I love this game, and have spent hundreds of hours playing it, but there are a few design decisions which I find are absolutely infuriating and I cannot for the life of me understand why the D3 design team won't fix them. Is it just plain stubbornness, or is the development team that far out of touch with the community?
Here are my top 3 of nonsensical frustrations. 1)Identifying items. - At least the community managers and game developers have tried to improve this element, but I cannot understand why they won't implement an Identify all feature when the vast majority of the community have continuously stated that this is what they want. I've read the explanations about the "present unwrapping" /anticipation, but frankly that argument does not hold up with the itemisation system that they have implemented where the vast, vast majority of yellow items are junk. 2) Time to craft gems - Unlike item 1, I have never heard of a good explanation for this and it just seems like an insane waste of time. Like seriously, what is the point blizzard???? it has to be the most boring part of the game by a long shot and serves no purpose except to bore the player base away from the game. A classic example is the requirement for perfect square gems required for the jeweler designs in 1.07. Most people are going to want to craft at least 20-30 items at a time for efficiency reasons and also to give themselves a decent shot at an upgrade. So for all the people wanting to craft their own, this generally means several minutes of mind numbing; "click, and wait 4 seconds, repeat adnauseum". What is the point? What would be so wrong with implementing a "Shift + click" that did 10 at a time for example? Similarly, upgrading all your pre-inferno crafting materials is the same boring exercise. 3) Time to craft recipes - same argument as above. Lots of us are going to be crafting 20,30 maybe even 50+ or more items at a time - what is the point of waiting 3-4 seconds every time.
As I said at the outset, I really do enjoy this game and think that it is getting much better with every patch, but these particular items annoy the crap out of me and I find it sad that such obvious and simple improvements can't be addressed. To me at least, it does definitely demonstrate that the developers are indeed out of touch.
Those things don't really bother me honestly. Identifying a whole inventory of items takes a minute max and that's about how long it takes to look each item over anyways so an identify all option would save a few seconds a couple times a run, not a big deal IMO. Gems I craft as I stash them or don't craft them at all, so not really an issue also. And crafted items I like to do 1 or 2 at a time as to not waste DE if I don't need to.
fair enough richtko, and I am sure that there are a decent proportion of the player base that agrees with you and isn't too worried about these points. However, I also know that there is a large proportion who are irked by the items I have mentioned. The point is that Blizzard could easily "fix" these elements. By doing so, they wouldn't upset you (or any of the people that think like you) but they would certainly make the game a whole lot more fun for me (and the people who do think like me).
1) By vast majority of the community, I believe you mean a bunch of threads on the noturiously whiny b.net forums? Cause I sure don't care. It takes very little time. I would much rather they put this effort towards something else, like say #2.
2) Agreed. They've stated they're looking at this, I think it was one of the AMA's. No clue when this will happen. However, the reason why they did this is part of the reason why they have you "unwrap" an item, the anticipation (which I think is actually heightened by the lack of useful yellows, it's that gamblers high which you won't get if you always win).
3) Same as above, plus they want people to feel they invested in it. Also, the time is part of the investment.
All that said, yes they could probably fix these rather easily. However, something a lot of people forget is that every easy fix takes time away from something else. Something one finds in any production environment is nothing happens in a vacum. Yes, it is easy to fix by itself, BUT they have to weigh that time against all sorts of other stuff, and whether it's worth it or not to do so. Plus, I'm sure if they did fix it, there'd be other people complaining about how now they don't get that anticipation, just like there were people complaining about how you don't need scrolls, or Cain, to ID anymore. Same with the crafting items, people are going to start whining about how someone is mass crafting high level items and flooding the market or some such.
Fair points, and thanks for the contribution.
1) Yes, I tend to agree that the "whiny" forum posters (maybe I am one of them now!) tend to be misrepresented simply because they are more vocal. That said, my feeling is that most players, especially the high end players would prefer an identify all feature, and it would be easy to make it optional which keeps everyone happy.
2) You are probably right that the "anticipation" was part of the original reasoning, but IMHO, there is no anticipation factor - we all know what you are going to get 4 seconds after pushing the button!. It's good to hear that the issue is on their radar though.
Good point about opportunity cost, but again the fact that we are assuming that these are easy fixes also assumes that very little time is diverted away from other, possibly more important, activities. You are right that it is in the nature of many to moan/whine regardless of what blizzard does, but my point is that I believe it is actually possible to keep (almost) everyone happy - e.g. making the Identify all optional. (gee, I would even be happy to pay gold for the ID all service!)
They can implement ID all that excludes legendaries and sets, I'm all for that. I personally like taking a couple of seconds to unwrap my Lacuni's and Echoing Furies.
As for gems... I haven't crafted them in ages, other than the Marquise in the past few days. I don't mind crafting time for the items, either. It's another gift-unwrapping phase. After all, you pretty much stop the moment you get the good one anyway.
Even though I pick up most of everything that drops I don't particularly mind unidentifying. Maybe if it was instant it would be better? Either way, I'll be happy if they implement an ID All feature, but they can take as much time as they want with it. Not too bothered.
On gems, I'm pretty sure they mentioned they'll be implementing a "craft X amount" feature in the coming patches. The reason being that you know what the results will be. That is also the reason why they won't implement a "craft X amount" for Blacksmithing. Results are random and it's supposed to be a decision after each craft whether to continue with another.
Gems
For an incentive, reduce cost by x amount after crafting x amount.
Then it might be worth your time crafting yourself.
Something to make it interesting, maybe combine gems to produce mixed stats. Mixed stat gems cannot be sold or traded.
Just an idea.
Mixed stat could mean more than intelligence and strength, it could produce crit chance or gold find or both on same gem.
Honestly, out of all the flaws that D3 suffers from, these three feel the least 'infuriating' to me. At most, I'd say it's annoying to identify rare items one by one, especially when it is nothing but a pointless chore 99.99% time.
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"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
I love that Blizzard released a game, with numerous game mechanics that are undesirable to the player only for said player to then point out these design flaws for them to fix over time.
No joke, it feels like this a Beta game and we are all game testers working for free.
Seriously though, I accept D3 for what it is. I enjoy it on a very base level, nothing like its predecessor which I played for ages. I would say that its got about another 6 months left and that'll be it unfortunately.
Honestly, out of all the flaws that D3 suffers from, these three feel the least 'infuriating' to me. At most, I'd say it's annoying to identify rare items one by one, especially when it is nothing but a pointless chore 99.99% time.
Yeah, I kind of know what you mean, these really are more "annoyances" than anything else, but the reason that I find them "infuriating" is because they are no brainers and so easy to fix.
Identifying has never really bothered me, but mass crafting gems would be nice, not so sure it's needed for blacksmithing as you could get a perfect item on the 1st roll, in which case it would be pointless and expensive continuing to cast the remaining 99 rolls or whatever.
Whole heartedly agree on gem crafting time. It's absolutely ridiculous.
I don't mind the ID timer, but it could still be shorter and still probably retain that present mechanic, though it'd be more akin to madly tearing the wrapping off. .3 seconds would be good enough while making the player pay attention to what they've gotten.
I think the ID thing is to keep players from vacuuming up every last rare, IDin them all, then selling them off. A minor sort of way to keep even more gold out of the economy. :/ And honestly, at a certain point, you're only picking up 1/3 of all rares, unless you need them for crafting and you don't even have to bother with IDing those. The key is to pick up items that actually have potential value and you could actually get excited about, so you're not sitting there IDing a bunch of 700 DPS 2handers.
*guess* The reason is probably technical - they give their servers X seconds to find the data and send it to the player, rather than "GIEV STATS NAO". This allows to avoid "bursts" of requests, where it could happen that at 1st second players would attempt to identify a total of 10000 items, 2nd second only 1000 and 3rd second 4000 - leading to lag, at least for the first group of players, and more likely for everyone, because of instability. Instead, with the current system, let's say the servers process 5000 items immediately and then the rest "when they have time", but the player sees no difference unless s/he inspects the packets - in game he gets his ID results after 3 seconds anyway.
It doesn't matter that much for gems (because the results are immediately known, server is only really required for confirmation, which can arrive later and be hidden from the player), so they are fixing it. For items/crafts, IMO forget about it.
This is actually an amazing and perfectly valid explanation. I could really imagine that: ID time as some kind of server request buffer to avoid desyncs/rollbacks.
Best post in this entire thread (because the first time I hear this and the first time I read something new here).
Maybe we'll see the ID all feature, maybe not. But we'll definitely get the auto gem crafting feature, while we will not see an auto item crafting feature. Blizzard replied to both already.
*guess* The reason is probably technical - they give their servers X seconds to find the data and send it to the player, rather than "GIEV STATS NAO". This allows to avoid "bursts" of requests, where it could happen that at 1st second players would attempt to identify a total of 10000 items, 2nd second only 1000 and 3rd second 4000 - leading to lag, at least for the first group of players, and more likely for everyone, because of instability. Instead, with the current system, let's say the servers process 5000 items immediately and then the rest "when they have time", but the player sees no difference unless s/he inspects the packets - in game he gets his ID results after 3 seconds anyway.
It doesn't matter that much for gems (because the results are immediately known, server is only really required for confirmation, which can arrive later and be hidden from the player), so they are fixing it. For items/crafts, IMO forget about it.
There is definitely a blue post somewhere telling people that holding on to unid legendary items until after the legendary buff patch is pointless as stats are rolled when items dropped.
There was also the exploit to determine unid'ed items stats, which couldn't work unless the stats were already determined but hidden.
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Here are my top 3 of nonsensical frustrations.
1) Identifying items. - At least the community managers and game developers have tried to improve this element, but I cannot understand why they won't implement an Identify all feature when the vast majority of the community have continuously stated that this is what they want. I've read the explanations about the "present unwrapping" /anticipation, but frankly that argument does not hold up with the itemisation system that they have implemented where the vast, vast majority of yellow items are junk.
2) Time to craft gems - Unlike item 1, I have never heard of a good explanation for this and it just seems like an insane waste of time. Like seriously, what is the point blizzard???? it has to be the most boring part of the game by a long shot and serves no purpose except to bore the player base away from the game. A classic example is the requirement for perfect square gems required for the jeweler designs in 1.07. Most people are going to want to craft at least 20-30 items at a time for efficiency reasons and also to give themselves a decent shot at an upgrade. So for all the people wanting to craft their own, this generally means several minutes of mind numbing; "click, and wait 4 seconds, repeat adnauseum". What is the point? What would be so wrong with implementing a "Shift + click" that did 10 at a time for example? Similarly, upgrading all your pre-inferno crafting materials is the same boring exercise.
3) Time to craft recipes - same argument as above. Lots of us are going to be crafting 20,30 maybe even 50+ or more items at a time - what is the point of waiting 3-4 seconds every time.
As I said at the outset, I really do enjoy this game and think that it is getting much better with every patch, but these particular items annoy the crap out of me and I find it sad that such obvious and simple improvements can't be addressed. To me at least, it does definitely demonstrate that the developers are indeed out of touch.
2) Agreed. They've stated they're looking at this, I think it was one of the AMA's. No clue when this will happen. However, the reason why they did this is part of the reason why they have you "unwrap" an item, the anticipation (which I think is actually heightened by the lack of useful yellows, it's that gamblers high which you won't get if you always win).
3) Same as above, plus they want people to feel they invested in it. Also, the time is part of the investment.
All that said, yes they could probably fix these rather easily. However, something a lot of people forget is that every easy fix takes time away from something else. Something one finds in any production environment is nothing happens in a vacum. Yes, it is easy to fix by itself, BUT they have to weigh that time against all sorts of other stuff, and whether it's worth it or not to do so. Plus, I'm sure if they did fix it, there'd be other people complaining about how now they don't get that anticipation, just like there were people complaining about how you don't need scrolls, or Cain, to ID anymore. Same with the crafting items, people are going to start whining about how someone is mass crafting high level items and flooding the market or some such.
Fair points, and thanks for the contribution.
1) Yes, I tend to agree that the "whiny" forum posters (maybe I am one of them now!) tend to be misrepresented simply because they are more vocal. That said, my feeling is that most players, especially the high end players would prefer an identify all feature, and it would be easy to make it optional which keeps everyone happy.
2) You are probably right that the "anticipation" was part of the original reasoning, but IMHO, there is no anticipation factor - we all know what you are going to get 4 seconds after pushing the button!. It's good to hear that the issue is on their radar though.
Good point about opportunity cost, but again the fact that we are assuming that these are easy fixes also assumes that very little time is diverted away from other, possibly more important, activities. You are right that it is in the nature of many to moan/whine regardless of what blizzard does, but my point is that I believe it is actually possible to keep (almost) everyone happy - e.g. making the Identify all optional. (gee, I would even be happy to pay gold for the ID all service!)
Cheers
As for the id all, +1, but they are extremely stubborn about it, don't know why.
As for gems... I haven't crafted them in ages, other than the Marquise in the past few days. I don't mind crafting time for the items, either. It's another gift-unwrapping phase. After all, you pretty much stop the moment you get the good one anyway.
But yes, ID all for looted rares.
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On gems, I'm pretty sure they mentioned they'll be implementing a "craft X amount" feature in the coming patches. The reason being that you know what the results will be. That is also the reason why they won't implement a "craft X amount" for Blacksmithing. Results are random and it's supposed to be a decision after each craft whether to continue with another.
Ha. Bagstone.
Gems
For an incentive, reduce cost by x amount after crafting x amount.
Then it might be worth your time crafting yourself.
Something to make it interesting, maybe combine gems to produce mixed stats. Mixed stat gems cannot be sold or traded.
Just an idea.
Mixed stat could mean more than intelligence and strength, it could produce crit chance or gold find or both on same gem.
No joke, it feels like this a Beta game and we are all game testers working for free.
Seriously though, I accept D3 for what it is. I enjoy it on a very base level, nothing like its predecessor which I played for ages. I would say that its got about another 6 months left and that'll be it unfortunately.
Yeah, I kind of know what you mean, these really are more "annoyances" than anything else, but the reason that I find them "infuriating" is because they are no brainers and so easy to fix.
What was the point of this? I said I don't mind identifying.
Ha. Bagstone.
I don't mind the ID timer, but it could still be shorter and still probably retain that present mechanic, though it'd be more akin to madly tearing the wrapping off. .3 seconds would be good enough while making the player pay attention to what they've gotten.
I think the ID thing is to keep players from vacuuming up every last rare, IDin them all, then selling them off. A minor sort of way to keep even more gold out of the economy. :/ And honestly, at a certain point, you're only picking up 1/3 of all rares, unless you need them for crafting and you don't even have to bother with IDing those. The key is to pick up items that actually have potential value and you could actually get excited about, so you're not sitting there IDing a bunch of 700 DPS 2handers.
This is actually an amazing and perfectly valid explanation. I could really imagine that: ID time as some kind of server request buffer to avoid desyncs/rollbacks.
Best post in this entire thread (because the first time I hear this and the first time I read something new here).
Maybe we'll see the ID all feature, maybe not. But we'll definitely get the auto gem crafting feature, while we will not see an auto item crafting feature. Blizzard replied to both already.
Stats are rolled when the item drops...
Proof/source?
There is definitely a blue post somewhere telling people that holding on to unid legendary items until after the legendary buff patch is pointless as stats are rolled when items dropped.
There was also the exploit to determine unid'ed items stats, which couldn't work unless the stats were already determined but hidden.