Well this would defiantly be awesome considering there was a blue post pretty much confirming that blizzard betas are only for testing what's already in place, I.E most likely nothing new will be added for launch. Which of course would make sense if launch is 3 months out and they've just got to polish what's already in beta.
The mystic seems really solid so probably not a lot left to change there.
Apart from polish, act 5 seems finished.
Same with the crusader and the vanilla classes.
I haven't seen any problems with adventure mode.
Bounties and rifts look good as well., also loot 2.0.
All that's left is number balancing for classes, fixing OP legenaries, and tweaking rewards for bounties and rifts. I think thats more than doable in 3 months.
I don't believe anybody who says "i'm not buying RoS because it's too expensive". I just don't. We will all buy it just to see how good it is.
You'll pretty much know exactly how good the expansion will be before the launch. The beta offers everything the expansion has to offer, and in the next few months with the tweaks and official Blizzard statements we'll get a crystal clear picture of RoS as a game. This is a fair move by them, letting the players watch/play through all of the content in beta and decide for themselves is this expansion really worth their money.
Considering the amount of hours of gameplay a new class, act and adventure mode will offer, 40$ seems like a good deal. If you simply enjoy farming, maybe trying some fresh builds with the new legendaries, than RoS is definitely worth the money on launch. All these aspects of the game are polished and work great in the expansion, along with the streamlined leveling system.
Other than that, the game doesn't really offer much, and it seems that it will sadly once again get pretty boring after a couple of weeks (mostly for softcore players). So, if it does feel like 40$ is too expensive for you at the time of the launch, and you have better things to spend your money on, it's OK to wait a bit and see how everything will play out in the weeks after the game is released. Even when, or if, ladders and competitive PvE are released, the players who got the expansion on day one won't have any real advantage over a player who bought the game later on.
Better to wait than to get frustrated for spending money on something you won't really enjoy that much. This time, Blizzard made the right move to make all of the content public months before the release, and no one will be right to blame them or to ask refunds for the game like they did with the original D3. RoS will mostly sell copies on it's own virtues and quality of design, which is a good thing, while D3 earned a lot of millions solely on the legendary legacy of the Diablo franchise.
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"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
It should also be noted that Blizzard says that they don't "add more features" during a beta, but they often have features being developed internally that haven't yet pushed out to beta testers. An example is the Heart of the Swarm leveling system that was "added" during the beta: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/7681240/
I don't believe anybody who says "i'm not buying RoS because it's too expensive". I just don't. We will all buy it just to see how good it is.
I don't believe that anyone wouldn't pay $40 to have another couple hundred hours of entertainment.
Whenever I go to the movie theater it makes me appreciate just how cheap video games actually are in terms of time spent playing/watching versus cost.
$10 for 90-120 minutes of entertainment
-or-
$40 for a few hundred hours of entertainment
Yeah, RoS is a ripoff!
I like the new avatar shaggy!
I agree with what you say, but only partly. I'm one of those people that don't like the current price of games (they're too high) but for me it's only for those games that are primarily single player, not the multiplayer games like Diablo, Battlefield, COD, all those games where multiplayer is a main aspect of the game.
I think it's important to keep in mind that prices for video games to vary from country to country. I'm not sure how much everyone else pays for their games but it's pretty expensive here in Australia - given you buy it from a store and not online. It's actually getting a lot better though! Going back 5-6 years the normal price for a new release game would be 80-90 dollars, nowadays it's 60-79 dollars!
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Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
I'm waiting for an official statement from Blizzard on release date. Sure, 25th March can be right, expecially after a week from the AH closure.
The problem is i'm a bit disappointed by what i saw in the Beta, but, probably, because all streamers are using broken skills and inflated loot rewards so the game looks too much easy, too much generous and without any long term gameplay. I'm keeping my hype really low, even too much, but it's the first time i'm considering to not buy a CE and even a day one purchase...
I agree with what you say, but only partly. I'm one of those people that don't like the current price of games (they're too high) but for me it's only for those games that are primarily single player, not the multiplayer games like Diablo, Battlefield, COD, all those games where multiplayer is a main aspect of the game.
I think it's important to keep in mind that prices for video games to vary from country to country. I'm not sure how much everyone else pays for their games but it's pretty expensive here in Australia - given you buy it from a store and not online. It's actually getting a lot better though! Going back 5-6 years the normal price for a new release game would be 80-90 dollars, nowadays it's 60-79 dollars!
Ahahaha I hear ya man.
It galls me to see games creeping up to $60 from $50. If I go into a GameStop and just look around the price tags generally get me pretty pissed off. That being said, even at $60 per title, if you're getting 50 hours out of it, it's still pretty damned cheap entertainment compared to almost everything else out there.
So, from an absolute perspective, I completely hear you and totally sympathize. But everywhere else I look, I just see entertainment that costs much more than video games, so relatively-speaking, I think they're a damned fine value.
That being said, the international market has issues. There's no reason you Aussies should be spending 50% more than us Yankees are spending for the same game.... unless that's what the exchange rate is (which I doubt). I know my Canadian friends used to complain that it would cost them $15+ for an authenticator because of international shipping. Something that costs me $6.50 with free shipping, to someone who could be just 50 miles north, it's going to cost a hell of a lot more. Why? Because shipping a stupid keyfob from the USA to Canada costs a damned arm and a leg.
I agree with what you say, but only partly. I'm one of those people that don't like the current price of games (they're too high) but for me it's only for those games that are primarily single player, not the multiplayer games like Diablo, Battlefield, COD, all those games where multiplayer is a main aspect of the game.
I think it's important to keep in mind that prices for video games to vary from country to country. I'm not sure how much everyone else pays for their games but it's pretty expensive here in Australia - given you buy it from a store and not online. It's actually getting a lot better though! Going back 5-6 years the normal price for a new release game would be 80-90 dollars, nowadays it's 60-79 dollars!
Ahahaha I hear ya man.
It galls me to see games creeping up to $60 from $50. If I go into a GameStop and just look around the price tags generally get me pretty pissed off. That being said, even at $60 per title, if you're getting 50 hours out of it, it's still pretty damned cheap entertainment compared to almost everything else out there.
So, from an absolute perspective, I completely hear you and totally sympathize. But everywhere else I look, I just see entertainment that costs much more than video games, so relatively-speaking, I think they're a damned fine value.
That being said, the international market has issues. There's no reason you Aussies should be spending 50% more than us Yankees are spending for the same game.... unless that's what the exchange rate is (which I doubt). I know my Canadian friends used to complain that it would cost them $15+ for an authenticator because of international shipping. Something that costs me $6.50 with free shipping, to someone who could be just 50 miles north, it's going to cost a hell of a lot more. Why? Because shipping a stupid keyfob from the USA to Canada costs a damned arm and a leg.
In a global world this baffles me.
Even in a global world, look no further than local governments. Australia gets the short end of the stick because all goods shipped in are taxed so incredibly high that retailers are forced to sell at much higher price points just to make a profit.
I Paid €60 for 4 acts and 5 classes and 2 artisans.€40 for 1 act , 1 artisan and 1 class and MAYBE and thats a big maybe adventure mode, because they are discussing whether they add it to the pre patch or not. Thats too much imo. All other additions are not features of RoS, they are added within a free patch for all d3 players.
If they add the challenges and Devilshand and ladder system, which they are currently alpha testing, then €40 would be a fair price.
I think you don't understand how everything works on the internet.
You can technically say WoW has level 1-90, 11 classes, 13 races, TONS of zones, cba to count. TONS of raids, also cba to count. And just basically tons of everything. If WoW expansion which has 10% of what WoW currently has, I assume if expansion costs 50€, that means original game should cost over 500-600+€! Is that fair?
This is an expansion, expansions cost money. I hope you don't expect to buy games for free. Also I assume you'll get couple hundred hours out of new expansion, perhaps couple thousand if you're a dedicated player. How much do you get out of a 60-80€ game you buy for PS or Xbox? Maybe 10? Lucky if its 12? Mostly those games are 6-8 hours of gameplay. And some of them got crappy multiplayer you play for a few weeks or a month.
Anyways, I think 40€ is a fair price, I would even pay 50-60€. If you really think 40€ is too much, then I assume you still live at your parents house getting pocket money each week. Cause 40€ is nothing for a working person.
@Shaggy, can't you order RoS outside Australia if your Australian prices are so high? There are retailers that will simply send you the CD-key at release date.
IDK! I live in the USA :-p
Digital downloads obviously help mitigate the extra costs that the mail system puts on physical products, but there's no reason that problem should still exist in the 21st century anyway. We live in a global economy, but if I want to send some Canadian guy an authenticator I end up tripling its cost just to get it to cross the border. What the fuck kind of harebrained shit is that?
I usually find that the digital copy costs more (here in the UK anyway, at the moment for CoD:Ghosts - Amazon £28, Steam £40) as the publisher has more direct involvement in setting the price, which is one of the main reasons I still by most of my games from retail.
I assume part of the reason that digital copies are as expensive is big publishers don't want to piss off big retail as they still rely on them to sell the hardware and accessories etc.
Quote from leon483» ROS dont have a good end game system like POE or even D2.
You just play casual game like 1-2 months max. and then you quit, because you farm,farm, and agen farm this is the point in the game?NO, is just no point to play like this.
This ROS is must be Salvation of D3 FAISL pls blizzards add some mechanic system in the game for end game !!! : (
RoS is just anthor craapy patch to D3 ?
Blizzard has destroyed the diablo franchis ?
You must add some ladder system or some competition system or enchanting rifts before release date , because nobody wana buy this !@#$.
good end game like POE or D2? I havent played POE so I'll just comment on D2. D2 had a good end game? Doing Baal runs over and over again was considered fun? (I didn't PvP, sorry )
If you're talking about the ladder system D2 was horrible, it was just dominated by bots. Considering POE is free to play I'm sure they will run into that issue some time down the track too.
In reply to your last sentence, never speak on everyone's behalf.
I'd still buy the game even if there wasn't an "end game" because newsflash not everyone plays the game for the same reason.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Pietrak and Ducha, he just copied the text from a bad thread he made. Don't feed the trolls.
I was responding to Ducha, not to the troll
And a good response too!
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Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Look at it objectively. If they decide to add Adventure mode to the pre-expansion patch, then you have to admit that RoS starts to look a bit empty. When most people think of RoS, they think of Loot 2.0 and Adventure mode, but it might be that neither of those things will be RoS content, but patch material instead.
That being said, they should really clarify what will be in RoS and what will be in the patch (when they themselves know, ofc).
I do agree with you that they should be more clear what exactly is going to be in the patch and what's exclusive to the expansion. I found that reasonably confusing even back during the Gamescom coverage, when they announced most of it initially...
However, while it's it's entirely possible they decided to go in a different direction, they did point out in a number of blue posts, "major system changes will be in the pre-expansion patch, such as Loot 2.0, Paragon 2.0, Adventure Mode, and Loot Runs (now Rifts)."
Loot 2.0 should NOT be in an expansion. Blizzard seems to be fully admitting their fault in going the AH route, and as a result, don't want people to have to pay for the loot they should've had at launch. That's why that's free.
Paragon 2.0, while fully revamped, goes hand in hand with a current in-game system...so while I don't necessarily think D3 needed stat allocation at launch, it does change a major game system, and shouldn't require being paid for.
Haven't seen anyone else mention it in skimming through here, but...what about the skill rebalancing and reworks? Should that be in the expansion, or are those things going hand in hand with "major game systems"?
Much the same as Adventure Mode...people have been begging for the ability to jump around acts since launch, finally they'll get to, complete with Bounties and Rifts to space out the farming/XP.
That all being the case, I don't know how "full" RoS is supposed to be. It's an expansion, it's not a full separate game. The Mystic is going to be a really popular artisan to fully boost the quantity of good item drops. Act 5 is going to be pretty huge, robust, and offer randomized zones for people to enjoy. The Crusader is a sixth class to round out the pairs of classes working with different mainstats, not to mention starting right away with more skills than the other classes did at launch.
Everything seems pretty appropriate to me...
As for the OP's post...it'd be seriously nice if it releases March 25. Won't count on it till we hear an official announcement, and luckily I have D3 on PS3, Kingdoms of Amalur, Assassin's Creed Revelations, and Dragon's Crown on Vita to keep me busy till the PTR hits, :-D
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I see the line in the sand. Time to find out who I am. Looking back to see where I stand. Evolution.
Member of the Dfans clan.
BNet Tag: Evolution85#1878
Whenever I go to the movie theater it makes me appreciate just how cheap video games actually are in terms of time spent playing/watching versus cost.
$10 for 90-120 minutes of entertainment
-or-
$40 for a few hundred hours of entertainment
Yeah, RoS is a ripoff!
Considering the amount of hours of gameplay a new class, act and adventure mode will offer, 40$ seems like a good deal. If you simply enjoy farming, maybe trying some fresh builds with the new legendaries, than RoS is definitely worth the money on launch. All these aspects of the game are polished and work great in the expansion, along with the streamlined leveling system.
Other than that, the game doesn't really offer much, and it seems that it will sadly once again get pretty boring after a couple of weeks (mostly for softcore players). So, if it does feel like 40$ is too expensive for you at the time of the launch, and you have better things to spend your money on, it's OK to wait a bit and see how everything will play out in the weeks after the game is released. Even when, or if, ladders and competitive PvE are released, the players who got the expansion on day one won't have any real advantage over a player who bought the game later on.
Better to wait than to get frustrated for spending money on something you won't really enjoy that much. This time, Blizzard made the right move to make all of the content public months before the release, and no one will be right to blame them or to ask refunds for the game like they did with the original D3. RoS will mostly sell copies on it's own virtues and quality of design, which is a good thing, while D3 earned a lot of millions solely on the legendary legacy of the Diablo franchise.
I see the line in the sand. Time to find out who I am. Looking back to see where I stand. Evolution.
Member of the Dfans clan.
BNet Tag: Evolution85#1878
I agree with what you say, but only partly. I'm one of those people that don't like the current price of games (they're too high) but for me it's only for those games that are primarily single player, not the multiplayer games like Diablo, Battlefield, COD, all those games where multiplayer is a main aspect of the game.
I think it's important to keep in mind that prices for video games to vary from country to country. I'm not sure how much everyone else pays for their games but it's pretty expensive here in Australia - given you buy it from a store and not online. It's actually getting a lot better though! Going back 5-6 years the normal price for a new release game would be 80-90 dollars, nowadays it's 60-79 dollars!
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
The problem is i'm a bit disappointed by what i saw in the Beta, but, probably, because all streamers are using broken skills and inflated loot rewards so the game looks too much easy, too much generous and without any long term gameplay. I'm keeping my hype really low, even too much, but it's the first time i'm considering to not buy a CE and even a day one purchase...
It galls me to see games creeping up to $60 from $50. If I go into a GameStop and just look around the price tags generally get me pretty pissed off. That being said, even at $60 per title, if you're getting 50 hours out of it, it's still pretty damned cheap entertainment compared to almost everything else out there.
So, from an absolute perspective, I completely hear you and totally sympathize. But everywhere else I look, I just see entertainment that costs much more than video games, so relatively-speaking, I think they're a damned fine value.
That being said, the international market has issues. There's no reason you Aussies should be spending 50% more than us Yankees are spending for the same game.... unless that's what the exchange rate is (which I doubt). I know my Canadian friends used to complain that it would cost them $15+ for an authenticator because of international shipping. Something that costs me $6.50 with free shipping, to someone who could be just 50 miles north, it's going to cost a hell of a lot more. Why? Because shipping a stupid keyfob from the USA to Canada costs a damned arm and a leg.
In a global world this baffles me.
You can technically say WoW has level 1-90, 11 classes, 13 races, TONS of zones, cba to count. TONS of raids, also cba to count. And just basically tons of everything. If WoW expansion which has 10% of what WoW currently has, I assume if expansion costs 50€, that means original game should cost over 500-600+€! Is that fair?
This is an expansion, expansions cost money. I hope you don't expect to buy games for free. Also I assume you'll get couple hundred hours out of new expansion, perhaps couple thousand if you're a dedicated player. How much do you get out of a 60-80€ game you buy for PS or Xbox? Maybe 10? Lucky if its 12? Mostly those games are 6-8 hours of gameplay. And some of them got crappy multiplayer you play for a few weeks or a month.
Anyways, I think 40€ is a fair price, I would even pay 50-60€. If you really think 40€ is too much, then I assume you still live at your parents house getting pocket money each week. Cause 40€ is nothing for a working person.
If this is true (which sounds like it with AH shutdown), we will see a loot 2.0 soon.
Digital downloads obviously help mitigate the extra costs that the mail system puts on physical products, but there's no reason that problem should still exist in the 21st century anyway. We live in a global economy, but if I want to send some Canadian guy an authenticator I end up tripling its cost just to get it to cross the border. What the fuck kind of harebrained shit is that?
I assume part of the reason that digital copies are as expensive is big publishers don't want to piss off big retail as they still rely on them to sell the hardware and accessories etc.
If you're talking about the ladder system D2 was horrible, it was just dominated by bots. Considering POE is free to play I'm sure they will run into that issue some time down the track too.
In reply to your last sentence, never speak on everyone's behalf.
I'd still buy the game even if there wasn't an "end game" because newsflash not everyone plays the game for the same reason.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Totally ruins alot of the epicness you should of saw on that day one purchase.
Nothing wrong with being a curious birdie.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
However, while it's it's entirely possible they decided to go in a different direction, they did point out in a number of blue posts, "major system changes will be in the pre-expansion patch, such as Loot 2.0, Paragon 2.0, Adventure Mode, and Loot Runs (now Rifts)."
Loot 2.0 should NOT be in an expansion. Blizzard seems to be fully admitting their fault in going the AH route, and as a result, don't want people to have to pay for the loot they should've had at launch. That's why that's free.
Paragon 2.0, while fully revamped, goes hand in hand with a current in-game system...so while I don't necessarily think D3 needed stat allocation at launch, it does change a major game system, and shouldn't require being paid for.
Haven't seen anyone else mention it in skimming through here, but...what about the skill rebalancing and reworks? Should that be in the expansion, or are those things going hand in hand with "major game systems"?
Much the same as Adventure Mode...people have been begging for the ability to jump around acts since launch, finally they'll get to, complete with Bounties and Rifts to space out the farming/XP.
That all being the case, I don't know how "full" RoS is supposed to be. It's an expansion, it's not a full separate game. The Mystic is going to be a really popular artisan to fully boost the quantity of good item drops. Act 5 is going to be pretty huge, robust, and offer randomized zones for people to enjoy. The Crusader is a sixth class to round out the pairs of classes working with different mainstats, not to mention starting right away with more skills than the other classes did at launch.
Everything seems pretty appropriate to me...
As for the OP's post...it'd be seriously nice if it releases March 25. Won't count on it till we hear an official announcement, and luckily I have D3 on PS3, Kingdoms of Amalur, Assassin's Creed Revelations, and Dragon's Crown on Vita to keep me busy till the PTR hits, :-D