Also one other note: There's no longer any evidence that patch 1.1 will be "the pvp patch".
This theory was slated in early 2012 when it was announced that PvP would not come at launch and it would come with the first major patch, 1.1. This of course is with little anticipation of the reaction of the launched product. They have since launched 8 patches, with a few of them including large changes.
If you read the pvp blog it essentially reads that there is not timetable or even remote idea of what Diablo III pvp will look like. Brawling was kind of like, well we won't deliver pvp .. but here's something to say we are sorry. Real talk brawling is stupid.
I just felt the need to mention this because there is some mention in this thread of patch 1.1 being the pvp patch. I wouldn't get your hopes for that the least bit. One last note, as others have mentioned. There was never any official word that 1.0.9 was the itemization patch. All that was said on the record was that it was not 1.0.8. So we could see updates before itemization.
Tweaking numbers/stats on items is not a 5-9 month job. Im sure basic programmers could do this in a weekend.
Not over a weekend, but by 2014. a one-handed monkey with alzheimer's and basic typing skills would patch it in.
It's good that they are taking their time to do things right and everything, but c'mon, no one can honestly believe that this job requires a team, no matter how small it is, to work one full year on it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
I think it would be much better for Blizzard to hold off in major item/skill rebalancing until the expansion pack if one is coming since they might have to do it again when the expansion comes out and hopefully with them more working on the expansion then the expansion will come out earlier.
To me it is not just the items that need re-working but also the skills since to me all of the skills are based too much on items. I would love to see immunity to a certain element being brought back in as well as splitting up the damage to different elements and hopefully opens up more builds and more skills.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
On Strike and supporting Fallout 4 Mod Makers
Some fallout 4 mod makers have had their mods stolen and uploaded and downloaded on Bethesda's site for the Xbox One.
What will they do all this time? There is still the pvp to work on, I thought they will rush the itemisation so they bring the polished pvp in 1.1. I don't want a crappy revamp but really, next year??!! The game will stay in place until then , that's for sure...
PVP won't work until they hard cap crit. You can't have pvp hold any meaning in D3 because of this. This is why it was shelved for being no fun.
Brawling is proof of why its fails. You can't have a dps range from 20, 000 dps to 300 000 dps.. You simply cant.
They need to close the gap, more like D2 in terms of damage. Problem is you can't nerf pvp damage like D2 because of the gap.
I mean, there is white items pvp. Buts that's the best anyone will get.
I'm actually glad this is going to take a long while before going live. Why is that? It's because this way it really seems like they realize that they will have to pretty much overhaul the game's entire itemization. I would rather this instead of them trying to put lipstick on a pig.
Yes, the waiting does suck....but I think when this patch launches it will be worth the wait. Either that or the game will die a horrible death. So much at risk for a single patch...
I'm actually glad this is going to take a long while before going live. Why is that? It's because this way it really seems like they realize that they will have to pretty much overhaul the game's entire itemization.
Except overhauling the games entire itemization is easy to do. Its not something that takes a long time to do.
At this point id have to say the actual waiting is coming from either lack of people doing any work. Or people stretching it out for extra pay checks. Just like a city worker makes a 1 hour job last all day long...lol
Even something as simple as an ID all option took over 8 months to implement. How does that even make any sense?
There has to be a major reason as to why everything takes as long as it does. Maybe they do things slow on purpose. But I doubt its for the better.
My problem is that the console versions apparently have a working (as in viable) itemization model.
The problem here is that the console demographics are probably not the same as the PC demographics. The selling point of the console version will be local coop. Sitting in your living room with a couple of friends and slashing monsters. WIth that in mind the target demographic probably won't be people playing the game for a year and still trying to perfect their characters.
It's people sitting together for a couple of hours and slaying monster, finding better loot etc. Not necessarily people playing the game 3-5 hours/day in the most efficient way possible to max out their chars. There might be a reason that there aren't much MMOs on consoles. You can play them for more than a year, but the grind does not seem to match console play.
Taking the console approach to the PC would probably mean that the most hardcore players would have maxed out their characters after a month and start complaining that they can't upgrade their characters anymore (something the top players are complaining currently in D3; credits card heroes were even complaining much earlier).
That local-coop demographic is going to find out the hard way that copying saves and using them is more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. Only the primary local user (i.e. the logged in user as you cannot log two users in at once) will receive trophies, and on the PS3 you have to create a user on whoever's console you wish to do local co-op on in addition to activating that console as your secondary PSN conduit, thereby eating your only other device that you can activate your PSN account on. And if you go to more than one friend's house to play, you have to do the activate/deactivate thing constantly and unless you're logged in, you won't get trophies while your friend will.
It's all a really messy way to go about enticing players to play together. The only way to bypass that seems to be having a PlayStation Plus account, which isn't free and use their cloud system. It's a tactic that's sure to raise the ire of many PS3 gamers when they find out how frustrating it is to get local co-op going outside of multiple PS3s on a LAN.
As for "tweaking numbers", the console version appears to have not just tweaked items, but a fully functional "less is more" system where item rolls are more realistic, as well as a system where legendaries can apparently drop in any difficulty, scaling to that difficulty's level range if the Calamity pictures are any indication. That could be brought over to the PC version in a heartbeat and players would rejoice. If the system is sound enough, and it looks to be that way, the AH wouldn't be much of an issue on the PC version anymore since finding loot would be more along the lines of Diablo 2's loot model, which thrived without an AH (and still does to this day). Sure the AH could be an alternate way to gear up of the player chooses on the PC side, but it won't be mandatory as it is now if you want to do anything other than MP0/MP1.
There's literally no good reason to bring that console system over to the PC side since everything else in the game is the same except the AH and UI elements, and the UI elements have nothing to do with itemization so that's a moot point there. At this point things can really only go up for Diablo 3/PC.
The main problem as I see it is that they refuse to release anything before the big itemization patch.. is not like they release minor stuff now and then.. no, they maintain radio silence. It's frustrating.
Please yes. Also, I'm hoping to turn #SWAG into slander for the common douche. Don't care if it catches on, but if you # anything (BTW at least in America, it's called a pound sign dummies) you're a tool.
Let's leave the rubberbanding discussion for another thread, please.
And why is this?
Because this thread is about the itemization patch, not "the patch that is going to fix rubberbanding - the problem some people had a year ago".
Sorry, I do believe you are haunted by rubberbanding, but you are the first to mention it in a D3 setting since...last august? At least I've never heard anyone complain.
As for those who are on topic: great read. I can still see a lot of passion for the game. Passion overshadowed by disappointment, but still.
Tweaking numbers/stats on items is not a 5-9 month job. Im sure basic programmers could do this in a weekend.
Everything in D3 just take so long. Not really sure why.
If they just adjust numbers, there I will be "disappoint"
Well, im not sure what else there is they could do but adjust numbers.
Since theres no skill trees and +skill items the game basically forces most characters to stack the same basic stats. Which functions the same for all skills on all characters.
They say they want all items to be useful. So it basically means making them possible to roll the same ilvl60+ stats as everything else.
They could hard cap crit and bring in a new stat with a +50/200 damage increase to a specific skill. That would be a major step in improving itemization. That would be as close to +skills as we could get.
.
The whole argument about 'adjusting numbers' doesn't work, because that's not all that needs to be done. Yes, for current affixes found in the live version, adjusting numbers such as the affix ranges is part of it. But you're forgetting the other major, MAJOR points of the itemization patch; *NEW* affixes, as well as *NEW* legendary affixes.
One problem with the live version is you can get every, if not almost every single DPS increasing stat on one piece. And if you can't all of them on one slot, such as shoulders, you can still get all the DPS increasing stats that THAT slot has available. This creates a HUGE gap between awesome / BiS items and what is widely considered trash.
To alleviate this first problem, they are planning (according to Blue posts, and I haven't seen their position change) to add more desirable affixes then there are even slots. This not only creates diversity because now you as the player have to choose which stats you want, even for something as simple as pure DPS, but it also will create an environment where more gear is considered 'good' or better.
An example Blizzard used is gloves. IAS / CC / CD / Main stat / +dmg (for a pair of rare gloves) are all the +DPS stats, and they can all roll on gloves at once. This means if you're missing even one of these stats, the 'value' of the gloves drops dramatically, because well, of course a player is going to want all of them if it's available. If Blizzard is able to come up with more +DPS stats than there are slots, (say a +% elemental damage affix that rares can roll, or a new type of 'attack 'stat that increases % weapon damage no matter the class) then more items will have a use, and a value.
The second problem that itemization is hoping to fix is the lackluster legendaries. There are some cool ideas on some of the current legendaries, but they just don't work out. Either what they do doesn't do near enough damage or doesn't provide that uniqueness to the legendary to be able to justify using it.
Because of this second problem, Blizzard has to manually tune (not just punch in numbers) every single legendary to be competitive. They then have to come up with 200 + (Blizzard's numbers) unique ideas for each legendary, and make those ideas game changing enough that people will consider using that legendary over the cookie cutter one.
They THEN, because of the power-scaling they plan on introducing to all legendaries, have to tune each legendary for all the different ilvl's it can have, since the item will be based on the level of the monster that drops it. Some affixes can be easy, such as a main stat range, while others will be harder to scale, such as 9% IAS. Do you get that if it drops at level 10? When does it jump a point?
This whole post's point was to provide some insight as to why it would take longer than an afternoon or 20 to get itemization out the door. I'm just as eager as the rest of you guys, but this is a big job, and the fact they are taking so long with it (and that it's Blizzard) means when it does ship, it's going to kick so much ass it'l crack my computer screen =P
Pffft both you and I know there's like a one in 12893728917302981370281937201870128937000000000 chance that he finds someone selling a Tal's Ammy with +2 int and +3 vit! As Mulder and Scully would say: "the upgrades are out there!"
The whole argument about 'adjusting numbers' doesn't work, because that's not all that needs to be done.
It's shocking! Blizzard is doing more than just tweaking numbers. Yet we have plenty of people telling us how easy it is to tweak numbers. Great! Grand! But that's barely scratching the surface.
Included in itemization are topics like "how do we make Thorns a desireable stat?" and "how can we make it that if you roll LoH instead of Life Leech on a weapon that you didn't completely bork its usefulness/value?" Those (and many others) are the topics that require a ton of brainstorming, a ton of times in meetings, and a ton of trial-and-error to solve because they have no clear-cut answer.
Once you have a general idea as to how you're going to make every stat desireable, sure, then you just tweak the numbers. But getting to the "tweaking" stage is the hard part. 1.0.8, for example, took several months to develop and only 3-4 weeks on the PTR. The PTR is usually the "tweaking numbers" phase because it's very helpful to get feedback from millions of people on the numbers. It's usually not helpful to get feedback from players on ideas that are only 47% implemented and whatnot and that's why we don't see a PTR until they have something ready that only requires some... tweaking.
Then muscle in all the legendary effects. How do you make the fire chains demon something that is powerful enough that it can hold its weight? Is it a problem with the effect or do they need to just jack up the damage? The duration? The proc rate? Changing the damage, the duration, and/or the proc rate is simple stuff, but figuring out which of them needs to be changed to properly "fix" the item is the hard part. Maybe the whole effect sucks and they need to think of a completely new effect.
IDK, I think it's incredibly naive for anyone to think that all Blizzard is doing for the itemization patch is just editing some numbers in a database somewhere. If that's what the itemization patch amounts to then it's going to suck. Blizzard knows that 1.0.8 kicked major ass. They know the itemization patch is very important. They know if they want to sell (more) expansion boxes they're going to have to follow up a strong patch with another strong patch. That leads me to believe that they never approached this particular issue with the "lock six interns in a closet over the weekend and tell them to tweak the numbers on legendaries then throw that shit up for patch in the morning" attitude.
Hopefully when they say "after Blizzcon" that means that we still might see a PTR prior to Blizzcon and have the patch launch before 2014. Either that or hopefully they can throw in some other minor stuff (like some buffs to still-lacking skills) in the meantime. Just something to keep the game feeling a little fresh for the duration. Nothing big.
It's shocking! Blizzard is doing more than just tweaking numbers. Yet we have plenty of people telling us how easy it is to tweak numbers. Great! Grand! But that's barely scratching the surface.
Included in itemization are topics like "how do we make Thorns a desireable stat?"Those (and many others) are the topics that require a ton of brainstorming, a ton of times in meetings, and a ton of trial-and-error to solve because they have no clear-cut answer.
Well maybe if they hired the right people for the job things would happen a lot faster. I mean they basically already have a blue print in D2. They always had and always will. It took them 8 months to add ID all and any form of PVP. And they still haven't released the TDM the promised.
SImpy adding affixs that flat out boost certain skills by a certain percent is not hard. Re-working skills that are totally useless for minor reasons is not hard. Adding TDM is not actually hard. hell it already exists, we just can't play it because Jay Wilson said its not fun enough.
I wish a I had a bazillion dollars. Id pay Blizzard to let me take this game over....Seriously. id have patches and new content every single month.
By tweaking the numbers you can actually remediate the current situation. Not a revamp, sure, but it could be a temporary solution, like many.. many of us proposed a long time ago.
Do you remember how long we waited for a proper PvP patch.. that never happened because they weren't happy with the result?.. what if the same happens in 2014?.. it would be really disgusting, at least.
I mean they basically already have a blue print in D2.
Go and read all the threads from 2007 to 2012 in this forum. Go and watch some of the panels that Blizzard help during all the years of development. Go and read bluepost regarding "D3 becoming D2.1". Blizzard wants to create something new and not just copy/paste D2 itemization. Besides, D2 may have been better than D3, but it wasn't perfect. With a new system they risked new problems (and introduced them), but the outcome can be even greater once everything's "fixed".
It took them 8 months to add ID all and any form of PVP.
The ID all feature came all of the sudden. The unavailability of an ID all button was a conscious decision by the game designers and even a couple of weeks before the ID all button was implemented, said design decision was still being defended by blue posts on the forums. And although PvP was (and is) an important aspect for some players in the Diablo universe, it is and will never be the main aspect. Their stance against competitive gaming and the announcement that they don't want to turn D3 into yet another e-sports game made that very clear. PvP will come eventually, but it's not number one priority (and probably not even number 2 or 3).
SImpy adding affixs that flat out boost certain skills by a certain percent is not hard. Re-working skills that are totally useless for minor reasons is not hard.
Really, it's not hard? How come that every single adventure, MMORPG, hack'n'slay game that I've played in the past 20 years (including previous Diablo games) had huge balance issues? I suggest you sit down and try to design a game. Just try it. I assure you, if you take a serious attempt you'll forfeit after a couple of hours. Balancing items, affixes, and skills is a never-ending endeavour. Just look at WoW and the back-and-forth balancing of classes and specs that's been going on for years. Or even better, look at D2 and how some skill trees were always on top of certain others, and that game has a history of more than a decade.
I wish a I had a bazillion dollars. Id pay Blizzard to let me take this game over....Seriously. id have patches and new content every single month.
In case you haven't noticed, D3 is not a monthly subscription game. They don't have a bazillion dollars. And before you talk about the AH fees, you can't even imagine how expensive it is to maintain servers for ~3 million active players.
Please, please, please, think before you post. It's hard to deal with so much ignorance.
An example Blizzard used is gloves. IAS / CC / CD / Main stat / +dmg (for a pair of rare gloves) are all the +DPS stats, and they can all roll on gloves at once. This means if you're missing even one of these stats, the 'value' of the gloves drops dramatically, because well, of course a player is going to want all of them if it's available. If Blizzard is able to come up with more +DPS stats than there are slots, (say a +% elemental damage affix that rares can roll, or a new type of 'attack 'stat that increases % weapon damage no matter the class) then more items will have a use, and a value.
Except that that is not gonna fix a thing. If they go for a solution as described in the example above, it only means that the "good" items are the items with max attributes and ALL of them are dps attributes, and all the other items will be "trash" again.
Furthermore, somebody will calculate that +%elementagl damage is 0.1% better than the "atack" stat and we will again have the mathematicaly perfect items that are insanely rare and everything else will lose value really fast.
This theory was slated in early 2012 when it was announced that PvP would not come at launch and it would come with the first major patch, 1.1. This of course is with little anticipation of the reaction of the launched product. They have since launched 8 patches, with a few of them including large changes.
If you read the pvp blog it essentially reads that there is not timetable or even remote idea of what Diablo III pvp will look like. Brawling was kind of like, well we won't deliver pvp .. but here's something to say we are sorry. Real talk brawling is stupid.
I just felt the need to mention this because there is some mention in this thread of patch 1.1 being the pvp patch. I wouldn't get your hopes for that the least bit. One last note, as others have mentioned. There was never any official word that 1.0.9 was the itemization patch. All that was said on the record was that it was not 1.0.8. So we could see updates before itemization.
Not over a weekend, but by 2014. a one-handed monkey with alzheimer's and basic typing skills would patch it in.
It's good that they are taking their time to do things right and everything, but c'mon, no one can honestly believe that this job requires a team, no matter how small it is, to work one full year on it.
To me it is not just the items that need re-working but also the skills since to me all of the skills are based too much on items. I would love to see immunity to a certain element being brought back in as well as splitting up the damage to different elements and hopefully opens up more builds and more skills.
PVP won't work until they hard cap crit. You can't have pvp hold any meaning in D3 because of this. This is why it was shelved for being no fun.
Brawling is proof of why its fails. You can't have a dps range from 20, 000 dps to 300 000 dps.. You simply cant.
They need to close the gap, more like D2 in terms of damage. Problem is you can't nerf pvp damage like D2 because of the gap.
I mean, there is white items pvp. Buts that's the best anyone will get.
Yes, the waiting does suck....but I think when this patch launches it will be worth the wait. Either that or the game will die a horrible death. So much at risk for a single patch...
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Except overhauling the games entire itemization is easy to do. Its not something that takes a long time to do.
At this point id have to say the actual waiting is coming from either lack of people doing any work. Or people stretching it out for extra pay checks. Just like a city worker makes a 1 hour job last all day long...lol
Even something as simple as an ID all option took over 8 months to implement. How does that even make any sense?
There has to be a major reason as to why everything takes as long as it does. Maybe they do things slow on purpose. But I doubt its for the better.
That local-coop demographic is going to find out the hard way that copying saves and using them is more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. Only the primary local user (i.e. the logged in user as you cannot log two users in at once) will receive trophies, and on the PS3 you have to create a user on whoever's console you wish to do local co-op on in addition to activating that console as your secondary PSN conduit, thereby eating your only other device that you can activate your PSN account on. And if you go to more than one friend's house to play, you have to do the activate/deactivate thing constantly and unless you're logged in, you won't get trophies while your friend will.
It's all a really messy way to go about enticing players to play together. The only way to bypass that seems to be having a PlayStation Plus account, which isn't free and use their cloud system. It's a tactic that's sure to raise the ire of many PS3 gamers when they find out how frustrating it is to get local co-op going outside of multiple PS3s on a LAN.
As for "tweaking numbers", the console version appears to have not just tweaked items, but a fully functional "less is more" system where item rolls are more realistic, as well as a system where legendaries can apparently drop in any difficulty, scaling to that difficulty's level range if the Calamity pictures are any indication. That could be brought over to the PC version in a heartbeat and players would rejoice. If the system is sound enough, and it looks to be that way, the AH wouldn't be much of an issue on the PC version anymore since finding loot would be more along the lines of Diablo 2's loot model, which thrived without an AH (and still does to this day). Sure the AH could be an alternate way to gear up of the player chooses on the PC side, but it won't be mandatory as it is now if you want to do anything other than MP0/MP1.
There's literally no good reason to bring that console system over to the PC side since everything else in the game is the same except the AH and UI elements, and the UI elements have nothing to do with itemization so that's a moot point there. At this point things can really only go up for Diablo 3/PC.
Well, crap.
Please yes. Also, I'm hoping to turn #SWAG into slander for the common douche. Don't care if it catches on, but if you # anything (BTW at least in America, it's called a pound sign dummies) you're a tool.
/endrage
Because this thread is about the itemization patch, not "the patch that is going to fix rubberbanding - the problem some people had a year ago".
Sorry, I do believe you are haunted by rubberbanding, but you are the first to mention it in a D3 setting since...last august? At least I've never heard anyone complain.
As for those who are on topic: great read. I can still see a lot of passion for the game. Passion overshadowed by disappointment, but still.
The whole argument about 'adjusting numbers' doesn't work, because that's not all that needs to be done. Yes, for current affixes found in the live version, adjusting numbers such as the affix ranges is part of it. But you're forgetting the other major, MAJOR points of the itemization patch; *NEW* affixes, as well as *NEW* legendary affixes.
One problem with the live version is you can get every, if not almost every single DPS increasing stat on one piece. And if you can't all of them on one slot, such as shoulders, you can still get all the DPS increasing stats that THAT slot has available. This creates a HUGE gap between awesome / BiS items and what is widely considered trash.
To alleviate this first problem, they are planning (according to Blue posts, and I haven't seen their position change) to add more desirable affixes then there are even slots. This not only creates diversity because now you as the player have to choose which stats you want, even for something as simple as pure DPS, but it also will create an environment where more gear is considered 'good' or better.
An example Blizzard used is gloves. IAS / CC / CD / Main stat / +dmg (for a pair of rare gloves) are all the +DPS stats, and they can all roll on gloves at once. This means if you're missing even one of these stats, the 'value' of the gloves drops dramatically, because well, of course a player is going to want all of them if it's available. If Blizzard is able to come up with more +DPS stats than there are slots, (say a +% elemental damage affix that rares can roll, or a new type of 'attack 'stat that increases % weapon damage no matter the class) then more items will have a use, and a value.
The second problem that itemization is hoping to fix is the lackluster legendaries. There are some cool ideas on some of the current legendaries, but they just don't work out. Either what they do doesn't do near enough damage or doesn't provide that uniqueness to the legendary to be able to justify using it.
Because of this second problem, Blizzard has to manually tune (not just punch in numbers) every single legendary to be competitive. They then have to come up with 200 + (Blizzard's numbers) unique ideas for each legendary, and make those ideas game changing enough that people will consider using that legendary over the cookie cutter one.
They THEN, because of the power-scaling they plan on introducing to all legendaries, have to tune each legendary for all the different ilvl's it can have, since the item will be based on the level of the monster that drops it. Some affixes can be easy, such as a main stat range, while others will be harder to scale, such as 9% IAS. Do you get that if it drops at level 10? When does it jump a point?
This whole post's point was to provide some insight as to why it would take longer than an afternoon or 20 to get itemization out the door. I'm just as eager as the rest of you guys, but this is a big job, and the fact they are taking so long with it (and that it's Blizzard) means when it does ship, it's going to kick so much ass it'l crack my computer screen =P
Pffft both you and I know there's like a one in 12893728917302981370281937201870128937000000000 chance that he finds someone selling a Tal's Ammy with +2 int and +3 vit! As Mulder and Scully would say: "the upgrades are out there!"
It's shocking! Blizzard is doing more than just tweaking numbers. Yet we have plenty of people telling us how easy it is to tweak numbers. Great! Grand! But that's barely scratching the surface.
Included in itemization are topics like "how do we make Thorns a desireable stat?" and "how can we make it that if you roll LoH instead of Life Leech on a weapon that you didn't completely bork its usefulness/value?" Those (and many others) are the topics that require a ton of brainstorming, a ton of times in meetings, and a ton of trial-and-error to solve because they have no clear-cut answer.
Once you have a general idea as to how you're going to make every stat desireable, sure, then you just tweak the numbers. But getting to the "tweaking" stage is the hard part. 1.0.8, for example, took several months to develop and only 3-4 weeks on the PTR. The PTR is usually the "tweaking numbers" phase because it's very helpful to get feedback from millions of people on the numbers. It's usually not helpful to get feedback from players on ideas that are only 47% implemented and whatnot and that's why we don't see a PTR until they have something ready that only requires some... tweaking.
Then muscle in all the legendary effects. How do you make the fire chains demon something that is powerful enough that it can hold its weight? Is it a problem with the effect or do they need to just jack up the damage? The duration? The proc rate? Changing the damage, the duration, and/or the proc rate is simple stuff, but figuring out which of them needs to be changed to properly "fix" the item is the hard part. Maybe the whole effect sucks and they need to think of a completely new effect.
IDK, I think it's incredibly naive for anyone to think that all Blizzard is doing for the itemization patch is just editing some numbers in a database somewhere. If that's what the itemization patch amounts to then it's going to suck. Blizzard knows that 1.0.8 kicked major ass. They know the itemization patch is very important. They know if they want to sell (more) expansion boxes they're going to have to follow up a strong patch with another strong patch. That leads me to believe that they never approached this particular issue with the "lock six interns in a closet over the weekend and tell them to tweak the numbers on legendaries then throw that shit up for patch in the morning" attitude.
Hopefully when they say "after Blizzcon" that means that we still might see a PTR prior to Blizzcon and have the patch launch before 2014. Either that or hopefully they can throw in some other minor stuff (like some buffs to still-lacking skills) in the meantime. Just something to keep the game feeling a little fresh for the duration. Nothing big.
Well maybe if they hired the right people for the job things would happen a lot faster. I mean they basically already have a blue print in D2. They always had and always will. It took them 8 months to add ID all and any form of PVP. And they still haven't released the TDM the promised.
SImpy adding affixs that flat out boost certain skills by a certain percent is not hard. Re-working skills that are totally useless for minor reasons is not hard. Adding TDM is not actually hard. hell it already exists, we just can't play it because Jay Wilson said its not fun enough.
I wish a I had a bazillion dollars. Id pay Blizzard to let me take this game over....Seriously. id have patches and new content every single month.
Do you remember how long we waited for a proper PvP patch.. that never happened because they weren't happy with the result?.. what if the same happens in 2014?.. it would be really disgusting, at least.
Blizzard is one of the most prestigious companies you can work at as a game designer/developer. They have the right people. They have the best people.
Go and read all the threads from 2007 to 2012 in this forum. Go and watch some of the panels that Blizzard help during all the years of development. Go and read bluepost regarding "D3 becoming D2.1". Blizzard wants to create something new and not just copy/paste D2 itemization. Besides, D2 may have been better than D3, but it wasn't perfect. With a new system they risked new problems (and introduced them), but the outcome can be even greater once everything's "fixed".
The ID all feature came all of the sudden. The unavailability of an ID all button was a conscious decision by the game designers and even a couple of weeks before the ID all button was implemented, said design decision was still being defended by blue posts on the forums. And although PvP was (and is) an important aspect for some players in the Diablo universe, it is and will never be the main aspect. Their stance against competitive gaming and the announcement that they don't want to turn D3 into yet another e-sports game made that very clear. PvP will come eventually, but it's not number one priority (and probably not even number 2 or 3).
Really, it's not hard? How come that every single adventure, MMORPG, hack'n'slay game that I've played in the past 20 years (including previous Diablo games) had huge balance issues? I suggest you sit down and try to design a game. Just try it. I assure you, if you take a serious attempt you'll forfeit after a couple of hours. Balancing items, affixes, and skills is a never-ending endeavour. Just look at WoW and the back-and-forth balancing of classes and specs that's been going on for years. Or even better, look at D2 and how some skill trees were always on top of certain others, and that game has a history of more than a decade.
In case you haven't noticed, D3 is not a monthly subscription game. They don't have a bazillion dollars. And before you talk about the AH fees, you can't even imagine how expensive it is to maintain servers for ~3 million active players.
Please, please, please, think before you post. It's hard to deal with so much ignorance.
Except that that is not gonna fix a thing. If they go for a solution as described in the example above, it only means that the "good" items are the items with max attributes and ALL of them are dps attributes, and all the other items will be "trash" again.
Furthermore, somebody will calculate that +%elementagl damage is 0.1% better than the "atack" stat and we will again have the mathematicaly perfect items that are insanely rare and everything else will lose value really fast.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841