The reason that Jay says they are not trying to make D3 an e-sport is because he wants people to know they don't give a fuck if PvP is imbalanced. That's why he says it, it's the only reason. He's trying to look as radical as possible to get the point across as well, and the other Diablo games didn't cater to PvP either, and people played them for long periods of time. I bet you damn near anything as well that people are going to whine that PvP is imbalanced anyway.
The community is goign to make it into their own E-sport most likely, as well. They did it with the other ones, nothing is stopping them from doing it with this one.
I mean simplyfying game mechanics such as skill trees and such so that the casual gamer instead of playing Barbie with his character, that is worrying about what 1 point to use in that skill reading huge guides on min/maxing and getting maximum amount of headache and spending 50 minutes worrying about the skill trees and dresses and playing only 10 minutes, they can now just jump into the action ASAP when logging in.
I thought people did that stuff because it was fun. Well I find it just as fun as playing the game, at least.
It seems blizz is justifying a lot of gameplay decisions based on their vision of Diablo 3 as being a "casual" "coop" game.
I've heard they aren't going to worry too much about balancing classes because they don't intend for it to be an e-sport.
And this was Bashiok's response to someone who said "My 6 year old brother will be competitive at this game"...
"It's a co-op game. What exactly are you expecting people to compete over? And I'm guessing you didn't play Diablo II."
I also heard that even though there will be a PvP component to the game... it also wont be very serious. There wont be any sort of standings or ways of evaluating/comparing yourself...
Are they just being lazy? Why not balance the classes? Why make it so casual? Why not make it more competitive?
I think their goal is to make a game that can be picked up and played at any time, by any one, and for the one-word description coming from any player's mouth to be "Fun!"... But for me a "coop"-Diablo that is nearly void of competition (that my 6 year old brother, or any fool with ample cash to blow on the auction house, can beat me at) sounds a whole lot less fun.
I want to know what all my hard work/fun/time spent has earned me. I want to know how I stack up against others. I want to know if the players I just lost to in PvP bought all of their items with real money (Which by the way is entirely possible now that blizz is doing all the transactions). I want a Diablo that is viable as an e-sport.
To me the competition is what makes things "fun". Its what drives me to want more loot.
I am going to play regardless of what form Diablo takes on... But for how long, and with what level of enjoyment remains to be seen. I just hope blizz is making all the best decisions by keeping all of our interests in mind, and not just blindly following some vision and the dollar bill.
They will of course balance the classes, but as long there isn't competitive PVP they don't have to nitpick balance every skill/rune combination to the letter, and why casual you ask? why competitive i ask.I'm glad some game designers still make games that have a bigger focus on fun and relaxed game play then serious and competitive player vs player.
If there is one company good at catering both to hardcore and caaual at the same time it is Blizzard so I agree that they could cater both.
And it's a colossal pain in the ass to do so. Blizzard has probably spent most of it's WoW money re-balancing WoW to meet the combined expectations of both audience members.
Perfect examples are WoW and SC2. There are endless gaming options in both of the games. They are both easy to pick up and play but far from easy to reach the top (specially in SC2 with all the op Koreans lol). Both of them have done excellent giving gaming options for both PvE players and PvP players.
Putting aside for a moment that these examples are in diffiren genres, I think you're being generous saying starcraft 2 has exellent pve. I mean, yeah the campeign isn't bad, but it's not replayable pve content. SC is about pvp, it
s a head to head rts. WoW began as a pve game, got a whole lot of iteration on pvp, and now is a little of both with a lot of lasting balance problems in both areas.
I followed D3 development because I was so sure that competitive aspect of games was something Blizzard really has shown interest for in all of their games so the dissappointment inevitable became HUGE when not only removing ladder that already was announced but Jay Wilson saying things like "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP guy".
If you came into D3 assuming there was going to be a huge pvp audience, you clearly missed the first two games. There has been pvp in D2, but it isn't supported to the extent other tites encourage pvp. When the lead designer says he's not going to get into the pvp balance game and says "shut up pvp guy," that's a pretty good indicator that the pvp audience is screaming into deaf ears. Might not have been the most PC way to say it, but i'd go the same rout. They delivered on MORE pvp conent than any diablo title yet and they even promised to iterate on it in the future. What they refuse to promise is ranked ladder and pvp balance (which go hand in hand if you've ever read a ladder forum) because it DOES detract from their development of D3 as a pve game by adding conflicts of interest in skill modifiers, items, etc.
You like PvP or you don't like it. But as a lead for a big game like Diablo you do not talk like that in media. That is just awful statements to make. I can't imagine those comments, again whether Blizz employees agree with the design decisions or not, were popular at Blizz headquarters as well.
Actually you talk like that if you want to appeal to the target audience: pve players who've become fed up with pvp balance ruining their gameplay.
When it comes to making a game more "approachable," there isn't the giant trade-off that people think. This idea that making systems more efficient and understandable for all gamers necessarily means that the high-end number-crunching pros are getting shafted is flat wrong. The scales aren't being "tipped" for casuals. It's not like there's a balance, and putting features on the "casual" side means that you've taken features out of the "hardcore" side. Those features apply to casuals AND hardcore gamers, and the fact that they're intelligible and don't require alt-tabbing to 3rd party websites constantly is a big POSITIVE in my mind.
I'm not gonna judge the quality of this game until I play it. Every time I read about a change, my initial response is WTF!? Then, once I remove pre-conceived notions and actually think about it, I start to understand. When I read dev forum responses, or watch interview videos explaining the changes, I can trade the superficial and biased theories for the real, well-pondered reasoning behind it.
I think Blizzard deserves the benefit of the doubt, until we get our hands on the game and experience it ourselves. Theorycrafting is grossly inadequate when judging the quality of a game.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
Jay Wilson is not a Hamas leader trying to talk shit about his enemies in order to get his people excited.
I don't think I made that level of comparison, but you're on the right track if you are aiming for a full-on middle-east ranting derail of this thread.
He is a business representative that represents Blizzard. "Over my dead body" is something he should carefully use since, if you follow other blizz dev leads, they are very careful with words close to "never".
He's not a marketing executive and he was speaking to community members, not the general public. I don't know how politically correct and muted you expected his language to be, but i'm thankful he actually sat up there and had a candid conversation instead of towing the party line and trying not to offend anyone.
That is how professional leads act. They bring forth their arguments for their design choices they make but don't go talking shit and pissing of another portion of their customer base which is believe or not players that enjoy competitive PvP. Also there is no such thing as "over my dead body". If the majority of market demanded a certain functionality you bet your ass Blizzard would do it. It all comes down to a good business case at the end of the day. This aint charity work for kids sitting at their computers.
I think you're really confusing "lead designer," with "internet politician." When it comes down to good business, Blizzard made a good product and they're giving us Jay interviews to answer any "why'd you do that," with candid answers from the horses' mouth. That's good business and it's trasparency of design, also good.
You actually believe that any corporate doing serious business likes their representatives using sentences like "over my dead body" and "shut up PvP guy"?
I think, once again, you're majorly confused. Jay isn't the Blizzard marketing exec and he was expected to be candid in his interviews. What's more, you've blown those quotes entirely out of porportion and context (if you could even produce their origninal context, i'd be shocked) and essentially gone on a self-serving rant to justify your position as an angry pvp'er.
I actually like how Jay didn't try to sugar coat anything. If anything really he's played the extreme side of the game and just said everything that Blizzard intends Diablo to be, and probably even exaggerated alot. Would you rather have a dude that says, "We're looking into it and we want to please everyone," Then have the same exact thing happen that's happening now?
No, then Blizzard would be horrible money grubbing liars in everyone's opinion. It's a lose-lose situation no matter what.
You really show how little you know about the business world with the amount of crap that comes from your mouth.
So what, because he is not a marketing exec he is not bounded to professionalism but can go on self served missions on pissing of parts of the community in order to please another because "he is talking to the community and not the general public"?
Because obviously you don't care for PvP much you weren't offended which makes it much easier for you sitting there acting smartass with idiot comments like "you're majorly confused".
What if it was a franchise you cared for hearing bs coming out of the company representitive of the portions you cared about?
Seriously, the only thing clear on these and other boards are not the "angry" PvPers. It is the hate that comes from PvE people about a portion of the game they have less or no intention on even playing.
It couldn't be that he was speaking in a familiar manner because he's met most if not all of the people in the interview room before. And I've never heard of someone overstating something with hyperbole before. I mean, its not like it ever happens on the internet. (cwutididther?)
LOL, listening to some of these kids frothing at the mouth, you'd think that Jay Wilson wakes up each morning and says, "I HATE PVP! How can I destroy PVPers and everything they love today?"
I dont get all these 'It's to casual' topics anymore. Sure, blizz made a lot of changes (and not that i agree with absolutely all of them), but isn't at least expected to see how the gameplay turns out? How can we judge if we haven't played it yet?
I'll keep my judgement untill after release and had some hands-on playtime with the game. For all we know it's gonna be harder then we think it will be.
Agreed, none of these changes tell us anything about how difficult the game will be. Blizzard has said that D3 is all about the combat, and I imagine that it will get quite challenging. I suspect that it is going to be much more involved than in D2.
Nah im not joking. What other RPG or game bases your win on the ability to dodge attacks and aim your own? FPS? Fighter? Diablo has the elements to make it a great PvP game, WoW does not. Again if you think gear makes or breaks Diablo PvP then we can go and make some open battle.net characters, you can get your guy the best legit gear in the game and ill make a guy and go buy gear off charsi and ill be a lower level and I can show you that your gear doesn't mean jack compared to skill buddy. Anyone who says gear > skill in Diablo 2 simply wasn't good at PvP.
I dont even have a diablo cd anymore. But if you wanna keep drinking your own koolaid go ahead I dont really care. Its a gear based game. Always has been, always will. Hey, maybe thats why they are adding a rmah because you know people play diablo for gear. Maybe thats why there was 8 million diablo shops and dupes because hey people want gear to go destroy other gearless ppl. Dodging one measly attack just to one shot someone else is not skillbased pvp. I mean they dont play instagib in shooters professionally do they?
Diablo pvp is pretty much equal to dota/hon/LoL. I like it, but if i was gonna brag about my ability in a game, it would be in a shooter or rts, both with take more skill then any other genre in player vs. player.
Nah im not joking. What other RPG or game bases your win on the ability to dodge attacks and aim your own? FPS? Fighter? Diablo has the elements to make it a great PvP game, WoW does not.
LOL, I didn't even see this post but wtf are you talking about.
Diablo pvp is pretty much equal to dota/hon/LoL. I like it, but if i was gonna brag about my ability in a game, it would be in a shooter or rts, both with take more skill then any other genre in player vs. player.
Mmm, I wouldn't say that shooter or rts has more or less skill requirement than MOBAs or Diablo. They all have different systems to work within and different elements to monitor.
I mean, soccer is a relatively simply game, but that doesn't mean that the whatever team won the last world cup is less skilled than a football player.
I mean, that statement right there shows some ignorance (i don't watch soccer at all) so I'm just assuming football is more complicated.
Go is simple, chess is complicated, they both require a lot (and different) skills to win.
(though I've never cared for Diablo PvP that much).
Dude, I read through all of your post. Couldn't you at least have begun your post with that you have never cared for Diablo PvP so I wouldn't have wasted my time reading your whole post?
It's hard to discuss PvP and why it matters with someone that doesn't care for it to begin with.
It would be like you and I discuss the awesome features of the big bad boogy man boss or whatever the bosses are called in Diablo when in fact I don't give 2 cents about what the boss is called and what script he follows.
To me, he is something that gives gear so I can beat the crap of human players I want to play with/against.
Also stop with the nonsense "it costs to develop and maintain". Lets just play with the idea that Diablo would have 20% more players if the PvP was a bit more than the cuddly environment it will be now. I bet that would be kind of a good business case, wouldn't it?
So, just because I didn't care about PvPing where if you weren't in super amazo gear you would get killed instantly makes my points invalid? Nothing I stated was less valid because I didn't care for Diablo PvP. In addition, I'm actually MORE interested in the PvP of Diablo 3 due to the plans they have for it.
The point is though that Diablo is about its story and bashing monsters, not players. Sure they gave you the option, because it isn't hard to do so. Now in Diablo 3 they are already devoting time and money to give those that liked the ridiculous nature of Diablo PvP some love. Yet they still get downed on as if its never enough.
I'm sorry, Diablo 3 is a RPG not a PvP battle game. Its primary focus is those RPG elements. If this doesn't suit you, then go play another game. Heck, MOBA games seem to fit that style of PvP pretty well, abiat with a lot less grind.
As others in this thread have pointed out as well, just because they are using the term casual a lot when they talk about Diablo 3, doesn't mean it'll really be 'easy'. They are making an effort to make some rather extreme difficulty modes for play through.
Mmm, I wouldn't say that shooter or rts has more or less skill requirement than MOBAs or Diablo. They all have different systems to work within and different elements to monitor.
I mean, soccer is a relatively simply game, but that doesn't mean that the whatever team won the last world cup is less skilled than a football player.
I mean, that statement right there shows some ignorance (i don't watch soccer at all) so I'm just assuming football is more complicated.
Go is simple, chess is complicated, they both require a lot (and different) skills to win.
I didnt mean to say they dont require skill. Its just the level of skill people think they require is a little out of whack. I personally base what takes the most skill on what is hardest to be good at.
Like I feel I have a much better chance of being a Cup Stacking Champion then I ever do of becoming a Professional Football player.
I'm sure most of us have a much better chance at being very good at Dota and d3 pvp then we ever do at other games.
I get what your saying between a soccer player and football player. But these are professional sports who stood the test of time, and are played professionally. Similar to FPS and RTS genres. They are just accepted as the medium. Whereas stuff like wow and d3 isnt.
They are also far more balanced in terms of no team has an advantage over the other except for quality of players. One doesnt play with say 11 men on the field compared to ten. Or one baseball team gets to use an aluminum bat and the other a wooden one.
You know, if people are as pathetic as they were (generally) when it game to d2 pvp it may be better if the diablo community didn't have much pvp after all. "RUNRUNRUNRUNDODGEDOROKEKEKEKEKAHAHAHAHAHRUNRUNRUNDODGEPWNPWNREMAKEKDELETERUNRUNRUNDIEDIEDIEDAHAHAHAHAHAH"
I had forgotten that. People spammed in all caps so much it flooded the left sign of my screen, dying/losing(usually) or not, hacking(usually, auto aim/maphack/bugged items) or not. The community couldn't handle being mature enough for pvp as a whole or something XD!
^ don't take that seriously, it's a joke, mostly.
I will be content so long as you can *eventually* >agree< to duels 1v1 and like a customizable personal arena for friends, between friends. (IE, you all join a game, hop into a free for all arena where you can die/respawn and you can just kill each other and choose to, or not to invite public to the game, other features such as controlling the time limit, teams, or death limit would be awesome)
This way people could still duel and pvp without it being stressful at all, or requiring balance patches at all.
Will have to wait an see, I am sure there will be a lot of competitiveness long run. As far as i remember, even in WOW, sub 1500 arena rating players, all seem to get e-wood when beating someone at 1600 or higher.
Point is that the majority of gamers don't have much skill, grind type people, who can keep farming low end game bosses for hours. Or play arena games at sub 1500 rating for hours. They know they cannot beat the very last end game boss or take that final step above 1500; yet they keep playing. And, Blizzard knows that, hence they will keep making games more "noob", casual friendly. That's where the money is, it's a business after all. AVTI is up 2% today 11.72 +0.23 (2.00%). They would like to keep that going higher
Let's not forget that there is always room for the higher skilled players. In the end the hardcore, higher skilled gamer will be able to enjoy the game more, they will be able to go higher in PvP or walk all over Inferno mode with ease.
You can always make a game competitive, regardless of the creators intentions. For example, the beta is easy and mindless, but I felt than sense of panic and excitement i got from the hard parts of d2 when people were doing speedruns. You can always add limits to yourself to increase difficulty. If you think monsters die too fast, then use shit weapons. Demanding blizzard to increase the difficulty for you is an ironically, casual mindset. Not to mention pvp matchmaking, which will alone make it more competitive than diablo 2 ever was.
Tbh no matter how you look at it Blizzard learned from WOW PvP that it's impossible to balance RPG for competitve gaming. Especially small scale pvp like arenas. So generally switching from last man standing model to team death match and denying arena raitings Blizzard essentially follows FPS trends - if you want to have fun just queue with friends and melt some faces and it won't matter whether you won or lost. On the other hand it's always up to players to create a serious teams and set matches with other ppls of same mentality. This way Blizzard won't have to take a blame from masses about poor balance, most will simply have fun in arenas and only small percent will be fighting over unseen epeen factor. Nobody really hurt this way.
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The community is goign to make it into their own E-sport most likely, as well. They did it with the other ones, nothing is stopping them from doing it with this one.
I thought people did that stuff because it was fun.
They will of course balance the classes, but as long there isn't competitive PVP they don't have to nitpick balance every skill/rune combination to the letter, and why casual you ask? why competitive i ask.I'm glad some game designers still make games that have a bigger focus on fun and relaxed game play then serious and competitive player vs player.
And it's a colossal pain in the ass to do so. Blizzard has probably spent most of it's WoW money re-balancing WoW to meet the combined expectations of both audience members.
Putting aside for a moment that these examples are in diffiren genres, I think you're being generous saying starcraft 2 has exellent pve. I mean, yeah the campeign isn't bad, but it's not replayable pve content. SC is about pvp, it
s a head to head rts. WoW began as a pve game, got a whole lot of iteration on pvp, and now is a little of both with a lot of lasting balance problems in both areas.
If you came into D3 assuming there was going to be a huge pvp audience, you clearly missed the first two games. There has been pvp in D2, but it isn't supported to the extent other tites encourage pvp. When the lead designer says he's not going to get into the pvp balance game and says "shut up pvp guy," that's a pretty good indicator that the pvp audience is screaming into deaf ears. Might not have been the most PC way to say it, but i'd go the same rout. They delivered on MORE pvp conent than any diablo title yet and they even promised to iterate on it in the future. What they refuse to promise is ranked ladder and pvp balance (which go hand in hand if you've ever read a ladder forum) because it DOES detract from their development of D3 as a pve game by adding conflicts of interest in skill modifiers, items, etc.
Actually you talk like that if you want to appeal to the target audience: pve players who've become fed up with pvp balance ruining their gameplay.
I'm not gonna judge the quality of this game until I play it. Every time I read about a change, my initial response is WTF!? Then, once I remove pre-conceived notions and actually think about it, I start to understand. When I read dev forum responses, or watch interview videos explaining the changes, I can trade the superficial and biased theories for the real, well-pondered reasoning behind it.
I think Blizzard deserves the benefit of the doubt, until we get our hands on the game and experience it ourselves. Theorycrafting is grossly inadequate when judging the quality of a game.
-Thomas Jefferson
I don't think I made that level of comparison, but you're on the right track if you are aiming for a full-on middle-east ranting derail of this thread.
He's not a marketing executive and he was speaking to community members, not the general public. I don't know how politically correct and muted you expected his language to be, but i'm thankful he actually sat up there and had a candid conversation instead of towing the party line and trying not to offend anyone.
I think you're really confusing "lead designer," with "internet politician." When it comes down to good business, Blizzard made a good product and they're giving us Jay interviews to answer any "why'd you do that," with candid answers from the horses' mouth. That's good business and it's trasparency of design, also good.
What is that line about charity doing in there?
I think, once again, you're majorly confused. Jay isn't the Blizzard marketing exec and he was expected to be candid in his interviews. What's more, you've blown those quotes entirely out of porportion and context (if you could even produce their origninal context, i'd be shocked) and essentially gone on a self-serving rant to justify your position as an angry pvp'er.
No, then Blizzard would be horrible money grubbing liars in everyone's opinion. It's a lose-lose situation no matter what.
It couldn't be that he was speaking in a familiar manner because he's met most if not all of the people in the interview room before. And I've never heard of someone overstating something with hyperbole before. I mean, its not like it ever happens on the internet. (cwutididther?)
Or, maybe he just wants to make a good game? IDK.
Agreed, none of these changes tell us anything about how difficult the game will be. Blizzard has said that D3 is all about the combat, and I imagine that it will get quite challenging. I suspect that it is going to be much more involved than in D2.
I dont even have a diablo cd anymore. But if you wanna keep drinking your own koolaid go ahead I dont really care. Its a gear based game. Always has been, always will. Hey, maybe thats why they are adding a rmah because you know people play diablo for gear. Maybe thats why there was 8 million diablo shops and dupes because hey people want gear to go destroy other gearless ppl. Dodging one measly attack just to one shot someone else is not skillbased pvp. I mean they dont play instagib in shooters professionally do they?
Diablo pvp is pretty much equal to dota/hon/LoL. I like it, but if i was gonna brag about my ability in a game, it would be in a shooter or rts, both with take more skill then any other genre in player vs. player.
LOL, I didn't even see this post but wtf are you talking about.
Mmm, I wouldn't say that shooter or rts has more or less skill requirement than MOBAs or Diablo. They all have different systems to work within and different elements to monitor.
I mean, soccer is a relatively simply game, but that doesn't mean that the whatever team won the last world cup is less skilled than a football player.
I mean, that statement right there shows some ignorance (i don't watch soccer at all) so I'm just assuming football is more complicated.
Go is simple, chess is complicated, they both require a lot (and different) skills to win.
So, just because I didn't care about PvPing where if you weren't in super amazo gear you would get killed instantly makes my points invalid? Nothing I stated was less valid because I didn't care for Diablo PvP. In addition, I'm actually MORE interested in the PvP of Diablo 3 due to the plans they have for it.
The point is though that Diablo is about its story and bashing monsters, not players. Sure they gave you the option, because it isn't hard to do so. Now in Diablo 3 they are already devoting time and money to give those that liked the ridiculous nature of Diablo PvP some love. Yet they still get downed on as if its never enough.
I'm sorry, Diablo 3 is a RPG not a PvP battle game. Its primary focus is those RPG elements. If this doesn't suit you, then go play another game. Heck, MOBA games seem to fit that style of PvP pretty well, abiat with a lot less grind.
As others in this thread have pointed out as well, just because they are using the term casual a lot when they talk about Diablo 3, doesn't mean it'll really be 'easy'. They are making an effort to make some rather extreme difficulty modes for play through.
I didnt mean to say they dont require skill. Its just the level of skill people think they require is a little out of whack. I personally base what takes the most skill on what is hardest to be good at.
Like I feel I have a much better chance of being a Cup Stacking Champion then I ever do of becoming a Professional Football player.
I'm sure most of us have a much better chance at being very good at Dota and d3 pvp then we ever do at other games.
I get what your saying between a soccer player and football player. But these are professional sports who stood the test of time, and are played professionally. Similar to FPS and RTS genres. They are just accepted as the medium. Whereas stuff like wow and d3 isnt.
They are also far more balanced in terms of no team has an advantage over the other except for quality of players. One doesnt play with say 11 men on the field compared to ten. Or one baseball team gets to use an aluminum bat and the other a wooden one.
what is your opinion on pvp in D2?
Regards
/me...
I had forgotten that. People spammed in all caps so much it flooded the left sign of my screen, dying/losing(usually) or not, hacking(usually, auto aim/maphack/bugged items) or not. The community couldn't handle being mature enough for pvp as a whole or something XD!
^ don't take that seriously, it's a joke, mostly.
I will be content so long as you can *eventually* >agree< to duels 1v1 and like a customizable personal arena for friends, between friends. (IE, you all join a game, hop into a free for all arena where you can die/respawn and you can just kill each other and choose to, or not to invite public to the game, other features such as controlling the time limit, teams, or death limit would be awesome)
This way people could still duel and pvp without it being stressful at all, or requiring balance patches at all.
Point is that the majority of gamers don't have much skill, grind type people, who can keep farming low end game bosses for hours. Or play arena games at sub 1500 rating for hours. They know they cannot beat the very last end game boss or take that final step above 1500; yet they keep playing. And, Blizzard knows that, hence they will keep making games more "noob", casual friendly. That's where the money is, it's a business after all. AVTI is up 2% today 11.72 +0.23 (2.00%). They would like to keep that going higher
Let's not forget that there is always room for the higher skilled players. In the end the hardcore, higher skilled gamer will be able to enjoy the game more, they will be able to go higher in PvP or walk all over Inferno mode with ease.
Author of: Random Ravings of Warcraft