The least I can do is post what I posted in under a day to give my opinion on something that's supposedly taken 5 years to make.
To be fair, suggesting a few ideas is a whole lot faster than developing an entire game. And the process of implementing said ideas also takes quite a while to get into game.
Agreed. I perfectly understand it takes a lot of time to design the game. Hell, my beef is really with the gameplay design. The audio guys, the art guys and the cinematic guys are phenomenal. Very professional too.
I just facepalm extremely hard when core gameplay systems get thrown up for redesign SEVERAL years after being put in. There's a number of very successful games which started developement after Diablo 3's was started and have since been released and have made great money. They are already pretty big successes. This game needs to get out the door!
Thank you for this interesting post, you have some good ideas like class specific potions. Looking forward to reading the rest of it.
However I don't think having stat requirements on items is a good idea. Wizard get nothing from strength, but are forced to invest on it to be able to wear armor. Or would intellect armor have very low strength requirement? Same with dexterity, wizards need it for hit only while barbarians and demon hunters get the hit for ''free'' with the weapon requirement investment. In this model spell hit should come from intellect.
I agree with your opinion on my stats system. I literally spent one minute asking myself "well what should strength do? what should dex do? well if that's like this, tehn we would have to have three damage ratios... ap sp and weapon... and..." I'm perfectly fine with you seeing flaws in my one-minute shake-and-bake design philosophy. lol
My beef with the stats system doesn't come from being being a pompous ass. I really don't understand what was wrong with the current system and why they put an even worse substitute in. Diablo 2's system is just superior in every way. That's just my honest opinion.
I first intended to write what I didn't like about it but then changed my mind and just slapped in some mild humor but if you insist...
1. I read those so-called well written posts. Doesn't make me any more confident that the stats system will be even semi-interesting for me. Now if the combat looked more fun than it currently is, I wouldnt worry about not worrying about stats, but yeah.
2. There's a reason why you're not seeing any of this" content" and why players like me and designers alike would make these assumptions. It's not because they are story-related and that they would be spoilers. Sorry. It's just because the game is not ready for release when it should have been. I'm fully aware that I'm "making assumptions" but then again I'm mostly going on subjects that Blizzard has brought to our attention as problems for no good reason. Half of the things they bring to our attention are very easy design problems. They shouldn't be using it as excuses as to why the game isn't out yet.
3. I realize I could have been more civil and more objective, but I purposely didn't go that route. I've been a hell of a lot more respectfully to Blizzard and other companies that have made games that I've played in the past. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I believe that you, and the other passionate players that play games religiously even just for 6 months after a game's release should be listened to VERY CLOSELY. It's a respect thing. I realize that I'm posting to the Diablo Fans community, some random internet passerbys, the mods and MAYBE the Diablo devs. If the Diablo devs so read some of this, I hope they read it with a grain of salt and at most, take my negative tone as a slap on the wrist. Trust me. Good developers know how to take their lumps. Sometimes you do yourself a lot of good by realizing your shortcomings and just laughing at yourself.
I took the time too read the full post. I know this is a forum and everyone is here to give his opnion. But you're sounding really arrogant in some points
...
Health globes requires more strategy and skill then using potions. You simply didn't got the system and criticized it harshly.
Oh, you better believe I'm acting arrogant. Just like I said to the last guy, I purposely didn't sugar coat this for anybody. I'm not on anyone's payroll. This is probably the first time I felt the need to jot something this arrogant down on an internet post about game design. Respect is earned, especially when you already have a game like Diablo 2 thats been polished for around ten years to work on as a foundation. Other companies do great things with less. Starcraft 2 is a good game as well. You take it or leave it.
Still you could just not take me as seriously, seeing as though I mocked myself in my post probably as much as I scolded the devs. Just read a few sections with some cool ideas I had and move on.
And about health globes, they are just as automatic as collecting gold is. The difference between automating gold and automatically picking up globes is that one directly affects your combat performance and one is just a chore. The act of clicking a potion has more "Strategy" than picking up a red blob of whatever from the ground anyday. Why is that? Because they drop at random and you accidently run into them anyways! lol
Even the devs have mentioned that players sometimes feel like they get screwed when they "get a string of bad luck" and don't pick up any globes. Enough said.
If you accidentaly run into them you will use it before the time is right, loosing the globe. Once they are limited, wasting health globes will surely get you killled some day.
It almost feels like you think the health globe drop rate is 50% per monster or something or they allways appears right at your open side. Sometimes you're facing a group of enemies and as soon as the globe drops, a enemie walk overs it and you can't pick the globe unless you kill him or kite him off the area.
Even in normal and in the veyr begnning of the game, health globes is one of the coolest features of the game. There many cool situations and strategies evolving the globe mechanic that occur even in the first atc and in the easiest mod. A exemple:
You're full health (but potion on cooldown) and find a rare monster , his minions and an bunch of other enemies, You start to kill the weak ones first and drop a health globe. Some rare monsters are quite though and can eat up half your HP in a few seconds if you're not careful. Fight one without a potion or a back up health globe is unwise and might kill you.
If you accidentaly pick up one, you loose your HP back up. If you retreat the monsters will cover the globe area and when you need the HP regen you will have to fight then injured. So the thing to do is: hold the ground. Priorise maintaining the health globe area instead of rushing in battle. King of the hill style. Don't let mobs cover your health globe !
Standing and securing a area is a sudden change of strategy and behavior in diablo were everyone is used to rush as fast as possible. This kind of gameplay would never be possible without health globes.
Good games are based on reaction, not action. If you give total control to the player (like potions give you control over life regeneration) you will just formulate a good combat approach and keep doing the same action and movements over and over, without any reaction. Health globes is a great system because it forces players to adapt to the enviorment around him instead of impose his play style. It's entirely based on reaction, which is much cooler.
I simply provided very specific changes to the current game in very general broad terms. I did this to do something constructive as opposed to just saying "Hai guys! I think this game sux!. bai bai!"
You, on the other hand, sound somewhat offended that I actually proposed changes to their game, simply based on a number of posts either devs or other players have made. You act like I'm offending their intelligence by disagreeing with their opinions.
I've already wrote enough in my OP and I honestly don't feel like writing more to directly counter-argue the posts your talking about. If you think that i should write even more than what I wrote already, you are daft. I purposely didn't quote anything BECAUSE I had to write a lot and some people have lives and I understand that they didn't have enough time to read it all as it was without quotes. I'd be a hell of a lot more interested in hearing why YOU disagree with what I've put on the table. I have no interest in you being a mouthpiece for the people I personally disagree with.
Just by you saying "But this guy wrote a post about this! He's right! You're wrong!" is a waste of my time. Also you saying "You are obligated to respond to this post that you already told me that you disagree with!" is a waste of my time. I posted plenty of great ideas that could be in the game or could already be in the game. I didn't even say my way was the right way. I just clearly stated how my vision of Diablo 3 would be.
I apologize for reading in between the lines. Some people are capable of doing that.
Wow, good read. You've thought about all of this quite thoroughly. I'm not going to reply to everything, only the things I strongly agree or disagree with. If I don't reply to it then I don't feel strong enough to have anything to add.
You make some good points and I appreciate you throwing your opinions in a similar format like mine.
To be honest with you, I completely forgot that they had a campfire. That was pretty awesome in a number of little ways. I also found myself being really interested in the old D# website. The presentation and the lore too. Refering to the static towns, I would be also interested to see some phasing in cities and fights as well. I mostly refering to the physical layouts of cities with regards to where the exits were and how the npc's and graphics were always static. Act 1's camp had a random exit path but it still had the camp in the same layout.
I can see where you are coming from what you talk about health globes. You almost see it as a pacing mechanic and an incentive to reposition in the middle of a fight. I just see getting to them more of an problem for ranged classes than melee ones. I mean If I kill a mob as a monk by punching him in the face, and he drops a globe, it's right in front of me, isn't it? Still, it's my understanding that if you're in a party, and one guy picks one up, everybody gets health.
As for potions, I just think having random luck of depending on globes to drop to get health back is bad design. I didn't bother to explain this correlation later on when I spoke about dodge, but dodge is in the exact same boat. It's why at some points in WoW, healers hated how it was harder to heal, let's say, a Druid Bear Tank (was previously a very dodge dependent tank) as opposed to paladins or warriors. Why? Because Druids would sometimes take random large spikes in damage.
But hey, since this isn't my OP, I'll talk about an 800 pound elephant that I alluded to in my post, but didn't want to mention for a number of reasons. League of Legends. The game has MANY MANY MANY players and is very popular for the casual crowd and it's hardcore scene is pretty healthy as well. They recently completely REMOVED dodge from their game. There's just too many design reasons as to why dodge is a bad concept. Now, you could argue that, obviously, League of Legends is a PvP game and D3 is a PvE game, but luck should be a very small factor in determining a player's death. In Diablo 2, dodge was NOT a big deal. Diablo 2 was fine with having dodge play a minor role. I can see what they are doing by trying to make Barbs armor heavy and making Monks dodge heavy, but don't be surprised if Monks just end up being better tanks than Barbarians later on. It will be because of exponentially increasing your tanking capabilities with high dodge stats.
I agree that my stats system isn't perfect, But I would play it over the current system. Mostly because loot is too boring now.
1. Be a certain level
2. Wait for loot to drop.
3. Equip it
4. .....
The only hurdle is item level. There's no other hurdles to cross to use badass stuff. This monster slaying game just become too much like WoW. In fact, it's going to be a smaller dumbed down version of it in every facet.
As for GW2 and micro-transactions, that game will probably be more clean and more fun as well, ironically. lol. Too bad we don't know when neither game is coming out.
Even in normal and in the veyr begnning of the game, health globes is one of the coolest features of the game. There many cool situations and strategies evolving the globe mechanic that occur even in the first atc and in the easiest mod.
Every stream I've seen can be described pretty generally in one sentence. "I'm watching a guy mow through monsters in mostly 1-2 hits with no sense of urgency."
I'm not disagreeing with you. Maybe I'm just wrong about health globes. I'm just not feeling the excitement or seeing the urgency at all in the beta. Hopefully by act 3 there will be some sort of urgency, because I find myself being more interested in the rest of the game's presentation,like the art assets. :/
Would it kill Blizzard to release some footage of act 2? I mean honestly?
I guess the better question is "How many times have you guys died in beta?" I'm going to go post a thread asking that question right now. I'm very curious to hear answers about that now.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people tell me I'm going to hell. I just let them know that I've already packed my bags!
If you saw a hundred streams of people clearing Act 1 Normal in Diablo 2, you would find the game "boring and in need of change" too.
There aren't any sort of urgency except maybe in Act 4 as far as normal goes, and that was the end of the game back when it was released.
So far ive read about half (damn spoiler tags are a giant pain on my phone) and i am quite impressed by the ideas themselves. I was particularly drawn in by the stats section, it was much better, however what you didnt make clear was
1. What happens to the mouse buttons? 1-6 are skills, does this mean u can have 8 skills(left and right click) or 6 and the mouse does something different?
2. If u have different types of special potions, then how do choose which one you use?
Looking forward to reading the rest
gw
P.S. Im 14 and i dont appreciate my mental age being used as an insult
To balance my post, I would say that you should separate "isolated ideas", which can be great, from "stats/global system ideas", which require to think it with the balance and evolving concerns in mind.
I guess I can do that, since you asked. Maybe I could add some pictures since I really pissed off some people with the tsunami of text. I'm perfectly cool with that angry reaction but yeah. lol
If you saw a hundred streams of people clearing Act 1 Normal in Diablo 2, you would find the game "boring and in need of change" too.
There aren't any sort of urgency except maybe in Act 4 as far as normal goes, and that was the end of the game back when it was released.
I haven't watched that many streams. I'm really looking at the nuts and bolts of the game's design, it's actually less about Act 1 and more about what I think would be long-term implications. I also played the "game" in 09 and my first thread on these forums were my impressions. I'll link it if you want me to, but that version of the game is long gone anyways. Some of my concerns still exist currently in beta, but oh well. It was a much more mature and careful critique of how the game was 2 and a half years ago.
1. What happens to the mouse buttons? 1-6 are skills, does this mean u can have 8 skills(left and right click) or 6 and the mouse does something different?
2. If u have different types of special potions, then how do choose which one you use?
1. Should be in the hotkeys section. I would have 10 hotkeys, all fully re-bindable. This means you can bind any skill to either mouse keys or keyboard keys, while still hard coding the game to move upon mouse clicks. They can design the UI any way they want, I just felt like there should be 10 fully customization hot keys. I don't like the idea of limiting a player, especially since the D3 team will not be supporting mods. I didn't complain about that in my OP, but we need to remember mods will be a no-no.
2. You simply have those potions in your inventory then click and drag them to a hot key. Any of the ten hot key slots you want could be a potion slot. 6 for skills + 3 for potions of 3 types + 1 for an extra hotkey of your choice. Blizzard needs to remember that people weren't too stupid to hotkey things in WoW. Every player was able to learn how to do it and they did it. They could easily modify the UI for a console release and STILL have console players play with PC players. A simple Ui change would not prevent them from hosting a multi-platform game. If they can't pull it off, shame on them. Trendy Entertainment did an amazing job doing it with Dungeon Defenders.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some people tell me I'm going to hell. I just let them know that I've already packed my bags!
Identify items in town is a great idea, maybe have a threshold so that things your level and below you can identify, but higher level stuff you can't (the stuff you are more likely to want anyway). It would give a reason to get to town, and let you clean up your scrap items at the same time. I always did like how D1 did it, Cain was the friggin man.
This is written like op is god of software engineering. OP, you put very much effort and work in your article, but your thoughts about the game are antique imho. D3 is a modern game with new ideas, nobody can say much stuff about before release, particularly in this arrogant manner.
I completely agree.
A lot of work was clearly invested into putting all of this together, and for that, I commend the OP.
However I feel as though Jay Wilson and the rest of the team are doing a good job. Jay grew up playing Diablo and D2, he has a good base of knowledge for making D3 into a successful, addicting game just as it's predecessors were. I'm currently in the Beta, and I have no complaints about any of the systems or mechanics in the game, somethings still need a little more work; other than that, the game is great.
I'm desperately looking for a good reason to read all of this.
This is how i'm feeling. I read a sentence or two then saw everything else and got bored. Good job OP, now why dont u wait till Diablo 3 launches and make a mod. Oh wait...
Got about halfway through when I realized the entire post is 1/3 rhetoric and sweeping generalizations (who had fun allocating stat points on level up? I usually ignored them until I had about 100 saved up), 1/3 assumptions based on not playing the beta at all, and 1/3 wanting D3 to just be D2. Did it occur to you they're specifically trying to make the game NOT Diablo 2? It doesn't help that a lot of your suggestions are in the game or even could be in the game, but we have no idea because we haven't seen enough content (i.e. NPCs fighting monsters).
I read almost every word, and I have to say, you really have some great ideas that could really benefit Blizzard to consider.
The only thing that I felt a little lost on was the Final Act section. It wasn't because I didn't understand what you were saying, but more because it would take an incredible amount of more explanation to feel like the idea was substantial; this doesn't harm the idea at all, though. I like it a lot, and I'd love to read a really elaborate idea for a Final Act, as if it were actually being implemented, but that would probably take a lot more time.
(edit) I didn't like your item identification suggestion, as I like the right click to ID thing they have implemented now, but that's about all I didn't like.
I think Blizzard would benefit from employing you, regardless of if they actually like any of your ideas. They could use more people in their think-tank if they really want to make Diablo 3 as phenomenal as they say they do.
I think It'd be great to start an independent think-tank with someone like you to pitch ideas like this to companies. I'm hoping my college education pays off and let's me do just that some day.
Thanks very much for the write-up.
If you accidentaly run into them you will use it before the time is right, loosing the globe. Once they are limited, wasting health globes will surely get you killled some day.
It almost feels like you think the health globe drop rate is 50% per monster or something or they allways appears right at your open side. Sometimes you're facing a group of enemies and as soon as the globe drops, a enemie walk overs it and you can't pick the globe unless you kill him or kite him off the area.
Even in normal and in the veyr begnning of the game, health globes is one of the coolest features of the game. There many cool situations and strategies evolving the globe mechanic that occur even in the first atc and in the easiest mod. A exemple:
You're full health (but potion on cooldown) and find a rare monster , his minions and an bunch of other enemies, You start to kill the weak ones first and drop a health globe. Some rare monsters are quite though and can eat up half your HP in a few seconds if you're not careful. Fight one without a potion or a back up health globe is unwise and might kill you.
If you accidentaly pick up one, you loose your HP back up. If you retreat the monsters will cover the globe area and when you need the HP regen you will have to fight then injured. So the thing to do is: hold the ground. Priorise maintaining the health globe area instead of rushing in battle. King of the hill style. Don't let mobs cover your health globe !
Standing and securing a area is a sudden change of strategy and behavior in diablo were everyone is used to rush as fast as possible. This kind of gameplay would never be possible without health globes.
Good games are based on reaction, not action. If you give total control to the player (like potions give you control over life regeneration) you will just formulate a good combat approach and keep doing the same action and movements over and over, without any reaction. Health globes is a great system because it forces players to adapt to the enviorment around him instead of impose his play style. It's entirely based on reaction, which is much cooler.
text... nobody on this forum is gong to read that shit... not even the ones with the most time on their hands... picturz ploxxxxxxxxxxxx
gamma11 > east
The difference between you and I is this.
I simply provided very specific changes to the current game in very general broad terms. I did this to do something constructive as opposed to just saying "Hai guys! I think this game sux!. bai bai!"
You, on the other hand, sound somewhat offended that I actually proposed changes to their game, simply based on a number of posts either devs or other players have made. You act like I'm offending their intelligence by disagreeing with their opinions.
I've already wrote enough in my OP and I honestly don't feel like writing more to directly counter-argue the posts your talking about. If you think that i should write even more than what I wrote already, you are daft. I purposely didn't quote anything BECAUSE I had to write a lot and some people have lives and I understand that they didn't have enough time to read it all as it was without quotes. I'd be a hell of a lot more interested in hearing why YOU disagree with what I've put on the table. I have no interest in you being a mouthpiece for the people I personally disagree with.
Just by you saying "But this guy wrote a post about this! He's right! You're wrong!" is a waste of my time. Also you saying "You are obligated to respond to this post that you already told me that you disagree with!" is a waste of my time. I posted plenty of great ideas that could be in the game or could already be in the game. I didn't even say my way was the right way. I just clearly stated how my vision of Diablo 3 would be.
I apologize for reading in between the lines. Some people are capable of doing that.
You make some good points and I appreciate you throwing your opinions in a similar format like mine.
To be honest with you, I completely forgot that they had a campfire. That was pretty awesome in a number of little ways. I also found myself being really interested in the old D# website. The presentation and the lore too. Refering to the static towns, I would be also interested to see some phasing in cities and fights as well. I mostly refering to the physical layouts of cities with regards to where the exits were and how the npc's and graphics were always static. Act 1's camp had a random exit path but it still had the camp in the same layout.
I can see where you are coming from what you talk about health globes. You almost see it as a pacing mechanic and an incentive to reposition in the middle of a fight. I just see getting to them more of an problem for ranged classes than melee ones. I mean If I kill a mob as a monk by punching him in the face, and he drops a globe, it's right in front of me, isn't it? Still, it's my understanding that if you're in a party, and one guy picks one up, everybody gets health.
As for potions, I just think having random luck of depending on globes to drop to get health back is bad design. I didn't bother to explain this correlation later on when I spoke about dodge, but dodge is in the exact same boat. It's why at some points in WoW, healers hated how it was harder to heal, let's say, a Druid Bear Tank (was previously a very dodge dependent tank) as opposed to paladins or warriors. Why? Because Druids would sometimes take random large spikes in damage.
But hey, since this isn't my OP, I'll talk about an 800 pound elephant that I alluded to in my post, but didn't want to mention for a number of reasons. League of Legends. The game has MANY MANY MANY players and is very popular for the casual crowd and it's hardcore scene is pretty healthy as well. They recently completely REMOVED dodge from their game. There's just too many design reasons as to why dodge is a bad concept. Now, you could argue that, obviously, League of Legends is a PvP game and D3 is a PvE game, but luck should be a very small factor in determining a player's death. In Diablo 2, dodge was NOT a big deal. Diablo 2 was fine with having dodge play a minor role. I can see what they are doing by trying to make Barbs armor heavy and making Monks dodge heavy, but don't be surprised if Monks just end up being better tanks than Barbarians later on. It will be because of exponentially increasing your tanking capabilities with high dodge stats.
I agree that my stats system isn't perfect, But I would play it over the current system. Mostly because loot is too boring now.
1. Be a certain level
2. Wait for loot to drop.
3. Equip it
4. .....
The only hurdle is item level. There's no other hurdles to cross to use badass stuff. This monster slaying game just become too much like WoW. In fact, it's going to be a smaller dumbed down version of it in every facet.
As for GW2 and micro-transactions, that game will probably be more clean and more fun as well, ironically. lol. Too bad we don't know when neither game is coming out.
Every stream I've seen can be described pretty generally in one sentence. "I'm watching a guy mow through monsters in mostly 1-2 hits with no sense of urgency."
I'm not disagreeing with you. Maybe I'm just wrong about health globes. I'm just not feeling the excitement or seeing the urgency at all in the beta. Hopefully by act 3 there will be some sort of urgency, because I find myself being more interested in the rest of the game's presentation,like the art assets. :/
Would it kill Blizzard to release some footage of act 2? I mean honestly?
I guess the better question is "How many times have you guys died in beta?" I'm going to go post a thread asking that question right now. I'm very curious to hear answers about that now.
There aren't any sort of urgency except maybe in Act 4 as far as normal goes, and that was the end of the game back when it was released.
1. What happens to the mouse buttons? 1-6 are skills, does this mean u can have 8 skills(left and right click) or 6 and the mouse does something different?
2. If u have different types of special potions, then how do choose which one you use?
Looking forward to reading the rest
gw
P.S. Im 14 and i dont appreciate my mental age being used as an insult
I guess I can do that, since you asked. Maybe I could add some pictures since I really pissed off some people with the tsunami of text. I'm perfectly cool with that angry reaction but yeah. lol
I haven't watched that many streams. I'm really looking at the nuts and bolts of the game's design, it's actually less about Act 1 and more about what I think would be long-term implications. I also played the "game" in 09 and my first thread on these forums were my impressions. I'll link it if you want me to, but that version of the game is long gone anyways. Some of my concerns still exist currently in beta, but oh well. It was a much more mature and careful critique of how the game was 2 and a half years ago.
1. Should be in the hotkeys section. I would have 10 hotkeys, all fully re-bindable. This means you can bind any skill to either mouse keys or keyboard keys, while still hard coding the game to move upon mouse clicks. They can design the UI any way they want, I just felt like there should be 10 fully customization hot keys. I don't like the idea of limiting a player, especially since the D3 team will not be supporting mods. I didn't complain about that in my OP, but we need to remember mods will be a no-no.
2. You simply have those potions in your inventory then click and drag them to a hot key. Any of the ten hot key slots you want could be a potion slot. 6 for skills + 3 for potions of 3 types + 1 for an extra hotkey of your choice. Blizzard needs to remember that people weren't too stupid to hotkey things in WoW. Every player was able to learn how to do it and they did it. They could easily modify the UI for a console release and STILL have console players play with PC players. A simple Ui change would not prevent them from hosting a multi-platform game. If they can't pull it off, shame on them. Trendy Entertainment did an amazing job doing it with Dungeon Defenders.
Tbh just looked over most of the other stuff.
I didn't read it either, but from looking at the 1st picture my guess is he just wants Blizz to make a Diablo2 xpac instead of making Diablo3.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
I completely agree.
A lot of work was clearly invested into putting all of this together, and for that, I commend the OP.
However I feel as though Jay Wilson and the rest of the team are doing a good job. Jay grew up playing Diablo and D2, he has a good base of knowledge for making D3 into a successful, addicting game just as it's predecessors were. I'm currently in the Beta, and I have no complaints about any of the systems or mechanics in the game, somethings still need a little more work; other than that, the game is great.
This is how i'm feeling. I read a sentence or two then saw everything else and got bored. Good job OP, now why dont u wait till Diablo 3 launches and make a mod. Oh wait...
The only thing that I felt a little lost on was the Final Act section. It wasn't because I didn't understand what you were saying, but more because it would take an incredible amount of more explanation to feel like the idea was substantial; this doesn't harm the idea at all, though. I like it a lot, and I'd love to read a really elaborate idea for a Final Act, as if it were actually being implemented, but that would probably take a lot more time.
(edit) I didn't like your item identification suggestion, as I like the right click to ID thing they have implemented now, but that's about all I didn't like.
I think Blizzard would benefit from employing you, regardless of if they actually like any of your ideas. They could use more people in their think-tank if they really want to make Diablo 3 as phenomenal as they say they do.
I think It'd be great to start an independent think-tank with someone like you to pitch ideas like this to companies. I'm hoping my college education pays off and let's me do just that some day.
Thanks very much for the write-up.