Digital Purchase Restrictions Have Been Updated
We reported a few days ago on the limitations that the digital copy of Diablo III has for up to the first 72 hours. With patch 1.0.3a some of the restrictions have been lowered allowing full access to act 1 now.
Update 6/26/12: Leveling and Act I content restrictions for unverified digital purchasers have been removed with patch 1.0.3a. Please note that this change will not take effect until your game client has been updated to the most recent patch.
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For security reasons and to help ensure the integrity of the game and auction house service, players who purchase the digital version of Diablo III may have to wait until payment verification is complete before they can access certain game features. (See below for a full list of restrictions associated with digital purchases.) While most payments are approved and restrictions are lifted within a day, in some cases it can take up to 72 hours to complete this process.
Similar to World of Warcraft, these restrictions were put in place to deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone.
However, as an unintended consequence of these security measures, players who purchase the game digitally after patch 1.0.3 are temporarily being capped at level 13 and not able to proceed beyond Act I. We are working to correct this as soon as possible and will provide another update when we have more details to share.
Aside from the two unintended restrictions noted above, below are the standard security-related restrictions that will be in place for digital purchases until payment verification is complete:
No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers
Again, we want to be perfectly clear that these are temporary restrictions (often lifted within a day and at most 72 hours) associated with digital purchases for the protection of players. We appreciate player feedback and will continue to evaluate the best methods for ensuring a positive game experience for everyone.
Repair Costs
Bashiok talks about how the design for repair costs changed during pre-beta to post launch.
I remember writing that! That was on the old Battle.net forums? Yeah at the time we wanted to avoidany and all costs to death, except maybe the time to run back. At the time we thought there could be some other solution, or the game just may play better, by not having any 'cost' penalties to death.
Obviously after a lot of play testing we ended up deciding we needed one and added a durability loss (ie gold cost) to death sometime pre-beta. The cost we chose at the time ended up being far less impactful than we anticipated, so it was increased in 1.0.3. As we added a cost to death (durability loss) in between when I wrote that (2010) and the release of the game, I think calling it a change of direction is a bit late. We definitely made a huge increase to the death penalty we shipped with, though.
In any case, we're going to see how the repair cost reductions in the 1.0.3a patch tomorrow work out, and keep an eye on it. Give it a shot and let us know what you think after tomorrow.
...which was discovered after additional play testing that did happen.
Took me a minute... ok edited for clarity. It's late. Lay off me.
You increased the repair cost to hedge inflation in the gold market because you failed to roll out commodity trading on the RMAH at the same time as gear trading. As such gold is now worthless and equivalent gear on the GAH compared to the RMAH is now 10x+ the gold cost it was originally.
Nah, good/careful players won't be spending that much more. At least not enough to suddenly make for an inflation-less economy. There are people still able to rack up tons of gold. I personally haven't noticed any big shifts in the GAH prices since 1.0.3, which if its goal was to balance the market it seems like it'd make some impact.
Diablo III Feedback
Yesterday both Kripp and Athene made feedback videos that got the attention of many Diablo players. You can see Kripp's video here and Athene's video here.
I have personally watched both of the videos (Kripp Tips as well as Athene's feedback video) and in my own opinion they were great to watch and contained some very interesting feedback on Diablo III. Please continue to post your thoughts on both of these videos as well as giving your own constructive feedback for Diablo III
Be sure that your posts contribute to the discussion in this thread, avoid further posts created simply to bump the thread such as +1 or similar.
Please have a look. It will be much apprciated if you forward these little but very realistic things to dev team.
That was indeed a very nice read Inka ^^ Along with all of the feedback you gave being great, I can especially say that a ridiculously strong item with a .00000001% drop chance or something would make me farm so hard for it, I could just imagine my sheer shock and amazement if it ever dropped for anyone >.<
Off on a bit of a tangent here, but...
WOOHOO we did it guys ! now how do we get the lead designer(s) to see this stuff too >.> ...
When there is no blue post in a thread that does not mean it is ignored or the feedback is not passed on. Just because you do not see us does not mean we are not here, we are always actively passing on feedback from the European community to the developers.
A Witch Doctors and Wizards should befenit a lot more from a weapon with 500 dps and 200 Int then 1000 dps and 100 int... The skills of wizards and witchs should scale with Intelligence and not weapon damage in my opinion.
Let me just get my way-back-when machine here ^^ :
We have no plans to make it so that Wizard and Witch Doctor spells will scale off of anything but weapon damage at this current point. Previously we did not have a very strong synergy between weapons and the caster classes.
We want everyone to get an awesome feeling whenever they upgrade their weapons. That is why we went in this direction; to ensure that Wizards and Witch Doctors would be greatly pleased about weapon drops, as it was not that exciting in the previous Diablo games for casters.
This was an intentional design decision for Diablo III as in Diablo II the synergy between casters and their weapons was not all that great. We wanted to make it so that everyone would have that feeling of "AWESOME!" when finding a new weapon for themselves.
I'd mostly improve legendaries/sets by adding more funky modifiers.
We mentioned information about this in previous blogs. We are looking to increase the affix diversity and unique bonuses you will find on legendary items, we also plan to make it so that high level legendaries should be outright better than blue items.
We'll be sharing more information about this in the future, but for now you can find all current details for legendary item changes in these blogs:
Drop Rates to be "Buffed" I'm confused a little by this, is the intention to nerf the drop rates again?
Wha? No. Buff. Also, welcome to being green. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
PvP
We have no plans to release PvP as paid DLC. As stated previously, our goal is to release PvP with the 1.1.0 content patch (which, as with all of our patches, will be available for free to all Diablo III players). While we don't have a date to share at this time for when 1.1.0 will released, we'll be providing more information as the development process continues. Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Auction House Update: 12:30 p.m. PDT - The auction house display issues should now be resolved. Please let us know if you continue to experience the issues listed below.
We're working to address issues with the auction house that have arisen since the servers were brought back online this morning. In the meantime players may encounter the following issues when attempting to access the auction house:
Items that were listed to sell on the AH pre-maintenance are no longer showing up under the Auctions tab.
Items that were being bid on are not showing up under the Auctions tab.
Items that have "disappeared" as a result of the above two issues -- they do not show up under Completed and players don't currently have the option to recover these items.
I don't suppose there's any ETA on getting the AH running again?
The auction house issues should be resolved now. If you're still experiencing issues, will you verify what those issues are?
WHERE oh WHERE in the patch notes did it say you would be TOUCHING the auction houses?
It was an issue that came up as we were bringing our services back online. It wasn't related to patching.
If people would just give specific issues that they are having then the rest of us could test/verify it for them. If people are just going to flame the Blizzard staff then they are drowning out the people that are still having legitimate problems.
This is very true. I'm wading through a number of posts where players are seemingly yelling at the wind, as I'm trying to find actual reports of specific issues I can pass along to the appropriate people.
That's kinda the point, we shouldn't be testing or verifying anything. They should've done that before releasing the game....
Sometimes when things come back out of maintenance, it takes a bit for everything to load up properly. This is why a lot of people didn't see items populated properly in their auction house tabs for a short period of time after the servers went live.
If you're expecting a perfect experience all the time with no bugs, and you'll complain whenever we even acknowledge that an issue is present, you'll end up frustrated and disappointed with the real world quite often.
If you don't want to help test or verify anything, that's fine. We'll still work to fix things as quickly as possible, based on our testing and the reports of those who do. Either way, sitting on the sidelines and complaining that people have to report these things to us doesn't help anyone. Not you. Not us. Not the people reporting.
I can see this being true, but normally, how long do these "reboots" take, per se?
I don't have a timeframe off the top of my head, but we're in the process of working on some optimizations to get the auction house loading more quickly after a restart, as well as to better alert people as to why auction tabs would be blank. We know it's really scary when it looks as though your auctions have disappeared and you're given no information in the client to let you know things are just taking a while to load. We want that to change.
What about the issues where this game isn't fun past a certain point?
That's not related to this thread. And it's so broad and subjective it's virtually meaningless. If you're not in this thread to relay an issue you're experiencing with the auction house, don't post.
An item I won on bid sold for total bid amount, not current bid....a 150k difference. Order #: 446636878. Not sure if this is related.
That sounds like an issue that'd require further investigation by our support team, which you can contact here:http://us.battle.net/support/en/
If it's supposed to be up ...my tab is greyed out completely, probably already know this but that's what I can report.
Have you tried closing and reopening the Diablo III client? Let me know if that resolves the issue. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Are You Happy With 1.0.3 - Recap
It has been a week since 1.0.3 was released and there have been many mixed opinions on the patch. With 1.0.3b hitting servers sometime this week to fix some loot drop rates and with patch 1.0.3a taking a little edge of the heavy repair costs, do you think your impressions of 1.0.3 will change?
Results from last week's poll:
Diablo 3, From a New Angle
Malu05 has returned with another stunning video of Diablo III. This time taking a look at all the details in Diablo III.
That "from a new angle" video really highlights to me how wasted these visual resources are in the original game. Imo, Blizz has great artists and sound people, but they weren't enough to make this game enjoyable in an enduring way.
The art and sound are the only things in this game that are as epic as they were in D2 (for its time).
--
They are always quick to nerf but so very very slow to buff. There won't be a chance of me providing positive feedback until they start fixing some of the skills nearly no one uses.
"Nah, good/careful players won't be spending that much more."
Only baddies spend lots of money on the AH? A lot of people play the AH more then the game and makes a ton of gold (and real money). If they want to get the current BiS items on the AH for insane prices they should be able to do that without being labelled stupid by Blizzard.
such a shame the average player will never be able to experience some of (well almost all) of the art work in the game due to the camera being locked in position
I've personally seen all of that artwork in-game. None of it is "hidden" by the locked camera angle, just look around you once-in-awhile.
Anyways, enjoyed the vid. Always enjoy seeing videos that present the same environment in different perspectives than you're used to.
The art and sound are the only things in this game that are as epic as they were in D2 (for its time).
--
They are always quick to nerf but so very very slow to buff. There won't be a chance of me providing positive feedback until they start fixing some of the skills nearly no one uses.
The sound in D2 was miles and miles better
really? you think the sound effects for skills are bad in this game? music isn't any good? I think they are both great...art is debatable as it has been since they showed it for D3 but i've not heard many negative comments about D3's sound
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AdministratorWe reported a few days ago on the limitations that the digital copy of Diablo III has for up to the first 72 hours. With patch 1.0.3a some of the restrictions have been lowered allowing full access to act 1 now.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
---
For security reasons and to help ensure the integrity of the game and auction house service, players who purchase the digital version of Diablo III may have to wait until payment verification is complete before they can access certain game features. (See below for a full list of restrictions associated with digital purchases.) While most payments are approved and restrictions are lifted within a day, in some cases it can take up to 72 hours to complete this process.
Similar to World of Warcraft, these restrictions were put in place to deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone.
However, as an unintended consequence of these security measures, players who purchase the game digitally after patch 1.0.3 are temporarily being capped at level 13 and not able to proceed beyond Act I. We are working to correct this as soon as possible and will provide another update when we have more details to share.
Aside from the two unintended restrictions noted above, below are the standard security-related restrictions that will be in place for digital purchases until payment verification is complete:
- No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
- No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
- Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
- Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
- Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
- Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers
Again, we want to be perfectly clear that these are temporary restrictions (often lifted within a day and at most 72 hours) associated with digital purchases for the protection of players. We appreciate player feedback and will continue to evaluate the best methods for ensuring a positive game experience for everyone.Repair Costs
Bashiok talks about how the design for repair costs changed during pre-beta to post launch.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Obviously after a lot of play testing we ended up deciding we needed one and added a durability loss (ie gold cost) to death sometime pre-beta. The cost we chose at the time ended up being far less impactful than we anticipated, so it was increased in 1.0.3. As we added a cost to death (durability loss) in between when I wrote that (2010) and the release of the game, I think calling it a change of direction is a bit late. We definitely made a huge increase to the death penalty we shipped with, though.
In any case, we're going to see how the repair cost reductions in the 1.0.3a patch tomorrow work out, and keep an eye on it. Give it a shot and let us know what you think after tomorrow.
...which was discovered after additional play testing that did happen.
Took me a minute... ok edited for clarity.
You increased the repair cost to hedge inflation in the gold market because you failed to roll out commodity trading on the RMAH at the same time as gear trading. As such gold is now worthless and equivalent gear on the GAH compared to the RMAH is now 10x+ the gold cost it was originally.
Nah, good/careful players won't be spending that much more. At least not enough to suddenly make for an inflation-less economy. There are people still able to rack up tons of gold. I personally haven't noticed any big shifts in the GAH prices since 1.0.3, which if its goal was to balance the market it seems like it'd make some impact.
Diablo III Feedback
Yesterday both Kripp and Athene made feedback videos that got the attention of many Diablo players. You can see Kripp's video here and Athene's video here.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Be sure that your posts contribute to the discussion in this thread, avoid further posts created simply to bump the thread such as +1 or similar.
Please have a look. It will be much apprciated if you forward these little but very realistic things to dev team.
That was indeed a very nice read Inka ^^ Along with all of the feedback you gave being great, I can especially say that a ridiculously strong item with a .00000001% drop chance or something would make me farm so hard for it, I could just imagine my sheer shock and amazement if it ever dropped for anyone >.<
Off on a bit of a tangent here, but...
WOOHOO we did it guys ! now how do we get the lead designer(s) to see this stuff too >.> ...
When there is no blue post in a thread that does not mean it is ignored or the feedback is not passed on. Just because you do not see us does not mean we are not here, we are always actively passing on feedback from the European community to the developers.
A Witch Doctors and Wizards should befenit a lot more from a weapon with 500 dps and 200 Int then 1000 dps and 100 int... The skills of wizards and witchs should scale with Intelligence and not weapon damage in my opinion.
Let me just get my way-back-when machine here ^^ :
This was an intentional design decision for Diablo III as in Diablo II the synergy between casters and their weapons was not all that great. We wanted to make it so that everyone would have that feeling of "AWESOME!" when finding a new weapon for themselves.
I'd mostly improve legendaries/sets by adding more funky modifiers.
We mentioned information about this in previous blogs. We are looking to increase the affix diversity and unique bonuses you will find on legendary items, we also plan to make it so that high level legendaries should be outright better than blue items. We'll be sharing more information about this in the future, but for now you can find all current details for legendary item changes in these blogs:
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
I'm confused a little by this, is the intention to nerf the drop rates again?
Wha? No. Buff. Also, welcome to being green. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
PvP
We have no plans to release PvP as paid DLC. As stated previously, our goal is to release PvP with the 1.1.0 content patch (which, as with all of our patches, will be available for free to all Diablo III players). While we don't have a date to share at this time for when 1.1.0 will released, we'll be providing more information as the development process continues. Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Auction House
Update: 12:30 p.m. PDT - The auction house display issues should now be resolved. Please let us know if you continue to experience the issues listed below.
We're working to address issues with the auction house that have arisen since the servers were brought back online this morning. In the meantime players may encounter the following issues when attempting to access the auction house:
- Items that were listed to sell on the AH pre-maintenance are no longer showing up under the Auctions tab.
- Items that were being bid on are not showing up under the Auctions tab.
- Items that have "disappeared" as a result of the above two issues -- they do not show up under Completed and players don't currently have the option to recover these items.
I don't suppose there's any ETA on getting the AH running again?The auction house issues should be resolved now. If you're still experiencing issues, will you verify what those issues are?
WHERE oh WHERE in the patch notes did it say you would be TOUCHING the auction houses?
It was an issue that came up as we were bringing our services back online. It wasn't related to patching.
If people would just give specific issues that they are having then the rest of us could test/verify it for them. If people are just going to flame the Blizzard staff then they are drowning out the people that are still having legitimate problems.
This is very true. I'm wading through a number of posts where players are seemingly yelling at the wind, as I'm trying to find actual reports of specific issues I can pass along to the appropriate people.
That's kinda the point, we shouldn't be testing or verifying anything. They should've done that before releasing the game....
Sometimes when things come back out of maintenance, it takes a bit for everything to load up properly. This is why a lot of people didn't see items populated properly in their auction house tabs for a short period of time after the servers went live.
If you're expecting a perfect experience all the time with no bugs, and you'll complain whenever we even acknowledge that an issue is present, you'll end up frustrated and disappointed with the real world quite often.
If you don't want to help test or verify anything, that's fine. We'll still work to fix things as quickly as possible, based on our testing and the reports of those who do. Either way, sitting on the sidelines and complaining that people have to report these things to us doesn't help anyone. Not you. Not us. Not the people reporting.
I can see this being true, but normally, how long do these "reboots" take, per se?
I don't have a timeframe off the top of my head, but we're in the process of working on some optimizations to get the auction house loading more quickly after a restart, as well as to better alert people as to why auction tabs would be blank. We know it's really scary when it looks as though your auctions have disappeared and you're given no information in the client to let you know things are just taking a while to load. We want that to change.
What about the issues where this game isn't fun past a certain point?
That's not related to this thread. And it's so broad and subjective it's virtually meaningless. If you're not in this thread to relay an issue you're experiencing with the auction house, don't post.
An item I won on bid sold for total bid amount, not current bid....a 150k difference. Order #: 446636878. Not sure if this is related.
That sounds like an issue that'd require further investigation by our support team, which you can contact here:http://us.battle.net/support/en/
If it's supposed to be up ...my tab is greyed out completely, probably already know this but that's what I can report.
Have you tried closing and reopening the Diablo III client? Let me know if that resolves the issue. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Are You Happy With 1.0.3 - Recap
It has been a week since 1.0.3 was released and there have been many mixed opinions on the patch. With 1.0.3b hitting servers sometime this week to fix some loot drop rates and with patch 1.0.3a taking a little edge of the heavy repair costs, do you think your impressions of 1.0.3 will change?
Results from last week's poll:
Diablo 3, From a New Angle
Malu05 has returned with another stunning video of Diablo III. This time taking a look at all the details in Diablo III.
--
They are always quick to nerf but so very very slow to buff. There won't be a chance of me providing positive feedback until they start fixing some of the skills nearly no one uses.
Only baddies spend lots of money on the AH? A lot of people play the AH more then the game and makes a ton of gold (and real money). If they want to get the current BiS items on the AH for insane prices they should be able to do that without being labelled stupid by Blizzard.
Anyways, enjoyed the vid. Always enjoy seeing videos that present the same environment in different perspectives than you're used to.
really? you think the sound effects for skills are bad in this game? music isn't any good? I think they are both great...art is debatable as it has been since they showed it for D3 but i've not heard many negative comments about D3's sound