time it took to "complete" the game, then you are still wrong.
It took way longer than 20minutes to level each of all the classes to lvl 13 and try out different builds, and let's not forget about getting full yellow gear.
If by a LOT you mean perhaps 50-100K out of 6-7+ million, fine. It's probably not any bigger than that, if that big. Don't be thinking you're a majority.
The people I'm really mystified by are the ones who thought Blizzard was bad before they bought D3, and still bought it.
Nice guess, I'd guess around 2 million! But yeah, just guessing bro!
And I haven't seen many people who said they "thought Blizzard was bad" before D3 and still bought D3.
Who are these people you speak of ?
I would guess 100-300k.
Because all of you haters are here on the forums writing hate posts.
A small portion of the non-haters are on the forums writing non-hate posts, and the rest are enjoying the game.
If it were 2million like you said then all the forums would have like 500k visitors each, all of them writing hate posts, but I don't see that happening.
From your post it looks like you know what everyone has said before and after the game was released, guess you are reading every topic, on every forum, every second of you life to be able to know who wrote what and when.
During beta you received a lot of feedback? Last I checked, beta lasted what felt like 20 minutes. How much feedback could people give on NV stacks during beta? This a completely absurd statement to anyone else? My gripe is that they are saying that beta feedback resulted in the decision. Shouldn't beta have also given them insight on major problems to fix before retail release?
Lasted 20 minutes? I had the beta for a few months, not for 20 minutes.
If you are talking about the time it took to "complete" the game, then you are still wrong.
It took way longer than 20minutes to level each of all the classes to lvl 13 and try out different builds, and let's not forget about getting full yellow gear.
Hey faggot learn to read. I said it FELT like 20 minutes, not literally 20 minutes. And did you really min max your level 13 in full rares?
Did you know, those that are homophobic often turn out to be homosexual.
Why wouldn't I min max my beta character? I had nothing else to do on my free time.
What is the difference of min maxing a level 13 beta character and playing other games like let's say CoD?
You write like a CoD player so you are probably going to nerd rage now.
There were like 10+ threads on the front page of D3 General complaining about the lack of "skill permanence" every single day, even before the Beta was launched.
The other half of the threads were people complaining about the people who complained about the lack of "skill permanence".
It is absolutely obvious that NV was designed as a compromise between these groups. You can use the Internet Wayback Machine to view the forums back then if you don't believe me. It was the #1 complaint about D3 from D2 players in Beta and pre-Beta.
It is likely that the general sentiment against NV now (in this current day and age) is because the game now has a much bigger audience than just the Beta and pre-Beta followers.
My point is that they worried about something that doesn't mean as much as the game being fully functional on release. Did they use beta to see if people liked the game or to see if the game worked as close to "functional" as possible? I know that optimally, both should be achieved or should at least be the goal, but were either of them even near achieved?
What part of the game isn't functional? Out of the box, the game works. It may not be what people were hoping for, but from a functionality standpoint, it seems just fine. Being a Software Test Engineer, things like this peak my interests.
I'm referring to what was considered one of the worst game releases ever by many sources. I don't care about the NV stacks or skill swapping or any of that. I'm referring to beta being so short and seemed to have a severe lack of stress testing that caused the launch to be... well... poor. So many class changes were made in recent patches that have virtually made previous achievements for some DH's and Wizards pretty much worthless. Do your best to do the tedious balancing act before people actually beat the game. Don't wait for people to clear content and then be like "Oh guys, hey, they did that too easily, lets fix it!".
Thank you for your response. If I am reading this correctly,.. You are unhappy due to the lack of stress testing resulting in Error 37s on launch day and you are unhappy with the class balancing that has happened post launch.
As for the stress on the servers. A beta isn't going to solve this per say. It would have required the beta to be open to everyone all the time. Even then, it's hard to base final sales numbers on turn outs for a Beta. Understand, this isn't coming from my love of Blizzard. This comes from 9 years in QA working for multiple game studios. This comes from an extensive background in network testing for game franchises such as GoW, Halo and Guild Wars. Opening up the beta to all players would have helped, but in the end, it's not reliable enough. I share your pain, well... kind of. I really only dealt with the Error 37s for the first couple of hours, then things were stable for me. I know this is not the normal case... I was an exception to the rule.
Stress testing a network is incredibly difficult. Trying to simulate that kind of traffic on your own network is possible but flawed. Because all of the simulated connections are coming from within the network itself.
As for the class balancing that has been done in recent patches. Personally, I feel like it stems from an overtuning of Inferno, to the point where Blizzard wasn't able to beat it (without the use of testing tools). So some of this was to be expected. Not saying that I necessarily agree with the changes...
Oh and one more point to add concerning the Beta. To be able to attempt to stress the servers anywhere near what the total number of users is, they would have needed to purchase more servers to hold the players. While that doesn't seem like a bad idea (Blizzard has gobs of money so it should be a no-brainer) It doesn't make much sense to me. Soaking a bunch of money into servers you are using for beta and testing purposes, servers that would be isolated from the Live servers and only used every so often... It doesn't seem like the right thing to do (at least in my mind.)
I do want to agree with you, there has been a lot of frustration that is seemingly caused by Blizzard. It's a rough go.
My point is that they worried about something that doesn't mean as much as the game being fully functional on release. Did they use beta to see if people liked the game or to see if the game worked as close to "functional" as possible? I know that optimally, both should be achieved or should at least be the goal, but were either of them even near achieved?
What part of the game isn't functional? Out of the box, the game works. It may not be what people were hoping for, but from a functionality standpoint, it seems just fine. Being a Software Test Engineer, things like this peak my interests.
I'm referring to what was considered one of the worst game releases ever by many sources. I don't care about the NV stacks or skill swapping or any of that. I'm referring to beta being so short and seemed to have a severe lack of stress testing that caused the launch to be... well... poor. So many class changes were made in recent patches that have virtually made previous achievements for some DH's and Wizards pretty much worthless. Do your best to do the tedious balancing act before people actually beat the game. Don't wait for people to clear content and then be like "Oh guys, hey, they did that too easily, lets fix it!".
The game launch was rocky, I'll give you that, but "one of the worst of all time" is an exaggeration. For example, World of Warcraft's launch was much worse. It took them a month before they could get the servers stable, and they took the entire game offline for 2 days less than a month after launch to address stability issues.
As for the difficulty changes, this isn't an MMO. This isn't about what you can "achieve".
From your post it looks like you know what everyone has said before and after the game was released, guess you are reading every topic, on every forum, every second of you life to be able to know who wrote what and when.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were an actual simpleton, at first.
I'm not the one pretending to know what other people have posted before, your friend does:
"The people I'm really mystified by are the ones who thought Blizzard was bad before they bought D3, and still bought it."
First of, he is not my friend, I do not who he is. For you to think that we are friends just from this thread tells me that you know nothing about friendship, I'm sorry that you are a lonely 40year old living in your moms basement.
And there has been several posters who have said "Blizzard got bad after WoTLK" and they still bought D3 and then complained about it, so your point is invalid.
You are the one who said:
And I haven't seen many people who said they "thought Blizzard was bad" before D3 and still bought D3.
supports my claim that people hated on blizzard but still bought D3.
I could probably find more posts like that but I can't be arsed.
Like the poster says, it seems like it is "cool" to hate on Blizzard atm. IMO it's childish and if you don't like them just go away so that we don't have to see your stupid posts.
Like the poster says, it seems like it is "cool" to hate on Blizzard atm. IMO it's childish and if you don't like them just go away so that we don't have to see your stupid posts.
It's not Blizzard specific. It seems like there's a 'thing' where people hate what they have. First World Problems gone emo.
TLDR: If people had shut up about an outmoded concept like builds we wouldn't have to put up with the awkward skill lockout imposed on the NV system. Sigh.
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During beta you received a lot of feedback? Last I checked, beta lasted what felt like 20 minutes. How much feedback could people give on NV stacks during beta? This a completely absurd statement to anyone else? My gripe is that they are saying that beta feedback resulted in the decision. Shouldn't beta have also given them insight on major problems to fix before retail release?
No they are saying they based the way NV works based on feedback that some players wanted a sense of "build" while others wanted to swap on the fly. I disagree with them... but thats what they are saying. They never should have removed skill points from the game
The result isn't... quite that.
And as for the problems that should have been fixed for release... I guess that depends on what you are calling the major problems. If you are referring to the difficulty curve in Inferno, no. Beta shouldn't have helped with that. Remember, Blizzard stated that they tuned Inferno to the point of not being able to beat it themselves. If you are referring to the lag that people are getting... Well, maybe. Though it depends on who participated in the beta and who reported things. As for any other bugs, It all kind of depends on what was reported during the beta.
What part of the game isn't functional? Out of the box, the game works. It may not be what people were hoping for, but from a functionality standpoint, it seems just fine. Being a Software Test Engineer, things like this peak my interests.
I'm referring to what was considered one of the worst game releases ever by many sources. I don't care about the NV stacks or skill swapping or any of that. I'm referring to beta being so short and seemed to have a severe lack of stress testing that caused the launch to be... well... poor. So many class changes were made in recent patches that have virtually made previous achievements for some DH's and Wizards pretty much worthless. Do your best to do the tedious balancing act before people actually beat the game. Don't wait for people to clear content and then be like "Oh guys, hey, they did that too easily, lets fix it!".
You see, the fad is that if you disagree with Blizzard you make snarky comments and miscomprehend their posts. You, as someone who disagrees with them, but still understands what they are saying... are the minority.
If you think Blizzard is that bad, why did you give them $60? (or whatever the price was in your country if not US).
If I thought a company was that bad, no way would I give them my money, but it doesn't seem to stop a bunch of you at all. You pay the money, then whine that Blizzard sucks, and has sucked for years.
And this isn't a subscription game, so you gave them all the money in one shot. No ongoing fees to give or not give. They've already gotten their profit from you.
(I'm not on the Blizzard-hating bandwagon myself. I have no problem with others not liking the game, or not liking Blizzard, but, ffs, if you think Blizzard is a horrible developer, *don't* pay them money then bitch. Just don't give them anything.)
If by a LOT you mean perhaps 50-100K out of 6-7+ million, fine. It's probably not any bigger than that, if that big. Don't be thinking you're a majority.
The people I'm really mystified by are the ones who thought Blizzard was bad before they bought D3, and still bought it.
If you are talking about the time it took to "complete" the game, then you are still wrong.
It took way longer than 20minutes to level each of all the classes to lvl 13 and try out different builds, and let's not forget about getting full yellow gear.
Because all of you haters are here on the forums writing hate posts.
A small portion of the non-haters are on the forums writing non-hate posts, and the rest are enjoying the game.
If it were 2million like you said then all the forums would have like 500k visitors each, all of them writing hate posts, but I don't see that happening.
From your post it looks like you know what everyone has said before and after the game was released, guess you are reading every topic, on every forum, every second of you life to be able to know who wrote what and when.
Did you know, those that are homophobic often turn out to be homosexual.
Why wouldn't I min max my beta character? I had nothing else to do on my free time.
What is the difference of min maxing a level 13 beta character and playing other games like let's say CoD?
You write like a CoD player so you are probably going to nerd rage now.
The other half of the threads were people complaining about the people who complained about the lack of "skill permanence".
It is absolutely obvious that NV was designed as a compromise between these groups. You can use the Internet Wayback Machine to view the forums back then if you don't believe me. It was the #1 complaint about D3 from D2 players in Beta and pre-Beta.
It is likely that the general sentiment against NV now (in this current day and age) is because the game now has a much bigger audience than just the Beta and pre-Beta followers.
Thank you for your response. If I am reading this correctly,.. You are unhappy due to the lack of stress testing resulting in Error 37s on launch day and you are unhappy with the class balancing that has happened post launch.
As for the stress on the servers. A beta isn't going to solve this per say. It would have required the beta to be open to everyone all the time. Even then, it's hard to base final sales numbers on turn outs for a Beta. Understand, this isn't coming from my love of Blizzard. This comes from 9 years in QA working for multiple game studios. This comes from an extensive background in network testing for game franchises such as GoW, Halo and Guild Wars. Opening up the beta to all players would have helped, but in the end, it's not reliable enough. I share your pain, well... kind of. I really only dealt with the Error 37s for the first couple of hours, then things were stable for me. I know this is not the normal case... I was an exception to the rule.
Stress testing a network is incredibly difficult. Trying to simulate that kind of traffic on your own network is possible but flawed. Because all of the simulated connections are coming from within the network itself.
As for the class balancing that has been done in recent patches. Personally, I feel like it stems from an overtuning of Inferno, to the point where Blizzard wasn't able to beat it (without the use of testing tools). So some of this was to be expected. Not saying that I necessarily agree with the changes...
Oh and one more point to add concerning the Beta. To be able to attempt to stress the servers anywhere near what the total number of users is, they would have needed to purchase more servers to hold the players. While that doesn't seem like a bad idea (Blizzard has gobs of money so it should be a no-brainer) It doesn't make much sense to me. Soaking a bunch of money into servers you are using for beta and testing purposes, servers that would be isolated from the Live servers and only used every so often... It doesn't seem like the right thing to do (at least in my mind.)
I do want to agree with you, there has been a lot of frustration that is seemingly caused by Blizzard. It's a rough go.
The game launch was rocky, I'll give you that, but "one of the worst of all time" is an exaggeration. For example, World of Warcraft's launch was much worse. It took them a month before they could get the servers stable, and they took the entire game offline for 2 days less than a month after launch to address stability issues.
As for the difficulty changes, this isn't an MMO. This isn't about what you can "achieve".
And there has been several posters who have said "Blizzard got bad after WoTLK" and they still bought D3 and then complained about it, so your point is invalid.
You are the one who said:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5912672854?page=1#18
supports my claim that people hated on blizzard but still bought D3.
I could probably find more posts like that but I can't be arsed.
Like the poster says, it seems like it is "cool" to hate on Blizzard atm. IMO it's childish and if you don't like them just go away so that we don't have to see your stupid posts.
It's not Blizzard specific. It seems like there's a 'thing' where people hate what they have. First World Problems gone emo.